Final Fantasy Tactics didn’t create a new style of play that had never been seen before or push the limits of the original PlayStation hardware. Its story, complex but traditional, contented itself to convey an unspecific and not very uplifting pessimism about human nature and the harshness of the world. It originally came out in 1997, the same year that Final Fantasy VII, that intractable juggernaut of sales and mindshare, was unleashed upon the gaming masses. VII set the tone for most of the Final Fantasies to come after it: big and theatrical, a parade of set pieces and operatic extravagance. Tactics, on the other hand, was restrained— almost dignified— in the way it carried itself. It had some drama, but unlike VII, its primary purpose was not to be drama. Final Fantasy Tactics was, in story and gameplay both, about fighting.

“...I’ve discovered that my wife and I’s obsession isn’t an abnormality.”

–IGN.com.

Thanks to Jeriaska for the link.

(I resisted posting this for a while as I don’t really wish to become known primarily as the grammar cop of the game writing world, but it was just too snicker-worthy not to share.)

“…the soldiers discover that the Helghast spirit is just as fierce on their home world than ever before…”

– IGN.com again.

(I can’t help myself— the whole review is full of constructions like this.)

Sometimes it starts innocently enough. Maybe much of the game’s code is still under construction or it was written under great duress, so while you can freeze the game, you can’t yet capture some aspect of it, like the particle effects. The public relations people need ten new, never before-seen screenshots by tomorrow, because that’s the deal they put together with the magazine (exclusive content for them, many dedicated pages for the game), and the issue has a print deadline. Giving them screenshots of your title without a single explosion or muzzle flash or magic spell effect is unthinkable, so with the minutes ticking away, the solution is obvious: take the graphics the game itself uses to generate these elements and composite them over the source image. It’s not really dishonest, since you will just be doing by hand what the game does in real-time— or will do, when it all eventually works.