BocoDragon said:
Adages like "show don't tell" have traditionally applied to linear narratives like books or movies. In those mediums, you either have a character explain some aspect of the world verbally, or you have a scene which indirectly communicates this information visually. With gaming, we have player interaction. You don't have to be shown or told... the player could also just "find" a story detail through his interaction. For the first time we have the ability to cut all exposition out of scripted scenes and place it into a format where the player can discover these details at their own leisure. It actually frees the narrative from talking heads and having to be beat over the head with visual clues about every aspect of the world.
Not that this is some objective improvement for storytelling. Not every game should do this. But I wouldn't condemn this style of story as worse... I actually find it refreshing that there is a wealth of added backstory that isn't beat into my head through cutscenes or NPCs... I can read it when I feel like it. Check out tidbits of the story on the way to switching my weapon. It's not unreasonable for an RPG game that already relies on spending time in a menu.
The datalog also helped SE pull off the early in media res scenes IMO. They started talking about Fal Cie and L'Cie and they had the luxury of not having unrealistic exposition dialogue "oh, L'Cie are.... blah blah blah". Everyone knows what L'Cie are in this world, there is no Tidus outsider character to give a reason for why the story is explaining everything to you about the world. The datalog lets them cut the talky BS and present the ultradrama.. then we can discover the meaning of those terms in detail if we desire, as a Cocoon native would already understand. IMO anyone who said that Fal'Cie/L'Cie were meaningless terms should have hit that datalog 20 minutes into the game. It's not like it doesn't remind you everytime it updates.
FFVIII used this encyclopedia in its storytelling as well.
I wish the LOTR movies had a datalog. :lol No idea what was going on in 9+ hours of that thing..
I agree with you 100%, except that an in-game, text-only datalog is a poor substitute for player interaction in a game. It's like the appendix at the end of the Lord of the Rings. There were numerous ways to expand on XIII's universe in the way the datalog did by building into the game world itself. No one can deny that even learning a bit of history from a character is going to be more interesting than reading it in menu-based encyclopedia.
In other words:
M°°nblade said:
The datalog is kind of a replacement for the NPC conversation. In previous FF games you had to press a button in front of an NPC to learn about the world. Now you press a button in the datalog menu. While this certainly lacks a virtual-social aspect, it does the job of explaining the story of the world.
This. Would love to see someone defend a datalog over towns and an actual interactive game world with people in it for the purpose of world-building.
ZephyrFate said:
I have no love for 8 nor any of its environments. IX is just perfect, so that's a no-duh sort of thing. The Forgotten City was great, if only for its music, but Midgar just came out of absolutely nowhere in its awesomeness.
Towns are pretty much just filler now with XIII's ridiculously addictive gameplay.
ZephyrFate said:
FF went 'unrecognizable' after IX. IX was the end-all of the series and everything afterward has just fallen apart.
No one takes you seriously anymore with statements like this. You need a crash course on argumentation dude. Every post of yours in here hurts my head. Can't state 'self-evident absolutes' in a thread full of thinking XIII-critics if you want to debate this for real.
ZephyrFate said:
:lol
ZephyrFate said:
It's a bit unfair to use FF7's Midgar as that was the only imaginative or worthwhile part to the entire game.
What? :lol
ZephyrFate said:
There's more atmosphere in Midgar than in most games out there -- not many games outside of, say, Blade Runner, have perfectly encapsulated modern dystopia, not in a wasteland (like a Fallout) but in a world heading towards it, slowly sapping away at its own misery and myopia. It's a bit unfair to use Midgar, which is arguably one of the best 'cities' ever envisioned in games, and compare it to XIII which has an entirely different focus and, for the most part, shies away from the dystopia.
That's the problem! XIII is ultra-dystopic, and you never get to see it! Cocoon seems like a goddamned paradise in flashbacks, but then we're led to empathize with a party whose focus becomes all about defending their home, their world and their lives against Fal'cie dominance and control. We don't even know their world. We don't get to see what's wrong. We don't get to talk with the people. Everything about XIII's experience is confined to the conversations between the six primary characters. It's like watching a stage play with no props, no backgrounds, no history. Oh, but I can always look down at the programme (aka datalog) mid-show to fill in the gaps. How miserable.
And Blade Runner isn't a game.
ZephyrFate said:
The gameplay of XIII is enough for me to put it above nearly every other FF game outside of IX, which it cannot touch with a million foot pole.
Hey yeah, at least IX let you tell each character what to do. On game design principles alone, that's a plus.
Rez said:
the pre-rendered backdrops had a hundred million times more visual charisma than anything in ten, twelve or thirteen, that much is true. the series lost a lot in going 3D.
I regrettably agree, a lot.
