Sakaguchi says HD visuals too much for game worlds

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Mistwalker founder and “Father of Final Fantasy” Hironobu Sakaguchi has only worked on two games for a high-definition console in the studio’s history. Those games were both for Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Now that Sakaguchi-san is hard at work on a Wii-exclusive rpg call The Last Story he expressed the differences of working on an non HD system.

“To be honest, I personally feel that the HD visuals that are now the trend are still too much for a game world.” Sakaguchi-san told Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata. ”You end up putting all your effort into preserving the quality of the visuals.”

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(SPOILER)Kitase'd
http://i54.:bou::bou::bou::bou::bou:...ou:/6jmstf.jpg


It is important to mention that "The Last Story" feature only one town.
Iwata Asks More Questions About The Last Story (andriasang.com, 10.27.2010)

First Square Enix and now him? What's with these people not wanting to work with high resolutions?

That makes... some sense... I guess....

I don't get it at all. I mean, I get it if some small studio says it. I get it if TaleWorlds says that, because there's like, under a dozen people in the company. But I don't get it when some of the biggest names in the industry say it. They have the resources in abundance, and it's not like you can change the guys who design NPCs and quests and towns to working on art.

What I really double-don't-get is how with FFXIII they said "Towns are too hard" before sending you running through what, four, five different urban environments? They had everything they needed except a handful of interiors and NPCs. Heck, they had to add a dozen NPCs to the game and that was Oerba as a nice little town.

And Western developers aren't saying this. BioWare aren't, and DA and ME have plenty of settlements. Bethesda aren't, and Oblivion and Fallout 3 have plenty of settlements. Obsidian aren't, and New Vegas etc. etc.

Sakaguchi doesn't know what he's talking about.

If he's saying that it sucks when developers substitute pretties for gameplay and story, sure I agree with him. I think developers get too caught up in visuals at times. The reviews of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow talk about how beautiful it is, but how broken some of the gameplay and camera angles are.

Meanwhile there are gorgeous games out there that don't have to be uber-HD to be pretty. I think Kirby's Epic Yarn proves that one. Then there are games that are awesome and not that pretty like Minecraft.

So his point is valid, but if you look at MILFs point you see the problem.

This is an excuse. Many developers (mostly Western) don't let the HD visuals trump and destroy the rest of the game. Let's talk broader than towns. Games like Dragon Age, Oblivion, FO3, Red Dead... etc. are gorgeous and still have good gameplay and stories.

Any developer complaining that HD kills the game just needs to crank their visuals back down from 11 to 9 or so and put focus on the story. It's not the fault of the visual, but rather how far you take it at the expense of all else. Perhaps if those devs would learn some better balance, that would fix the issue.

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”You end up putting all your effort into preserving the quality of the visuals.”

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You who? The artists take care of the visuals and other people take care what they are in charge of. It's not a one person operation. It's not a zero-sum game. You can have both.

If he's saying that you make decisions based only on what you can represent visually with the hardware... TURN IT THE **** DOWN A NOTCH. Seriously. If you're going to make the decision not to make towns because it's so taxing on the system or personnel resources, then just crank things down to the point that you can make towns and still have a pretty game. The developers themselves are the ones setting the bar inordinately high if they are running into this problem.

Sure, maybe RDR didn't look as good as FFXIII by some tiny tiny bit, but did anyone care? It had town, and good gameplay and all of that. Nobody cared ultimately if it was slightly less pretty. I'm sure someone at R* had to make that call. "Guys, we can't do everything we want in scope if the graphics are that bleeding edge. Dial it back a notch so that we can still do this thing we want to make the game feel expansive."

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Bethesda aren't, and Oblivion and Fallout 3 have plenty of settlements.

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I can't speak for fallout, but Oblivion looks like utter :bou::bou::bou::bou:. There are like 5 NPC's copy-pasted throughout the entire game world. Every single dungeon looks exactly the same. It might be HD content, but it's the same content recycled a thousand times over. It was pretty clear to me when I played Oblivion that they sacrificed a good deal in terms of visuals so they could bloat the game with so much stuff.

I agree completely with Sakaguchi, although I am sure there are plenty of games that contradict his statement.To me, visuals are the single least important aspect in a video game. The absolute last thing I want is to take a linear trip through uncanny valley that lasts 30 hours when the story sucks, the characters suck, the gameplay has been done before, and the voice actors are the same 5 people repeating the same 20 statements for 30 hours. A good looking game isn't enough to make a game good. It is enough to make a game bad, though, if the majority of your funds are spent on visuals.

