And now we play the waiting game -
November 8, 2000 - Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot. You have no idea how long I waited to use that quote here
yesterday... AND IT DIDN'T END UP MAKING SENSE, DAMMIT!
Don't say we didn't warn you.
By rights, today we should have some idea of who the next
president of the US should be, but we don't. I blame aliens from
Mars, personally.
Seriously, a lot of people were wondering prior to this what my
political affiliations were in this thing. Some people guessed I was for
Gore, based on my attitudes and comments about various things in the
column, while some guessed I was for Bush because I lived in Texas and
could be expected to be interested in tax cuts as a working engineer. One
or two wrote letters good enough for me to answer privately about it, but
by and large I've tried to keep it out of the column because I don't
think it's really within this column's scope to argue politics, except as
they intersect with games. Of course, since politics covers just about
everything that ends up being a pretty big intersection area, but my
personal political preferences aren't in there.
But the election is over now, and even though the result isn't in yet,
it's not anything that can be effected by any external action at this
point. Kinda like Schrodinger's cat, in a sense. So I don't mind telling
you at this point that I was pretty strongly for Gore, for a couple of
reasons - I did live in Texas under Bush and wasn't particularly
impressed with what I saw, I like Gore's ideas about the environment and
paying down the debt, and my family's traditionally been strong Democrats,
even though it means something very different for me to vote for Gore in
2000 than it did for my great grandfather to vote for a Jim Crow candidate
in the late 1800's.
That said, I'm still not real keen on arguing out the election here,
especially since I've been doing so with friends in private emails for
the past several weeks. So I'm answering the one letter below, because it
amuses me to, but other than that if you want to argue politics take it
outside.
Onward.
| It's bloody obvious,
isn't it? |
| Ok, so what, in all of God's creation, can you possibly be hyped
about in this election? I'm going to vote, sure, and I'm
terrified about the possibilities this election presents, but
hyped? Are you a politics junky?
CO |
In case it's not completely clear by now, I'm addicted to not just
politics, but any kind of good conflict. Heck, I don't think I could
have done this job day in day out for the past 8 months if I didn't want to be around
arguments all the time. Perhaps I'm just perverse, but I see the system
as working perfectly when people are yelling and screaming and bending
over backwards to make things go their way, rather than just sighing
and saying that such argument is bad and of course we'd all be
happier if people could just agree with each other.
But that aside, the extreme closeness of this election was reason
and entertainment enough to be excited about it. This is history, and
history's cool, especially when it hasn't happened yet. I'm enjoying
the hell out of this stuff, and I hope you folks are too.
| Vive la differance! |
| Blaming menu-based control for a percieved lack of
innovation is a mistake. It is a method by which you control your characters,
and nothing more. What developers do with that control method is what
matters- and what they do with the many other factors which make up an RPG.
Play FF4. Then play Saga Frontier 2. Then play Chrono Cross. Then play The Seventh
Saga. Then tell me that using menus for combat makes for a lack of variety in RPGs.
Of course, neither Enix nor Square has any intention of relying soley on
menu-based combat. Unless Vagrant Story, Legend of Mana, Valkyrie Profile, and
Star Ocean 2 were simply figments of my imagination caused by my proximity to
a pulp mill.
-Davon |
You've got an excellent point that each of those games plays
differently, despite technically having the same interface. Actually,
that's not exactly true - they feel different, although the core
gameplay is very similar when looked at from a moderate perspective.
You've also got a point that many of the newer games out don't rely
on traditional menus - in fact, with the exception of FF9 there aren't
that many Square games out there right now that do end up resembling
classic random-battle-heavy menu-driven RPGs. I'm not someone who
generally says that tradition is good, but maybe in this case it's not
so bad to have some games hold to the traditionalist bent.
| No FFT2 for you! |
| howdy,
do you think there's any possibility of seeing a north american release
of Hoshigimi: Ruining Blue Earth? I know that the release just got
pushed back again in japan and that's probably not a good sign for us.
But seeing that, eventhough the Dreamcast is kickin'and the PS2 is out,
the PS1 still seems to have a prolific few months ahead of it in terms
of games coming out for it, do you think Hoshigimi stands a chance? it
would be really nice if they would let us have it (or at least me). yers cruelly,
opultaM Forward |
This'll most likely go in the FAQ next time I manage to update it:
No.
| He takes the bait |
| CJ,
Yes, I'll take the bait.
The only two reasons why I like menu-driven games is consistency and
strategy. Consistency, to me, is X meaning accept and O meaning cancel on
the Playstation controller. While real-time battles with no menus sounds
like fun, it also means that X will be low attack, O is high, L1+R2 is
special attack, ect, ect. No two games would have the same buttons meaning
the same thing. I hate memorizing button combinations. A good example of
combating that problem would be games like Dead of Alive, which features
just three action buttons that can perform hundreds of different actions.
Which brings me to the strategy part. I know it's a personal preference, but
I simply like bigger battles with more strategy involved in beating them. I
just cannot see a developer pulling off a big strategic real-time menu-less
battle, and making it fun, anytime soon.
