A little of everything -
February 7, 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.
Well I'd rather hear some tune tonight than entertain your lies.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
Genius that I am, I seem to have sabotaged my own topic yesterday. As
it was written (and as anyone would have interpreted it) I was talking
entirely about the battle engine and related events, so what I got in
response was a bunch of letters that pointed out that a wide variety of
strategy RPGs already met my definition. And they do.
But what I was really after was a game that touched on more than just
fighting - I want a game that has you dancing a waltz, jumping on a
moving train, routing automated defense drones in low earth orbit,
transporting illegal medical supplies, writing haiku... nearly anything
you can think of. Which is a completely bizarre idea, I admit, but that's
why I mentioned it.
Anyway, that's not today's topic, we'll save that for sometime in the
future. As for now, let's get back to what I actually asked you to write
about, and see where it takes us.
Onward.
| Variety, and a Lunar 2
rant |
| They say variety is the spice of life. This applies to all things, and
games are no exception. Without a heavy coating of this bad boy, even
the sweetest games turn to ashes in your mouth.
I mean, look at Lunar 2. I don't know about you, but by the end of
that, I was screaming bloody murder every time I got into a fight.
Complete with sputum and mouth-frothage, too. This was because every
hour of the game was simply a repeat of this little formula: Find town
X. Buy armor and weapons A and W. Hear about bad thing Y. Go into
dungeon Z. Kill boss B. Wash, rinse, repeat. Aaaaallllways repeat.
On the other hand, I enjoyed the dungeons in FF8 quite a bit, since they
involved more than just battling. You had to ration your spells, assign
characters roles, and so forth.
So variety is important. However, when you start putting entire genres
together, well, that's something else entirely. You can't simply grab a
salad and slice of pizza, mash them together, and call it a meal. The
two have to compatible; really make sense together. Take Deus Ex.
Now, I never actually played the game, but I've heard nothing but good
things about it. I've gotten the general impression that it combines
stealth, shooter, and skill management in one game, and does it well. I
bet this is because all those disparate facets can come together in the
same storyline, game structure, and engine, with no parts left over. I
bet if it had tried to combine first person shooting, fighting, and
real-time strategy, things would have turned out differently.
Variety is important, yes, but so is coherency.
Now, feel free to bare-handedly disembowel, dismember, and cannibalize
my poor, pitiful logic to your savage little heart's content.
Talen |
Lunar 2 does strongly follow the classic RPG model, but a lot of people
like it for that precise reason. I'm not one of them, but I will say that
I like Lunar's actual battles more than FF8's (of course, those were
largely optional after a while) and that the dialog and interaction's good
enough to keep me playing through any number of town/dungeon cycles.
But in a way, Lunar's limitations are exactly what I was talking about -
Hiro and company save the world by doing any number of interesting things,
but the only thing you actually have any control over are battles and
wandering around. I'm not saying I want the ability to skip through story
points or anything, but I would have liked to have more control over
Ronfar's gambling or Jean's dancing - nothing about the story would have
changed, but it might have given us an even better connection to the
characters than we already had.
| Stay on target... stay
on target... |
| Hey DA-
I don't think having a variety of tasks (and thus a variety of engines
to accomplish) would be beneficial. I think it would disrupt the flow of
the game. Let's assert that the engines are all well-done and are not
"watered down." Still, that means that at different points in the game, you
would have to stop and adjust to the new engine for the new task. When you
reach a town, suddenly instead of your fancy battle controls, you have a new
set of negotiation tactics. That would seem a little bit awkward, as you
would constantly have to adjust to a new scheme. If not that, it would make
the game quite a bit more complex, as there would be quite a few more
engines to conquer. Vagrant Story, I think, is a reason NOT to do this, as
there were only a few skills (weapon management and battling)and the game
flowed very well. In order for the game to draw in the player, it needs to
be more continuous than a game comprised of multiple engines. The game
would have less focus...at least in my view.
-Gizmo
|
This is my main problem with the idea, and I can't think of many
ways to get around it - part of any game is gaining proficiency with
the main engine, and if you keep switching engines, you keep losing the
skills you've picked up while playing. This leaves you with a setup
where you either play something over and over again until you
get it right or lose interest in the game entirely, or you have easy goals that
defeat the whole purpose of making a well-designed engine in the first
place.
