Santi Leguiza 2021 Was A Year of Endings and Beginnings | Winter Spectacular 2021
2021. You can say it was a wonderful year full of opportunities, or a despairing succession of months where, at best, nothing happened. Regardless of how it was for you, all things must come to an end, something true for every year as well. You can say the same about the games that were released this year, we got a lot of beautiful masterpieces chronicled and lauded by the industry while the opposite also occurred, with some of this year’s titles better left untouched.
But I digress, I’m not here to depress anyone, least of all myself. And then again, all things must come to an end, even games. In a year of a lot of conclusions and beginnings, here are my favourite ones of this year, which are oddly related to that.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker
Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion marks the apocalyptic event known as the Final Days, and the extent you must go to, to prevent it. This is a journey that takes you across space and time, on one of the most mature and well-written stories I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness. Needless to say, knowing YoshiP and his team, Endwalker offers a satisfactory wrapping up of every possible plot point without leaving you in the slightest discomfort.
The realist squad of the year, by far.
And while that alone is a massive feat, the game goes above and beyond, introducing an array of loveable characters that were never seen before, going so far as giving them pivotal roles in the story. Endwalker does all this while also enriching the already existing characters, with scenes full of joy, friendship, and sorrow.
At the end of the day, Endwalker is a wonderful, heartfelt, and somewhat bittersweet ending to a beautiful tale. A greatly personal story that will be cherished by millions of players for the rest of their lives. And yet, the lingering sensation of an upcoming new adventure remains, with the exciting promise of new places to visit, new mysteries to uncover, and possibly more friends and foes as is inevitable when your MMO is so popular it has to be taken off of a sale. All of this takes me to a similar experience that was also released this year.
For a 11/8 year old MMO Final Fantasy 14 can still manage to be a stunningly pretty game.
Warframe - The New War
Warframe’s epic conclusion to the story arc that began 8 years ago, brings the long-awaited confrontation between your character and the villainous Sentients, hell-bent on destroying the Origin System. In the very climax of this conflict, the game bravely ditches the core multiplayer gameplay to tell a solo narrative. The final hours of The New War tell a compelling story of pain, loss, suffering, and war, shaking the very core of Warframe’s foundations to make you feel abandoned, drifting alone across the Origin System while all this occurs.
I am not sure a seat has ever screamed “EVIL DUDE SITS HERE” so loudly?
You don’t very often get to see a game having the will to abandon part of its core foundations to tell a story, and even less often do you get to watch it succeed at that. It is in the final moments of The New War, that right after offering you closure, Warframe immediately turns your world on its head. And there you are, having saved the universe as a silent hero that now has to deal with a hateful, ungrateful universe, in the wake of a new adventure.
Evil dudes do be loving a good throne to be fair…
Now, it’s easy to notice the similarities between these two examples. Both games offer closure for long-term stories that accompanied us for a long time now, and both stories kickstart a new story right after finishing the last one. Why does this make me choose them as my favourite games of the year? Well, bear with me a little bit more, and let me talk about the next game.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Yeah, well, no, I know, I know, it was released 10 years ago, bla bla we all know that I asked you to bear with me. Just, just five minutes.
The Elder Scrolls: V must be the game I have replayed the most, by a long, long shot. Its many characters, a massive world built around you that presents endless integrated tales, adventures, enemies, and treasures, all those are extremely attractive points as a new player. The thing is, after 10 years you’re not a new player at all, there isn’t too much else to discover, and it becomes more obvious with every year that passes. So, why after all these years do I feel the urge to return to Tamriel?
The magic about starting a new adventure in Skyrim, in my experience, has a lot to do with the conceptual nakedness at the beginning of each save file. On a narrative level, your character is a blank slate, an embodiment of sheer potential and infinite opportunities for you to explore the world at your leisure. On the technical side, this is also true, since every character in every new game can be built differently and interact with the world differently - and no character will be the same at the end of your run. This means that even if you know the game, you get to experience a new story however you see fit every time without the game losing any fun while you do it, like a book that tells a new story every time you open it. Honestly, how many pieces of media can say the same?
Skyrim rocks dude, and so does Final Fantasy XIV, Warframe, their endings, and their beginnings.
Begin again.
