Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Dive Into the Heart In our popular media, the heart has somehow become acquainted with emotion. We experience a broken heart, we wish with all our hearts, we trust our hearts to guide us. This sentiment, primarily encouraged by Disney films, is far from what the actual heart is as the organ that pumps
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix No Time to Think: How Kingdom Hearts 1 Hinders Itself I can’t speak for everyone, but I think it is safe to say that many came to the Kingdom Hearts series due to their love of something else. Kingdom Hearts works with beloved properties: Disney and Final Fantasy. The original intent was to replicate the success of Nintendo’s
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Beyond the Door A common critique aimed at Kingdom Hearts 1 is that the villain, Ansem Seeker of Darkness, is revealed far too late in the story. For most of the game it seems Maleficent is the big baddie, only to be pushed aside for some random dude who loves darkness. Ansem can
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Hikari (Light) Riku’s story in Kingdom Hearts 1 bears similar attributes to Sora’s. He is the chosen wielder of the keyblade. He is searching for and trying to rescue Kairi. He experiences a loss of innocence and comes of age. Riku’s story is the hero’s journey with a
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Kairi “And then there’s also Kairi, a.k.a. the girl. And that’s kind of it.” – SuperButterBuns There is a scene at the beginning of the third act of Kingdom Hearts 1 where Sora talks to Kairi after rescuing her and freeing her heart. It is clear that Sora
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Road to a Hero In Joseph Campell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell coins the trope popularized in epic stories as “the hero’s journey.” It is very common and appears in several games, including the Legend of Zelda series, Journey, Final Fantasy VII, the Uncharted series, Gone Home, and of course
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Hand in Hand If you had to settle what the core theme is from Kingdom Hearts 1, the answer would be friendship. When Sora loses the keyblade to Riku, he pronounces that, “I don’t need a weapon…My friends are my power!” Ignoring the fact that Donald and Goofy had abandoned him
Firewatch The Sound of Silence In the summer of 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a cabin in the woods that he built at Walden Pond. His intent was to see if he could survive living a plain, simple life in radically reduced conditions. Thoreau was interested in truth and always questioned tradition. While conducting
Firewatch Less is More The art of creating can sometimes be bogged down by too many ideas. When someone tries to pack in idea after idea after idea into a creative project, they are often left with a muddy mess and it is hard to tell what they are trying to say with what
Firewatch Hey There Delilah When we talk about Firewatch, we could talk about the attention to realism, or the choice to include narrative depth, or even the way feminized gameplay can rile up a community more interested in gatekeeping then pushing the medium to new places. These topics only manage to breach some of
Firewatch Featured Intentional Anticlimax Upon Firewatch’s release, the game was met with high praise for its solid plot and incredible environments. But this was not the consensus among everyone. A large portion of people who played the game complained about the ending. Among the disappointed was YouTuber Felix Kjellberg, more commonly known as
Not a Game The Art of the Flashback Martha Marcy May Marlene is one of my favorite movies. I have always wanted to discuss it in some fashion, and this was a lot of fun to make. Hope you enjoy the essay and if you haven't seen the movie, go check it out because it is phenomenal. This
