Can't do an open world? I'm not buying it

So, I don't know if I'm solely alone, and I have a feeling that I'm probably not alone when I say I'm frustrated with Square for the lack of free roam in their past few Final Fantasy games. The last true free roam was of course 9 (except 11) but I've always read that they say that they can't make a free roam world with characters and buildings to scale. Well, I just played Just Cause 2 which is a Square Enix game on the 360 and I call B.S. If anyone has played it, they did it perfect with that so why can't it work for Final Fantasy? The cities are huge, landscape and mountains are huge and 400 square miles of free roam over the top territories....

Wasn't FFXII an open world? More than IX was at least.

XII was free roam for the most part, course it took something close to 6 years to make it, but it was technically breaking ground for SE. I believe SE's argument was they couldn't do a HD FF title with a free roaming world and what not, but revelations about XIII's development combined with what Versus XIII has been showing, I feel pretty much shows that statement was simply a cop-out excuse to explain why XIII was poorly designed, instead of the reality that XIII was mismanaged by corporate forcing the developers to make it use Crystal Tools, which itself was still in development, and then the teams all doing their own thing with no actual plan on what they wanted XIII to be like until SE CEOs promised a demo, which forced all the teams to finally get on the same page almost a year before its release.

Though it should be fair to point out that SE didn't make Just Cause 2, they were simply the publisher, the game was actually developed by a Swedish game company called Avalanche Studios and also by Eidos Interactive.

I think when SE mentioned that they couldn't do a highly detailed free-roaming world for a Final Fantasy game is because their resources are stretched so thin. Whilst it is certainly possible to do it, it might not be feasible at all.

It would certainly require a large team that's extremely dedicated and focused, as well as a ridiculous amount of money invested. And we've since seen quite a few companys recently coming under scrutiny for extremely bad working conditions to meet these kinds of expectations (such as Team Bondi and Gameloft working 120 hour weeks).

However I do believe things can be done a lot better than how SE delt with FFXIII. For once it'd be nice to hear SE just lay it out how it is rather than making up excuses and being secretive. In SE's defense though, there's a lot more to a Final Fantasy game than Just Cause 2 and there are many many many factors to consider than just creating environment assets (models and textures).

I think the issue wasn't so much that it was impossible, but that it would take more resources and time than was practical. It'll be interesting to see what the process for Versus XIII ends up being. Apparently it's going to be super open, and there'll be a world map, but it appears to be in a more modern urban setting, even using real areas of Shibuya as a model. It's been in development since FFXII was halfway done, I think.

Was XIII in development before Versus XIII?

No, it was announced in 2006, the year XII was released, XIII was the one that started actual development in 2004, though I believe SE announced they were making XIII in 2003. Versus XIII was revealed with the trailer for XIII.

Well you have to give some credit to the idea that to create a fully scaled RPG world would be an immense undertaking. Yes, Just Cause 2 is huge as are many other open-world games this generation but they can't possibly come close to the number of cities, towns, and unique areas we expect from a Final Fantasy. You can especially tell with the WRPGs that try to do this, how recycled all of the art assets are with dungeons that are probably identical to the last one you came across, and the entire game is only capable of nailing one art style. In Final Fantasy, I expect many.

I beat White Knight Chronicles a couple months back, and it had a huge open world, with some cities that were actually pretty impressive with how huge they are, all the people populated in them, and the number of unique interior areas. When I started playing I thought to myself, 'here's a good-looking HD RPG world, why couldn't FF do it?' BUT that was only one region! To multiply that by the number of regions I would expect from the game would be a massive undertaking and I do start to see Square's point.

That said, I do think it will be easier and possible very soon. With studios getting used to the modern engines and building up considerable asset libraries from multiple games, I do think we'll finally see that true classic FF/DQ RPG that nails everything the older games were about. Especially considering Versus has been in development for like 6 years, it may just be that game. It'll probably have to be on Blu Ray only, though, like Versus, because to go back to a shop in a town in the castle at the beginning of the game, whose chair file couldn't fit on the disc for the latter part of the storyline, doesn't seem it would be handled well with multiple discs.

Huh? I don't know what games you've been playing with free roaming, open worlds, but they certainly weren't Final Fantasy I-XIII, or X-2, or Dirge of Cerberus, or Tactics, or Tactics Advance, or Mystic Quest, all of which I've played.

Honestly I loved the way XII was set up world wise, I'd like to see more of that.

But I also loved XIII so they're free to continue in that direction and I'll be just delighted by it. :heart:

13 was nice at the end of the game. I'd prefer an overworld like Gran Pulse instead of some screen change where my characters become miniatures with only the illusion of freedom. In general though, FF games are notoriously linear, until the end of the game. The world maps just gave the illusion that you could go somewhere other than the next plot point in the story, but really... where did you go and what did you do that was so open-ended and non-linear? It was always point A to point B. Still though, at least there was the illusion in FF games prior to 13, whereas in 13 the vast majority of the game is LITERALLY a straight tunnel without even side paths. FF6, actually, in the whole second half of the game was pretty open, and 12 felt a lot more open than most FFs. Too bad all of FF13 wasn't like Gran Pulse. It's also too bad there wasn't really any story on Gran Pulse.

I actually thought Gran Pulse is what derailed FFXIII. Up until that point you were almost always using different party combinations of 2-3 characters, which forced you to adjust the strategies available to you. It also had a ton more character development and interaction. It was almost as if once each character got over their past, there was no need to have a presence in the storyline anymore, you could just have Barthendalus guide them to the end.

I understand it's only the illusion of nonlinearity that's gone but I think it's an important illusion nonetheless. I didn't realize how linear FFX was until I played FFXIII, and to me, that's the mark of a great game, considering FFX's field screen design is almost identical to FFXIII. I can't really tell what it was that disguised it in FFX, was it the pacing, the presence of towns, or even ATB Random Encounters???

I'm not really sure.

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

I understand it's only the illusion of nonlinearity that's gone but I think it's an important illusion nonetheless. I didn't realize how linear FFX was until I played FFXIII, and to me, that's the mark of a great game, considering FFX's field screen design is almost identical to FFXIII. I can't really tell what it was that disguised it in FFX, was it the pacing, the presence of towns, or even ATB Random Encounters???

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All three contributed somewhat. Also the presence of Blitzball provided a nice distraction. Similarly with mini-games, side stories, and the cloister trials.

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Originally Posted by Del Murder

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

I understand it's only the illusion of nonlinearity that's gone but I think it's an important illusion nonetheless. I didn't realize how linear FFX was until I played FFXIII, and to me, that's the mark of a great game, considering FFX's field screen design is almost identical to FFXIII. I can't really tell what it was that disguised it in FFX, was it the pacing, the presence of towns, or even ATB Random Encounters???

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All three contributed somewhat. Also the presence of Blitzball provided a nice distraction. Similarly with mini-games, side stories, and the cloister trials.

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It also helps if you like the story, I blame my dislike of the plot for being able to notice how linear and uninspiring the map design in FFX was. Still, at least X had the decency to litter the maps with "something" while none of it really great, was at least something to pass the time and relieve boredom and tedium, unlike FFXIII...

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

It also helps if you like the story, I blame my dislike of the plot for being able to notice how linear and uninspiring the map design in FFX was.

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Do you mean "uninspired" or do you normally look to map design for inspiration? ;)

edit: Also, starting to find the answer after Del's post, I think that's why a lot of RPGs have the fetch quests, the collectible flashbacks, a puzzle template (cloisters), and if you can throw a story-spanning side game in there like Blitzball, then that's just the icing on the cake for a great RPG. Especially if it's fun, which Blitzball WAS.

It's a little of both, see unlike you, I never found Spira interesting, and I do partially blame it on the map design making the world feel like the yellow brick road of Oz, so while it is certainly uninspired in its over-simplicity and lack of imagination, I also feel the map design leads to the game not inspiring a sense of being in a "living world" and drawing the player in. So I'll agree with you that it was uninspired design but I also stand that it was uninspiring as well. ;)

In retrospective, Final Fantasy never were an open world compared to games like DQ3 and Ultima series so why it needs to be open now ? I don't recall any past FF like that ?

I think most people agree its the "illusion of freedom". While the FF series hasn't really been open world since FFII and FFXII most recently, the games always offered a few little treats for going off the beaten path. In FFIV, you can discover a chocobo forest before you ever get to Mist Cave, and later there are entire dungeons and towns that you will never see if you don't go off the beaten path. VIII and IX both have a few quests that require you to backtrack to earlier locations at certain points in the plot and both also had some optional locations to visit. Hell, even just discovering locations of rare monsters like the Intangir and Brachiosaur in VI or the Vlakorados in VII.

The pre-PS2 titles always had some minor diversions and secrets to discover that made you less aware that once you leave the dungeon, your only option is to go to town and then the next dungeon. It still creates the sense of being a large open world while also encouraging the player to look around and check everything before going to the next stage of the game.

Honestly, I would not mind if they just went back to big world map with tiny chibi-versioned characters running around it. It can be done a hell of a lot better than the PS1-era games, too.

I agree with Rostum entirely.

It's doubtful they will do that, though. It's not "adult" or "modern" or "fast-paced" enough. <_<

Didn't SE state that they weren't going to move the FF series in an adult/mature direction anyways?

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

Didn't SE state that they weren't going to move the FF series in an adult/mature direction anyways?

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That would be a neat change to see. I usually end up liking the little experiments they do with Final Fantasy.

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Originally Posted by Rostum

Honestly, I would not mind if they just went back to big world map with tiny chibi-versioned characters running around it. It can be done a hell of a lot better than the PS1-era games, too.

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I believe I read Nomura tried this with vs XIII but didnt like how it looked. Are games all about eye candy now? Are we somehow past the shrunken cities on a world map era? I dont think so. Who cares if it looks odd, at least initially, in high def. Its still superior to static point and click maps that teleport you anywhere without no feeling of travel or adventure.

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Originally Posted by clowd

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Originally Posted by Rostum

Honestly, I would not mind if they just went back to big world map with tiny chibi-versioned characters running around it. It can be done a hell of a lot better than the PS1-era games, too.

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I believe I read Nomura tried this with vs XIII but didnt like how it looked. Are games all about eye candy now? Are we somehow past the shrunken cities on a world map era? I dont think so. Who cares if it looks odd, at least initially, in high def. Its still superior to static point and click maps that teleport you anywhere without no feeling of travel or adventure.

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Why are you trying to make it sound like these changes are bad or about eye candy? Did we even see the world map system in that game ? No, it might be justified from their prospective.

loved the world map but after playing 7,8,9 wif it 10 was a dont really know differant but in a good way maybes the idea of alternating them after a couple or every series would be an idea

Nothing needs to be open and I don't think anyone really believed in actual freedom in an FF game (or even the 'illusion' of it) until interesting world design was removed from the series entirely. I think people just want a game where the world isn't as predictable as a straight line. A few hours into X or XIII and it becomes really obvious that This Is It. The Calm Lands and Gran Pulse were exceptions but those were some damn awfully integrated exceptions.

EDIT: Thinking on it, there is quite a bit of freedom in the older games. Not at all times, but that's really also why FF game worlds are so exciting. In a single game you can be on the run, adventuring forward at your own pace, exploring a town, or even traveling back and forth between towns interacting with NPCs and making little connections between everything. You can even go back into old dungeons and find some chests, or grind for monsters, or whatever you want. By the end, you can really kind of go anywhere you want, and it's usually why a lot of people (me, I guess) get frustrated with VIII or IX when they block off locations during the endgame with some kind of cop-out plot excuse.

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Originally Posted by Flying Arrow

Nothing needs to be open and I don't think anyone really believed in actual freedom in an FF game (or even the 'illusion' of it) until interesting world design was removed from the series entirely. I think people just want a game where the world isn't as predictable as a straight line. A few hours into X or XIII and it becomes really obvious that This Is It. The Calm Lands and Gran Pulse were exceptions but those were some damn awfully integrated exceptions.

EDIT: Thinking on it, there is quite a bit of freedom in the older games. Not at all times, but that's really also why FF game worlds are so exciting. In a single game you can be on the run, adventuring forward at your own pace, exploring a town, or even traveling back and forth between towns interacting with NPCs and making little connections between everything. You can even go back into old dungeons and find some chests, or grind for monsters, or whatever you want. By the end, you can really kind of go anywhere you want, and it's usually why a lot of people (me, I guess) get frustrated with VIII or IX when they block off locations during the endgame with some kind of cop-out plot excuse.

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Personally, i don't see that big gab between Snes/PSX and X~XIII style. In case of X~XIII, they didn't even have a role of level designer in teams, they let art director and art teams handle levels just like Snes/PSX era.

That's fine, but what I'm saying is that there are a lot more ways for the player to interact with the game worlds of the older games than in X or XIII. XII is very much like the older games in the way I described them in my previous post. X gives you some options later in the game (via a list), but the game world is still pretty stripped back. XIII lets you return to a big, barren area for sidequests and that's it. The game doesn't provide a cohesive, existing world in the way the older games do, and traveling through its areas is done using the most basic of inputs.

