How to Drift in Wild Arms 3

Square Soft’s Final Fantasy series established in the mind of gamers that medieval European aesthetics was the status quo of the century for Japanese Role Playing Games. However, in 1996 on the first generation Playstation console the original Wild Arms broke the paradigm with its western aesthetics, from the landscape to the music to the character’s equipment. Six year later, Wild Arms 3 carry the same aesthetics, and the director Nobukazu Sato further expounds on the mind of the western frontier and the freedom in which that lifestyle entails - appropriately naming the characters’ vocation “Drifters.” The motif of the metaphorical feather in which to describe the characters’ spirit can be found in other aspects of the game - plot, gameplay and aesthetics. ​

​The tenuous relationship in the pulp fiction reflects the freedom founded in the western frontier. All the characters - Virginia, Gallow, Jet and Clive - meet as they try to protect or get their hands on the ark scepter stowed away in the caboose. Each character has his or her backstory in why they have become Drifters. Therefore, the characters’ loyalty to one another is founded on a weak foundation. Clive elects Virginia to be the leader of the party by his very intuition, Gallow blindly follows the party out of his childish acceptance, and Jet accompanies for the sake of monetary rewards. At any point Jet can abandon the party but doesn’t in order to serve the plot later in the game. Furthermore, the heroes’ rivals are developed from sheer antagonism rather than deep rooted motivation like revenge. The Prophets, Janus Cascade’s crew and Maya Schroeder’s band of caricatures obstruct Virginia’s quest to gather various relics by happenstance. Over time they become antagonists to one another. It is not until the heroes need to save the world that they discover a common goal and corroborate with each other. The pulp fiction and tenuous relationships in the story represent the independence the player has over the game. 

While the plot reflects the liberties in a role playing game, the gameplay, although annoying at times for the player, promulgates the hazards in having too much freedom. The player remembers that the open world can be explored early in the game. For example, the player can enter the forest of the Secret Garden under level because the non-playable characters give vague misdirection. One NPC, for instance, instructs the heroes to go west in order to move the next plot point. “West” from the Midland transition leads the player to the Secret Garden. The player can open the events at level ten when the Secret Garden is designed for level twenty-five, at which the characters learn explicitly about the location from the NPCs. Other aspects of the gameplay like the saving system, although breaks the expectations, can frustrate players its in the ability to save anywhere but at a cost. The Gimmel Coin, a consumable item, can put the player permanently in dire straits or soft block the game because of the limitation of quantity. For example, if a player uses the last coin deep inside a challenging dungeon, the player cannot escape the dungeon to replenish resources. In addition to the vague directions and unreliable saving system, resources are not fixed. Hotel prices increase throughout the game, and the shopkeeper is a traveling merchant who can appear in any town at random. The mechanics stir the fears found in adventure.

And adventure is further fully represented in the aesthetics, in how it deviates from the expectations found in traditional RPGS that rely on the medieval European set design. However, a piece of instrument which encapsulates  emancipation of the Drifter, and appears throughout the original soundtrack, is the whistle. The whistle exemplifies the westerner’s liberated spirit by the nature of being a wind instrument, the way it is produced directly from a human, and it is a lead voice in a musical piece. The wind is equivalent to the vocation of the heroes - Drifter - by association through air. In the opening theme song “Advanced Wind,”  the somber whistle sings over the rhythmic patterns of the guitar and congas that represent rapid steps of a galloping horse. The whistle symbolizes the individuality of the characters. In “Gun Metal Action,” the theme music for the battles, the whistle cuts through the polyphony of various instruments - violins, trumpets, synthesized drums, and guitar - representing the characters’ determination to traverse a battle. The whistle is the characters, and the other instruments are the enemies. The original soundtrack is an adventure by itself. 

Since its conception in 1996, the Wild Arms franchise breaks the paradigm of traditional Japanese role playing game. Wild Arms 3 improves on its predecessors by expounding on the elements in video games. Although Wild Arms 3 might stereotype the western aesthetics, its beauty lies in the hyper-transformation of the genre found in the plot, gameplay and original soundtrack.