Working Title 03.10.10: Final Fantasy Week - Oddball Appreciation

Posted by Jordan Williams on 03.10.2010

It's Final Fantasy theme week here at 411, so Working Title shows its appreciation to some of the best characters from the Final Fantasy series, the Oddballs. Also a mini rant on the whole deal going down between Activision and Infinity Ward...

Welcome to the #1 Column to get interrogated in a windowless room for six hours over the weekend, WORKING TITLE. That's right; I did TWO fucking horrible Infinity Ward jokes two weeks in a row.

But now I realize that most of you probably don't give a fuck about what is happening...but if you DO be sure to check out the mini-rant at the end of the column.

No, that does not mean scroll all the way down there right now. You have to actually READ the rest of this week's admittedly short column based on my favorite Final Fantasy Oddballs. But first...

Weekly Gaming Update

Bad Company 2
Picked it up last week, was sorely disappointed that all of the EXP I racked up during the demo didn't carry over. But at least the 30 dog tags I had did. The single player of the game is downright maddening to me. Having not played the first Bad Company I don't know if they really changed anything but I am getting the same Modern Warfare "Okay, the AI will ignore everyone else on your squad and pick you the fuck off no matter what the hell you do. So you'd better just hide behind some cover and pop some shots off" shit that made me not like it. It also has a really bad problem with telling me to destroy things...but not pointing them out. In a field of brown-green and camo it's hard to spot that tank fucking my shit up.

But enough of that...the multiplayer is BONER-AWESOME.

I never got into the MW2 multiplayer because I just love me some goddamn teamwork. Modern Warfare is built in such a way that you can be that Rambo guy and everything will kind of work out. But with Bad Company I LOVE being on a team (and a squad) and shit is just jellen'. I'm almost maxed out on the Engineer, which I absolutely love. And the crowning achievement was me getting the Dentist nerd cred on some pussy ass Recon who decided to hijack our UAV Heli.

Haha, fuck that guy. EA needs to work on the servers big time, though.


Mass Effect 2
Didn't really play much Mass Effect, decided that on this playthrough that Garrus, Tali, Grunt, Jack and Morinth are going to live. I am trying my damndest to make everyone else die. Seeing as on this playthrough I didn't have my FemShep romance anyone (outside of Kinky Kelly) and I didn't even bother recruiting Thane (because I hate him so much, and Zaeed DLC means you have to skip one character) I don't have to worry about effing up romances. Jacob dies because I dislike him, too. Miranda is dying because my MaleShep boned her (and cheated on Ashley to do it); Mordin is dying because he seems to always die. Zaeed is dying because since he is DLC, I don't know how much of a role he will play in ME3 ANYWAY...and then there's Legion. Man, that's a tough one. He still might end up surviving, but it's iffy. I want to try to survive with a morally 'grey' team and Legion is as grey as you can get. So I don't know. The only reason Tali is alive because a commenter last week convinced me that she needs to live...AND I WANT TO SEE HER FUCKING FACE.


Dead Strike (iPod)
This game sucks. Do not buy it. (It's free.)


Just Cause 2 Demo
After seeing gameplay footage of this game I was excited...after playing the game...I dunno. While there is a lot of fun to be had it just seems like the controls were fighting me every step on the way. This also might be a case of the demo just being a small (bad) part of the game, and the fact that it's a timed demo means you always feel rushed anyway. When the game comes out I might give it a try to see if it's a bit of a slower and more relaxed pace so you can really learn the controls.


And now that that is out of the way, in observance of Final Fantasy week here at 411mania, I decided to do another one of my columns where I pretty much just tell you flat out why I love certain characters. When it comes to the FF games I always have the oddball/outside of the box characters in mind. So I am pretty much going to just talk about my favorite oddball characters of Final Fantasy...and that doesn't mean I have a favorite oddball of EACH Final Fantasy game, these are just my favorites in general.

I told you it was going to be a short column.


Working Title - Final Fantasy Oddball Appreciation
Everyone has their heroes, the heroines, the badasses, and the comic relief. But for me it was always the odd characters that really spoke to me in Final Fantasy. They are usually forgotten by the plot after it expands beyond the realm of their usefulness, but for the brief moments that they are around they always sort of grab me in a way that the other cliché characters don't. Now while all of the characters I am listing below might not be oddballs per say, they were still definitely different from the group in their own special way and lent something more to the games for me. So just sit back and look at the one thing the internet loves the most. Lists!