The answer? No clue. But I think games like Zelda, with a single action
button, and Dead of Alive pave the way with their simplified control
schemes. So, Chris, what battle system out for any game would you like to
see in a future RPG? You mentioned something without menus, but has that
been done before yet? I think that would be good to know.
-Red Raven, who swears he only plays Dead or Alive for the battle system |
I'm not gonna get into my own personal insane schemes for menu-less RPG
parties, but I will say that with a lot of action oriented games like
Zelda or Soul Calibur it is possible to reprogram the controllers to
something closer to what you're used to. (I know, not Zelda, just using it
as a genre example.) Plus I generally just play one game at a time, and it
takes all of 10 to 15 minutes to get used to the control scheme, so I don't
much buy into your argument, personally. Especially when you consider that
many of the interesting features that really make menu combat worthwhile
are game-specific, like Squall's gunblade press.
| Shame on me |
|
First off, shame on you for not buying Shenmue. I know there are too many titles
coming out this month to buy them all but I feel we owe it to Sega for bringing
out these innovative title like jet Grind Radio and the like.
w/o our support they'll stop sending them over here and we'll get another fifty
sequels to Crash Bandicoot instead of stuff like Parappa.
One thing that pisses me off to know end are these damn American distributors
having to "localize" (i.e. take out the original dialogue and use talentless
hacks from Canada and the gutters of Hollywood instead) ok....MGS had great
voice actors but you know what I'm trying to say.
It just infuriates me that Suzuki spent so much to create this incredibly realistic
and absorbing experience set in JAPAN mind you, only to pull us right out of
it with wooden English. What about Tenchu, anyone? It takes place in medieval
Japan and is all about ninjas but they use English as the default and relegate
the Japanese dialogue to a cheat code.
-nobuoKotei(think you have trouble affording new games,
I got into j-pop at the beginning of the summer and spent all of
my graduation money and then some(1,500 in all) in just 3 months! Now with
college expenses I never have any cash!..............beware, it can happen to
you too, first videogames and anime and before you know it you're addicted to all
Japanese pop culture. It will enslave your wallets as well!!!!!!!)
|
I definitely wouldn't mock the voice acting in MGS - the guy who
played Solid Snake wrote the script for the X-Men movie, and if you
publicly insult him he might make you one of the unwitting extras who
gets torn apart by Wolverine in a murderous rampage. That said, I think
it's always a good thing to have the option of Japanese and English
voice acting with the appropriate subtitles, and I'm glad to see that
Sega's been doing that with at least a few of their games, like Sonic
Adventure.
I'm not much gonna apologize for not getting Shenmue - I'm a
student, so I have a limited amount of both time and money, and as such
I have to ration out what games I get. This is the reality for most
gamers, often more severe than what I have to deal with, and only a
select few have no limits on time or money. For me, Shenmue just
didn't make the cut, that's all. But if it's any consolation, if this
coming spring is as sparse, gaming wise, as I expect it to be, I may
end up revisiting Shenmue. We'll see.
| The last word on
pronunciation (and why there can be no such thing) |
|
I just read the letter asking about how to pronouce 'Chocobo', and I
realized that this is something I can help with! Running Otakuworld.com
has forced me to get educated a bit about Japanese pronounciation....I
still stink at it, truth be told, but my understanding is sound, even if
it is hard for me to actually say things correctly all the time.
In a nutshell, all vowels in Japanese are always the same, and all words
are pronouced without emphasis on any particular syllable. In English we
tend to stress syllables, but in Japanese, words are spoken pretty flat,
in terms of emphasis.
The way vowels work is this:
A is said as "Ah" as in "Almonds" or "Alter"
E is always "Eh" as in "Entirely" or "Error"
I is pronounced as "Ee" as in "EEK!" or "Squeek!"
O is always "Oh" as in a capital "O" or in the word "Ocean"
U is pronounced "Oo" as in the words "Toon" or "Balloon"
So "Chocobo" would be spoken as "Cho-Koh-Boh" with equal stress on all
the syllables.
"Magus" would be pronounced "Mah-Goo-Soo". This is because Japanese has
only one sound that is not paired with a vowel...the sound "N". All
consonants are pared with a vowel, so that something like "K" would come
as a "Ka", a "Ku", a Ko" or whatever. Over 40 sounds in all, in Katakana
alone. This means that the word "Seattle" would be pronouced
"Seh-Ah-Too-Roo-Eh".
To be precise, the "Roo" in the above is neither a "Roo" or a
"Loo"...the old "R"/"L" sound issue really represents a sound that does
not exist in English. It is hard to do, kind of a combination between a
D and an L and and R, all at the same time. "Roo" works.
How about "Gilgamesh" (The MAN!). In Japan, it would be said as
"Gee-Roo-Gah-Meh-Soo" -again, said without any emphasis on any syllable.
Want some more?
"Mog" is a "Moogle" in English because in Japan, "Mog" is pronounced
"Mo-Goo". That became "Moogle" in sloppy interpretations. How about
Cloud Strife? Say it "Cah-Roo-Doo Sah-Tah-Rai-Feh". Aerith is said
"Eh-Ree-Soo", and lastly, you would say "Sid", the constant figure from
all Final Fantasy games, as "See-Doo". Intertesting ne?