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Originally Posted by Del Murder

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

I understand it's only the illusion of nonlinearity that's gone but I think it's an important illusion nonetheless. I didn't realize how linear FFX was until I played FFXIII, and to me, that's the mark of a great game, considering FFX's field screen design is almost identical to FFXIII. I can't really tell what it was that disguised it in FFX, was it the pacing, the presence of towns, or even ATB Random Encounters???

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All three contributed somewhat. Also the presence of Blitzball provided a nice distraction. Similarly with mini-games, side stories, and the cloister trials.

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And the ability to go back to previously explored areas. In FF13 it's like there's a ton of explosives in each area that demolishes every place you visit once you're past it.

I agree with Flying Arrow, and would like to throw in that Gran Pulse was a pretty bad way to compensate for everything they did up to that point. It makes it even worse because it's so obvious what they were doing. In fact, I thought the game fell off a little after Gran Pulse, because although everything was linear, it was focused, and it didn't arbitrarily fall back on mark hunts as a way of saying 'i'm sorry.' That was just like a slap in the face, not to mention the character interaction and development drops off at about that time, too.

Still an awesome game, though!

I love how you always have to say its an awesome game after every criticism you make of it, like you're trying to convince yourself its not as awful as you subconsciously know it to be. ;)

I also agree with Flying Arrow, while progressing the story is often linear, the world itself grows and expands as you progress and your options get greater. It creates a greater sense of a world, than just traveling from one connected location to another, and the tube like quality of these stages only help to make them feel artificial. Some dungeons in previous games were also simply straight paths, but the games tended to scramble it all into a twisted mess, so its hard to tell how linear areas are when they resembled mazes. Mt Nibel itself is like five maps top, but it involved hitting switches and solving a puzzle to get to the boss and the exit. IV had several hidden paths and some large branching areas in their dungeons which made their visually simple designs far more complex. They may seem simple but really when you think about it, even some of the more simple dungeons in early FF games tend to be less straightforward than what XIII presented us.

I think one of the bigger issues with some of the later FFs is how sparse they are about vehicles. While both X and XII had a form of an airship, they are revealed at the last stretch of the game when the final dungeon opens and you're in sidequest hell. Even FFVIII and IX were really sparse about giving the player the ability to travel around the world with the same sense of freedom as an airship can. I feel vehicles also make a world seem larger and bigger, and by the PS2 generations, they have been marginalized to a great degree.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I think one of the bigger issues with some of the later FFs is how sparse they are about vehicles. While both X and XII had a form of an airship, they are revealed at the last stretch of the game when the final dungeon opens and you're in sidequest hell. Even FFVIII and IX were really sparse about giving the player the ability to travel around the world with the same sense of freedom as an airship can. I feel vehicles also make a world seem larger and bigger, and by the PS2 generations, they have been marginalized to a great degree.

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Not to mention are a great tool for giving limited amounts of freedom. Each new vehicle allows you to access new areas, but still allows areas to be restricted. Hell even in the old titles once you got your airship it wasn't the be all and end all of world access, there were multiple airships/upgrades for you to get as you went along.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

Some dungeons in previous games were also simply straight paths, but the games tended to scramble it all into a twisted mess, so its hard to tell how linear areas are when they resembled mazes. Mt Nibel itself is like five maps top, but it involved hitting switches and solving a puzzle to get to the boss and the exit. IV had several hidden paths and some large branching areas in their dungeons which made their visually simple designs far more complex. They may seem simple but really when you think about it, even some of the more simple dungeons in early FF games tend to be less straightforward than what XIII presented us.

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The problem for me is that FFIV's design suited JRPG games in 1991 and VII's did its own thing in 1997. I won't go so far as to speak for others, so I'll just say that I simply cannot get over the idea the rigid, featureless linearity of FFXIII passes for good game design in 2011. I've read the reviews that talk about how XIII is a much-needed paring down of extraneous FF conventions, and I do agree that it's good to see mini-games finally given the boot and a get story that doesn't veer off into shenanigans to add play time. That's fine and great and probably the only thing XIII can legitimately say it does better than the older games. It's just that... couldn't SE have done something with XIII's bare bones to make it interesting?

I hate to harp on this like a broken record, but using a third person camera perspective it just makes everything seem so much more linear. You are by definition running in a straight line with slight deviations to alter your course left to right. Factor in the fact that there are much less map transitions nowadays and you are spending most of your time running around holding forward on the analog stick.

Even if you took a game like FF7 and ran through it with a third person perspective it would seem a ton more linear than the experience with a static camera. IMO even the areas of FF13 where the camera pans out had a much better feeling to them.

^ Yes. The camera is the biggest difference maker in the PS2/3 games. And at the risk of sounding like a whining old fart (I'm not that old!) I remember hearing that FFX was going to be an over the shoulder perspective and thinking how odd it would be considering FF games don't really incorporate a lot of environmental puzzles or whatever that necessitate this kind of perspective. I can see why Square wanted to move away from the quaint (although amazing) pre-rendered environments, but I still think they suited those games perfectly and the jump was only made for the graphics factor. X and XIII, for me, feel like not a lot is going on because there's not a lot of gameplay added in to accommodate the new perspective and control scheme. XII, for example, was a great over the shoulder FF game because with the fluidity of the battle system it couldn't have played out from any other perspective. If there are no real puzzles and there's still a battle system that requires screen shifting, the over the shoulder adventure parts start to feel like real filler.

I can agree as well, I think the happiest hybrid of the two would be to pull of Xenogears/BoF3-IV dungeon layouts where the camera is fixed but its possible to rotate it anywhere from 90 to 360 degrees depending on what's needed. All three of these games also incorporated the rotating camera into puzzles and exploration better as well which is something I can't say for FFXII I'm afraid.

Personally, I feel the dungeon layout should fit what is needed, I feel the camera style of XII and XIII would work wonders if used sparingly with pre-rendered layouts and more as a means to keep the player mentally stirred. I honestly feel the full 3D camera works very well for walking around towns, I can't tell you how much I actually like just strolling through towns in FFXII and taking in the sights.

I agree about the just looking aroundishness of FFXII. I spent a lot of time out on the lookouts of Bhujerba just watching the sky. FFXII probably has one of my favourite game skies. Shame about the camera in XIII, though. Sometimes I just wanted to look out at the Sunleth Waterscape but adjusting the camera in that game is about as easy as trying to twist my cat off my couch while he has claws dug in.

I actually found the design of FF12 had me spending an inordinate amount of time not looking at the scenery. Why? Because I was spending the whole time running around with the camera planted on my backside I was constantly getting disoriented and looking at the minimap. For like 50% of the game I was running around starring at a wire-frame drawing. What a waste of of developer money on such a gorgeous little country. (I refuse to call FF12 a world).

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I can agree as well, I think the happiest hybrid of the two would be to pull of Xenogears/BoF3-IV dungeon layouts where the camera is fixed but its possible to rotate it anywhere from 90 to 360 degrees depending on what's needed.

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The camera was one of the weaker aspects of Xenogears IMO. I never found the ability to control it added anything to the game, only the hassle of moving it from places you didn't want it to be and causing disorientation when entering areas with the camera on a different facing. I don't see what having it movable added that having smartly crafted camera angles for every area wouldn't.

*Also note that when I say 'fixed camera' I don't mean it has to stay in one place. I mean that it's movement is predetermined and not in the players control.

I think FFXIII-2 and Versus present good solutions such as implementing physics engine(Cloud formation/weather) , global dynamic lighting(Day/night cycle in VS13) and a degree of destructible objects in VS13.

What are those solutions to, besides a game with no dynamic weather or destructible environments?

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

I actually found the design of FF12 had me spending an inordinate amount of time not looking at the scenery. Why? Because I was spending the whole time running around with the camera planted on my backside I was constantly getting disoriented and looking at the minimap. For like 50% of the game I was running around starring at a wire-frame drawing. What a waste of of developer money on such a gorgeous little country. (I refuse to call FF12 a world).

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I played director and would shift the camera around to fit the locale. Yet in some locations and towns I actually took the time to really just look around the locations, seriously, the towns in XII are some of the most well crafted towns in the series in terms of visual content. I mean just watching airships go by in Bhujerba and then quickly panning the camera on the people and scenery was nice. I also shifted the camera often in battle when I needed to move my characters to specific strategic points and to keep my bearings as I watched to make sure the boss didn't spot me. I only used the minimap to check for traps and to help when I got lost or worse, turned around.

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I can agree as well, I think the happiest hybrid of the two would be to pull of Xenogears/BoF3-IV dungeon layouts where the camera is fixed but its possible to rotate it anywhere from 90 to 360 degrees depending on what's needed.

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The camera was one of the weaker aspects of Xenogears IMO. I never found the ability to control it added anything to the game, only the hassle of moving it from places you didn't want it to be and causing disorientation when entering areas with the camera on a different facing. I don't see what having it movable added that having smartly crafted camera angles for every area wouldn't.

*Also note that when I say 'fixed camera' I don't mean it has to stay in one place. I mean that it's movement is predetermined and not in the players control.

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The movable camera was great for spotting hidden items that simply moved off camera but would have been unnoticeable otherwise, the camera helped with setting up some of the platforming elements (better than KH1's godawful camera...), and it was utilized in some of the more amusing mini-games like the hide and seek game in Aveh. Hell it was because of than mini-game that I actually started to play with the map as I explored towns and dungeons to notice items I wouldn't have otherwise. I found it a fun element of exploration, and as I said when I praise XII, exploration is something that has been whittled down to nothing in modern JRPGs. I feel its something that needs to be refocused on and I find the camera is often an underutilized tool for exploring towns and dungeons.

As for moving cameras, I'm going to disagree, its one thing to have a moving camera when you're controlling it, but when the game does it, I find it visually jarring cause I'm trying to focus on my characters and the moving camera keeps distracting me cause my peripheral vision keeps picking it up. I find as soon as the camera moves, I suddenly halt to a stop to see what the camera is doing and I find it disrupts the flow of the game for me. So no camera for the game designer during the playtime portion. I never liked when the game would combine the movement with the cutscene cause the cutscene was always more distracting. You have no idea how many times I fail the fight mini-game at the battle between Gardens in VIII cause my focus keeps shifting to the fighting in the background instead of the playable part. I think in terms of panning cameras, Suikoden III might be the only exception I can think of.

I disfavor free cameras as well. FFVII introduced the camera as a storytelling tool, and designers could use its placement to accentuate a scene and make the story that much more powerful. Giving a free camera further highlights the differences between custscenes and gameplay, and makes them that much more stark.

That said, I think it worked well for a game like FFXII which was based around freedom (story and gameplay!) and exploration. You got to explore the world when you wanted and so it let you look at things when you felt like it. During battles, I would rotate the camera until I was able to fit all the combatants in the frame, and then let it sit there and watch the battle play out. Actually did a good job resembling the more cinematic fights of FFVII-IX.

I actually kinda like semi-free cameras. The camera position isn't locked, but you can't move it anywhere you want to, just zoom in/out a bit, move it a 20-80 degrees in each direction, or stuff like that, depending on the scene.

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

I disfavor free cameras as well. FFVII introduced the camera as a storytelling tool, and designers could use its placement to accentuate a scene and make the story that much more powerful. Giving a free camera further highlights the differences between custscenes and gameplay, and makes them that much more stark.

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I don't really agree with this because I feel the transition with set cameras is just as noticeable because you'll be walking around in the dungeon and then suddenly the controller stops responding, so you suddenly realize that you're transitioning and you watch as it pans out. The fact action has to stop for the sake of dialogue is pretty much a major transition change that will jolt a player out of the game.There is also the issue that often times I don't agree with the director's "vision" of the scene. Sometimes I prefer seeing the characters over the scenery and sometimes I feel it should be the other way around. There is also this problem...

Considering most JRPGs will still load in the dialogue scene, I feel this argument is moot and that it's still very plausible to let a gamer have more free reign over the camera during dungeon and and town exploration in order to utilize more gameplay options. Story is great but I will go back to my usual position that it should never trump gameplay. Yet as I stated, I feel the fixed but still movable camera of Xenogears/BoFIII-IV is a nice compromise because it would give the director more options in order to make the dungeon dynamic looking by limiting what positions the player can see, and programming story segments into that so even if the player switches from the default right corner/ back of character view to a left corner front of character view, the dialogue sequence will just start and the director can still maintain control of how cool it looks by making sure the dialogue sequence is visually stimulating based on the limited viewing options, even if BoF, there are times when the game won't allow you to move the camera at all and I feel its fine when it fits the moment but I don't always feel the director's storytelling vision is right for the game part. I really feel this is the best compromise.

I think a rotatable camera probably could solve some problems, but only if done really, really well. I don't think Xenogears' method of making the player rotate the camera to see hidden things is particularly a good way of doing things. Treasure should, I think, be hidden in more meaningful ways than just tucking into the game world's titty geometry. Obviously a modern game would probably have much smoother areas, but I still think the style is a regression of what can be pulled off today with some creativity and talent.