Galuf


You batty fucking old man. Of course in a game like Final Fantasy V all of the characters are sort of left up to interpretation, but the real reason why Galuf is on my list of oddballs because for some reason when I first played FFV I decided to make Galuf my workhorse. He was the one character who I tried to max out in every single goddamn class. He was the strongest monk, the best dragoon, the beast master, clown, barbarian, black, red, blue, AND white mage. Galuf was pretty much the goddamn shit.

The fact that he was always portrayed as a crazy old motherfucker just seemed to make this even better. Everyone else obviously has a class they were meant to play but Galuf just seemed like that crazy old drunk guy at the bar who no one ever fucks with because if you do you know that he knows some shit that will just fuck you up. Galuf was my drunken bar guy. And we ALL have a drunken bar guy. If you don't you must not be able to drink yet or something.

So now take that drunken bar guy and give him the ability to fucking shoot fire from his hands or turn into a Ninja...and you have just why I love Galuf.

...Well, that was until halfway into the game where he up and died and suddenly the strongest member of my party was a 10 year old girl.

Yeah. I hated that twist.

Gau


Although Edgar is my favorite character in Final Fantasy 6, Gau comes as a very close second. His relevance to the plot and usefulness are always a point of argument, but I just liked the fact that he was one of the only characters in the game that didn't have tons of drama and other melodramatic storyline shit holding him down. We have Locke who has a dead girlfriend back home, Terra Skywalker, Sabin and Edgar with their problems and the list goes on. What was Gau's main problem? His dad was a fucking looney motherfucker who let his kid roam the wilds. That's it. No deep secret or some weird twist that will change the outlook on the character. He is just a weird kid who likes to act like animals. No more no less.

Gau was just sort of...innocent, I guess. But he was still an oddball. Hell, you want to have a hilarious time beating Kefka? Take a team comprising of Gau, Mog, Umaro, and Gogo to the final boss and just watch the hilarity ensue. And because I have a soft spot for Blue Mages, I think it is great that they found a really creative way to use the character type. Even if I did somehow glitch Gau once. I sent him into The Veldt for the elusive Cat Scratch Blue Magic.

And forgot about him.

Went on the game as normal, went through the Flying Continent and all of that. World of Balance ends, World of Ruin begins. Get Edgar and most of the crew. End up back in the Veldt for some reason and the first fight I get...Gau returns. And he knew -EVERYTHING-.

I mean EVERYTHING.

This was on a ROM some years back and I haven't been able to recreate it since, but it was still a pretty hilarious moment. Gau was pretty much broken from that point on and it was GLORIOUS.

FuSoYa


Although you only get Sleepyhead for a little bit of time and he truthfully isn't all THAT odd, I still put him on the list because the very nature of him is just...well...odd. You've gone this whole game and done shit like fight underground, in high technology castles and all of this and then you come to find out HEY, GUESS WHAT...POW...TO THE MOON, ALICE.

And this bearded mofo who says he's been pretty much sleeping for the last few decades starts spitting some noise about Cecil is an alien, and then on top of that he says that Golbez is his brother. Now remember that crazy bar guy I was talking about? FuSoYa (who will be referred to as Sleepyhead from now on) is sort of like that guy. Except instead of being the crazy old guy at the bar he's the crazy old guy who sleeps BEHIND the bar and when he is awake all he does is regal you with crazy ass tales about how he got abducted by aliens. Sleepyhead is useful for a bit, but the weird shit he comes up with in his world of crazy dreams is far more useful than his useful ass.

Add to that the fact that when he dies his beard becomes its own being and slowly begins to consume his body and then you get just sheer hilarity. So where the oddness of Gau and Galuf is outwardly obvious, you have to dig just a wee bit deeper into Sleepyhead's character to find the little oddball inside of him. Why does it seem like the longer your beard, the crazier you are?


Umaro


But what if your entire body WAS a beard!? You must be HELLA crazy. Or a Yeti...in which case you are what we in the biz call SUPER DUPER HYPER EXTREME MEGA BATSHIT CRAZY.

But we can't blame ‘em; he's a Yeti after all. Umaro might not be one of my favorite characters in FF6 because unlike Gau he is ultimately useless in the end. But I do love the way he was brought about. When you first see Umaro you just figure "Oh, he's a one shot little diddy here just to be here. Nothing will really come from it" then you find out that he's a fucking playable character waaaaay late in the game and I LOVE stuff like that. I think the correct term is Chekov's Gun or something. I love those little details in the beginning of the game (like seeing Umaro in Narshe, but nothing comes of it) that come back to have a pay off later in the game that you don't see coming.

I also like the fact that they didn't try to change the fact that Umaro is a savage beast. He's in a permanent state of berserk (like the Berserker classes of yesteryear) and...well that's pretty much it. You can't give him any armor or weapons, a few relics here and there and you can tailor him a bit but for the most part he is just your own personal Yeti and Mog's bro. Seriously, if I ever do a column about epic bromances in video games Mog and Umaro are definitely going to be in there.

