A Respite

So, these last few posts have really been a bit of an autobiographical indulgence in how my sense of the RPG changed as I grew up. This story has basically been a series of meandering anecdotes about Chrono Trigger, where I wrote a great deal about a game that isn't FFXIII.

I threw the "autobiography" tag on because, really, I don't feel like I can talk about video games, especially RPGs, without examining how I come to games as a person. Video games are interactive, and RPGs especially require you as a player to put something of yourself into the game, to a varying degree, obviously. Even critics can't avoid themselves in their writing, and I'm not even trying to do criticism per se. I want to log play experience, to write about what playing FFXIII is like. That's probably pretentious.

Taste is autobiographical, so my sense of game is about me, so how I relate to FFXIII is all about me in the end. I'm not a biography blogger, but when I started this blog, I permitted myself the autobiography tag because I thought it was an important way to describe the experience of the project. Really, I'm not planning to come out with a thesis, I'm just hoping to beat the fucking game.

And that's really the hiccup now isn't it?

Because, this respite too has been autobiographical. You see, I haven't played FFXIII since I started posting about Chrono Trigger. I hadn't panned on taking a break, but without the need to post about my current play, I haven't played. Which, doesn't bode well.

I've hit a point of withdrawal. I do tend to leave games unfinished. I bore of a game and instead of finishing it, I just repress my commitment to the game and pretend like its actually alright for me to start seeing other games. I've left both Arkham Asylum and the cel-shaded Prince of Persia at the table waiting for me to return from the bathroom in the last few months. I don't dislike either games, I just pulled away.

I have these battles where I feel an obligation to play games after a certain while, like I should try to beat X before I play Y. But I don't always have the time to beat X before I play Y, and so when I find myself wrestling between desire and obligation, I ask myself which is the game I want to play, and which is the game I feel I should play. Then, and this is the important part of the exercise, I allow myself to just play the game I want to. After all, they're games, not lovers.

I know they don't really suffer without me, but I know it also makes me look like some deadbeat dad. I guess I do owe them some form of alimony, but instead I just keep their cases outside of the game cabinet, and if I feel really bad, on top of the X-Box.

And I've reached this point with FFXIII. The part of the game I'm in kind of sucks. I hear it gets better, but the game I'm currently playing is sort of a chore, a chore I chose for myself as some sort of blog-muse, really, an obligation over a pleasure. I'll keep playing, but this waning desire has been evident here, in my desire to talk instead of myself, and my friends from high school, and what pawn shops meant to me as a child.

Without the blog, I would probably stop playing FFXIII. But then again, without the blog, I wouldn't have ever started it in the first place. So, failure tag this post up my bitches.

We'll resume soon.

P.S. Games I've started playing as semi-official asides to FFXIII:

• Eternal Sonata. I'll blog about this soon because there's some interesting things to say about it in relation to FFXIII
• Ninja Gaiden
• FreeSpace 2
• Mario Galaxy
• KOTOR 2

I've lost my laptop power cord, so I now blog on a computer that sounds like a tractor. But it has a graphics card so it actually allows me to play some games that I have but can't play on my laptop. I don't know why I think you care about that. Hmm.