I’m willing to accept
that KH3D (sorry, but I’m never
calling it Dream Drop Distance) might
be the game that restores my faith, but I have a niggling voice that says that
those days are over. I had my fun with Kingdom Hearts, but the franchise as I
knew it has changed. Whether or not
Tetsuya Nomura and his cohorts had a plan for the series to transform into its
current, monstrous incarnation or not doesn’t matter; Kingdom Hearts was destined to change independent of whatever
preferences or opinions fans might have had.
In the eyes of some, it’s a change for the better -- a chance to see
Disney worlds go into the realm of over-the-top action, and go up against
villains that aren’t quite so colorful and cartoony. To others, it’s just a slide into mediocrity,
taking gamers to places they’ve already seen before rather than dwell in the
flawed, yet still-satisfying world created at the franchise’s outset.
The adult in me is
willing to nod and accept that, and learn to appreciate the series’ changes as
they come as well as latch onto the games that suit me.
The child in me,
however, says “Fuck your Roxas! Gimme
some KH1!” So I popped my copy of the game into my PS2,
started a playthrough, and let it rip.
And it was good.
KH1 is about ten years old now.
That’s a pretty significant amount of time -- enough time for one
console to rise and fall, and another console to soldier on until its twilight
years. Enough time for a middle schooler
to become a college graduate, for a TV series to run through ten full seasons,
and even for entire wars to come and go.
I’ll admit that I thought about playing through the original game once
or twice before, but never could. “The
game’s five years old now; it hasn’t aged well!” I told myself. “I’ve got KH2
now; why bother going back to that crappy camera and Sora in tiny red shorts?”
I scoffed. I should probably stress how
much of an idiot Younger Me could be; a cut above Really Younger Me, but I
still marvel over the fact that Younger Me could put on a shirt without
starting a fire.
KH1 has aged horribly in some respects, and yet I find myself
consistently -- consistently, good
sirs and madams -- entertained. I can
see depth. Symbolism. Consistent threats and plotlines, hidden
beneath a veil of sparkles and 3D cartoons.
I’m enjoying the story and characters more than I did in my first
playthrough, even though you’d think those things might be repulsive to our
2012 sensiblities. And the
gameplay? More exciting than I remember
it; maybe it’s because I bumped the difficulty up to Expert (a choice that I
both regret and adore), but it seems like there’s a lot more depth and danger
than I’d ever perceived before. You
would think that a series so heavily dependent on mashing the X button wouldn’t
offer anything in the way of strategy, but here I am spreading the good word.
I’m convinced that KH1 wasn’t a fluke. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s still
really damn amazing; it’s worthy of being the foundation of a franchise. Granted that may have something to do with KH1 being a product of SquareSOFT and
not Square-ENIX, but I’ll set that musing aside for now.
I’ve got work to
do. And I intend to do this right.
Part 1: Characters
Sora
Our hero, made famous
for his knife-edged hair, poofy red shorts, and size twenty-six shoes. At story’s outset, he’s just a regular dumb
kid with some flighty dreams of going on adventures with his friends (with all
the short-sightedness on travel preparations you’d expect from
fourteen-year-olds). Little does he
know, he’s about to get his wish granted in a way he’d have never imagined.
What’s important to
note about Sora is that…well, he kind of sucks.
Compare his opening scenes to, say, Cloud or Squall.
Cloud is an ex-SOLDIER
now allied with a resistance group, who carves up goons with a giant sword,
takes on a massive scorpion robot, and blows up a planet-killing energy
reactor.
Squall is a cadet in a military
academy who -- ignoring a cinematic where he slashes his rival and is slashed
in return -- has his field test include heading into a cavern to tame and
control a living embodiment of hellfire.
Sora is a kid in red
shorts whose tutorial level ends with him getting fearfully consumed by
darkness. Following that nightmare, he
gets shown up by his rival, gets one step farther from winning the heart of the
resident new girl, and can potentially get his ass bruised by Tidus, Wakka, and
Selphie. It’s as if the game wants you
to feel embarrassed for him.
Riku
The resident badass of
Destiny Islands, who I suspect cheats at every game he plays. He’s the anti-Sora in every sense of the
phrase; cooler than you, faster than you, stronger than you, braver than
you. While he’s decisively Sora’s best
friend and rival, even in the game’s opening hours you start to suspect that he
sees Sora differently than the way Sora sees Riku.