Still, we're talking about Playstation 3 games. Xenogears' ugly, rotatable environments "worked" (actually, I think they were pretty awful) because they were really all that could be had aside from 2D sprite art or pre-rendered backdrops. In this day and age, the over the shoulder action-adventure camera is fine, as long as the developers bother with decent level design or make the world interesting to explore from this perspective. If they don't even bother with this most basic necessity of game design then they just shouldn't bother at all.

I kind of fell off of JRPGs around the beginning of the PS2 era, once I felt they lost the appeal that they previously had (telling a story in clever video game language rather than dramatize it horrendously using film conventions). For those curious as to where my JRPG ideals fall, I think DQVIII is the pinnacle of the modern console JRPG (as far as exploration and adventuring goes, but in other ways too). It's basically, remember when you were a kid playing on the NES and imagining what the worlds of DQ, FF or Zelda looked like from the perspective of your dinky little sprites? That's exactly what DQVIII is.

I can agree that DQVIII (and I would add XII since its just a more graphical powerhouse version of the same setup) is pretty much what the standard should be. Amusingly, I find it interesting that Xenoblade and Last Story are often compared to FFXII in several factors including exploration. I think I could be happy with this set-up especially since DQVIII found a happy compromise of realistic world travel but a means to actually see a world map by implementing the old school style maps when you used the boat or flying bird. Though it would also work to bring in some of the old school jazz of other visual elements in the world. Wouldn't it be awesome to run across a field and watch a herd of chocobos stomp by or climb a mountain and witness an airship descending from the clouds to the city you passed below. I'm still really pissed that VIII and IX were introducing elements like this into their games and they have all but been dropped.

I agree with Flying Arrow that DQVIII is where the medium should be at today. I totally agree with the sentiment that it looks exactly how your imagination would have fully realized the worlds represented by tile sets and sprites on the NES. It was kinda the advent of everything JRPGs could have become with no substantial place to go after that.

I also agree with Wolf that FFXII was the same way. Even on the first playthrough, when I disliked the game, I did at least realize that it showed the direction JRPGs should have headed. The fact that we were wrong is a very lamentable occurrence, but I'm glad some Japanese devs got the message; I love me some White Knight Chronicles :)

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I don't really agree with this because I feel the transition with set cameras is just as noticeable because you'll be walking around in the dungeon and then suddenly the controller stops responding, so you suddenly realize that you're transitioning and you watch as it pans out.

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I doubt you really believe it's "just as noticeable." The absence of the same perspective from gameplay, which is very rarely seamless at that, is an additional factor beyond lack of controller input and presentation of dialogue. It's an additional factor, so it's an obvious logical misstep to claim it's "just as noticeable."

Also, camera control is lost with dramatic set pieces, which is the crown jewel of modern game design, another element introduced by FFVII. The loss of control becomes very noticeable in these very intense scenes, whereas in games with fixed cameras, there is no transition.

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I don't really agree with this because I feel the transition with set cameras is just as noticeable because you'll be walking around in the dungeon and then suddenly the controller stops responding, so you suddenly realize that you're transitioning and you watch as it pans out.

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I doubt you really believe it's "just as noticeable." The absence of the same perspective from gameplay, which is very rarely seamless at that, is an additional factor beyond lack of controller input and presentation of dialogue. It's an additional factor, so it's an obvious logical misstep to claim it's "just as noticeable."

Also, camera control is lost with dramatic set pieces, which is the crown jewel of modern game design, another element introduced by FFVII. The loss of control becomes very noticeable in these very intense scenes, whereas in games with fixed cameras, there is no transition.

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I find it amusing you think you know what I notice and what I don't but, you forget that most dialogue scenes of games like VII-IX usually begin with a camera change when you enter a new screen, like when you go into the elevators in VII or how often dialogue sequences usually take place at the beginning of a new location or at the end. So in a way, the fixed camera serves nothing more than as a tool for viewing the dungeons. I feel your argument is moot because its rare for a JRPG not to pull this, because very few games have dialogue scenes in the middle of dungeons unless something happens that makes it warrant being there, like entering a room where the switch is, or the magic artifact, or a boss. Or hell, like in VIII when you're being chased by the spider mech and everytime you enter a new area, you're party and the mech start in a neutral position once the map loads, as though they are taking cigarette breaks between loading screens and now you have to push forward to start moving again cause it doesn't register it all the time if you just hold it down. So technically these games really didn't bring in seamless camera work, of anything, the old 16-bit games did this all the time but we can chalk that all up o having to view everything from one angle due to tech limitations. I also don't necessarily feel the fixed camera/pre-rendered backgrounds did wonders for dungeon design because I honestly feel dungeon design in these games began to weaken in favor of just showing off visual locales.

This eventually devolved into what we are seeing in FFX and XIII with uninspired level design with eye candy wallpaper, instead of having the locations actually be memorable for themselves. So your" crowing jewel of modern game design" eventually turned into pretty colored glass instead of something that actually brought anything meaningful into game design, all it really did was segregate game and story from each other more. Even then, 95% of VII's locales are from a 3/4th angle or side perspective, so I don't know what you're smoking when you talk about how wonderful it was and how much it changed everything, especially since it wasn't exactly new in gaming either.

My real issue here, is that I don't really feel that the story part needs the bells and whistles of Hollywood movie magic to make it interesting, if the plot is good, the characters are likable, and the visuals and music fit the mood, then I don't need the dungeons and cutscenes to get the Stanley Kubrick treatment. I just started playing the demo for Type-0/Agito and one of the most visually impressive things it has done is a part at the beginning of the demo where my party rounded a corner and in the distance I saw two military trucks drive towards us, come to a stop somewhat far away and watch a platoon of enemy units get out to fire upon us, all while I was running towards it. If this had been any been the 16-bit/PSX era, the party would have stopped moving to watch the trucks come towards us and probably comment on it, had it been the PS2 era, the game would have stopped and loaded in a hi-res cutscene with the vehicles coming towards us in a fury and possibly watch my party dodge getting run over, all the while the game zooming in on close-ups and camera angles and making a big deal out of this group of guys with guns coming out is going to kick my ass but are unaware they are the games Imps. There has been some seriously cool visual effects with the enemies in this game, it is seamless but hampered by an awful camera and lack of a decent target system, but otherwise it was something simple but still created a great story moment as we busted into the town and created a real sense of the situation and all with a boring over the shoulder camera.

Despite all this, I don't necessarily feel that a fixed story camera is always a bad idea, but I just don't believe its as important, or as impressive as you give it. Of anything, I argue it should be used sparingly to maximize certain moments but not be overused cause not all elements in a game should be created to support just the plot. Wasn't that the lesson Xenogears taught you? ;) Some of the most visually stunning sequences I've seen in games were ones with a movable camera but still it was done so well it was hard to move the camera and mess it up, like Team Ico's games.

The thing I love about static cameras (I say this as in non-player controlled, not completely static) is the fact that the developer can present emotion, mood and story telling just from the position and angle of the camera itself; even if it's just the character's being further away from the camera, or closer, it'll bring a different feel to the scene. Just like how it works in cinematography and pretty much any creative medium that requires composition.

I'm not saying Final Fantasy has perfected that art in any of their games outside of cinematics, but it's definitely something that developers should try and explore in role playing games. i.e. Delivering the player with something extra outside of dialogue and character movement.

As far as actual gameplay goes, well I don't really have a solid opinion on the matter. From a development point of view third person camera's are extremely hard to get right and it's not like all developers share their secrets, especially if they do get it right. I never had an issue with FFXII's, and the only issue I had with FFXIII's was that it was made difficult if I wanted to look at a certain part of the scenery.

Edit: Just to make things clear, when I talk about static camera's in 3D games (i.e. Not pre-rendered backgrounds) I am more or less saying the player doesn't control or fully-control the camera but the camera will move in to position as the character is moved. Similar to some bits of Final Fantasy X.

^ One of the things I love about VII is how the camera pulls way back in certain screens to give you a sense of scale. Things like Mt. Nibel, Gaea's Cliffs, or the Northern Crater really do a great job visually presenting the idea that Cloud and crew are very, very small on the planet. In a game that involves a literal circle of life, a Lovecraftian alien from some unknown corner of the cosmos, and a meteor hanging oppressively in the sky, I'm willing to bet that the directors and artists really knew what this story was about and went to every length to impress it upon the player.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I find it amusing you think you know what I notice and what I don't but, you forget that most dialogue scenes of games like VII-IX usually begin with a camera change when you enter a new screen, like when you go into the elevators in VII or how often dialogue sequences usually take place at the beginning of a new location or at the end.

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... what? When the dialogue is at the beginning of a level, there is no visual transition when you go back into the gameplay. When the dialogue is at the end of the level, there is no visual transition when the text starts coming. With free camera, there is virtually always a visual transition. Hence you claiming it to be "just as noticeable" is untenable when there's obviously an additional, visual factor on top of the dialogue and lack of controller input.

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Originally Posted by wolf

Even then, 95% of VII's locales are from a 3/4th angle or side perspective, so I don't know what you're smoking when you talk about how wonderful it was and how much it changed everything

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Then I refer you to Flying Arrow and Rostum's last posts for elaboration on the point and you can go after them instead ;).

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Originally Posted by woof

Of anything, I argue it should be used sparingly to maximize certain moments but not be overused cause not all elements in a game should be created to support just the plot. Wasn't that the lesson Xenogears taught you?

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Xenogears taught me that gameplay doesn't matter. It just doesn't. You can have a pure gameplay experience such as, say, Gears of War, that does everything of its genre right in an unbelievably polished way, introducing a few innovations of its own, and even going as far as to point where gaming itself is headed over the next few years. But a game like Xenogears, with a humongous cast, various intruiging plot threads, intelligent writing and translation, an attempt at a few themes, powerful visual images, and phenomenal music scoring those scenes... it simply isn't going to matter that the latter game also has unpolished battle design, a shallow combat system, uninspired puzzles, TERRIBLE platforming, boring encounters, scripted bosses, and monotonously repetitive dungeons that have had noticeably little effort put into them. Xenogears is an incredible story inside a terrible video game, but it will always be more memorable and have a stronger impact on me than even the perfect gameplay experience ever could.

I'm just glad I'm at the final dungeon so I can go back to Valkyria Chronicles II :kakapo:

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Originally Posted by Flying Arrow

^ One of the things I love about VII is how the camera pulls way back in certain screens to give you a sense of scale. Things like Mt. Nibel, Gaea's Cliffs, or the Northern Crater really do a great job visually presenting the idea that Cloud and crew are very, very small on the planet. In a game that involves a literal circle of life, a Lovecraftian alien from some unknown corner of the cosmos, and a meteor hanging oppressively in the sky, I'm willing to bet that the directors and artists really knew what this story was about and went to every length to impress it upon the player.

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You see, I just never really saw it as a big deal and I have never felt like pulling the camera back did anything for those places. Of anything, I just felt it was more of a cheap way to cover up how rather boring they were but then again, FF really never did do mountain dungeons well if you ask me.

As for Rostum's example, I would be more impressed if the scene in question was relevant and not just Sephy throwing a piece of materia at Cloud and flying off. Whatever tension it had is lost by how silly it is executed. Out of context I can agree but the problem here is that it doesn't address the issue of its practicality for the game side of an RPG. the Fixed camera/pre-render set-up is solely for storytelling and pretty much limits what is capable for the dungeon itself. If a cutscene hadn't taken place at that scene, then that would not only be a weird angle for a part of a dungeon you're just casually walking through, but also boring for level design cause its simply a straight path with no gameplay purpose. That's my issue here, its aesthetic strengths only serve to help one side of the game. While I can agree that its an effective tool for creating visual stimuli, I can't agree its practical for gameplay or making a dungeon fun to play through. If you really think about it, some of the best dungeons in VII like the Shin-Ra building are presented to you in a visual format similar to a 16-bit RPG with an overhead 3/4th angle view that often shown more than the character in question could see.

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... what? When the dialogue is at the beginning of a level, there is no visual transition when you go back into the gameplay. When the dialogue is at the end of the level, there is no visual transition when the text starts coming. With free camera, there is virtually always a visual transition. Hence you claiming it to be "just as noticeable" is untenable when there's obviously an additional, visual factor on top of the dialogue and lack of controller input.

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The problem is, you are talking about a technique that existed in the old days of RPGs cause everything utilized the in-game engine. There was no need for transition, but here's the real issue, we've gone so long with transitions into better higher quality cinematic cutscenes and dialogue sets for ten years, I seriously doubt the transition issue is something that bothers players anymore, hell most would expect it, suddenly going back to an old school approach seems weird.

I think this all comes from playing DQV cause I get thrown off when the game moves out of my control, but I don't witness a transition. It has been so long since I played a game that relied solely on its in-game engine and map layout to tell a story that its a bit jarring to play something relatively new to me that does it like the old days. It doesn't help that I tap buttons when I stop moving and accidentally skip some dialogue either... I think I had a simlar issue with the opening of MGS4 cause while the transition from cutscene to game is smooth it doesn't work as well the other way around.

