Month: August 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE : Hah, I called myself an editor. You will soon know just how funny that is.

The following article was written over the course of several months following the gameplay reveal for Final Fantasy VII Remake, a highly anticipated title that everyone on this planet was begging for except for me. I wrote a lot of the noise in my brain down just trying to quantify how I feel about this game coming out and all of the news surrounding it. I don’t even think I managed to say everything. But I want this thing out of my queue at this point. Interested in why I’m wary about the remake of one of the most revered JRPGs of all time? Have a read! Want to dispute my feelings about Square-Enix in the comments? Bring it on! I prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around! Just understand that this is my opinion. Get hyped for this game if you want. But my concerns come from a place of love, and I guess that having this outlet means that I hold my stupid opinion in high enough regard that I want to blast it all over the internet. Don’t get defensive unless you’ve read through to the end. 

After all, it’s just a video game. The world has far worse problems than a potentially mediocre remake of a classic video game. 

***

E3 2019 was certainly an E3 event, wasn’t it? Days of news designed to inspire us all to open our wallets and dump cash on a rich industry have led to ongoing discussions about heavy hitters like Watch Dogs Legion (it’s certainly Watch Dogs again!), and just how tone deaf Todd Howard was at the Bethesda conference. But there is one game that I’m seriously incapable of describing how I feel about it in less than 140 characters on Twitter and that’s the remake of the PS1 classic, Final Fantasy VII.

Long time readers of this space know that I can run my mouth about a Square-Enix game for days, and your average Final Fantasy game for weeks. I’m sure it’s at least half of the reason that hardly anyone reads this bloody thing, the other half being that I’m not just on YouTube doing the same thing instead like the rest of the people who realized that blogs were dying. You could call me overly critical. You could call me obsessive. I’m not sure that either is exactly right. It’s more that I’m a fan of the series in an older sense. I’ve played every single roman numeral single player game to completion and done the same with a ton of the spin off games. I’ve watched all three of the movies and I didn’t even hate The Spirits Within. I’ve dumped more hours on this series and speculated on its future far more than is probably healthy. No, I don’t have seventeen copies of each game from various countries, or figures and statues of every character I like. But I’ve played the games. Some of them several times. They are the games that have shaped my preferences in the medium, and several of them are among my favorite games ever.

And yet, I’m somewhere on the outside of the raging hype train that most Final Fantasy fans seem to be on in regards to the remake of Final Fantasy VII, a game that I have a complicated history with in regards to how the fandom treats it. Is it a good game? Certainly. Very good even. The story is written pretty well, is thematically sound, and the gameplay is tight and rewarding – and I’ll eventually get back to that, somewhere in this rant when I get into why the older Final Fantasy games feel more rewarding. However, if you were going to ask me if it needed to be remade from the ground up, expanded, turned into several sixty hour games, with real time combat and some new creatures called The Watchmen of Fate (seriously, this was revealed as I wrote this part)?

No. It doesn’t need a remake. But we’re getting one anyway, so let’s talk about this thing.

Why Don’t You Want a Remake?! Are you crazy?! Why don’t you like anything!?

I think Yahtzee Croshaw said it well during an E3 interview where he played the demo of the remake: “I think games should stay as capsules of the time they were made in rather than continually brought up to date every few tech generations.” Now, I realize that I fawned over the remake of Resident Evil 2 earlier this year, and to point out such a thing would be well within your rights. It’s a damn fine remake of one of my favorite games, but when you pick the remake apart, there’s not a lot that changed. The map is a little bit different, the script is not as cheesy, you can aim your gun and move while shooting. But the meat of that game is no different when you describe it; explore various places while solving simple puzzles, manage your resources, survive. The ability to aim a gun didn’t make it easier. In fact, everything took more of a beating than ever before, which displaced the fact that controls were inhibiting in the original, which heightened tension, which added to the horror vibe that Capcom was aiming for on their not-really-that-scary zombie games. We already know that VIIR isn’t this. It’s a new game. Rather, it’s several new games.

