Toodles. As of 9:00 AM EST tomorrow morning, the Agent has flown the coop. I'm off on a plane, train, and automobile, my destination: adventure! Something like that, anyhow. So everyone breathe in a sigh of relief. Eight days of AK doing letters at GIA. Eight glorious days without fear of me trashing your letters and opinions. Eight days without putting up with my attitude and my snarky remarks, my false machismo and arrogance. I'm gonna miss you, too. And, just to keep you all occupied, I've got a thick lettercol tonight, with discussion of the current state of RPGs, where I see them going, and what we all think of that. | Square trends | Hola Agent, I've been playing Square games ever since the first Final Fantasy, I'veI've begun to notice some trends in them. Bear with me hear and see if youagree. WARNING - MINOR SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS SQUARE GAMES BELOW. Heroes becoming more mentally unstable- In FF4 we had Cecil doubting hisloyalty to Baron and his own self worth, but then he pulls together uponbecoming a Paladin, everyone's happy. Then it's on to everyone's favoritemental case Cloud in FF7: memory loss, self doubt, loss of consciouscontrol, etc. Now in Xenogears we have a character who's not only sufferingfrom amnesia, self doubt, and frequent blackouts, but who also frequentlyturns into a killing machine that attacks his friends! Is Squall going toget committed in FF8? We can only wait and see. Proliferation of Flashback sequences- I don't recall any flashbacks in FF4,there might have been one. FF6 had quite a few, but kept in within limit.FF7 went to town on those to try to explain Cloud's psyche. Xenogears isabout 60 percent flashbacks! Almost all of flashbacks are usually toexplain the hero's forgotten past (see above mentally unstable characterrule). Increasing role of love ineterests- The first FF love interst I canremember was Cecil/Rosa in FF4. They kept things pretty quite during thegame, and just ended up having the generic ending wedding. FF6 had the nowfamous opera sequence for Locke/Celes. FF7 centered around Cloud and Aerisand Xenogears had flashback afer flashback regarding Fei and Elly'srelationship. Now FF8 is toting "love" as its main theme. Why's Squaregetting all mushy on us? I'm not sure if I want to play a love RPG. (Note,usually the main role of the love interest is for the woman to aid the heroin his mental instability). Obscurer endings that explain less- I think FF endings peaked with the onein FF4. It took you through every character and showed what happened tothem after saving the world. Then they all get together to show thateverything's fine and dandy along with a happy wedding. FF6 just showed usthe dialogue the characers had while escaping from Kefka's tower and theairship flying around with credits. What happened to the character's lateron? FF7, holy and the lifeforce destroy meteor, that's it. Sure I know youcan fit only so much FMV on a disk, but did the ending have to be entirelyFMV? Haven't beat Xenogears yet so I can't comment. Whew! That's it! Comments? - Fabio |
All your trends do seem to exist in Square games, and other games of the genre as well. There's a lot of other trends that I could point out, but they all boil down to one thing: a growing maturity of plotline in the game plotlines. In the fine days of Dragon Warrior, plots were thin as wafers, and not really open to discussion. The Dragonlord is evil. Ergo, you kill the Dragonlord. Simple, no? Your main character didn't have a personality, much less personal faults. Everything was pat and clean, like a fairy tale or a Disney movie. Now, as the technology and desire to tell stories with games grows, so does the realism and maturity of the characters. Love interests become characters instead of objects. Flashbacks are used to flesh out histories for the character, which seldom affects gameplay, but affects the story. Flawed, unstable heroes. One of my favourite moments in RPGdom is in Vandal Hearts, where the main character, Ash, actually feels guilt over the dozens of people he slaughters during the game. He eventually decides to soldier on and kill some more people anyway, but my soared to see it acknowledged that hey, it's kinda bad to murder hundreds of people in your quest to save the world. The end result is a fuller, more complex storyline for the game. With complexity comes resistance and preference issues. On one hand, I thank my lucky stars that I'm playing games now whose plot isn't a throwaway. I like flawed heroes and darker worlds to explore. I like serious romantic subplots instead of mindless, sexless drones. And so help me, I'm sick to death of happy