Please no unnecessary conflict, my friends. _ Posts edited.
Unfortunately, much of my experience has been limited to interesting and entertaining Let's Plays and what have you, but I have heard a number of wide-ranging comments about the series overall. Though I cannot concretely pass my own judgment, I am most likely going to grab my hands on Xillia or Vesperia sometime in the future, just to get a taste. I cannot completely identify a favourite yet, but I do enjoy the unique dynamics in the plots, worldbuilding, and even mechanics that the games present. A very nice RPG series overall.
It is very much part of the versatility and universality of characters we can consider "RPG" based. Namely because, as PaW stated earlier, many of these ideas are derivatives based off of the world surrounding tabletop pen & paper, among other things. At the same time, the term seems to be growing looser and less collective as time goes by, among the fact that traditional RPGs themselves are being segmented into different types within the genre. Genre-blending is common when we consider elements specific to a genre as components of a large proportion of games.
Even if it was a consumerist marketing stunt, those folks did seem quite happy enough. I do have to commend the idea behind it, despite its multifaceted nature. Acceptable as airplanes have some danger to them (as do all transportation systems), but hardly are they flying death traps I would say. Generally, commercial airlines are fairly safe and are getting safer.
It is the other way around, really. Many people have thought of me as older until the discovery of my actual age, and the like. In this way it is certainly true that we cannot explicitly link age to our expectations of a person beyond certain generalizations. I am friends with a good deal of people both quite older and quite younger than me, and their experiences offer refreshingly different viewpoints on things as well. Suffice to say these friendships have different social boundaries, as was said, but there is a core root of experience tying them together. You befriend the individual, not the age.
_ Merged.
I always knew Fire Emblem Batman was a softie at heart. Just look at the rest of his supports.
The internet is a very fluid entity, and arguably the 20th century models of governing certain groups attempt to apply to it are akin to sectioning off a piece of a river by placing the pikes only mid-water deep. Essentially, the nature of the internet is something that is slowly changing the method of information distribution that has become so integral to our lives; it is part of the reason why such digital-rights struggles become popular, and why one can find nearly anything they need if they look hard enough. What is more, the internet is akin to a neural system of multiple agents, often with similar goals, forming a featureless group working together to spread information or some service globally. As long as ideas fly through the Wi-Fi waves then simple quarantines and sectioning off cannot put off entire groups because of the intrinsic fluidity of the internet. Like Nova said, economics and demand create a good incentive for the engine behind internet fluidity, among other things. Though anonymity seems to slowly die off these days, this appears less of a problem namely because the new internet does not completely require such a dichotomy between anonymity and reality if it means being able to send and distribute information regardless. These institutions may indeed come into place during our lifetimes, but it feels more as if the internet and its function as a collective, globalized human consciousness acting as the agent changing or controlling society, rather than the other way around.
I have a large list, but one of them is amusingly enough just resolving myself to keep up with the rest of my resolutions. It feels very much a combination of the busy time we have surrounded ourselves in society and the inherent lack of determinism that combine to make us stumble over our resolutions from time to time. For them to work, from what I have seen, one requires a set reason behind following these resolutions that an individual can pursue beyond as much reasonable doubt as they can subject themselves to. In the end, it is a matter of driving yourself forward, but I believe in you all at least. As long as you are not planning to drive off a ramp into the water or something ridiculous.
This feels the likeliest to me. The reason why they retain their appearance is because they have enough willpower to retain their appearance despite losing their hearts, and part of this is connected to their self-identity. It is also entirely possible that memories are not solely connected to the heart in some instances, and may be tied to the soul of the person as a whole, at least in terms of identity. In this idea, I question whether the Nobodies are tied explicitly to identity as a dependency of their existence. We can understand that the grunt nobodies (the basic ones we fight and the like, assigned to each member) have lost their sense of individuality, implying they possess no identity and therefore are the likeliest to have no memory in connection to their lack of hearts. If this is the case, it may seem that memories are connected to both the heart and the shell, depending on the strength of the heart or the individual as a whole. If memories can be formed post-heart loss then this should not be very much a problem if strong-willed nobodies begin to regrow hearts from the onset of their loss. Alternatively, the shells may operate on a sort of neuroplasticity-type of factor where the lack of heart means that other functions of the body (e.g. the shell) temporarily take over these processes in the interim until the heart regrows.
