I’m sure this won’t mean anything to those out there who never played FFXI, but I got a rather nice, yet bittersweet surprise today.
A while back, Square Enix had a contest for old and new FFXI players to submit their vocals for one final song for FFXI, Rhapsodies of Vana’diel, the original game’s theme set to lyrics and a chorus. I had my doubts that I would be selected, but remembering how many good memories I had of the game so many years ago, I felt compelled to at least try. I spent an afternoon doing take after take until I had a recording that I felt was the best on-key performance I could do, and emailed it out.
Flash forward to today, when I was looking at a thread about Elezens in the FFXIV forums. Someone had responded that they liked my elezen (which of course I took great pride in, lol), but then curiously they added:
“(Is that you singing in the XI chorus?!)“
I completely froze, and then realized I had totally forgotten about that song, which had now been completed and released to the public. I hurriedly tracked it down and found that they had uploaded it. It was a really lovely rendition, but my fingers whizzed to the end of the video to check the credits, and lo and behold…
I can’t really explain the feeling in words.
It sounds incredibly silly, but I was dumbfounded. I was of course saddened that I was the only chorus singer from my server, but there was something about instantly realizing that my voice was in there, among all the voices of people who shared such fond, passionate memories of a game that was really so much more than that… something about that made my eyes well up and I still have a lump in my throat thinking about it.
I loved Vana’diel. These feelings choking me up prove it, because I felt so grateful that I was literally able to have my voice finally be inside the game that had meant so much to me so long ago. Even though I’d moved past it way back in 2009, that wave of nostalgia is so strong, even to this day. To know that I was able to be a part of it, right at its end, really hit me at my core.
That may be impossible for someone unfamiliar with the game to really empathize with, but I just couldn’t help writing how I felt about it.
It may be the end of an era, but I’ll never forget it.
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