One possible way to get past this (and maybe the only way) is a
training mode, either in the game as part of the plot, or as a separate
startup option, somewhat like the shooting gallery in Perfect Dark. You'd
have a chance to get used to the required skills in baby steps, which
would also somewhat negate the learning curve and let developers bring in
the tougher, more interesting tasks sooner. Still, not many people will
except that they've got to spend a lot of time getting prepared before
they actually go out and play the game... except, ironically, people who
like to level up.
| Yes, right, strategy,
ok... |
| Chris,
About your wonderful game idea? Didn't you just describe the newest Romance
of the Three Kingdoms? Resource management, strategy, negotiation, and some
hand to hand combat as well. Or if you like a little bit more action,
there's always Kessen, or Kessen II out there.
Well... there it is then. Goodnight.
Drakonian
PS: Even better that both of those, there's Starcon II. Now THAT's a good
game. |
Yep, this is the perfect answer to what I requested last night.
Unfortunately, I don't have much to say about it, except that I
believe that's the 4th Star Control II reference in the column this
month, so let's ease up a bit, eh?
| Zelda fallout |
| Ok, so I know there are lots of letters that didn't got published.
But what's this talk of a stout, chubby, geeky little green hero? That
character design was more of a limitation of the console (all characters
look like Link too - that doesn't mean they're all short and fat).
There was a far more obvious character design change which no one
seemed to notice. It's more noticeable when you see screenshots of the
first OoT demos: Link's eye color (blue eyes??), Link's hair lenght /
change of hairstyle, Link's hair color - when did he dye it blonde? Did
he turn sort of Super Saiyan? Chalk it up to "character
internationalization" or something.
Last, but not least, in some early screenshots, he has sort of a
squirrely / rabbit face (those theeth always sticking out of his mouth).
That was stretching it, I think, because never in the manuals they
showed Link like too much of an elf.
Anyway, I know this letter is late, so I won't talk much about Zelda
(forget about her looks, even her role in the game got an impressive
change). There can be lots of changes done to the main characters'
design, because they're not the same ones from previous games (which
can't be done in a Mario game - now there's a game where characters
really haven't changed... except for Bowser... hair plugs, anyone?).
As for the next game, we may or may not have a Link that wears
earrings. :)
-----
Danny,
who's embarrassed to not have sent this letter sooner. |
Hmm, you're right... there has been more evolution to the series
than I thought at first, and some solid reasons why things have been
changed away.
After thinking it over, I'm almost sorry I bought up the topic tho.
Miyamoto has said in past interviews that the feeling he wanted to get
across with the original Zelda, and all the subsequent iterations in the
series, was the feeling he had when he was a little kid wandering around in
a field with a stick, pretending the field was a vast fantasy world and he was
the brave hero trying to save it. He's succeeded spectacularly, and as
long as he continues to, I really can't complain too much about what
characters keep coming back or how they look.
| Ding dong, the SOB is
dead... |
| Chris:
Hey, did you see this article at Video-Senki? Yamauchi: "I'd really
like to stay until next Christmas to see what happens and then retire, but
that's too long to wait, so right now I'm intending to leave after I see how
our new systems do this Christmas."
What? What!? This on the heels of "no thought to a successor"?
--DarkLao, hopes that when (uh... if?) he dies, they give Yamauchi the Lenin
treatment.
|
Wow. That's so interesting, I have no immediate response, but
there's something very fitting about putting Yamauchi in a glass coffin
and having legions of people raised under his regime line up to see
his corpse.
| Obligatory Persona 2
plug |
| Hey Chris,
If you're looking for a game that adds a new twist to traditional turn-based
combat, you should check out Atlus' Persona 2 Eternal Punishment.
Battles are handled in two ways. First there is the normal turn-based system -
with the advantage of being able to turn of the animations when you get bored
of them. The second, and more unique, "battle" mode is negotiation-based. You
basically have to persuade the monsters into thinking that your party is a good
group of people and once this is accomplished they'll help you out with items and
information. The persuation tactics vary from monster to monster, and things like
choice of speaker and composition of the negotiation party have an influence as well.
The game itself is pretty fun so far, with a complex story that ties into the
other Persona 2 but doesn't necessarily require you to play it. It's also based
in the (quasi) real world, which is an interesting change of scenery.
It's a shame that the game will probably not get too much attention, because
people are beginning to equate RPGs with Square, and Square alone, which can
only be a bad thing in the long run. The game plays well enough to demand more
than a casual glance, but with the current RPG climate that might not happen, and it'll
be relegated to the would-have-been-big-if-not-for-Square category.