99% of the thread has covered my preferences for Disney-unique worlds, so I shall go off on another derivative. I would be interested in seeing a few more story-unique worlds, provided that they were relevant to the plot and did not clutter up the space where Disney and other such worlds could be. The series-unique worlds we have seen so far are fairly well-made and vary wildly in their environments, and I am personally fond of that little picturesque collection that the series has presented so far. Perhaps for a final conclusion for the series we could at least get some closure on those existing worlds, or go deeper into some we already know.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF KINGDOM HEARTS VIDEOS IMMIGRATION BUREAU REGISTRATION NUMBER: MEMBER #61794 MEMBER #61794 IS REQUIRED TO PRESENT HER CREDENTIALS AND IMMIGRATION PAPERS. NO OUTSTANDING NOTICES TO REQUIRE FURTHER INQUIRY. BACKGROUND CHECK UNNECESSARY FOR FURTHER INQUIRY. PAPERS AND CREDENTIALS ARE ACCEPTABLE AS PER RULE #325 OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF KINGDOM HEARTS VIDEOS MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR AND MINISTRY OF IMMIGRATION. ACCEPTED. YOU WILL BE PLACED IN QUARTER 53-B. GLORY TO KHV.
I just made 5 posts in the Kingdom Hearts sections, my friend.
This is actually gorgeous. I adore it when I get to see recreations of video game items in real life, and this attention to detail and efficient craftsmanship is marvelous. Hats off to this man. I should commission him for help in cosplaying weapons but then I would fear everyone would think that I grabbed the real thing straight from the games themselves, dang.
I am ... conflicted. It would be nice. But at the same time, I do not think it would fit the story. There is time travel, yes. Square has pulled off multiple endings in previous games, yes. But the writing for the Kingdom Hearts series has, for the past 10+ years, been centralized with its themes and its overall direction. I typically see multiple endings in games where you get a distinct element of choice from the beginning, but from the beginning Kingdom Hearts has been plowing forward with its hopeful dandy plot and positive ethical themes without any real indication that the player has some control in their decisions. It is following a distinct story, and to give it multiple endings with little bearing in the past events would feel a bit ... flimsy. It would diminish the integrity of the cohesive end that the plot has been marching towards; all the themes, the build-up, and what have you, crashing down at the last minute to suddenly tell the player that "Oh look! You actually have a choice now!" would feel detrimental to the story. Unless of course Nomura was planning to pull this postmodern apply-what-you-learned-from-my-story-by-choosing-your-ending from the get-go, in which case, hats off to him and I would be amused.
I enjoyed the change from colourful to more subdued that occurred in Kingdom Hearts 2's costume change. Like it was said earlier in the thread, it captured Sora's maturation fairly well. In general, it would be a bit harder to extrapolate the general sense of what Sora's outfit might be, namely because the design of outfits, despite generally holding a similar style, have enough unique and individual factors that go into their design that we would need to understand the thought process of where Nomura is headed for Kingdom Hearts III in general. Will it retain a similar environment to one of the previous games? If it is darker, I imagine that Sora's clothes may "mature" even more; I did find Kingdom Hearts 2 a bit darker compared to the first game, at times, but this is just grasping for straws. Although, to be honest, I cannot think of Sora wearing orange all over the place. It does not seem to fit the aesthetic style that the series has with its costumes throughout all of the games, and would seem both flashy and out of left field to me.
Have yet to play Birth By Sleep completely. I played a bit of it and I agree with the thread that it certainly has one of the nicest combat systems. In terms of games fully played, DDD's combat system was the most appealing to myself. It felt fluid and combined the best of a number of other games from what I had seen, and I did not see much of a problem in helping train the spirits. Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 are on the same level about, perhaps with Kingdom Hearts 2 a tad lower due to excessive reaction commands. Chain of Memories was fun, but I cannot quite say with happiness that I found the battle system itself fun rather than very frustrating at times. But alas.