No, not THAT way. (Well, maybe a little bit.) For now, I’ll just say this: given that the
story’s loser gets approved to wield the series’ equivalent of Excalibur and
travel throughout the galaxy unimpeded, wouldn’t YOU be a little sore if you
got left behind after your home gets wrecked?
(It’s at this moment where I start to realize that everyone on Destiny
Islands is effectively dead, not just the main trio; apparently, nobody cares
if their parents have been sucked into the abyss. I mean, they are teenagers, but still…)
Anyway, as these things
go, the hero ends up becoming a pure-hearted hero, while the less-naïve guy who
has no shortage of ambition and pragmatism gets tainted by malicious
energies. Let that be a lesson for you,
kids: never want anything out of life.
Kairi
Kairi
You can’t have a
Disney-style world without a Disney-style princess to save. Given that Squaresoft -- or JRPGs in general
-- has never had any qualms about regulating heroines to roles as healers or
helpless damsels, you’d think that the first thing that came up in meetings to
create the story revolved around how to get a princess captured and built the
game around that.
At any rate, Kairi --
for the hour or so you know her at game’s start, and the hour or so at game’s
end -- is probably one of the few JRPG heroines whose manual description
actually mirrors her in-game depiction.
She’s fourteen years old, and has the requisite spunkiness and energy
for someone her age. She cares about her
friends, shows her fair share of emotion, and while she does have the expected
plot-relevant mysteries surrounding her, they neither define her character nor
bog down the story. Arguably, it’s her
spirit that saves her from the devastating fate of being Token Evil Villain’s
Superweapon Energy Generator #2643.
It’s kind of a shame, then, that she spends
ninety percent of the game missing and/or in a coma. I suppose we can’t have a girl being TOO
proactive…
Donald
Still as incomprehensible as ever.The Disney Kingdom’s high magician, acting in direct service of King Mickey. (I wonder if that would make him Lord Donald, or Duke Duck…?) Donald’s among the first to notice that the King has gone missing, leaving behind only a letter and instructions for him to follow. “Find the Keyblade,” the letter suggests. Not having anything else better to do, and saying goodbye to the apparently-regal Daisy, Donald moves out for the sake of accomplishing his mission.
I’m not an expert on
the Disney lore, but weren’t Donald and Mickey rivals at one point in their
relationship? I could have sworn they
were…anyway, the gist of Donald’s character is “loyalty to the mission” --
while he has plenty of moments where he freaks out or gets wrecked by other
Disney characters and events, he’s stills surprisingly dedicated to getting the
job done in the manner prescribed to him.
He’s the one who gets adamant about the Prime Directive, prefers not to
meddle in others’ affairs or get distracted, and even goes so far as to make
sure the team blends in with the worlds they visit. (Sometimes, at least; if he was really
dedicated, he’d make it so that there wasn’t a talking duck and a talking dog
strutting around across the universe.)
You would think that in
light of Donald’s service in the navy and berserker tendencies, he’d be an
unstoppable zweihander-swinging tank. However,
Squaresoft decided to make him a black mage -- typically the softest,
easily-battered, magic-focused and scholarly of the classes. Logic!
I guess the assumption
was that the player -- forced to use the character wielding the closest
equivalent to a sword -- would build a knight-type, meaning that someone had to
fill in the role of magi-slinger. To be
fair, Donald does do his job pretty well…late in the game, when he’s not
getting hit and can actually build/rebuild his MP just by getting hit. Talk about taking one for the team.
Goofy
Let’s be honest here:
Goofy is THE character everyone knows for being a complete and utter screw-up. You wouldn’t have anything less from someone
who was once named “Dippy Dog.” He’s
dull-witted and easy-going to an insane degree.
Just listening to his voice makes you think he’s a few IQ points short
of functional.
And yet, somehow, Goofy
ended up becoming my favorite part of KH1.
If Donald’s all about “loyalty
to the mission,” Goofy’s all about “loyalty to his comrades.” He’s aware of the rules, but moves in
opposition of them if he thinks the new route’s more beneficial. As it turns out, Goofy -- Goofy, someone you’d think is incapable
of rational thought -- is the group’s voice of reason. He’s the one that cements the idea of
friendship amongst the group, and with even a few lines reveals that he’s much
more aware of things than his voice lets on.