Also, I've always wanted to play an RPG with a Soul Calibur-like battle engine.
Now that would rock! And with DVD and super-consoles here, why not?!
Lunchlady Doris
|
I've got no time for Persona 2, sad to say, but it does seem to be a
solid game. But what intrigues me here is the idea of an RPG with a Soul
Calibur engine - I've had the same thought myself. What's interesting is
how close Soul Calibur actually is to the N64 Zeldas: both have a system
wherein the player establishes a lock on the opponent, and moves in and
out and circles around while using various sword moves. The only real
difference is that Zelda allows you to change what you're locked on to,
whereas the only opponent in Soul Calibur is the one you're currently
fighting. Still, if they toned the number of extra moves down and put it
in a free-roaming world, Soul Calibur would make a beautiful action RPG.
| Fight a bit, then let
your troops deal with it |
| Dare I mention Suikoden 2 and Saga Frontier 2? Doubtless many others will as
well, but these are two games that mixed other combat types with the
traditional turn-based party-on-party approach - both featured a duel mode
and mass battle mode as well. I have to say, I prefer Suikoden 2's take on
the idea - the various character's battlefield abilities meant unit design
was a challenge in itself, few of the mass battles (except the earliest)
were tilted in a matter that made them way too easy, and the challenge of
trying to work out your opponents upcoming attacks from their taunts in
duels was definitely top-notch fun. (Not to mention the kick ass little
twirl of the tonfa on winning a fight.)
So what of this approach in the future? I don't know. I'd love to see
Suikoden 3 on a next-gen console taking these premises and creating a much
more fully fleshed out version of each combat system. Adding a real time
element to the mass combat, for example. The one problem is simply that
combat engine design is a big portion of the development effort for a game.
So why spend all that money and time on a minor portion of the game? I
dooubt this is something we'll see soon - maybe once the developers have cut
their teeth on the new environments, such things'll be feasible. Here's
hoping.
And as for the Twilight Zone stories working as short stories - as I
understand it, most of them were originally based on short stories, in fact
I have a book of such stories at home. However, I do agree that the
adaptations tend towards the classic play model. Don't forget films like
Reservoir Dogs, whcihc was originally a play, and which almost all the
action takes place in one room.
Ciaran Conliffe
Experienced Software Developer
|
You're absolutely right that developers won't build several complex
engines, just because a good engine takes time and building several of
them would be cost-prohibitive. What I do like is the idea of a
rolling game engine - since there won't be any big jumps from 3D to 4D
anytime soon, and since processor power isn't exactly a rare commodity,
there's no reason developers shouldn't build a good fighting engine
and then begin to modify it with new abilities (put a turn-based
strategy shell around it, include a negotiation mini game, you name
it.)
Of course, it'd have to
be well built in the first place for upgrades to be clean, and there'd
likely be a point where further augmentation would just be too messy
and you'd want to start from the beginning... but if all you're doing
is upgrading the graphics as you move from console to console, there's
no reason why an engine shouldn't be able to last years, not unlike how
things are in the PC FPS world.
| The day no HP were lost |
| CJ,
Whether or not it would actually work or not, doesn't concern me. I'd just
like to see some experimentation for once. Sure, we get some innovative
games like Parasite Eve (for it's time) and Saga Frontier 2, but the actual
impact was just a drop in the bucket. We have such a dynamic media on our
hands...why not run with it?
Frankly, I'd start by eliminating battles. Or just limiting them to
story-battles if needed. And if you think the battle engine is what makes a
RPG what it is, maybe you're in the wrong genre.
-Red Raven, tired of "leveling up" |
I agree completely, totally, 100%.
And that ticks me off. How are we supposed to have an interesting column
unless we have something to argue about. Correct and reasonable tho they
might be: STOP HAVING MY OPINIONS,
DAMMIT!
Like this next guy, f'r instance.
| Catching me in a
contradiction |
| Yo Chris,
There are a number of RPGs that feature some sort of
resource management. Simplest example would be FF8:
You had to manage your resources (or gather a lot
more) to be able to create the best weapons. Of
course, this is a very simplistic resource management,
and the driving force is still combat, but if this is
the type of resource management you meant, then RPGs
(particularly Square RPGs) are pretty much rich in the
stuff. FF7 - Chocobo Breeding, FF8/9 - Card Games.
Suikoden had potential for some sort of strategy/RPG
hyrbid, but you really had no choice in what battles
to fight and how many troops to bring, etc. The only
real tactical choice you made was to assign generals.
