Secret Reports

Is anyone else getting tired of these popping up in every single game?

I mean, I think they started with Kingdom Hearts, and, sure, the Ansem Reports were interesting. But since then, they haven't stopped showing up. G-Reports in Dirge of Cerberus, Chaos and Cosmo reports in Dissidia, Analects in XIII...

And, worst of all, they are all so damned similar. Yes, there is some big conspiracy running through your entire game, that you are only going to show us through cryptic one page documents dropped on us randomly throughout the game. Been there, done that, can we get over it please?

Developers have a really hard time balancing creating a game completable by casual* gamers and the grind happy RPG mentality. And the lack of multiplayer to pad game time makes it even worse. As such games get padded with easy to create content that adds little to the game over all, such as secret reports and mark hunts. In some ways it is our fault for constantly demanding more gameplay and sidequests out of our games. In the end they just stop trying.

*which in this case means people who just want to finish the game and not invest hundreds of hours in it.

>>> Yeah reports are dumb and boring, they should replace them with Squall`s porn mags..:luca:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by black orb

>>> Yeah reports are dumb and boring, they should replace them with Squall`s porn mags..:luca:

---

Squall? I thought those were Zell's.

I like secret reports.

I've never been bothered by them in KH but they do irk me when they've shown up in other SE titles. Mostly cause they are either used as ploys to make a sequel (FFXIII-2) or when they are used to tell the real story of a game making the actual main story feel a bit irrelevant (Dissidia). In KH, it varies. I find the reports interesting and relevant in in games like KH1, 358/2, and BBS, but they were kinda irrelevant in KH2.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mercen-X

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by black orb

>>> Yeah reports are dumb and boring, they should replace them with Squall`s porn mags..:luca:

---

Squall? I thought those were Zell's.

---

They were Irvine's but he gave one to Squall. On topic. I didn't mind them in KHI. If they were in II I never noticed or I just forgot and mark hunts were fun in XII.

I like them. They add interesting backstory. I can't be bothered to actually spend all of that time acquiring them, but hey that's what GameFAQs is for, right?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jessweeee♪

I like them. They add interesting backstory. I can't be bothered to actually spend all of that time acquiring them, but hey that's what GameFAQs is for, right?

---

I don't mind the extra backstory, but I don't like how it is doled out.

XII had the best system, with the extra bits of info about the world that were added in as you killed monsters. The only real important information was unlocked by bosses and Espers as you fought them, which actually made sense and had smooth progression that tied in with the main game.

But, as Wolf said, the others undermine the main plot. And they aren't distributed smoothly either. You get backstory, but there is no cohesion or progression to it. It isn't really a story.

I find it more annoying when critical story elements are revealed outside of the video game itself. This is something that happens occasionally with the Ultimania series of guides.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jessweeee♪

I like them. They add interesting backstory. I can't be bothered to actually spend all of that time acquiring them, but hey that's what GameFAQs is for, right?

---

I agree. If a secret report or something similar will take too long for me to legitimately acquire, I will go ahead and read about it on a message board or something like that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roogle

I find it more annoying when critical story elements are revealed outside of the video game itself. This is something that happens occasionally with the Ultimania series of guides.

---

The Ultimanias were originally meant to be clarification, to explain things that the developers had tried to portray, but didn't translate well into the game, or were too subtle/ambiguous for most players to grasp. Only recently have they been used as a substitute for the game story.

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jessweeee♪

I like them. They add interesting backstory. I can't be bothered to actually spend all of that time acquiring them, but hey that's what GameFAQs is for, right?

---

I agree. If a secret report or something similar will take too long for me to legitimately acquire, I will go ahead and read about it on a message board or something like that.

---

Soo, you don't like story being revealed outside of the game, yet you go to the internet to get this extra info?

Just more proof that they are a very poor storytelling method.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Skyblade

The Ultimanias were originally meant to be clarification, to explain things that the developers had tried to portray, but didn't translate well into the game, or were too subtle/ambiguous for most players to grasp. Only recently have they been used as a substitute for the game story.

---

I consider the types of things that are revealed in the Ultimania to be necessary to get a total picture of the story and its world. I am not necessarily talking about the detailed revelations such as the connections between Sephiroth and Jenova in Final Fantasy VII. An old Final Fantasy IV booklet, for example, explained important connections between some of the main characters and some of the basic geography and background information about the world itself that I feel should have been included in the game. This has more to do with the development process of a video game where story elements are cut for time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Skyblade

Soo, you don't like story being revealed outside of the game, yet you go to the internet to get this extra info?

Just more proof that they are a very poor storytelling method.

---

In that case, it is the thought that counts. It is easier to get information that is originally in the game outside of the game than it is to wait for pieced translations of Japanese materials.

Like WK I liked them in the KH series but not in other games. The very first set of Ansem's reports made sense in the context of story of KH1. Other KH continued to use them but I didn't mind since they were interesting and the use of them was already established. In FFXIII they were pretty dumb and almost like they were added as an afterthought.

Final Fantasy XIII had a type of secret report? Are you talking about the log of events that acts as a summary of the plot or something else?

Yeah, the Analects, which are unlocked as you complete the Cieth Stone missions in Pulse. Thet detail the creation of Cocoon, the fall of Pulse, ponder about the truth about those special Arks scattered across Pulse (the one Dysley sends you to as "training"), speak of a threat from beyond, and basically talk about the Gods and the nature of Fal'Cie. Most of the info is never once mentioned in the actual game and most of the info lends itself to their being more of a story. It's why no one is terribly surprised XIII got a sequel cause the Analects kinda created some annoying loose ends.

Lazily Encrypted Secret Report:
Starting with every other letter can bare absolutely no results. My poor eyes can't take much more. I can't just scramble a bunch of letters in a sentence so I can make sense out of nonsense. I say, under penalty of dissemination, they should cease and desist.

I've always felt they were a lazy cheap route developers took, so we just get to read about it instead of actually seeing anything happen.