Things are going about as well as can be expected. Final Fantasy XII has been proceeding apace when I have time and brainpower to devote to it, and it's still a blast.
When I have neither, however, I've been mostly thinking about how RPGs (especially JRPGs) have changed and evolved. I know the whole process has been beaten to death, subjected to Life2/Arise and then beaten again repeatedly, but the Dork Side demands incessant rehash and regurgitation before one can actually reflect on things like this.
I wandered about the internet, looking at old fansites and such about things like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI and gripes about 'ruinous' stuff that came along with the Playstation 2 forward. I've always accepted the axiom that maturity is for the weak among us nerds, but I rarely encounter such incessant, one-note whining outside of work. There is honest-yet-incisive criticism, and there is bitching. I keep encountering the latter.
I still find it, well, jarring that supposedly more 'casual' and 'bro-tard' fare produces intelligent (profane, troll-bait, but intelligent) discussions while 'hardcore, thinking' games provoke screeds upon screeds of mangled, vapid chat room yammering pretending to be wiki articles and FAQs. It's not that RPGs magically started sucking right before FFVIII hit shelves and have been in some sort of developmental stasis. It's more like the RPG fandom has inexplicably stopped aging at age 12-15 at or around the same time and has been slowly regressing ever since.
Damn, sorry about the soap box; it's made out of cheap pine so we can stand around and warm ourselves later. The point I was trying to make is that RPGs have always been flawed since the beginning, like everything else of mortal existence, but sometime around the aforementioned FFVIII release all we seem to acknowledge is the flaws.
We've forgetten that no game is perfect, and there is some merit to being able to look past problems in our toys and remember that they are toys. They are something to play around have fun with. Yes, a lot of them have some serious flaws, some of them very tragic flaws. Yes, most of the dedicated RPG fandom has aged out of the target demographic. But who the hell cares? The from 16-bit consoles to the PS2, RPGs enjoyed a golden age. Such an age will likely never come again, and we need to remember that, and actually enjoy the geeky bounty we were given. We are nerds, and it is time to actually be nerds for once. Celebrate these gems. Talk about them like we actually know what we're talking about. Update the articles and wikis and FAQs (but archive the old stuff, they're great sources of lulz and catharsis--betcha you never so those words in the same sentence). These are the games we've embraced, and we need to proclaim that again. And stop being so funereal about our favorites.
Okay, its out of my system now.
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