Fever dream -
January 05, 2001 - 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. Just as a reminder, each of us is wearing an unlicensed
nuclear accelerator on his back.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
I'm simultaneously feverish and cold at the moment, which would
seem impossible under ordinary circumstances, but here we are. On
the other hand, it gives me the excuse to stay in all weekend and
play games. There's an upside to everything.
Onward.
| That would be the
intelligent thing to do, so it's right out |
| This is a direct message to all those who think that
Nintendo will buy Sega: Are you crazy?
While this would be a good move, since when has Nintendo been making good moves
lately? Was alienating the Japanese market a good move? Was handing Sony Square
and Enix a good move? No!
Nintendo will not take Sega, though, because of their pride. They will refuse
to take their old arch-enemy. They will feel that this will create weakness,
and cause them to go down the porcelain pipeline. This will allow Microsoft,
or more likely Sony, to snatch up a grade-A game developer. Sony will take them
because, A) they need a mascot, and stealing one works in their strategy. And B),
who can pass up Sega as a games developer?
However, there is also the possibility that Sega will stand alone, and while
it is a bust as a console developer, it coulkd be a very successful games developer.
I don't know about everyone, but I think that Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia on
the PS2 would rock!
Also, we should always remember, that no matter what happens, there will be
another Sega game out there to play.
-Sir Blaze, valiant warrior of the RPG
P.S. - Doesn't it look like Nintendo snatched up the marketing geniuses behind the Saturn and Sega CD fads? |
Much fun as it is to trash Nintendo for past mistakes, let me
advance a wild, crazy theory here... maybe Nintendo got smarter
during the N64 era. Farfetched, sure, but there may be some mavericks
within the company who'd like to make intelligent decisions and
actually make some money. Hey, it could happen...
| This letter is too
levelheaded for me to come up with a bizarre title, dammit. |
| Hey Chris,
Saw the letters in the column regarding the Nintendo / Sega situation,
and I forgot I wanted to email in my views on that. I think the whole
situation has been misinterpereted a little, as people are looking at
the current stances of each company from the wrong P.O.V, I believe.
Here's the way I see it: I'm sure both companies (Nintendo and Sega)
have had discussions of some sort, just not in the way everyone thinks.
If you remember, awhile back various people within Sega hinted that the
Dreamcst would be Sega's last console. The rumor exploded for awhile,
but died down eventually, and was replaced by rumors that the Dreamcast
2 was well underway. Well, very recently Sega of Japan's parent
company, CRI, went on record saying that the Dreamcast would indeed be
Sega's last console, and that Sega was going to bow out of the hardware
field.
So now we're going to see Sega slowly transist into a software
development house only, which hey, I'm quite cool with that. Without
Sega consoles to put their hardware on (Despite my being a huge fan of
the Dreamcast, looking at Japanese, and often American, sales charts, I
can't see the DC surviving too much longer into the upcoming generation
of consoles), they need to begin licensing plans. I'm sure Nintendo's
looked into a few key franchises; after all, if the GameCube could be
the sole console for both Nintendo's first party games and some of
Sega's titles, or even just have those Sega franchises even if they're
also on other consoles, that's going to be a big plus sign for them.
That's all of your 'old school' gaming on one console.
At the same time, knowing that Sega is becoming a software firm makes a
whole 'buyout' even more ludicrous, at least to me. First off, why
would Nintendo want to lay down the enormous emounts of cash needed to
buy Sega completely when they could just license their games?
Furthermore, I myself wouldn't want to see Sega's software development
teams all too controlled anyways. And from Sega's point of view, why
would Sega want to become completely owned by Nintendo? Sure, the
GameCube is looking great, but the PlayStation 2 and X-Box aren't small
competition. I'm sure Sega wants to keep their options open should one
console fare best in the upcoming gaming generation.
Just my two cents,
Jeremy Steimel |
Not only can I not come up with a title for this, I can't come up
with any holes in the logic either. I gotta stop printing these kinda
letters.
| Another drunken ramble
from a Sega fan |
| hello sir,
first off, i'm drunk. ok now i'll start this, i dont know if you said to
shut this topic down or what, but nintendo buying sega is like taking my
whole gaming childhood and putting it into a ziplock bag and then jumping
up and down on it. nintendo is great and all (i've beaten every mario,
zelda, metroid, early FF, etc), but i grew up with sega. i got the sega
master system when i was 6 (the month it was out) and ever since i'm a
defender of sega. for christ's sake i was 7 years old and in love with
phantasy star 1 (which i still have 2 mint copies of), alex kidd, fantasy
zone, etc., before i was old enough for a license i had beaten the shining
series, all 4 phantasy stars (already 45 hours into pso japanese), and all the
other awesome sega names. if nintendo buys sega i will make the ending of fight
club true. if sega is gone the only thing left is to dress like Nei and destroy
everyone who had anything to do with this tragedy. and also, by now all the
articles say that this rumor is complete crap, but i still felt like writing an email.
goodnight captain
-Z, master of phantasy star |
It's all in how you look at it, Z. If Sega does get bought out, it
could be a soul-crushing experience, or it could be an important step
in your self-development, as you learn that everything you love is
destined to be destroyed and blown away on the winds of change. Believe
me, things get much easier when you give up dreams and hope, my friend.
