I've never been able to enjoy video games based on sports. I don't particular enjoy the real-life versions, regardless of whether I'm playing or watching. That's not the issue though. The problem is that video game sports offer me a world that acts just like the real-life world, with all its arbitrary restrictions.
Why should I bother?
Give me a game like Baseball Simulator 1.000 or Mutant League Football. Let me play with the rules the way I never could in real life. Stuff like that catches my attention. If there is a gravitational constant that makes for a more exciting game than the standard 9.8 meters per second squared, let me use the better one.
But then, I love fantasy. Ninety percent of the books I read are fantasy or science-fiction novels. When it comes to visual art, I prefer the impossible works of Magritté, Escher or Dali. I feel like I can't learn anything from something which just gives me an objective look at the world I know. If I do look at a real-life scene, it will be an Impressionist scene: it may be the real world, but it's as close to looking through another's eyes as one can get. And, to me, that's the power of fantasy: a novel perspective lets me better understand my own.
The most important aspect of fantasy is its ability to examine what-if scenarios that stem from changes on a fundamental level. Take the world as it is, change some truth (not some law or some rule, for those can be broken) about it, and see what follows from that change. If one’s goal is to pose this type of question to the audience, then it is fair to say that the specifics of the story are less important than the relationship between the real world and the fantasy world.
While there is no method to appreciating art, understanding fantasy usually begins with noting what changes and what stays the same. Furthermore, having an alternate perspective is crucial to really understanding one’s normal perspective.
If it is to have any meaning, then, a fantasy world must have some kind of internal logic. Sheer randomness is amusing, but not particularly insightful. A fantasy world that proves to be inconsistent will drive away its audience. This idea is even more crucial in video games than in any other form of art: a reader can trudge through any book, a viewer can sit through any movie, a listener can wait for the end of any song. Meanwhile, a gamer who is never allowed or simply never able to pick up on a game’s internal logic might be utterly unable to reach its end.
On the other hand, one of the beautiful things about video games is that they allow for utterly bizarre worlds that a player can nevertheless come to understand and explore. Anyone who’s played a Mario game knows that one hundred coins gives you an extra life. It doesn’t make sense, really, but it follows the internal logic of that world. As I mentioned in my Wario World review, Treasure games are often amazingly consistent, from Bangai-O’s explosions to Silhouette Mirage’s “digital and also not” world.
There are plenty of flagrantly bizarre games out there, but Final Fantasy Tactics Advance manages to be twisted on a subtler and, perhaps, more meaningful level.
The story opens with some kids engaging in a refereed snowball fight. At first, it seems like it’s just a cute device for teaching the player the battle mechanics, but it actually serves to set up a number of crucial issues. It quickly becomes clear that the enemy team is only interested in attacking a shy boy, Mewt Randell. The fight ends when a rock hidden inside one of the snowballs inflicts a cut on Mewt’s head. These cruelties go unpunished, much to the open disgust of Ritz Malbeur, because there’s no rule against ganging up on someone and Mewt is too fearful of possible retribution to complain about the thrown rock.
So we’ve got the start of a story. There’s the terminally shy Mewt, the haughty Ritz, and you, the new kid. You’re all unpopular for the reasons (such as they are) given in the previous sentence, you’ve all got problems at home and you live in a world in which important laws are either absent or simply un-enforced.
Life is hard.
It is fairly standard for stories that use a
through-the-looking-glass device to have a “real world” which is thoroughly mundane. The plot stays in the real world just long enough to reveal how boring it is, then shifts to the fantasy world. After taking care of business there, the hero returns home a little wiser and a little bolder, and there the story ends. In these cases, the fantasy world is always more vivid, more poignant, more real than the real world. The people are more complex, their emotions are more genuine and the issues they face are more important than the corresponding aspects of humdrum real world.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance does not follow this convention. If anything, the fantasy world is so fantastic as to be largely nonsensical. Whereas its real world is lawless, its fantasy world has random laws that change from day to day. These laws actually make up the natural order of the fantasy world, such that Judges teleport in to preside over every battle. If you encounter a group of roving monsters, a Judge will appear to make sure you dispatch them legally. If you encounter a group of wanted criminals, a Judge will appear to watch you catch them. Judges can teleport offenders directly to prison with their red cards, while you invoke or dispel laws with alchemic law cards.
There’s a scene in which a Judgemaster uses a card to make it illegal for a particular character to take any action. That character responds by using an anti-law card, which makes taking action legal again. While not as overtly bizarre as, say, a giant, homicidal, flower-selling, flying fish with a little girl’s head (one of many excellent bosses from Treasure’s Silhouette Mirage), it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around a world in which the law is a natural force rather than a social construct.
Simply put, it’s a hard world to take seriously. While a Judge is around, characters cannot be killed permanently. Violence between clans (basically a succinct term for “a group of people who work together”) is condoned -- and why wouldn’t it be? It’s not like anyone actually gets hurt. For me, watching Mewt get bullied was far more troubling than watching a dragon rip through one of my teammates. “Darn! He’s dead!” I thought.
