Well, I think Baldur’s Gate and FFVII came out around the same time, so that’s a contemporary comparison, no? I actually replayed the Baldur’s Gate series about 3 years ago and I loved it, while FFVII was unplayable, and I had to give up after a couple of hours. I remember loving it when it came out!
As for modern JRPGs, I guess I’m only really in the NDS loop. The World Ends With You was a legitimately good game (though completely linear, which is not ideal, but was made up for by other aspects). I tried the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles games, and was not impressed at all; couldn’t even finish them. Tried FFXII - Revenant Wings, but was again bored. Don’t worry, I’m not wasting my money on these titles; they were all borrowed from a friend, who’s basically my source for all the DS games I don’t want to play.
I really hesitate to go back and try FFVI now, because that used to be my favorite game. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure Planescape Torment will hold up well, if the Baldur’s Gate series did. I think the difference is in the depth of gameplay and the ability to affect the story; I’m no longer interested in interactive movies, unless it’s an action game like Half-Life 2.
I hope you’ll forgive me for using you as a jumping off point Windwalker but your post made me consider this…
Does “Linear Gameplay” = “Interactive Movie?” I’ve seen this comparison made in many other places and I’m really not sure that I buy it, but it does make a certain amount of sense. Is it really a matter of playing a section “right” nets you the next cutscene? That seems to be the argument… But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. The choice in every game from Baldur’s Gate 1 to Mass Effect 2 is simply a branching path with a different cutscene. (I’m simplifying things but I think this is essentially accurate.)
I like JRPG’s and that undoubtedly biases my perspective. (I’m about 5 hours into FF13 right now, and I’m liking it, so shoot me.)
Every video game ever made is about trial and reward, whether it’s about another choice or another trophy. “Choice is illusion.” Is this wrong? Should I broaden my perspective?
I’ve loved everything from Baldur’s Gate and Planescape to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, (and Valkyria Chronicles, PS3 owners should seriously play that game!). To me, and I know I might be in the minority on this, every title is essentially trying to do the same thing with only slightly differing methods, and that is; they’re trying to tell a compelling a story.
Non-RPG’s are trying to do something different FTR. It doesn’t really apply to them.
Montreal is their biggest game dev studio, the other two mostly do publishing, but I think the Ghost Recon games are out of France, Red Steel might be as well. I’m pretty sure they did the Rayman games, too
No, that’s correct. It’s a computer - it’s incapable of GENERATING story (It can generate content, but it’s not the same thing, and it’s not very good at it, so you tend to get very generic stuff). If you want to have a game with cutscenes in it, it’s going to have to be designed by a person, which means it’s going to be finite. How finite? Well. Generally that depends on the design goals. Some games choose to, say, put 60 hours of gameplay into a linear story. This has advantages in that you can be assured that someone who plays through will have SEEN the whole story.
Others games might opt for multiple, branching paths - which are likely to be shorter individually. You can pad that a bit by re-using content between stories, but as the amount of content re-use increases, the replay value, and therefore, the chance that someone will ever see all of the individual stories, goes down.
You can also combine either of the previous approaches with ‘optional side content’ - this adds some elements of nonlinearity to the gameplay without detracting from the “ability” to tell a relatively linear story.
Still another approach is the ‘sandbox’ approach - ala GTA or Fallout 3. This approach offers a high degree of player agency, which is seen, over on this side of the tranquil pond, as being important. Or at least, trendy. The problem is that this sort of game does a bad job of telling a story, because the player will do things out of order, miss some bits, and disqualify some bits from ever having a chance to happen. It does mean that the replay value is pretty high, but the storytelling impact is low.
There are some ways to blur these and cheat and the like, but that covers the overall categories pretty thoroughly. The simple fact is that the game can’t create the story dynamically - the designers have to create it. And assuming a roughly equivalent number of designers creating content at roughly the same pace for roughly the same amount of time, you get about the same amount of story (Except in a sandbox game, where you actually get less, but theoretically compensated for by all the ‘non-story’ stuff you can do.)
