Gustavo

It's night, and Estelle is waiting for her father. Apparently, there's no mother. Suddenly, he appears with a gift for her - a boy. This boy was found on a mission, and when he wakes up, he's mostly worried about the safety of this family, saying that he should be left behind to die.

Fast forward some time, and these three are living like a family, but a "different" one - a soldier, Estelle's father Cassius Bright; no mother; an adopted scholar son, now named Joshua; and our main character herself, a charming young girl who's very bad at school and wants nothing else than to swing her staff.

This is the premise of Trails in the Sky. It was pretty interesting to me at first glance, mainly because I know that this will turn out to be a huge series, and it's always nice to see the "humble beginnings." With the benefit of foresight (because objectively I'm from the future), I can start catching the clues that will lead to this game turning out to be a political war drama.

What an interesting perspective it is to know that if this wasn't a game from my backlog from basically 10 years ago, meaning, if I didn't know that there would be 14 games after this one, I could have thought that this "humble beginning" might just be another PC or portable JRPG where I would end up saving the world from another cosmic force in 40 hours of gameplay.

So, generally, I feel that there's a lot of extra weight in knowing what this game will turn out to be. To be honest, I started this backlog quest afraid that not having a specific experience when I was younger would somehow detract from my overall enjoyment. But it's quite the opposite; knowing this, I'm thrilled to see how these simple events will turn out to be part of such a big story chaos. And there's more: knowing myself just a little as I do, I'm almost sure that I would have given up on this game back in 2004, so I'm glad to give it a shot just now.

So, this probably started 20 years ago and there's no way it will end in this lifespan.

Building on this idea, I'll continue by asking you all a question - is there any experience that you feel like you should have? Because I feel like there's a dilemma behind every backlog - why do they exist? Why do you feel like you need to experience something that wasn't part of your life? Can it become a part of your life now? Will it feel the same way it's supposed to be? As I expect it to?

So, I don't have the answers to these questions, and that's why I will document my journey through my gaming backlog. To see and to tell, especially to myself, if this urge to experience things that weren't part of my life will pay off in the "end".

So, if someone is thinking that I don't have a good plan for that, you are mostly right. One thing that I learned in life is that meticulously crafted plans tend to not go well because you will make so many slips that the whole thing can appear to be pointless. So, for now, the plan is to tackle the first game of one of the longest franchises in my backlog, which, until now, I haven't played a single piece yet - Legend of Heroes - Trails in the Sky.

The Trails Series is a series by the developers Nihon Falcom, a very niche but philosophically strong team from Japan, also known by their other long-running franchise - Ys.

They started in 2004 and until now, 20 years later, released basically 15 titles divided into 4 story arcs. Since its first release, only a few years could not see a release of a Trails game. So, this journey tends to be a long one, if I can continue to see a point in doing it.

I'm planning to share my experience through every weekly playthrough, and I'm excited to try to answer all my internal questions as I learn new things and enter a more deep state of mind about those same issues. I hope some people can see it, but I'm more than okay if this stays a journal to myself.