replicantgestalt
2012
Before this review starts, I would like to preface that this is by no means an actual, in-depth critical review of Max Payne 3. I won’t be touching the story or gameplay AT ALL in this, so let that be warned. This is purely about how I feel about Max Payne 3’s portrayal of my region of Brazil and how it affected my enjoyment of it to the point where I just can’t really stand it and think it is one of the most racist video games ever made. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that Resident Evil 5 is frequently cited as a super racist video game when Max Payne 3 is literally right there and does the exact same things that game does!
The average person who played Max Payne 3 will probably not bother to do an inch of research on the country of Brazil, probably thinks Rio is the capital, and believes that it is an absolute warzone hellhole where people get shot on the street constantly. This is the kind of audience Rockstar was trying to appeal to with this game. I do not believe, even for a second, that they made this game out of respect for Brazil. They simply wanted a 3rd world country to throw their white American hero into so he could shoot and kill without a care in the world, because the 3rd world is so lawless, right? They wanted to portray their weird, twisted view of Brazil so much that they even went so far as to scan a thousand residents of the favela of Paraisópolis into the game, acting as backdrop NPCs in the chapters that do take place in the favela. You can kill actual residents of São Paulo in Max Payne 3, which is crazy once you consider how the rest of the game handles this stuff. You can sit there in your little house just outside Little Rock, Arkansas, and get your greasy hands on the controller and shoot at people who were probably paid less than a penny for their faces to be plastered onto enemies. It's the most pure depiction of the average 40-something-year-old American going to a country that doesn't belong to you and killing brown people for fun!
There is so much arrogance in Rockstar's approach to developing Max Payne 3. A huge inspiration for the game was the 2007 Brazilian movie “Tropa de Elite," which is very funny once you learn what that movie is about. It's like Rockstar saw that movie as just an average cool awesome shooter romp through a favela and not as a critique of Brazil’s problems and struggle with violence. I think taking a movie that presents a very thoughtful critique of violence and using it for their little American power fantasy video game is insanely disrespectful. But it’s not like it really matters to the audience for this game. The audience doesn’t know what "Tropa de Elite" is; most of them couldn’t even tell what language Brazil speaks, and most of them probably don’t even know Portuguese is a language. It appeals to the naive, the Americans, who think going to Brazil to shoot at some mixed-race thugs is the coolest thing in the world because they can live out their little soldier hero fantasy.
The depiction of lawful Brazilian citizens, who all seem to hate gringos and be aggressive on sight despite Brazil frequently being cited as one of the most friendly countries to foreigners, is an objectively wrong, offensive depiction. Brazilians do not hate gringos; I, being one myself and being friends with a lot of gringos and foreigners, can personally attest to this. I have been around a lot of São Paulo because I live fairly close to it and there are always gringos around, and no one minds, and in fact, most Brazilians really enjoy helping out gringos or foreigners in any way they can! Rockstar seems to have this weird, twisted idea that since it's a favela and not the clean, corporate building of the Brancos, the people are totally different. The people from the favelas are wonderful people, despite the bad hand most of them have been dealt in life: stuck in poverty, living in run-down buildings on top of other buildings, stacked up so high. They have a resilient spirit; they, to me, represent the Brazilian spirit more than any other group of people in this world, and I respect them deeply for it. I think choosing to depict these people as inherently hostile to Max, the American hero, is so disrespectful to them and their home and the culture they were raised around, and it paints a picture that is absolutely not true. I believe Rockstar chose to depict the favelas like that because it would sell. The depiction of the favelas as lawless wastelands with gangsters and thugs at every corner is the most pure evidence you could find of the ignorance of the average American writer. You can visit a country and study it, see how it is, then go home to your little flat in your little apartment and depict it in a way that would make sense to your audience, which is the American, the one you want to please because they at the end of the day give you money; the citizens of São Paulo don’t really matter in the end much at all, and their input was never needed.