Beyond that is a matter of personal taste. If you prefer a stronger story experience, you may prefer the longer, more intricate plotlines of some JRPGs. If you prefer more player agency, you may prefer Fallout 3. If you find yourself happiest in the middle, the Mass Effects of the world are for you.
It depends. But it seems like if you enjoyed Planescape, you’ve already played pretty much the most storyline nonlinear game out there, so I dunno how much more broadening you can do.
Well, some of them aren’t (I submit that, for example, it is secondary in sandbox games like Fallout 3 and GTA4) , but all storytelling games use one of the methods above.
I think you have the wrong distinction here - lots of games do exactly what (J)RPGs do with different gameplay mechanics. They tell a linear story (often even MORE linear than any JRPG except FF13, due to the mission based structures that are common in many genres) interspersed by cutscenes - it’s just the method of advancing that is different. I don’t think there should be exceptions for games like Half-Life 2 - it’s almost hypocritical to criticize a JRPG for being linear and then say “But Half-Life 2 gets a pass because it’s an action game.” Nonsense. The gameplay mechanic is completely independant of the storytelling method. Wing Commander was an action game, but it featured and extensive branching story tree. If the Half Life 2 design team decided they wanted to make a nonlinear game, they could have, but they chose to make a linear, well told story. But you can’t criticize the likes of Lost Odyssey for being linear stories with no real player agency and then come back and say “Well, Half-Life 2 is different because it’s action game” - because it’s NOT. You can say you LIKE HL2 better because you find the gameplay more engaging, but to criticize one game for being linear but not apply that same criticism to another game that’s just as linear as the first, well, we know the word for that.
It is a contemporary comparison. I’m just saying that I feel nostalgia plays a part in many people’s evaluations of both, because I tried BG1, and honestly, it felt generic and hollow. People who have fond memories of it are less likely to be bothered by that kind of thing.
Maybe it ages better than FF7, but I’d say rather that you’ve just developed a taste for games that allow more customization. Because I’d hestitate to call BG less linear than FF7 in terms of story.
Yeah, I realize that any story-based game, even my favorites, are essentially just a bunch of linear scenes with multiple branches, as well as side content “trees” that have branches of their own. It’s just that the games I like tend to have more branches and more side trees, with a heavy bias towards well-developed (with healthy leaves and colorful blossoms) branches. Role-playing games that don’t allow the stories to spread via branches and side-trees don’t appeal to me as much anymore.
I think you’re missing the point here; what we’re all looking for as gamers are indeed games we like! I can excuse linearity in the story if the gameplay makes up for it. The fact of the matter is that most action games, like HL2, have far better pure gameplay than most RPGs, which can make them very enjoyable even with mediocre, absolutely linear stories. And it’s not like I discriminate; I excuse JRPGs if their gameplay is awesome, too. Final Fantasy Tactics had a completely linear (though utterly confusing) story, but it had a kickass combat and development system, so I liked it and still do. The World Ends With You was also completely linear, but the story was at least unique and it had awesome innovative gameplay, so I ended up enjoying the hell out of it.
So I guess I need to clarify my preferences a bit: If a game doesn’t rely on gameplay but more on story, then I need that story to allow some degree of player agency, with branching plotlines or multiple solutions to quests or tons of enjoyable optional side content with their own branches. And make these choices feel like they matter.
Games like the older Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior titles (haven’t played the newer ones) with absolutely linear stories and repetitive spam “Attack” button gameplay just don’t really offer anything to me anymore, despite the good times I had with them as a kid. However, if newer JRPGs are serving up helpings of cool new gameplay mechanics on the level of The World Ends With You, then perhaps I can forgive them the completely linear non-interactive story and give them a shot.
Also, if a game just happens to have a ridiculously well-told and compelling story, I may just forgive it everything else. This is incredibly rare, but has happened with games like Chrono Trigger (though at least this one had a passably fun combat system too).
