Day 20: In Terms of "No"

It is Day 20. We're just over a week to go.

At the beginning of the month, or maybe even when the announcement was made to shut off the servers, I began to think in terms of "if." I did this against my better judgment, but so it went. If I play this game again, I thought, I'll do this. If they fix the servers for the month, I'll do that. It was optimistic. Wistful, maybe. I knew that the end was going to come, but it felt good to be excited again, to know that others would embrace it like me for one last time.

Now, I think in terms of "when." Mostly, I ask myself, when the servers are off, and knowing that I almost never used them to their fullest potential until these last moments, will I ever play this game again.

Soon, I'll be thinking in terms of "no."

I have a complex relationship with this game, as has been widely documented and easily read on the internet. I've also written tens of thousands of words about it and the series it spawned, most of which you'll probably never read. None of that really matters, right now, I guess. In my honest heart, when I really reflect on my life and where it's headed, the odds that I'll turn this game on and play through it after the servers are gone get longer all the time. It won't be for a lack of wanting, I suppose: Lately, I've had a strange and perverse interest in replaying the first Kingdom Hearts, but I know I'll never do that. Nobody has time for that shit anymore, to put up without unskippable cut scenes and other niceties that modern game design provides. I'm glad I have my memories of that game, and I do kind of long to see some it again on my own, but responsibility, waning interest, and most of all patience for something like that has long since siphoned away from me. I'll never replay Kingdom Hearts, or probably most other PS2 RPGs unless someone is paying me to do it. This is something that I've made my peace with, regardless of any kind of itch to scratch.

Demon's Souls will soon join that crowded Valhalla. Sure, there will be pangs of regret, maybe. There will be forlorn looks at my PS3 collection from time to time. But while this game has, in large part, made me the person I am today, I can feel a finality to things. Right now, and as next Wednesday rolls along like any other ho-hum, 2-4-1 burgers, wish-it-was-the-weekend, lots to do/ never enough time hump day, the binding on this cracked, dog-eared book is stretching to a close. For me, it might be one of the more melancholy, bittersweet moments I have with this, my chosen hobby, my most loved obsession. To everyone else, it will be Wednesday.

Yes, the rumors persist that Demon's Souls will get a remaster. Sure, I'll probably play it. But it can't possibly be the same game that I'm playing right now, with these same people. This final month should be encased in amber and preserved. I wish I could have done a better job of conveying that to you. Feelings are ephemeral, after all. It's one of my more sad moments to let it drift away with a message that I'll be playing, forever, in offline mode.

Maybe we'll talk about that more tomorrow.