(I touch on extremely light details about the end of the game, but I don’t think it will ruin anyone’s experience. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this piece.)
I have fond memories of my childhood summer vacations—especially those during my elementary school years. My family lived in a relatively large suburban neighborhood where many of my friends lived, too. As young as I was, the scale of the neighborhood was daunting to me. My cousins, who lived only a few blocks away, seemed like worlds away from my house, and it always felt like an accomplishment when I managed to slowly push myself and my old scooter over to their street.
This is all an elaborate way to say that my world was small—limited—when I was young. I didn’t have a car; I couldn’t pick up my keys and drive wherever I wanted to go. Like many other kids, my world was contained within my neighborhood during those summer months. Yet, it kept expanding. I started, of course, by staying near my house and the general vicinity. Slowly but surely, though—as I grew older and more capable—I was able to extend my forays in the neighborhood further and further, until I could find myself on the complete opposite side of it where, lo and behold, I realized a biking trail started. Every discovery was incredible.
And, much to my surprise, playing Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past reminded me a lot of these summer vacations.
If you know anything about Dragon Quest VII, it’s almost certainly one thing:
“It’s long. Like, really long.”
And, you know, that’s not wrong. Dragon Quest VII is a lengthy journey. It took me roughly sixty hours to hit that traditional Dragon Quest “Fin” and, if I went through all of the side content and post-game that I have yet to complete, I could absolutely see that playtime shooting up another ten or so hours. Is it an inherent issue with the game? Well, yes and no. Yes, because it’s absolutely a deterrent from getting people to stick with the game. But also no, because its length is worth it in the end. “How so?” I already hear you asking. Well, friends, it’s because Dragon Quest VII is a lot like summer vacation—it feels like an eternity as you experience it, but feels like it took only a blink of an eye upon its end.
Dragon Quest VII starts out with Auster, our hero—yes, I’m calling him his default name because I love it—exploring some of the local ruins with his friend, Prince Kiefer of Estard. Estard is your home island, Kiefer is the king’s son, and you are Kiefer’s best friend. Simple enough. Yet while Estard is your home island, it is also the only island in existence (as far as you know). Immediately, I’m thrown back to my youth—exploring my street and nearby houses and their backyards with the few friends who lived right next to me. Auster’s world is small, but he and Kiefer long for something more. So, they continue to explore the island much to the chagrin of Kiefer’s father. Suddenly, I found myself relating to them and their desire to expand their limited horizons.
Unlike other Dragon Quest games, Auster is not a prince or some sort of royal. He’s a simple, mischievous, curious, kind son of a local fisherman. He’s not what you would expect from your typical Dragon Quest Hero. Look at every Hero from Dragon Quest I to Dragon Quest VI. They’re mostly intense, armored, or jacked—or some combination of those attributes—but hardly any of that is found in Auster. He looks like a kid, and he is a kid. He’s a bit scrawny, his childhood friend Maribel is always giving him grief over the littlest things, and his father expects him to become a man someday and join the family trade as a fisherman. Yet, from the outset, his sense of adventure compels him to explore and discover the outside world with his best friend. Unlike other Heroes, it’s not duty that guides him to act, but his curiosity.
Why did I feel the need to trample across yards and find shortcuts through my neighborhood while I was growing up? Was it because I had to? Certainly not. Was it because I needed to save time going from Point A to Point B? Well, not exactly. If I were to pinpoint the exact reason, it’d probably be something similar to Auster’s reason for exploring Estard. I was bored, and I wanted to explore the world around me. Every new thing I discovered was exhilarating for my young, developing, and often stupid brain. I didn’t have to explore; I just wanted to.
If you aren’t already aware of the basic premise of Dragon Quest VII, it revolves around Auster and his friends traveling to forgotten islands in the far distant past, resolving some issue plaguing the islands and their inhabitants, and restoring them to their rightful place in the present. The gameplay quite literally has Auster expand his world. Moreover, these islands create a gameplay loop that is unique to Dragon Quest VII: travel to the past, save island, travel to present, explore present-day island. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Now, I understand that this premise may sound repetitive and even boring at face-value to some people. I really do. But you need to approach this game with the right mindset. Auster’s mindset, actually.
For the majority of the game, Auster has no pressing issue to resolve or goal to attain. He and his friends want to restore the rest of the forgotten islands to the world, sure, but they aren’t really in a rush to do it. And that’s the way players need to approach this game. Each island is a new adventure—an often self-contained story that has you explore someplace unique, with new people and cultures to take in. Like other Dragon Quest localizations, each new area typically gives a new accent to the people living there. However, this is at its best and makes the most sense within the context of Dragon Quest VII. These are islands, whose kingdoms and communities are often isolated from their neighbors. So, it makes absolute sense these islands would develop their own cultures, languages, and beliefs. When playing Dragon Quest VII, you need to approach it like a kid approaches summer vacation. Each day brings something new to the table, and you appreciate every new adventure. There’s no need to rush.
Not every adventure is fun, though. And not every island has a happy ending. Sure, you may save the island from its immediate danger, but that doesn’t mean every person is left satisfied. Oftentimes, you see island inhabitants struggle with personal relationships and communicating properly with their loved ones. And, oftentimes, these miscommunications lead to a disconnect that is never resolved—a person who can’t bring himself to leave town with his loved one, a man who refuses to reconcile with his brother over the death of his wife, a brother who cannot properly verbalize his emotions to his sister. It’s tragic, looking back on some of these stories, but it’s also human.
I’m reminded of some summer vacation adventures that didn’t go quite as planned. There was that time where, as I took a shortcut back to my street through some backyards, a large dog (from behind a fence, mind you) sprinted up to me, barking his head off. I panicked, I was scared, and I ran as fast as I could back to my house. In retrospect, there was no way that dog could have hurt me, but the experience pounded in the back of my mind for many months to come. I did not take that shortcut again.