With the way modern media presents story telling through film and television through fast paced cut-aways and quick transitions, I feel that the issue of total visual transition is a moot argument with today's media crowd. I feel only when the game does it obnoxiously so, like FFX or XIII where you can't walk three yards without instigating a cutscene does it become even noticeable to me. I still find it hard to believe you would criticize FFX, XII, and XIII because they transitioned from gameplay to story with a total visual and non-interactive transitioned. I would assume you would say its normal and kind of silly to argue that its detrimental to a gaming experience when its been the norm since the PSX days.

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Originally Posted by woof

Of anything, I argue it should be used sparingly to maximize certain moments but not be overused cause not all elements in a game should be created to support just the plot. Wasn't that the lesson Xenogears taught you?

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Xenogears taught me that gameplay doesn't matter. It just doesn't. You can have a pure gameplay experience such as, say, Gears of War, that does everything of its genre right in an unbelievably polished way, introducing a few innovations of its own, and even going as far as to point where gaming itself is headed over the next few years. But a game like Xenogears, with a humongous cast, various intruiging plot threads, intelligent writing and translation, an attempt at a few themes, powerful visual images, and phenomenal music scoring those scenes... it simply isn't going to matter that the latter game also has unpolished battle design, a shallow combat system, uninspired puzzles, TERRIBLE platforming, boring encounters, scripted bosses, and monotonously repetitive dungeons that have had noticeably little effort put into them. Xenogears is an incredible story inside a terrible video game, but it will always be more memorable and have a stronger impact on me than even the perfect gameplay experience ever could.

I'm just glad I'm at the final dungeon so I can go back to Valkyria Chronicles II :kakapo:[/QUOTE]

A great plot will allow you to forgive so many issues, unfortunately for me, Valkyria Chronicles has kind of shown me the opposite is true. A game can have a great and innovative gameplay experience that is fun and inventive to play through, but come across as an unplayable mess with the most boring generic plot based off every single war anime cliche in the book, filled with an unrealistic cast of characters who would be more at home in a comedic anime than a hard military tale and the game has the most insufferable layout for moving the plot along, when the main menu feels like you're in a debug room you know someone wasn't trying. I still haven't finished VC because the plot is so bad. :p

Yet my point in all this is that don't you feel Xenogears would be a greater game if it had the gameplay to back it up for you? Doesn't it seem silly to build a game with the story as the main form of entertainment and the game part just acts like some kind of irrelevant padding? Shouldn't a game strive to do well on both spectrum's of the entertainment wheel instead of putting all their bets on one facet of the experience? Going back to my original argument about using the camera solely as a cinematic tool, doesn't that seem like it limits the game cause the dungeon has to be more about the visual appeal rather than being designed for the portion of the game about the player interacting with the world? The cinematic camera has its place in story portions but it really doesn't bring anything to dungeon design that great visuals and good music can't already provide.

The Magitek Factory in FFVI throws the player off with a visual steampunk display that has not been seen anywhere else in the game. It is accompanied by one of the most sinister themes in the game that utilizes percussion instruments to further push the idea of an industrial nightmare, but it also is a an engaging dungeon to play through because it has several secret rooms and locations to find, it utilizes minor switch elements to access different parts of the level through lifts, allows you to travel through pipes, you the player can't quite make out where its going, and conveyor belts that lead to whole new section of the dungeons you didn't even realize were there. Its Escher style layout is what makes it one of the more fun dungeons to playthrough in VI, not because the atmosphere is great, its backed up by some fun design as well. VII does have dungeons like this but even you would have to agree they are not exactly the most visually stunning designs that took full advantage of any cinematic camera like the Sector 4 underpass that lead to the Sector 5 Reactor, which amounted to several ladders, pipes, and metal stairways. It was still fun trying to get to far off items and being turned around though, and I feel that is more important than it being visually stunning.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I think this all comes from playing DQV

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Arguably the greatest RPG of all time.

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Originally Posted by woof

Of anything, I argue it should be used sparingly to maximize certain moments but not be overused cause not all elements in a game should be created to support just the plot. Wasn't that the lesson Xenogears taught you?

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Originally Posted by Wolf

A great plot will allow you to forgive so many issues, unfortunately for me, Valkyria Chronicles has kind of shown me the opposite is true. A game can have a great and innovative gameplay experience that is fun and inventive to play through, but come across as an unplayable mess with the most boring generic plot based off every single war anime cliche in the book, filled with an unrealistic cast of characters who would be more at home in a comedic anime than a hard military tale and the game has the most insufferable layout for moving the plot along, when the main menu feels like you're in a debug room you know someone wasn't trying. I still haven't finished VC because the plot is so bad. :p

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What chapter are you on? Because, as much as I praise the game, I was the EXACT same way. I looked so forward to the game, as a SEGA SRPG with a cool visual, but was continuously let down until one thing happened in the plot and I realized just how serious this game was all along. So many games, like FFVI, Chrono Trigger, and Xenogears, were major let downs for me after how much other RPG heads praised it. I always loathed that "you need to get further in the game!!!" mentality. Until I played Valkyria Chronicles. Now, I honestly believe it's one of the top 5 best games of this generation, a game that truly revolutionized its genre (or sub-genre) and easily one of my favorite games of all time. I can't wait to get back to it!!!

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Originally Posted by woof

Shouldn't a game strive to do well on both spectrum's of the entertainment wheel instead of putting all their bets on one facet of the experience?

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Yes, and that's why Tactics Ogre is probably the greatest game I've ever played. But that's not the reality we live in and 99.9998123778899% of video games can't do both, much less provide as much content at that level that that game did...

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Originally Posted by W

The Magitek Factory in FFVI throws the player off with a visual steampunk display that has not been seen anywhere else in the game. It is accompanied by one of the most sinister themes in the game that utilizes percussion instruments to further push the idea of an industrial nightmare, but it also is a an engaging dungeon to play through because it has several secret rooms and locations to find, it utilizes minor switch elements to access different parts of the level through lifts, allows you to travel through pipes, you the player can't quite make out where its going, and conveyor belts that lead to whole new section of the dungeons you didn't even realize were there. Its Escher style layout is what makes it one of the more fun dungeons to playthrough in VI, not because the atmosphere is great, its backed up by some fun design as well.

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Least favorite part of the game. More thought out response incoming once I've sobered up.

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I think this all comes from playing DQV

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Arguably the greatest RPG of all time.

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It started out good but its finally devolving into normal DQ fare which is fine but I actually liked how un-DQ the game is at first.

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Originally Posted by woof

What chapter are you on? Because, as much as I praise the game, I was the EXACT same way. I looked so forward to the game, as a SEGA SRPG with a cool visual, but was continuously let down until one thing happened in the plot and I realized just how serious this game was all along. So many games, like FFVI, Chrono Trigger, and Xenogears, were major let downs for me after how much other RPG heads praised it. I always loathed that "you need to get further in the game!!!" mentality. Until I played Valkyria Chronicles. Now, I honestly believe it's one of the top 5 best games of this generation, a game that truly revolutionized its genre (or sub-genre) and easily one of my favorite games of all time. I can't wait to get back to it!!!

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You need to stop getting suckered in by the hype :p It doesn't help that you're playing many of these games fifteen years after they were released. I doubt you would think favorably of FFVII as much if you played it now instead of when it came out.

I can't tell you what chapter I'm in, either 4 or maybe chapter 6. Its been that long since I've mustered the stomach to play through it's awful story campaign. Personally, I feel if any story or game has to wait until its halfway through to finally get to the "good part of the story" that's more of a detriment to its design than some kind of incentive to keep going.

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Originally Posted by woof

Shouldn't a game strive to do well on both spectrum's of the entertainment wheel instead of putting all their bets on one facet of the experience?

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Yes, and that's why Tactics Ogre is probably the greatest game I've ever played. But that's not the reality we live in and 99.9998123778899% of video games can't do both, much less provide as much content at that level that that game did...

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My question is why not? Shouldn't games strive to be the best they can be, instead of putting all their eggs into one basket?

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Least favorite part of the game. More thought out response incoming once I've sobered up.

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I'll save you the trouble cause the idea you don't like that dungeon is so foreign to me that my mind wouldn't be able to grasp anything you write about how its bad beyond you just yammering away in some nonsensical fi. I'm not going even going to try to meet you half way cause that's how utterly wrong I feel your statement is so just drink up and play more VCII and save us all some time. :p

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I can't tell you what chapter I'm in, either 4 or maybe chapter 6. Its been that long since I've mustered the stomach to play through it's awful story campaign. Personally, I feel if any story or game has to wait until its halfway through to finally get to the "good part of the story" that's more of a detriment to its design than some kind of incentive to keep going.

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You mean almost like Xenogears?!

Playing games 15 years later has nothing to do with it. I played 1/3-1/2 of the way through Dragon Quest V on an SNES emulator and I was almost more blown away by it than I was when I later got my DS copy.

And I wouldn't say the "story gets good," I just think it's at a certain part that you realize that all along they were showing you all the different aspects of war. And it may sound like putting the cart before the horse, but when you get attached to the characters, it makes everything so awesome and heart felt. The game trickles it down slowly but you really get into these characters lives and see what makes them tick what they regret, what they hope for. They're really well defined. The villains are also really awesome in their own ways, even the ones that you don't love to hate, you just hate.

But what makes it incredible, as with other games, is the presentation. The visual style was commendably executed and Sakimoto gave a great score. He's one of my favorite composers anyway, so maybe I'm biased.

Not sure what to say on Magitec factory. FFVI actually has some of my favorite dungeons in the series, so the fact that I don't rate it particularly highly must mean something. I seem to remember it was something I just wish would end. Wasn't that the one that ended with the railway cart (not train) first person thing? That was awkward. Definitely one of the risks they took in that game that just didn't pay off.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I can't tell you what chapter I'm in, either 4 or maybe chapter 6. Its been that long since I've mustered the stomach to play through it's awful story campaign. Personally, I feel if any story or game has to wait until its halfway through to finally get to the "good part of the story" that's more of a detriment to its design than some kind of incentive to keep going.

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You mean almost like Xenogears?!

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I CAN'T BELIEVE I AM NOT ALONE IN THIS!!! THANK YOU MIRAGE!

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

Playing games 15 years later has nothing to do with it. I played 1/3-1/2 of the way through Dragon Quest V on an SNES emulator and I was almost more blown away by it than I was when I later got my DS copy.

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You are also forgetting the hype factor though, I seriously doubt anyone kept telling you to play the first six DQ games cause they were "the greatest games of all time" and revolutionized the industry" so I'm betting you didn't go into any of them with any real expectations, like you would have with Chrono Trigger, FFVI, and Xenogears, of which all three you've known for years and listen to fanboys drone on and on about. Throw in your bias for the PSX generation which you've stated time and time again is when you felt "RPGs came into their own" and I find it hard to swallow you could enjoy those games for what they really were without some bias and chip on your shoulder. ;)

So far for me, I felt the game started off strong but once you fix up Harry's issue in his kingdom, I kind of feel like I've just been dropped from any plot and now I am meandering around until something happens like most DQ games. Its bringing back what I felt was the weaker aspects of DQIV (which is tied with DQII as my least favorite), where anything exciting in the game kind of dies when you get to the Hero's chapter.

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And I wouldn't say the "story gets good," I just think it's at a certain part that you realize that all along they were showing you all the different aspects of war. And it may sound like putting the cart before the horse, but when you get attached to the characters, it makes everything so awesome and heart felt. The game trickles it down slowly but you really get into these characters lives and see what makes them tick what they regret, what they hope for. They're really well defined. The villains are also really awesome in their own ways, even the ones that you don't love to hate, you just hate.

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So far I feel like I'm playing Gundam set in a fictional WWII setting with tanks instead of mobile suits, and its not even some of the better Gundams, its the overrated UC Timeline stuff. As I said, its just overusing all the "war is hell" nonsense you see in any anime based in war. It's hard to get into it all when you've got this huge wave of deja vu coming over you every new story bit.

I just got past the point where the main guy made a bet with his two lackeys about winning a battle so they will accept his "sister" with her ethnic background. I'm already guessing at some point either her or the other main chick is going to be used in an experiment to make a weapon that will turn the tide of battle and its going to all be connected to that McGuffan resource everyone is fighting for. The higher ups seem like those types of assholes and I'm still waiting for the blue haired chick to show up with all her superpowers, so I'm guessing she's probably when the super soldier element is kicking in.

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But what makes it incredible, as with other games, is the presentation. The visual style was commendably executed and Sakimoto gave a great score. He's one of my favorite composers anyway, so maybe I'm biased.

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This is actually one of the reasons why I'm disappointed with the story and cast so far cause I do like the music and visuals of the game, and I just don't feel like they are being done justice. Though I am sad how much the game likes to use head shots for dialogue. You make a gorgeous art style and 70% of the dialogue is spoken through a simple head shot, you might as well had just used artwork stills like Nippon Ichi titles.

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Not sure what to say on Magitec factory. FFVI actually has some of my favorite dungeons in the series, so the fact that I don't rate it particularly highly must mean something. I seem to remember it was something I just wish would end. Wasn't that the one that ended with the railway cart (not train) first person thing? That was awkward. Definitely one of the risks they took in that game that just didn't pay off.