I’ve played the updated versions of the several other Final Fantasy games. The 3D remakes of III and IV were pretty good in their own rights. III looked nice, and it was great to finally get a localized release. But for my money, the original had a better pace to combat. IV was a stellar update, with a sharp increase in difficulty, solid voice work, and, honestly, it’s another reason to replay IV. Neither game replaces the original for me, but I felt like Matrix did fine work overall. Previous rereleases on GBA and PS1 were the first time I got to play some of the earlier titles in the series as well. Changes from 8-bit to 16-bit style sprites were to be found, as well as softened difficulty levels. Still, the experience was usually true to the original games, with updates to the translations enhancing the games as well. The fact that Squaresoft, and later Square Enix, revitalized these games and made them available to a new fanbase was and still is excellent. I wish they’d had the same level of care put into later ports, as the Steam/Mobile versions of V and VI look like garbage. Ports of VII and IX have kept this tradition up as well with VIII headed to consoles later this year. While we could use new releases of 1-6, it’s not a bad time to get into Final Fantasy. XV is the best new entry since the PS2 era, and you can pick up copies of the beloved 3D titles in the series on every system now.

The promise of a Final Fantasy VII remake has always rung odd to me. The tech demo shown at E3 2006 sparked an flame in the fan base that couldn’t be smothered, but it came mere weeks after I first saw Advent Children, a ninety minute snooze of a movie that had one narrative function, and that was to give Cloud and Sephiroth an excuse to fight again. The idea of a fully voice acted remake of VII was enticing…but Advent Children soured the idea. Dirge of Cerberus soured the idea. Most of Crisis Core ruined the idea outright for me – the game underneath all of that fan service and Gackt was still pretty good though.

But that was then. Years have passed. I replayed Final Fantasy VII with my wife, which was wonderful. I found my love for VII renewed where the Compilation seemed determined to kill it. Enough time passed that the remake seemed unlikely, and the Compilation faded into memory. I stopped seeing near constant praise for Advent Children.

And then the remake was announced.

The first trailer was damn nice looking. Square has frequently had amazing tech behind their games, and this was no different. I was interested, to say the least, to see what this game would eventually be. The first screenshots of combat hit, showing ATB meters, and I was cautiously skeptical, because I knew it was no longer going to be turn based. The bigger concern came from the fact that it was going to be an “episodic” game. The original ran about sixty-five hours total if you did every side quest and got all of the trophies listed in the PS4 port that released the year before the remake announcement. Then they said that each episode was the size of a single game. At E3 2019 we find out that the first volume was going to be a 2 disc monstrosity that only contained Midgar. So, the first five or six hours of the original game. The goal was to make Midgar a living, breathing city, and there would be all kinds of new side quests and such to flesh this section out.

Let’s talk about Lightning Returns for a moment.

The Worst Side Quests I’ve Ever Played

I know this game has its fans. I know you’re out there guys and I’m genuinely sorry if this bothers you. I’ve got a bone to pick with this game. It is a festering wound for me. I spent over sixty five hours hacking this one out, doing almost everything in the game. I did every little fetch quest that every character gave to me. The only thing I didn’t finish was the Last Ones quest, which would have required more time playing the game. I put the time in. I finally finished the game.

And it’s offensively bad. It’s not just “I don’t like this” bad. The story is awful, poorly written, and the side quests only deepen how bad it all is.

There are three quests to herd sheep. There is a two-part quest to collect “adornments” for a character. There are countless, meaningless fetch quests where you take one barely-descript item from one town to another, or worse, to someone in the same town. There are no skill checks blocking your progress. It’s a game full of busy work.

The fact that you are “saving the souls” of these NPCs is where this busywork becomes insulting.

I have a lot of trouble accepting the woes of a character who can’t walk a quarter mile across town to talk to someone. Much less the shallow girl that will fade into nothingness with the apocalypse because she didn’t have a sack of barettes and hats before the world ended.

And this was how Lightning Returns handled side quests.

Final Fantasy XV would do this better, but the majority of the sidequests were basic fetch quests that were completely unmemorable and uninteresting. The rest were hunts drawn almost directly from Final Fantasy XII. The fact that they were merely unmemorable was fine compared to Lightning Returns.

The Gold Standard for side questing in an RPG is currently The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, a game that made going into a shack to get a frying pan engrossing. Square-Enix hasn’t touched reached this caliber of side quest since the PS2 era, and even then it wasn’t that good.

