It's truly amazing how games can influence you like that, I mean of course books, films, music can do the same but with a game you're so much more engaged. I have a terrible memory, I can hardly remember anything of my childhood, yet I can recall with ease a lot of games I burned through at a young age. I'm pretty sure my earliest memories are playing with Lego and playing Sonic.
I got into Final Fantasy with VIII, I had a demo of it with a Playstation magazine and straight away the opening cutscene blew me away, it was so unlike anything I had ever seen before and appealed to me on a level not many games have (a close second would be Resident Evil 2, 3 and Metal Gear Solid). So of course I had to own this game and until I saved enough money to buy it, I had rented it out a few times from a nearby video store (heh videos, I also remember playing FF8 looking at the beautiful cutscenes and my 11 year old brain kept thinking "why aren't movies on disks?").
I still remember vividly my first play throughs, starting with Garden, taking the SeeD exam, running away from that godawful robot spider and well... a lot happens! It was my first RPG and I just couldn't believe the experience it was giving me, I pretty much died from joy after finding Esthar (which is a name I always give to my first Civilization starting city) and then holyfuckingshitwe'reinspace!!!?? Not to mention flying about endlessly in the Ragnorak (the love child between Dragoon armour and a spaceship) in pure joyful bliss. Everything about the game was so different to what I expected from a game and appealed to me on such a deep and profound level, from the presentation, art style and music, so much the music. As for the story? I had no fucking idea what the hell was going on as a kid but I didn't care (turns out it's fate, preemptive persecution of witches and so much time travel wibbly wobbly that would make Doctor Who scratch his head).
Final Fantasy VIII is what inspired me to start drawing, to want to make games and ultimately opened my eyes to the fact that fantasy just doesn't need to be swords, magic and dragons and that sci fi can be more than spaceships and aliens. It's ridiculous how much it influenced me back then and still holds a grip on me today, I'll still load up the OST and suddenly get an overwhelming amount of feels from each song.
Of course back when I first played it I identified with Squall somewhat, having a rough and lonely childhood myself, it would be pretty accurate to say I was a complete loner and couldn't integrate with the social groups in school. Of course now I'm older and well, maybe not wiser, I think Squall is a complete jerk and Laguna is obviously the best character in the entire game.
I actually found out a while after I finished 8 that a couple of "friends" in school were fans of 7, it was pretty crushing to find out that they thought 8 was complete bullshit and they'd never play it because "it wasn't a sequel to 7". That was my first introduction to the whole FF game rivalry thing, which back then, 8 was definitely on the losing side and what confused me even more was that I had read up on the previous series and found out that they had all been completely different worlds, so I just couldn't understand all of the hate. Most FF games are awesome for different reasons.
People are confusing.
Anyway, since VIII I've played a fair share of FF. VI is my second favourite, the first time I became aware of "magitek" was in a game called Guardian Heroes on the Sega Saturn, which had these huge red mecha automations powered by magic and were extremely cool. So when I loaded up VI and saw the magitek armour, I flipped my shit at how cool it all was and of course, it's one of the finest made Final Fantasies. Although for a decade now I can't say that I know anyone IRL that is also a Final Fantasy fan.
So what does Eorzea mean to me? Hopefully a great Final Fantasy game that captures the magic of the previous games, although I feel that in this case, that magic is going to come from playing it with others, especially you guys.
(Ye gods that might be the corniest thing I've ever said)
Did I mention the music was really awesome?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYHblHmoQKg
I got into Final Fantasy with VIII, I had a demo of it with a Playstation magazine and straight away the opening cutscene blew me away, it was so unlike anything I had ever seen before and appealed to me on a level not many games have (a close second would be Resident Evil 2, 3 and Metal Gear Solid). So of course I had to own this game and until I saved enough money to buy it, I had rented it out a few times from a nearby video store (heh videos, I also remember playing FF8 looking at the beautiful cutscenes and my 11 year old brain kept thinking "why aren't movies on disks?").
I still remember vividly my first play throughs, starting with Garden, taking the SeeD exam, running away from that godawful robot spider and well... a lot happens! It was my first RPG and I just couldn't believe the experience it was giving me, I pretty much died from joy after finding Esthar (which is a name I always give to my first Civilization starting city) and then holyfuckingshitwe'reinspace!!!?? Not to mention flying about endlessly in the Ragnorak (the love child between Dragoon armour and a spaceship) in pure joyful bliss. Everything about the game was so different to what I expected from a game and appealed to me on such a deep and profound level, from the presentation, art style and music, so much the music. As for the story? I had no fucking idea what the hell was going on as a kid but I didn't care (turns out it's fate, preemptive persecution of witches and so much time travel wibbly wobbly that would make Doctor Who scratch his head).
Final Fantasy VIII is what inspired me to start drawing, to want to make games and ultimately opened my eyes to the fact that fantasy just doesn't need to be swords, magic and dragons and that sci fi can be more than spaceships and aliens. It's ridiculous how much it influenced me back then and still holds a grip on me today, I'll still load up the OST and suddenly get an overwhelming amount of feels from each song.
Of course back when I first played it I identified with Squall somewhat, having a rough and lonely childhood myself, it would be pretty accurate to say I was a complete loner and couldn't integrate with the social groups in school. Of course now I'm older and well, maybe not wiser, I think Squall is a complete jerk and Laguna is obviously the best character in the entire game.
I actually found out a while after I finished 8 that a couple of "friends" in school were fans of 7, it was pretty crushing to find out that they thought 8 was complete bullshit and they'd never play it because "it wasn't a sequel to 7". That was my first introduction to the whole FF game rivalry thing, which back then, 8 was definitely on the losing side and what confused me even more was that I had read up on the previous series and found out that they had all been completely different worlds, so I just couldn't understand all of the hate. Most FF games are awesome for different reasons.
People are confusing.
Anyway, since VIII I've played a fair share of FF. VI is my second favourite, the first time I became aware of "magitek" was in a game called Guardian Heroes on the Sega Saturn, which had these huge red mecha automations powered by magic and were extremely cool. So when I loaded up VI and saw the magitek armour, I flipped my shit at how cool it all was and of course, it's one of the finest made Final Fantasies. Although for a decade now I can't say that I know anyone IRL that is also a Final Fantasy fan.
So what does Eorzea mean to me? Hopefully a great Final Fantasy game that captures the magic of the previous games, although I feel that in this case, that magic is going to come from playing it with others, especially you guys.
(Ye gods that might be the corniest thing I've ever said)
Did I mention the music was really awesome?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYHblHmoQKg
