The Playstation 2 is small. It’s affordable. It’s–well, I don’t want to say “hardy”, ’cause it’s not. Regardless, I would recommend its purchase to anyone. I recently received a review copy of Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 for the PS2 from Namco Bandai (Bandai Namco?), and it was not a bad game in the least. It’ll definitely prove to be a lot of fun for the Narutards.

And heck, what am I playing now when I have a few minutes to myself and my husband’s not poking me for a Brawl match? Xbox 360? Nope. DragonQuest VIII. (Yes, still.)

Post from: EveryJoe

Playstation 2: Still Alive o/~

Here’s where the moaning comes in. “Oh no! The purity of the original story has been looooost!” Ha ha! Bugger off. Dragon Warrior / DragonQuest has always gone the classic route with its stories: An ultimate hero versus and ultimate evil. Dragon Quest VIII is no different. Honestly, if not for the fact that the characters have something amazing to say every other line, I wouldn’t care about chasing Dhoulmagus across the world.

The sprawling, expansive, gorgeous world…with the night wind blowing through the trees. Holy crap, such a minor detail that so few game developers pay attention to, even in this age of systems with gazillion-gig hard drives.

Writing compelling dialect is a hard, hard job. I will not touch it with a ten foot dragon-poking pole, because reading bad dialect is obnoxious. If you do it right, however, you stand to add a lot to your character.

Former lout Yangus gets a lot of love in the gaming community, and I have a small clue that it’s because of that low-class proletariat accent of his. That alone sets him worlds apart from the stuck-up but lovably formal King Trode. In fact, Trode recites my favourite line in the game when you pick him up from the pub in Pickham after quickly completing a chore: “Well, that was unduly expedient of you.”

If such a line were used in any other instance (in a game, book or otherwise), it would just be an example of a writer showing off. But with an aristocrat like Trode, you wouldn’t expect any less. Only Trode talks like Trode; you never hear the same from Jessica, Angelo, Yangus or the Hero, what with him being mute and all.

I’d love to see this kind of detail and effort put into every localised game. There is in fact a bard you meet in Pickham who arrived not long ago, but you can already tell his accent is sliding into the local dialect just a bit. Alas, game localisation rarely sees that kind of loving care. If it did, it’d stand a far greater chance of measuring against real literature.

Post from: EveryJoe

Gabby Quest

I was about 12 when I played Dragon Warrior III, and it inspired me to take on a stupidly huge writing project. To my credit, it wasn’t fanfiction (I wrote one of those for a school project the year before): It was about two prepubescent kids who are pulled into a medieval world through a book thanks to magic, or dungeons and dragons or who the hell knows. There, they discovered they’re destined to beat the Dragon King because they’re descended from some wanker named the Black Duke, etc etc. I had a wizard character named Garth. I shit thee not.

There were some cool moments: One of the kids (Jay) acquired a pet baby dragon, which subsequently poisoned him and he had to find his way out of the spirit world with the help of (boooong) The Black Duke. I think the school year ended by that point. I did have an outline for the rest of the novel, though, which is more than I can say for some of the crap I write today.

So what the monkey does all this have to do with Dragon Warrior? Even if I didn’t blatantly steal plot ideas (except for the word ‘descendent’, which I learned from being a descendent of the noble warrior Erdrick), I stole monsters without knowing exactly what they were. So the guardian of my childish underworld was a multiheaded dragon named Orochi; I had no idea it was a creature from Japanese myth. Dragon Warrior III also featured the Hydra, which I had no idea was from Greek myth.

Oh video games. Where will you take us next?

Expect a lot of DragonQuest VIII talk over the next few weeks, because I’ve forgotten precisely how unforgiving this series tends to be:

GREEN FELLOW: “Great Hero, you must steel yourself and charge into battle! Leave no enemy unslain!”

ME: “WAR CRYYYYYYYYY!” *dies*

No seriously, I died on my second battle with a bunch of bunnicorns. Yeah, I got totalled by rabbits. And that’s when I remembered.

DragonQuest is not a sissy-boy RPG series that coddles you. You don’t start with massive swords, gun blades or armour beyond the clothes on your back. You don’t start your adventure with some token female who can heal your boo-boos from the outset. You have to earn your healing spells, and they don’t spread out with the “R” button, bucko. And when you die, a stay at the Inn won’t call back your wayward spirit. No sir, you’re going to Church and ponying up some cash because God don’t let His souls go for cheap.

Then there’s the small issue of item distribution. Oh, you’re down to zero HP, backed up against a wall by a fire-drooling dragon and you forgot to take some herbs out of your bag before the battle? Sucks to be you.

Good times, though. Good times.

Post from: EveryJoe

I’m playing DragonQuest VIII, and it’s a thrill.