But even then, I still prefer the rich coloration in the visuals of games like Chrono Trigger than I prefer the monotonous grey that shades every single xbox360 and ps3 game I've ever seen. I'd much rather see creativity and vibrancy in my graphics than grim accuracy.

Oblivion looked pretty good when it came out in 2006, the environment more so than the NPCs. But to say that it's flaws were caused by using high resolution textures is absolute bull:bou::bou::bou::bou:. Those Japanese developers need to get on with the times instead bitching about it while releasing mediocre stuff.

Yeah but the different cities in Oblivion are all very varied, though the point about dungeons is quite accurate. But I wasn't really referring to Hi-res, just focus on graphics. I don't think Oblivion is very good, as I have tiraded about at great length, but the flaws didn't spring up from the devs saying "Oooh can't do that we need to have an insane draw distance instead" or whatever. The game has plenty of content and the fact that it's (imo) poor quality stems from other factors.

Bethesda have never been able to do faces. I think their lead face guy has only ever seen a human face by looking at a Picasso painting through cataracts. But they don't say "Welp, can't do that very well, no NPCs in the next TES" or "All this art design for a city half the PCs will never visit is too hard, let's just cut it instead".

There are plenty of flaws with plenty of games, but the Japanese seem to be the only ones outright saying "We can't make good games because we have to focus on graphics". Everyone else either doesn't worry about graphics, combines good graphics and good gameplay, or at least makes the attempt and falls short.

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Originally Posted by I'm my own MILF

What I really double-don't-get is how with FFXIII they said "Towns are too hard" before sending you running through what, four, five different urban environments? They had everything they needed except a handful of interiors and NPCs. Heck, they had to add a dozen NPCs to the game and that was Oerba as a nice little town.

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That's... actually kind of insane to think about now that you mention it...

A part of me does want to agree with him. We can mention all of these Western games, but IMO none of them are really that great. PC developers like Bioware and Bethesda have been technically developing in HD long before the 360/PS3, so it's hard to really use them as shining examples. I think there's just something to that Japanese flair of game development that doesn't really mix well with HD. I'm playing Lament of Innocence right now and it kind of just makes me feel like we never needed HD to begin with. Yes, there's been a lot of crazy set pieces and big moments like that, but I can't really say this generation has delivered what it should have in spades.

Final Fantasy XIII did have towns. I don't know why people still insist it didn't. Lost Odyssey, also an HD rpg, had towns. Nier had towns. This business about towns being impossible in HD is a crock.

The fact that they're insisting VersusXIII will have towns and an overworld map just makes this even more silly.

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Originally Posted by DMKA

Final Fantasy XIII did have towns.

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except they were just the same corridors you've been running through for the entire game with different textures. There's absolutely zero interaction aside from the few oneliners you get from the NPCs standing there.

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Originally Posted by kotora

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Originally Posted by DMKA

Final Fantasy XIII did have towns.

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except they were just the same corridors you've been running through for the entire game with different textures. There's absolutely zero interaction aside from the few oneliners you get from the NPCs standing there.

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And, aside of not having to push a button, this is different from every other JRPG...how?

^ There's nothing to explore or find or any other tidbits of info you might not otherwise receive. There's also no reprieve from grinding and traveling. But the thing is, XIII isn't really a grind anyway as there is no resource management whatsoever - one never has to worry about running out of items or strategically using certain abilities so as not to run out of MP or AP or what have you. The way XIII is designed, towns are kind of redundant.

HOWEVER, the purpose of towns is not and has never been purely mechanical (ie: running around and pressing a button to talk to NPCs). It's all about pacing by allowing the player to rest and interact with the world in a way other than running forward and combating. Arriving at a new town in the first nine FF games is always refreshing after hours out in the field. Not only that, but VII spiced up its towns with mini-games and great story pacing. IX included ATEs, which allowed the player to unwind completely with special (and optional!) scenes in a new area before moving on.

What's bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: about XIII is that the environments are clearly there, but the content and options within them are not. Sure, the game is straight-forward, but that's not such a good thing when one is expected to play it for 50-60 hours. There needs to be more to do. SE have even indirectly acknowledged this by making excuses about how difficult it is to make things interactive and look nice at the same time. The excuse is 'it's hard, so don't blame us - it's just too hard, so just enjoy what we were able to do.' The excuse itself barely holds water. Like it's been said earlier in the thread, there's no reason why they couldn't have made the environments like Palumpolum or Nautilus more interactive - the backgrounds are already there, so just let the player run around and find things! I'm the last person who would say that XIII needs to be like older games (my blood boils when fanboys derp over an RPG element for its own sake) but SE still need to make a compelling package. If they insist on making RPGs like this they need to find a way - if they're not going to make traditional towns - to make the game world more robust.

