A not so final, Final Fantasy update

Last month's Distant Worlds concert made me reflect upon just how much time I have invested into the Final Fantasy franchise. Recollections of years of adoration for the series crept back into my mind, and as a result I think that now is as good a time as ever to take the trip down that particular memory lane.

I would like to start with Final Fantasy XI. This is the online one, and a game that I played more or less exclusively for five years. As such, it will be hard to put all that needs to be said about it into one post, so I expect there will be quite a few before I am done. I will try to sprinkle in stuff about other games along the way, but in the mean time... Please bear with me while I reminiscence about airships, crystals, dragons and men with somewhat oversized swords :)

Distant Worlds, Edinburgh Playhouse

It is nice to be at a video game event where the majority of attendants have put on their fancy clothes. Most people were either in full cosplay gear, suited up... or both, in the case of those dressing as "Turks" from Final Fantasy VII.

I knew the concert was going to be great when the first number started playing. It was the Final Fantasy Prelude. Initially just a solo harp playing, reminiscent of the early NES games, but it was eventually overlaid by the choir arrangement from the japanese Final Fantasy: Pray CD. Halfway in, the string parts added to the Prelude in Final Fantasy VII were incorporated, and at this point I must admit that sentimentality got the better of me, and I might have shed a nostalgic tear or two :)

After winding the composition down to its basic form again for the ending, the choir transitioned into Liberi Fatali from Final Fantasy VIII, complete with video from the game's intro sequence, giving the Edinburgh Playhouse a chance to shine both as a concert venue and as a cinema, the purpose for which it was originally constructed in 1929.

Subsequently, the conductor Arnie Roth addressed the crowd, presented The National Youth Choir of Scotland, The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the evening's representative from Square Enix in attendance: Final Fantasy XIII composer Masashi Hamauzu.

After doing a short Victory Fanfare the orchestra continued with a moving rendition of the Zanarkand theme from Final Fantasy X.

From Diablo to Torchlight

Diablo CD Cover © Blizzard Entertainment

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away... There was a company called Blizzard North. 

In this company there worked a developer named David Brevik, two artistically inclined brothers called Max and Erich Schaefer, and a multi-instrumentalist by the name of Matt Uelmen, whose 12-string guitar picking skills were devil-iscious. Together, they made a game called Diablo, and it was awesome.

Blizzard North was originally a small company named Condor, but were bought by Blizzard Entertainment and re-branded in 1996, six months before they released Diablo. The man who incorporated them into the Blizzard fold was Bill Roper, at the time a producer for Warcraft II.

Diablo was one of those games that drew you in primarily because of its atmosphere. It was dark and Gothic, with phenomenal ambiance and beautiful music. It was exactly how a game for fans of dark fantasy in the Alternative/Post-Grunge era should be.

Apps on Steam and indie game creation

As of today, Steam is offering productivity applications as well as games on their online store. On the surface, this may not necessarily seem like a big deal. After all there already are online stores for productivity applications, for instance the App Store from Apple. It is however a big deal for budding video game makers, and here is why: Steam Workshop.

Steam Workshop is a mechanism that allows easy distribution and consumption of user created content for games on the Steam platform. Popular games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, has an active modding community that so far has released over 10.000 user modifications of variable quality on the game's workshop channel.

One of the seven applications currently being offered on the Steam App Store is GameMaker: Studio from YoYo Games. And it just so happens, that it has Steam Workshop integration built in right off the bat. 

At the same time, numerous indie-developers are currently engaging in the gated popularity contest that is Steam Greenlight to get their game considered for publication on the Steam platform. The contestants are many, but the winners are few.

Now, if your game is made with GameMaker, you can now put it or a demo on Steam through GameMaker's workshop channel, thus bypassing the nomination process of Steam Greenlight.

At the time of writing there are currently just over 50 titles being offered as workshop items for GameMaker. Many of them just demos or works in progress. Expect this number to increase over the next couple of days as creators realize the buzz-making potential this gives to a game in development.