Bravely Second Soundtrack

[Desmond Hutchins]

HeyFinal Fantasy Explorers? This is how you make a good FF-esque game! Bravely Second is the sequel to Bravely Default, a game where the goofy title somehow becomes even goofier once you know the explanation behind it. And the sequel is no saner or more sober, but it's still rather charming and very fun to play!

In Second, you are trying to rescue former player character Agnes, now a prominent religious leader held captive by an enemy nation. That's more or less all I can tell you without spoiling both Second and Default. I'll say that the plot this time around is marginally less tedious than Default and you don't have to fight the same bosses three or four times over.

The trick to the game is the Brave/Default battle system. Through this, you can "Default" on some of your turns, defending rather than attacking and therefore saving up your moves. You can then "Brave" a turn, unleashing all of your Defaulted moves in a big stack. Before I played the first game myself, I thought the system would be a reinvention of the wheel, mucking up something that didn't need to be more complicated.

But when you actually play the game . . . it works. It both simplifies and deepens the gameplay, and once you're used to it, you'll wonder why turn-based RPGs haven't had this since their inception. And Second has an even richer job system than Default, allowing you to have a plethora of different moves and classes at your disposal at any given time.

The second pillar of the gameplay is said job system, which allows your characters to change classes at will and retain skills from certain jobs as passives. It's comprehensive, though a little easy to abuse. I'm relatively inept at character builds, but even I could build a game-breaking party on Normal difficulty.

If any one element of Second is bad compared with its predecessor, it's the music. Bravely Default had a beautiful soundtrack that went a long way towards giving that game a sense of charm and energy. Second's sound just isn't as intense or interesting. Also, on a lesser level, there is some overlap with the jobs which makes some of them erroneous (looking at you, Bishop).

The opening scene seems straight out of a music video: minimalist stage, stark light, four actors encased in fashionably generic black and red. The impeccably timed dancing, emotionless and overtly sexual; the music, driving and anonymous. A heavily stylized plot takes shape--man fondles woman, who pulls away; another woman claws said man toward her--dominated by the same aggressively heterosexual assumptions that pervade MTV. The talons of this brand of "savage love" are thickly lacquered and varnished. And it's the ritualization of this savagery that makes it seem all the more deadly.

Any play that advertises "Love" in its title instantly traps itself in a certain genre, and the title "Savage/Love" inspires a cynicism which its script tries only half-heartedly to counter. Shuttling from scene to scene with dizzy velocity, the play attempts to cover all the aspects of modern love: jealousy, obsession, loneliness. There is no plot and no development; the nameless characters change personalities in each disjointed episode. It's about as profound and moving as a 30-second sound bite. The audience winces at lines like, "It is love. I will have to hide or flee"--a wince of sympathy for the actors who must recite such lines with a straight face.

Ultimately, it's the talent and energy of its actors that saves "Savage/Love" from the rubble heap of disposable pseudo-culture. The facile sound and fury of "love with its own mythology, its minor and pointless magic" is made to sound almost meaningful by Tom Giordano's earnest delivery. His scenes, which seem to focus predominantly on insecurity and isolation, evoke not pity but slow admiration for his character's courage.

Sliding with smooth facility from jealous to tender, maternal to monstrous, Silje Normand cradles her sleeping lover in one of the play's most emotive and best-written segments. Her manner is stylishly minimalist and her accent, which vanishes and reappears at random, is delightful. Normand skillfully handles what is probably the most overtly melodramatic line in the play, screaming, with a sudden viciousness, "I want to strangle your dreams inside of me!"

Shannon May, polished and not at all self-conscious, makes an absolutely arresting impression in almost every one of her scenes. The force of her talent gives the two "murder" sequences--when she informs a lover, "I killed you," with deadly and restrained passion--a drastically disproportionate significance. Whether she is flickering in the light of a green strobe or pacing across the stage reciting Shakespeare from a tiny book, she maintains a stunning poise that gives the play far more credibility than it deserves.