Not sure if I should speak since I only have 10 exp points on game development and 0 exp points in the game industry.

The 'towns' in FFXIII weren't towns in the RPG sense of the word (As in, the locations which are not Field and Dungeon). In story terms they were places where people live. In gameplay terms they are just different looking dungeons. Except maybe Nautilus, but you don't exactly spend long there kicking back.

I agree with the fact that people care way too much about visuals.

Sure, a game that looks pretty is a nice BONUS, but it's not the end all of the game. Uncharted 2 is considered awesome because of the story and gameplay, the visuals just added. A lower graphic version of it would have received the same hype. Fallout New Vegas honestly looks like crap compared to today's games (running on a 2006 engine) but so many people love the game. If that's not the perfect example, I don't know what else would be. I'll say it a bazillion times, gameplay over graphics any day. It's why I love my Nintendo systems, because I know the games, I know what gameplay to expect, and I enjoy that gameplay. I have my PS3 as well for those other games that I enjoy, that Nintendo doesn't offer, such as Assassin's Creed, or Demon's Souls. Both of which would be just as amazing with Wii level graphics.

Essentially, if The Last Story is amazing, as it seems it will be, then it doesn't have to be HD, and I think that's his point. When you make a game on an HD system, you worry about HD graphics, and some of the more important aspects of it can be dropped off. It has happened in some games(FFXIII), and it should never happen.

THE JACKEL

Unfortunately, the people who drive sales are generally not the educated gamers who might be able to handle a little less graphical fidelity for some pure fun. In this HD age, if your game is not from an established franchise (Fallout, Final Fantasy) and does not look at least really good (Assassin's Creed) then most people will not pay attention to it. Assassin's Creed is the most successful 'new IP' of the generation. Uncharted 1 got hype because it was an amazing looking PS3 exclusive in a time when the PS3 still did not have a whole lot of amazing looking exclusives.

Graphics are important to the people who want to make money from their games and don't have any pedigree or gimmick to hook people with otherwise.

More importantly though, Japan is just a different culture altogether. I want you guys to keep discussing it because it is interesting, but I'll just say that it's really not fair to compare what Western developers can and have done when a Japanese developer says they can't do it, because of the culture.

Perhaps the most obvious difference is that Japan is dominated by 'low resolution' gaming systems. The PSP and the DS rule over there and it's difficult for any high budget, high definition game (without a pedigree or gimmick) to sell well enough to recuperate the development costs of that expensive game. This is why it's been so important for them to reach out to the west to sell their games and make money--but that's stuff that a lot of us already know.

Something I didn't know until recently was brought up in an interview with Keiji Inafune (English translation here--it's long), the creator of Mega Man and other Capcom properties who just quit the company basically out of frustration last week. Inafune has probably been the most vocal about why Japan sucks, technically, compared to the west. Something I didn't realize until he brought it up is that a key difference between the development studios in Japan and those in the West is the motivation of the development staff themselves.

Japan has a culture of Employer Loyalty--basically, once you work for a company, you're there forever. You're safe. Regardless of how hard you work, you're guaranteed a paycheck until you retire. In the west, especially in the recent years, a game company can disappear just like that. The attitude of the workers in a safe environment is much different than the attitude of those who need to compete to either keep their job, or be lucrative in their next job. This is especially dangerous in the bigger franchises, like Final Fantasy, where they can say 'towns are too hard' out loud, but then they are thinking 'but you are all going to buy it in droves anyway and I'm still getting my paycheck'. I know FF13 had other circumstances, but the attitude of 'oh well, we give up' is something that just won't happen in a competitive employment environment.
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To be honest I lost interest in writing this about 6 times tonight. It's not finished and not proofread, but I don't feel like wasting all that text. Sorry for this incomplete rambling.

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Originally Posted by JKTrix

Uncharted 1 got hype because it was an amazing looking PS3 exclusive in a time when the PS3 still did not have a whole lot of amazing looking exclusives.

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Well, to be fair, it didn't have a whole lot of amazing exclusives period. But it came out in the first year, and Heavenly Sword and Motorstorm were also pretty unbelievable-looking, even Resistance was pretty good for its time. However, pretty much any PS3-exclusive that shows "Teh Powa of da Cell" will instantly attract overeager enthusiasm and premature hate. I think that's why inFAMOUS was so successful, because it was a fun PS3 exclusive that managed to escape the pre-launch flamewars of Killzone or God of War III.

So I would say inFAMOUS is an exception to your rule, although it's pretty hard to think of other examples.

