Parasite Eve is easily one of my favorite games, and over the years collecting things related to it has become a hobby in its own right. I own the US and Japanese releases of both Parasite Eve and Parasite Eve II, along with a copy of the confusingly named The 3rd Birthday for PSP. I have both soundtracks (and the remixes) on CD, the Japanese movie on DVD, an English translation of the original novel in physical and digital form, and three volumes of manga that I can't actually read because it's all in Japanese.
I also have the issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly with Aya Brea on the cover from around the time the game was being introduced to American audiences. I have the game installed through the PlayStation store on several Sony systems, and emulated from my own discs on more computers than is, frankly, necessary. Hell, I once managed to get it running on a period-correct Mac using a commercial PlayStation emulator from around that same timeframe.
In fact, getting Parasite Eve running has become part of my ritual when configuring a new computer.
Whenever I get a new computer, handheld, or other sufficiently computer-shaped object, eventually an emulator gets installed and Parasite Eve gets loaded. Once I reach the title screen, I take a screenshot and post it in Discord as proof of life for whatever system I've cobbled together.
To me, the system is not really commissioned until that opening FMV has finished and the title screen settles into place.
Given all of this, one might reasonably assume that I have finished Parasite Eve several times.
Nope. I have, in fact, finished it nones of times.
Humans are constantly bringing our traditions with us into new places, and new ages. This is something fundamental to the human condition, and when practices persist across cultures and history, it links us to each other in ways we'll probably never fully understand or even see.
One such practice is the burning of scraps of paper with worries, or sins, or hopes, or dreams, or really whatever it is deep inside of us that we no longer want deep inside of us, that we want to be set free to the universe. Maybe to be gone forever, maybe as a call to come to us in the future, but throughout time and cultures, where there's fire and writing, there's offering our words to the universe.
Somebody once told me I reacted to my new job like a shelter dog.
At the time, I thought it was a hilariously dark way of explaining exactly what was going on. I laughed, and then promptly made no changes to myself, my life, or my thinking.
I’ve started noticing a phrase people deploy right before saying something they don’t want examined too closely. A small linguistic seatbelt, fastened immediately before driving directly into oncoming traffic.
I speak, of course, of the once humble “in my opinion.”
People no longer say this, then offer their thought. They say it like performing a quick-save in Skyrim before looting a shop. It's become the conversational version of “in Minecraft,” except instead of protecting from the fuzz it protects from follow-up questions.
This is a real bummer too, because “in my opinion” used to perfectly perform its previous purpose.
Traditionally, the first paragraph of a review attempts to establish the writer’s bona fides, to explain why the reader should bother listening to their opinion at all. For long-running franchises, this often takes the form of the author talking about the first time they encountered it - typically a story from their youth meant to demonstrate that they’ve been around long enough to be taken seriously. Sometimes there’s trivia baked in as well: nothing too obscure, nothing too mainstream. Information just niche enough to signal that they’re hip, that they get “it,” that they are an Authority.
You know. Gatekeeping.
I’m not going to waste your time with that. Instead, I’ll waste your time explaining what I won’t waste your time with, because that’s different, and it challenges the status quo.
Much like this weird little opening, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy starts off a little rough, but ultimately does something unique with Trek - something new for the franchise. It’s a bit weird. But it’s different. And, I think, it’s good.