What's Going On With The Keyblade Chronicles

Hey folks. Almost two months back, I teased the start of a brand new blog series called The Keyblade Chronicles. It's supposed to be an analysis of the Kingdom Hearts series from the perspective of a player who used to enjoy the games, but hopped off the bandwagon quite a while ago - an attempt to experience and understand the overarching series storyline, a la Metal Gear May Madness, combined with the 'close reading'-style gameplay and narrative analysis of Enduring Final Fantasy VII. I've been excited to embark on what promised to be a mammoth journey through the series, getting reacquainted with Sora, Donald and Goofy, and maybe even finding out what the hell is actually going on with all the Nobodies and Organizations and Xeha-whatsits. It looked like it was all going to be a ton of fun.

Since that announcement some eight weeks ago, it would appear to any outside readers that I've gone dark on the project. In fact, that's about as far from the truth as you could get. In the last eight weeks I've drafted no fewer than four attempts at the first 'proper' instalment of the Keyblade Chronicles, centred around the Final Mix version of the original Kingdom Hearts. Each time I've felt like I've got off to a good start, but things have then either escalated to the point where I can't contain everything I want to say in a single blog, or devolved to the point where what I am writing just isn't interesting to read. In other words, it's a real fucking struggle to write. This morning I highlighted every single one of the roughly four-thousand words in my latest draft (note to self - four-thousand words is far too long for any blog post, much less an unfinished one) and deleted them. Then, I started writing this instead.

With each successive failed draft, I've started to get closer to what I think the real issue is with the series - the scope. Putting it simply, one blog post is not enough space to talk about every aspect and nuance of a thirty-hour RPG. Trying to squeeze everything I want to say about the story, characters, worlds, gameplay and side content of Kingdom Hearts Final Mix into a single entry results in either a bloated blog post that nobody wants to read, or a vague disjointed blog post that nobody will enjoy reading. Either way, the end result is going to be something that I'm not happy with.

What is likely the best solution for this problem only dawned on me this morning as I wiped the slate clean yet again. What the Keyblade Chronicles needs to be is not a blog-per-game series like Metal Gear Madness was, but a much more broken down series where each blog entry covers a few hours of gameplay in detail, like Enduring Final Fantasy VII was. In retrospect it's something that maybe should have been obvious, given how well Enduring FFVII worked and how rushed and stunted MG Madness ended up being (it probably goes without saying at this point that I don't exactly consider the latter to be my finest contribution to the Giant Bomb blogosphere).

So I have a potential solution, but that in turn throws up another problem. If I want to analyse the games in greater detail, in the same way that I did with Enduring FFVII, it stands to reason that I should be writing the blogs as I play through the games, while all the minutiae of each play session are still fresh in my mind and thus easier to write about. However, I've already played a significant amount of the whole series at this point, having beaten the first game, completed both stories in Re:Chain of Memories, and made it halfway through Kingdom Hearts II (incidentally, I'd already beaten the original Kingdom Hearts twice when I started this blog project, which was a big part of the reason why I originally opted for the blog-per-game approach). That means if I want to give this series another shot, with this whole new approach, I'm going to have to play those games all over again.

Which brings us to the predicament I now find myself in. Do I negate all my progress through the series so far and start over, so that I have a better chance of delivering the blog series I really want to? Do I keep playing through the games at my current pace and try to persevere through the immense struggle that writing these blogs has turned into? Or do I simply drop the blog project altogether and move onto something else? It's a tough choice, and one I'm going to have to think about the implications of, particularly given the hours of wasted time I've already invested in both those scrapped drafts and the games themselves. I'm really torn, because I really want this series to happen and to be the best that it possibly can, but although I've enjoyed the games so far, I don't know how I'd feel about having to play them a second time (especially Re:Chain of Memories).

So that's why I'm writing this blog, to keep you all informed of what's happening with the Keyblade Chronicles and to try and suss out where we go from here. I'd appreciate feedback from you guys too - I've said several times over that I write these things as much for you as I do for myself, so I want to take into account what you all think when I make my decision about where to go from here. That way, whichever path I choose, hopefully it'll be the one we all want to be on. Thanks for reading, folks. I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix (PS3)