Baldur’s Gate 1 was far less linear than FF7! OK, perhaps the main story was pretty linear, but you almost always had at least the hero vs. villain option to respond to the main quest, and sometimes a third or fourth option as well. Sometimes these choices were cosmetic, and sometimes they were minor, but you could affect the details of the main plot to some degree. Where Baldur’s Gate really shines, though, is the side content, which allows you to explore a crap-ton of areas right off the bat. Hell, that loneliness you feel right after you leave Candlekeep was pretty cool; you had a vague direction as to where to go (some inn somewhere), but you could completely ignore that and just go bumming around the countryside if you wanted to, getting in mischief or becoming a little Robin Hood. More likely you would end up dead as you faced things way past your level, but there were ways to actually avoid the main quest for a good long time.
There were good, evil, and leave-me-the-fuck-alone options to most of the encounters, and occasionally multiple ways to solve a quest, as well. You also had a healthy choice of followers to choose from, which would sometimes have an impact on the story, as well.
I know you can say that the main story is the main story, and that it always needs completing, but to me, I see a game’s story as being more than just that. It’s the main quest, sure, but also the side plots, the little character interactions, and the way in which you solve things. Baldur’s Gate just plain wins out there, at least to me.
That’s fine, but if you’re trying to objectively compare games, you still can’t say “Linear story was a negative for this one, but not for this one.” It’s just that the negative was outweighed by other positives. (I would argue that a game that needs gameplay to compensate for a mediocre story probably isn’t telling a very good story too, no offense to Half Life.)
This is the thing. That last sentance. It’s an illusion. How well the illusion works varies wildly from person to person.
I would argue that FF1 and Dragon Warrior were, in fact, NEVER particularly good games. I didn’t even really enjoy DW1 as a kid with way too much free time. My standards were definitely lower back then.
This is something that bothers me about the JRPG stereotypers (not saying you are one of them, just saying that this is a common complaint I see) - a lot of people seem to act like all JRPGs have exactly the same (implied: boring) game mechanics. It’s really quite inaccurate - there are a whole lot of different battle engines out there, ranging from the reallllly typical FFX style through the VERY slightly innovated sorts like Lost Odyssey, the still-turn-based but definitely skill based style used in Shadow Hearts Covenant, the real-time-with-pauses brilliance used in Grandia 2 and 3 (Why they can’t make a grandia game with this battle system and a story that’s actually really good escapes me), or the out and out realtime stuff like Star Ocean or Tales Of. Some of them have really really good battle mechanics, but so many people just think “JRPG. Spam a button and move on.”
I’ve always felt that an RPG needed positive marks in two of three categories: Gameplay, Story, and Characters. If it could score ‘positive’ in two of the three, it would be worth playing through even if the third category were really terrible. I still think that’s a decent rule of thumb.
I don’t really consider branching dialogue trees that have no effect (or minimal effect) once the dialogue tree is over to be non-linear.
Like for example?
Sandbox stuff (which is what you describe - there’s no ‘story’ there) holds no appeal to me at all. Particularly in a game with such terribly clunky mechanics.
An impact on the story, or just different dialogue?
You see I consider pretty much everything you mention here to be window dressing. Is it nice? Sure, if done well. Does it make or break a game? No. It can be the difference between a good game and a great one, but not the difference between a bad (or even mediocre) game and a good one, if that makes sense.
In any event though, I’d be surprised to hear someone assert that Baldur’s Gate had better character interactions than FF7, which seems to have sold many people based on its characters alone.
In the interest of full disclosure though, I should state that I have not, in fact, ever played through FF7, so for all I know it could be ass and a lousy comparsion for my point. I assume it had sidequests, but I can’t actually say for sure. Perhaps someone who liked it/played it can provide some insight here.
FF7 may have had better developed characters, but they certainly weren’t as fun as Baldur’s Gate’s. Perpetual moping and seriousness vs. “Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes! RAAARGH!” and “Tiax rules all!!! You are but grease stains on the wheel of time compared to Tiax!” Baldur’s Gate 2’s were even better.
FF7 and Baldur’s Gate weren’t contemporaries, really. Sure, they were both sold about the same time, but FF7 was released in January of 97, while BG1 was November '98. That’s an entire 2 year gap. Besides, they’re two entirely different design philosophies.
As a sidenote, I’m not that thrilled with FF7 and I loved Baldur’s Gate. I just thought I should set the record straight that a 2 year gap in video games isn’t really all that contemporary.
