Final Fantasy Tactics vs. Unfettered Imagination
At 36, the difficulty of grasping a style of play that I treasured in prior decades reflects in other areas of life, as well.
Old Habits
I should be playing Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth with every spare moment I have, but I’ve fallen back into revisiting my all-time favorite game, Final Fantasy Tactics, for the millionth time.
The plan was just to play a little to get some video footage to pair with my band’s recording of my arrangement of one of the tunes from it (below). But, well, I got some footage… and then was sucked back into the land of Ivalice all over again.
As I’ve aged it’s been harder and harder to will myself to sit down and spend the time necessary to play long games. Some of you may recognize that I just spent, what, 100 hours or whatever on Persona 3: Reload… It’s not that it never happens! It’s just that it rarely does. In fact, I think that perhaps the main reason I’ve been slow on FFVII is because I jumped right to it from P3.
Games that more easily allow for short bursts of playing appeal to me more these days. Turn-based tactical games fit that mold perfectly, which is why I’ve stuck it out to beat games like Triangle Strategy and Fire Emblem: Three Houses without much difficulty. So naturally, when I turned on my favorite game—and when that game has the play style that best fits my needs as an adult gamer—I couldn’t help myself.
However, during this play-through, it’s been all too obvious that something had changed. The game is no longer the game that I first played in 1997. And that difference comes not from feeling that the gameplay or the story or the characters have lost their luster—far from it! many of the themes hit harder than ever—, but rather from the observation that I have lost the imagination of my youth.
A child said, “what is the grass?”
In Final Fantasy Tactics, the player has a roster of units to choose from to send into battle. There are two main types:
Units that are generic. These units are given randomized names and stats. They start off with a basic class (aka “job”)—Squire or Chemist—and as they gain experience in those jobs, you unlock the ability to change their job to ones with different abilities, such as Thief, Time Mage, Lancer, etc., etc. We’ll call these “mercenary” units.
Units that have a direct place in the storyline and are involved in cutscenes. While they have a unique starting class and set of abilities, they can change to any job available to mercenaries (with the exception of Squire, which their unique class takes the place of). We’ll call these “hero” units.
Technically there's a third type that's a mix of the two, but it only applies to three units. At the start of Chapter 2 of the game, the player will always have the option to recruit Radd, Lavian, and Alicia—units who play the role of mercenaries but are mentioned by name in the very first cutscene of the game. They have no dialogue, themselves.
One of my favorite things to do as a kid was not just let the game tell the story it was meant to tell, but rather also to craft tales centering my mercenary units in my head. The individual and collective stories I imagined for these units would evolve as they took part in more battles, as I changed their jobs around, and even as the scenarios in the written plot unfurled.
Some of my mercenaries would develop bonds with one another or with heroes by charging into battle together. Others would be jealous of the power of new hero units and work to surpass their might by learning more advanced jobs. A Black Mage would become obsessed with their power, only then to realize they had gone too far and become a Priest in an attempt to change their ways! A Knight would devote themself to the protection of the one that had saved them from the brink the battle prior!
One of my best friends in grade school and I loved talking about this game together. I remember having come up with a list of 100 scenarios for my units, and if I’m not mistaken, many of them were born from those chats and the unfettered goofiness that came with us allowing ourselves to entertain ideas without restraint.
The only one I really remember involved changing all of my units’ class to Monk and then giving them the ‘Equip Gun’ ability. Woe was the band of bandits that happened across my mob when the supposed fist-fighters unexpectedly pulled out pistols and filled ‘em full of holes!
Indulging in scenarios like that wasn’t practical in terms of beating the game (… or was it?? maybe I should recreate that one…)—they were all for the fun of letting all barriers down to try whatever came to mind, practicability be damned!
A prison of one’s own making
With this play-through, though, I found that something that came so naturally to me back then had become difficult to grasp. I tried to force dreaming up scenarios and personalities for my mercenaries, but it didn’t feel right. I didn’t really have any interest.
Those feelings worried me. Am I so burdened by adulthood that I can no longer free my mind and step away from that which is given to me in order to create my own stories? Can I no longer let my imagination run wild into the unknown? Can I no longer find joy in that act, no matter how nonsensical or unrefined or amateurish the content I come up with? Am I bored by what I now produce in that meditative state, or am I more afraid of having lost my imagination, trapping myself in a vicious cycle of doubt and displeasure?
Despite my concerns, I continued playing and noticed that the first chapter of the game went by in a flash, which is not something that I had remembered being the case in the past. The second chapter was the same. I then started to wonder whether time was adding to those feelings of loss of creativity.