Ja mata ne,
Jennifer Diane Reitz |
I actually took a semester of Japanese, so I knew how a lot of this
stuff worked. Still, Ms. Reitz's done her usual excellent job at
laying it out for us, so thanks to her for that, and to everyone else
who wrote in with their personal take on "Chocobo".
The problem is, we run into complications real quick when it comes
to how foreign words should be pronounced. As Jennifer pointed out,
the Japanese would not pronounce (or at least write) Seattle anywhere
close to the way we would, simply because there's no L sound
available. And it cuts both ways - most people in Austin don't
pronounce the street name "Guadalupe" the way it would be said in
Spanish, and of course Notre Dame the school doesn't much sound like
Notre Dame the cathedral.
So the question is, do we attempt to pronounce Chocobo as the
Japanese would, if you're a staunch literalist, or do we invent our
own workable pronunciation and go with that? Personally, like I said I
don't think it much matters. It's rare enough that you'll actually be
speaking with someone aloud in a context where getting the exact
pronunciation of Chocobo is important, and on the off chance that they
looked down on you for not saying it the "correct" way, you'd be
justified in writing them down as a petty RPG snob. End of
discussion.
| It's all as it should
be |
|
Mr. Jones:
I'd like to start up my rebuttal of Mr. Cruz's letter by first pointing out
that I fail to see where he judges FF games coming out years from today based
on what is happening now. I may be off on this due to my dearth of knowledge
about upcoming FF XI, but has enough information even been released to
provoke judgment of the game at this point? I think I'll wait a while until
the game is a bit closer to release.
Now I do agree with Mr. Cruz's assessment of Vivaldi in that making the same
game over and over doesn't make a good new game, but the battle system is
only one instrument in Vivaldi's composition. If that is the most important
feature to Mr. Cruz, I won't change it, try to change it, or want to change
it -- it's personal preference; no game will be perfect in all aspects. Four
or five days full of in-game-music conversations? There's more to a game
then just fighting. I find it hard to believe that this Mr. Cruz could not
look at FF XI because of battle system alone.
I didn't see Mr. Cruz mention was which battle system he preferred, though he
noted Zelda, OB 64, Mario 64, FFT and MGS. None of these (except Zelda,
depending on how it's viewed) are the same genre as typical FF games, how do
they compare? FF games won't become first person with only one character as
Zelda, Mario 64, and MGS were (not sure on MGS, never played it and don't
much desire to). FFT and OB64 were strategy games plain and simple, if FF XI
adopts that system it'll be called FFT II. Those are the games that're "made
as they should be"? Nah, those're the strategy and first person
adventure-ish games that're made as they should be. I'd like to see the
story line of FF VIII wrapped up in the one character you can control in
Zelda, it'd be interesting to see designers work on that. They'd go nuts
trying to make it all fit together; the hand can't grasp if the fingers don't
work in unison. Also, if Zelda had more than one person to control, I
guarantee a turn system would be implemented.
Anyway though, props to Mr. Cruz to a well-written letter, and I too say
Yamauchi's a hypocrite. Talk about sequels, Pokemon has been redone more
times in the past few months then FF has in the past few years. They're all
the same, too. At least we agree on one thing. If I haven't made my point
clear (which I haven't), I just think battle systems can't be compared unless
there's a certain amount of similarity and also that not looking at games
because of their battle system is along the same lines as judging a book by
it's cover alone.
Call me Krelyk, sorry about the length on this one too. |
And props to you too as well, Mr. Krelyk, for your equally
well-written letter. Not a lot to add here,
except that a couple of people reminded me from yesterday that Mega Man
has a huge number of sequels as well. Not that this has much to do
with a menus discussion, I just wanted to put it in while I still
remembered to.
Closing Comments:
Ok, got a good topic for tomorrow, so write in. Also, because I got
so many good ones I'll be having a reader suggested topic tomorrow for
Friday as well, but don't whine about it because you've already gotten
3 free topic days this week. See you tomorrow, unless someone defeats
me in the Electoral College vote.
-Chris Jones, thinks the
waiting game sucks, wants to play Hungry Hungry Hippos instead
| Topic for Thursday,
11/09/2000 |
| Yo Chris,
I'm honestly scared that Square won't be around in 5 years. They've got so
many projects right now that will sink them if they fail, it's scary.
There's the FF Movie, which will have to be a blockbuster here AND in Japan,
making at least $150 million at each place to make up for production and
advertisement.
FFXI needs millions of users to pay a monthly fee just for Square to break
even. They will have PS2 and supposedly X-box support, if the Game Cube
jumps in they might have a chance. However, if the basic game sucks, no one
at all will buy it.
Also, every non-RPG that Square releases sucks hard. The PS2 racing game,
baseball, and wrestling games got absolutely awful reviews. The graphics
were great, but the gameplay sucked. So do you think that we could be facing
the end of Square, as we know it?
--The Steve, who remembers when Square would've been destroyed if FFVII
failed (ha!) |
|
