Wide as the ocean, deep as the sky -
March 6, 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.
I said hey gunner-man, that's quicksand...
Don't say we didn't warn you.
A great and terrible plague seems to have attacked various computers belonging to RPG news organizations as of late. Nominally, all of these incidents are unconnected, with some people claiming hardware problems and some software problems on a wide variety of machines, but I know the truth - I know who's been covertly attacking us, and our retribution shall be fierce and terrible indeed.
You have been warned.
Onward.
| Thematic disillusionment |
| Chris,
I'm a bit tired of games ramming themes down my throat, the Final Fantasy series being the most obvious offender. I'm not against it if it can be done better, but it's just done too heavy handedly right now. For example, I turned the sound waaaayyyy down when "Eyes on Me" was playing in the Ragnarok to salvage the scene. Remember in FF6 when all the characters stood in a line and said something like "I like my friends because they make me feel special like when I touch myself!"? What do most people remember the defining moment of that scene being? Nope, not Mog's pitiful cry of "I have my friends here," but Kefka telling them that they sound like a whiny self-help book! The villain can see through the lameness of the theme, so why can't the writers who create the villain's dialogue?
Even in Metal Gear Solid, which integrated its themes a bit better than FF STILL came on too strong. Did anyone else cringe during Naomi's voiceover? "Snake, the important thing is that you choose life... and then LIVE!" Now that's deep. With the current RPG experience, I've deduced that having themes tends to sappify otherwise terrific games. Interestingly, when I think of my favorite books--Lord of the Rings, the Prydain Chronicles and Harry Potter--the theme tends to be the basic "good vs. evil" theme. When I think of movies that I really enjoy like the Usual Suspects, Se7en, Chinatown and Gladiator, I don't see themes. I do see sweet stories, which almost everyone agrees is the backbone of a good RPG.
I guess Chrono Trigger and Vagrant Story would be my best ideals of RPGs that doesn't let a theme get in its way. Chrono Trigger has an interesting hook--"what if we could time travel?"--but there isn't really a theme. The story is fun throughout as it has the freedom to just be a good story, rather than restricted to a theme with some psychobabble metaphysics. Vagrant Story has a darker storyline that is still plenty complex without a theme. I'm not against themes, but they certainly need to be done better.
NinjaPirateMan
|
I think Vagrant Story did have a theme (several, actually) but its part of the game's strengths that we weren't subjected to any characters mouthing off ad nauseum about it. And Metal Gear Solid wasn't that bad if you ignored Nastasha's channel. Meanwhile, the dreaded Eyes on Me scene isn't that cringeworthy in my opinion, because it's a scene, and not a talking heads sequence where one character clumsily explains to another how much they're in love.
I think the key thing to remember here is that in many instances, the awkwardness we're seeing may be a function of the translation process... but on the other hand, a lot of manga and anime also seem to have a weakness for big, gushy, verbose scenes so perhaps we're just seeing some culture shock, as Japanese narrative style conflicts with Western expectations.
And yet, even in Japan you have wonderfully understated stuff like many of Akira Kurosawa's films, so perhaps I'm just babbling here.
| Bloat is always somebody else's fault |
| Chris,
Growing up with Dragon Warrior, RPGs were tedium at
best -- plot was a line or two to set you on the next
fetch quest (FFI's key-dynamite-herb-crystal thing was
a special offender). Then came Final Fantasy II, and
blew (probably everybody) away: characters fought each
other spoonily, died, turned traitor, got eaten by
giant serpents, married, ended up being related... My
standards were ruined by that game; anymore, I can
only think of "true" RPGs as serial-novels with
fighting systems attached.
That's why I really love Xenogears, despite all its
flaws: at its core, its got a damn good story with
all those twist-a-plot revelations and disparate
threads coming together. I was less than satisfied
with Chrono Cross for the same reason -- it seemed to
be going somewhere, but kind of lost it in its summary
ghosts-on-the-beach close.
To the charge that big plots can get ponderous &
bogged down, I agree -- but you have to remember the
cultural point when dealing with games from Japan.
Namely, that lots of ideas can get bloated &
text-heavy in localization (Xenogears!), and that some
themes don't translate so well at all. Square games
especially seem to take a preachy/cutesy line that
clashes with the rest of the plot; five minutes of Fei
telling Krellian why he loves Elly, or the cursed
Chu-churucifixion, makes me scream (as did Terra's "I
know what love is!"). But I think those are partly
artifacts of Japanese language and culture that clash
with American sensibilities. I'd love to see a major,
"epic" RPG scripted here.
On a side note, do you think plot bloat has increased
with technical ability? FFII had a much bigger
revolution in scripting than in anything else; was
more time spent on this b/c graphics and the rest were
still primitive? Similarly, the more FMV and polygon
characters we see, the more plot bloating grows -- a
consequence of bigger stories overall, or are
developers getting "sloppy" because they have other
areas to concentrate on?