DDD spoilers below. To answer this question, we have to first understand a few things about the Organization as a whole, and understand what is really meant by "bad guys". To begin, what is a bad guy? Typically, this is very much a matter of perspective, because good and bad are relative. For the purposes of this situation, let us use a skin-deep metaphor and claim that a bad guy is someone who is opposed to the actions of the protagonist. This ignores the moral definitions of "bad" that shall be expanded upon in a few moments. Are the Organization members antagonists, then? As a whole, that would certainly seem obvious, but this is mostly because us, as the player, has been explicitly treated the perspective of situations where we view the Organization as a whole in an antagonistic light (and yes, I believe even Days has instances of this, from the machinations of getting rid of certain characters and the like). Not to say that this excuses anything inherently deplorable of them, but this implies that in these stories, both the moral scale of "good" and "bad", along with the idea of "protagonists" and "antagonists", are fairly relative. Now, I certainly do not enjoy thinking of ethical behavior as black and white and I understand that everybody in this thread has enough world-weariness to share the sentiment well enough, so we can all establish that, even in fictional antagonists, there is a sense of grey morality in their actions. While we can attribute this to what they did or did not do, it seems much more evident when we come to understand that the actual motives of the Organization's entire existence are not explicitly limited to getting their hearts back! In fact, that was never Xemnas/Xehanort/whatever you wish to call him's intention in the first place! If I recall correctly, the actual purpose was to serve as shells or vessels for the thirteen incarnations of Xehanort, which accordingly failed, as we learn. What does this mean? It simply shows how fragmented and misdirected the Organization was. The morality in their existence was grey due to the very fact that their existence was connected to multiple layers of rationalization, some of which they were unaware of themselves. From this point on, further understanding the motive behind our little Organization depends on whether or not you consider all extraneous media canon. In the games, the player sees that certain members of the Organization pretend to have emotions to fill the void where their hearts should be, while print and other sources expands this further by claiming that they do possess emotions, but their lack of hearts make them extremely insecure. This is where something special comes into place. Again, as revealed in Dream Drop Distance: Nobodies can eventually regrow their hearts. What does this mean? It means a few things. It means that the members were lied to, proving that they were not working in tandem much at all, and it also justifies the complete fragmentation of the Organization in the end. As a few posts stated before, these members never really seemed to work together. There was constant betrayal and weakness within the ranks, and this led to the eventual collapse of the Organization itself; not because of Sora's efforts, but their own insecurities as a result of their individual differences combined with their lack of hearts. It was stated earlier that much of their plans seemed whimsical and fragmentary. They were individuals in the end, acting on their own beliefs as how they tried to deal with their lack of existence based on themselves (not to mention Xehanort's own influence). Almost uncaring about what could happen. To themselves, to others. Why should they care? They are too insecure. Why are they too insecure? Well, when you have no heart, and you feel that you are never going to get it back (which turns out to be a lie), then you grasp to simply keep your existence in check. Accordingly, the entire motif of the Nobodies in Kingdom Hearts II revolved around the idea of existence, or lack thereof. In the Kingdom Hearts world, your heart is the stamp of what makes you. Your identity and existence. So what are you then without an identity but something or someone whose existence is unable to be verified? Do you actually exist? Do you want to exist? Some did. Some did not. Some did not even care. This existential crisis is entirely human, and it is what led to the downfall of the Organization. They did many terrible things as a group, and none of their personal interests can justify them. At the same time, the story of the Organization has come to play out less like a gang of competent villains than it has turned into a tragedy. Some wanted to fight, some did not. Some genuinely believed in the cause, and some distrusted the others' goals. All of them had lost their hearts, and all of them as individuals tried to deal with this. All of them were tricked, and this led to all of their downfalls. With the sole exception of Xehanort. And of course, the pawns he was able to explicitly control. I would not be surprised if his influence was what cultivated much of their negative actions. We have seen his persuasion enough through Birth By Sleep? Are the Organization XIII bad guys? They are antagonists. It is too complicated to explicitly label themselves as bad. But from the beginning, they seemed doomed to a tragic conclusion.
Theme time?
