Have you ever pressed ‘A’ on
a TV in a Pokémon game to see
what was playing?
“There’s a movie on TV,” the
text box reads. “Four boys are
walking down railroad tracks.
…I’d better go,
too.”
This
is,
of
course,
a
reference
to
“Stand By Me,”
the
1986
Rob
Reiner
film
adapted
from
Stephen King’s
“The Body.” The
film
and
the
book it’s based on are seminal
texts that explore working
class
heteromasculinity;
they’re favorites among those
who grew up in the ‘80s —
those who have a fondness
for an era with less parental
guidance and a larger, more
mysterious earth to explore.
While it’s difficult to say
whether the original Japanese
text made such a reference
or
whether
the
English
localization staff embellished
the nod, it’s equally difficult
not to wonder whether “Stand
By
Me”
had
a
profound
influence on Japanese Role-
Playing
Games
—
youth
abandoning their hometowns
to go on a parent-less adventure
is quite nearly a cliché in the
genre.
“Chrono
Trigger,”
“Kingdom
Hearts,”
“Secret
of Mana,” “Earthbound” and
most certainly “Pokémon” all
introduce their narratives in
this way. And even if they’re
framed around a different
concept (“Final Fantasy VII”
following a group of radical
ecoterrorists is an example)
many more of these games are
structured like road trips. A
group of friends travel across
great distances and make stops
in fascinating little towns. It’s
a formula for success.
So “Final Fantasy XV” is
most certainly not the first
road trip video game, but
it’s the first video game to
literalize the concept into
gameplay. We open on a dusty,
western highway, on which
four
gorgeous,
primped
anime
boys are pushing
a
broken-down
luxury
car
towards
a
gas
station. As they
banter
among
themselves
and
the player takes
control of the car-
pushing effort, a
Florence + The Machine cover
of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”
song swells in the background
(it
incorporates
a
bit
of
the classic “Final Fantasy”
title screen music into its
orchestration, a nice touch).
Could it be clearer what
we’re supposed to be thinking
about? This genre. That movie.
Angst. Coming-of-age. That
childhood desire to pack up an
old-timey knapsack and head
out to the Yukon, “Calvin and
Hobbes”-style.
The anime boys in question
are Noctis, a prince, and
his three confidants Ignis,
Prompto,
and
Gladiolis.
Those familiar with “Final
Fantasy” shouldn’t balk at
the Latinesque nonsense that
comprises their names, but for
everyone else, hearing names
like this spoken very seriously
out loud will take some getting
used to.
But there’s not much else
about “FFXV” ’s introductory
sequence that “Final Fantasy”
die-hards will expect. There’s
no daring bombing mission. No
epic swordfight. No futuristic
water polo game. Rather than
being shoved headlong into a
desperate scenario, the game
quietly picks up with four kids
driving around, listening to an
indie singer and talking about
things. It’s jarring, to say the
very least.
“Final Fantasy” has blended
modern and future technology
with classical high fantasy
aesthetics in the past, but
never like this. “FFXV” drops
our Anime heroes into a
world of Western Americana,
complete with diners, gas
stations and a whole lot of
desert. It feels new.
And there’s more Western
influence than merely the
Classifieds
Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com
ACROSS
1 Carnival Cruise
Line
headquarters
6 Net gain?
10 One often taking
a bow
14 How many
crosswords are
solved
15 Plot to plow
16 Creepy look
17 Bridge
20 Young
Skywalker’s
nickname
21 “At Wit’s End”
columnist
Bombeck
22 Like Cheerios
23 Bridge
27 Liked a lot, with
“up”
28 Taqueria order
31 A3 or Q7
34 Leave
37 Whistle-blower
38 Way around the
block?