We are told our whole lives that time seems to pass by more quickly the older you get. This phenomenon must be due in part to all that we’re constantly thinking about as adults—that which has to get done, that which we strive to accomplish, that by which we’re troubled.
Instead of focusing on the game and being a zone where I’m willing to explore and take in every feature—those that are hard-coded and those that align with the reality that I myself develop—, I was playing in a way where I was simply going through the motions to get through the battles and to the next level. Plagued by everything else on my to-do list, my eyes were set on the end, not focused on the journey. I wasn’t giving myself space to relish the moment.
Practical application of the impractical
The feeling was familiar: Admittedly, I can feel that way when on the bandstand sometimes, too.
Maybe my playing is off a given night. Maybe the gig isn’t happenin’. Maybe the audience vibe is weird. Maybe we’re playing tunes that I’m not feeling. Maybe I’m trying too hard. Maybe I’m just unable to disassociate myself from the state of the world or personal issues. There is so much distraction that can take me (anyone) out of the musical moment.
When faced with those vibes, I have to make a conscious effort to get regrounded. I have to remember to be present with myself, what I’m playing, the band, the music, the spirit and influence of those that came before me, etc., etc. For me, once a mental distraction arises, it’s not easy to return to a solid state.
I have a vague recollection of a sentiment I heard once that was along the lines of “play every gig like it’s your last.” I thought I had heard that Roy Haynes said that’s how Trane played, though I’m unsure. Regardless, it landed hard when the pandemic was in full swing, and I’ve tried to keep it at top of mind ever since in order to overpower those distractions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Whenever it does, the gig is always better.
And I want to be clear that there’s a difference between being distracted by emotions—particularly those that come from reactions to political or personal issues—and channeling those emotions through the horn into what I’m playing. If I come to a gig and something is affecting me, the goal is to center myself in the moment; either clear my mind completely or redirect my emotional state to break down any mental barriers prohibiting complete creative freedom; and play with fatal intent. That’s my path to joy.
I feel like the benefits of unshackling one’s mind extends to organizing spaces, too. There is a strange freedom inherent in coming to terms with the unpleasant truths of humanity and its history rather than choosing to live in a state of willful ignorance. But that acceptance doesn’t mean that one’s mind is free—one can easily be overwhelmed in a myriad of ways, leading to traps of, for instance, endless reading and absorption of information without acting on that new knowledge; retreating into states of despair; or always playing defense instead of going on the offense and working towards something.
When we say a better world is possible, we need to have a personal understanding of what that better world looks like to ourselves. To me, coming to that understanding feels most effective when moving from a vision of a world that is free from the negative to a world that is free with the positive.
How does one do that? We need to allow ourselves the space to have moments of youthful, unencumbered creativity! We need to allow ourselves to take the time to think past the so-called “practical” and all that is weighing down our ideas! We need to allow ourselves to dream beautiful dreams!
And ideally, we need to have enough trust in our comrades to share whatever we come up with so that we can find ways to make the presently “impractical” into the future “practical” together.
I believe that if we do so, when organizing, we will develop campaigns that are more inspired and are more inspiring. Those campaigns will energize us to will ourselves out of inevitable moments of doubt and despair, as well as pick our comrades up when they find themselves in a tough state. Then, we will more easily continue the work that we believe needs be done for a brighter future, side by side, with joy.
Breakthrough
It took me a while, but with some conscious effort, I eventually got to a point where I started making sidestories for my units again.
The latest one involves a mercenary unit that, after having mastered the Ninja job, decided to take a step further into the dark arts to become a Dark Knight, and with every new skill he learns, he has to claw his way back from the abyss else he lose his mind to it. But he can’t do it alone! The more power he gains, the more the bonds of friendship he has with other units are critical to his retaining a sense of self……
Again, you know, the stories are whatever. It’s not the quality that’s the point, though! Ha.
I’m nowhere near returning to that state of mind I felt when I was a kid. Certainly, my units’ stories and relationships with one another are lacking depth. I can’t eradicate invading thoughts to develop them like I once did. I can’t always bring myself to focus only on the game, either (for two evenings I played it in the background while watching a movie). Yet, I’m happy to have rediscovered even a small piece of what was.
Maybe with more practice, I can more easily allow myself to be freely creative in the moment—without being self-consciousness; without worrying about whether what I come up with is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and rather just enjoying letting it be—while playing games, while on the bandstand, while organizing, and while living life in general.
Peace,
Greg