[jstarfish]

> Earthbound as a curiously mature JRPG for the time. I like to cite it as an example of a game that is more about the journey than the destination.

I could never put my finger on what made that game so compelling. The "Yakuza: Like a Dragon" game had a similar vibe. The working title for it might as well have been "Friendship is Magic."

> making sure to stop and take a coffee break every now and then

The lesson you were supposed to take away from it was to stop and call your dad every now and then.

[dfxm12]

I could never put my finger on what made that game so compelling.

The game's director and writer, Shigesato Itoi, is a creative writer by trade, so he brought a fresh perspective, and frankly, is a better writer than most who work on videogames. Being an outsider, he also wasn't bogged down by common video game tropes.

[smoldesu]

Mother 3 is totally worth playing too, for those who never got around to it. I played the English fan-translation a few years ago and it really floored me how well it developed the themes of Earthbound. It feels equal parts dire and slapstick, illustrated by cartoonish characters that live in truly trying times.

While I'm still a sucker for FFVI and FFVII, Mother 3 kinda achieves the impossible in many ways. It re-develops the themes from it's predecessor into a more accessible, more nuanced and funnier story. Characters get hurt, die, yell curse-words and contend with progressively more horrifying environments. Tonally it almost feels like Stand By Me, elevated to cartoonishly-evil stakes from the start. Best of all, the morals are immediately accessible to the player instead of being hidden as lore like most RPGs are want to do. For younger audiences, there should be no confusion about who is right and wrong and why they are that way. While Final Fantasy is written better overall, I feel like younger players would take so much more away from Mother 3. It really captures the "coming of age" storytelling that has been developed since Mother 1.

After getting to the end of that game, you kinda understand why Itoi doesn't want another game like that. The bar is simply too high, even by the standards of modern consoles.

[djur]

I agree with this except for one detail: EarthBound and Mother 3 especially are better written than any Final Fantasy game. (And I love Final Fantasy.)

[VyseofArcadia]

In fact he brilliantly used his outsider's perspective to lampoon and tweak them.

My favorite examples are the pencil statues, making fun of seemingly arbitrary obstacles in RPGs by introducing a self-admitted arbitrary obstacle, and the rolling HP counters, which cleverly introduced an element of real-time to an otherwise entirely turn-based battle system.

I would also like to once again shout out the third strongest mole as the most brilliant ludo-narrative joke in all of gaming.

[jstarfish]

> My favorite examples are the pencil statues, making fun of seemingly arbitrary obstacles in RPGs by introducing a self-admitted arbitrary obstacle

IIRC, the solution was equally silly-- a literal pencil eraser.

I remember the game having a lot of cheeky David Bowie references too. Starman is an obvious one as a recurrent character, and correctly figured that the fight with Carbon Dog wasn't going to end so easily.

[VyseofArcadia]

> The lesson you were supposed to take away from it was to stop and call your dad every now and then.

That's a good catch, thanks!

I also think the dad was intended to be a commentary on Japanese salaryman culture, and now that I'm older, from the dad's perspective I see another lesson about all the things you might miss if you spend all your time working.

[jstarfish]

> dad was intended to be a commentary on Japanese salaryman culture, [...] lesson about all the things you might miss if you spend all your time working.

Totally. Check out a few episodes of the "Old Enough" show on Netflix and you'll see the same; dad/mom is stuck running the restaurant while the kid goes on the epic errand. Adults have responsibilities and it was touching that the game respected that instead of vilifying him as an "absentee" parent. Childhood is your journey; your parents are just there to provide air support.