endings, where the world is saved, and everyone goes home and becomes a king or queen or whatever. On the flipside, there's a lot of people who like their entertainment to be escapist. They want the fairy tales from start to finish, with uncomplicated True Love winning out over all and happy endings where everything is spelled out. They don't play video games for realism, after all. They've got plenty of that outside their window. In the video game world, everything is neater. It's all good, there. And that's something they like to immerse themselves in. With staggering steps, various game developers are moving in different directions. Most of them still stick close to the escapist ideal. Square is making some stabs into adult storytelling, and it's created waves in the RPGing pool. I'm riding them out, and hope to find truly great plots at the end of the ride. Those who prefer escapism, well, I guess you'll have to look beyond Square, because it's only going to get further from what you want. | Ending troubles | Howdy, Allan. It's been approximately 12 minutes since I finished Xenogears, and I came to a sobering conclusion while staring at at the words "Xenogears, Episode V, THE END." Endings for RPGs are just too short these days. Have you or anyone else noticed this? I didn't until I actually thought about it after completing Xenogears. Here I have in front of me a wonderful RPG made by everyone's favorite (for all of you who would disagree, sales don't lie) RPG developer, Square. I spent approximately 60 hours on it, not to mention a lot of joy and heartache. The story really got me interested, and despite what anyone else says, *I* enjoyed every facet of the game (save the dubbing). However, after slaving to raise money and to perfect my Gears, and after having a hell of a time beating up Deus and his cronies, I'm treated to an excellent anime scene, and then the ending credits, complete with a beautiful song. I suppose the entire thing took about 15 minutes. Seriously, now. After spending 60+ hours of my lifetime plugging away at anything, I want to see a hefty payback when all of my efforts are done. I want an ending that goes into more depth - not necessarily closure. FFT's ending had much more depth than Xenogears', and it had just about the same amount of closure, if not less. From my viewpoint, 15 minutes just isn't enough time to acheive that kind of depth. Of course, that's only my opinion, but I think it's a valid one. Maybe I'm asking too much of the game designers, I don't know. IMO, I don't think I'm being ungrateful - I mean, I laud the game in all aspects save the dubbing - but the ending left me unfulfilled. I would have liked a longer anime sequence.. perhaps some more voice acting, or some more depth.. more anything. Again, I could be asking too much, since I don't know about the things that go into game endings, but what do you think? -Matt Blackie |
Length and depth don't mean the same thing. Square doesn't seem especially interested in spelling out "this is what happened to Character X" in their endings any longer. They present an ending that makes sense thematically, giving closure to those issues, and leave it there, leaving the audience wanting more. FF7 pushed this too far, leaving things too open and vague to make any sort of statement clear. FF Tactics did a better job, reiterating the major theme of the game (the truth can never truly die), and then gives us that interesting scene at the end, which I appreciate more and more the more I think about it. Delita is the generic hero guy from a million RPGs who kills dozens of people in the name of "good", marries the princess, ascends the throne, becomes famous, but in a brilliant twist of the knife, he's lost so much in his quest to do right that he's miserable and lonely. In the end of FFT, we don't know what happens to Orlandu, or Beowulf, or Agrias or Mustadio. It doesn't matter. The truth wins out, we see what happens to the false hero, and that's all that counts. So what about Xenogears? Well, let's see. The ending establishes what Deus was for, it brings Elly and Fei together once and for all, it establishes that they want to stay with humanity, and the planet is saved. What else, pray, is needed? You're asking for more, but you're not saying what, and from my perspective, adding anything more to Xenogears' ending would be redundant and best, tacked-on and cluttered more likely. Less is more, sometimes. The story ended, and I don't see how making the ending longer would have improved things. | Where's da wizards? | My main complaint about the recent RPGs I've played is that you justdon't have wizards anymore. Look at FFI, you have