A good Final Fantasy side quest is one that deepens our understanding of the world in which the game takes place. The NPCs who hint us into those quests don’t make the quests interesting. Truthfully, the average NPC in a Final Fantasy game isn’t that important in our memory of the games. They don’t have to be, mind you, but it’s a trait that I enjoyed in the aforementioned Wild Hunt.  I think about hunting for UFOs in Final Fantasy VIII and how it ties into the running Occult Fan magazines and how those perodicals build on the world. Or maybe being a mail carrier for moogles while their mailing system is on the fritz. The rewards are usually mythic weapons, like the Excalibur II from Final Fantasy IX that requires the player to speed their way to the finale in under twelve hours. It’s not a ten HP increase and a sack full of gil. It’s not a sack full of barrettes.

I know that VIIR is a new game, and that the opportunities are there for some excellent side quests as we make our journey through the newly massive Midgar. I can even tell you what I would like to see. I would love to see a longer run as Avalanche, doing some ‘community service’, if you follow me. Punishing corrupt politicians, weakening the stronghold of Shinra over the various communities – that’s what I want to see happen in those early hours of the game. Build up Avalanche’s presence in this story and hold off on what we’ve seen in the trailer.

Because this game isn’t wholly about Cloud vs. Sephiroth. And the fifteen year blitz of media that precedes the E3 2019 trailers sure as hell made it look like it was.

Let’s Break Up The Doom Train by Saying Something Nice For Once!

I don’t think the game will be bad.

The fact is, the majority of gaming press is singing praises about how the remake plays. As much as I love ATB combat, I know that I’m in a shrinking minority. I could go on and on about how the JRPG genre was built on turn-based combat and how the dwindling number of titles that continue that tradition shatters my cold black heart. But I played XV and liked it, and I’ve played other action driven JRPGs and I liked them. I have played through and finished every single Kingdom Hearts game except for 358/2 Days and have a mostly positive relationship with that series – I just think that they’re written poorly.

It’ll be fun. I’ll probably have a good time playing it. I’ll probably get the platinum on it and enjoy earning that pointless gaming achievement. I’ll dump upwards of a hundred hours getting deep into it and playing it to death and getting every penny of my $80 out of it. Yeah, I’m getting the Deluxe Edition of it. I want the CD and the art book and the steel book isn’t too bad either. I wish it didn’t have Sephiroth on it, mind you. Something more interesting, like a new piece of art from Yoshitaka Amano would be far more lovely. Just look at the XV steelbook for more on why I would prefer that.

I have a pretty crap reputation for being negative about things but here’s a fact for you; it’s possible to be skeptical and hopeful in the same turn. It’s possible to think that something is good while not thinking it’s a sparkling diamond of perfection. It’s possible to think something isn’t very good without thinking it’s utter trash. Koudelka for PS1 is a flawed game, with clunky mechanics and I still think it’s an adventure worth taking if you can get it for less than $40 because my God it’s not worth $80 (and upwards to $100 plus at current going rate!). I think Kingdom Hearts III is a richly fun game but the story literally takes a back seat for forty hours while you go to the Disney worlds for the bulk of the game – a problem with all of the KH titles after the first one, if you want to get serious about how the KH series tells its stories.

 

But the reality is that I go into anything hoping for the best. I’ve played a lot of games, seen a metric ton of movies, and listened to hours upon hours of music. I want everything to be great because, otherwise, why am I spending my time and money on it? I’ve enjoyed mediocre games. I’ve enjoyed FMV games without a lick of irony (I genuinely love Rebel Assault II despite how crap it is overall). But most people see my concerns and jump right to calling me a bastard.

As you can see from the previous section, I overthink everything. I’ve been writing an essay on the thematic storytelling in Final Fantasy VII and how I pray that Nomura doesn’t use a single second of the Compliation in Remake because of how those games betray the tone and narrative of the original game – and remember, I enjoyed playing Crisis Core. 

The biggest problem I’ve had with the news we’ve had from the Remake so far boils down to the fact that all of the trailers have been driven to please the fans rather than reveal what we are doing in this new and massive Midgar. And don’t be a smartass and come into my comments to say anything to the tune of “duh, it’s FFVII”. We’re getting an extra sixty hours of Midgar this time, and we don’t know what that means. Sure, it’s going to be gorgeously rendered and full of new stuff to fight, but what are we doing in between all of the familiar parts. What kind of questing are we going to get to do? I can’t get excited about doing loads of tedious busywork for boring NPCs, and as I said above, that’s what I’ve come to expect from Square-Enix and their attempt at open world RPGs.

