Haven't played Crisis Core unfortunately. :/Originally Posted by Sephiroth
Haven't played Crisis Core unfortunately. :/
Pull my Devil Trigger!
My issue is that it's a boring transition, and it ultimately destroys the momentum created in Chapter 9 and isn't helped by the fact that Chapter 11 isn't exactly the most plot heavy story either until the very end, so instead it just creates an unnecessary lull in a story that has already been dragging longer than it should have been.
I agree that having all of them on top of each other was a poor move, especially since Hope really needed the extra oomph in the chapters he's stuck with Lightning and Fang needed far more development before just dumping it on us while characters like Hope and Vanille, who have been here since the beginning get theirs so late and many cases felt more like an after thought on the writer's part since both of them had their bigger story turns in earlier chapters.The only part I have an issue with is how close the Fang, Hope and Vanille Eidolon encounters are to each other. They weren't paced well. Aside from that, Fang was only introduced in Chapter 6. And she makes it clear from the outset that she's from Pulse, so we won't get more of her backstory until we reach that place which is in Chapter 11. And whether or not you find her story interesting or not is entirely your opinion. I personally found her and Vanille's dynamic interesting, considering they both awoke from a crystal stasis yet she was the only one who lost her memories.
Except they don't, they ultimately do exactly what the bad guys wanted them to do. The fact they choose to do so for different reasons other than their focus is at complete odds for why they were against the focus in the first place and thus the overall theme of the game is lost in the party's own hypocrisy and only rescued by an off screen handwave by the writing team.Cid's presence in the plot wasn't substantial enough to be impactful when he unwillingly betrays you, but that doesn't mean he's a bad character. He was an unfortunate character. He had been an ally to the party numerous times (helping Snow find the party, bringing them together, helping them board the Palamecia) and wanted to help them even more by overthrowing the fal'Cie. He acts as a vessel for the party to continue their journey; when you beat him, he tells you to choose your own fate and disregard your focus of destroying Cocoon. His words are pretty important considering that's exactly what the party sets out to do.
Cid is not a bad character, but he's a poorly utilized one, remaining a background character for a few minor scenes before Chapter 10 and thus the impact of his betrayal is lost on the player because he's not been much of a presence in the story as he should have been. He had the potential to be something better and deeper to help the player actually care about Cocoon but I often felt he was just used to add shallow drama as the writer's moved onto the next plot point, and to see him go to such waste was a disappointment.
Except not, Cid being the Primarch serves no real purpose but to simply show the party themselves that they are trapped by their fate regardless. His survival was never important and its obvious in the scenes he's featured in that he is a broken man who realizes he's being used and even in death, he can't fight against the will of the fal'Cie who had convinced the party to return and destroy Orphan for them, so even his death serves no real purpose but to crush the hope of the resistance. For all his talk of fighting fate, his life and death were largely a waste.Cid's entire reasoning for fighting the party is completely different from anyone else's at this point in the game. Because in his mind, he wants to kill you to free you from your focus and save Cocoon. He's not fighting you because Dysley told him to. He turned himself into a Cie'th to fight against his fate, his focus. And his sacrifice isn't moot; he was intended to be revived as the new Primarch. He fought against the fal'Cie by ordering Rygdea to kill him. Cid's story echoes the entire theme of the game: challenging your fate
Well first off, FFX was my least favorite FF before XIII took the mantle from it and then beat it to death with it and second you're mistaking Mario Bros and FFXIII as both being apples when they are really both fruit and one is an apple and the other is a tomato. They look the same but the texture, taste, and cooking requirements are very different.This is a common complaint about the game I hear, and it's absolutely asinine. The "corridor simulator" complaint. You know what else is a corridor simulator? Super Mario Bros. That's right, you're on a straight linear path to the end of the game, fighting samey enemies, running through samey environments and levels. But guess what? No one gives a trout. Because Super Mario Bros. is a good game. It's a fun game. And so is Final Fantasy XIII. I love walking through beautiful, unique environments. I love being able to encounter enemies on the map, engage them in battle, and figuring out the most efficient way to win. Let's take another "corridor simulator" example: Final Fantasy X. A game many people consider being the last "good" Final Fantasy. Yet it's even more linear than XIII. There's no huge open world like Pulse in X. Just a linear story with unique environments and enemies along the way. But no one cares about how linear it is, because in the end it's a good game. Just like XIII.
A platformer works in a linear setting because the objective of the game is to move past obstacles through skill and prowess to an inevitable end. Even with that simple premise, Mario is not necessarily a linear experience unless you purposely do so. The stages have various secrets and there are various ways you can complete the level utilizing different paths and tactics. The stages themselves may even have secret pathways that take you to later levels or give you some extra boon. Despite it's linear layout, the stages themselves are filled with things to find and discover. XIII doesn't have that, which is where linear corridor comes into play because there is only ever one way to go, you can't interact with the environment to change how you get to the ending. The combat system is based on an A+B=C principle where it's nearly impossible and largely inadvisable to skip steps to achieve victory so even combat begins to feel very narrow and more of an means to an end than something fluid and thoughtful that requires the player to be creative or engaged. The game removes most of your ability to explore and most locations outside of Pulse have nothing worth finding in the rare times there is a minor optional path.