Brazil already gets misrepresented by the world at large, and I am a firm believer that media can affect and alter reality and how people perceive things in significant ways. Rockstar seemed to be drawn in by the allure of Brazil that exists in the minds of only foreigners and not the actual experience of the average Brazilian. The funk, the favela, the scorching sun, the people, the beaches, the drinking, the soccer—everything that people stereotype Brazilians as is present in this game! I don’t feel proud saying this is THE game that takes place where I live, that this is THE game that is supposed to “represent” São Paulo. I personally struggled with my Brazilian identity for a long time because of certain notions and preconceptions people held and still hold against Brazilians, particularly online, which tends to get very very nasty and racist. And I cannot sit here and pretend like I am fine with the way these Americans wrote about my country and my people.
Even when you get to the real villains of the game, the Brazilian UFE and Victor Branco, the game never changes from its weird attitude towards Brazilians. Chapter 12 is literally named “The Great American Savior of the Poor,” and as ironic as Rockstar’s intent may have been while writing that, they characterize Max and Brazilians in such a way that that is actually the case! He stops the Comando Sombra, he stops the UFE, he stops political corruption, and he saves a bunch of favela citizens from getting their organs harvested. He, a white American man, really does become the savior of the poor through this game's absolutely naive and frankly stupidly racist writing. And the critique itself towards the Brazilian police and political world is absolutely shallow and warped. I mean, Victor Branco is kind of a silly caricature of a stereotypical corrupt Brazilian politician, but the game doesn’t really delve any deeper than that, and it frankly makes me quite sad. Just a few years after this game came out, Operation Car Wash started, and honestly, I wish this game had come out during that time frame so they could have developed that plot point further. But then I also worry they would’ve handled it in the worst way possible and made the most Brazilian right-wing propaganda piece video game of all time, and that thought alone sends shivers down my spine. Like Imagine in your head right now a game so right-wing Bolsonaro would probably use clips of it in his 2018 campaign. I already think the game is inherently right-leaning simply because of the way it handles a lot of the subject matter, and I honestly fear what a 2017 Max Payne 3 taking place in Brazil during the Temer era would look like...
If it seems like I have gotten emotional or angry while writing this, it is because I have! I do not live in the city of São Paulo proper; I live on the coast. But I have been to São Paulo quite often in my life due to a few of my relatives living there, and those relatives live in the parts that Max Payne 3 chose specifically to depict. It makes me sad that this is the product that was made; this is what Rockstar chose to depict of my family, my friends, and my country. To the people that live here, to the people that know and love people that live in the world Max Payne 3 chose to take place in, it is a very painful experience to go through again and again. São Paulo is really a beautiful state, and most will never ever get to experience it; only the people that have lived here would really understand how amazing and beautiful it truly can be. But to the average audience that loves Rockstar, all of this is alright and fine by them; they’re never going to feel offended, and they’re never going to have a problem with it. They’re never going to feel their blood pressure rise when the game says something so insanely racist you have to take a step back. They’re never going to wonder how their friends and family are viewed due to the negative connotations being from a favela already carried, made worse by a totally inept and ignorant development team. Because they don’t care. To the average American consumer, it is just another game set in a "shithole," a "warzone," where they get to escape their privileged realities and pretend they’re some sort of hero. Rockstar manages to reinforce every single negative stereotype about Brazil for these people. And they’re going to eat it up; they’ll believe it because they are inherently ignorant. It is a game made for Americans, not for the Brazilian people, and there is nothing more American than pretending to be a badass hero in some “shithole” where the only goal is to kill as many brown people as possible.
I have gone on a few tangents here and there, but I have stated my case. Max Payne 3 is a racist video game, plain and simple. It's not going to beat around the bush and pretend it's because Rockstar is doing it by accident because it honestly feels very deliberate. They had writers approve a lot of this stuff, and it baffles me that at no point a writer went and said how kind of messed up it all is. I will leave a single quote here that I feel perfectly illustrates what I mean by all of this:
“We’d half destroyed São Paulo’s most hallowed place of worship.” A stadium.
