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I finished Kingdom Hearts for good. I haven't played Chain of Memories, and I'm unlikely to invest any further in the series because CoM is unlikely to have a good play value, even if I know I'm missing some of the story. I feel like there's not too much to be gained in this aspect.
Seeing the ending, I stand by everything I've said so far about the game with a single addition. There are a large number of Final Fantasy characters in the game, from various series, and unlike the Disney characters who have story bits set in their own worlds, in their own contexts, the Final Fantasy characters have all been pulled from their own contexts and inserted into a Kingdom Hearts narrative that was completed whole cloth. That is, Jasmine is from Agrabah, Ariel is from Atlantica, Beast has his castle and rose, but Cloud is not from Midgar, Squall is not from Balamb Garden, and Setzer (small cameo that he makes) isn't from, well, the worlds of Balance and Ruin. (I'm a nerd.)
This game is not, by itself, what I'd consider amazing. It is, however, chock full of things that fascinate me. In this case, it's how the Final Fantasy characters have become characters somewhat divorced from their actual settings. Umberto Eco stated in an essay that some well-known characters become entities outside of their original stories and I wouldn't say that all Final Fantasy characters are. However, characters like Sepheroth, Cloud, and to lesser extents Yuffie, Cid(s), Seifer, Squall and Yuna are coming close. Kind of like Mario. It's hard to say what Mario's continuity really is anymore, but he appears, by himself, as a cultural icon. That's why you can take all of these FF characters and just drop them into this game and say 'Bam! New context!' They all act the same as their original counterparts, but they're not the same actual characters, but nobody bats an eye.
On completion, I realized I had a nagging feeling about the game. I felt that, and this is a spoiler in only the most specific sense, he is basically a multiple murderer before the age of 20. Part of the premise of the game is that there are beings called Nobodies that are created when a 'heart' leaves a body. Sora is assured, as are we, that Nobodies have no emotions and are just 'shells' of people. Since some appear as bosses in the game, it's no surprise when Sora does away with them. Because there is some rationalization as to why this is ok (and it's stated several times at important junctures) and this is his own rationalization for defeating them in the manner that he does, I feel that there's something odd about this.
That is, it's not incorrect to end a life in self-defense, which is clearly happening, but killing someone and disregarding that as a difficult action morally because you believe they don't feel emotion is a terrifying thing to propose.
That went on really, really long.
I've been watching some Supernatural. I doubt I'll catch up on all of this before I go. On disk three, Home and Asylum were much better then preceding episodes, and the ground set for the not-so-subtle conflict between the brothers is basically the entire story that we're watching. Like I had begun to expect by episode 2, supernatural baddies are just a stage to set the action of a dysfunctional family. Asylum really reminded me of Fatal Frame for a little while, which made it worth the price of admission by itself.
So, I guess my main objective is to watch as much of this Supernatural stuff as I can before I leave and have to give it back. I guess I'm also tickled that I ended up combining Umberto Eco and Kingdom Hearts in the same thought-space. Most of my stuff is put away, so Eco's short essays and a copy of Catcher in the Rye are my current constant reading companions. We'll probably be hearing from them again. Enjoy your new Umberto Eco and your last Kingdom Hearts tag for a long while, LJ.
Seeing the ending, I stand by everything I've said so far about the game with a single addition. There are a large number of Final Fantasy characters in the game, from various series, and unlike the Disney characters who have story bits set in their own worlds, in their own contexts, the Final Fantasy characters have all been pulled from their own contexts and inserted into a Kingdom Hearts narrative that was completed whole cloth. That is, Jasmine is from Agrabah, Ariel is from Atlantica, Beast has his castle and rose, but Cloud is not from Midgar, Squall is not from Balamb Garden, and Setzer (small cameo that he makes) isn't from, well, the worlds of Balance and Ruin. (I'm a nerd.)
This game is not, by itself, what I'd consider amazing. It is, however, chock full of things that fascinate me. In this case, it's how the Final Fantasy characters have become characters somewhat divorced from their actual settings. Umberto Eco stated in an essay that some well-known characters become entities outside of their original stories and I wouldn't say that all Final Fantasy characters are. However, characters like Sepheroth, Cloud, and to lesser extents Yuffie, Cid(s), Seifer, Squall and Yuna are coming close. Kind of like Mario. It's hard to say what Mario's continuity really is anymore, but he appears, by himself, as a cultural icon. That's why you can take all of these FF characters and just drop them into this game and say 'Bam! New context!' They all act the same as their original counterparts, but they're not the same actual characters, but nobody bats an eye.
On completion, I realized I had a nagging feeling about the game. I felt that, and this is a spoiler in only the most specific sense, he is basically a multiple murderer before the age of 20. Part of the premise of the game is that there are beings called Nobodies that are created when a 'heart' leaves a body. Sora is assured, as are we, that Nobodies have no emotions and are just 'shells' of people. Since some appear as bosses in the game, it's no surprise when Sora does away with them. Because there is some rationalization as to why this is ok (and it's stated several times at important junctures) and this is his own rationalization for defeating them in the manner that he does, I feel that there's something odd about this.
That is, it's not incorrect to end a life in self-defense, which is clearly happening, but killing someone and disregarding that as a difficult action morally because you believe they don't feel emotion is a terrifying thing to propose.
That went on really, really long.
I've been watching some Supernatural. I doubt I'll catch up on all of this before I go. On disk three, Home and Asylum were much better then preceding episodes, and the ground set for the not-so-subtle conflict between the brothers is basically the entire story that we're watching. Like I had begun to expect by episode 2, supernatural baddies are just a stage to set the action of a dysfunctional family. Asylum really reminded me of Fatal Frame for a little while, which made it worth the price of admission by itself.
So, I guess my main objective is to watch as much of this Supernatural stuff as I can before I leave and have to give it back. I guess I'm also tickled that I ended up combining Umberto Eco and Kingdom Hearts in the same thought-space. Most of my stuff is put away, so Eco's short essays and a copy of Catcher in the Rye are my current constant reading companions. We'll probably be hearing from them again. Enjoy your new Umberto Eco and your last Kingdom Hearts tag for a long while, LJ.
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Also relevant to your interests:
The Shrinking Appeal of Kingdom Hearts (http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9010233)
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"When I first got this game in 2002, I was a Disney-loving seven-year-old that loved video games but wasn't very good at them."
So, that makes me feel old, but it reinforces what I was initially assuming : that KH was a formative gaming experience so nostalgia is the strongest for this game rather then previous or future ones.
It's also interesting that the first experience for this gamer with many FF characters was a decontextualized rehashing. In many ways, the original characters these KH characters represent are copies or false representations of the KH ones they're familiar with.