Ever since I found out that Ridley Scott wanted to end Alien with Ellen Ripley being eaten by the Alien and then having the Alien deliver the closing monologue in Sigourney Weaver's voice, I've wondered who I have to thank for all of the good ideas and who to blame for all the bad ideas in any given work.
After creating the Ogre Battle series with Quest, Yasumi Matsuno teamed up with Square to make Final Fantasy Tactics, finally giving birth to the fictional world he had been nursing in his imagination for some years: Ivalice.
Tactics' story was intriguing in ways that not even those who enjoyed would grasp immediately. Tactics was a biography - not just an objective history lesson, but a tale ("The Zodiac Brave Story") from one angle among many possible depictions of a single event (The War of the Lions). Tactics, even with all its convolutions, is a focused story. There aren't any mini-games that involve adding numbers or sequences where your party forms an impromptu rock band. It's all about war, faith and the limits of loyalty.
Upon Tactics' success, I imagine a thought must have occurred to Matsuno. What if Ivalice was a place that could be explored from a variety of angles? Not just from various points in its history, but through various genres as well? That's when Matsuno and his bros in aesthetic sensibility - music composer Hitoshi Sakimoto and character designer Akihiko Yoshida - set to work on Vagrant Story.
Two particular games would be released after Tactics: Parasite Eve and Metal Gear Solid. Both would inspire Vagrant Story's concept of a one-man army going on an infiltration mission to cease the ridiculous machinations of a villain with whom the hero shares an undisclosed connection. Indeed, the relationship between Ashley Riot and Sydney Losstarot is directly comparable to that between Parasite Eve's Aya Brea and Eve, which, to be fair, is nearly identical to that between Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife and Sephiroth, which was copped from Berserk's Guts and Griffith, who, really, might just be Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver from Treasure Island.
Vagrant Story would also apply Metal Gear Solid's deft production budgeting to Parasite Eve's concept of a "Cinematic RPG". The design team traveled to Bordeaux, France to inspire their complex virtual sets, and constructed the most expressive character models of the generation, and all would look impressive from every angle. Matsuno and gang would pass on including voice acting, since Square's experience was mostly limited to Brave Fencer Musashi and some of Ehrgeiz, instead conveying dialog through comic book-style speech bubbles.
I do sometimes wish that Sydney started singing "Out There" after crashing through the window.
All these tools would be used to compose the mostly tightly-directed cut scenes of the day to tell one of the most tightly written stories in video games. Even the speech bubbles would be figured into the composition of each shot. This brand of direction would go largely ignored by Japanese RPG developers, who were prefectly content with having camera slowly hover through cut scenes at eye-level from one glass-eyed static character model to the other, despite the fact that video game cameras don't have physical mass and can be moved literally ANYWHERE to achieve marginally more interesting results.
The truth is that Vagrant Story's story isn't even made up of very original components. An invisible evil force, amnesia, corrupt churches and corrupt states, silly hair styles - those motifs alone have been around since the first Breath of Fire. Like Tactics, Vagrant Story is one facet of a gem in Ivalice's history. This focus, putting some facts center stage while obscuring others, introduces an element of mystery that somehow makes everything more dire. Characters with simply stated motives seem to carry a depth suggested in their actions that we never quite fully see. Paradoxically, thanks to our imaginations, that minimalism is imbued with weight, realism, a kind of maturity not often seen in video games, save for maybe Silent Hill, Braid, possibly even Hotel Dusk. What I'm saying is Vagrant Story isn't supposed to be a kitchen sink RPG where you mourn your friend's death by going snowboarding. Vagrant Story is serious business.
Which brings me to the main problem with Vagrant Story as a video game - consistency.
In such a laser-focused narrative - in a game where the last dungeon includes a cut scene in which the exposure of a new fact that is integral to understanding what happens is limited to one single sentence delivered with impeccable timing, why are there there four puzzles that involve pushing boxes into holes?
You might think I am suggesting that Yasumi Matsuno is like Tim Schaefer, a designer who comes up with fantastic ideas but fails to actually have really fun video games made out of them. That is not true. Aside from the box-pushing puzzles, Vagrant Story features a beautifully intricate series of game mechanics. The problem is that
1) it's not finished, and
2) it doesn't belong with this story.
The first time I played Vagrant Story, I believed that a weapon's efficiency against a target was based on the target's "Class" - human, beast, dragon, undead, etc - and that training weapons to be more effective against those classes would help me deal more damage to them. This knowledge was supported by the player's manual and the fact that when examining a weapon the first thing you see is its efficiency against all of the enemy classes.
HOWEVER the Internet taught that a weapon's Class efficiency is a negligible factor in damaging enemies compared to its Elemental affinity and its type - and that, on top of attack and defense power, all of these factors work together to decide how badly you damage the enemy. I didn't fully understand this concept until my third play through the game 10 years later. If someone had just explained it to me as laying my weapon's affinities on top of the enemy's affinities like two rear projector sheets, everything would've been so easy.
But it's not just that the game tricks you into thinking you know how to play it - it still makes you think that you don't, even when you do.
Let's take the final boss as an example of how the combat system is amazing and retarded all at once. It is un-analyzable, meaning I can't check its defenses, and all of my weapons did zero damage to it, so I couldn't even really guess which angle I was supposed to attack from. What I discovered online is that ALL of its elemental defenses were astronomical. This meant no one element was more effective than the other, which in turn meant that none of them were the wrong one to use against it. Upon a single play through the game, of all the stat-boosting gems you collect that you can use to bolster your weapons strengths, you get the most wind-damage gems. So I loaded those all into my weapon with the highest innate wind affinity and went to town.
