It is October 1994. I am on my way back from the mall with a brand-new copy of Final Fantasy III for the SNES tucked safely in a bag next to me. I would love to be reading the manual on the way home like I usually do, but I am the one driving this time with my recently-acquired learner’s permit. When the arduous fifteen-minute drive ends, I rush into the house and head straight downstairs to the basement, where the SNES patiently waits for me. Tearing open the box, I settle in on the couch and begin to read the instruction booklet. Yes, I am one of those people. Once I’ve learned about how to set Espers and seen that I will be able to equip Relics with a multitude of effects, I am more ready than ever.

Running back upstairs to the kitchen, I grab a can of Coke and a box of Harvest Crisp crackers. Supplies in hand, I head back downstairs and pull my comfy, if somewhat threadbare, beanbag chair over in front of the 26″ CRT Panasonic TV and slide the cartridge into the SNES with a satisfying click.  Flipping the system on, I settle back into my beanbag and let the first strains of the opening theme wash over me. I have, of course, run the SNES sound through the stereo to take advantage of the bigger speakers.

I am hooked pretty much instantly. The moment those mechs come walking through the snow towards the lights in the distance, I know that this is where I’m going to be spending most of my time for the next few weeks.

Somewhere just outside the basement door, my father is splitting wood for the stove. Winter is coming soon.  The rhythmic thuds of his axe striking the logs punctuate the theme of Narshe.

I should be out helping him, but I’ve got a world to save.

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Think back to the last time you played Uno – it doesn’t matter whether it was the XBL version or the old-fashioned card version — and try to remember when the game shifted from friendly to contentious.  Uno games always shift from friendly to contentious, no matter who is playing. Odds are, whatever the moment is that you are picturing, it probably involved the “Skip” card.

If you are somehow unfamiliar with the rules of Uno (say, perhaps, you were born as a fully grown clone), all you need to know is that the “Skip” card does just what it says: it skips the player directly after whoever played it.  The first time someone gets skipped, everyone probably has a good laugh, and the skipee jokingly plans their vengeance. Once a few more Skips are played, people start to get a little more tense; the card has become a weapon of direct aggression.  Eventually, someone will at some point in the game, through whatever cruel trick of chance or fate, end up getting skipped multiple times in a row.  At this point, if this player has any sort of human spirit within them, they will explode in righteous anger.

Understandably so.

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There is a very strange moment in Final Fantasy VI that has always baffled me.

Relatively early in the game, after your party splits into three separate groups to take on their individual branches of the story, you are presented with a section dedicated to the character of Locke.  Locke, your party’s “treasure hunter” extraordinaire, travels back to the now-occupied-by-the-Empire town of South Figaro to cause some mayhem in the hopes of slowing up the Imperial advance. 

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There has been a bit of a gaming lull lately, and while I am still working my way through the Elite Four in Soul Silver, and still striking the earth as often as I can in Dwarf Fortress, I felt the need for a something with a little more… something.

As it so happens, over the last month, I have had the occasion to react in abject horror when two different people told me they never played through Final Fantasy III/VI (I’ll stop doing that now).  Both were people I would generally consider “well versed” gamers, and I viewed such a gap in their gaming history as a mark of shame.  So, after vigorously explaining to them that they just had to play, it seemed like the perfect time to give it another whirl myself. 

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There is a refrain that I hear often on gaming sites: “turn-based combat in RPGs is dead.”  As anyone who has been paying attention knows, it is a favorite hobby of games journalists and bloggers to proclaim the death of this, that, or the other.  For instance, adventure gaming has been declared dead on more occasions than I can count, and yet seems to be enjoying quite a resurgence at the moment; episodic Monkey Island games, some fantastic-looking titles like Machinarium, and a host of others are popping up for download on a weekly basis.

So why the eulogies for turn-based (TB) combat?  The general consensus seems to be that TB combat is simply too boring in this new world of HD graphics and multiplayer FPSes. People want speed and twitch gaming, the writers say, and turn-based is just too slow and old-fashioned to keep people interested.

This is a pretty shallow way of thinking, I’d argue.  Yes, turn-based combat is by definition slower than real-time, but that does not automatically make it boring.  Boredom is in the eye of the beholder, and for those used to speed and action, turn-based systems must feel like a long walk through a muddy swamp.  But depth and choice can be exciting, and TB systems can usually offer those in spades.

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There is no doubt in my mind that there are many games I recall with far more kindness than they deserve.  Were I actually to go back and play them, it is entirely possible the experience would wipe away my cherished memories and replace them with bitter truth – it is for that reason that they remain untouched in the far recesses of time.

The question this raises to me is:  If I remember some games too fondly, am I perhaps also remembering some games too harshly?  If that is the case, then there is no other game better to check that theory against than Final Fantasy VII.

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Now that we’ve seen the distant past of moral choice in games as well as recent history, let’s take a look at what it all means, and where it all could be going.

Choice is a powerful thing for a gamer; it can be the critical difference between a player simply playing a game and a player really experiencing a game.  Choice draws the player in, makes them feel like they really have a say in what’s going on in a game. Obviously, some choices are more important than others, and players want to know that the decisions they make have an actual effect.  Simply offering them the choice between going down the left hall or the right hall may be a choice, but it’s not one they are likely to remember. Moral choices, though – especially the ones that carry real consequence – those are the ones that players really remember.

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