There was just a bit in Yakuza 6 that was tonally inconsistent with anything else in the series and included Beat Takeshi’s character and made perfect sense in context and was an absolutely hilarious sequence of these provincial small-town yakuza thugs basically playing rugby with a baby, and I’m pretty sure he guest-directed it or something

…huh

oh if we’re talking about vidya as repository of Japanese self-narratives, everyone realizes that FF6 was (in part) that classic Japanese form of “WWII metaphor, slightly kinked”?*

That royal/roughneck brothers Edgar/Sabin are England/America, captive general Celes is France

Emperor Gestahl is the old imperial Germany, and his usurping mad clown chancellor Kefka is obviously Hitler

Which means samurai Cyan of Doma is a self-pitying Japan. We only got into this cause honest feudal politics but crazy ol’ Kefka went to WMD and now everyone’s dead

The Ghost Train was about postwar Japan dealing with everyone having someone they love be dead

The World of Darkness is obviously about being nuked and ruined

* others: Strike Witches and Gate Keepers. Tag your faves!

Playing Yakuza 6 and suddenly taken aback to realize the State of Japan – or rather, nation of Japan – has probably recruited at least $50k of lifetime value – maybe more! – out of me from the fact that Sony’s PS4 offered SEGA’s Yakuza Kiwami as their free game one month

Like, first off paying for 0, Kiwami 2, and 6. But also since “walking around, eating a variety of Japanese food and drinking Japanese liquor” is like a central mechanic in the series, I’ve had that on my mind. To start with, I got sushi more often.

And I got to thinking “boy, I like ikura” and then “huh we don’t have much in the local cuisine, given the salmon focus from Oregon to Alaska” and now whatever idle share of my brain is dedicated to how I can match up local resources to Japanese expertise

Gave me a better sense of ramen varieties that I bothered to order from the ramenya again after my first try was disappointingly pork-fatty. Tried the slightly-more-sophisticated-than-college packaged ramen from the convenience store. Was nice, but I thought “man I wish they sold surimi and dehydrated add-ins, though!”

They made Japanese whiskey look intriguing, tried it, and I like the light golden taste. Suntori Toki and Hatozaki are now regulars in my cabinet.

I’m not coming in as a novice. For a decade I’ve had a certificate from the Japanese state department I got by paying them to take the hardest test of my life saying I’m somewhat competent in Japanese, which I learned in a program that America uses to train spies and diplomats. I have years ago looked into how the local consulate could help with my dream of retiring to a mountainside hot spring and establishing an onsen ryokan.

So I was primed. But part of that was, I already had a latent base-level familiarity and I’ve been astounded how well this series activated it.

Like, all the faces and the types I had got just enough glancing exposure to from a childhood of Lupin III and Capcom games and Time articles about the salaryman as modern samurai, not only realized in better depth but situated in a matrix where you see how they all fit with and relate to everything else I’ve seen of Japanese culture.

And the way I could pick up things from it and apply it back to what I knew before, like oh, shit, those anime mooks were Korean-coded, huh?

The way the series covers like 30 years’ development of Tokyo (and what went before, with their Golden Gai-alike) and Osaka, and early modern rust belt Hiroshima and semitropical possession Okinawa, helping put together the pieces of Japanese geography and history and culture

(Like, the side missions in 6’s backwater Hiroshima underline how slice-of-life tropes AND pop-mystical youth tropes – “time leaps”, ghosts, “we hit our heads now we switched bodies” – are flip sides of the issue that nothing really happens there compared to the big cities)

The language – just hearing the rhythm of it. I’ve developed an instinctive sense of the uses of makaseru. The way the subtitles help me pick up things where I already know 70% of the words they’re just so fast, the bits where I actually understand every word but I’ve got to parse how the laconic yakuza speech means what the subtitles indicate.

It’s rekindled a flame! From since I was young and my parents’ old neighbor Mr. Tamura, since recalled to home office, visited on business trips. It’s given me a glimpse at the more textured understanding I didn’t even realize I wanted.

A funny thing is amidst all the walking simulators and woke checklists (Depression Quest was MAYBE the third best Twine of its era about chronic depression) of 2010s vidya criticism is AAA games have taken the place of movies as widely shared narrative experiences and have been doing interesting things!

Part of it they learned how to leverage them to promote other properties. The Arkham series got you caring about the whole Bat-collective! “Oh, Nightwing, the butt model with the sticks?” Well, yes, but also the guy who can rival Bruce but isn’t gloomy and can give him hilarious shit about it!

