The Nightly Montage

🧭 Monty & Joachim 🧭

"They could have done more with the first game of Kingdom Hearts though."

Raj scrawled his response on the back of a worksheet. Monty, my man. You're just salty 'cause you don't have the nostalgia.

I scowled, heat prickling up my neck. Possibly half of university students were hunkering down in the school's library, studying for the impending exams. Was I grumpy and tired? Yes. Was I willing to monopolize this opportunity to take a break from writing and rewriting coding rules so much that my hand cramped? Definitely.

"Look, there's very obvious story-telling problems. Like, yeah it's a video game, and the gameplay itself is fun but--"

IT'S A GAME. Raj pointed at his written response like it was a mathematical proof to the universe's existence.

Then his eyes lit up with the hope of salvation. I followed his gaze to where a guy was checking out textbooks at the librarian's counter. I'd seen him at the gym a couple times. You could peg him as an athlete, but he could easily be one of those English kids going into journalism or global politics. His boots, fannypack and the way he stuffed way too many papers into too small of a backpack gave it away.

Then his head snapped in our direction. He came over, and had a conversation with Raj. Their lips moved. Though I couldn't hear them, Raj's expressive gestures and mimicking a prayer made it clear that Raj thought the dude would save him from this ridiculous discussion.

No chance. But manners first.

Raj had likely already introduced me to his friend, but I held out my hand anyway, business-style. The guy shook it. "I'm Monty," I said. "I'm also deaf, so it'd be great if you could communicate by writing or typing."

He blinked, the only reaction that gave away his surprise, and whipped out his phone. The longer he typed, the bigger his smile grew, and I got extremely suspicious.

Was it possible for him to look any cuter with that smile?

Finally he showed me. Joachim, he'd typed on his screen. I'm Raj's friend. I've played pretty much all the KH games out so far and according to Raj, the story telling's rubbing you the wrong way?

Joachim drew up a chair and sat at our table while I explained, "I understand that the video game's storytelling doesn't have to make 100% sense for you to have fun, and sure if a video game's not fun then that ruins everything else. But I have huge issues with how Riku's character conflict is resolved. It's way too simplistic and..."

We launched into a long back and forth. Joachim didn't seem as interested in the actual argument as he was in talking about just how great the Kingdom Hearts writing is with pacing and pairing that up with gameplay. That led into discussing the best fighting strategies (important), all the work that went into coding the different textures and 3-D models (fascinating), the symbolism of multiple stuff (good Lord), then finally circling back to the actual topic at hand, with me being depleted of my competitive fire.

"You have some good points," I grudgingly admitted. "I just have a habit of judging books by their cover."

And you know a lot more about the industry than I thought. To be honest I took you as a little ignorant of the effort being put into producing games. It's some stuff to admire.

I thought about impressing him by showing off my current work-in-progress: coding a 2D visual novel. Then I shoved the notion away; this was a dude I just met. He was definitely not my type. Definitely not.

Still, that familiar feeling of electricity coursing through my veins like a spike of coffee told me that Joachim was one of those good people who'd stick around in my life. It felt good to look back and see I had been right.