SAYA'S PROFILE

author= Maria
When she is not awake, she is usually drinking a beer or five.

XD I wish I could drink beer in my sleep.

Just beat Odin Sphere. The plot was just the Ring Cycle mixed with Norse mythology and a bunch of fairy tale tropes played totally straight. Painfully straight, one might say, but it was enjoyable nevertheless.

Wait, what? Since when did "religion" become "the Catholic Church"? I thought religion was about love, mercy, sacrifice, and transcending human vices.

My main annoyance with RPGs is the whole "God is evil, let's go kill him" plot. Most of the time it comes off as cheap and stupid.

Long rant ahead, beware:



Another thing: Christianity is over-used. Use Islam or Judaism instead. You can even incorporate elements of Buddhism and Hinduism. The thing is though, most people are too lazy to actually do research about these religions (or are afraid of offending people, which they shouldn't be, because plenty of portrayals of Christian religion offends Christian people, and there's nothing you can do about it). I personally, would love a change of pace.

Evil churches are overdone. Evil gods are overdone. Try something new.

I also want to say that religion can be used symbolically too. Rather than flat-out portraying a church, you can use names and terms that your audience is familiar with in order to help reinforce your theme. But... this can easily turn into overkill if the symbols don't have anything to attach themselves too.

Erm... I liked Final Fantasy 7. Once I began to understand it, I could see some Christian themes in it-- in fact, I believe that the game does a better job portraying Christianity versus some other games that actually have a religion akin to Christianity. The ancients are pretty much Jews in Space. Aeris dies (okay, unwillingly, she probably didn't know she was going to die) performing a ritual that was supposed to protect the planet from Meteor. Cloud & co. go beat up Sephiroth, but Holy doesn't work, instead merging with Meteor. Then the Lifestream comes out and saves everyone.

For me, the drama resembled the Christian dilemma of salvation for works or by grace-- Salvation by deeds (such as beating up Sephiroth and maybe even depending on Holy) didn't work. It was by grace (Aeris's death enabled her to control the Lifestream to repel Meteor) that saved everyone.

Now THAT is a good example of religious subtext in games. But then again, it's the interpretation that matters.

Okay, I made a new grass tile to try and fix the tiling issues. As for the cliffs tiling too much, I did some overlaying rocks, I think it looks much better now. I think I'll do some more cliff graphics to do "ramps" and caves.

Down at the bottom is a poorly done water tile, with an even poorer animation to boot. Hopefully that doesn't bother people too much, and of course I'll do some beach auto-tiles and tweak the water color to make it match the palette.

@JosephSeraph: Which brown do you dislike? The one on the cliffs or the one in the dirt tiles? I'm using a brown pretty similar to RMXP RTP, so I don't really see why it should bother you too much... maybe I'll play with it sometime in the future to see what I can get.

Coming soon: Trees! and plants. And maybe updated dirt tiles. Also, I am doing my own charsets. Once I figure out the plot =P

Well, might as well translate for the English-speaking community:

"Soon you'll know everything Celes... I can tell you things, teach you."