-Colin Bucher
|
I think it's too simple to blame bloat on technical increases, although there's a grain of truth there - you can only do so much when your text system is geared towards "Our princess is in another castle", whereas you can put libraries on a CD... and it shows. But at the same time, I'd point out that FMV, especially silent FMV, as used in the last few FFs, is a great boon in escaping preachy themes, because the characters can't talk and are thus forced to show their intentions and situations through action. A lot of FMV is awfully well put together, even when you look past the special effects. There's a real directness in FF7's pivotal scene at the end of disc 1 that you wish would carry over to the dialog.
| Uncommon monsters who show up out of nowhere |
| Hey Chris,
I'm not going to get into the debate as to whether or not RPG random
encounters should be done away with. I will say that when they're
ridiculously impeding, (FFIX, Skies Of Arcadia) I wouldn't mind if they
were banned by law. I will also say that lots of RPGs have forgone the
random encounter with satisfying results. (Grandia, Chrono Cross) But
in yesterday's column, Vestal implied that the random encounter was
born of necessity due to NES hardware limitations. This is utter bull
puckey. Random encounters have been a part of RPGs since their
inception 30 years ago as D&D/Chainmail. Every few seconds the dungeon
master rolled a die, and if certain numbers came up: bam, you just
stumbled into a random encouter, brave adventurers. The d.m. would then
jump out of his chair and wave his arms wildly and say
"WWWWWRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSHHHHH!!!" I think I remember that happening.
Anyway, every monster in the D&D pantheon had a "Frequency" stat that
determined just how random an encounter with it would be. So, while
random encounters certainly do often suck eggs, it should at least be
acknowledged that they can be seen as a legitmate RPG tradition by
certain hardnosed diehards who were playing RPGs long before freaking
Dragon Quest, when some people who profess to know everything about RPG
history were still suckling at their mama's teat.
GIA RULES!!!
Druff
|
Thanks for that extremely condescending remark, sir. You're mostly right - random battles were part of D&D, and more importantly, part of Ultima, the intermediate link between D&D and Dragon Quest. But I think Andrew was more or less right when he said that technical limitations prevented monsters from being shown - a random number generator to determine if a monster shows up after every step is a much easier programming hack than having to generate a bestiary of monsters and keep track of their positions. Still, from that perspective it's possible that we'd still have random invisible encounters even if RPGs had started out on more advanced hardware... but it's becoming much better practice not to have that be the case.
| One more shot at Mr. Vestal |
| AV is wrong about the Tower of Babel. All the "random" battles in that area are scripted, so when you step on a certain spot the battle starts instantly, as in with NO load time. And there are no scripted battles in mid air.
You can do all the scripted battles in an area and then walk around forever without a battle. There aren't any truly "random" battles there like in the rest of the game. Anyone with a Tower of Babel save can verify this.
I just wanted to defend Xenogears and its development team against these unjust attacks. They made the Tower of Babel's battles different just to prevent the very thing everyone wrongly criticizes them for.
-Swordbreaker
|
I'm pretty damn sure the ToB battles are random, because I clearly remember fighting a few mid-air (or dangling from a tether) myself, but if anybody wants to confirm Swordbreaker's claim, be my guest.
| DRAMA! |
| Chris,
RPG's with fun, lighthearted anime-esque storylines and super-deformed characters are great. I really enjoy them. But when I think back to some of my most fond moments playing RPG's, it's playing the serious ones.
Who can forget viewing Clouds flashback to Nibelheim and seeing Sephiroth walk away from the burning village, all with his awesome synth opera music playing? Who can forget when you beat the floating island and you see the entire world be changed forever? Who can forget watching Id lift up the freaking Yggrassil without even touching it, and beating you in one hit when you fight him?!?! I could go on and on, Chris... I live for serious, operatic drama in RPG's, dealing with life and death, power andlove, killing and saving. I live for playing as hero's who aren't 100% good, and fighting villains who aren't 100% bad. The more drama, the better, Chris!!
(shakespearean voice)DRAMA, Chris!! DRAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(/shakespearean voice)
- Shake
|
Nobody's arguing that RPGs aren't capable of fine dramatic moments - instead, I think the question being asked is wether those dramatic moments are worth the lame philosophical yammering that occurs around them. But then again, even the most lighthearted games seem to feel a need to get serious and preachy around the climax, so there may be no escape from bad philosophy. And in that case, maybe you're just as well off playing more dramatic stuff, if that's what you crave.
| Voice actors you can understand are bad |
| This somewhat ties in with yesterday's topic of offensive games: voice acting in console titles.