Yet the most remarkable save comes when, standing alone in front of the giant word "Loneliness," Ryan McKittrick dissects the blindness and isolation of urban life with startling delicacy and emotion. Bravely resistant to the oppressive miasma of cheekiness that permeates his scene, he sets the lines "The Eskimos have 26 different words for snow--such a fine alertness to what variously presses down" aflame with sincerity. Somehow, mysteriously, the playwright's pretension is transmuted into poetry.

But all the king's horses couldn't give this fashion victim of a play a fully convincing makeover. Pop culture, it complains, forces us to manufacture ourselves in the stylized image of our own mass-produced fantasies. The blatant phoniness of this predigested psychobabble is underscored by the soundtrack (imagine--a play with a soundtrack!), which features such luminaries as Sting, U2, Live, and Counting Crows. Despite its occasional flashes of loveliness, "Savage Love" limps along ponderously, bloated by the ostentation of the same culture that it attempts to parody--and, ultimately, fails to escape.

Turning 30, artist and speaker Kyle Scheele wanted to do something unusual to mark this milestone. Instead of a birthday bash, he decided to hold a funeral to memorialize the decade of his life that was ending. Building a 16-foot Viking ship out of cardboard, he invited friends to help him set it on fire--a symbolic farewell to his 20s and all the grief, regret, and mistakes that accompanied those years.

When video of his Viking funeral went viral, it encouraged many others to let go of past hurts as well. Moved by the response he received, Kyle planned a second funeral (this time with a 30-foot cardboard Viking ship) and asked people to share the things they carried--the bad choices, disappointments, heartaches, and negative thinking that they wanted to lay to rest. He received more than 20,000 responses from around the world--stories both heartbreaking and hilarious, painful and inspiring.

In this entertaining and wise book, Kyle reflects on what he discovered about freeing ourselves from the pain of the past, interweaving anecdotes from those who participated with the story of his own journey of renewal. "This story involves multiple Viking funerals, thousands of square feet of cardboard, and enough hot glue to supply your mother-in-law's craft night for the rest of time," he writes. "But it also involves regret, self-doubt, insecurity, and ultimately, redemption. So buckle up. It's about to get bumpy."

How to Host a Viking Funeral is the story of letting go of the people we used to be, but no longer want to be. It's about renewal; where there was once regret there is now blank space--an opportunity for a fresh start.

"Wise, funny, and surprisingly poignant, this book teaches us the most important lesson there is: how to be a better human being." -- Bob Goff, New York Times bestselling author of Dream Big and Live in Grace

"A hilarious, wise, and inspiring roadmap for life. Kyle Scheele bravely bares his own vulnerabilities to show us that what we reject most in ourselves are often the very things that connect us all as humans." -- Qian Julie Wang, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Country

"With humor, heart, and a whole lot of cardboard, Kyle Scheele delivers a blast of creative inspiration. Here we have something truly special - a reminder that we each already have the materials needed to live a life packed with beauty and joy." -- Brad Montague, New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of The Circles All Around Us

"Scheele has written a love letter to those of us who struggle through the painful and seemingly endless process of moving on. Scheele gave me permission to celebrate the journey, with its highs and lows, and start a new adventure with nothing left to carry but the hope of what lies ahead." -- Hugh Weber, CEO of The Great Discontent

"This book reads like it was written by someone who is 100 years old because Kyle has packed so much life into such a short time frame. I can't wait to see what you do after you read this manifesto for the beauty of crazy ideas." -- Jon Acuff, New York Times bestselling author of Soundtracks: the Surprising Solution to Overthinking

"'No regrets' is a clich for a reason: we hate facing our shortcomings! I didn't think it was possible, but Kyle Scheele makes this important inner work not just easy, but hilarious! The sugary goodness of his storytelling makes this medicine an actual treat." -- Andy J. Pizza, host of Creative Pep Talk podcast

"Like John Baldessari, who decided to cremate all his 'bad art' and start over, cardboard master and motivational speaker Kyle Scheele shows readers that they really can "burn it all down." Get this book so you can learn to set your old life on fire before it burns you out." -- Austin Kleon, New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist

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