And that works for whole nations, too. Like on the one hand okay Poland is “illiberal” and “a challenge to the human rights foundation on which post-60s first world international relations have been based” but on the other

kontextmaschine:

Playing Yakuza 6 and… it’s interesting, it’s like they’re doing it as a slice-of-life episode, a way to finish off the Kiryu saga without trying to top previous plot stakes.

Like, the plot so far is seriously “Kiryu becomes a grandfather, retires to a small backwater town, and becomes involved in local civic life”.

Like previous games there’s a dual-threaded plot but the suspense plot is just like, trying to find someone and tell them something, and the rival clan plot is a very minor set of small-timers he drew petty anger from by wandering into a love triangle of 40-somethings (that’s kind of a callback to Yakuza 1)

Maybe it reels into something bigger later, but honestly I dig it

It gets a bit more serious but major minigame chains are “you have to rebuild the local adult league baseball team” and “you have to hang out in the local bar until you hear all the stories & in-jokes”

Playing Yakuza 6 and… it’s interesting, it’s like they’re doing it as a slice-of-life episode, a way to finish off the Kiryu saga without trying to top previous plot stakes.

Like, the plot so far is seriously “Kiryu becomes a grandfather, retires to a small backwater town, and becomes involved in local civic life”.

Like previous games there’s a dual-threaded plot but the suspense plot is just like, trying to find someone and tell them something, and the rival clan plot is a very minor set of small-timers he drew petty anger from by wandering into a love triangle of 40-somethings (that’s kind of a callback to Yakuza 1)

Maybe it reels into something bigger later, but honestly I dig it

Orphaned FF7r thoughts:

At the start I was like “oh, why am I reminded of the Yakuza games”

And at first I thought it was just I had previously been playing them so much, and then thought the aesthetic of Japanese construction sites and weird-shaped undeveloped plots was reminding me of the real estate-focused 0 and 2.

Then Wall Market was conceptualized as a Kamurocho-type separated “entertainment district”, with karaoke bars and ramen shops and masseuses and brothels and criminal powers and giant stone underground fighting coliseums…

The construction zones, though, I think that was on to something… the ugliness, the brute-force landscaping, the lack of coherence – in the zoning-free utopia, “incompatible uses” put next to each other and then walled off by blank concrete slabs, Cloud and Tifa’s apartments the shittiest seen-a-million “1R"s, institutional bath toilet and sink straight off a bare room.

The point that when they’re dramatizing Shinra’s environmental rapacity, or the degradation of the Midgar slums relative to the richer plate, they’re recognizably invoking and critiquing ”the formless, brutal, utilitarian jumble“ of the Japanese postwar boom

Thing the second: you know how for decades we tee-heed about the Bumblebee Inn scene "helping players realize something about their sexuality”?

Well, you know how I said that part of my personality change since choking last summer was I went up like a Kinsey point? Before even getting to the scene, just in contemplating it, I realized that femboys were now… flagged as eligible targets?

Like, it was with anticipation and eventual relief I proceeded on to the scene and realized that drag!Cloud did not trip the same “yeah, I would” flag as Tifa or Aerith, that was an experience.

FF7r got kinda Evangelion movie, in that it started out as a retelling of a familiar tale, dwelled on the cozy familiar in a fanservicey way, started to turn up the divergence from the source, and then got totally abstract and thematic at the end

Part of that was to wedge final boss climaxes into a narrative that’s not through yet, but part of it specifically was to kill the narrative. Up to there mostly delivered a similar experience to the original, with some things remixed, enough that for returning fans they can really tease the fate of Aerith

Well just before the end they come out with a remix of that bit, then the final boss, more than Sephiroth, is like “the force of things necessarily going the way they’re fated to”, and with that defeated it’s not clear where anything stands and it’s like yes, that was definitely Final Fantasy 7 there, no I have no idea where this is going now

A+

FF7r continues to be brilliant

Like, the first game is apparently up through Midgar, expanded to fit and I can’t tell what’s new or just newly done well enough to matter, but it is just full of themes of parents and children and comrades and just the spirit of loss hanging over everything

Aerith in particular is amazing, a new type that later scholars will connect to the MPDG and the yandere, and she’s vocally aware that she’s an impermanent thing and her time is limited

