Quote Originally Posted by Sephex View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Vivi22 View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Sephex View Post
The reason I like it to this day for the simple fact that it uses one of my favorite methods of getting a point across in video games: Using the actual gameplay to showcase a story point. The game builds up Sephiroth to be a bad ass super solider, and watching the amount of damage he dished out and capabilities the character had drove that point home. If he was capable of such feats five years ago as a "good" guy, imagine what he can do now!
I like that part too. Shame it's over in the first five minutes or so, and everything after it is nothing but linear exposition for an hour or two.
Again, then why replay the game at all? There are plenty parts of the game where there is linear exposition. If that's a problem then why replay ANY RPG from the late 90s on?
Most games don't lock you on a path that is nothing but exposition for a couple of hours on end. I don't mind replaying games again and even experiencing stuff I've seen before. That's not the problem. The problem is that you do absolutely nothing as a player except sit and watch for hours. That's literally it. The most player agency you get is walking from one piece of exposition to the next. It's not experiencing the story in that segment that's the problem. It's that that's all you do for an incredibly long time with nothing to break it up. It's not so bad the first time when it's all new. It is when you want to actually PLAY the game again. It utterly kills the pacing for every subsequent playthrough, which leads me to believe the pacing wasn't that great to begin with, it's just more apparent when you play it again.

It's the same reason I won't ever go back and actually play Xenosaga again. If your exposition is so long that you give the player the option to save and take a break part way through then it's too long and you've failed as a game designer.