October 29, 2014

Book Club: Final Fantasy, Week 2

Ben Adams, John Perich, Jordan Stokes, and Red Pages Podcast’s Justin Bortnick continue the Final Fantasy VI book club with Week 2! Join us for a discussion of avatar-as-identity, the narrative-as-chaperone and rivers-as-infinite-loops.

[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/oti-book-club-final-fantasy-vi-3/oti-book-club-final-fantasy-vi-3.mp3]

→ Download the Final Fantasy VI Podcast

Possible Episode Titles

“Once Again, Video Games Prove Their Superiority To Having Friends”

“Russian Formalism If You Want to Get Nasty”

“Locke Goes Back to Grad School”

“The Chaperone That Makes Sure You and Sweet Lady Narrative Don’t Go Too Far on The First Date”

“One Must Imagine Ultros Happy”

“The Game Makes Magic Feel Awesome”

The Overthinking It Book Club

The book club has always been an experiment to see if we, the worldwide community of Overthinkers, can have as much fun looking at a work of literature as we have when we talk about movies, TV shows, and music. Now, we’re taking that idea into a whole new medium, and turning our eyes to the world of interactive fiction – fancy talk for video games. Beginning the week of October 15, we’re going to spend a month and a half playing the RPG classic Final Fantasy VI, in honor of the 20th Anniversary of the game’s North American release.

Get The Game

If you have the game already, great! Time to dust off the SNES and get cracking. Otherwise, the game can be acquired for iOS and Android.

The Syllabus

We’ve divided the game into six roughly equal chunks. You’ll get the most out of the club if you have played through these sections by these dates:

Introduction: October 15

Week 1: October 22 (Chapters 1-2: Narshe through the Returner’s Hideout)

Week 2 (this podcast): October 29 (Chapters 3-5: Locke’s Scenario, Terra’s Scenario and Sabin’s Scenario)

Week 3: November 5 (Chapters 6-7: From Narshe to Zozo and the Opera House to Vector)

Week 4: November 12 (Chapters 8-10: From Vector through the Sealed Gate, Thamasa, the Floating Island, and the World of Ruin)

Week 5: November 19 (Chapter 11: Cid’s Island to Darril’s Tomb)

Week 6: December 3 (Chapter 12: Kefka’s Tower and wrap-up)

The Forums

For our discussion, we’re going to use a special section in the Overthinking It Forums. Friday before each section begins, we’ll open up a forum for the coming week with some study questions to get our discussion started. As you play over the weekend, you can answer our questions in the week’s forum, start your own discussion topics there, and chime in on discussions that others have started. Everything up to and including the week’s section of the game is fair game for discussion—but if you’ve played ahead, no spoilers for what is to come! (We’ll open up a “all-game” thread for those.)

The Podcast

Sometime mid-week, we’ll release a podcast where a panel of Overthinking It writers and guests will talk about the game. We’ll talk over the week’s gameplay, address some of the study questions, and highlight our favorite discussions from the forums.

Book Club: Final Fantasy, Week 2 originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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