Well I've played lots and I can confirm that it is indeed that bad
Well I've played lots and I can confirm that it is indeed that bad
That's kind of implied by the fact that I was making a statement and never claimed it was universal truth.Originally Posted by Rocket Edge
And I've played plenty of JRPG's in my life and FFXIII is still one of the absolute worst I've ever seen. No matter how much it may have been polished it's still a turd.
This. XIII had sub par writing. Like what was this all th look back scenes. Not to mention it was very weak on the mapping. It looks ok, but it was very linear. Gave the player no freedom of choice, and no freedom to explore. XIII was worse than Mysric Quest in my opinion.That's kind of implied by the fact that I was making a statement and never claimed it was universal truth.
And I've played plenty of JRPG's in my life and FFXIII is still one of the absolute worst I've ever seen. No matter how much it may have been polished it's still a turd.
Linear dungeons have nothing to do with writing.
As for the flashbacks...probably because the story is about these fugitives on the run and the game starts off with a big event ie. the Purge. Flashbacks explain who these people were and why they were involved with the Purge.
And I've already said my piece in the past about why FFXIII is a much better written game than, say, FFVIII. It's certainly better than Star Ocean 3.
Incidentally, Fynn, I've talked to several people who say your coparison of Snow and Hope with those characters from Persona 3 is flat-out nonsense.
We can agree to disagree, but I'd really like to know your reasoning's about why you think XIII is better written than VIII.
Str8 Pimpin'
Everyone in XIII's cast has development and a reason to be there, for starters. In VIII, the only characters with development are Squall and Rinoa and maybe Quistis if you bring her along at key moments. Otherwise Zell, Selphie and especially Irvine all just take up space and contribute nothing to the plot. I single out Irvine because he was brought into the party for one purpose...and he promptly fails at that purpose and then immediately tries to abandon your party in prison. What a lovable goofball! This isn't even getting into the fact the "team sharpshooter' suffers perpetually from jitters and anxiety attacks.We can agree to disagree, but I'd really like to know your reasoning's about why you think XIII is better written than VIII.
Which is a more central problem of VIII's writing, it insists on craftingthese big military-esque scenarios that fall apart any time anyone with a brain thinks about them. The Deling abduction mission? Stupid. The Sorceress Assassination mission? Even stupider. I'll never get over how a lynchpin of this plan was to seal the woman WHO THEY ALL KNOW CAN WALK THROUGH SOLID OBJECTS in a gate.
Mostly FFVIII feels like a lot of things just happen and they're strung together with little rhyme or reason. Monsters falling from the goddam moon? Sure, why not. I mean, it's not like people aren't talking about Christmas two months in advance. Meanwhile, no one around ever mentions MONSTERS ARE GONNA FALL FROM THE MOON TOMORROW.
Also a time-traveling sorceress from the future? Sure why not. We needed time travel in this game, right?
The worldbuilding is just bizarre, too. Centra was apparently a super advanced civilization that existed for thousands of years but no one remembers them at all. I mean, they were destroyed 80 years ago. Who remembers that far back, am I right?
And of course Ellone's power is never explained. It's justsomething she can do because the Plot demands she can do it. Oh and Odine can mechanize this completely unexplained power so that our time traveling sorceress can get to it. So...shoot Odine in the head? Destroy the plans for Junction Machine Ellone? I guess that's not how time travel works in this game.
I can keep going, if you want.
Listen, there's plenty of things I hate about XIII. The nature of the fal'Cie is poorly explained, for one. But I still like the concept. They're presented as the gods who can manipulate humanity to their whim. But in reality, the fal'Cie are the real slaves and they're just trying to escape their eternal fates as, I dunno, waste management or whatever. I'm sure there's a fal'Cie in charge of Cocoon's sewage. That poor thing can do nothing else from now until the end of time. No wonder it wants to die.
Our heroes also have no real plan at any point. Well, they kinda did, with "we can get rid of our brands on Pulse!" Why do they think this? Who knows. It fails spectacularly at any rate. Mostly though they just bumble about and say "things will work out." Which is stupid as I said but I still prefer it to them coming up with some elaborate, convoluted, moronic scheme like "how about we LET the villain achieve her goal and destroy time?"
They do bombard you with a lot of Terms at the start, too. My firstrun I was very confused about Pulse and Cocoon and PSICOM and Guardian Corps and etc.. But all of this is fairly well spelled out in cutscenes. If you want extra detail or clarification, the Datalog exists for a reason. Speaking of which, the Datalog is infinitely more helpful than FFVIII's Encyclopedia.
Gah! Almost choked on my burger. Some warning next time please.
you just about choked? I fell down the stairs laughing so hard. The only reason XIII gets any talk is it has Final Fantasy in its title. It is the weakest of the numbered FF and is up there with Mystic Quest for worst JRPG of all time. I choked through it to say I played it but it wasn't a true Final Fantasy, and it wasn't a great game.Gah! Almost choked on my burger. Some warning next time please.
This never normally happens, but I'm going to have to agree with Forsaken Lover. Maybe it is just me (it probably is), but I never found FFXIII's story terribly hard to follow. Sure, it jumps right into the deep end, but by the end of the first chapter I got a good grasp of what was going on. And the terminology isn't that hard to follow at all. Fal'Cie produce l'Cie, who when they fail their focus become Cie'th. I don't understand the confusion. The linearity is a fault, but one which produces a clear enough thread to follow.