Hell, now I MIGHT do a column about epic bromances in video games.

Quina


You know? I never finished Final Fantasy 9. I should go back one day...but the truth is that Quina just scares the fuck out of me.

Yep, that's all I have to say here. If you can look at a picture of Quina and not see why she is on this list then you are either some fucking frog-hate or...I dunno. Blind.

Which means you can't read this either.

Unless you have text to speech enabled.


Which then makes me this the #1 Column to use the Text-To-Speech Feature. Fuck yeah.

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Working Mini Rant: Infinity Ward vs. Activision
So of course last week was that giant news that Activision stepped in and kicked the leads of Infinity Ward to the curb over insubordination and a ton of other things. Almost right away everyone with a voice in the gaming community weighed in on the situation with their two cents. From people backing up IW to people damning Activision and using this as another chance to grill the new evil of the month, Bobby Kotick.

Now while I understand that the shit that went down over at IW was foul, the thing I am not understanding is why everyone seems to be universally hopping all up Activision's ass over this? Let's just assume for a second (because that's pretty much what EVERYONE else is doing) that Activision did in fact fire the two IW heads over breach of contract and insubordination.

Activision actually does have a case here. There are tons of print interviews where people from within IW (heads and non-heads) openly call foul on the way Activision does things including a pretty famous incident where some IW guy pretty much tore an Activison guy a new asshole in an interview. While Activision might be the big bad evil company everyone is painting them as. The fact of the matter is that IW isn't some third party dev or someone who just happened to be making a game for them. They were OWNED by Activision.

And there isn't a single fucking job in the world that would let you get away with openly crossing the boss as many times as people within IW have, and the gaming business shouldn't be held any different. As gamers and people who will be directly affected by what's going on we can't help but to want to back up what we see as the 'little' guy here. But insubordination and breach of contract are big things that no company throws around lightly. If this does go to court (and by all accounts it will) there's a lot of proof to back up Activision's side of the story and not really much to help out the IW heads with their argument of "They are trying to screw us out of bonuses".

The bonuses argument is already a weak one because as game developers, especially for an in-house dev team you are paid all money for the game up front. Bonuses are mostly for third party developers who get their money from the sales of the game versus the time put into it. Since IW is OWNED by Activision, they got paid what they are going to get paid at the start of the dev cycle. And even if there were some sort of bonuses to be had, if you are found in breach of contract that means you forfeit any terms OF that contract, which includes any bonuses you might get.

Although this story is FAR FAR from over, I just wanted to drop my two cents. The IW heads are out of a job (who knows for how long) and that sucks, but the fact is that sometimes in a business that is out to make money you have to realize that some internal problems are best handled that way. Internally. Don't go around airing the dirty laundry around for the world to see or the powers that be will make sure they take the clothes off of your back.

And as for Bobby? While the rest of the gaming industry is on his dick for being the bad guy, I actually kind of like him. He's a business man in a business. I might not agree with his whole "I want to take the fun out of game development" approach he has said he has, but sometimes you need someone like that in your company. Someone who is going to cut the bullshit and tell it like it is. Do you think EA, Sony, or even Valve would do what Bobby has been doing lately? He might be a dick, but every company needs them. Hell, every company HAS them. Bobby is just the only one who publicly says it.

And one last thing, the people bitching and moaning that Activision is going to ruin Call of Duty by turning it into the next Guitar Hero? That's was already in the works WAAAAAAY before this shit even went down. The game has been annualized for a while now whether you notice it or care. The thing is that pretty much everyone plays Call of Duty for the multiplayer. Which could EASILY EASILY stand alone as its own component and still sell fine. It's not like Guitar Hero where each SKU comes with some new plastic dongle to get and in the end you feel like you are ripped off. If you really think the people who are playing Modern Warfare or any other CoD FPS game would be against some sort of monetized multiplayer version would mind it in the long run, you are SUPER DUPER HYPER EXTREME MEGA BATSHIT CRAZY.

So, the tl;dr of it is don't be so quick to jump up Activision's ass for doing what very well might have to be done. This is a business; they are out to make money. If someone is fucking with those goals, they are cut. Every business in the world acts like that.



Working Question
You know, the more I think about it. The more I am going to do it. Next week's column is going to be about the best gaming Bromances.

Give me some examples. Salem and Rios is already a given.

Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and I am kind of surprised at the response Final Fantasy 13 is getting so far...after all of this a giant resounding "Meh" was really surprising.