Now comes the part where I may become sick because I now have to say something nice about FFX. While the stage layout of FFX was also linear in nature (and one of the most criticized elements about the game back in the day I might add) it was at least filled with stuff to do. If you weren't being stopped by various NPCs for a chat or cutscene, you had a mini-game or two to divert your attention, there was actually stuff to find like Al Bhed books, written works that expanded the world for you, or people to chat with that heled sell the world of Spira to the player, and of course just combat in general. XIII doesn't really have any of this, which is why it gets knocked more. Instead you simply have the option to move forward to the next cutscene or the next battle. Your only other option was to open up the menu and read the Dataogs, but that in itself is troublesome, because I sure I speak for many when I say that the point of a JRPG is to "tell you a story" not relegate it all into an in-game Ultimania/encyclopedia. Hell the whole "Fang was Ragnarok" is spoiled in the Datalogs before you ever get to Vanille's scene where she gets her Eidolon making the revelation fall completely flat. I would even argue that the Datalogs do a better job of telling you the story than the actual cutscenes since it allowed the reader to understand what was going through the casts head as opposed to guessing from the uncanny valley cutscenes.
Yes there are some people to talk to but your mostly just overhearing their own conversations and there is so few of these moments its easy to forget that their was anyone outside of the story cast that was relevant. Pulse itself is a huge open place to explore but it comes so late in the game that I and many others pretty much had already given up on the game cause thirty hours of doing the same monotonous routine of going forward, fighting a battle with a scripted battle mechanic, and then watching a cutscene, repeat ad nauseum just to finally get to the "fun" part of the game is not how you make an engaging experience. Especially when you're dealing with a genre that has generally always been more about choice and exploration. The linear design of the game was a bad fit and one I still believe was made out of necessity than choice as XIII had its own troubled production.
Linear design in gaming is not bad, but I do feel wholeheartedly that XIII's linear design was badly executed and damaged the overall experience for many players.People seem to associate "linear" with "bad" yet forget that some of their favorite games were even more linear.
Except Chapter 11 already begins as a slow burn anyway in terms of plot with the party trapped on Pulse and trying to figure out what to do next. Cid tells them to fight fate, which many of them had already resolved to do before Chapter 9 so it was kind of a pointless reiterating of a theme the game has already been throwing down the party and players throats since Chapter 3, and technically the open ended nature of Pulse was pretty much guaranteed to slow the pacing of the plot considerably (which it does) anyway especially after going so long with little to do but advance the story. So again, I would argue that Chapter 10 was irrelevant, especially since:The chapter is not pointless at all. Like I stated before, it is a transitional chapter. It's meant to bridge the heavy plot-focused, boss-battle oriented chapter 9 and the exploration-based chapter 11. You can't just have heavy action and heavy plot all the time; you need to pace it out and provide a respite from it every now and then. Chapter 10 does a phenomenal job of that because it acts as a very nice interlude between the two chapters. And I feel like you completely misunderstood Cid's story because, again, he still fought against his fate by ordering Rygdea to kill him in order to defy Dysley's wishes. Fang was given more than enough development by the end of the game. Her entire backstory and relationship with Vanille is completely fleshed out, as well as her motivations for being with the party.
Chapter 10 actually helps the flow of the game by giving the player a transition and respite from the intense chapter it preceded. It also set up the nice chapter quite nicely with Cid Raines' story providing the characters motivation and a clear objective.
- Cid's words fall on death's ear and the party is struggling to figure out what to do and how to go on at the beginning of Chapter 11 anyway.
- His own attempt to fight fate ends up having him being used as a pawn by Dysley later and his death was meaningless since the destruction of Cocoon and mankind's extinction was the entire point of their plan so dying early does nothing to change this.
- Chapter 11 is one of the longer chapters anyway and the side-quests and openness offers a better "transition" from the linear corridor of the previous ten chapters and would have easily served the same purpose as chapter 10.
So again, I would argue that there is nothing going on in Chapter 10 that isn't either invalidated in the next two chapters or could not have been done with Chapter 11 anyway.
.Story's bigger revelations? Like how the game did all of the antagonists dirty? How the empire's demise was detailed in the form of optional letters you have to pick up off of desks? It revealed that the game was rushed and incomplete, sure. I don't know how you could possibly argue that XV was better than XIII in any way, especially the story. All of XIII's antagonists got proper closure and had complete story arcs. You have to learn about XV's antagonists through a smurfing collectible
You mean like everything above I've pointed out on how Cid's purpose in the plot was mostly wasted and made moot by later revelations? Jihl being propped up for several chapters as a great foil for Sahz only to be literally killed off before the big battle with her for the painfully obvious reveal of Dysley? Roosch being an idiot who fights for the badguys until the bitter end never knowing he's just an expendable pawn? Dysley revealing that he could have wiped out Cocoon without the party involvement? Or how about the party ending the game by doing the one thing they spent most of the game saying they weren't going to do and only get saved because of a literal Deus ex Machina that is poorly explained without the Ultimania and the sequels? Seriously, XIII's plot is a mess filled with plot holes and a central theme that completely loses it's point thanks to hand waves, contrived plot elements, and general hypocrisy in the actions and motives of the cast.
XV wasn't perfect but we all knew the empire was just a red herring anyway, and Ardyn is at least interesting and memorable to ease the sting of the disappointment of Nifelheim, but at least he was more memorable and interesting than all of XIII's B-Movie antagonists who could never really steal the show. The overall plot of XV is basic as hell but at least filled with wonderful moments of the main cast showing the theme of brotherhood, and many of the side characters are personable and memorable. The best part is, no angst. Honestly if you want to play a linear RPG whose central theme is about a group of characters fighting the inevitable fate that is death, then play Persona 3. The game XIII stole most of it's ideas from, but had the good fortune of remembering it also needs to be a fun game.
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
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