There was another time when I played street hockey with one of my older brother’s friends. It was going well and fine until the puck or hockey stick—I really can’t remember—hit me in the face. A baby tooth was then dangling from my gums, and I was rushed to the dentist. I remember getting there, having laughing gas administered to me, and then the rest is hazy.
Another day had me discover a bird’s nest on the windowsill outside the office on the second floor of my childhood home. I liked to check up on that bird every other day or so. It was a simple robin, and I named it Maria—probably because I played a lot of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle around that time. I remember tapping on the glass to let it know I was there; I was probably extremely annoying. Eventually, one day, the bird never returned to its nest. I was sad. I still get a little sad when I think about it now.
It’s interesting to look back on the past and see how things have changed. In Dragon Quest VII, you return to these islands that you’ve saved in the present day. Sometimes they remember stories about the heroes that saved their island in the past; sometimes they don’t and your actions are forgotten. While I’ve seen people consider these revisits a waste of time, I find them compelling. Auster is driven by curiosity, so of course he would be curious to see how time has treated the islands that he and his friends helped save. Despite familiar settings, each visit is a new adventure. People and places change—grateful villagers become ashamed of their actions, royal palaces become casinos, entire kingdoms become nothing but empty land—and Auster wants to see it all.
So, what’s the point? Why should I play Dragon Quest VII?
That’s not really why I’m writing this, I think. I’m still figuring that out. But, I’ll admit, Dragon Quest VII isn’t for everyone. Like we’ve established, it’s long. It can be repetitive. It is easy as hell. But I think that serves the game’s interests.
One thing that the game tries to tell the player is that home is always waiting for you. No matter what, no matter how long you might be gone, home is always waiting for you to return. I haven’t mentioned Auster’s parents much, but I should. He has a mother and a father, and they are wonderful and supportive to Auster. His mother, Pearl, stays at home, always making sure his father, Pollock, has a pilchard sandwich for when he gets hungry during fishing expeditions. Auster’s father, from the beginning of the game, plans for Auster to join the family business when he becomes old enough. At first, I wanted to rebel against that preplanned expectation for Auster. I think Auster wanted to rebel against that, too, given his frequent adventures with Kiefer.
As your and Auster’s journey continues, this expectation fades into the background. After all, you’re enjoying the here and now—every new adventure and discovery brings new thrills and excitement. But, as you enter the last act of the game, Dragon Quest VII does something remarkable. Following many, many hours of exploring islands and hardly ever stepping foot back on Estard and in Pilchard Bay, your village, the game makes you go back home for a bit. In the calm before the storm, you get a taste of home again. You sleep in your bed, your mom wakes you up, and you go deliver another pilchard sandwich to your father before he heads out to sea. It’s familiar. It’s comforting. And, when the storm finally hits and you have to leave home for another spell, a sense of reluctance remains in the pit of your stomach. At least, it did for me.
Every time I went outside to play as a kid during summer vacation, I always knew home was waiting for me at the end of the day. But I didn’t quite appreciate that at the time. Even if I was dirty, scraped up, or in a foul mood, home was going to be at the same spot it was earlier that day when I ran out the garage door. And, yes, that makes me privileged. Not everyone has that or had that growing up, and I recognize that. I didn’t appreciate it—but, as I write this, I think I’m starting to.
After Auster leaves home again to help finish things for good, he gets asked one question repeatedly—that being something along the lines of “When all of this is said and done, do you plan on going back home to be a fisherman?” One person who asks that is Captain Sharkeye, a legendary pirate, who more-or-less asks you to take over as captain of his colossal ship. I thought about it, and refused his offer. Another person who asks if you’ll return to become a fisherman is King Donald, the King of Estard and father of Auster’s best friend. I thought about it, and said yes. The last person who asked this is Maribel, your childhood friend and party member for most of the game, in a completely missable party chat. At that point, I stopped thinking and said yes.
If I was asked this question at the beginning of Dragon Quest VII, I probably would have said no. I imagine Auster would have, too. The world was small, and I needed to see more. Auster, Kiefer, and all of his friends needed to see more. And they did. After many hours exploring the world of Dragon Quest VII, I was ready to hang up my Hero vocation and go back home—to where my mother and father were waiting. The end of the game ends with just that. Auster returns home to Pilchard Bay, and his father tells him that it’s finally time for Auster to join him on the fishing expedition. And that’s where the game ends—Auster on the deck of Pilchard Bay’s ship side-by-side with his father. After the adventures and discoveries and twists and turns of every little place you explored during your journey, the tranquil sight of father and son (and Maribel, who snuck onto the ship) filled me with a sense of peace. Calmness. Contentment.
Knowing that I always have a place to go home to fills me with a warm, overpowering feeling. I can’t quite put the right words to it. Dragon Quest VII helped me realize that I’m lucky to be in the position that I am. I’m with a loving partner, have had academic success, and always have a place with my parents. I’m so lucky. But I often forget to appreciate that. Maybe I need to visit my parents more often. Maybe I’m like Auster right now, knee-deep in a journey so exciting that home is pushed to the background of my mind.
The final scene on that boat broke me. I wasn’t expecting to cry over Dragon Quest VII, but this final scene brought everything full circle in a way that I genuinely was not prepared for.. I won’t elaborate on the specifics, because I really think it’s something you need to experience for yourself. Nevertheless, it’s something special—and it captures the game’s final message to the player:
Sometimes, life can carry you away from home.
Sometimes, life can keep you apart from your loved ones.
Sometimes, all you can do is keep them in your thoughts and reminisce about summer vacation.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this. I hope you give Dragon Quest VII an honest try. It’s worth it.
Rooftop Talks with Zerker 