I’m not looking for story spoilers, and I’m not asking to see more character images and the like. I don’t care what HD Sephiroth looks like, and I’m pretty disappointed by the ongoing discussion about Tifa’s bra size because it makes the lot of us look pathetic. I’m not sold by shiny graphics and flashing numbers. That’s not a game. If all we wanted was a CGI movie adaptation of Final Fantasy VII, they might be in good shape. But it’s a game, and we still know nothing about what we’re doing for the majority of that game.

But it’s early. E3 2019 marks the first time we’ve seen the game in motion, and E3 is still a trade show at its heart. The fact that people lost their minds over the trailer means that the trailer did exactly what it was designed to do; it got the average and “hardcore” Final Fantasy VII fans excited and talking about it and encouraging their stock value to go up. I’m not even being cynical. That’s what E3 is meant to do, and Square-Enix nailed that. But I’m not a stock holder. I’m some guy who is going to buy their game and just wants that little bit of stuff that is usually shared on the show floor.

And the game itself is getting an incredible response from the press. People who have actually played the game say that the hybrid of ATB and real time combat works perfectly, and is a great compromise between the two systems. I want to believe it works like an idea I’ve had myself about how to make ATB combat look more interesting, where the characters have ongoing action on the field while combat commands shift their actions during that phase of action, akin to what’s happening in a tabletop RPG where players actions are taking place in a frame of time dictated by each players turn. Will I prefer ATB to the new system when it’s all said and done? Sure. I’m an old fart who is always going to prefer my characters taking turns and listening to exactly what I say and also killing Sephiroth in less than two full turns thanks to a nicely stacked material array. But I’m not closed to the idea of the new system, nor am I able to judge it based on a video despite how much it looks like the attack button is constantly pressed in demo videos – and it is, because you can see the graphic flashing constantly.

Oops. Got gloomy again. Let’s change the header.

Open World Games Rarely Tell Stories Well

There are exceptions, of course, but your average sandbox game is full of fluff. They call this “content”, and that word is a plague on the gaming experience because of how it presents the material in what we are arguing to be art. “Content” is what a publisher sells to you in order to put some inconsequential stuff in their game in order to get a few extra bucks out of you. “Content” is weightless and has no meaning except they spent some extra hours to create it instead of putting the effort into a proper expansion. An arena to engage in some extra boss fights in XIII-2? That’s “content”. The Hearts of Stone story is an expansion. It’s an amazing work of fiction that actually stands on its own outside of the events of Wild Hunt.

The “content” problem isn’t exclusive to Square-Enix. It’s a greater problem with how game are sold now. Extra “missions” are sold in pizza packages for new Assassins Creed games. Preorders are required to get items and quests that should have been in the game in the first place. Little effort is put into the add-ons, because it’s not necessary. Very few people will actually play the Hot Pockets DLC for AsCreed, and as such, it’s just some filler that someone wrote for the game knowing it’s not vital to the establishment of the world or the plot.

And this is an extension of the problem with modern sandbox games. There’s a lot of empty space to fill on these giant world maps, and in order to maximize player engagement, there has to be enough stuff per square mile to make it work. The Witcher has an easy out, however. Witchers, by profession, are monster hunters. The player is tasked with doing that job in game because that’s the role of the player. You go to a town, the people who live there are likely to be stalked by some manner of nasty beast, or are killed by a nearby nest of something or other. Pair this in with the fact that The Wicher has a setting packed to the brim with human horrors as well, you have a wide series of options for engaging side stories in the game. And those events do unfold as small stories. See the frying pan side quest mentioned above. It’s seriously great.

But racing across rooftops doesn’t make sense in Assassin’s Creed II because you’re supposed to be keeping a low profile. Performing assassinations? Sure, that tracks, but who cares about the people who you’re contracted to kill.

These moments away from the story are part of the problem of how open world games tell stories as well. Because the narratives in your average Assassin’s Creed aren’t that strong to begin with, it’s hard to remember what was important about the plot when you come back from taking out towers and performing an assassination or upgrading your brothels or what have you. The rest of the game is so much larger than the story that it envelops the stuff that you should be there to experience rather than enhancing it.