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I disagree about it not paying off, was it awkward? Yeah I can agree and age certainly hasn't done it any favors but I felt the same way about the motorcycle chase in VII, which is my least favorite part of the Midgard section. I feel it was something new and exciting for its time, RPGs really never tried to pull stuff like that before (it is the only game) and even if it was cheesy I felt it worked well to build up tension and excitement with the story. I find it odd, that for someone who has spent the last couple of posts debating about the "groundbreaking effects" of changing a camera a little to add more cinematic touch into a RPG that something similar attempted in a 16-bit game gets an "it was awful and never should have been done". It just seems kind of hypocritical to me.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I can't tell you what chapter I'm in, either 4 or maybe chapter 6. Its been that long since I've mustered the stomach to play through it's awful story campaign. Personally, I feel if any story or game has to wait until its halfway through to finally get to the "good part of the story" that's more of a detriment to its design than some kind of incentive to keep going.

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You mean almost like Xenogears?!

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I CAN'T BELIEVE I AM NOT ALONE IN THIS!!! THANK YOU MIRAGE!

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You both have pretty much destroyed any credibility on taste in gaming for me. :penciltrick:

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

You are also forgetting the hype factor though, I seriously doubt anyone kept telling you to play the first six DQ games cause they were "the greatest games of all time" and revolutionized the industry" so I'm betting you didn't go into any of them with any real expectations, like you would have with Chrono Trigger, FFVI, and Xenogears, of which all three you've known for years and listen to fanboys drone on and on about. Throw in your bias for the PSX generation which you've stated time and time again is when you felt "RPGs came into their own" and I find it hard to swallow you could enjoy those games for what they really were without some bias and chip on your shoulder. ;)

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1) Yes, a lot of people on this site claimed DQV was the best in the series, and I've heard from various places about the innovations it brought to storytelling, and 2) I liked Chrono Trigger, I liked FFVI, hell, there were a lot of things I loved about Xenogears. If anything, I felt a giddy feeling of getting to start a magical gem that's widely acclaimed. Unfortunately, those games don't start off as awesome as the games people claim they're better than, nor do they surpass them once things get going. Was there somewhat of a chip? Yeah, but that's only because of how caustic and delusional their fan bases are.

And look, I'm not gonna convince you to like Valkyria Chronicles. But I'm telling you for a fact I spent a good chunk into it completely underwhelmed like you, until it just clicked. At least the gameplay's good in the beginning and only gets crazier later on, whereas Xenogears' gameplay sucks in the beginning, and is just as titty once they start delving more into the plot.

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I disagree about it not paying off, was it awkward? Yeah I can agree and age certainly hasn't done it any favors but I felt the same way about the motorcycle chase in VII, which is my least favorite part of the Midgard section. I feel it was something new and exciting for its time, RPGs really never tried to pull stuff like that before (it is the only game) and even if it was cheesy I felt it worked well to build up tension and excitement with the story. I find it odd, that for someone who has spent the last couple of posts debating about the "groundbreaking effects" of changing a camera a little to add more cinematic touch into a RPG that something similar attempted in a 16-bit game gets an "it was awful and never should have been done". It just seems kind of hypocritical to me.

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It definitely wasn't the first, off the top of my head I can think of FFIV showing you going into (SPOILER)outer space in first person. The problem was the screen became smaller and it was so repetitive, it's almost hard to understand what it is you're actually looking at. Because it was the same static graphic repeated billions of times, there's no perspective of distance, either. It's the complete opposite of the bike chase scene, which, putting an entirely different game inside of an RPG and incorporating it into the story (instead of a mini-game that manipulates the existing engine), was pretty impressive for its time.

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You both have pretty much destroyed any credibility on taste in gaming for me. :penciltrick:

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(Me & Mirage --->) :cheers:

Beat it last night and it's just not all that, dude. Unless you're someone who has completely given up on the prospect of JRPGs having worthwhile gameplay, I can't see why it's rated as high as it is. Us tearing apart eachother's favorite stories is one thing, but when a game has so many demonstrable flaws in its design and implementation, it's hard to see why it's gotten such a reputation. Even then, it's story isn't substantially deeper than, say, Final Fantasy X. :omg:

I don't always agree with Bolivar

But when I do, I usually talk about Xenogears


And if you seriously think liking Xenogears is paramount to having a good taste on games, well then you just lost all gaming credibility in my eyes :>.

You know, I've never had a problem with games that are linear. In games with more freedom, I always did the story related things first, then took all the sidequests after, since I was so engrossed in the story.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

You both have pretty much destroyed any credibility on taste in gaming for me.

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It's nice to know when hard pressed you resort to name calling like everyone else. :p

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

1) Yes, a lot of people on this site claimed DQV was the best in the series, and I've heard from various places about the innovations it brought to storytelling, and 2) I liked Chrono Trigger, I liked FFVI, hell, there were a lot of things I loved about Xenogears. If anything, I felt a giddy feeling of getting to start a magical gem that's widely acclaimed.

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You'll have to forgive me for never noticing since I've never heard you really say anything positive about VI and CT, you usually only speak about how overrated they are, and how so and so game is so much better. So forgive me for never reading between the lines at the tough love you were giving them. :p

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Unfortunately, those games don't start off as awesome as the games people claim they're better than, nor do they surpass them once things get going. Was there somewhat of a chip? Yeah, but that's only because of how caustic and delusional their fan bases are.

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The shear irony of you giving this statement amuses me to no end.

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And look, I'm not gonna convince you to like Valkyria Chronicles. But I'm telling you for a fact I spent a good chunk into it completely underwhelmed like you, until it just clicked. At least the gameplay's good in the beginning and only gets crazier later on, whereas Xenogears' gameplay sucks in the beginning, and is just as titty once they start delving more into the plot.

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See, there you go again. You know, I honestly want to love this game, and I'm probably harsh on it cause I'm still waiting for a real next-gen JRPG to come out, that I can enjoy. Is it still a wonderful title that came out this gen, hell yeah, but for me, it's greatness is one that is mostly won by a serious lack of competition this generation.

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It definitely wasn't the first, off the top of my head I can think of FFIV showing you going into (SPOILER)outer space in first person. The problem was the screen became smaller and it was so repetitive, it's almost hard to understand what it is you're actually looking at. Because it was the same static graphic repeated billions of times, there's no perspective of distance, either. It's the complete opposite of the bike chase scene, which, putting an entirely different game inside of an RPG and incorporating it into the story (instead of a mini-game that manipulates the existing engine), was pretty impressive for its time.

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I don't count that as the same thing though, the railroad chase itself is meant for you not to see what's ahead, the tension of moving blindly away from an unseen pursuer. I feel its context combined with the technology is a much better use of utilizing the technology to tell a story, as opposed to the Lunar Whale which was simply you transporting from location A to B. While I feel the Lunar Whale is powerful, I feel that VI utilized it in a more unique way, by basically re-creating something most gamers would have only seen from Indiana Jones. I feel it has that same tension, In IV, chances are, you're too busy trying to grasp why you now have to go to the moon in one of the silliest space ships ever conceived to be brought into the wonder of going to the moon. The other issue here is that VI's visual change is unexpected and leaves the player powerless to he events of the game. In IV, you basically know you have to go to the moon, and once you start traveling you know when it will end. It's the difference between skateboarding down a straight sidewalk and being on a skateboard when a friend pushes you down a hill. Same mode of transport (technology) but the experience they create is totally different for the participant.

I'm also not bad mouthing the impact of the motorcycle chase, just stating that I feel it has not aged well. Its kind of a lame mini-game and it controls like ass compared to the superior snowboarding and submarine games. Though I do feel the motorcycle chase away from Shin-Ra is similar in tone to the minecart escape from the Magitek Factory. ;)

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Beat it last night and it's just not all that, dude. Unless you're someone who has completely given up on the prospect of JRPGs having worthwhile gameplay, I can't see why it's rated as high as it is. Us tearing apart eachother's favorite stories is one thing, but when a game has so many demonstrable flaws in its design and implementation, it's hard to see why it's gotten such a reputation. Even then, it's story isn't substantially deeper than, say, Final Fantasy X.

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As I said, I don't agree to many of your flaws. While I can agree many games have done aspects of the game better, I don't agree it makes it a bad game cause I still have fun playing it and in the end, I feel that's what really matters. Is it easy? yes but I honestly felt most games around that time were easy. I died maybe twice in VII and both times were simply because I didn't know a boss could do certain things, but it didn't stop me from one-rounding everything from Disc 2 and beyond, its not FFVI, Brave Fencer Musashi, or god forbid FFVIII that came afterwards also set some challenge bar Xenogears didn't live up to. Puzzles? I'm a snob when it comes to puzzles so really only a few series ever do anything challenging (Square isn't one of them) and its not like puzzles are pretty much a moot point in a replay. Platforming? Honestly, I feel good platforming has to be frustrating and difficult if the objective of the platforming is to get from point A to point B (Mario, most of the NES). If its like modern platforming titles, where moving around is actually easy, then its about rhythm and flow and how smoothly getting from one place to another is (Sly Cooper, Assassin's Creed, Mirror's Edge) so for me, I feel Xenogears is simply like old school games in that respect, is it unpolished? Hell yeah but Square doesn't make platformers and real gamers don't bitch about fairness, they just get better with MAD SKILLZ :mwahaha: I also enjoy the break in monotony in dungeon exploration it brings. Dungeon design not living up to FFVI and VII? Well yeah, I'll agree, but you have to remember that when the game came out they were the only games like that... maybe Wild ARMS and Lufia 2 but that's four games in a sea of titles that just had long uninspiring dungeon crawls. Once again, I don't feel VIII really did any better.

Does it feel unfinished? Well yeah, because it is, but I probably got more fun and enjoyable experiences out of this half finished product that it's kind of hard to look at other games that had more time and resources and yet come across less satisfying. Now here's the thing, this whole thing here is not me trying to convince you that you're wrong, I'm just saying I don't feel your evaluation is objectively correct. It's pretty much like my feelings of FFX, but it hasn't stopped large fanbases to love both games, so obviously the game design did something right, we're just not on the same wavelength with the fans. I love Xenogears for its story, but I also found it to be a fun game as well. You didn't, that's your problem, but you're free to have your own opinion.

Also, I now question if you actually really payed attention to Xenogears cause its a hell of a lot more thought provoking and deeper than smurfing FF " oh its a Spiral of death, hey get it? Spiral, Spira, I'm so smurfing clever, and you're the figment of a dead person's imagination" X. :simon:

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Originally Posted by Mirage

I don't always agree with Bolivar

But when I do, I usually talk about Xenogears


And if you seriously think liking Xenogears is paramount to having a good taste on games, well then you just lost all gaming credibility in my eyes :>.

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Thankfully my sole reason for existing isn't to impress you :p

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

It's nice to know when hard pressed you resort to name calling like everyone else. :p

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I wouldn't really call that name calling, just telling them where they stand in the "WK Circle of Existence". Technically I still recognize them as living which is more than I can say about you my FFXII/Persona 3 hater. ;)

If I was going to name call, I'd call Bolivar, Susan and Mirage, Professor Eugne Skybuttom. :colbert:

To be fair I don't hate Persona, I just find the series not to my tastes. I still consider them good games. FF12 goes straight into the mediocre pile though.

(And playing through Xenogears again I have to agree with the gameplay. The first time through I was just to distracted by the wonderful art style, story & music)

Fair enough, looking back, we've seem to really diverge far from the actual topic :sweatdrop:

For a thread that died once then came back I think that is alright.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

I don't always agree with Bolivar

But when I do, I usually talk about Xenogears

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^ Easily the world's most interesting post.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

You'll have to forgive me for never noticing since I've never heard you really say anything positive about VI and CT, you usually only speak about how overrated they are, and how so and so game is so much better. So forgive me for never reading between the lines at the tough love you were giving them.

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I've NEVER said anything bad about Chrono Trigger on this site. I want to make this my public challenge to Wolf Kanno to provide a single link on this site where I bad mouth Chrono Trigger or assert it's overrated!!!

Concerning VI, we were debating dungeons & puzzles not too long ago and I actually commended VI for having some awesome dungeons!!! I love playing that game!

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Originally Posted by Wolf

See, there you go again. You know, I honestly want to love this game, and I'm probably harsh on it cause I'm still waiting for a real next-gen JRPG to come out, that I can enjoy. Is it still a wonderful title that came out this gen, hell yeah, but for me, it's greatness is one that is mostly won by a serious lack of competition this generation.

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I'm not trying to go anywhere! I'm just telling you straight up, I felt the same way you did, hell, from your latest comments I would say I felt even worse than you did about the game when I played it. And I had a blast playing VCII this weekend, thank you for asking!

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While I can agree many games have done aspects of the game better, I don't agree it makes it a bad game cause I still have fun playing it and in the end, I feel that's what really matters.

