I should clarify the title of this thread. Explain the allure of modern Japanese CRPGs.
Seriously, things like Xenosaga, Final Fantasy, Star Ocean and to a lesser extent Chrono Cross are just interactive DVDs which enable the player to fight a battle or two between lengthy and tedious cut scenes.
Chrono Trigger, Dragon Warrior and some other old school CRPGs weren’t as tedious or geared towards people who want to be observers rather than players. What is it about the latest offerings which make fanboys and reviewers gush like Jerry Falwell about the second coming?
I recently started playing FFX, and I’m finding the same thing. I liked the older ones, with shorter cut scenes, even though most became rather repetitive after the first 10 or so hours (and don’t get me started eith the dot hack quartet of games…)
I hate the modern RPG and bemoan the loss of its Golden Age (to me) in the early to late nineties.
There’s no beating SNES and PSX RPGs, especially the Final Fantasies of that era and the Breath of Fire series.
There was also an RPG on the Genesis that was set against the backdrop of Europe’s Age of Exploration that I loved playing. Something Horizons, I think it was… you could pick between playing eight or so different characters of different nationalities and each had its own unique mission although you could ignore that to become a pirate if you so chose. Which I almost always did.
Great game.
The most egregious example of this is a scene from FFX. I wasn’t playing but my friend was playing the game. All the characters in the adventuring party were standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. They start laughing. That’s all it’s about.
Yes, the Japanese are strange in a delightful way but this was pointless.
I eagerly await more responses and commentary. I am baffled at these offerings being highly rated or ranking in first place for most purchased game.
Unchartewd Waters: New Horizons
A very fine game. Not at all the usual.
That part wasn’t pointless.
At that part, they made it to the holy land, Zanarkland, only to find that land all in ruins. So they used the time to meditate, about what they are about to do next. knowing that they have, at least, one last battle ahead against Sin, who was Tidus’s father.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked FFX. Fantastic game. I wish more video games would pay as much attention to narrative and character development. I got all choked up at the end, even. Lots of non-interactive cutscenes, sure, but what the hell: I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies even though I didn’t have to press any buttons to move the action along. I don’t see why FFX should be any different. And, as far as gameplay goes, I did enjoy the turn-based combat, and the simple, OCD thrills of endlessly leveling up your characters and finding better and better equipment. Both of which are staples of the RPG experience, and both of which were implemented quite well in FFX.
But that doesn’t make FFX an RPG. I’m sorry, I don’t care what it says in the fan sites, or the game magazines, or the press release, or the back of the box. It’s not an RPG, because there’s no @&%$! role-playing involved!.
Not exactly sure what you mean, there.
It’s the argument that goes all the way back to the first Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star and the like. If you think of an RPG as primarily being something like D&D, where you play a single character and try to act and think and be that character, you won’t think of FF as an RPG. It will be more like an adventure game with some role-playing elements, for example, combat instead of puzzle-solving. It’s the same as saying that a game like Baldur’s Gate or NeverWinter Nights is not really an RPG because, although you have more choices, you are still limited to what’s in the dialog tree and can only act in certain ways.
Fallout, Arcanum and the like are more like RPGs than FF, etc.
Is there a schism between eastern and western culture in regards to roleplaying games?
Personally, I don’t think so. I really believe it’s more of a definition thing for the individual gamer. See my earlier post.
The allure for me is that I enjoy the epic stories, characterizations and visuals. I like that these games are fun to play, relaxing and relatively easy to play and allow my mind to be engrossed in a good story in a unique universe. I like other types of other games for different reasons (such as I love building imaginary things, so I love Civilization and SimCity type games).
When I just want a good story, why yes, I will enjoy a good book. But sometimes I want to do less work mentally. So a game is great for that. TV shows are mostly awful. Movies are 99% crap (IMHO, I usually only see fantasy or sci-fi movies anyway, which are usually crap, and most “deep” movies are not deep to me and put me to sleep). But a good game can entertain me for (checks his FF 10-2 time) 196 hours for a complete 100% game completion.
Now, if I, like Miller, want an actual role-playing experience, I will go to a LARP or play table-top with friends. Those are real RPGs to me, and I agree with Miller’s cursing. Those game lead to much of what I look for in books and “RPG” games, but I get to interact with people and have the great fun of the unexpected.
Thus, Japanese RPGs (which for me is really just Final Fantasies and a couple of highly recommended other companies or games) fill a niche of fun diversion for me that I don’t get from TV, movies or other sources. Role-playing with friends can’t happen every night since I live a distance away from my usual groups of RP friends.