| Have I had an insanely
long letter lately? No? Here you go, then... |
|
Many times I have read in your columns that you do not think that
customization of RPG's is possible without destroying the strong stories
that are the real hallmark of a console RPG - to quote from Thursday: "user
choice destroys dramatic tension". I think that view only is valid if one
is a fan of a world view where any action necessarily causes major changes
in everything else (i.e., where a butterfly flapping a wing can cause a
storm on the other side of the world; or the many SF stories that hold that
time travel is so dangerous because you could drop a penny and the
cumulative effect of that would kill your grandpa, etc). The "traditional"
RPG has gone with the other extreme - every single line is scripted and is
unchanging - but I think this was largely due to space/technical
limitations. There is no reason an RPG cannot go in the middle - most
religions/world views do so (a crass example: if someone dies from an
illness it was "god's will", but if you chose to eat at McDonald's that did
not involve devine intervention). A story can be scripted so that the major
story points MUST occur - but that there are many roads to get there, and
the results might be colored by your previous actions. For instance, you
might have to fight a certain "boss" at one point (although I hate the
"boss" part of RPG's, that is a rant for another day). You might have to
fight that boss alone, or with allies, depending on your skill in recruiting
allies. One of you allies might turn on you and fight with the "boss" -
depending on how well you choose your friend, or on how well you treat them,
or on whether or not that person you killed on disk one was actually their
father.
The fact is, in real life most of the things you do/say do not have any
consequence even a short time later, and even those effects are often
eliminated (or greatly reduced) whenever major life events (i.e. major plot
points) occur. If a high school student is a total jerk to his fellow
students his freshman year, it is likely to greatly impact how they treat
him, and may even get him beat up - but once he moves to another town that
summer (Major Plot Point - father is transferred to new job in other city)
the life (story) can pick up in exactly the same place as if he had been the
sweetest guy in town. Therefore the "authors" of the RPG can "corral" the
story - to compare it to platformers, it would be as Crash Bandicoot is to
Mario Brothers - even though the player is give a lot more freedom of
movement (and therefore some new play strategies) you are still getting a
very similar overall feel.
As the writers get more proficient at dealing with the possibilities, they
can add new wrinkles - i.e. when you kill the corrupt evil king/mutated
villain, do the people hail you as a savior (they knew he was corrupt) or
condemn you as an assassin (they think you are one of the "bad guys" and
therefor the king must not have been corrupt). This again doesn't
necessarily have to lead to hundreds of choices - you might still next have
to rescue Princess Toadstool (or save the world, etc) but how you get there
(as a knight? hunted criminal?) might change, as might who would help/hurt
you in your new quest.
The point is, there can be room for LOTS of player customization and still
keep the main plot intact - and it could actually lead to much RICHER
stories with lots of interaction (and replay value). It would be harder to
write, but most things worth doing are - and it would be more like "real"
life (if you had blue hair, a giant sword, etc in real life).
The District Attorney
|
What you're suggesting is definitely possible, but I have to ask,
what's the point? You'd end up with a setup where seemingly major
events have no effect on the rest of the game - you might trigger the
event where you move, for example, but under what you're describing, it
would never again be mentioned in the game. How is that any better
than one of those annoying questions that leads you to the same
result, regardless: if they ask you to join their party and you say
no, they'll just keep asking infinitely until you say yes. I'd
frankly rather have no choice at all than have that happen.
More than that, what's the point of playing at all if your choices
don't actually matter? For events to have meaning, they have to have
consequences - certainly not everything you do has to change things
irrevocably, but the choice to have mercy on a villain or not should come
out to more than merely gaining his magic sword in one case, and having
him lead you to a hidden treasure in the other. The kind of choices heroes
make in RPGs would say a great deal about their character: are you a
merciful
man, or a just man? Can she forgive her sister's treachery, or will she
tear her family apart out of pride? In any good book, movie, comic,
play, whatever, these choices would resonate throughout the rest of the
work, but not in many RPGs. And that's a bad thing, from a story
standpoint.
Of course, you can have your actions lead to real consequences, and
some RPGs do so to great effect - Tactics Ogre, for instance. But that
game's relative uniqueness says volumes about how difficult it is to pull
off properly. In most cases you get something like Phantasy Star III,
where your choice of marriage (hard to think of anything more
life-changing) merely changes some character class stats and opens up a
few different dungeons. On the other hand, you don't have to worry about story at all -
for a lot of people, merely tracing all the possible branches in a game
is reward enough. That's an equally legitimate way of looking at things,
and in fact, it may be better suited to the nature of the medium. But it's
not why I play RPGs, and it's not what I'd like to see in the future.
Closing Comments:
Yep, once more it's time to try and momentarily pacify Drew's insatiable
appetite for email, which we will do, as always, by coming up with an
interesting topic. And that topic is this: What now? The final gasp of
PSX RPGs is over, and there's little on the PS2 or Dreamcast fronts
(Phantasy Star Online and some Konami releases in March aside) that
makes my mouth water. One way or another, I don't see 2001 as being
chock full o' goodness to the extent that 2000 was... so what's your
survival strategy? Let Drew know, and I'll see you Monday.
-Chris Jones, saying "THE ADVIL
ISN'T WORKING!!!! Oh wait, those are M&Ms...."
|