The collapse of the Sector 7 plate is set up as a foreshadowing parallel - if you have previous exposure you know what’s happening, it’s loss and failure, with the built-up Cloud/Jesse ship as a loss, but at this point there’s been just enough divergence from the “real“ timeline you wonder until the end whether it’ll really happen

This time though Wedge survives (meanwhile obviously, in the original this sequence did not expect players to appreciate Aerith’s later fate)

The remake is aware the payload of FF7 is the Cloud/Tifa/Aerith triangle, it’s striking how marginal even Sephiroth is

So as it reaches a peak, this installment is whispering in your ear

Hey Aerith’s so great, she’s really a dream girl, but she’s telling you not to fall in love with her because her time is limited, it’s 2020, you know we’re going to kill her…

…right?

And oh my God, that’s the obvious-in-retrospect angle a compelling multi-game FF7 remake would have to take, and it’s brilliant

People wanted one for decades, but the issue is if you didn’t deliver on it perfectly, a FF7 remake would track mud over everyone’s adolescent nostalgia

This one, luckily, is perfect, exactly evoking the feel of playing the original for the first time. The rich environments matching the wonder of that prerendered background beauty, only now in full rotatable 3D with a more natural and intuitive travelable/not travelable distinction than I’ve ever seen

In Chapter 9 now, I got to Aerith’s house and just explored it for a few minutes with my jaw dropped, that wooden rural cozy with 80s TV and microwave, evoking the interior design of Final Fantasy Six as much as anything…

With decades of pitching the brand, Square realizes what people get from it and a lot is “imagining the characters hooking up”. Like I said, Jesse/Cloud is beefed up and I can see what plot hooks the doujins are meant to take off from

I mentioned Tifa still had huge melons just under a sports bra – I was thinking of some shots in profile where you could see the size and the compression rounding under the armpit

Well now I’ve met Aerith and yeah, she doesn’t need a bra, and a string necklace draws attention to her deep neckline, and I’m like oh this is no accident, and it’s not lewd fanservice, it’s more showing off the modeling, but they are definitely making sure you notice how nice the girls’ tits are

(This leaves me awkwardly wondering how the 16-year-old Yuffie is going to be treated)

Not just physical though, with the texturing available the characters and their relationships are richer. As Colin Spacetwinks pointed out, Cloud now very much vibes as the kind of intense but directionless young man who would leave his small town to join the army and then mask how it fucked him up.

In tone of voice and timing, Aerith’s sweet, cheerful, but not soft or vulnerable – in fact, it’s very charming how she sweetly, cheerfully, constantly gives Cloud shit. To wrap it up I guess what I’m saying is in the year of our lord 2020 and knowing where the story is going, the last thing I expected was to develop a crush on Aerith fucking Gainsborough

More FF7r thoughts:

They’re really aware you’re going to be shipping these characters – Cloud/Jesse is built up a lot, and your landlord is shipping Cloud/Tifa

Cloud’s sleeveless turtleneck thing really looks like a virgin-killer sweater, huh?

Just got through the first big section with no clear precedent at all – so far things seem about as remixed as from a 26-episode anime to the movie that covers the same ground

I forgot all about the Turks, as I was not a fangirl who had a sexual awakening about them

Oh jeez, that means I forgot about Vincent, I wonder how/if he’s even in this

Actually, what else do I remember? A seaside resort town, Red XIII and Cosmo Canyon, Cid and the rocket, Yuffie and Wutai, the end of Disc I, a seaside town with retractable seawall armor and the Sister Ray cannon, Sister Ray mounted in Midgar, Cait Sith, the Golden Saucer, that mountainside with the strategy game, a submarine?

I have no clue how any of that fits together.

I’d heard someone saying they reigned in the character design in on Tifa and… not really true! Her huge tits are now depicted flattened and bound by a firm sports bra, which is reasonable gear for a kickboxer with mondo knockers, but it’s stunning how they render the original outfit, suspenders and all, as something a human might actually wear, much more so than Tidus’ FFX half-shorts. If anything, the skirt’s shorter now

The FF7 remake is good! Just a bit in myself, the game and artistic designs both seem to be applying the best of Square’s modern style to evoke the classic feel

The memory’s distant enough that I keep being “oh yeah, that” and then being pleasantly surprised again with what comes next, which might be ideal

The audio, graphic, and animation quality help a ton at giving things weight - as odd as it is to say, Cloud’s blankness is textured now

