This was me the whole time playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Every character except the main character is MUCH better off in the fantasy realm - the main character’s brother is literally crippled and sick in the real world and healthy and robust in the fantasy realm, and the main character still wants to go back to the “real” world. Didn’t identify with him at all.
An ancient 4chan demotivator summarized FFTA as “your life sucks shit and I’m dragging you back to it.” You’d think it was fundamentally impossible to have a good story where the message is, escapism is bad, mmkay? But it would be so easy to say Ivalice only exists as a shared hallucination, with the locals they’ve befriended gradually revealed as shallow imitations of people. Or: say it’s a real place which these kids can visit any time… y’know… like players do. Put some ludonarrative assonance on the idea there’s a crapsack reality you do need to take care of, to continue enjoying this fantasy.
On the other hand, as an actual game, Penny Arcade gave it the “Oh shit, is it 3AM?” award.
Yeah I did forget to mention it’s still one of my favorite games of all time. The story and characters are even really good - it’s only Marche I don’t identify with much.
This was me the whole time playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Every character except the main character is MUCH better off in the fantasy realm - the main character’s brother is literally crippled and sick in the real world and healthy and robust in the fantasy realm, and the main character still wants to go back to the “real” world. Didn’t identify with him at all.
An ancient 4chan demotivator summarized FFTA as “your life sucks shit and I’m dragging you back to it.” You’d think it was fundamentally impossible to have a good story where the message is, escapism is bad, mmkay? But it would be so easy to say Ivalice only exists as a shared hallucination, with the locals they’ve befriended gradually revealed as shallow imitations of people. Or: say it’s a real place which these kids can visit any time… y’know… like players do. Put some ludonarrative assonance on the idea there’s a crapsack reality you do need to take care of, to continue enjoying this fantasy.
On the other hand, as an actual game, Penny Arcade gave it the “Oh shit, is it 3AM?” award.
Yeah I did forget to mention it’s still one of my favorite games of all time. The story and characters are even really good - it’s only Marche I don’t identify with much.