[Editor's note: Gen Eric Gui is the first promotion for The FEAR Monthly Musing theme. Gen talks about Death and the Instant Death spell in RPGs for his piece. -- CTZ]

In Megaten games, death is always around the corner. Oftentimes, this statement is to be taken quite literally. The next random monster you fight might be some religions’ personification of the God of Death: the 4 Riders, Mot, Samael, and so on; the protagonists of the Megaten games have struggled against them all (And sometimes befriended them.)

However, lots of RPG’s throw these kinds of monsters at you; it’s not exactly an uncommon occurrence to fight multiples of such monsters at a time. It’s supposed to make the player feel epic and all-powerful, that they and their characters are able to overcome such a monumental force of nature such as death. And because of this overuse, most players don’t even feel a modicum of fear the first time they run into Mot or Nyx in their very first Megaten game. Well, sadly for them, they’re in for quite a violent awakening. 

[Gen Eric Gui is another newcomer that has started his C-Blogging off on the right step. Read his take on voice acting as part of the Monthly Musings theme. -- CTZ]

Lately, voice acting has become a topic of great contention amongst gamers. If a game doesn’t have voice acting, the gaming population cries out “Why not?” and marks are made against the game for not giving it's characters vocal chords. And of course, when a game does have voices, there’s always that chance that comparisons to “nails on a chalkboard” will be brought up in many a review. In any case, voices are here to stay in videogame land, so I figure a bit of a discussion on them will do some good.