The average person who played Max Payne 3 will probably not bother to do an inch of research on the country of Brazil, probably thinks Rio is the capital, and believes that it is an absolute warzone hellhole where people get shot on the street constantly. This is the kind of audience Rockstar was trying to appeal to with this game. I do not believe, even for a second, that they made this game out of respect for Brazil. They simply wanted a 3rd world country to throw their white American hero into so he could shoot and kill without a care in the world, because the 3rd world is so lawless, right? They wanted to portray their weird, twisted view of Brazil so much that they even went so far as to scan a thousand residents of the favela of Paraisópolis into the game, acting as backdrop NPCs in the chapters that do take place in the favela. You can kill actual residents of São Paulo in Max Payne 3, which is crazy once you consider how the rest of the game handles this stuff. You can sit there in your little house just outside Little Rock, Arkansas, and get your greasy hands on the controller and shoot at people who were probably paid less than a penny for their faces to be plastered onto enemies. It's the most pure depiction of the average 40-something-year-old American going to a country that doesn't belong to you and killing brown people for fun!
There is so much arrogance in Rockstar's approach to developing Max Payne 3. A huge inspiration for the game was the 2007 Brazilian movie “Tropa de Elite," which is very funny once you learn what that movie is about. It's like Rockstar saw that movie as just an average cool awesome shooter romp through a favela and not as a critique of Brazil’s problems and struggle with violence. I think taking a movie that presents a very thoughtful critique of violence and using it for their little American power fantasy video game is insanely disrespectful. But it’s not like it really matters to the audience for this game. The audience doesn’t know what "Tropa de Elite" is; most of them couldn’t even tell what language Brazil speaks, and most of them probably don’t even know Portuguese is a language. It appeals to the naive, the Americans, who think going to Brazil to shoot at some mixed-race thugs is the coolest thing in the world because they can live out their little soldier hero fantasy.
The depiction of lawful Brazilian citizens, who all seem to hate gringos and be aggressive on sight despite Brazil frequently being cited as one of the most friendly countries to foreigners, is an objectively wrong, offensive depiction. Brazilians do not hate gringos; I, being one myself and being friends with a lot of gringos and foreigners, can personally attest to this. I have been around a lot of São Paulo because I live fairly close to it and there are always gringos around, and no one minds, and in fact, most Brazilians really enjoy helping out gringos or foreigners in any way they can! Rockstar seems to have this weird, twisted idea that since it's a favela and not the clean, corporate building of the Brancos, the people are totally different. The people from the favelas are wonderful people, despite the bad hand most of them have been dealt in life: stuck in poverty, living in run-down buildings on top of other buildings, stacked up so high. They have a resilient spirit; they, to me, represent the Brazilian spirit more than any other group of people in this world, and I respect them deeply for it. I think choosing to depict these people as inherently hostile to Max, the American hero, is so disrespectful to them and their home and the culture they were raised around, and it paints a picture that is absolutely not true. I believe Rockstar chose to depict the favelas like that because it would sell. The depiction of the favelas as lawless wastelands with gangsters and thugs at every corner is the most pure evidence you could find of the ignorance of the average American writer. You can visit a country and study it, see how it is, then go home to your little flat in your little apartment and depict it in a way that would make sense to your audience, which is the American, the one you want to please because they at the end of the day give you money; the citizens of São Paulo don’t really matter in the end much at all, and their input was never needed.
Brazil already gets misrepresented by the world at large, and I am a firm believer that media can affect and alter reality and how people perceive things in significant ways. Rockstar seemed to be drawn in by the allure of Brazil that exists in the minds of only foreigners and not the actual experience of the average Brazilian. The funk, the favela, the scorching sun, the people, the beaches, the drinking, the soccer—everything that people stereotype Brazilians as is present in this game! I don’t feel proud saying this is THE game that takes place where I live, that this is THE game that is supposed to “represent” São Paulo. I personally struggled with my Brazilian identity for a long time because of certain notions and preconceptions people held and still hold against Brazilians, particularly online, which tends to get very very nasty and racist. And I cannot sit here and pretend like I am fine with the way these Americans wrote about my country and my people.