40 Luau band
41 Meatball medium
43 Roll in the yard
44 Inn crowd option
47 Cause of some
closings
48 HBO drama set
in Baltimore
50 __ Friday’s
52 Bridge
58 Sultan Qaboos
Grand Mosque
prayer
60 Sci-fi navigator
61 Gen __
62 Bridge
66 Number of times
a horse can enter
the Kentucky
Derby
67 “Dies __”
68 Copy, in a way
69 Essen’s region
70 Celebrate an
anniversary, say,
with “out”
71 Secretly watch
DOWN
1 Hebrew prophet
2 Absurd
3 __ fool
4 Club __
5 Take in
6 Harmful ray type
7 More than 70%
of Earth’s surface
8 Lab greeting
9 “Ars gratia artis”
is written in an
arc around his
head
10 Zoom along
11 “Time for me to
split”
12 Smoke passage
13 Gull relative
18 Carrying, so to
speak
19 Hen holders
24 Common street
name
25 Strait-laced
26 __ ejemplo
29 Geometric art
style
30 Several
31 Start of a
subordinate title:
Abbr.
32 “You meant 8
p.m. not a.m.?”
33 Vacation spot
with horseback
riding
35 Toon often seen
in a hunting hat
36 Shelled veggie
39 “Jeopardy!”
staple
42 Flaws and all
45 Is for everyone?
46 Bikini in the
Pacific, e.g.
49 It starts a bit
before Christmas
51 Astronauts’ gear
53 Channel with a
“Congressional
Chronicle” online
archive
54 Kolkata cash
55 Slangy refusal
56 Wafer brand
57 Place to find a
flag
58 Le Pew’s
defense
59 Dish list
63 Limit
64 Jackie O’s
second
65 “Shirt Front and
Fork” artist
By Gary Schlapfe and C.C. Burnikel
©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/06/17
01/06/17
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
RELEASE DATE– Friday, January 6, 2017
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
xwordeditor@aol.com
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FOR RENT
“Fantasy XV” is a fresh
primer for the road-
trip video game genre
A-
Final Fantasy XV
Square Enix
PS4 (Reviewed),
Xbox One
Most recent iteration of long-running game
series breathes new life into the franchise
COURTESY OF SQUARE ENIX
When ya fridge be empty.
JACOB RICH
Daily Arts Writer
visual. Like last year’s “Metal Gear Solid V,”
“FFXV” represents a massive left turn for a
franchise that’s been around for decades —
abandoning the precedent of narrative linearity
that was held very closely to in the last single-
player “Final Fantasy game in favor of a quest-
based open-world structure.
It’s a lot like “The Witcher 3.” The player
can progress through a singular “main quest”
storyline, complete standalone side quests for
experience or take on lucrative bounty hunts
involving
tough
fights
against
“daemons,”
mindless wild beasts emboldened by mysterious
antagonists. While I wish the side quests were
more complex (most of them are simple MMO-
style fetch quests), they provide a meaningful
alternative to traditional grinding since each
of them provides experience points and reward
items.
Those comparisons aside, the game “FFXV”
shares the most DNA with is “Kingdom Hearts.”
Before a massive team transition in 2014 in
which Hajime Tabata took over development as
director, “FFXV” was to be the first main series
“Final Fantasy” game to be directed by Tetsuya
Nomura, the guy who directed the first two
Kingdom Hearts games. His influence shows
itself blatantly in the game’s combat. Fighting in
“FFXV” is essentially an expansion of the action-
based combat in “Kingdom Hearts,” the primary
differences being the ability to hold the attack
button rather than mashing it, and an emphasis
on maneuvering to the backs of enemies to do
extra damage.
Magic and summoning are also overhauled.
Magic
involves
charging
spells
by
using
resources picked up in the environment, and
deploying them as massive area-of-effect attacks
that one would use much like a grenade in a first-
person shooter. It never really clicked for me as
useful, but I’ve seen other gamers on YouTube
harness it quite effectively. Really, it’s a matter
of preference.
Summoning is strange. Essentially, the player
can call gods down from the heavens to do
massive damage to everything in the area,
but only when the gods feel like helping? The
criteria for when a summon appears feels
inconsistent. It’s not at all reliable, but its
rarity makes it admittedly very cool whenever
it happens.
