Of all the wonderful books I’ve read over the years, only a handful gave me that feeling. You know the one. It’s the feeling you get when you read that last word on the last page and reluctantly flip the back cover over. You realize in that instant that the time you’ve poured into those wonderful characters, their world, and the motivators that pushed them along the way is now over. You sit there looking at the object in your hands like its a strange and powerful artifact. Something clutches at your heart like the combination of a panic attack, kissing your soul mate, and putting the final touches on your Magnum opus. You’ve accomplished something that’s going to stick with you forever. It’s still there…but in a way its gone. You’ll never get to experience that story in the same way again and you know that. There’s a weight with this, too – a realization that nothing else you do for the rest of that day is going to compare to that moment.
Glee and heartache, despair and longing. Would that I could have more of those moments.
Like I said, I’ve read a lot of really good books, but only a few have left me in a state like this. I can list them here without effort:
- Tolkien’s The Return of the King
- Martin’s A Storm of Swords (I read this immediately after the first two, but before feast was published), A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons
- Sanderson’s The Way of Kings & Words of Radiance
- Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind
Looking at this list, there must some common factors contributing to that feeling. Let’s see – all of these books pulled me into their world and truly transported me to a place that felt real. All of them had characters that felt alive – people that I could become deeply and emotionally invested in. Lastly, they all contained plots that easily obtained my buy-in for the things that were at stake, ending with a sense of finality that took an above-average amount of time to get there.
Those three things – they all struck a special chord in regards to world, characters, and plot.
There is only one other format that has left me with ‘the feeling’: video games. Those, however, have been even fewer and farther between. For all the same reasons as the books above, here are the only games that had this effect on me:
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
- Ni No Kuni
- The Last of Us
And now: Yakuza Zero
I could talk at length about my love for all of the titles above, book and game alike, but here I’m going to gush about my first, and incredibly long overdue, experience with the Yakuza franchise.
Before I get into spoiler territory, check out this E3 trailer from 2016 so you can get a feel for this game:
BEWARE [[MINOR SPOILERS FOR YAKUZA ZERO BELOW]]
Plotting Along 