Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Impressions [Video]

It's been a while since my last blog post and part of that was getting the "Top 10 Anime" and "Favorite Games" pages up.  Obviously the major reason why, though, is because I've been hard at work creating this video on Xenoblade Chronicles 2.  This marks the first video that I made from the ground up seeing as my other video I already had the script written in the form of a blog post.  I wrote the script exclusively for this video and you will only find it in the video.  There are a lot of things I want to talk about in my experience making this video but just like last time if you don't care about any of that skip right to the bottom of this post for the main feature.

E3 2017 Roundup: Sony

With Nintendo out of the way it's time to look at Sony and what they brought to the table for E3 2017.  At last year's show, Sony redefined how E3 press conferences should be performed with a classy presentation that had little to no down time.  An opening live orchestral performance that led into the world premier of the new God of War game set the mood and the lack of company execs and developers giving idle pleasantries kept the audience energy at a constant high as game after game after game was shown off.  In addition to God of War other titles such as Resident Evil VII and Insomniac Games' new Spider Man were revealed.  A handful of brand new IP's even premiered in the forms of Days Gone, Detroit: Become Human, and Hideo Kojima's much anticipated project Death Stranding.  This all culminated in one of the most well received press conferences in E3 history and Sony aimed to replicate that success by using the same conference format for 2017.  The difference: not nearly as many new titles announced and not a single new IP beyond small VR games.  However, as we saw with Nintendo a lack of new announcements doesn't necessarily make for a bad conference but what we will see is that it certainly won't reach the same high as last year's did.

E3 2017 Roundup: Nintendo

Now that the biggest gaming trade-show of the year has wrapped up it's time to take a look back at what's been shown off and how much of a splash these announcements made.  To kick it all off I'm going to start with Nintendo's showcase.  This was the first E3 for Nintendo's new console and, as I mentioned in my pre-launch piece for the Switch, would prove to be a pivotal showing for it.  This was Nintendo's chance to really sell the Switch with solid first party support that will court relations with third-party developers in the future.  All in all, Nintendo has a solid performance at E3 but it also felt like they were treading water a bit, not really pushing the boundary of expectations.  Let's break down their showcase game-by-game and and see what each brings to the table.

Sympathy & Empathy [VIDEO!!]

So I follow a handful of game and anime journalist groups on the web and I've always admired the polish and professionalism these outlets put into their video content.  When Memorial Day weekend rolled around I thought, "Screw it.  I've got a three day weekend, let's try turning one of my blog posts into a video."  Now you can skip the rest of this post and go straight to the video if you want but I want to use this space to talk about the process and my experience while making my first video ever.

Truthfully I would have rather turned one of my video game articles into a video but that would have required me capturing game footage and I have no way to do that without going out and buying a peripheral.  So I decided to do one of my anime pieces instead since I could relatively easily acquire video clips for those.  From there it was a matter of deciding which anime article to use.  In the end I settled on my "Sympathy & Empathy" article because it is the one that I feel most proud about and is also one of my most received pieces.  I would later come to realize that I was biting of a little more than I could chew by choosing this piece.

Simple Lessons on Life

"A broken tool is of no use to its owner."

"A weapon doesn't need to think, just destroy."

"Stop pretending to be human and just do what you're told."

Chances are if you've watched your fair share of anime you've heard lines similar to these in one show or another.  They're typically spoken by villains or high ranking military officials to an individual with immense power that comes in a humanoid form of some sort.  Human weapon stories come in many shapes and forms such as the usual android tales or characters literally turning into weapons, to give a couple examples.  Often times these stories are used to explore the facets that make us human and posit concepts that make the viewer question those established concepts.  Along the way you have lines such as the ones above spoken and the protagonist clinging to the human weapon (who is normally in the form of a girl) as he desperately explains the importance of life with tears in his eyes.  If you want a example hot off the press look no further than this season's Alice and Zouroku.  While offering fresh new characters, such as an old man protagonist, Alice and Zouroku has still followed the tried and true formula of human weapon stories thus far.  Human weapon stories have stayed relevant over the years by focusing more on their mysteries of how the human weapons came to be in their respective universes, but the core formula for each has remained the same and it's hard not to say the genre has become stagnant and predictable as a result.  It is upon this stage that WorldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us? (sic) has come into play and it aims, from what it has shown so far, to redefine just how a human weapon story is told.

