Electric Challenge 2020 #12: Epic Scenes
Feb. 24th, 2020 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptThe 12th Electric Challenge Stage asks us to describe "the most epic scene ever in a game."
For more than a few people of my generation, that would be the end of the first disc of Final Fantasy VII, where the antagonist, Sephiroth, drops in on the party and kills Aerith / Aeris Gainsborough. Not in a resurrectable way, either. She's killed, and for all intents and purposes, the hope of a good resolution to the story goes with her. Up to that point, for many of the game-players, they hadn't experienced a situation with permanent death, and at a particularly strong hope spot for the game. I'm curious as to how that same scene will be handled in the remake, now that it's old enough that people know it's coming.
There's also the establishing shots of Final Fantasy VII, which zooms it extremely effectively from a lone flower girl in a street to showcase the entirety of the city, before zooming back in again on a different part of town where the action is set to begin as a train comes screeching to a halt just outside a Mako reactor.
Before that, or in conjunction with it, the opera scene from Final Fantasy VI is pretty memorable, whether because it's a freaking opera or because of the attempt by the sound chip to emulate voices that didn't go as well as the players might have hoped.
And there's the first time that the party characters witness the Day of Lavos in Chrono Trigger and vow to stop it from happening at all costs. The setpieces in Square games are always really well-scripted for the narrative purposes they intend to accomplish.
But what about the music video sequence as the end credits of Plants vs. Zombies? Or, for that matter, the promise of new adventures that happens when you rescue the princess from Bowser's clutches (or the classic refrains of "Your princess is in another castle" or "Oh, thank heavens! I'm back to my old self again!") Are those any less epic than, say, the various Couch Gags of Mario destroying the Koopaling castles in Super Mario World? Or the animated end sequence of Dust, which promises further possibilities for Dust, Arah, and Fidget in the future, even if no further games have happened?
Do romhacks and speedruns count, too? It can be pretty epic to watch someone play games blindfolded or to watch a tool-assisted speedrun that loses three of its four white mage early on and then proceeds to win Final Fantasy I by manipulating luck and using the mechanics of the game as they were intended to be used, even if the result is that the final boss flees rather than is defeated. Or to see the engine-exploiting tricks of high-level competitive play or tricks performed in service of speed. The idea of being able to understand a game so completely as to do things that would seem impossible is pretty epic. (I got a much smaller version of this when I finally figured out how to consistently pull off the super pogo jump in the Commander Keen games.)
Is a particularly epic cascade in a match three game the very best thing, or a similar cascade done in Tetris or PuyoPuyo just to watch the lines melt or the Puyo penalty stack up completely? I've had a few of those, too.
I dunno. The one that I kind of come back to, because of the art and the music direction, and the way that it weaves a certain thing throughout the series are the Dives To Heart in the various Kingdom Hearts games. They set difficulty levels, and give tutorials, but the stations of awakening are gorgeous (especially when you look at KHIII and see the technological improvements) and I'm always a little sad that the particular music for those games almost never shows up again as the game progresses. Because it would be interesting to see how the game might work if there were more regular Dives. Even after many years of waiting, the Dive is still one of my favorite parts of any given Kingdom Hearts game.
For more than a few people of my generation, that would be the end of the first disc of Final Fantasy VII, where the antagonist, Sephiroth, drops in on the party and kills Aerith / Aeris Gainsborough. Not in a resurrectable way, either. She's killed, and for all intents and purposes, the hope of a good resolution to the story goes with her. Up to that point, for many of the game-players, they hadn't experienced a situation with permanent death, and at a particularly strong hope spot for the game. I'm curious as to how that same scene will be handled in the remake, now that it's old enough that people know it's coming.
There's also the establishing shots of Final Fantasy VII, which zooms it extremely effectively from a lone flower girl in a street to showcase the entirety of the city, before zooming back in again on a different part of town where the action is set to begin as a train comes screeching to a halt just outside a Mako reactor.
Before that, or in conjunction with it, the opera scene from Final Fantasy VI is pretty memorable, whether because it's a freaking opera or because of the attempt by the sound chip to emulate voices that didn't go as well as the players might have hoped.
And there's the first time that the party characters witness the Day of Lavos in Chrono Trigger and vow to stop it from happening at all costs. The setpieces in Square games are always really well-scripted for the narrative purposes they intend to accomplish.
But what about the music video sequence as the end credits of Plants vs. Zombies? Or, for that matter, the promise of new adventures that happens when you rescue the princess from Bowser's clutches (or the classic refrains of "Your princess is in another castle" or "Oh, thank heavens! I'm back to my old self again!") Are those any less epic than, say, the various Couch Gags of Mario destroying the Koopaling castles in Super Mario World? Or the animated end sequence of Dust, which promises further possibilities for Dust, Arah, and Fidget in the future, even if no further games have happened?
Do romhacks and speedruns count, too? It can be pretty epic to watch someone play games blindfolded or to watch a tool-assisted speedrun that loses three of its four white mage early on and then proceeds to win Final Fantasy I by manipulating luck and using the mechanics of the game as they were intended to be used, even if the result is that the final boss flees rather than is defeated. Or to see the engine-exploiting tricks of high-level competitive play or tricks performed in service of speed. The idea of being able to understand a game so completely as to do things that would seem impossible is pretty epic. (I got a much smaller version of this when I finally figured out how to consistently pull off the super pogo jump in the Commander Keen games.)
Is a particularly epic cascade in a match three game the very best thing, or a similar cascade done in Tetris or PuyoPuyo just to watch the lines melt or the Puyo penalty stack up completely? I've had a few of those, too.
I dunno. The one that I kind of come back to, because of the art and the music direction, and the way that it weaves a certain thing throughout the series are the Dives To Heart in the various Kingdom Hearts games. They set difficulty levels, and give tutorials, but the stations of awakening are gorgeous (especially when you look at KHIII and see the technological improvements) and I'm always a little sad that the particular music for those games almost never shows up again as the game progresses. Because it would be interesting to see how the game might work if there were more regular Dives. Even after many years of waiting, the Dive is still one of my favorite parts of any given Kingdom Hearts game.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-24 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-25 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-25 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-26 03:13 pm (UTC)I'd like to add the introductory scene for Id in Xenogears, when nobody knows what he is* or what he wants, and he yeets a battleship after lecturing you about the unfairness of trying to kill him with it.
*well, Citan does.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-26 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-02-26 11:37 pm (UTC)\o/