Does this help? Questions?
This is just about exactly how my daughter explained to me why she loves RPGs (most recently, for her, Tales of Symphonia.) Personally, I prefer first-person shooters and hack-and-slash games with minimal story lines.
Bytopian summed it up nicely. Video Role Playing Games are their own medium that shares the name “Role Playing Game” with their paper-and-pencil cousins, but the computer role playing game is really an independent entity. Video RPG’s really are “interactive movies” - you play FFX not to live as Tidus in Zanarkand and embody that character, but to guide and witness the story of Tidus, Sin, his father, and his companies and their subplots. Character building, dungeon crawling, side quests, and customization are held over from tabletop RPG’s, but it’s a very linear story.
Sadly, there seems to be a divide there - a video RPG seems to have to choose to be story-based, or character based. The last real “character-based” RPG was Ultima IV, where one’s in-game actions and choices actually affected the direction of the game. But, as a result, UIV’s story suffered greatly, and the end result was a great character-centered game with no real story. The rub is that you give up personalization in favor of turning character development over to the game’s linear story - so Tidus’ personality changes through cutscenes and explication, and not through your battle choices or in-game decisions.
I think FFX in particular (just sticking with the example) is an excellent blend of an “interactive movie” - keeping the game story-based - while giving the player much freedom to build, customize, divert the plot with side quests, etc. A contrary example would be “Xenosaga”, which is bogged down with explication and just plain watching - often for 30+ minutes at a time with no actual playing - that the player beings to feel that the battles and exploring are just a diversion from the story.
When I sit down to play a video game, I don’t want to watch a movie. Short cutscenes interspersed throughout gameplay…good. Short gameplay interspersed throughout cutscenes…bad. FFX is an interactive movie (only about 6 hours in). Every so often it asks me to make a decision.
I have to agree with this. While I enjoy the eye candy, the first time I played FFX at a friends house, all the cutscenes got annoying after a while. They’re still annoying, especially when you don’t get a chance to save between a lengthy speech and a battle with Seymore Flux (guess what point I haven’t gotten past yet?). I even remarked to my friend, “I feel like I’m playing a movie.”
Although at least FFX was easy to follow. FFVII confuses the heck out of me.
To answer the OP, though this has already been said, I like RPGS for plot and simple battle mechanics. I suck horribly at action games, to the point where I lose interest. And I don’t like killing things just for the sake of killing things. I need a reason to be killing things. Don’t get me started on FPS games.
FFX is horribly forced for the little bit. Hmm…until the entire party is together, I think. Been a while since I last played through. After that it opens up a lot, and you can rush from plot-point to plot-point (like I did the first time), or explore, find the secrets, build your characters, etc.
Of course, it become a lot smaller part if you do a lot of exploring/building. Particularly if you try to do every possible sidequest. The monster-hunting alone probably doubled the length of the game last time I went through it. There’s still a couple I haven’t finished - the ultimate weapons quest I don’t think I ever will. Tidus and Lulu’s are just too hard.
The biggest problem with FFX wasn’t the railroading at the start. It was
The final battle that you couldn’t LOSE. >_< Total letdown.
There’s a spectrum there between non-linear and heavily scripted, and the Japanese style (I often characterize it as the ‘colsole’ style) of RPGs tend toward the scripted. One of the advantages of the heavily scripted game is that you can create a really strong and tight story. The disadvantage is that you don’t get to decide for yourself who your character is, as you do in the more PC-style RPGs like Fallout or Planescape: Torment. But take Knights of the Old Republic, for instance. It borrowed a lot of elements from the console style, with the arc of the plot pushing you forward, while at the same time you still got a sense of free will. You got to decide how your character reacted to things, rather than wade through a freudian melodrama.
I think there’s a schism between games produced in the west and those produced in the east. Perhaps that should be another thread subject.
Marc
Japanese entertainment in general has its own style, very different from American storytelling.
Here in the States, we expect a story to create questions and then provide answers. In Japan, they seem more concerned about presentation… “This is how things are. Isn’t that neat?” And then they move you on to the next Neat thing.
Compare Morrowind to the FF games. Morrowind got criticized for being TOO open-ended. Seriously, you could go and do whatever the hell you want. “Fuck this quest, I wanna become a vampire!” In my opinion, it had just as strong a story as FFX, just spread out over 100 hours instead of 20. The heavily-scripted style is done to maintain pacing.
If you can stand it, you’ll like the games.