Step-by-step, turn-by-turn

When you boot up any video game one of the first things you will most likely see is a loading screen of some sort.  They come in various shapes and forms such as screens that display helpful tips or having some quirky interactive element to kill time.  One of Persona 5's loading screens is a simple portrait of the protagonist with the words "Take Your Time" below.  It's the only loading screen I can think of that shows a central motif of a game.  The idea of "taking your time" permeates the entirety of Persona 5's experience from the way it methodically tells its story, to the way you slowly build relationships with characters, to the meticulous infiltration of Palaces.  Of course, the sentiment extends to the game's turn-based combat as well.

By definition a turn-based combat system in a well balanced game requires the player to carefully contemplate their decisions to achieve victory over their enemies.  Turn-based combat systems were prevalent on home consoles up through the end of the PS2 generation.  Big-name, AAA companies like Square Enix, Bandai Namco, Atlus, and many others put out game after game that utilized turn-based combat.  Upon entering the HD era of gaming, however, there was a paradigm shift in how games were presented.  Developers wanted to utilize the greatly enhanced graphics to provide players with more grandiose, cinematic experiences and the stop-go nature of turn-based combat limited that ability to do so.  As a result the game industry started to see less and less turn-based combat games on home consoles from AAA developers.  Instead, active time elements became more prevalent as developers sought systems to keep players more involved in battles and lessen the disconnect felt from definitive turns.  As a result, true turn based combat systems found a new home on handheld systems where there is less emphasis on creating dazzling set pieces (although the Switch may change this notion in the future).  Series such as Bravely Default found a solid foothold on the 3DS while the long-running Final Fantasy franchise turned full action RPG on home consoles with Final Fantasy XV.  The only console games to have come out in recent years from a AAA developer that features a true turn-based combat system are Tokyo Mirage Session #FE, Paper Mario: Color Splash and now Persona 5.  While TMS#FE and Paper Mario were fine games on their own rights the combat didn't have that console quality spark to it; the aspect that made them feel at home on a console rather than a handheld.  Persona 5, on the other hand, does.  It plants its foot firmly on the ground and declares loudly, "I am a turn-based RPG and I deserve to be on consoles."  Something about Persona 5's combat gives it that cinematic quality that console games seek and what that something is is what I want to discuss in this piece.

Kizumonogatari: Repainting a Picture

The Monogatari (the Japanese word for "story") series is a long running light novel series written by Nisioisin and has been made into multiple anime throughout the years, the first of which was Bakemonogatari (Ghostory) which aired back in 2009.  Animated by the creative minds of Shaft, all of the Monogatari anime sport the avante-garde animation style and story telling methods that have become synonymous with the studio.  The "story" of Monogatari follows high-schooler Koyomi Araragi, a human who has recently reverted back from being a vampire, although he still retains his vampiric regenerative powers.  Koyomi has encounters with various "apparitions" that have various effects on those around him such as robbing a girl of her weight, both literally and figuratively, or causing someone to remain forever lost and never reach their destination.

While each season told compelling stories with interesting characters, mind bending dialogue, and eye catching visuals, the origin story to it all, how Koyomi became a vampire in the first place and then reverted back, was never shown in animated form until recently.  Eight years after Bakemonogatari first premiered on Japanese television, that origin story, Kizumonogatari (Wound Story) finally saw its conclusion in theaters.  By this point a total of 86 episodes spanning across multiple seasons had aired of the Monogatari series.  Assuming an average episode length of 25 minutes, that's nearly 36 hours of story.  Kizumonogatari, by contrast, was split into a 3-part movie series with each part being 65-90mins in length.  While prequels and origin stories are meant to give the viewer new insight into the story and world they already know, it's hard to imagine how much a mere 3 1/2 hours could effect perception of a 36 hour long beast.  As it turns out, quite drastically.  Kizumonogatari stands tall as the most provocative prequel for a series I have ever seen and has changed how I view the Monogatari series as a whole in ways I never thought possible.