They can overweight things - a buff black ecoterrorist proclaiming his righteousness to status quo suits that worked in 1997 polygons & text is just absurd here

More Yakuza Kiwami 2 thoughts:

“Drinks beer out of aluminum cans” is such efficient shorthand for a specific type of 25-35 year old noir tomboy tsunderes

There’s definitely a stereotypical Japanese beat cop face

This and Yakuza Zero’s takes on “Dontonburi” are making me appreciate the nuances of Kansai identity, and how its common translation as Dixie southernness isn’t quite right

The Cabaret Club Fever music sounds almost happy hardcore, which makes sense for 2006 Japan

Cops having moral dilemmas about shooting people attacking them, or legal dilemmas about a group including two cops and one retired cop shooting a guy who had already shot two of them during a terrorism investigation, is WILD

there’s gonna be a social distancing-themed Hitman level sooner or later, huh

Went on to get Yakuza Kiwami 2, cause God knows there’s no shame in staying in playing vidya on a nice day now. Thoughts:

The new engine is beautiful and smooth, and I’m impressed with how faithfully they reproduced the sites from the old one. I don’t know how you expect me to go back to play even the remastered ¾/5 after this

I wonder if the “different types of XP” inspired the recent Spider-Man, or if there was a mutual influence somewhere

Challenges seem better balanced, can be tough but not frustratingly impossible, and award XP you could just grind for some other way

It doesn’t pause cutscenes if you go back to the PlayStation menu, gotta get used to that

Yakuza Zero and Kiwami each kind of eased into things, with slow starts and twists accumulating; this one is like here’s your themes, remember this guy? he’s giving you a new mission, oh he’s dead, here’s a new character and the organizing tension, go!

I guess Zero and One were both slice-of-life introductions to minor soldier Kazuma Kiryu, and you can’t so much do that for Fourth Tojo Clan Chairman (ret.) Kazuma Kiryu. Maybe that’s why they started adding other playable characters

People hold their wafer-thin 2009 flip-phones in all sorts of wrong pistol grips, cross-keypad overhand grips, etc. That’s fascinating, was there just not the expectation in Japan that you hold it from behind like a corded phone?

the fact that they are still paying to advertise new content for GTAV Online blows my mind

illumynare:

jasmiinitee:

prokopetz:

the-venereal-bede:

prokopetz:

“Generically medieval”, by which we mean our peerage is French, our castles are German, our weapons are Italian, and everybody speaks English.

you can have religion in one of 2 flavors: “woo hoo aesthetic garnish” and “Sinister State Control in Bad Allegory for Problems in Modern Christianity”

Also, the latter is aesthetically French Catholic, theologically German Protestant, and has the institutional structure of the Church of Scientology.

not to mention that this land is simultaneously inhabited by thinly modified northern vikings (Nordic pre-medieval/9th century), travelling mongols (European medieval/13th century) and a wealthy italian merchant family with a house full of oil paintings (Southern European renaissance/15th century). the dance of the day is waltz (refined German 18th century country dance).

#lutheranism? #in MY 11th century southern France?#it’s more likely than you think! (via @byjoveimbeinghumble)

Not wrong

To get on one of my hobbyhorses again, reminder that “JRPG medieval”, where states comprise one city each led by a single noble always almost coopted by his chancellor; wars are fought with lancers, dragoons, and heavily armored 2h swordsmen; the empire is threatening to take over while the corrupt church co-opts from beneath; and the world is a combination of stone castles, half-timbered merchant towns, surprisingly advanced factories, rural idylls and exotic savage lands, is really an early modern German vision.

ktwpa:

FINAL FANTASY VI

More Yakuza 0 thoughts

• It’s not just Japanese faces and types, especially in the Osaka-based area it’s an interesting presentation of Chinese and Korean people from a Japanese perspective
• (a disproportionate share of Yakuza are ethnic Koreans or else burakumin, the outcast caste ethnically indistinguishable from other Yamato, the dominant “Japanese” ethnicity)
• Used to Majima from Kiwami as a figure of wacky fun; weird to take him seriously as a tragic figure bonding with a sex slave over being tortuously disfigured; interesting to find that “slugger” and “breaker” were real fighting styles
• Interesting how Yakuza fashion in ‘88 Tokyo is shiny fabrics and fancy tailoring and in more hayseed Osaka it’s like, checked fabric suits that “meant” the same kinda rube tryhard thing in America