Even when you get to the real villains of the game, the Brazilian UFE and Victor Branco, the game never changes from its weird attitude towards Brazilians. Chapter 12 is literally named “The Great American Savior of the Poor,” and as ironic as Rockstar’s intent may have been while writing that, they characterize Max and Brazilians in such a way that that is actually the case! He stops the Comando Sombra, he stops the UFE, he stops political corruption, and he saves a bunch of favela citizens from getting their organs harvested. He, a white American man, really does become the savior of the poor through this game's absolutely naive and frankly stupidly racist writing. And the critique itself towards the Brazilian police and political world is absolutely shallow and warped. I mean, Victor Branco is kind of a silly caricature of a stereotypical corrupt Brazilian politician, but the game doesn’t really delve any deeper than that, and it frankly makes me quite sad. Just a few years after this game came out, Operation Car Wash started, and honestly, I wish this game had come out during that time frame so they could have developed that plot point further. But then I also worry they would’ve handled it in the worst way possible and made the most Brazilian right-wing propaganda piece video game of all time, and that thought alone sends shivers down my spine. Like Imagine in your head right now a game so right-wing Bolsonaro would probably use clips of it in his 2018 campaign. I already think the game is inherently right-leaning simply because of the way it handles a lot of the subject matter, and I honestly fear what a 2017 Max Payne 3 taking place in Brazil during the Temer era would look like...
If it seems like I have gotten emotional or angry while writing this, it is because I have! I do not live in the city of São Paulo proper; I live on the coast. But I have been to São Paulo quite often in my life due to a few of my relatives living there, and those relatives live in the parts that Max Payne 3 chose specifically to depict. It makes me sad that this is the product that was made; this is what Rockstar chose to depict of my family, my friends, and my country. To the people that live here, to the people that know and love people that live in the world Max Payne 3 chose to take place in, it is a very painful experience to go through again and again. São Paulo is really a beautiful state, and most will never ever get to experience it; only the people that have lived here would really understand how amazing and beautiful it truly can be. But to the average audience that loves Rockstar, all of this is alright and fine by them; they’re never going to feel offended, and they’re never going to have a problem with it. They’re never going to feel their blood pressure rise when the game says something so insanely racist you have to take a step back. They’re never going to wonder how their friends and family are viewed due to the negative connotations being from a favela already carried, made worse by a totally inept and ignorant development team. Because they don’t care. To the average American consumer, it is just another game set in a "shithole," a "warzone," where they get to escape their privileged realities and pretend they’re some sort of hero. Rockstar manages to reinforce every single negative stereotype about Brazil for these people. And they’re going to eat it up; they’ll believe it because they are inherently ignorant. It is a game made for Americans, not for the Brazilian people, and there is nothing more American than pretending to be a badass hero in some “shithole” where the only goal is to kill as many brown people as possible.
I have gone on a few tangents here and there, but I have stated my case. Max Payne 3 is a racist video game, plain and simple. It's not going to beat around the bush and pretend it's because Rockstar is doing it by accident because it honestly feels very deliberate. They had writers approve a lot of this stuff, and it baffles me that at no point a writer went and said how kind of messed up it all is. I will leave a single quote here that I feel perfectly illustrates what I mean by all of this:
“We’d half destroyed São Paulo’s most hallowed place of worship.” A stadium.
Lich hits Evunda for 600 points of damage.
Evunda has been defeated.
<Evunda> FML
LEVEL DOWN!
Final Fantasy XI sort of confuses me. It has all the things I should absolutely despise in a game: pointless and tedious grinding, a confusing set of missions, poorly explained tutorials, an overwhelming reliance on fan wikis to do quite literally anything, a story that at first doesn’t seem all that special, a relatively boring combat system that isn’t very special in any particular way, clunky and old UIs... But I believe that Final Fantasy XI's imperfections make it perfect, make it loveable, and make it filled with an overwhelming feeling of “soul” that is very hard to come by nowadays with most MMOs, or hell, most games in general. It is such a bundle of love and joy that I find myself at a loss for words when prompted to describe it in length. But I will do so anyway, because I love this game; it helped me heal, it helped me develop my sense of self, and it brought me comfort at a time when nothing in this world did. These are my experiences and my honest feelings about a little video game called Final Fantasy XI. I hope you enjoy the read, and I'm sorry if it gets too heavy. Grab yourself something cozy to drink—some San d’Orian tea, perhaps?
