Sakaguchi says HD visuals too much for game worlds

[ShinGundam]

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

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

(SPOILER)Kitase'd



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

[kotora]

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

[Roto13]

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

[Madame Adequate]

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

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

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

[Old Manus]

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

[Yeargdribble]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[nik0tine]

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

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

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

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

[kotora]

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

[Madame Adequate]

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

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

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

[Bolivar]

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

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

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

[DMKA]

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

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

[kotora]

Final Fantasy XIII did have towns.

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

[DMKA]

Final Fantasy XIII did have towns.

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

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

[Flying Arrow]

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

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

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

[Depression Moon]

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