XII managed to keep the world around us feeling pretty lush and varied, going from jungles, to deserts, to airship corridors, to factories, to sewers, etc. XIII assaults us with so much of the same until Chapter 11. It's unfortunate.
RpgN said:
The game not having real towns and mini-games are falid complains, but saying that Oerba town is boring and not liking it and compairing how it's better done with other FFs?
Oerba town is just as atmospheric as the other towns in FF9, 8 etc.
You see that town ruined and there are still remains left that people used to live there. A small class room that is ruined, has books lying around, the clock not moving and some light coming out of the window as a small hope. Vanille's house is FULL with details, the kitchen with plates and whatnot. A mini chocobo doll hanged up on a wall, if you click on the description it says that lots of young kids used to have those. Pakuti, a malfunctioning pet robot that belonged to Vanille, you could find the parts back to repair it. And when you did it would help you and explain more about the world. The garden on top of the class room looks gorgeous, full with flowers and ruined of course. You could easily make Oerba sound interesting as well if you want to Himuro.
I wasn't crazy about Oerba, but I will agree that it had me empathizing with the loss people must have faced there a hundred times more than anything on Cocoon. The game never puts you in touch with Cocoon's people, outside of Chapter 1's NORA and Hope's family, and Nautilus (albeit briefly). How am I supposed to care for an entire world and want my party to save it when I can't even visit it and see what's worth saving?
Little details, even the fairly hollow ones in Oerba, enrich a game world. Just the brief back and forth there instead of a corridor managed to actually break up the pace. Such little things make a big impact.
Nevertheless, it managed to be just about as boring, and it's kind of laughable to even consider it a traditional FF town. As far as gameplay went, outside of the historical touch given to it while exploring, it boiled down to just another XIII 'dungeon':
dramatis said:
It's atmospheric? I felt it was dull. You spend all this time walking there and when you get there it's just another dungeon, it was hardly rewarding at all. The mixture of metal homes with stone ruins didn't work so well, leading the town to lack cohesion in its culture. When you don't care about Vanille, then would you care about all the details of her home? The way you describe it, Oerba can only be interesting if the player is invested in Vanille. Otherwise it is a dead dungeon.
Interest in a world can be built with setpieces. But genuine atmosphere and life is breathed into a world via people, not pretty scenery. Oerba is an example of how stupidly centered the game is on the characters, because that 'town' was built solely for Vanille. What about the other people that existed on Pulse? What about those crazy fal'Cie worshippers mentioned in the novels? Where are the vestiges of their existence? Even Nautilus, self-indulgent as it is, is a better example of atmosphere, detail, and world-building than Oerba.
This, a thousand times this. This the hallmark of roleplaying games. This was the hallmark of Final Fantasy.
DangerousDave said:
When FF VII lauched, FF VI was the tru hardcore FF fans game, VII was for newcomers and 3d-whores.
When FF VIII lauched, FF VII was the tru hardcore FF fans game, VIII was for newcomers and emos.
When FF IX lauched, FF VIII was the tru hardcore FF fans game, IX was for newcomers and kids.
When FF X lauched, FF IX was the tru hardcore FF fans game, X was for newcomers and casuals.
When FF XII lauched, FF X was the tru hardcore FF fans game, XII was for newcomers and mmo fans.
When FF XIII lauched, FF XII was the tru hardcore FF fans game, XIII was for newcomers and graphicwhores.
This seems bizarrely accurate to a lot of reactions I remember about each new installment upon their release. :lol
It's not how I felt personally, but yes, I remember the web consensus feeling this way a lot of the time.
Yazus said:
This is exactly how it is.
The real thing is that the FF series reinvent themselves every iteartion. So you might love XII but this does not mean at all that you will love XIII. Because they only share what, weapons and magic names? They are completely different games. This is why people who make comparisons are retarded. Is like making a comparison between FFXIII and TWEWY or I don't know. Every FF is a stand alone game. There is NO best FF. Its just opinions.
You kidding me? Comparisons are vital, across series, genres, and all of gaming. We know what we love from past games, and are eager to see solid gameplay used again and built on.
Final Fantasy has built a name for itself as an RPG pioneer. Its name carries tremendous weight. It's perfectly reasonable for long-time fans to become disgruntled when an installment in the series takes what we believe to be a wrong turn in terms of storytelling, gameplay or character building. Final Fantasy actively encourages comparisons to its antecedent installments as well by re-using names all over the place. It's one series, through and through. All the games since IV have run on some version of the ATB for battle. Comparisons are inevitable and a practical way to discuss how things have evolved and changed.
And props to Himuro and others for the town defense some pages back. Those were worlds with life and history that I can't help but remember.