But the fact that the battles are there prove that a
strategy/RPG hybrid is possible; the army-battles in
Suikoden weren't really tedious or bringing down the
game in any way. Of course the problem is that at
heart, it's still an RPG. If your goal was to sell to
fans of both RPGs and strategy games, you'd probably
fail miserably on the strategy side.
The main problem with trying to sell a game that
combines elements from different genres is that
basically you're trying to market to the intersection
of two sets, which invariably ends up less than if you
sold to fans of one genre alone.
Anyway, why are you even considering this? Aren't you
a story whore? (Hehe...cheap shot) Don't you think
that added gameplay elements would only detract more
from a well-written story? I know you tried to close
the debate on this yesterday, but given the choice of
having more, better gameplay or more, better story,
what would you choose?
-theRoy- |
Excellent question, theRoy. And my answer to you is this - having
smaller, more tightly crafted gameplay elements in greater variety would
actually add to the story (and linearity) rather than subtract from
it. I see a setup where rather than wandering in and out of towns and
getting into battles at will, you'd
move from one story based event to the other in a much more scripted way.
I'm not saying you'd never have the chance to wander around (I
hated Xenogears disc 2 too) but having clearly defined goals using
different gameplay modes in different
sections of the game would allow for events to be synched in with the story
better, which leads to tighter, more interesting stories. Obviously this
entire setup will sound like hell to a lot of the people who are writing
in trashing FF8 for being too movie-like, but this is my fantasy, not
theirs.
| A world without limits |
| Chris-
Alright, there's something about this column that's
been bothering me for quite some time now. Whatever
happened to the 500-word limit? I can't speak for the
other readers of your column, but when I check in on
the column, I expect the letters to be a paragraph or
two long and to the point. Also, I expect to find the
occasional letter from some lunatic who does things
like put goldfish into red and white seashells (the
"Pokemon trainer"). Instead, I find excruciatingly
long letters rambling about something that I couldn't
really care less about. What happened to the good old
days?
-L. Valeth
"What the hell is this crap? Ah, forget it. I'm just
gonna go play Tekken Tag until my eyes bleed." |
This week has been kinda longwinded, I admit, but things haven't
changed all that much. The 500 word limit is still in place - just about
all the letters I've printed so far have been under it or only a few dozen
words above it. (Come on, I'm not that much of a hardass to toss someone
out of consideration just because they're 50 words over.)
And I can only print what I get, although I thought that letter last
week about Yamauchi being harmful to newborns was kinda amusing in a
vaguely disturbing way.
| Complexity theory |
| "a really good game would be about more than just hand to hand combat, it'd
be also be about planning, strategy, resource management, and
negotiation"
X-COM(it did come out for the PSX, after all)? RTK-infinity?. Lately, it
seems like there's a tendancy for games that try to combine all these
elements to one degree or another (Kessen, which is really RTK-lite). The
problem I have is that the other trend is to make *everything* real-time. I
don't have anything against real-time gameplay, especially for battles,
whether one-on-one or RTS-like. But as the level of complexity in the
planning, strategy and negotiation phases goes up, it's harder and harder or
a human to keep pace with a computer. There seems to be an unwillingness
among developers to combine turn-based startegy with real-time action to get
the kind of game you're talking about. Imagine trying to play Civilization
in real-time. Now imagine Civ with a full RTS battle system for combat
resolution. The difference seems obvious to me.
Orin the lawyer - who now needs a cold shower
|
This isn't much related to the topic, but your letter gave me an
interesting insight as to why it's always a few determined heroes that end
up saving the world - because games really can't effectively control the
massive armies that you'd expect to settle such things. There are a couple
of games that pay lip service to the idea (in Saga Frontier II, Gustave's
control of steel-equipped armies is just as important to the story as Wil's
battle against the Anima Relic) but few console games (a few heavy duty
strategy games aside) have really been able to pull it off. Maybe that'll
change in a few years, tho... who knows?
Closing Comments:
Didn't get much in the way of reader topics today (you people
suck!) but maybe that's just as well, because we need something
lighter after all the debate that's been going on. And with that in
mind, let's talk about Paper Mario. Thoughts? Impressions? Reflections
on how it relates to that odd hybrid, the Super Mario RPG? Let me
know, and I'll be back... eventually.
-Chris Jones, wants to have a
real time kung fu survival horror rhythm RPG
|