Granted his wisdom is in relation to a manic water fowl and an untested
kid from the boondocks of the universe, but he still holds up. He’s a voice of solidarity, and is largely
responsible for injecting the spirit that KH
is famous for -- from his colorful animations to his enthusiasm in his voice
clips, I found myself regretting taking him out of the party several times.
But then I remembered
that he flushes all my items in a five-minute span, so I put him in
time-out.
The Heartless
The rank-and file
enemies you meet throughout the game.
Supposedly, these denizens of darkness are attracted to people who
routinely express negative emotions -- greed, anger, ambition (sorry Riku) --
and seek to consume their hearts. They’re
supposedly animalistic; they’re shambling, twitching creatures that care only
about their next meal. Often they work
in packs, but they never show any semblance of cooperation (though that just
may be a quirk of the AI). Whatever the case, they blend in fairly well
with the rest of the game’s aesthetic, and capture that Disney spirit. At outset, they’re just some silly-looking
shadow creatures -- playful and cuddly at worst. By game’s end, they’re the stuff of
nightmares (like the Darkball pictured here). In the same sense that
Disney can both invoke marvel and menace, so too can the Heartless. And with the sizable variety, you’ll have to
test your wits against their attack patterns.
The Disney Villains
The main baddies of the
game. Acting in strict violation of the
Prime Directive, these guys (one way or another) gather before a round table to
discuss their plans to control the darkness, capture the seven Princesses of Heart,
and unlock the final door that will make all their dark desires come true. Granted the crux of their desires are “take
over the world” or “kill all my enemies” but at the very least, they’re working
together. You know that these guys, even
if they aren’t THE threat, are still A threat.
And an immediate one, at that; leave them alone, and they’ll turn the
worlds to crap. And even though they’re
all selfish twats working for their own ends, they’re still in it together; if
one of them succeeds, doubtless the group as a whole will be one step closer to
Disney domination.
On an unrelated note,
James Woods has an awesome voice.
The Disney Heroes
You learn a lot about a
person when you’re faced with adversity.
It’s pretty much a given that all the Disney heroes aren’t about to tuck
away in hidey-holes, but would you have ever guessed that Ariel could tear
apart whales with lots of spinning? Or
that Aladdin could do a Shoryuken with his sword? Or that Peter Pan could stop time? Only in KH1
would one of these singing-prone sketches be given superhuman fighting
prowess.
What’s surprising is
that the stories in KH1, when it
comes to the Disney characters, isn’t just a rehash of old content (i.e. the
movies they hail from). It’s remixed
content; Aladdin has the lamp, but he uses his wishes to get out of jams he and
Sora come across. When you visit
Wonderland, Alice is already on trial and you have to prove her innocence by
gathering and presenting evidence. Christmas
doesn’t even figure into Halloween Town (not until the sequel, at least). What you get, therefore, is less of those
Disney movies with Sora retconned in and more of original stories that offer
something new and keep elements of what made the movies so notable. Couple that with an array of diverse
personalities, challenges to face, and the
ability to slay evil with the goddamned Beast, rest assured you never had
to put Hope or Vaan in your party.
The Final Fantasy Crew
Oh, right. These guys.
You know, maybe the
whole Disney/Final Fantasy crossover idea is a bit of a misnomer. What exactly do the FF characters do in this game?
Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie are there to whoop you if you haven’t learned
the game mechanics yet (and grind for early levels), and they vanish after the
game’s first hours. Squall -- or Leon,
but he’s not fooling anyone -- bashes your brains in, then brings you to his
hideout to throw some exposition at you.
Yuffie’s there too to offer the same.
Cid (in spite of learning quickly that you’re the only one that can save
the worlds) charges you for items that could make your journey easier. Aerith is there to add another girl to the
cast. Cloud tries to kill you, as does
Sephiroth. And…that’s about it, outside
of a few optional tournament battles and some scenes here and there. What’s baffling is that even though these
characters have less than an hour of screentime, Disney and Squaresoft thought
it’d be a good idea to get David Boreanaz, Christy Carlson Romano, Mandy More,
and Lance Bass of N’Sync to voice
these people. Brilliant move.