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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! Update your bookmarks! From this day forth, if you ever had fun playing a game, Wulf cannot assert it to not be a good game!!! Valkyria Chronicles? Good game! FFXIII? Good game! FINAL FANTASY X!?!?!?!?!? GREATEST GAME EVARRR!!!

J/p man, look, we all had different experiences and that's what makes everything good, because we can have actual conversations and debates on them. Such as a) um, there's an entire series of games that had novel, but delightful dungeon design before Xenogears, it's called Dragon Quest and b) what truthfully makes Xenogears more thought provoking than FFX? Because it throws out a bunch of terms coined by Sigmund Freud without any substantive connection to what those ideas were actually about? Or because of its constant exploitation of religious scenery and dialogue? "God! This is because of God! There was a war between God and humans! Maybe it's due to God? YOU ARE GOING TO KILL GOD!!!" The point at which its cheapness is so evident is where Stone tells you that all the priests solely desire to control, exploit, and kill their oblivious religious followers; the priests who don't? Yeah, they rape little kids. And let's not forget where Citan lets Fei and Elly eat the canned food in Solaris only to reveal the reality of the genetic experiements. "Remember that food I let you eat a little while ago? Yeah, that was humans we performed horrific genetic experiments on and then killed. I know this is completely out of character and unbelievable for me to do, but hey, nice going, cannibal!"

So whereas Xenogears relies on constantly trying to shock you, FFX actually provides a serious look at grief and mortality, not just with the spiral, but with the inevitable result of Yuna's pilgrimage, and with Zidane's existence. And they were able to do this...

without an open world!

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

I've NEVER said anything bad about Chrono Trigger on this site. I want to make this my public challenge to Wolf Kanno to provide a single link on this site where I bad mouth Chrono Trigger or assert it's overrated!!!

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You don't love it, in my jaded fanboy eyes, that means you hate it. HERETICS WILL BE PURGED FROM THE FORUM...:tonberry:

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Concerning VI, we were debating dungeons & puzzles not too long ago and I actually commended VI for having some awesome dungeons!!! I love playing that game!

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Considering how much you troll the VI forums I find this hard to believe. It would be like me saying FFX was a good game. :p

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While I can agree many games have done aspects of the game better, I don't agree it makes it a bad game cause I still have fun playing it and in the end, I feel that's what really matters.

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LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! Update your bookmarks! From this day forth, if you ever had fun playing a game, Wulf cannot assert it to not be a good game!!! Valkyria Chronicles? Good game! FFXIII? Good game! FINAL FANTASY X!?!?!?!?!? GREATEST GAME EVARRR!!!

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I wouldn't go that far. FFX is a mediocre title at best and XIII is awful, I seriously feel if you had fun playing that game then you must have abysmal standards for what constitutes as "fun", cause damn... That game suck so bad, you'd get a better deal if the game case just contained Wada's feces. It would be more fun to play with too.

I've always told people my opinion doesn't matter over your their own, so I have no idea why you've been debating me all this time as though my opinion actually contained any merit that has any more meaning than my meandering experience. If you think a game is fiun that's fun, but know that not everyone agrees and I do enjoy pointing out faults.

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J/p man, look, we all had different experiences and that's what makes everything good, because we can have actual conversations and debates on them. Such as a) um, there's an entire series of games that had novel, but delightful dungeon design before Xenogears, it's called Dragon Quest

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I can't agree with this, cause outside of maybe two dungeons in DQIII (Pyramid and Zoma's castle) and one in DQIV with Torneko, I honestly never cared for DQs dungeon design, its just a meandering maze to me, with very little to differentiate one over the other throughout the whole series. Their only merit is that they hold onto the old school mechanic of dungeon crawling being about resource management which is the only thing that makes them fun, but honestly I could probably only name three dungeons in the whole series that I liked. I can name more awesome dungeons in the SNES Breath of Fire games than most of the DQ series I've played.

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b) what truthfully makes Xenogears more thought provoking than FFX? Because it throws out a bunch of terms coined by Sigmund Freud without any substantive connection to what those ideas were actually about?

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(SPOILER)Wrong, Id is pretty self evident but looking at the nature of Fei's mind being split into three, its obvious that the Coward is the ego (true self) and Fei is the Superego, and all three of them relate to each other within the context of Freudian theory. With Id being a being of pure destructive selfish nature, Fei eventually growing as the moral guardian of law that contains Id and snaps the ego back into place. I'd say that's more than just throwing the names out there. One of the major themes of the game is Fei struggling to not only understand himself but learn to control and balance himself, if that isn't Freudian, I don't know what is, and I'm a former Psychology Major.

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Or because of its constant exploitation of religious scenery and dialogue? "God! This is because of God! There was a war between God and humans! Maybe it's due to God? YOU ARE GOING TO KILL GOD!!!"

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(SPOILER)Except you don't kill God, the misconception among some fans is that Fei is an anti-Christ figure and this is a typical "Japan hates Christianity plot" but Fei is actually Jesus within a Gnostic view of the world, the Wave Existence itself is the Gnostic version of the true god and Deus is simply the Demiurge that separates man from the True God. The story is actually about Gnostic belief systems and is a sci-fi telling of the religions cosmology with Deus being the physical god of the world that made man, the Wave Existence being God that gives man his souls, and Fei being a man who is connected to the divine and hunted by the Physical God, his one companion being the female aspect of God known as Sophia (we can guess who that is :p ). It gets complicated after this point but just read some books on Gnosticism and this will all make sense.

Fei, Elly, and Miang are all trapped in an eternal cycle of reincarnation until they fulfill a certain role (namely free the Wave Existence for Fei and Elly, and complete Deus for Miang and surprisingly Elly as well...) and its symbolically battled in the final confrontation with Uoroborus which symbolizes the eternal cycle of reincarnation that both Fei and Miang find themselves trapped in. Hell, even the way Grahf exists is understandable once you understand Buddhist laws of reincarnation work.

Hell the story is also filled with symbolism for divine goddess figures like Mother, Elly, Miang, Billy's Mom, Fei's mother. The whole of humanity is brought forth by a divine mother figure created by Deus. I would also commend the game for the fact that it is one of the few times where God isn't portrayed as evil in JRPGs. Deus is simply a machine initiating its survival program, the Wave Existence is an innocent bystander who finds himself trapped in a lower dimension and accidentally creates the physical universe and life by just being there. Neither is really evil, nor does the game spend its time talking about an evil god that needs to be destroyed and overthrown for being a bully. It's a radical departure from the way God is viewed from what BoF, FF, DQ, MegaTen, and countless other JRPG series. DQVII is the only other JRPG I know where God isn't treated as some irredeemable trickster demon, and he is useless in that game, obviously in Japan, real gods have vaginas. ;)

The cross necklace is a familiar and overused symbol but it works on many levels, as both a religious symbol, Abel's need for a mother, Kim and Lacan's sense of powerlessness, and Fei's own guilty conscious. By game's end its less of a cross for the sake of a cross as much as its a physical symbol that connects Fei and Elly and all of Fei's past incarnations mistakes. There is a damn good reason it always shows up just before Fei loses it, and why Id uses it to unbalance Fei's psyche.

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The point at which its cheapness is so evident is where Stone tells you that all the priests solely desire to control, exploit, and kill their oblivious religious followers; the priests who don't? Yeah, they rape little kids.

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(SPOILER)You lost me on the rape part... Know one gets raped by the Ethos. Billy was going to sell his body to support Primera but he never states he's selling it to Priest's. Also you'renot completely correct about Stone, he wishes to rule by overthrowing Solaris. So Control and Exploit is certainly up there but that's not the nature of Ethos itself, which is a organization created to spread dis-information to the people, refurbish and ultimately rip-off Aveh and Kislev with Gear repairs and to keep them at each other's throats, and find people to send to Solaris as either slaves or test subjects who are transformed into Wels and tested, killed, and their bodies returned to Solaris as part of the ongoing experiments to mass transform humanity into the parts needed to rebuild Deus. Stone is only one part of what Ethos is and what its role in the plot is about. Was it the toekn "take that to Catholicism" that the Japanese love, yes but you have to also remember that when Xenogears came out, there were only two other games outside of Japan that dealt with the "Church is evil trope" and that's BoFII and FFTactics and even if you combined other JRPGs of the time , within Japan, I can only add maybe five more games to that list that existed before 1998.

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And let's not forget where Citan lets Fei and Elly eat the canned food in Solaris only to reveal the reality of the genetic experiments. "Remember that food I let you eat a little while ago? Yeah, that was humans we performed horrific genetic experiments on and then killed. I know this is completely out of character and unbelievable for me to do, but hey, nice going, cannibal!"

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(SPOILER)Considering all the tit Citan pulls in that game, no, I cannot agree with you that this situation was out of character for him. While I felt the Soylent Green section is an amusing shout out to a classic cheesy Sci-Fi flick, I also just thought it was pretty damn ballsy to actually bring it up. Its relation to Solaris is probably closer to being a reference to the film Logan's Run (super advanced society that exists by feeding on the older population unbeknownst to them) but still, I think it was just more of them driving the point home on how completely unethical and inhuman the Floating City had become over the centuries. Hell you can't tell me you didn't think that Solaris wasn't a bit of a poke at American Culture when you got the chance to roam through the actual upper city part and landed in what felt like any major US. city minus the Jetson future design.

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So whereas Xenogears relies on constantly trying to shock you, FFX actually provides a serious look at grief and mortality, not just with the spiral, but with the inevitable result of Yuna's pilgrimage, and with Zidane's existence. And they were able to do this...without an open world!

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I don't agree that it was a serious look. Wakka laments on Tidus looking like Chappu and this brings in Lulu but it never goes anywhere, it gets bogged down by other plot elements and ends up being some silly trivia point by the end of the game. Yuna's story and the Pilgrimage in general is just a seriously drawn out version of the Tale of Orochi which smurfing DQIII utilizes as apart of its own plot and that can be resolved in an hour. My issue is that its been done better, by other shows and games.

I felt FFIX did a much better job with the idea of mortality and the meaning of life. It at least doesn't undermine its own themes or bog it down.

Kilik is destroyed to show why Sin is bad (and act as a not so subtle symbol of Japan and its relation to all the natural disasters that befall their nation) and then its just dropped for the rest of the game. The Al Bhed's Home is crushed for the silly Maester sub-plot (Dear FFX, if you're going to bother doing the evil church plotline, at least try... there is nothing about it that the player didn't figure out five minutes after meeting the Maesters in Luca. You might as well had placed a sign over their heads that said, "we're manipulative evil bastards". The foreboding melody that is Seymour's theme wasn't a dead giveaway... :roll2 ) and Operation Mi'hen was so predictable that the aftermath was barely emotional because the game built up the whole scenario so often and so much that you just knew it was going to end terribly. Killing off one of the more annoying side characters was just an added bonus, especially if you made sure it was the new recruit.

While the mythology of death itself is intriguing, I feel that the Unsent kind of ruin all the drama of death and mortality for me, cause being an immortal super zombie doesn't sound like a raw deal to me, and I kind of feel Seymour actually had a plan that just as good as the parties. I mean death is almost trivialized in FFX by its cosmology. You either go to a happy afterlife, become a fiend until your killed and properly sent, or remain an immortal you. Where's the bad side here? At least FFVII and FFIX had the reincarnation cycle being screwed with which made death more of a serious threat in their worlds. Can you imagine how different our own world would be if we actually had physical knowledge of what happens when you die and you know most of the options are not so bad? The theme of death and the Spiral of Death is kind of ruined by all this. The people of Spira react to death like we would but their cosmology is in contradiction to this mentality, we react to death like this because its one of the great unknowns, when the mystery is gone and the options are actually better than what you would get in some real world religions, I kind of feel you would look at death very differently.

Also, I felt the twist with Tidus is utterly stupid. My big secret is that I'm a dream created by a bunch of dead people, and somehow transcended thought to become a sentient physical, killable being. Makes you wonder why they just didn't imagine another being like Sin to destroy Yevon and his Sin. Let alone why they let this nonsense go on for a thousand years. If you bring in some cosmological bulltit that thoughts can become reality, then all bets are off in your fantasy story and now you have to explain why a thousand other scenarios didn't pan out. Considering the whole point of this plot twist was just so they can have the switcheroo tragedy ending, it just felt like a far-fetched nonsense plot twist used to create a simple dramatic piece that I guess was going to happen about halfway through the game, when I felt they were pushing Yuna's "noble sacrifice" a little too hard. It is still one of the dumbest plot twists in the FF series if you ask me, and any chance of me ever liking FFX's story died right there. :p

So no, I don't think FFX is as deep cause its own mythology undermines most of its themes, and its big tear-jerker ending is undermined by a stupid and mostly unexplained cosmological principle that only exists to make the ending happen in the first place.

I like how WK used spoilers to make his post look less long but it ended up being 10 pages long even with the spoilers. :p

My first forum was a Xenogears/Xenosaga forum, I can talk for hours about this game. This was the abridged version of what I wanted to say as well. ;)

1) Reaching on Xenogears.

2) Trivializing Final Fantasy X.

P.S. Stone explicitly tells the party once he reveals everything to Billy what I described above.