Yeah, but not everyone goes for the hamster humor either. Sometimes, I like my characters to seem like people and not “hah, this was such a clever idea!”
Page Fault has a good point about the timing though.
Are you sure this isn’t due to cultural differences in design philosophy? I recall that in Japanese Playstations the circle means yes while the x means no, while it’s the opposite control scheme for North American consoles.
The Japanese game industry zeitgeist reminds me of the US superhero comic book industry: both cater to an ageing, shrinking fanbase wallowing in nostalgia and both are the worse for it.
I am also enjoying the crap out of Tekken 6. And don’t forget God Hand, it was very original, though sadly too original for both the Japanese and the foreign markets.
You’re forgetting the gravelly voice. This is one of the reasons I don’t like shooters so much, the homoerotic hooray for penis thing gets on my nerves after a while.
Rock Band and Guitar Hero are actually preceded by Japanese music games of the same type, though I’m not sure if any of the same technology was used or if they were simply based on the same idea. If you’ve got Lost in Translation go to the scene where Scarlet Johansson is wandering by herself and comes across a Japanese arcade, she sees a guy playing what is clearly a guitar game. The movie came out in 2003 and Guitar Hero came out in 2005, by the way.
I’m playing through the Baldur’s Gate series for the first time right now and I actually find the humour to be childish. I hated Minsc so much that I made my character evil so I wouldn’t need him in my party. I think I may have killed him, I can’t remember since I haven’t touched the game in a while. And the terrible English accents really grate on me, I mean they’re just dire. But having said that, yeah it’s pretty fun, I especially like fulfilling a quest then killing and robbing the quest-giver, I basically get paid twice.
Interesting note about JRPG’s as well: a great many of them seem to have gone backwards. Take a look at the early Dragon Quests or Final Fantasies: the game characters’ ages were somewhat indeterminate, but seemed to include a rather lot of adults and more mature, if simple, plotlines.
These days, I’ve come to expect immature characters (both physically and otherwise), with a complex, but childish plot.
The rise of the X-Box tapped into a new group of gamers who are interested in Western games, especially shooters. A lot of those gamers wouldn’t give a second thought to a RPG with some effeminate, spiky-haired guy with too many zippers on its cover. Instead you see games like Halo and Call of Duty get a lot of publicity and sales. Even Mass Effect, which is an RPG, only god ridiculously popular only because it’s got FPS elements in it (compare to how much other Bioware games such as KOTOR, Jade Empire, Dragon Age, Balder’s Gate, etc - they’re all highly acclaimed, and are well-known among RPG gamers, but lack widespread appeal).
It’s cyclical. Game development cycles are growing longer and longer and more and more expensive, which means less game releases in general. There haven’t really been many big Japanese releases yet (except for FF13) whereas there have been a lot of highly-selling Western ones which stick in your mind. A couple years back everyone was gushing over Zelda and Metroid and Super Smash Brothers.
I’m a bit less convinced on the second reason, if only because I think the first reason is applicable and won’t be changing any time soon. I think while the majority of gamers will be switching between the cycles of whatever happens to be good, there is now a large chunk who will only be playing Western games.
I think it is a lack of innovation and the cost of development.
Take for example, the recent JRPGS feature the same tried and proven gameplay - be it turn-based combat or semi real-time battle. Tales of Vesperia is the same as Tales of Symphony. Blue Dragon/Lost Odyssey is very similar to the FF turn-based system. Sure, the new FF13 boasts some real-time chaining combat gimmick, but in the end it’s still the same - (Edit: I haven’t played the game, so by “still the same”, I mean the “3 characters face off a group of baddies and take turns to whack at each other”)
Lacking new features, the best way to hook people’s attention is through game-play and execution. But cinematic which you just sit through is getting old (see MGS 4), and just presenting a story through rendered movies is not as moving anymore. The way Mass Effect 2 does it is exciting, though it is not really an ‘interactive story’ (as some purists, like Chris Crawford, would insist), it draw the players much deeper in than any realistic CG movies of characters shouting narm, filled with deus ex machina plotlines and incomprehensible sudden plot twists, which the Japaneses developers are so fond off (does anyone find that ever since from FF9 onwards, it is harder to make any sense of the FF stories? Tidus is…a ghost? A what?)