Wizards. Look at FFII (US), you have wizards. Look at FFIII, you have, uh, magacite (sp?). All I did to fight thefinal boss in FFIII was cast ultima, cure spells, and use the occasionalEther. That was just boring. Materia is even worse, you don't evenhave to "learn" the spells like you did with Magacite. I like the get alevel, get a spell system of FFII best because you got to see how thecharacters were becoming more powerful. As FFVIII has (apparently) gone for an entirely new system of magic usewhich will have to be judged on its own merits. But I sincerely hopethat some characters are at least Wizard-ish and others are just yourstandard, built like a tank, fighter types. Its more interesting thatway. I like having a wizard in my party. Call it the Gandalf Syndrome. Thank god (plural if you want, or if you're an atheist sub in "randomcosmic forces") for FF Tactics. - Trey Does anybody remember that game 7th Saga for the SNES? Just curios, Iliked that game. |
Hey, something I agree with! Wow! Anyhow, while I'm not in favor of having more wizards per se, the idea is good: namely, distinctive, unique party members. The growing trend in the FF games (only, thankfully) is to unify the gameplay by having all characters use and access magic in the same way. While I'm all for characters who are defined more by their personalities than their capabilities, the fact is that we're playing a game here. Combat utility in FF6 and FF7, after a point, becomes an issue of how long you've been building the character in question up, not any sort of individual use. I like the strategic challenge of having different characters with different strengths and weaknesses. Unifying the magic system makes the individual character, to a great extent, moot: Ultima does 9999 damage whether you're Sabin or Celes. That's not challenging, that's not engaging, and I'd like to have individualism of characters restored to the FF games. Thankfully, this isn't a terribly broad trend, though. In response to your question, I've been advised by my therapist to forget about 7th Saga, in an effort to break my involuntary response of retching every time I hear that battle music. Suffice to say that I consider it the single worst RPG ever to cross the face of the earth. If I owned a copy, I'd shatter it with a sledgehammer and burn the pieces. I think I disagree on that point, in other words. | PSX2 banter | Playstation 2 having the ability to create Toy Story graphics? Good Lord!Now we can all do that tongue thing to all PC owners who spend thousands ofdollars every year upgrading their systems to have the latest PC acceleratorcard. =P =P =P But the question is, how hard will it be to do it? Just because the systemhas the ability to create graphics of that quality doesn't mean it's easy.Furthermore, how will it move if the graphics are of that quality? Will itmove at a constant frame rate or will it go at 2 frames per second? Andanother thing, why is that article bragging so much about the system'sability to play DVD movies and stuff? If this system is marketed as an"all-purpose entertainment system" and not a "games machine", say bye-bye tomy dollar. Didn't Sony learn anything from CDi and 3DO (the system, not thesoftware company)? Now that we know what Sony has up their sleeve, I wonder what Nintendo willshow.. Oh well, as long as Miyamoto is alive, I'll always buy a Nintendosystem.. I guess that's just me. -Clyde Hudman, hey, did you guys ever have a Zelda: Ocarina of time review? |
See, I agree with your point that a) developing for this sucker is going to be hard as hell, and b) the all-purpose entertainment system is traditionally a flop. I can't fathom how Sony expects to sell this thing at a price point of over eight hundred dollars. Like you said, it sure as hell didn't help the 3D0 or the CDi. I'd like to think they're smarter than that. But then again, the first time I trusted a company to do the smart thing with their system, the 32X was released. The second time, the 64DD was announced. I place no faith in game companies. Nintendo's sort of in a tight spot now. Over the next two-three years, the only remaining selling points of the N64 is their first-party software support. They're behind in technology, a bit outclassed by the DC, totally whupped by the PSX2. Their third party support isn't as strong as the DC's is. They've got a notoriously complex development kit out and a small storage medium. What ARE they going to do? I've got no idea. The diehard support for the name alone can sustain them for a while, but will it last forever? And no, we never did a Zelda 64 review. | 2D gaming is dying | About the unveiling of some of the specifications