Because Final Fantasy Tactics Advance doesn’t ask you to take the fantasy world all that seriously, its real world actually feels real, whereas its fantasy world feels like... well, like some sort of videogame!
This brings me back to the plot. Shortly after waking up in the fantasy world, Marche (or whatever you named him) mentions that he’s never seen a real Bangaa (a humanoid, lizard-like race) before. He’s asked what he means by that. I expected him to mention the strange book that brought him to the fantasy world, since the player is treated to sketches of the game’s five major races as the characters read through it. Instead, he said that he’s seen them while playing Final Fantasy.
This is the first Final Fantasy game in which Bangaas have appeared. This implies that Marche has played some version of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and has somehow fallen into its world. What this suggests for you, the player, is pretty staggering. Well, it was for me at least -- those racing through the text to get to the battles might be more inclined to think of Captain N.
As you might have guessed, a large part of the plot deals with Marche’s quest to go home. As I play though, I wonder -- does Marche really want to go home? If so, should he? Do I want him to? For him, it’s a matter of choosing between the gritty real world and the playful fantasy world.[1] But for the first time in my seventeen years of playing videogames, I‘ve realized -- when Marche goes home, the game ends. I don‘t want the game to end. I‘m happy playing in the fantasy world. Shouldn‘t Marche be happy to stay there as well? Of course, I’m allowed to move between the two worlds as I please. Furthermore, given the choice, I would have to choose my real world. Yet I have never noticed this conflict before – I am eager to play and advance and explore, yet saddened by the game’s inevitable conclusion.
Personally, it takes a great effort for me to finish off any sort of series. Often, I'll tear through a series of books until there is only one left and then put that one off for several years, assuming I don't stop altogether. To finish the last book feels like sealing off that world -- nothing new will ever happen there. Likewise, I often have to wait for the right moment to watch the last episode of a completed series.[2] Maybe Marche (who I renamed after myself) feels the same way -- eager to progress in his adventure but also sad that it will one day end.
As for progress, that too takes a different form in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. The entirety of the game revolves around taking requests at pubs and completing them. The missions that advance the plot are mixed in with the side quests, such that it's nearly impossible to tell what you're "supposed" to be doing at any point. Sometimes, it's not even clear that you've advanced the plot after you've completed the mission -- it's only later that the importance behind a particular allusion lets you figure it out. Occasionally, this causes the player to stumble into a difficult battle when their teammates are off on other missions, but a simple reload cures that dilemma. A soft reset every few hours is worth the novelty of not being pressured to do anything in particular.
Moreover, this form of plot progression solves the normal oddities that come with telling a story through an RPG. Depending the quality of the game, a player’s decision to take on a task can range from entirely forced to completely spontaneous. In the worst cases, the player is forced to complete one task because a critical bridge will remain broken until they do so. In the best cases, the player eagerly pursues the plot without even recognizing that they have to. No matter how careful the designers are, though, the world will simply enter a period of stasis whenever the player avoids doing what’s intended for him/her. To me, seeing that the other world does not really operate but rather exists solely to revolve around my character’s actions makes that world less compelling. This problem is avoided in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance – by merely doing whatever mission looks most interesting at the time, the chance occurrences that must happen to further the plot can happen without making their nature as “plot events” obvious. It’s certainly not a perfect solution, but sometimes novelty is as important as quality.
And on the subject of novelty --– this game's battles could use more. I’ve not seen a battle that requires anything more than defeating all the enemies or one particular enemy. With all those Judges running around, you’d think some of the missions could have more interesting goals. Get a unit to the other side of the map, for instance. Secure a particular location for some number of turns. Protect a particular unit. There could also be missions that require specific skills, such as making an enemy unit berserk or stealing a unique piece of equipment off an opponent. The randomly changes laws can create interesting scenarios, but, as I said before, randomness isn’t meaningful.
I don't know exactly what to make of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. The world it spins is extraordinarily conducive to playing around in, with its silly laws, risk-free but engaging battles and colorful characters. On the other hand, the issues it raises are perplexing. What does it mean to fall in love with a world where laws are entirely arbitrary and strictly enforced?
While all this might've been interesting, you might still be wondering whether or not you should actually purchase the damn thing. Fair enough: Hardcore strategy buffs will probably want to get their fix elsewhere. I can personally and highly recommend Advance Wars 2, but Tactics Ogre and Fire Emblem also seem to deserve a look. Likewise, if it was the political intrigue of Final Fantasy Tactics that kept you fascinated, know that you won't find that here. If it was the darker themes that drew you in, I predict that you’ll find them in its successor, but cannot say for certain. Whether or not you find Final Fantasy Tactics Advance as brilliant I do, you’ll be certain to find it interesting on every level. And, well, what more could you ask for?
Shepard Saltzman's fantasy has always been to command a legion of Moogles.
He just didn't know it until now.
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