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

1) Reaching on Xenogears.

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Considering I've played the game more than you have, and own Perfect Works that describes most of what I just said up there, yeah, I kind of feel you're the one trivializing here.

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2) Trivializing Final Fantasy X.

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Then prove to me why my point is wrong. Explain to me how I am mistaken for seeing the cosmology wrecking the emotional impact of the game because the idea of death is knowable and you have a 2/3rd odds of winding up in a sweet deal like Symour and the Maesters , or how the fact every single person you talk to between the Blitzball tournament and Operation Mi'hen event talks nothing about how "successful this strategy will be" is not the same vein as the cop movie cliche about "two weeks until retirement" nonsense. Where's the brilliance in the whole idea that Tidus is some bizarre psudeo being blinked into existence by thought and how this doesn't create a problem with the notion that if thought can become reality, why the Sleeping Fayeth don't just imagine a powerful Sin like monster on their own to defeat Yevon and finally let them past on so they can end the cycle?

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P.S. Stone explicitly tells the party once he reveals everything to Billy what I described above.

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Actually Verlaine mentions everything you said, not Bishop Stone. Bishop Stone kills Verlaine after he reveals the whole "evil Catholic Church cliche", what Bishop Stone explains is what I said, that Ethos was a front created to be Solaris' physical presence on the planet. That it grew corrupted and needed to be cleansed (You even got me mistaking Verlaine's role for Stone's) and then he goes onto explain what the Wels and Reapers are in future encounters, so he can stick an emotional knife into Billy when he reveals he's killing innocent people.

Overall, I don't think the scenario was bad, amusingly enough, the game predates the heavy scandals the church faced in the 21st century, and technically its role is no different from what Catholicism did in it's time. Yet its exploitation of the people was simply a front to continue on Solaris' experiments, attain resources, and perpetuate conflict on the globe, all for the sake of maintaining Solaris' control, not the Ethos itself, once the Ethos planned rebellion, that was when they were done in. The fact the game creates a historical background for the Ethos creation (to prevent another Lamb rebellion like the war between Solaris and Shevat) was also a nice touch than just having them their to be a typical "Take that' to western religion. The fact they could do both was just a bonus. :D

I agree with WK's point about the Unsent. Those guys just pissed me off. When Seymour came back I was all "aw naw man that tit ain't cool" and then proceeded to kill him like 100 more times. Just smurfing die!

EDIT: Also I haven't played Xeno...gears, yeah, that's the one you guys are talking about. I haven't played that so I just skipped most of WK's post. Sorry dude :shobon:

Lastly, wtf does this have to do with the topic? :greenie: It's certainly interesting though so please continue.

Well, my post was supposed to be an ironic juxtaposition of a concise response to an extended retort, but here goes:

Look, I'm not going to say Xenogears doesn't have a great story. I've said multiple times that it's an incredible, intelligent, and well translated plot that is an absolute showcase of video games as a storytelling medium. My real gripe is with everything else that largely detracts it from being a great "game." I guess in my fervor I over-extended myself and tried to go for the kill by saying the story isn't above its' peers either. The direction is really great; at the end of disc 1 I had to step away from the TV because of how emotionally drained I was. But upon completion I don't think it's terribly above and beyond the rest.

First of all, I read a perfect works translation myself over the weekend and I didn't see an explanation of its inspirational parallels at all. Perhaps you could link me to a better one that includes it? I understand your background in psychology, and I'm not going to pretend I know more about this. But when all this Id stuff started coming up I took a quick refresher on Wikipedia (I know, I know!) and a lot of it just doesn't seem to carry over. Like the Coward... aren't all three aspects supposed to be interacting with each other all the time? Instead the Coward only comes out for one scene and completely disappears, as does Id, whereas the human struggle is supposed to be a constant balancing of all three, not a one time thing you resolve then move on. I'm not going to try to pretend I know more about this than you do, but I'm not sure if it all adds up quite as well as you're saying.

As far as the religious aspect, I must confess I don't know much about gnosticism, although it sounds very interesting and I have identified the parallels you pointed out to be true. Obviously I understand that the game's canon does have a real God who wants to stop evil in the world, and that's not the trendy-church-bashing that lesser caliber stories fall for. But that doesn't excuse the fact that for the first forty hours the game tries its absolute hardest to shock the player with its gratuitous use of religious symbols and terminology. For example, the scene where (SPOILER)Elly goes to save the rest of the team, and the gears (and ChuChu) are all crucified, what does that add to the plot? What analogies does that make to real world philosophy and how does it contribute to the game's story? To me, this and other scenes are just cheap ploys at pulling at the emotional reactions people have to religion. And I think we've settled that Verlaine stated the whole "control or molest" dichotomy of priests in the Ethos.

And just to clarify, do you really think (SPOILER)Citan letting Fei and Elly eat the Wel-food was in his character? I understand the common use of (SPOILER)a society that feeds its failed human experiments back to its people, but if you really think (SPOILER)Citan letting Fei and Elly eat them before revealing the truth wasn't inconsistent, then I don't even know how to respond to you.

An erudite implementation of world philosophy is great, but it all comes down to how it's directed, what the scenes look like, and the messages that are conveyed to the player. FFX's cosmology of knowing what happens in the afterlife is not what you're making it out to be. The characters do not know what happens after you die. They do know that unless you are sent, you are filled with hatred and jealousy of the living. That's not the "so who cares about dying?" scenario some people make it out to be. People can see images of the ones they've lost in Guadosalam, but they don't know if that's their actual loved ones or just projections from their own memories. Where is the explanation of the happy afterlife? They never explain if the sent go to another plane of physical existence, return to the life force of the universe, or simply dissipate. It's not what you're making it out to be.

I also find your disappointment with Operation Mi'ihen perplexing. What's wrong with foreshadowing? I think the whole point of the scene is that you know that these people are going to fail, yet you have to witness their pathetic false hope, all along knowing most of them are going to die. You know something truly horrible is going to happen yet you have to witness the painful build up. I'm pretty sure that's the standard formula for a horror movie.

As for Tidus' existence... To each his own. But I thought it was a great way make the story more powerful as you progress, you really don't know what this guy actually is, and what's going to happen when it's all said and done. As you watch him interact with his friends, fall in love with Yuna, it's all given a dramatic sense of sadness because you don't know if this guy is going to be with them when it's all said and done. And at the end when you find out (SPOILER)he's not real... well, that scene was far more powerful to me than Xenogears' ending, I can tell you that. After everything is said and done, we get a happy ending, (SPOILER)Fei lives, Elly tries to sacrifice herself, but that's ok, because she lives, too, all your friends are okay and waiting for you and the world is going to be alright. And Krelian? That guy who spent the entire game manipulating, enslaving, and mass murdering people and has been performing horrible experiments on countless human beings for thousands of years and killing them and feeding them back to other people? He's actually not so bad, turns out he loves people more than anyone else! In fact, he gets forgiven by God who he gets to go with and live on a higher plane of existence!

In FFX, not everything is ok at the end, in fact, they just get to live in a normal cycle of life and death like we take for granted every day. To me that's a far more adult way to conclude things than the standard, triumphant RPG ending.

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

Well, my post was supposed to be an ironic juxtaposition of a concise response to an extended retort, but here goes:

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I was mostly just giving you a ration of tit but whatever. :D

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Look, I'm not going to say Xenogears doesn't have a great story. I've said multiple times that it's an incredible, intelligent, and well translated plot that is an absolute showcase of video games as a storytelling medium. My real gripe is with everything else that largely detracts it from being a great "game." I guess in my fervor I over-extended myself and tried to go for the kill by saying the story isn't above its' peers either. The direction is really great; at the end of disc 1 I had to step away from the TV because of how emotionally drained I was. But upon completion I don't think it's terribly above and beyond the rest.

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I can understand not being impressed with the title as a "game", but I honestly don't agree that many games, let alone FF has ever really been as well written on so many levels, even with the games half finished plot and loose ends, I don't feel FF has ever come close to really hitting on so many themes and tying together such a complex and mature mythology and narrative. Does this mean I feel Xenogears is the end all be all of writing? No, I feel there are many games that are either as good or better written. But I'll be damned if you're going to compare Xenogears to FFX. VII? You have more of an argument, but not with FFX. :p

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First of all, I read a perfect works translation myself over the weekend and I didn't see an explanation of its inspirational parallels at all. Perhaps you could link me to a better one that includes it? I understand your background in psychology, and I'm not going to pretend I know more about this. But when all this Id stuff started coming up I took a quick refresher on Wikipedia (I know, I know!) and a lot of it just doesn't seem to carry over. Like the Coward... aren't all three aspects supposed to be interacting with each other all the time? Instead the Coward only comes out for one scene and completely disappears, as does Id, whereas the human struggle is supposed to be a constant balancing of all three, not a one time thing you resolve then move on. I'm not going to try to pretend I know more about this than you do, but I'm not sure if it all adds up quite as well as you're saying.

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I'm not going to yell at you for using Wikipedia. :p

(SPOILER)Fei is not exactly a normal healthy Psyche, that why the three don't interact with each other. There is also the issue that technically "Fei" that the player knows, is an artificial persona. By the end of the game though, they've become to function like the Freudian concept, like when Fei subdues Id by telling the Coward to not be a prick to Id and accept what happened, and by also revealing to Id that their mother saved their life at the last moment, meaning his rage against her is misguided. The Superego act as the "civilized" part of the human mind that subdues the Id, and keeps the ego in equilibrium. Granted, the Freudian idea of the psyche is pretty much bollocks in the modern psychology field (I'm Jungian myself, but that school is pretty heretical in the psychology profession) but the paralells are their and the Id's personality for the most part is much like the Freudian concept. To be honest, its been awhile since I read up on this in connection with Xenogears so its possible I could be wrong myself. I did find it amusing that Kaiser Sigmund is named after Freud but bares a resemblance to him. :D

As for sources and guides... Sadly the Ethos Sanctuary doesn't exist anymore but these two sites are pretty exceptional.
Xenogears: Guardian Angels - Proudly serving since 1999!
Xenogears: God and Mind >> Welcome to Xenogears: God and Mind - they actually just updated a translation of Perfect Works that actually have all the artwork and timelines.

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As far as the religious aspect, I must confess I don't know much about gnosticism, although it sounds very interesting and I have identified the parallels you pointed out to be true. Obviously I understand that the game's canon does have a real God who wants to stop evil in the world, and that's not the trendy-church-bashing that lesser caliber stories fall for. But that doesn't excuse the fact that for the first forty hours the game tries its absolute hardest to shock the player with its gratuitous use of religious symbols and terminology. For example, the scene where (SPOILER)Elly goes to save the rest of the team, and the gears (and ChuChu) are all crucified, what does that add to the plot? What analogies does that make to real world philosophy and how does it contribute to the game's story? To me, this and other scenes are just cheap ploys at pulling at the emotional reactions people have to religion. And I think we've settled that Verlaine stated the whole "control or molest" dichotomy of priests in the Ethos.

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When you really start to delve into the symbolism, a lot of it actually serves more of a purpose than shock and awe, despite that, I don't necessarily disagree that the game tries to do a shock and awe approach and I agree the crucifixion scene is definitely one of those. Where I don't agree is that its all there for just exploitation of the strong emotional pull that religious symbolism pulls (technically most of it would be lost on a Japanese audience) breaking down the symbolism of the Deus System itself, the name of each part actually refers to something relevant, of anything the game just found an amusing way to find religious terminology that can double for many of the things in the game. The Deus System and its mechanical and biological components mostly have religious terminology that is relevant to what it physically is in the game.

I also feel its evident that there is a major contrast between the Ethos Church and the Nisan sect, especially in terms of the Nisan sect being run by a Holy Mother and the Ethos preaching a male god figure. It's really not different from Christianity and the pagan religions of the Roman times. The teachings of Nisan itself is actually taken from the Italian artist Luciano de Crescenzo when Sophia speaks about one winged angel, and how we are created to be imperfect in order to help each other. (SPOILER)The three sages of Shevat are named after the supposed names of the three wise-men who gave gifts to Jesus, in the game each gives a specific thing to Fei, Balthazar(Old man Bal) created Weltall, Gasper removed the physical limiter on the party, and Melchior created Weltall-2 as well as gave Fei the nano-machines for suppressing and controlling Id. The Anima Relics are named after the 12 tribes of Israel, which correspond to the 12 disciples of Cain who helped populate the earth in the beginning timeline, and are also the people who became the Gazel ministry, and were physically reincarnated as Fei's party (hence why most of them can use Omni-Gears). Once you really start to look at the naming schemes of almost everything, it starts to make sense.

There is a lot of depth here, but it sadly does require some homework on the player's part.

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And just to clarify, do you really think (SPOILER)Citan letting Fei and Elly eat the Wel-food was in his character? I understand the common use of (SPOILER)a society that feeds its failed human experiments back to its people, but if you really think (SPOILER)Citan letting Fei and Elly eat them before revealing the truth wasn't inconsistent, then I don't even know how to respond to you.