Secondly, do remember there are a lot of kick-ass JRPGs that never make it outside from their shore last time (Shadow Hearts: Covenant almost did not), and this includes many of those Super Robot Wars and etc. So judging by a few of those international entries may do the other studios on the whole a disservice.
circle in Japanese is “maru” which is used for correct things, x is “batsu” which is used for incorrect things (hence accept and cancel in menus). There are differences in design philosophy so I’d agree with you
yes but no. The Japanese version of guitar hero/drum hero are just a guitar game and a drum game, and are separate games. They also have a DJ game. The guitar game has only 3 buttons rather than 5, no hammer-ons, etc. Basically they’re FAR simpler and focus more on speed and memorization (I can play rock band on hard and sometimes very hard, but anything higher than med on the jap equivalents you simply can’t read. The notes go by too fast, and it’s all memorization. And with the drum game the notes have very little to do with how you’d actually play the drums) rather than a band-like experience, and they haven’t changed at all since 2003. Like, at all. They don’t have these games for consoles, and so there’s no DLC of new songs etc. Basically, they started the idea of music games (you can go back to DDR for that) but they haven’t kept up in any way, shape, or form with what Harmonix/Activision have done with them
I don’t really think this is where the ‘lack of innovation’ is hurting the genre - it’s not like FPS games, fighting games, RTS games, flight sim games, platform games or Guitar games (or any other genre I can think of) have changed up their mechanics real heavily once they found their ‘groove’, and I think it’s unrealistic and unfair to expect JRPGs to do so. Frankly, there’s a ton more variety in systems and gameplay mechanics in JRPGs than there are in most other genres - being good at Tales of Vesperia sure won’t make you any good at FF13, which won’t make you any good at Shadow Hearts Covenant, which won’t translate at all to Grandia III. Whereas every FPS under the sun uses the same basic control scheme - individual buttons may do different things, but going from FF13 to Tales of is like going from Disciples to Warcraft - they’re technically both the same “genre” but the mechanics are 100% different.
If anything, I think JRPG developers need to focus LESS on weird new gameplay mechanics, and more on solid storytelling.
Now you get to the meat of the matter. The stories being told have been, as a rule, unfortunately juvenile, overly complex, or just not even applicable. (To this day, I don’t really grasp what the deal was with FFX. Though to be fair, FF12 had a nice, comparatively sane, political plot with fairly comprehensible motivations and a party of relatively adult individuals. And oddly, a lot of people panned the plot.) You get a seventeen year old protagonists surrounded by parties of allies between ages 12 and 20, most of whom don’t have three brain cells to rub together. Maybe its the nostalgia factor in Japan, but I think they need to understand that their audience is aging and stop trying to appeal exclusively to the 14 year old boy demographic.
Also true. To some extent anyway, but for every Shadow Hearts covenant with an unusual and mature theme, there are probably 2-3 Tales of Hearts kids fluff games.
I’d like to toss something out there, with regards to control schemes and FPS, at least on a console.
When you play Team Fortress 2 on the 360 compared to Halo, there’s a difference with the controls. Team Fortress has multiple buttons that do the same thing, the movement isn’t crisp, and you can’t change the control scheme. When Bungie made the Halo games, the controls were the first thing to surprise, for they were responsive, customizable, and showed that first person shooters are a viable commodity for a console and could be played at a very high level.
Did they actually meaningfully change the control SCHEME, or did they just make it perform better?
I haven’t played either title, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that both games used one stick to move and one stick to aim, and button to shoot and a button to change weapons and a button to jump. The fundamental actions you take are essentially the same in both games.
Compare to setting say, FFX next to FF13 next to ToV; While all three games technically have an action called “Attack” it’s performed completely differently in all three of them, and many fundamental gameplay mechanics just don’t cross over at all - paradigms? Fatal Strikes? MP/TP? Yeah. More differences than similarties, even if you ignore the turn based vs semirealtime vs real time aspects.
