This article was originally published on December 30, 2024.
One challenging yet impactful feat for any media is to convey the sense of time’s heft. Regardless of how epic or thrilling the journey, observing or participating in it will always prevent us from fully empathizing with the characters. Events that transpired months ago for them might have only transpired hours ago for you, and this can lead to a disjointed experience as the characters have had time to process events that you haven’t.
In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a time leap of five years occurs swiftly, leaving your characters behind to navigate a conflict-ridden world while you’re absent. The poignant parting is heartrending, but the brief gameplay duration means it lasts barely ten minutes. When your friends reunite with you later, you might find yourself more preoccupied with their new hairstyles than embracing them emotionally, given that you were more focused on critiquing fashion trends rather than shedding tears and sharing heartfelt moments.
Games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 can mirror real-life challenges, such as the inexorable passage of time, which poses a significant danger to the characters’ wellbeing. For instance, when this game was launched, I decided to dedicate an entire week to it, immersing myself completely with minimal breaks for essentials like food and sleep. This compressed what was meant to be a storyline spanning several months into just a few days for me.
As I delved deeper into the game, I found myself acutely aware of the ticking clock – a reality that hung heavy for one character, making each move I made feel more consequential. Every action propelled these characters further along their journey, inching them closer to their fate. In a strange way, I found myself hoping that if I were to pause my gameplay, somehow we could all dodge the inevitable end.
So it goes with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth – which I’m about to completely spoil, by the way.
Decades-old spoilers for Final Fantasy 7 follow…
Much like countless others, I entered this game with the strong expectation that it would culminate in the most legendary gaming death: Aerith’s. This setup a situation reminiscent of Xenoblade 3, except in this instance, the characters were unaware of the impending disaster that I was guiding them towards. However, it was me who held this knowledge.
It transpired that I didn’t need to play Rebirth for work, thus when it launched at the end of February, there was no rush in completing it promptly. Consequently, I approached it leisurely and finally wrapped it up in early December. It’s quite unusual for me to experience a large-scale JRPG like this, savoring each moment rather than rushing through. Remarkably, the weight of its conclusion hit me hard after such an extended playthrough.
I frequently tease my friends by saying I experience a feeling of “post-JRPG letdown” after finishing these games, and I’m far from alone in this. Once I’ve invested numerous hours – sometimes even hundreds – into a world I’ve grown accustomed to and characters I’ve come to care for, wrapping up that journey can leave me with a sense of emptiness knowing there’s no more new content to explore. Although the feeling eventually fades as soon as I start another one, I can still recall vividly where I was and how I felt when the credits began rolling on almost every JRPG I’ve ever played because of this reason.
As a gamer, this game, Rebirth, truly resonated with me like nothing else did throughout the entire year. It was almost like it became a benchmark for my life’s events. Whenever I reflect upon other moments from the year, I find myself measuring them against my journey in Rebirth. The memories of my progress stand out so vividly because they are often surrounded by weeks when I didn’t play due to various reasons.
In nine days, I wrapped up Metaphor, then jumped straight into Dragon Age: The Veilguard, completing it in eight days. This leaves me pondering: if I can tackle such huge games so swiftly and comprehensively enough to create detailed guides, why did Redemption take me nearly an entire year?
It’s a mystery to me why it turned out this way, but I am grateful for it happening because as I neared the final stages, I could feel the burden of how prolonged this journey had been. In that moment, I and the characters found ourselves in a parallel state of mind, as we both drew near to the culmination of an extended voyage – for them, a lifelong adventure filled with peril and triumph, and for me, a video game experience on occasion.
2024 saw me finding solace in this game. Regardless of whatever else life threw at me, knowing I could return to Rebirth at some point provided a sense of calm. As the end approached, my instinct to hold onto familiarity and comfort surfaced, and I found myself reluctant to part ways with it.
When the final credits appeared, the intensity of the “post-JRPG blues” I mentioned became even more profound – and this was certainly influenced by the fact that Rebirth’s conclusion didn’t provide a traditional ending. Instead, it prompted me to contemplate not only the game I had just finished but also my entire year, reminiscing about all the events that transpired during that period.
In simpler terms, I’m saying that the game “Rebirth” holds a special, enduring emotional significance for me, unlike any other game I played this year, including ReFantazio. This sentiment might grow stronger over time because my personal experiences with Rebirth have been influenced by the passage of time.
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2025-05-16 12:46