The book reacts to their conversation and that night Marche awakes in the world of Ivalice, a world based on Final Fantasy (and one used numerous times in the series and its spinoffs).

While reviewing the apparently ancient text, the group discuss their experience with books, which turns into a talk about their common love of games, specifically the Final Fantasy series. After school, the kids meet to read a mysterious book that Mewt found. The thesis of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is that escapism is not just dangerous to the medium but to those of us that love it.įinal Fantasy Tactics Advance begins as a timid new student named Marche (whose father has just walked out on his family) meets the game’s cast: the bullied Mewt, whose alcoholic father is a drunk and whose mother has recently died Ritz, a tomboyish misfit with an illness that whitens her hair and Doned, Marche’s quadriplegic younger brother. It’s a game about gamers and the dangers of escaping into gaming too deeply. The game acknowledges the idea that many have that games are escapist and refutes it. What could such an audience have to escape from?įinal Fantasy Tactics Advance, released in 2003 for the Gameboy Advance, however, rejects the idea of games merely existing as a form of escapism.

It’s odd to think of such an expensive hobby that is so often associated with a privileged class as designed purely for escape.

It’s difficult to point to when the idea that games exist for the sake of escapism was popularized, but in recent years, such an idea has driven much of games journalism and probably a good deal of design as well. Therefore, games satisfy a need for speedy, direct progress. Life is slow moving and mundane, games aren’t.

Final fantasy tactics advance