The Decline of Modern Recreation
I’m going to make a new post in response to a conversation with Chimp, because this subject is near and dear to my heart.
In my opinion, modern RPGs don’t have the same gripping stories as the old school ones. It seems that most of the developers’ focus lies on dazzling screen art, “novel” combat systems, and half-hour summoning spells.
Secret of Mana had it best, in my opinion. The story was the focus. The combat system was fun, but not burdensome. The magic system was pretty, but not overbearing. Plus, it had an unobtrusive multiplayer aspect. The camera focused on the party equally, and each player could take command. Teamwork and coordination were key, rather than allowing Player 1 to force the other two players to bend to his whim. This game defined Roleplaying for me, before I grew up and started throwing dice in basements or chem labs.
The early Final Fantasy games were much the same way, though this should not be surprising, since Squaresoft produced both franchises. The quality of the writing for FFIV and FFVI was above and beyond what I’ve seen recently. The character sprites were not that pretty, and the spells didn’t slow down gameplay. I still periodically play these games, if only to see my favorite Opera Scene or to mourn at Kain’s personal tragedy.
Hell, even Final Fantasy VII had a bit of that feel to it. Huge, blocky polygon people looked way worse than the sprites of FFVI. Even though the summons began to take longer and the spells started to grow more sparkly, the story and the development of the characters remained the primary focus. Contrary to what all you fanboys out there think, Cloud is not “some whiny emo bitch”. If you play through the game, you see that he is a man both crushed by self-defeat and raised up by his determination to succeed. Such nuance does not often rear its head, nowadays.
Hopefully, Lost Odyssey will restore my faith in Video RPGs. This game has all the right elements to be a great success: a story by novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu, game development by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, and soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu. Throw in a pretty face on a Next-Gen system, and this may finally bridge the gap between great games like Secret of Mana and mediocre games like Final Fantasy XII. I promise a full review once I’m finished playing it (again, in a friend’s basement).
March 11, 2008 at 10:50 pm
(Man if you thought the last post was long, I got things to say about this noise)
Secret of Mana quite possibly /the/ greatest RPG’s of all time. It did everything right and then some. I learned two things from playing Secret of Mana at a young age. 1)How to grind. SoM was the first real RPG grind I ever encountered. Level up twelve different kinds of weapons with three different people and an assortment of magical schools as well, (Not Water though). The higher weapon class you had the better the “charge ability” and more damage it would do. With magic the higher you leveled a school of magic the faster cast time it would have. As I mentioned before in the Brawlin’ comment. The Antidote Exploit was the second thing I learned. I taught me to look at every available mechanic and use them in new and interesting ways. This has aided me in god knows how many games and I get away with alot of things I probally shouldn’t.
The old school RPG’s: we’re talking NES/GENISIS/SNES/MABEY A PS game. So anything from DragonWarrior to lets say FF7 is the cut off. With the exception to FF7. Alot of our older games didn’t have it graphicaly. We mostly ended up with pixel sprite characters with a 2frame walking animation. This lack in graphics was largely due to the fact that there just wasn’t enough room on a cartridge to hold the amount of data that a full blown 40+hour RPG took. And we didn’t care. The battle systems while undubtubidly one of the easiest things to grasp: Attack, Magic, and Item. were you’re only options of choice. They varried from game to game, but the basicly kept it the same.
They had to do this because there was no such thing as ingame tutorials. DEV’s had this thing where if someone couldn’t pick up the game and play it, then they needed to tone it down. Notice I didn’t say “dumb” it down. There’s a huge difference when I say “tone down” the combat mechanics and “dumb down” the game.
Lets take FF12: Reasons why it failed. Horrid plot movement and the AI group setup, while a unique and somewhat fresh idea for a combat mechanic, didn’t sit well with most of the hardened RP’s. Look no matter what game we talk about it, ask any player whats the worst part of the game and if it has a section where the AI controls a party member for you. That’s going to be the part they dislike. The AI never hits where you want it to, heals when you need it to. Frankly you can’t pull it aside and let it know your strategy. “But Chimp you can program it!” You know what, jackass? I go through less steps getting my VCR to stop blinking 12:00, then you go through to get that douchebag AI to heal you at the right time.
It also failed with the story line. I remember playing about 20-30hours of FFXII. And I don’t remember a god damn thing besides the fact that I was hunting far overpowered “hunts”. I dont remember what the guys name is and what he was getting at. But I can tell you from act to act what happened in Illusion of Gaia(1994).
In the end. Why do you think SQUENIX re-releases of old FF games for the DS sell more then FFXII. It’s not superior AI mechanics, it’s not cinema cutscenes. It’s an indepth storyline with gripping characters and a simplex but customizable battle system.(key note:SIMPLEX)
P.S. If you have yourself a SegaGenisis or a PS lying around. Pick up Lunar:SilverStarStoryComplete. You wont be disappointed.