of the PlayStation2, I wasnoticing the absence of anything relating to two-dimensional gaming. What'sup with that? That was one of Saturns pluses when it came out, and they have(at least in Japan and on the import scene) run with it. That's all well andgood that it can push a gazillion polygons in a nano-second, but what aboutgames OTHER than racing or first-person or TEKKEN?? Also, what about backwardcompatability? If it's a good system that's all well and good, but I shudderat the thought of letting my PlayStation begin to collect dust, the games atleast. Also, about the Final Fantasy Thread Which Would Not Die (tm), I sure wishyou people would just stop whining. The game is out, it's done. If you don'tlike it, then don't play it. The game has its flaws, like questionablecharacters and dialogue, but that doesn't mean that it's a horrible game. Theonly reason that some people say that it's horrible is because it it a FinalFantasy game, a series with a high standard of quality. Square tried some newthings, and it didn't work out that well in some cases. WE ALL KNOW they cando better. Another well-written letter from the HypeSpider |
Backward compatability is something that's a neat idea, but a lot easier said than done. I don't find it terribly surprising that the PSX2 isn't backwardly compatible with the PSX any more than I was shocked that the Dreamcast doesn't play Saturn or Sega CD games, or that the N64 doesn't play SNES games. Backwardly compatible systems are the exception in the console industry, not the rule. Secondly, I hate to break it to you, but in the face of 55 million polys a second, 2D is dead in the water. Hell, in a worst-case scenario, they can just use polygons to replicate 2D gameplay. With the level of detail and speed at which polygons can be used with the PSX2, and the experience developers have gained with 3D graphics from this past generation of game systems, the two main sticking points of 2D graphics are totally overtaken. I suspect sprite-based graphics are going the way of the buggy whip before 2005 is out, if not sooner. There's a minor grassroots, pro-2D sentiment among some gamers, but it sure as hell isn't present in any developer I can name. 3D graphics at the PSX2 level can do everything 2D can do and a whole lot more, and I can't name a games developer that's going to choose tradition over effectiveness. | English language fetishism, the response | Hey, you mentioned the whole Japanese English fettish thing tonight, soI'll tell you what I know. Which isn't too much, but hey. Ahem. Since you're lucky enough not to go to high school in the UnitedStates at the moment, you probably missed the advent of February's Fadof the Current Lunar Cycle. Which is, of course, bland-looking shirts orhats with a string of Chinese characters on them. The most prevalantshirts are made by Mecca (and they all have the EXACT SAME string ofkanji on them), and there are also some with the Kani name emblazoned onthem. Now, why are people donning the expensive Kanji gear when theydon't even have a bloody clue what it means? Because they're unoriginalhosers, and everyone else is wearing one. But besides that, why didpeople *start* wearing them? Because it looked cool. There's some sortof mystique about something in another language, doesn't matter what itsays. Especially if it's in a totally different character set thanyours. It's unfamiliar, and therefore interesting. That's the bestexplanation I can offer. *shrug.* I'd guess this is where AV's legendaryJapanese fettish comes from - his soul craves confusion anddisorientation, so he's naturally drawn towards and into a culturetotally different from his. (Personally, I think dealing with theopposite sex is culture shock enough, never mind girls from anothercountry, but I have a Japanese fettish too, so what the hell am Italking about. *wink*) Incidentally, though, some of those English shirts in Japan are justplain bizzare. I've met a lot of exchange students, so I've seen thephenomonon close up and personally. One t-shirt said "Clap your cherry -Clack your cherry." Tell me THAT would be worn by someone from NorthAmerica. Wow. Makes you wonder just what the hell those Mecca shirts saywhen translated into English. Cheshire-ly yours, ~Game Cat |
For once, I have nothing to add.
Closing comments Well, that does it for another day. I left some nice, burly, potentially explosive topics for AK as an extra-special present, plus a few of my patented rants, just so you don't feel gypped. Heh. Have a good one, everybody, be nice to AK, and I'll see you in eight days. At which point I'll start blowing things up again. :) Ciao. - Allan Milligan | | | |