I had known of Final Fantasy XI for a really long time and I always thought it looked cute, something about it struck a particular fancy I had in my little heart. The old, charming, and PS2-era graphics coupled with the wonderful musical score I had grown accustomed to listening to made me quite interested. I knew that I had to try it for myself. I gathered enough of my hard-earned R$ to purchase the ultimate edition and began my descent into a game that would change my life and my soul forever. And what a time it was—that December in which I started Final Fantasy XI. I had just graduated from high school (class of 23!) and was at a point in my life where I was deeply uncertain about a lot of things. Mental illness and being unsure about your past can really take a toll on you and mold you in various ways that are toxic and unwelcoming to other people. You begin to sort of hate yourself, hate the person you’re becoming, and hate thinking about where you’re going to end up in life, and it leaves you drained, pathetic, and sad. It’s never easy. In Final Fantasy XI, my aching mind wanted to find some form of salvation, some form of healing, just to find anything that I could hold onto, even if just for a little bit of time. I ended up finding something much more. We all have games that changed us, or that found us in a time where life was knocking at the door, telling us to come out of our little room we burrowed ourselves in. This was mine.
I’ve never made it a secret to anyone who knows me that I struggle with borderline personality disorder. It’s a nasty thing. I will not be divulging details on how it works or how it makes me feel here; this isn’t the DSM-5, and this isn’t a piece about myself. Now you, the reader, might think this information isn’t very relevant, but it is. When I spoke of healing, when I spoke of wanting to grab onto something when it felt like everything sucked and no one cared about me, it all stemmed from the fact that I was suffering from the ills of, well, mental illness. In this world, we have to find blankets, right? Someone or something to coddle us and make us feel safe, to sort of guide us in the dark to a world where we feel like we can finally be happy. As stupid and silly as it sounds, this was Final Fantasy XI to me. When the entire world is so dark, a little bit of light is all we need to keep going. Vana’diel, at that time, was my light.
Dashing into that world of light, I made my character. A little blonde Mithra named Evunda. A sort of stupid and silly name with absolutely no thought of meaning behind it. I picked Warrior because I am very basic, and I didn’t feel like delving too deep into the magic or thieving systems just yet. Starting off in Bastok, a little stone fortress located right in the middle of Gustaberg, so polished and pretty and yet so daunting at the same time. I walked outside those Bastok gates into Gustaberg, and for a while I just... wandered around, listening to the music and killing whatever I came across. It was at that moment that, for some reason, I had a feeling of nostalgia. It somehow felt like home. Despite me never touching this game before, it felt like I had. It felt like somehow, despite a lot of turmoil, I found myself back somewhere I’d forgotten, but somewhere I desperately longed to be in. Leveling up and finding my way around the UI and the systems was a form of therapy. It was beautiful, really. I felt alive, and I felt in control of myself for the first time in a while. It felt like somehow time had stopped, and that was all there was to the world in that moment, killing bugs and leveling up.
And Evunda kept on going. Doing quests for the nations, adventuring, exploring, leveling up, leveling down, coming back to the mog house, dying, being revived by a kind passerby, earning conquest points, coming across new gear... Perhaps it is strange to feel such an overwhelming feeling of healing and kindness from doing tasks I assume other people would find tedious or boring, especially considering Final Fantasy XI’s clunkiness. But wow, it felt great! I was making so much progress that I even started one of the expansions, Chains of Promathia, and did a few quests regarding that. How cool is that? I felt so happy that I tried to share my happiness with everyone around me. I think it was around this time that I felt myself change in slight ways. I wasn’t really all that mean anymore; I wasn’t doing anything stupid or wrong. I was just a normal person. Perhaps it comes with being 18 and maturing, but even so, Final Fantasy XI sped up that maturity. I was met with kindness by strangers in the game, helping me with systems, explaining mechanics, and overall just hanging out with me. They didn’t know, but I needed that so badly that it kind of made me tear up some times.
