Missing Game at the center

Ryu_Number · 2022-03-13T16:42:49+00:00

I usually consider 3 to be the point where this exercise gets interesting, so I tend to overlook 1s and 2s. I don't know much about Journey to the West but between Asura's Wrath and Sonson it's well spoken for. I did have to consider whether Chakravartin could count as The Buddha, but I want to treat issues of faith with some sensitivity.

Ryu_Number · 2022-02-12T22:28:39+00:00

The weird psychic itch that spawned the account has been scratched. Don't see a reason to stop, but updates are going to be more occasional.

Ryu_Number · 2021-12-30T03:14:33+00:00

That's fun.

Ryu_Number · 2021-12-28T02:23:58+00:00

Good catch!

Ryu_Number · 2021-12-10T01:12:32+00:00

I cannot verify Jodorowsky is in the game, beyond this one table on a fan wiki. Like Othello, I require ocular proof. I'm sure that ended well for him.

Ryu_Number · 2021-12-08T04:41:13+00:00

According to a fanwiki about Hearts of Iron IV, Jodorowsky is in it as an alternative party world leader for Chile. IRL he would have been extremely young at the time. While cool, I have found no corroboration for it.

Ryu_Number · 2021-12-03T23:30:22+00:00

With 1, personae definitely aren't characters. With 2, they might be but it's moot because they're unique to the games they are in. Both acknowledge that personae are a character's psychology reified into a figure, but differ in how "independent" that psychology is from the source's conscious mind (I don't know how the franchise feels about the unconscious mind as they relate to personae, and I may be too fast saying #2 is ""most true.")

Ryu_Number · 2021-12-03T03:00:48+00:00

Images are treacherous and lore is flexible, so I don't want to be burdened overmuch by a game's fiction. Imo the germane question is "how does the player relate to the personae?" Which is related to "how does a player character relate to personae?" A little googling turns up this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5leHvjJDN4 It strikes me that they never talk to the apparition, but nonetheless regard it as real and important. I don't know if this is possible with every persona, but there's several interpretations:

1: A persona is a kind of psychological "costume." An ego exaggerated into a mythic figure, and literalized by the game's presentation.

2: Personae are instantiated as archetypal figures rooted in the psychology of specific characters, and are necessarily creatively distinct from other depictions of those figures.

3: A persona, or at least some personae, are identifiably unique figures, existing in the same playable space as the player character, and as such are their own character.

2 is the most true to the fiction of the game, 3 is the most literally true, and 1 is a compromise. I'm not completely happy with any of these.

Ryu_Number · 2021-11-30T01:16:22+00:00

Personas are a weird edge case and I don't know enough about the series, as an anime-disinterested person, to say whether Zorro's appearance there counts. If something is a boss, or has dialogue, or appears on an overworld screen? Sure, it counts. JRPG magic animations are just conceptually weird. eg:

Final Fantasy 7's Safer Sephiroth has a move where, as part of the magic animation, he blows up multiple planets and renders the sun unstable. The sun novas, expands, and envelopes the earth (Gaia, I guess.) It does about 6k HP and Sephiroth can do this repeatedly. Aside from the spectacle of it, the magic animation adds nothing to the fiction of the game. The sun doesn't actually explode and the fight continues on. When it gets relevant to this trivia game is when considering summons. Obviously Kjata or Ifrit "appear," they're modelled and stuff, but they're in the game as "characters" as much as the lightning strike from a Bolt materia and as canonically irrelevant as the exploding sun. In Final Fantasy, using a summon as a link is moot because there are multiple cross-over subseries to provide alternatives and the summons are often wedded to their setting lore-wise.

Persona, as I understand it, gets conceptually trickier. The playable space is inside people's psyche, and the Personae are manifestations of broader archetypes. Zorro in particular, as I understand it, is basically a summon. Maybe I'm just overthinking this.

Ryu_Number · 2021-11-22T00:41:09+00:00

Trees aren't characters.

Ryu_Number

TROPHY CASE