Rant the Geeky One

Another confession: besides Final Fantasy VII, I have never finished a Final Fantasy game. I've watched people finish their games, and I'm content with that. What do I do? I go the ENTIRE GAME and then on the save point before the final boss battle I go back and try to get EVERYTHING in the game.

If you've played a Final Fantasy game, you know this is no easy feat.

So, since I cannot play Final Fantasy XIII, it being released only on consoles I cannot afford for the time being, I am playing Final Fantasy XII. I had been avoiding this game because the main character irks me, but at least the characters around him are agreeable.

What I like about Final Fantasy XII is that you can pretty much customize any character to become whatever you want it to become. I have a very concise idea of what I want in a party of adventurers and so I can work with the game to have not one but two perfect trios comprised of a leader (basically a tank with lots of hp and attack power), a secondary attacker in charge of items (who also steals from foes and has decent magic power), and a mage in charge of healing and handling a long-range weapon as to not be in the middle of the battle.

At first I pretty much just followed a very loose path of what I wanted my characters to learn and often I would forget what it is I wanted and would end up spending my license points in the wrong thing. After I realized this I began making a list where I wrote down the path each of my six characters will go in order to better do their craft. I was aware of the geekiness involved in this, but at least I wasn't making spreadsheets.

However, Final Fantasy XII's monsters aren't the money-rich monsters of other games. Instead, they drop "loot", which you sell in order to get money to buy better weapons, armor, spells, techniques, etc. This loot also becomes neat items in an alternate shop called "bazaar".

There is, of course, a very definite set of rules as to how the bazaar works, and I happened to find a very detailed, intricate guide that showed exactly how many of which items were needed, and for a fleeting moment, I considered the possibility of making a very complex system that would make my looting far more productive than just killing a lot of things, selling what they dropped, and hope for the best.

Then I realized the amount of work that would entail.

At one point I might have done it. When paired with the right people my geekiness level rises and I've been known to keep complex documents about Harvest Moon and Final Fantasy Tactics for the PSOne. But not this time. I will go out of my way to get all the hunts I can, and I will keep on doing the "write down next thing to learn", but I refuse to put so much work into a small part of a game I'm supposed to be having FUN with.

Unless, of course, upon further reading of the long, intricate guide on the many uses of loot, I find an item that changes my mind.

Books Speak to Me

There's this game where you get a red book (any red book, so long as it's red. How red? Just red. If it looks red to you and you're not colorblind, it probably works.) and you put your hand on it (whichever, if you don't have hands, use your feet. If you don't have feet, use your face. If you don't have a face, I can't help you.) and then you ask a question (any question, be it deep or stupid or personal or mean). You open the book to a random page, put your finger in a random place in that page without looking and then you read what is there. THAT is the answer to your question.

YES!

As much as I'd like to take all sorts of games like these with a grain of salt, I have been playing them since I was little and it is uncanny how some answers will sound so right. I know that the human mind is built to make connections, so vague answers are a sure way of getting "right" answers. If the words that you point at in the book are sort of, kinda related to what you asked, your brain will do the rest of the work.

Usually, however, the answer will be so right, so dead on, that my disbelief will not be able to jade me. And that is when I get not one or two answers that speak to me, but many. And the same question asked twice will only be answered with two different ways of saying the same message. The times when books tell me an answer I wanted or expected I am inclined to believe I'm just twisting their passages to my liking, but they have told me many uncomfortable truths, and they all seem to have their tempers. Some will be quite clear, others will be vague, others will simply not answer your questions. They will not show you a rare, inscrutable passage, they will plainly tell you they are in no mood to hear your inquiries.

Poetry books, in general, will be vague, although Milne seems to get his point across whether in prose or verse. And for some reason, no book seems too fond of answering questions about tattoos (something to do with ink, perhaps?). If you want short, simple answers, your best bet is a dictionary.

Now, supposedly it is The Devil answering the questions through the book. Which may or may not be true. I am not a Christian so I'm changing the way I look at this Devil. However it is always best to not take the books' answers for law, and consider yourself what is being said and the consequences of your actions before jumping ahead.

As for me, what is expected of me will not make me happy.