[General Discussion] What is so special about...? HEY ASSHOLES, POST MORE IN HERE.

What is so special about EARTHBOUND?

What is special about Earthbound? It's like the video game equivalent of an amuse bouche or a palate cleanser. At the time when it first came out, most of us had been spoiled on games like BoF II, Final Fantasy VI, and Chrono Trigger. Great games. Epic games. Legendary games. Also, fairly serious games. These are games, well, mostly the latter two, that played with some conventions and really went artistic with what they did. They were heavy, and melodramatic and wonderful. And then along comes Mother 2.

Visually, it's not stunning. But what it does, it does well. Bright, vibrant colours. Cartoony graphics and brightly painted faces. The music is light and interesting, and the characters amusingly stereotypical. The empathic girl, the plucky hero, the nerdy sidekick and the enigmatic ninja. But lots of games can claim this sort of crap, so what makes this game different? What makes it special? Two things.

First, it's FUN. My god, this game is a blast. It's plug and play, you can excel having never touched the manual. Though, even THAT was great. Packaged in a huge box with scratch and sniff stickers in a complete (fairly thorough) guidebook? Forget about it. Everything about the game was tactile and entertaining. And that extends to the in game experience as well. You have an immense sense of the world you're in, you have no trouble identifying with the cities, with the concept of where you're in. You feel immersed. Which you don't notice at first, because it's such a lighthearted little romp. But somewhere around Threed, it hits you. "I've never felt disengaged from this place." Onett feels safe, familiar. Twoson is different, but still home. Threed feels alienating, Fourside overwhelming, Winters and Dalaam are foreign and make you feel distant from where you've been. It has an incredible sense of scale, much moreso than even CT or FF VI, where the world map is much, much larger. But traveling in Earthbound really makes you feel there's something substantial to it. This is part of the fun, no matter how ridiculous (and I won't get into the comedy and the light hearted stuff much, as every review out there covers how much whimsy is all over this bitch) the concepts get, you always feel comfortable in them. I said the world was tactile, and it is. You feel very connected to all the stuff you take part in. Yes, you're saving the world from aliens as a band of little kids while ordering pizza and fighting dirty, stinking of pachouli retro hippies with no real clear idea of what the real enemy is, but you know what? You care about it.

Which leads to the second thing this game does that makes it special. Oh my god, well paced. You know how editing can save a movie just by you never feeling like they were hitting you with filler? That's what this game is. It is cut brilliantly, as it were. You never feel it's now time to go do one of the millions of game-extending sidequests, and you don't feel like you've got to rush through any given area. It all feels like you're moving just quick enough. A nice, constant pace that will keep you interested. Now, I could go into how well stocked it is for side characters, and how it never takes itself all that seriously, but you know that. You've read the reviews, and what you want to know is the less tangible aspects of things.

I said earlier that it was like an amuse bouche, a nice middle course. Something light and easy to manage. And it is, very much. But that doesn't mean it's simplistic. It's a well made game that isn't lighthearted because it couldn't pull off melodrama. It's lighthearted because it fucking wanted to be. It was a decision made, and one that works well. The script isn't stupid, it isn't dumbed down, it's just whimsical. Like a Miyazaki creation, clear thought went into the mythology of the world. It isn't just cute for the sake of it, it's zany in ways that function within the plot, not just for the sake of being CA-RAZY. Everything flows. It's like a well written novel. It's over, and you don't fully appreciate how well constructed it was until the second run-through. It may be a palate cleanser, but man, there are some complex flavours involved, and they all compliment each other perfectly. This is a game that could be damned pretentious about how well put together it is, but it just refuses to. Sure it could tell you it's influenced by Japanese storytelling techniques and classic Joseph Campbell-esque hero myth, but you know what? It'll just chuckle and tell you to have a beer and watch some cartoons. Because that's the kind of guy Earthbound is. And he's totally cool with you dating his sister.

Jam it back in, in the dark.