But what really keeps the combat in “FFXV”
entertaining over the course of its runtime
(about a 15-hour campaign with about three
times as much side content) is its extraordinary
enemy variety. I constantly marveled at the
creativity expressed in the often gigantic
creatures Noctis and company were tasked
with hunting them down. Some of the later-
game fights against screen-filling monsters
are breathtaking — highlights of an all-
around excellent single player story that shifts
drastically as it progresses.
“FFXV”
goes
from
road
trip
to
intercontinental boat trip, to train trip, even
to a secret mode of transportation that only
unlocks after you beat the game. The constant
shifting of tone and structure in the game’s
campaign might feel incoherent to some, but to
me it provided much-needed variety to a genre
that’s often held back by homogeneity. There’s
really only one part of the game’s campaign that
isn’t a blast — a lone chapter that drastically
shifts tone to emulate survival horror gameplay.
It’s a nice idea, but it’s not executed in a way
that’s fun to play.
Besides hunting monsters and traveling, the
player can also engage in one of my favorite
fishing minigames I’ve ever played in a video
game — rivaling even that of “Twilight Princess.”
It’s a blast to take a break from the action and
level up Noctis’ fishing skill. The other party
members have special skills too, but they’re
more passive — Prompto will take pictures over
the course of the adventure that you can save
to your hard drive, and Ignis will cook meals at
campfires that grant helpful stat buffs. They’re
fun little touches. This game has a lot of those.
I’m somewhat conflicted about how “FFXV”
represents gender and race. Both the male and
female characters are sexualized relatively
equally (breasts, biceps and abs hang out
EVERYWHERE in this game), which I’m
more than fine with, but it seems like a missed
opportunity to make every character in the
party a light-skinned straight dude. What kind of
dynamic would it bring if one of these beautiful
anime boys liked other guys? How much would
it have changed if one or more of the party was a
girl? Why are there only two or three people of
color in the entire world? But at the same time,
I’m proud of the way that “FFXV” portrayed a
nontraditional sort of heteromasculinity with
its main characters. It allows them to show love
for each other, dress in risqué black leather and
talk to each other about their feelings without
writing off any of those things as something not
okay for straight guys to do.
Over the course of the campaign we’re
allowed some real insight into the interpersonal
relationships of the four boys, even beyond the
(well-written) banter that’s frequently spouted
in the car and on quests. There are social quests
that very occasionally pop up that provide much-
needed breaks in tone — they kind of feel like
the filler episodes of an anime where everyone
goes to the beach for no reason, except they’re
actually good. A scene that pops up randomly
when you’re staying at a certain hotel between
two of the boys is an emotional one that I’ll not
forget for some time. There are times when the
characters fight, make up, split off from one
another and come back together again. It felt like
there were tangible emotional highs and lows
among the characters — I can’t think of another
game where that’s been felt in recent years. I
can’t say enough how much I enjoyed spending
time with Noct, Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto. I
would be remiss not to note how meme-worthy
their dialogue can be at times, with Ignis in
particular lending his voice to one of my favorite
twitter memes I’ve seen in a long time.
It’s strange. On paper, “FFXV” is a number of
combat encounters strung together with only a
few interruptions from fishing minigames and
sequences of travel. It doesn’t sound all that
compelling. But because the game’s story is so
excellently creative, its visuals so gorgeous, its
style so unique, it becomes something much
greater than the sum of its parts. It goes to show
how far a dedication to world-building can go in
making a superb video game.
It felt like there
were tangible
emotional highs
and lows among
the characters.
We open on a
dusty, western
highway, on
which four
gorgeous,
primped anime
boys are pushing
a broken-down
luxury car.
MUSIC!
FILM!
THEATRE!
AN IMPENDING SENSE OF DOOM!
TV!
STYLE!
E-mail us at npzak@umich.edu or anay@umich.edu to join the
Daily Angst Section.
6 — Friday, January 6, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com