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Well yes, because Citan has always been a guiding figure in the story and what better way than to make the student experience it firsthand? Technically Elly has been eating this stuff beforehand, as did Citan, but Citan needed to show Fei what he was up against. Of course, the Soylent System was suppose to have a larger role in the 2nd Disc but we know how that went...

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An erudite implementation of world philosophy is great, but it all comes down to how it's directed, what the scenes look like, and the messages that are conveyed to the player. FFX's cosmology of knowing what happens in the afterlife is not what you're making it out to be. The characters do not know what happens after you die. They do know that unless you are sent, you are filled with hatred and jealousy of the living. That's not the "so who cares about dying?" scenario some people make it out to be. People can see images of the ones they've lost in Guadosalam, but they don't know if that's their actual loved ones or just projections from their own memories. Where is the explanation of the happy afterlife? They never explain if the sent go to another plane of physical existence, return to the life force of the universe, or simply dissipate. It's not what you're making it out to be.

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X-2 says they return to the planet cause it works like VII/IX's world, and when you go there in the game, Yuna can speak with the Fayeth there and technically Tidus, its obvious that the souls are there, hellX-2's main boss uses them as a power source...

Also, FFX itself shows that only people who die can be seen there, hence why Tidus sees his mother but not Jecht. So its not just an illusion created by the viewer. As for the fiends, they are simply reincarnated as a monster, that itself can be killed, then purged, and return to the rest of souls. Most of this is pretty par the course of Buddhist thinking. I honestly figured the whole thing was a reincarnation gambit as usual, it just took the Ultimania and X-2 to finally confirm it. The pyreflies, Farplane, Unsent, and fiends are all pretty consistent with Japanese myth. pyreflies are Hitodama, unsent are ghosts and spirits, fiends are vengeful souls that become demons, the Farplane is Yomi. Yomi itself is nether considered a paradise or a hell, but then I would describe the Lifestream and Crystals as that as well.

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I also find your disappointment with Operation Mi'ihen perplexing. What's wrong with foreshadowing? I think the whole point of the scene is that you know that these people are going to fail, yet you have to witness their pathetic false hope, all along knowing most of them are going to die. You know something truly horrible is going to happen yet you have to witness the painful build up. I'm pretty sure that's the standard formula for a horror movie.

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I actually don't care for horror movies, but my issue is that the game played it up too hard and too soon. If Operation Mi'ihen had been done closer towards the end of the game, like before you go to Zanarkand, I feel it would have had a stronger impact for me. Partly because I would have spent more time in Spira and I would have had a stronger attachment to what happens to it, it would have had a better buildup instead of just walking out of Luca and having every person you talk to bring it up. until the event happens almost an hour later in playtime. My issue is that its buildup didn't create tension, it just created this giant "let's watch this blow up in their face" moment and that's pretty much how I see the scene. Its an amusing spectacle that shows that some people in Spira are trying alternative methods to beat Sin but also establishes that the Final Aeon is the only thing that can beat it. I feel its relevant in those points, but not as an emotional scene. I felt exploring Lindblum after Atmos destroyed it in IX was far more shocking, emotional, and poignant.

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As for Tidus' existence... To each his own. But I thought it was a great way make the story more powerful as you progress, you really don't know what this guy actually is, and what's going to happen when it's all said and done. As you watch him interact with his friends, fall in love with Yuna, it's all given a dramatic sense of sadness because you don't know if this guy is going to be with them when it's all said and done. And at the end when you find out (SPOILER)he's not real... well, that scene was far more powerful to me than Xenogears' ending, I can tell you that.

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I just feel the twist is stupid and could have been handled better. If the goal was to have him sacrifice himself instead of Yuna, there were more graceful options than to come up with some silly BS that''s he's a dream and not real. I mean the whole twist pretty much just serves this part alone and it seems kind of Deus ex Machina to me cause it has no real good foreshadowing and I feel the whole concept creates some weird plotholes that didn't exist. I really felt like Nojima was just trying to recreate the whole "Cloud isn't Cloud" twist from VII but fumbles when he tries to explain it and basically pulls it out of his ass. You know, I probably would have liked X's story more if this one twist wasn't there, cause I felt it really just kind of undermined any buildup up until then.

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After everything is said and done, we get a happy ending, (SPOILER)Fei lives, Elly tries to sacrifice herself, but that's ok, because she lives, too, all your friends are okay and waiting for you and the world is going to be alright. And Krelian? That guy who spent the entire game manipulating, enslaving, and mass murdering people and has been performing horrible experiments on countless human beings for thousands of years and killing them and feeding them back to other people? He's actually not so bad, turns out he loves people more than anyone else! In fact, he gets forgiven by God who he gets to go with and live on a higher plane of existence!

In FFX, not everything is ok at the end, in fact, they just get to live in a normal cycle of life and death like we take for granted every day. To me that's a far more adult way to conclude things than the standard, triumphant RPG ending.

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(SPOILER)You forget that most of the human population is dead, after being integrated into Deus or wiped out by the Seraph, there is a story reason why you can only go to two towns at the end of the game. Most of humanity is holed up in the remains of Shevat. Everyone else is dead. So I wouldn't say it was all lollipops and gum drops in the ending. No one in the party dies, but considering all the hell they had to go through to get to this point, I kind of feel Fei and Co. deserve their happy ending. It's not like every previous incarnation Fei had didn't end absolutely miserably, nor all the events in his own life have been a bucket full of rays of sunshine. So you're going to spite him for finally catching a break? ;)

As for Krelian, I actually like that he gets off with his crimes, the player never gets the catharsis of defeating the games true mastermind, but I also felt the ending worked for his character who has just been someone who couldn't cope with the loss of his love, and eventually became a man who simply seeked to be with someone or something that can accept him for who he is. His own goal was simply to force humanity into a higher plane of existence where they would be free from misery. Despite his inherent madness, his goal is noble if not grossly misguided. I find that the ending was not so much the "happily ever after" but really just a final analysis of Krelian and his character.

Well, it looks like we kind of hashed out all our feelings on this, so I'll summarize what I still agree/disagree with:

I still think you're partially reaching on Fei saying "well, he's not a normal Psyche!" but I do concede the Freudian concepts aren't completely substanceless. I also think that's cool about the Kaiser, he was actually one of my favorite characters, his intro scene of him playing Mitsuda's "Prayer" track on the organ while discussing strategy is one of the illest video game scenes of all time. I really wish he got more screen time, I would have loved to see him and Bart at the negotiation table hammering out the terms of an armistice, or even better, making amends with his son.

I also agree that few games, certainly in FF, came close to making such complex plots with humongous casts, threads, and themes all come together at the end. The way they tied up the whole Lacan/Graf/Fei thread could've really went downhill but they pulled it off.

I also guess we agree: the symbology parallels are deep, but a lot of it is shock-tactics.

I still don't think Citan would let them eat it!

Also (SPOILER)was Ramsus supposed to join the game as a late addition to the party? It kinda seemed like they were going to pull a Magus with him when Citan gives him the old-friend pep talk, which in itself makes me wonder if given more time they were going to have branching plot lines and alternate endings.

It kind of seems like you're conceding that they don't know 100% what happens in the after life, but they have their teachings on it. A lot of games have that, namely VII and IX off the top of my head. In any case, I don't think it ruined the plot.

I also disagree about Operation Mi'ihen, there's plenty of great scenes in that game so I didn't need that to be one of the few mindblowing ones sparsed throughout the plot. To each his own on this one.

What plotholes does Tidus' nature create? Also I do think there was foreshadowing because he was from a place he couldn't possibly have been from.

I guess Fei did deserve a break. It's not like they didn't lose comrades and loved ones along the way (SPOILER)(HAMMER!!!! :( ). But with everything going on with Elly late in the game, the truth that gets revealed about everyone, including the fact that (SPOILER)all humans on that planet (except Abel) were artificially created. It was a little bit of a let down for everything to end so predictably. So yeah, I still feel FFX had a much more adult ending than Xenogears.

As for Krelian's wrap-up, I can see why people like it, but I think it asks too much from the player, and gets away with it only because of how crazy the rest of the ride was up to that point :)

San Andreas the RPG? Id play it.

There is something greatly entertaining about erikramza's 7 word post after the essays posted above.

I like how they can derail a thread and get away with it :D

[QUOTE=Bolivar;3030831]

Also (SPOILER)was Ramsus supposed to join the game as a late addition to the party? It kinda seemed like they were going to pull a Magus with him when Citan gives him the old-friend pep talk, which in itself makes me wonder if given more time they were going to have branching plot lines and alternate endings.[/spoiler]

You know, I honestly don't know, as far as I've read, I don't think there was any dummied out data of him, but I agree I felt they were setting it up for him to join. Would have been awesome come to think of it cause I really did like him.

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What plotholes does Tidus' nature create? Also I do think there was foreshadowing because he was from a place he couldn't possibly have been from.

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If they can make thought/dream into physical reality, why not just create a Sin like being to destroy Sin, instead of his half-ass backwards generation ploy? It's not like Yevon can possess Tidus or Jecht, so it doesn't seem like they are susceptible to possession by Yevon without becoming an Aeon, so wouldn't it make more logical sense to just create a Dream Sin to destroy Sin and the other Aeons? It's not like Yevon has much of a mind left to thwart the Fayeth in doing this.

It just seems like it would make more sense. There are also some philosophical quandaries I don't care for either concerning this, but that is irrelevant to the story.

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I guess Fei did deserve a break. It's not like they didn't lose comrades and loved ones along the way (SPOILER)(HAMMER!!!! :( ). But with everything going on with Elly late in the game, the truth that gets revealed about everyone, including the fact that (SPOILER)all humans on that planet (except Abel) were artificially created. It was a little bit of a let down for everything to end so predictably. So yeah, I still feel FFX had a much more adult ending than Xenogears.

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I may agree FFX had a more mature ending (it is actually the ending I wanted for IX) I don't think it makes up for the rest of the game, as I said, I kind of feel some bad writing was used to get it to that point, so I don't find the ending as deeply moving as some of the other FFs. I felt Xenogears held onto the more mature storyline for most of its game and having a happy ending never really felt like a cop-out when you consider the state of the world at the end. It was a happy victory for the cast, but I felt they really earned it. Course we could also just talk about FFTactics or Vagrant story that would appease us both by having a matuure main story and a thought provoking ending. :D

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As for Krelian's wrap-up, I can see why people like it, but I think it asks too much from the player, and gets away with it only because of how crazy the rest of the ride was up to that point :)

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(SPOILER)I don't really feel it asks too much from the player, of anything it basically serves as an example of the paradox of divine forgiveness and divine retribution, which is really more of an issue in western religions like Christianity and Islam. The player wants to see Krelian punished but instead he asks for forgiveness and receives it, though by a being who probably doesn't give a rat's ass. This is one of those things that never sits well with views of Jude-Christian thought. Seriously, ask a pastor or an openly religious person about their view of the scenario of whether Hitler can go to heaven as long as he repents.You will get some interesting answers. I feel Krelian kind of falls into this category, but he's also helped by his rather sympathetic backstory.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

It's a little of both, see unlike you, I never found Spira interesting, and I do partially blame it on the map design making the world feel like the yellow brick road of Oz, so while it is certainly uninspired in its over-simplicity and lack of imagination, I also feel the map design leads to the game not inspiring a sense of being in a "living world" and drawing the player in. So I'll agree with you that it was uninspired design but I also stand that it was uninspiring as well. ;)

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I know, right? I could not fathom Spira's geography. Walk down a dusty road, suddenly in Antarctica. What's with that?

I always found it cool that the whole world was built around one road and you could traverse it in under an hour.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

I always found it cool that the whole world was built around one road and you could traverse it in under an hour.

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Oh, FFX.

Somewhat related question: Does the camera turn around to face the opposite direction if the player is running back from where he came (say you want to go back to Besaid from some later point on the map). Do you just have to watch Tidus running at you as the camera pans back or does the game change perspective? My immediate memory says that it doesn't.

It does not. It is a pre-set camera path, albeit with and extremely uninspired placement.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

I always found it cool that the whole world was built around one road and you could traverse it in under an hour.

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I'd rather play a side-scroller/action game if I wanted this kind of nonsense :p

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Originally Posted by Flying Arrow

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

I always found it cool that the whole world was built around one road and you could traverse it in under an hour.

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Oh, FFX.

Somewhat related question: Does the camera turn around to face the opposite direction if the player is running back from where he came (say you want to go back to Besaid from some later point on the map). Do you just have to watch Tidus running at you as the camera pans back or does the game change perspective? My immediate memory says that it doesn't.

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It mostly doesn't but I believe there are a few exceptions, namely Besaid, where the camera will reverse around for some parts. Mostly its stuck in one place like the PSX FF titles.

They were originally going to make the game full 3D with movable camera but they ran into some internal technical conflicts and dropped the whole idea. On a side note, FFX was also suppose to have eliminated random encounters and had enemies viewable on the map interacting with each other, but they realized the idea was too ambitious and they didn't have the know how of the PS2 to implement it within a timely manner. It's kind of amusing how many of the dropped technical ideas from FFX made it into FFXII instead. ;)