I settled on being a Dark Knight, which is funny considering what my character looks like; it’s kind of jarring! A little tiny blonde Mithra wielding a scythe, wearing all dark, chaotic-looking armor, is quite the funny image. I did it because of the scythes. I am not immune to looking like a cool reaper. A DRK/WAR… A cool combo, I think... But mostly because I was too lazy to level up a second job alongside DRK, I just settled with my WAR, which already had 30 levels sunk into it. It was fun. It really was. I felt like I belonged somewhere in this little world, and it was Vana’diel! Being a part of it all, even if I am, by all standards, a very late newcomer to this game that's existed for so long, 22 years is a hell of a long time; I haven't even been on this earth for that long! To think it all happened in a single month…
December, huh… The jolliest of all months—Christmas and New Year's—all happen in December. I had navigated so much of the time before December completely alone and aimless on what to do with my life. I loved, lost, got hurt, felt like I was doomed, and at the end of it all, I think I became rather apathetic. I’ve been dropping tidbits of it here and there when attempting to explain what Final Fantasy XI did to me, but this is the part where it all comes into play. I have to be honest with myself; I was kind of a bad person. I said a lot of things to people that I now deeply regret. I broke friendships, broke myself, and broke so much. At the end of it all, I felt like the biggest loser in the world and someone who didn’t really deserve to live. Final Fantasy XI grabbed me by the collar, put itself around me, and warmed me up. Those nights where I drank tea while wandering around felt like a mother hugging her child. It’s embarrassing. Perhaps it’s even cringeworthy, but it’s how I felt, and it’s how I still feel. I still play, and I still enjoy myself. Sometimes I joke around about how much the game makes me want to die, but it is quite the opposite. I want to keep on going. I want to fix things. I want to continue healing and helping those around me. Final Fantasy XI woke me up to a lot of things; it’s inexplicable. All you need in life, as I said previously, is that guiding light. I found mine, not in a person or a figure, but in a silly little video game. How dumb.
Apologies if it got heavy; this is my heart. It’s what I’m putting out here for all you passersby to see. A little piece of my mind, a little piece of my life, and a little piece of my feelings are on this little website. I love you, whoever’s reading this. Please find yourself that blanket. Find your light. It can be anything; it can be a stupid video game; it can be a movie; it can be a book; it can be music. We all need it at the end of the day, I think. We’re all eternally lonely creatures on this little, messed-up planet. If we can’t have each other, we might as well have ourselves and our blanket. We can face the world when we’re ready, can’t we? I’m unsure of the answer, as much is bound to happen, both in my life outside of here and in Final Fantasy XI, Evunda’s little adventure and tale. But I believe the ending will be good; that’s what keeps me going.
And to close all of this, thank you, Vana’diel; you saved my life. I owe all I have right now to you. Have my eternal love and gratitude. The world cultivated there has a soul like no other. I pray for others to read this and try to understand it. Much love, forever and ever.
100.000 gil for some grass is criminal though I CAN’T FORGIVE THAT. I SPENT 4 HOURS GRINDING FOR THAT I DIDN’T HAVE MONEY I HATE ALL YOU FINAL FANTASY XI HYPER CAPITALISTS!!!!!!! (COME SAY HI IM EVUNDA LEVEL 56 DRK/WAR IN BAHAMUT I WELCOME THEE)
Evunda has been defeated.
<Evunda> FML
LEVEL DOWN!