I recently finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for the Switch, and have seen some decent examples of side quests in a JRPG open world, so I’m able to return to this ongoing rant with some renewed positivity. Learning why Nopons have cutesy stuffed animal dialogue was hilarious, tongue in cheek, and brilliant. Helping a guy get a beautiful beach ready to propose to his girlfriend? That was sweet, memorable. For the faults I saw in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, it was written so well that even when I was digging through the oceans of side quests, I wasn’t noticing how flat they were. Sure, there’s a lot of fetch questing still in the mix, but the writing helped distract from that. And that’s the goal in the end. The mechanics of your typical JRPG don’t usually lend themselves to a broad range of side quest. Xenoblade seems to have been taking notes from Geralt of Rivia, because there’s even a few tracking quests that lead players into battle with a number of giant monsters.

It can be done. It has been done. But I need to see it before I can believe it. Even Octopath Traveller, one of my favorite games of this generation, didn’t pull off great and memorable side quests. But it fit the bill for something else that Square-Enix doesn’t do enough of – new and interesting IP.

That Game You Like is Coming Back into Style

Now for the most complicated video game thing I’ve ever tried to tackle – how I feel about remakes and rereleases.

Video game preservation is a must. It’s a young artform, and we need to keep the history of where we came from alive in whatever form that we reasonably can. Some of the earliest works of cinema will never be recovered, others we have fragments of. But what we have is part of the foundation of our understanding of how cinema has developed over the course of more than one hundred years. Commercially released video games have a little over fifty years to keep track of, and its a challenge for those who seek to archive that history.

Video games have and will continue to exist with the primary goal of making money. It’s commercial art, driven by capitalism to drain every last one of us of as much money as they possibly can. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t an art form, or that we can’t learn from the thousands of games that came before. If anything, we probably have a lot to learn from how the earliest adventure games were designed for the Atari 2600. Raiders of the Lost Ark for 2600 is absolutely baffling to look at, but the creativity that was utilized to cram the Spielberg classic into that little black cartridge and function at all is astonishing. Could I play through it? Probably not without hitting the net for information, but I have to respect the work regardless.

Early console games are at risk in many ways. For every site that Nintendo shuts down for carrying Nintendo ROMs, we lose access to the vast number of games that publishers aren’t rereleasing in retro collections like the Atari Flashback carts for Switch, or the dozen or so repacks of Genesis titles. I can’t argue their position; it’s a legal matter, and they have to protect their IP – that’s just how it is. But we risk losing these games, for good or ill, and that’s not acceptable to me.

Worse are situations like the Sega Saturn. The Saturn is notoriously difficult to emulate, and hardware failure is a prominent issue even with the advancements in bypassing the consoles lockouts. The Saturn is home to a number of fantastic exclusive titles, and the cost of these games for Region 1 originals is painful to most collectors with several titles costing at least $300. Many of these games are too obscure to see a rerelease in any form, and even the famous ones aren’t frequently in the discussion of what games “need to be remade”. So when the question is asked about what game needs to be remade, I usually say Panzer Dragoon Saga. It’s outrageously expensive, fairly rare, and exists only on hardware that is already uncommon due to poor sales in the US.

The industry has profited greatly on existing works, as well as the ever power tool of nostalgia, and publishers are continuing to exploit this for profit. Remasters and collections seem to be more common than new IP. I am far more interested in the continued availability of the original versions of classic games. Final Fantasy Adventure being in the Collection of Mana is far more exciting than the mobile remake, or the critically blasted PS4 remake of Secret of Mana.

One Last Hurrah Before I Close This Up

Looking over this mess one last time before throwing it online in an act of pure exorcism, I saw that I mentioned early on that I find the earlier Final Fantasy games to be far more rewarding than their action oriented modern brethren. Amidst all of the overthinking about a video game remake in the rest of this mess of words and stupidity, that is probably something that I can expound on and get some fun out of.

I’ll try to explain this. It’s something where each player’s experience is different, and I’m speaking specifically from my experiences.

Turn based combat is largely strategic and preparatory. It feels like something that belongs in the context of a stat-driven roleplaying game because the outcome of events is tied up in the mathematics happening beneath the on screen animations. Utilizing different variations of skills and abilities to draw the right outcome from combat is rewarding because the choices prior to and during combat led to the victory. Making a mistake in a pitched battle against the Omega Weapon meant a swift death and a trip to the start screen.

