Last summer I found solace after a tough climbing experience in one of my favorite pastimes, videogames. In particular, a great moment in Kingdom Hearts 3. A moment that I think defines what makes gaming great and definitely one of my favorite sequences as a player.
Lessons at the Gorge
A few years ago, my friends introduced me to rock climbing. While we mostly stick to the gym, every so often we make head to the outdoors for real rock climbing. In my experience, the feeling of ascending actual rock and stone is far superior to the artificial routes of the gym.
A common destination of ours is Red River Gorge, a region in Kentucky that’s popular for climbing. The area’s routes are was mostly set up for lead climbing, as compared to top rope climbing that I typically do in the gym. The difference between the two is the cost of a fall. In top rope, the rope is anchored at the top of the route, meaning a fall will only drop the climber the slack in the rope, which should be next to nothing. In lead, the rope is brought up by the climber and clipped into smaller anchors throughout the climb. This means a fall will take the climber to the last clipped in spot plus whatever slack is in the line. Slack is required to move above the current clip, so falls can be a big loss in progress. This climbing website has a good guide. I thought about just using their picture, but check out their site if you want to see it for yourself.
One of the specific challenges of climbing outdoors that setting the route. Lead, in particular, has a challenging setting process, as you need to place the clips the rope will go into as you make the initial climb. This process is pretty straight forward, as there are bolts in the wall for where to place the gear. The one spot that matters is the top anchor clips, as these need to be placed in a specific orientation for safety. On the bright side, once everything is placed, it’s now a top rope route for those who don’t want to lead.
After the climb is done comes the more complex part, taking everything down. Part of this process involves removing the rope that is holding you up. Before removing, you attach yourself to the top bolts to prevent taking a massive fall. Once the anchor clips are removed, you pass the rope through the existing anchor, often some chains, and lower down like a standard top rope climb.
The removal of gear is called cleaning and the process is a pretty fun one. The biggest challenge is often having the energy to climb back up after a long day of climbing. Being the spry young man I am, I was more than happy to clean as many routes as I could.
During the second route I ever cleaned, I had the joy of finding myself trapped at the top of the wall. Sand had gotten into the carabiner lock that held me at the top. Being unable to lower until detached, I was a little concerned. Remaining calm, a friend raised up a set of pliers with the grip needed to open the jammed lock. Upon being lowered, several friends commented on the calmness of my being stuck. The whole experience boosted my confidence that I might be pretty good at this whole climbing thing.
Meeting Miranda Rayne
The next day, we left camp for the gloriously named “The Shire,” a wall with a few routes new to our group.
After a challenging drive through some crazy backroads and hills, we arrived and began climbing. The first two routes were a lot of fun. Leading and setting them were relatively simple and we made our way across the wall to the route that inspired this post, Miranda Rayne.
It was a long way up, but I’ve been climbing well all weekend. At this point, I hadn’t fallen once, learned a lot and was feeling confident. Starting the climb wasn’t too bad. Around halfway up, I took my first fall. Just some fatigue, right? With a quick shakeout, I made my way back up and fell again. More tired, I tried again. And again. All the while, an experienced group of climbers arrived and flew up Miranda Rayne with relative ease just before I started my climb.
After a few more falls, I had to call it quits. I was exhausted and defeated. Luckily, the other group of climbers were kind enough to finish setting the route, so that my friends could experience the suffering – I mean enjoy the exciting challenge of Miranda Rayne, albeit on top rope.
While I can definitely laugh about it now, in the moment I was furious and disappointed with myself. How could I not climb this route? It should have been easy.
With some time to reflect and think about the climb, I felt more motivated to climb than ever. A big flaw in my current training was height. The gym I go to has 30 ft walls, which may sound large, but Miranda Rayne towers over the gym walls at 60 ft. Adding in the occasional double, climbing a route back to back was a nice way to work on climbing stamina.
Kingdom Hearts is Li…fe Changing
Before I can dive into the scene that inspired this post, I have to lay some groundwork. I don’t know if there’s a game series that I have more nostalgia, frustration and love for than Kingdom Hearts. This silly mashup of Final Fantasy and Disney somehow became a world wide sensation with over a dozen games and many meme-able moments. While I’ll largely be discussing my experience with the series, I do reference several specific plot points for the first and “third” games of the series, so consider this your spoiler warning.
In my youth, my dad would often take my siblings and I to Best Buy where my brother and I would pick a game and my sister would pick her own. My memory could be wrong, but I feel like Kingdom Hearts was a “sister pick.” The world, story and characters had me hooked from the first entry. Sora, the series protagonist, was the perfect insert for dumb kids ready to smack monsters with the legendary Keyblade – a sword that’s also a Key. There’s some interesting ideas they do with the weapon as a concept, but it’s also extremely literal. It tends to lock or unlock things.
Most of the game is gallivanting across several worlds based on Disney franchises like Tarzan, Aladdin and Peter Pan. However, the final worlds visited take a more serious and darker tone. Sora is betrayed by his best friend, Riku. After a challenging fight with Riku, now fully possessed by darkness, Sora makes a difficult choice to save another friend, Kairi. Sora sacrifices himself. He briefly dies, well at least the closest thing the first game offers as any indication of death. A challenging scene to take seriously as an adult seeing and hearing an incoherent Donald Duck rushing to our hero as he disappears into nothingness.