Many people I know don't understand why I prefer the Japanese voice actors (VAs) to their American counterparts. It is vital to the development of a character to have his or her voice be appropriate and believable.
When I put in a masterpiece like Xenogears, and then hear Fei's voice sound like a whiny 10-year-old's (and be two seconds out of sync), there is a problem. Many people disagree with the importance of character
voices, but I believe that it depends on whether or not you think of games as art. For those readers who do--would you have some piece of great filmwork re-dubbed with inappropriate and cartoony voices? Obviously
not. (This argument should be familiar to anime fans--however, the whole sub vs. dub debate has yet to be thoroughly discussed as it relates to games.)
What many people don't understand is that the director of a game is directly responsible for nearly every part of the final product. KOJIMA Hideo told the Japanese VAs exactly how he wanted them to deliver their
parts in Metal Gear Solid. Now, regardless of one's opinion of the quality of the English voices, is it not somehow defacing the work as a whole to replace entirely the voice of a character? Even if the new voice was
well acted, it is not the voice that the director wanted in the final product.
Generally, when a game is brought over to these shores, the company is looking to increase revenues by expanding the market, but doesn't plan for corresponding increase in expenditures--they want a high profit
margin for their troubles. Consequently, most localisation budgets are extremely small. And since quality VAs cost quite a lot, the companies are forced to look through the dregs of the profession. They seek to find
those who didn't quite make the cut for that hand-lotion-ad-voiceover, or were rejected for that bit part on "Ed, Edd n Eddy" last week. What I'm trying to say is that the VA talent we hear in games today is just plain
shit.
With games today striving to be self-contained and polished works of art, the largest single pitfall is the voice acting. I truly hope that many more games follow the lead of titles such as Onimusha in allowing the player
to choose to hear the game as it was originally intended.
--Justin, fan of BC Bud
|
If I remember right, Kojima was involved in the localization of MGS, so those voice actors are just as kosher as the Japanese version. Certainly they seemed a cut above when I played the game the first time through.
But more than that, I reject the idea that English voice acting is bad, period. In a lot of films and anime, yes, it makes sense to have a dub, because the characters actions are specifically keyed to their mouths and actions, and attempts to have English voice acting mimic both content and form are often awkward (but not always, see Cowboy Bebop's dub). In games this isn't so much of a problem, since CG models can easily be resynched to the English dialog.
Beyond that, you said it yourself when you pointed out that the problem wasn't so much with the voices themselves as it was with the amount of money companies want to spend on the game. When companies are serious about good presentation (and they're getting more so every day) you get good voice acting - I was very happy with Soul Reaver in this respect, and there are lots of PC games with great voice work. (My life for Auir, etc.) More importantly, if games are "self-contained and polished works of art", then it makes sense to try and have as seamless a presentation as possible. Dubbing foreign films is one thing, but I see no reason to have Otacon, an American wannabe otaku character, speaking flawless Japanese. It ruins the illusion.
| Whatever happens, happens |
| If you asked most console RPGers "what makes a great game," I'd predict most would say the same thing. RPG fans like to distinguish themselves from the maddening crowd -- they want to feel like their tastes are deeper and more sophisticated than the average shmuck. So they're going to say, "why the STORY, of course! A good game simply MUST have a good story."
'Simply not true. Ultimately what makes a good game, is a good game. An intriguing plot-line factors into that, of course, but if it's not fun to play, why waste your time when there's so many more games to be had?
I don't expect my gaming to reveal to me the secrets of the universe. I don't think that getting over 200% of the map in Symphony of the Night will make me a better person. Rather it's a hobby -- and one that I love dearly. But that doesn't mean that it needs to try and be something that it's not.
I'm not saying the potential isn't there. When Metal Gear Solid came out, it was just about the last game that I thought I'd like. I was a (trumpet sounds) "Role-Player" after all. But because it was fun, it didn't matter. The characters and story were just the icing on the cake that made an already great game even greater. But even with all of Snake's philosophical waxing, it never pretended that it wasn't a game. MGS never took itself too seriously, and I think that's a big part of what really impressed me.
El Cactuar! (long-winded and twice as prickly)
|
A fair number of people might disagree with you about MGS not taking itself too seriously, although admittedly any game that allows you to hook plastique up to a guard's back as he's taking a leak... well, you get the idea. Still, we've gone full circle hear and echoed what Andrew was saying yesterday - play games as games, enjoy what they offer, but don't (for the moment) expect to see any great philosophical genius coming out of them. That's all.
Closing Comments:
Finished ZOE yesterday, but I'll give you folks that haven't a few more days before we start discussing it. (Whatever there may be to discuss.) For tomorrow, I'd like some feedback on the discussion about voice acting: what's your take on it? Enlighten me. Later.
-Chris Jones, the Binary Avenger
|
