When people die, they just go away. If there’s any place a soul would go, it’s in your memories. People you remember are with you forever.
Kaim Argonar
But there will come a day that a light will shine
From the darkness and sorrow that we knew
Luck played a great part in how I discovered
Lost Odyssey. After my family moved to China, our first Xbox 360 overheated and broke down, due to my younger brother playing it so often. My dad was going to get it fixed, but later decided that he was going to buy a Japanese Xbox 360 instead. My older sister and I were upset over the broken console, and were also anxious about getting a Japanese version. A big factor in this decision was my brother, as he would be able to play his new Japanese game on it. However, the games we already had probably wouldn't even work on it—and they didn't. That left my sister and I with nothing to play, no
Oblivion IV, our favorite at the time, or any of the other games in our collection.
Days later, when my dad returned with the new Xbox 360, he found out about Lost Odyssey on the internet. Knowing that my sister and I enjoyed the Final Fantasy series, he recommended the game to us, noting how the creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, was once a part of Square Enix. After perusing through Lost Odyssey's official website and watching game reviews and trailers, we agreed to try it out. A week later, it finally arrived!
Needless to say, I fell in love. I love everything about this game: the story, the characters, the music, the world—the small short stories that can be unlocked. Very few games have ever made me experience so much emotion as Lost Odyssey has. More than a decade later, the story remains unique in its mature exploration of life, death, love and the meaning of mortality. Even though I've only played through the entire game once, it's still one of the very first games I think of whenever someone asks me what my favorite game is. I'd always meant to replay it, and seeing as how I can play it on the Xbox One with my old discs, perhaps that dream will come true very soon! (Or dare I hope for a remake? Please?!)
Although I have very fond memories of the game, when I discovered that the fanlisting was open to apply, for some reason I hesitated. Firstly, I was happy with the sites I currently had, and I didn't see any reason to open a new one at the moment—especially since I have many that are in dire need of revamping. Secondly, and more importantly, I was aware that it has been years and years since I last played this game.
Aside from listening to the game's soundtrack religiously, I really hadn't even touched anything of Lost Odyssey in ages. Was it really as good as I remembered? What if I made the site, only to discover that I didn't like the game as much as I thought I did? If I can hardly remember some of the major beats and important details of the game, can I really still call myself a fan? Lately, I was contemplating even closing the fanlisting I had for Seth, one of the very oldest that I own.
Conflicted, I decided to look up some YouTube videos of gameplay, cutscenes—perhaps even a review or two. I opened the first one I saw, skipped to somewhere in the middle—and was struck with sudden nostalgia. The player was just strolling around in the city of Numara, but I recalled how much I enjoyed the design and architecture of the area—how a younger me once daydreamed about visiting a place like that one day.
As I continued to peruse videos and familiarize myself with the game once more, it didn't take me very long at all to fall in love with it again. The same scenes still made me emotional; the rich world still made me long to explore all that was in it.
Moreover, I remembered how
Lost Odyssey was a part of my early shrine-making and web designing days. My site for Seth was my first attempt at creating a shrine for a video game character. While I was playing the game, I kept thinking of the sort of site I'd like to make–taking notes, compiling transcripts, and so on. I was so excited back then, and working on this fanlisting just brought all those memories back to the surface! Because I literally forgot a
ton about the game, struggling to even write up some basic info about it, I turned to my incredibly old shrine pages (um, no, Seth's revamp was never completed sadly...) to figure out what the heck to do. I unearthed gems like my review of the game, a doppelganger essay, relationship analyses, a
love calculator?! to go with those analyses—just
a lot. All worded, um...
poorly not so eloquently.
All of this made me think about how far I've come in regards to this web designing hobby in general—and how far the internet has advanced, really! My first layout for Seth was a tiny iframes layout. Iframes! (To be honest, it's still one of my favorites.)
So while fanlistings may not be as popular today as they were before, I knew I'd end up regretting it if I didn't pick up Lost Odyssey. I
haven't played the game in eons; I may have very different thoughts about it were I to play it again now; the sites I have for it may
remain small and incomplete forever—but so what? It was a big part of my life at one point, and I love it for that. At the very least,
perhaps this small site will compel someone out there to pick this game up and experience it for themselves. And if they do, I hope
they enjoy it as much as I did—if not more. ❤
There will be a light that reaches us inside
To a new world full of love that sees us through