I always recall things like the pairing of the Genji Glove and the Offering in Final Fantasy VI, or the materia arrangement that I used to counter Sephiroth into a quick death as my favorite examples of the rewards from understanding the systems in these games. Nothing in any game after X has offered such a feeling – note that I’ve not finished my second run through XII, a game I just kinda finished without getting deep into the side content.

XV, for all of the merits I will note in it, is not a game that feels good to play. You hold the attack button or hold the block button, dodging accordingly. It looks exciting, and gives the feeling that combat is this exciting event. But you aren’t doing much to control it on a moment-by-moment basis. It’s not as dreadful as XIII, which did all of the work for you, but I don’t feel involved. I’m guiding one guy in and out of combat with the flashy teleportation move and then flying through the air to stab something seconds later.

Meanwhile, we’ve gone from controlling a party of characters to just changing their equipment and choosing their stats in between combat. Control over the battle is now gone. The strategy is gone.

I know that turn based combat isn’t as appealing to the masses as an action game, but there was once room for turn based games. These were turn based games, and that was their identity. Squaresoft continued to experiment with action games, but their classic series was still a turn based game. Even when XII experimented with limiting direct control to one character, you could establish a strategy for the other two party members to enact. It wasn’t my ideal, but strategy was still baked in.

XV is the end of strategic combat. VII seems to want to be on both sides of the line, but I want to know why turn based combat has to have such a stigma attached to it.

I suspect the popularity of Kingdom Hearts plays into the obsession with making Final Fantasy more action oriented. The rampant button mashing combat of Kingdom Hearts was the gateway drug to a new audience of JRPG fans upon its original release, a time when the JRPG was rising to some incredible excesses. The Final Fantasy characters made those classic games look interesting to those new fans, but their expectation may have been set by their love of Kingdom Hearts, and when they tried their hand at ATB meters and three-to-four people standing in a row to fight, they might have been incredibly disappointed.

I’m extrapolating, mind you. I’ve seen so many Final Fantasy fans decry turn based combat and it does confuse me. That kind of gameplay is at the heart of the majority of the core entries to the series. Even a large number of the spin offs are turn based games rather than action games. The demand for action oriented games in the series has overtaken the desire for turn based games.

And this is odd to me. Persona 5 is a hit. Octopath Traveller is likewise a critical darling. Dragon Quest XI is a beloved title to pretty much everyone I’ve seen that’s played it. The new Yakuza game is going to have turn based combat, and it was an open world sandbox game with retro brawler combat before this.

The time has come that we should be able to get both. I know that the hybrid combat of FFVIIR is going to try to scratch the itch for everyone, but I can’t help but wish that someone would throw that much money at a hi-def 3D game with turn based combat. The PS1/PS2 era was ripe with top of the line graphics being used in games where three people stood in a row and waiting their turn to stab things.

And Now I’ll Stop…

I’ve ultimately accomplished nothing in this piece other than ranted and rambled about a game that isn’t out. A game I haven’t played. But it’s out of my brain, and maybe we can all have a nice chat about it, and you’ll at least know where my skepticisms come from.

But I’m going to pick the game up, like the rest of you, and I’ll play the hell out of it for a while. I’ll pray every day up until release that it doesn’t call back to anything from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and doesn’t try to play to any obsessed Advent Children fans. But it’s going to have to stand on its own and be worth a damn. I’m not going to cut it slack because it has HD renders of characters I liked in a game that I played when I was in high school. If anything, it has more to prove because a it’s trying to be a larger version of an existing piece. It has to prove that it has any right to be made, because otherwise, it comes across as a work of greed and exploitation. There is no reason why VII needs to be remade. It’s an artistic dead end. The fact that it will be multiple 80-100 hour games now just sounds like Square-Enix wants to make a fortune off of the still-massive fandom for a game that came out over twenty years ago.

And from the studio that once bankrolled Chrono Cross, that’s incredibly disappointing. They used to be good at this. Their sequels could be as rich and fascinating as Chrono Cross. And now I can only think of Lightning Returns and an ocean of cheap mobile games when I think about how they try to please their fans.