What's amazing about this is that I realized, technically, there is no "wrong" way to attack an enemy, that you can turn the tables with the right know-how. What's retarded about this, in actuality, is that if you can't figure out the "right" way quick enough, fights take forever, and the game does very little to help you.
My belief is that all of the little subsystems in the game - the stat-boosting gems, the ability to combine weapons to create new ones, rearranging blades and grips, the magic spells that boost certain elemental affinities - weren't just created to give the player a sense of control, but to keep the programmers from having to balance the difficulty themselves. It's like one of those "brew your own root beer" kits. It's a cool idea, and when it actually works you feel accomplished, but then you're just like: "Why didn't the guys who made this kit just make some root beer? It probably would've tasted better than what I made."
Even if Ashley's arsenal involves more statistics to keep track of than your entire army in Final Fantasy Tactics, the weapons system is fascinating - the kind of deep number massaging that nerds can really sink their teeth into, not unlike how the junction system in Final Fantasy VIII makes an otherwise challenging game more fun. Only change "challenging" to "incomplete" and "fun" to "playable".
But even then - even if you excuse the obtuse combat system and the weird "sure, that works" difficulty - the final nail in the coffin is ergonomics. Even with a "quick menu" to manage all of the options at Ashley's disposal, a walk through a single room can be prolonged by trial and error attacks to see if the enemy's weak against your weapon, going to the inventory to switch your weapon with a new one, attacking again, find that it still doesn't work, casting Analyze, going to the status menu to view the results, going to attach the appropriate gems to your weapon, not finding the gems, remembering that the gems are in a shield that you're not using, removing the gems, confirming the removal, attaching the gems, confirming the attachment, and the finally killing the enemy that didn't even really have that much HP left after all, and then switching back to your other weapon to fight other, different enemies.
It's a wonder why there isn't a WEAPONS or GEMS option in the quick menu, considering it's changing those things that eat up the most time. It's especially frustrating that there are instead options to access BREAK ARTS, which are mostly useless, and both CHAIN and DEFENSE abilities, which I rarely change.
If I had to remake Vagrant Story, I'd trim all of the fat and focus the entire combat system on your Chain Abilities - the various means by which Ashley actually inflicts damage, based on Super Mario RPG-style timed button presses - and management of your RISK - a gauge which fills as you perform more consecutive Chain Abilities, increasing the damage you take and the chances that you'll whiff. These two simple tenets, rewarding technical skill and punishing risky behavior, have been the foundation of making video games fun for as long as they've been around. Besides that, chain abilities and Risk are about the only parts of the gameplay that are directly tied to Ashley's character. I'd probably have to cut the blacksmithing, too - sure you wouldn't be able to make that Perfect Romaphaia 'Holy Win' Sword, but Ashely really shouldn't be dicking around like that anyway, he's on a mission!
All of this musing on what could have been just make me wonder again, who is to thank and who is to blame? Did Matsuno make all of these decisions, thinking they'd mesh perfectly? Did he have different ideas, but think the public would prefer these? Or did he kowtow to meddling from higher-ups?
We know that some things didn't go as planned. Early on, he thought the game might have included AI controlled partners, or even a second player, and then 50 percent of the "scenario" had to be cut - whether that means playable areas, written story or both, we'll never know. For all we know that 50 percent could have come out of the script, leading to the tight and exposition-dry version we've come to know and love. Maybe there was going to be a tutorial that actually taught you how to play the game. This information, along with troubles that would occur years later during Final Fantasy XII forcing Matsuno to "get sick" and step down from the helm, suggests that meddling and budget mishaps - indeed, Vagrant Story was part of the Summer of Adventure in America, a deluge of Square titles also including Parasite Eve 2, Legend of Mana, Threads of Fate and Chrono Cross - may have caused the incongruity between Vagrant Story's narrative and gameplay.
It is also possible that, after Tactics, Matsuno would be expected to produce a game with lots of numbers of changeable variables that players could fuck around with for hours and multiple playthroughs - and, with a history in strategy RPGs, he isn't a stranger to that sort of thing. So it's also possible that Matsuno created a story with such spectacular aesthetic sensibilities and consistency - including an incredibly human cast of saints and sinners and a score both hauntingly ambient and bombastically soaring - and then he attached a really fucking complicated game to it on purpose.
Why would he do this, aside from having stuff that happens while time passes between cut scenes? And why do I care so much?
Think about all of the RPGs you've played - not just the long and good ones like Earthbound, but even the ones you haven't liked that much, like, say, Crisis Core. All the people you meet, all of the monsters you defeat, all of the trials and bullshit you go through - you carry so much with you the whole way. It's like life. You can start to hate it, almost. But there's something about finishing a game of that length that is so important, exactly because it took so long and you worked so hard. You come out of the darkness and into the light, and its by that light that you can see all you've done.
Without going into too much detail, Vagrant Story is exactly like that, and at the same time nothing like that. You and Ashley goes through so much shit - so much fucking shit, shit beyond the both of you - and you're the only two capable of taking it, and you get out into the light and you wonder... Was it worth it? Who did we do it for? Would we have been happier if we hadn't?
Am I suggesting that Matsuno meant all of the frustration and confusion of the player to parallel that of his hero, and possibly himself? No. But that doesn't mean it didn't.
P.S. If you're trying to show off the game to your friends, use completed game data. You'll look like less of a schmuck.
P.P.S. The man who wrote the Brady Games Official Strategy Guide for Vagrant Story was Dan Birlew, AKA President Evil, who wrote the first ever Silent Hill plot analysis that I mentioned. That guy's gonna be connected to a lot of games that made me feel particular ways.
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