One resurrection and a SquareSoft multi-phase final boss fight later, the forces of darkness are defeated, for now. A plot thread that gets the story truly started is that worlds have been disappearing. Defeating the final boss releases those lost worlds, including the island Sora and his friends started this adventure. In an incredible ending sequence, Sora and Kairi stand on the ground of different worlds as they begin to pull apart. Sora chooses to stay behind to look for Riku and Mickey Mouse – if I explain that part I’ll never get this post finished. The island from the beginning of the game begins to reform around Kairi as a tear forms in her eye. I still remember crying after the end of the first game. Despite all his efforts, the fighting, and adventuring to find them, Sora is separated from his friends.
These games were a fundamental part of growing up for me. I remember getting Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, a spinoff game many fans didn’t know it existed due to its release on the Game Boy Advance. My brother and I traded in maybe a dozen games we no longer played and still had to beg our mom for like 10 bucks to buy the game. Even my early days on the internet were often spent on the KH Insider forums reading the latest fan theories for the story to come.
One challenge of being a Kingdom Hearts fan is the proliferation of spinoff and side games. Out of roughly a dozen entries, there are only three mainline numbered games in the series, with the major gap between these being Kingdom Hearts 2 and 3. KH2 was released in early 2005, and then six games across five different consoles were released before fans saw the “third” game hit shelves. In January of 2019, the world was finally able to play the finale of the “Seeker of Darkness” story-line which began in the first game.
Falling into Darkness
I, however, did not own a PlayStation 4 to play the game, nor did I feel that same pull to the franchise I once did. I had the chance to play a bit when I visited some friends and family who owned the game. Dropping into the middle of a story I hadn’t really touched in years left me thinking maybe I’d grown out of the franchise.
Five long years after it’s initial release, I finally felt the call and bought Kingdom Hearts 3. It helped that the games were finally released on Steam, the most popular platform for buying PC games.
After the long awaited first playthrough, I have some critiques. My first complaint is some minor nitpicks with the story. I feel there are a few missed opportunities. In particular, a potential theme of prophecy and overcoming fate is setup, but left unexplored. The scene I go into detail below is a good example of this theme not really paying off. A prophesied event is prevented, but there’s no exploration of the fact. The game just moves on to the next plot point.
My other complaint lay in the gameplay. With recently playing through Kingdom Hearts 2, I felt overwhelmed with combat options many of which felt very reactive. Its predecessor o the other hand, gives a selection of more proactive choices to handle various challenges and bosses. So much so, that great players can take on some of the games most challenging bosses with randomized abilities and tools and still come up on top.
Despite my issues with the game, I enjoyed my time with Sora and the gang. The writers know how to make certain moments hit, although we’re a long way from the simplicity of the first game. To briefly summarize the wild setup for Kingdom Hearts 3, the main villain, Xehanort, has moved through time to create 13 versions of himself to create a prophesied clash of 13 darknesses and 7 lights. The latter is of course our group of heroes, led by Sora. The forces of light and dark meet at an appropriate battleground, the Keyboard Graveyard, a wasteland with countless Keyblades stuck into the dirt. However, before this battle even begins, a monstrous wave of Heartless – creatures of darkness that serve as the main enemy throughout the series. Everyone dies – or more likely become Heartless like Sora did when he sacrificed himself in the first game. Seeing so many fallen friends, for the first time of the series, Sora gives up. In the aftermath, Sora dies. Like actually to dies this time, arriving in an afterlife not seen in the series before.
After a convoluted series of events, some time travel occurs and the heroes get one more chance to take on the darkness. Events begin repeating themselves, but this time moments before the end, a light flashes and a new character appears for just a few seconds. Sora is lifted by a whirlwind of Keyblades from the environment. This new character is Ephemer, a Keyblade wielder from long ago. His story takes place in a prequel game showing the events of which caused the Keyblade War, the event which created the graveyard the fated battle is now occurring. After being lifted by hundreds of Keyblades, a sequence begins with a familiar button prompt, but this one is slightly different.
The prompt shows the username of a player – not a character but a human player – from the aforementioned prequel. In the lore of the game, Keyblade Wielders from eons past are helping Sora overcome the massive wave of Heartless. In reality, it’s just a list of names, but the designers elevated names to the key to success. It is because of these players, we are able to overcome what was once a defeat.
The build up and payoff of this amazing sequence had me tearing up. Moments like this are why I love videogames. While all I’m doing is pressing a button over and over again, the storytelling and game play come together to craft this connection between fans of this series to bring our hero out from the lowest we’ve ever seen him.
Tying it All Together
Failure and defeat are inevitable in life, especially when trying new and challenging things. Wallowing in that failure is the only way it can truly be defeat.
Other people are a great way to bounce back, no matter how deep in the pit one may be. I am lucky to have a great group of friends that pick me up no matter how low I might fall – sometimes literally.
Trying Out Before Buying In 