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Japan has a culture of Employer Loyalty--basically, once you work for a company, you're there forever. You're safe. Regardless of how hard you work, you're guaranteed a paycheck until you retire. In the west, especially in the recent years, a game company can disappear just like that. The attitude of the workers in a safe environment is much different than the attitude of those who need to compete to either keep their job, or be lucrative in their next job. This is especially dangerous in the bigger franchises, like Final Fantasy, where they can say 'towns are too hard' out loud, but then they are thinking 'but you are all going to buy it in droves anyway and I'm still getting my paycheck'. I know FF13 had other circumstances, but the attitude of 'oh well, we give up' is something that just won't happen in a competitive employment environment.

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I had no idea about that - it seems to have a lot of probative value to the situation. But for some reason I still think a lot of Japanese developers, who innovated most of the genres around today, ask the same question many of us in this thread already asked: is HD really necessary?

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Originally Posted by I'm my own MILF

I don't get it at all. I mean, I get it if some small studio says it. I get it if TaleWorlds says that, because there's like, under a dozen people in the company. But I don't get it when some of the biggest names in the industry say it. They have the resources in abundance, and it's not like you can change the guys who design NPCs and quests and towns to working on art.

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In fairness, I believe Mistwalker is still a fairly small company in house. The fact that The Last Story is the first game they've developed without the assistance of another developer would certainly seem to support that. But that actually shows that they're smarter than some Japanese developers when it comes to developing next gen games for a reason I'll go into a bit more below.

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Originally Posted by JKTrix

Japan has a culture of Employer Loyalty--basically, once you work for a company, you're there forever. You're safe. Regardless of how hard you work, you're guaranteed a paycheck until you retire. In the west, especially in the recent years, a game company can disappear just like that. The attitude of the workers in a safe environment is much different than the attitude of those who need to compete to either keep their job, or be lucrative in their next job. This is especially dangerous in the bigger franchises, like Final Fantasy, where they can say 'towns are too hard' out loud, but then they are thinking 'but you are all going to buy it in droves anyway and I'm still getting my paycheck'. I know FF13 had other circumstances, but the attitude of 'oh well, we give up' is something that just won't happen in a competitive employment environment.

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This is certainly true, but another problem that arises from the lifelong employment model, and the fact that most Japanese companies do everything in house is one that David Sirlin pointed out in a post on his website not long ago which I had never really considered before (you can read his post here: Game Design, Psychology, Flow, and Mastery - Blog - Inafune and Starcraft Genetic Algorithms (unrelated) ):when you have a massive payroll every month, if you don't have projects going constantly then you end up paying people for possibly as much as a few months when the project is getting going, or just as bad, towards the end of development when things are winding down for some departments.

On the other hand, contracting out portions of the game to independent contractors and other design firms is surprisingly common on large titles in the west, and by going the co-development route, Mistwalker probably saved quite a bit during the pre-production phase of their next-gen titles. Something that's tremendously important for any company, not even just the small ones.

I'm surprised Bolivar agreed with Sakeguchi on something, well, that wasn't FFVII related. :p

Anyway, I do agree with Sakeguchi that the real problem with HD is that it creates the temptation of going overboard in utilizing it. I will not be the first or last to say this was XIII's failure as a game. As for the comments on Western style Rpg getting HD right, I'm with Bolivar on this one. I've been playing through DQVIII and while it lacks the visual quality of FFXII even, the game is still very pretty and grand in its scale.

Fallout 3 is an ugly game with a terrible "FPS color palette" consisting of mostly shades of brown, gray, and black but what makes Fallout 3 a good game isn't its HD quality graphics, its the size and scope of its world. The same goes for XII and DQVIII. The point here isn't really whether a JRPG can be made in HD but whether its actually important for the game and I sorta feel that's what Sakeguchi was getting at.

I'll take a dive in realistic visuals over gameplay and content any day, but this is because I feel the artistic style can come through and make the game better despite the quality of the images. Okami is a visually beautiful game that doesn't require photo-realistic HD caliber graphics. Just because you have a platform that can use an option doesn't mean you have to use it. Art direction can easily make up for lack of fluff on polygon models.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I'm surprised Bolivar agreed with Sakeguchi on something, well, that wasn't FFVII related. :p

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"The previous games can be considered puppet-shows compared to this one [FFVII]" - H. Sakaguchi :)

Vivi22, your link was crazy (it needs fixing though :P ). I always thought Infaune was just pompous with his consistency in "popping out of my mole hill every 2 months to talk about how much Japan sucks. Western! Western! Western!!!!"

But apparently it's living hell over there. I really hope someone can figure something out so I can start getting games I actually want to play again :)

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

Vivi22, your link was crazy (it needs fixing though :P ).

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Good catch. Fixed it.