Eye Candy Essay, Research Paper

?Eye Candy?

Heroes, villains, love, betrayal, friendship, evil, romance, fantasy, adventure?these are the ingredients of the excitement found in an RPG, a Role-Playing Game. What makes RPG?s so great? RPG?s allow the player to escape from reality, leaving behind all the stress and problems of today. RPG?s are an outlet for our imaginations and become addicting as they attract gamers like flies to a flytrap. Having a great combination of story line and graphics, RPG?s keep growing in popularity and have many high points and very few low points. Taking you into an untold world of fantasy that only we people can imagine, the legacies of the stories of fantasy and myth told throughout ages now come in the form of RPG?s. First thought of as an adventure game by players, RPG?s have started a new genre of gaming, and they are a major franchise in the gaming industry. Among the most popular of all games in the world is the Final Fantasy series. The story line attracts gamers like flies to a flytrap. Providing eye candy to the viewer, the graphics are among the most advanced computer drawings in the world today.

The RPG, a role-playing game, was created because it is human nature to create new ideas beyond our physical realm and to create ?fantasies.? To escape our natural habitat and explore new regions of our imagination, programmers create RPG?s to satisfy our imaginations. Developed in the mid-80?s, RPG?s were something very few companies tried to establish as a new genre of a game; however, there are always a few companies that will attempt to defy the odds. Squaresoft, makers of the famous Final Fantasy and one of the first and only major developers of RPG?s, set the standards. Squaresoft dominates all the RPG aspects with games, such as Final Fantasy VII, which sold 2.7 million copies in the United States in less than three days! What does this say about gamers? They are very, very interested in this type of entertainment, and the charts do show it. The charts show that gamers do love imagination and the belief that they can escape reality through games.

What makes these games stand out above other computer games is the story line of the games: the classic tale of good versus absolute evil. Final Fantasy VII uses this classic to engage the player?s feelings and emotion that the game can present. The plot of this game begins with the ?good? characters named Arieth and Cloud. Aerith is a flower girl who seems to be a normal, happy-go-lucky type of girl; however, all that changes. She meets up with a young man named Cloud Strife. Cloud is at one time a member of the elite Soldier First Class, an organization of the top fighters in the world, but now has turned mercenary-for-hire because of his incredible skills with a sword. As the game progresses, Cloud is propositioned to be Aerith?s escort home, but Shinra interrupts them. Shinra is a corrupted government that will destroy anything for profit, even at the cost of thousands of lives. Arieth is an important aspect to their plans. Aerith is one of the few surviving Cetra, an ancient civilization of great knowledge and power. They believe that if she is a Cetra, then she shall lead them to the Promised Land, a land of many natural resources, a land of money. The villain of the story, Sephiroth, is very mysterious to the players until the realization of his plans. Planning to go to destroy all humans and take his rightful place on the planet, Sephiroth puts the world in great danger by using the black material to summon the powerful Meteor Spell, a powerful black magic. Sephiroth?s actions will destroy all life on the planet. With a grudge against Sephiroth for destroying Cloud?s hometown, Cloud becomes caught up in the struggles of the world. Also, Cloud realizes that a friend named Tifa Lockhart is relying on him. Cloud promises Tifa that if she is ever in need of a ?knight in shining armor,? that he will come and rescue her. Cloud, being an uncaring individual about other people?s beliefs, believes that she is right and he should do something about the planet no matter the ?cost.? This leads towards newfound friends, a rediscovered past, and the power to change the fate of the planet. Do you not see the importance of such a plot? An in-depth, detailed story has always lured readers and gamers into trying new ideas. Now it is becoming an obsession.

?Eye candy,? as I like to call the graphics, is just what you would expect to get from an RPG. RPG?s now begin the game with a Computer Generated (CG) sequence, a breathtaking sequence that is done completely on a computer. Both painstaking and time consuming, CG?s are the most digitally enhanced graphics in the world today. In addition, the backdrops range from two-dimensional prerendered backgrounds to the traditional one-dimensional explorable dungeons. Running at the same pace as the backdrops are the characters. The characters can be made of polygon-shaped textures and look absolutely gorgeous to the eyes. Designing new graphics everyday, many companies help improve the technology of design by just trying new ideas, and when I see these graphics, it makes me say ?wow? to myself. The graphics are just stunning!

What is there not to like about RPG?s? They are long games, worth the money, and leave you guessing at what is going to happen next. There are some people who have never heard of RPG?s, such as my English teacher Mrs. Walters, but if she were to play this type of genre, she would love it. The storyline combined with the awesome graphics make RPG?s among the most popular games in the entertainment business. RPG?s are one of my favorite pastimes and they never seem to get boring. There is always something new to imagine in the world out there, and people do love to escape reality once in a while.