Final Fantasy XI sort of confuses me. It has all the things I should absolutely despise in a game: pointless and tedious grinding, a confusing set of missions, poorly explained tutorials, an overwhelming reliance on fan wikis to do quite literally anything, a story that at first doesn’t seem all that special, a relatively boring combat system that isn’t very special in any particular way, clunky and old UIs... But I believe that Final Fantasy XI's imperfections make it perfect, make it loveable, and make it filled with an overwhelming feeling of “soul” that is very hard to come by nowadays with most MMOs, or hell, most games in general. It is such a bundle of love and joy that I find myself at a loss for words when prompted to describe it in length. But I will do so anyway, because I love this game; it helped me heal, it helped me develop my sense of self, and it brought me comfort at a time when nothing in this world did. These are my experiences and my honest feelings about a little video game called Final Fantasy XI. I hope you enjoy the read, and I'm sorry if it gets too heavy. Grab yourself something cozy to drink—some San d’Orian tea, perhaps?
I had known of Final Fantasy XI for a really long time and I always thought it looked cute, something about it struck a particular fancy I had in my little heart. The old, charming, and PS2-era graphics coupled with the wonderful musical score I had grown accustomed to listening to made me quite interested. I knew that I had to try it for myself. I gathered enough of my hard-earned R$ to purchase the ultimate edition and began my descent into a game that would change my life and my soul forever. And what a time it was—that December in which I started Final Fantasy XI. I had just graduated from high school (class of 23!) and was at a point in my life where I was deeply uncertain about a lot of things. Mental illness and being unsure about your past can really take a toll on you and mold you in various ways that are toxic and unwelcoming to other people. You begin to sort of hate yourself, hate the person you’re becoming, and hate thinking about where you’re going to end up in life, and it leaves you drained, pathetic, and sad. It’s never easy. In Final Fantasy XI, my aching mind wanted to find some form of salvation, some form of healing, just to find anything that I could hold onto, even if just for a little bit of time. I ended up finding something much more. We all have games that changed us, or that found us in a time where life was knocking at the door, telling us to come out of our little room we burrowed ourselves in. This was mine.
I’ve never made it a secret to anyone who knows me that I struggle with borderline personality disorder. It’s a nasty thing. I will not be divulging details on how it works or how it makes me feel here; this isn’t the DSM-5, and this isn’t a piece about myself. Now you, the reader, might think this information isn’t very relevant, but it is. When I spoke of healing, when I spoke of wanting to grab onto something when it felt like everything sucked and no one cared about me, it all stemmed from the fact that I was suffering from the ills of, well, mental illness. In this world, we have to find blankets, right? Someone or something to coddle us and make us feel safe, to sort of guide us in the dark to a world where we feel like we can finally be happy. As stupid and silly as it sounds, this was Final Fantasy XI to me. When the entire world is so dark, a little bit of light is all we need to keep going. Vana’diel, at that time, was my light.
Dashing into that world of light, I made my character. A little blonde Mithra named Evunda. A sort of stupid and silly name with absolutely no thought of meaning behind it. I picked Warrior because I am very basic, and I didn’t feel like delving too deep into the magic or thieving systems just yet. Starting off in Bastok, a little stone fortress located right in the middle of Gustaberg, so polished and pretty and yet so daunting at the same time. I walked outside those Bastok gates into Gustaberg, and for a while I just... wandered around, listening to the music and killing whatever I came across. It was at that moment that, for some reason, I had a feeling of nostalgia. It somehow felt like home. Despite me never touching this game before, it felt like I had. It felt like somehow, despite a lot of turmoil, I found myself back somewhere I’d forgotten, but somewhere I desperately longed to be in. Leveling up and finding my way around the UI and the systems was a form of therapy. It was beautiful, really. I felt alive, and I felt in control of myself for the first time in a while. It felt like somehow time had stopped, and that was all there was to the world in that moment, killing bugs and leveling up.
