Hey MB, Why Would You Do This To Yourself Anyway?

Ah, you must mean the, uh, y’know. (Gestures to this lengthy and time-consuming transcript) Well, about that!

Let's begin at the beginning. One of the reasons we gamers love us our vidya games is because they illustrate a fully imagined, fully realized world for us to explore. Such wonderful universes have also come from books, TV, movies, comics, etc, but none of these media seems to capture the grandeur of a new world the way video games do. You’re limited in TV and movies to the one or two hours you spend with particular characters at a time; in books and comics, you’re limited to so many tens or hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of pages feasible to tell a story. But in a nearly limitless digital embrace, many video games can go on for hours, taking you to many different places, introducing you to many different people, giving you an unrivaled freedom to explore your way. Sure, they're not perfectly unbounded, but hey, you have to admit, they're pretty damn open, and getting more so as game development blossoms into a full blown art. Graphics, minigames, story, characters, design, gameplay, battle mechanics, strategy, so many things convalesce to create a great game, and when you hold the controller and interact with the story and environment through it, you are fully engaged in an alternate reality. None of the other media, fantastic as they are, can give you the same feeling of an otherworld, the like of which only dreams have ever been host to, right at your fingertips.

That's what I think, anyway. And, I believe one of the greatest insights into the world of a game is its script - especially in its entirety. Have you ever taken the time to read those journals or encyclopedias or other pieces of lore that some games give you? You know, it usually exists as an option in the main menu that tells you more about where you are and what you're doing, but you don't always look at it because you're busy kicking ass and farming materials and leveling up and getting through this mission and OH MY GOD what happened to Sazh?? I can't stop playing until I find out what happened to Sazh!! ...Well, as tedious as they may be, especially to people who just want in on the action, to loremongers like me, they're an invaluable source of inspiration, containing all sorts of little ficlets and Easter Eggs that you would otherwise miss. That goes for NPCs too - so many people fly through their games without ever bothering to talk to them, except to pick up a quest or whatnot. 

Nah, for people like me, these are all fonts of food for thought, a delightful detail of these lovingly crafted environs and stories.

You can probably tell from my impassioned description that I likely would have started transcribing games anyway, even just for my own enjoyment, but I feel it would be a great injustice not to cite another huge inspiration to me in writing all of this: a great entity in the FFX fandom by the handle of Auronlu. She has authored a potpourri of FFX-related musings and resources, including, most famously, a truly epic alternate universe fanfiction and "labor of love", Love Her and Despair.

Another of her contributions is the FFX Script. I stumbled upon it while desperately looking for such an exhaustive reference to Spira - the world of FFX. I came across a lot of scripts, but all of them only included dialogue from cutscenes and FMVs, or other particular parts of the game, like battle dialogue. I wanted the whole thing. So, discovering Auronlu's script was a real treat. Not only did she record every piece of script, from every NPC and from every aspect of the game, but it's all presented in a very smart and intuitive format that makes full use of colors and fonts to recreate the natural flow of the story. Very much unlike others I've seen, which generally come in standard GameFAQs format - one giant, unattractive block of indistinguishable Courier text. You'll see this method of organization and dedication to completeness greatly influences my writings here!

So, I think that about sums it up. This is all an ambitious effort of mine to take note of every single part of each game I work on, and satisfy the most nerdiferous cravings of other Final Fantasy enthusiasts, aspiring game designers, and storytellers and creators like myself! And on that note, feel free to give me feedback if you find my works useful (or even if you don't)!