But I sppose it’s a
good thing that the Spiky Hair Brigade takes a back seat this time around. They’ve all had their games, and their
adventures. At least in the minds of
gamers; KH takes place in a different
canon, so the Squall from the FF
games is different from Leon (especially since the former would be 17, and the latter’s
supposedly 26 -- assuming they’re sticking to the FF ages). Whatever the case,
they can’t be going on adventures without having the plot focus heavily on them
and their character development. It’s
nice to see them, but it’s not their story.
They’re cameos at best, as they should be.
Ansem
Let’s get one thing out
of the way: I think that KH1 should
have been the only KH game. Nowhere is this more evident than what they
did with the true villain, Ansem. It
would have been far too simple and rational to just have him be a villain, kill
him off at game’s end, and then -- if you ABSOLUTELY HAD TO have a sequel --
make a new villain with a new backstory.
Instead, it’s revealed that this ansem is just a really powerful
Heartless. There also about six
different versions of the same guy running around: Heartless Ansem (otherwise
known as Xehanort’s Heartless), Ansem the Wise (in name only, IIRC), Young
Xehanort, Master Xehanort, “Terranort,” and Xemnas, who’s the Nobody of…well,
one of the Xehanorts. Just had to make
things difficult, didn’t you…?
Anyway, Ansem. He has an extremely laissez-faire approach to
the whole matter; he’s content with letting Maleficent and the Legion of Disney
Doom do all the work for him (presumably because he doesn’t have a body until
late in the game). Since he’s supposed
to be some sort of hyper-competent researcher who got a little bit too carried
away in his studies, I’ll buy him being a manipulator. While I wish he had a more marked influence
on the plot beyond “Ha ha! Now I am the
true villain! Now come to my lair and
try and kill me -- ah! Alas, I am dead!”
I can’t hate him for being MIA for so long.
This is a game that puts Disney on the forefront. Maleficent and the rest would never have
gotten their time to shine if another original character hogged the
spotlight. (Note that Square-Enix would
promptly forget this lesson a few years later.)
That said, is Ansem a
good villain? Well…that’s
subjective. On the one hand, he has an
air of mystery and threat to him, and comes off as particularly lethal when he
comes at you on his monster-faced battleship.
He’s like an even darker version of Riku -- ambitious without any of the
teen’s kind-hearted tendencies -- and serves as a contrast to Sora. While Sora’s a weak little kid who’s way out
of his depth and doesn’t know anything, Ansem is fueled by dark power, and knows
enough about the structure of the universe to both examine and manipulate it to
his liking. “One who knows nothing can
understand nothing,” he declares early in the game. And while Sora has no rebuttal at that
moment, rest assured he throws that line right back at Ansem in the game’s
final hours.
In spite of that, I
still think he’s a bit under-utilized. For
someone who’s been pulling all the strings, why does he disappear for all but
the first and last few hours of the game?
If the developers could tease a connection between Sora and Kairi,
couldn’t they have done the same for Riku and Ansem? Similarly, the FF characters mention that Ansem came from their world, so couldn’t
they have contributed a bit more in the way of foreshadowing or fleshing out? Ansem just feels so inconsequential in the
end; it makes me wonder why he had to be the villain. How much oomph would there have been if the
last enemy was another kid from Destiny Islands? Someone we’d known intimately, but in a twist
of fate fell even further than Riku? Or
barring that, Riku himself?
Well, whatever. For what it’s worth, Ansem does his job
fairly well. It’s just that I wish I got
to see more of him. When you compare him
to Maleficent, who spent the entire game scheming and having her cohorts and
lackeys do the legwork, having someone suddenly be above her is both a smart
and stupid move. Still, he brings a
certain characteristic charm to the proceedings; he LOOKS like a Final Fantasy villain, but he ACTS like
a Disney villain. He’s not out to
capitalize on his nihilistic outlook or take revenge because somebody messed
with his now-dead lover; he’s just a selfish douche that wants more power and
knowledge, hamming it up when given the chance.
And for that, I can’t say I hate him for it.
Well, that’ll do for
now. Tune in next time when I talk at length
about what really matters to Kingdom Hearts:
the unmistakable bromance element the levels.
No comments:
Post a Comment