Now, FFXIII has several problems, a good chunk of them game-play related, but some story as well. Chapters 4 - 6 is basically your characters fleeing, with little in the way of actual story development (though a fair few character threads are planted). I can understand some of the flashbacks to be rather confusing, even dull. Snow's flashbacks are the worst offenders, but for the most part they do give an insight into the character's lives before the Purge.
Chapter 10 is another weak point. Pretty much all that happens of note is Fang's sudden crisis (with hardly any hints dropped about it, either), which does come across as rather forced. The villains are mediocre, at best. PSICOM were always meant to be a background threat to the characters, and while their significant introduction is compelling (chapter 7, the capture of Sazh and Vanille in chapter 8) they don't really follow through, Nabaat being limply thrown aside at the end of chapter 9 as the 'true' villains emerge.
It has many flaws, but I wouldn't say it is the worst written RPG ever. Every game has weakness. FFXII produces a stunning world, a vibrant history of city of kingdom, and an array of colourful side characters, but struggles to truly flesh out many of the main cast, especially the party members. Persona 3 and 4 are otherwise incredibly well written games, but suffer from occasional pacing issues, especially towards the summer months (Persona 3 has it worse off).
Of all the RPGs I have played, I honestly cannot pin one down as the worst offender, because every game has something in the writing that catches, that feels off and doesn't work.
I made simple statements of facts. Saying FFXIII's party has development is just a fact. If you don't like it, fine. But there's no denying they're more fleshed out than everyone in VIII except Squall. Even Rinoa's arc gets sidelined so she can hump Squall. Resolve her issues with her father? Pft! She only needs her sexy broody boyfriend! That fixes everything!
I'm not gonna sit here and tell you XIII was a masterpiece. It most assuredly was not. But it has mostly consistent plot and characterization and that's more than I can say for FFVIII or SO3.
i thought XIII had better story and characters too, though i enjoy VIII more. I think all the characters are easy to remember and actually do something. i think Sazh had better development than Selphie. only thing she got was "oh no my trabia are been boomed". Quistis done nothing either after the first 10 mins. While.... and i hate to say this... even hope had quite a bit of development.
i dont mean to start fights im just saying sorry...
I can't think of any either. I'm generally easy to please and even stories where I spend the whole time laughing at the cheesy, cliche fest... well, I still enjoy it in its own way. It's fun having cheesy cliche fests sometimes! If I really don't like a game or a game story I just stop playing it, so I couldn't really comment on the entirety of the story, nor do I remember any cases that stand out
Whatever the polar opposite of Fynn's choices are, probably.
Oh, honey
Anyway, about the XIII vs VIII debate - I've said this before, and I stand by it, but sometimes less is more. So what if we get more time spent developing characters if they are sad caricatures of what some clueless hack thinks human beings are, with sappy, melodramatic bulltrout as their back stories that they bring up in casual conversation because no one on the FFXIII writing team apparently has any idea about how human interactions work
Yes, we don't spend as much time developing VIII's cast. And? They are not, by some insane twist of fate, all tormented by their Dark and Troubled PastTM. The story is almost entirely about Squall and Rinoa and there is no need to add some bulltrout character development with Zell suddenly not being racist anymore because he just didn't think friendship was real and Selphie trying to run away from her past where she used to be romantically involved with an international drug cartel owner. These characters are support characters and they don't need to be anything else because THE STORY ISN'T ABOUT THEM. Stating all characters in a story need to undergo the ridiculously overhyped process of character development is just baffling to me. It's like saying Harry Potter sucks because the Weasley twins and the teachers didn't have some tacked on development. Please, read more, people, I beg you.
And my issue with the terminology isn't that it's confusing, it's just pulled out of the creator's ass. If you're going to pull all this lore out of nowhere, at least make the terminology something meaningful. Cie doesn't mean anything. The l'Cie, fal'Cie and Cie'th are explained well enough, but since all this could be just called stuff like Crystal, Crystal's Chosen and Crystal Fiend, and there's no foreign language present in the game to warrant foreign terminology, this is just a blatant case of making up nonsense to make it sound cool.
This is a general problem of FFXIII - style over substance. Everything in this game is skin deep, trying to get a reaction from you immediately so that you forget to look deeper and see that there's literally nothing there. The terminology is just the tip of the iceberg. There's scenes that just don't make sense and they're just there to look cool. Take the scene where they come back from Pulse for example - there is no reason for them to be on a racetrack, riding their Eidolons. Sure, the thing looks really cool, but the more you think about it, the more it falls apart.
The characters of VIII are not devoid of personality, just character development.
And really, go enjoy FFXIII for all I care. I just really think it's unfair to judge the game this way and pit it up against VIII when they use different styles of narrative.
And yes, Pheesh, this is exactly what this thread is - it's an opinion thread. I can say I think the writing in XIII is terrible however many times I want, and it's none of your business how much time I spend on it. And if you don't like that - that's your problem. I never said you're stupid for enjoying XIII, but you jumping at my throat for every opinion you don't understand or disagree with is, well, unfair, to say the least.
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