And Evunda kept on going. Doing quests for the nations, adventuring, exploring, leveling up, leveling down, coming back to the mog house, dying, being revived by a kind passerby, earning conquest points, coming across new gear... Perhaps it is strange to feel such an overwhelming feeling of healing and kindness from doing tasks I assume other people would find tedious or boring, especially considering Final Fantasy XI’s clunkiness. But wow, it felt great! I was making so much progress that I even started one of the expansions, Chains of Promathia, and did a few quests regarding that. How cool is that? I felt so happy that I tried to share my happiness with everyone around me. I think it was around this time that I felt myself change in slight ways. I wasn’t really all that mean anymore; I wasn’t doing anything stupid or wrong. I was just a normal person. Perhaps it comes with being 18 and maturing, but even so, Final Fantasy XI sped up that maturity. I was met with kindness by strangers in the game, helping me with systems, explaining mechanics, and overall just hanging out with me. They didn’t know, but I needed that so badly that it kind of made me tear up some times.
I settled on being a Dark Knight, which is funny considering what my character looks like; it’s kind of jarring! A little tiny blonde Mithra wielding a scythe, wearing all dark, chaotic-looking armor, is quite the funny image. I did it because of the scythes. I am not immune to looking like a cool reaper. A DRK/WAR… A cool combo, I think... But mostly because I was too lazy to level up a second job alongside DRK, I just settled with my WAR, which already had 30 levels sunk into it. It was fun. It really was. I felt like I belonged somewhere in this little world, and it was Vana’diel! Being a part of it all, even if I am, by all standards, a very late newcomer to this game that's existed for so long, 22 years is a hell of a long time; I haven't even been on this earth for that long! To think it all happened in a single month…
December, huh… The jolliest of all months—Christmas and New Year's—all happen in December. I had navigated so much of the time before December completely alone and aimless on what to do with my life. I loved, lost, got hurt, felt like I was doomed, and at the end of it all, I think I became rather apathetic. I’ve been dropping tidbits of it here and there when attempting to explain what Final Fantasy XI did to me, but this is the part where it all comes into play. I have to be honest with myself; I was kind of a bad person. I said a lot of things to people that I now deeply regret. I broke friendships, broke myself, and broke so much. At the end of it all, I felt like the biggest loser in the world and someone who didn’t really deserve to live. Final Fantasy XI grabbed me by the collar, put itself around me, and warmed me up. Those nights where I drank tea while wandering around felt like a mother hugging her child. It’s embarrassing. Perhaps it’s even cringeworthy, but it’s how I felt, and it’s how I still feel. I still play, and I still enjoy myself. Sometimes I joke around about how much the game makes me want to die, but it is quite the opposite. I want to keep on going. I want to fix things. I want to continue healing and helping those around me. Final Fantasy XI woke me up to a lot of things; it’s inexplicable. All you need in life, as I said previously, is that guiding light. I found mine, not in a person or a figure, but in a silly little video game. How dumb.
Apologies if it got heavy; this is my heart. It’s what I’m putting out here for all you passersby to see. A little piece of my mind, a little piece of my life, and a little piece of my feelings are on this little website. I love you, whoever’s reading this. Please find yourself that blanket. Find your light. It can be anything; it can be a stupid video game; it can be a movie; it can be a book; it can be music. We all need it at the end of the day, I think. We’re all eternally lonely creatures on this little, messed-up planet. If we can’t have each other, we might as well have ourselves and our blanket. We can face the world when we’re ready, can’t we? I’m unsure of the answer, as much is bound to happen, both in my life outside of here and in Final Fantasy XI, Evunda’s little adventure and tale. But I believe the ending will be good; that’s what keeps me going.
And to close all of this, thank you, Vana’diel; you saved my life. I owe all I have right now to you. Have my eternal love and gratitude. The world cultivated there has a soul like no other. I pray for others to read this and try to understand it. Much love, forever and ever.
100.000 gil for some grass is criminal though I CAN’T FORGIVE THAT. I SPENT 4 HOURS GRINDING FOR THAT I DIDN’T HAVE MONEY I HATE ALL YOU FINAL FANTASY XI HYPER CAPITALISTS!!!!!!! (COME SAY HI IM EVUNDA LEVEL 56 DRK/WAR IN BAHAMUT I WELCOME THEE)
2022
The biggest piece of shit I have ever had the displeasure of playing. AVOID AT ALL COSTS. FUCK DISCORD.