Bioware Writer: JRPGs are not RPGs

[mobiusclimber]

While I agree w/ you, I think Squall is a terrible example. If you look, FF8 Squall has just as much retarded crap as KH Squall. For instance, you can't see the zipper on his leg b/c it's on the opposite leg, but I know it's there b/c he has those three stupid belt buckles on his leg that are ostensibly holding the zipper closed (???). He's got dual belts on, a flippin' trinket on a chain on the end of his gun blade, and a fur-lined jacket that doesn't fit him!

FF7 was the beginning of the end for the Square. They basically made the JRPG version of Neon Genesis Evangelion. If you know the history of Gainax, you'll know how badly creating a cultural phenomenon that legitimized a genre and made a buttload of cash fucked that company up. That's basically been Square's problem. The exaggerated stereotypes for characters, the over-reliance of FMV and bombast, the needlessly complicated character customization system that discarded the very notion of one person being good at anything so your characters can master every damn spell in the game, and the angst, my god the angst! Now I'm not one of those FF7 haters. I actually think Square did a lot of things right w/ the game. But I also think they didn't have a single clue as to just WHAT they did right and why it was right at the time. What really bothers me is when they create a game with as detailed and rich a world as FF13 and then have to saddle the game with annoying characters, pointless over-customization and a battle engine that practically plays itself. Why???? B/c that's what Square does!

Granted, none of this has anything to do w/ this topic.

[shopkins]

The worst recent design is Cloud's Advent Children look, which is playable in Dissidia. It looks like he's wearing half a coat! I'm sorry, but that design should have been rejected simply for being fucking stupid.

[Icarus Moonsight]

The worst recent design is Cloud's Advent Children look, which is playable in Dissidia. It looks like he's wearing half a coat! I'm sorry, but that design should have been rejected simply for being fucking stupid.

If that didn't stop 7, then it's not going to stop half a jacket...

If I only had the 'shoppin' skill... That's begging for a "Stabbed yourself in the junk" treatment.

[Sothy]

The entire battle engine of Mass Effect, Bioshock and Fallout 3 is an FPS with stat building thrown in. You use a gun to shoot, you strafe, you duck behind cover. They're a stat-building system shy of being Gears of War, basically. And no, the fact that there's melee weapons doesn't change anything. (Most FPS games have melee weapons. Is Half Life an RPG?)

[Eternal Tune]

The worst recent design is Cloud's Advent Children look, which is playable in Dissidia. It looks like he's wearing half a coat! I'm sorry, but that design should have been rejected simply for being fucking stupid.

Say what you people want about Squall, but leave Cloud out of this!

[ShinGundam]

One of the reasons why I like FFXII so much is because it's a breath of fresh air.

I don't hate FF12 designs but they still have belts and far uglier. Also, How can Kuja and Zidene get free pass ?

[kupomogli]

I think FF12 has good character designs. Everyone except Vaan and Basch.

Also. You guys do know that the character designer for FF12 wasn't Tetsuya Nomura right? That's why every character doesn't look exactly the same :P. FF12 was by Akihiko Yoshida while FF9 was by Yoshitaka Amano.

[Hari Seldon]

Maybe this just means that the current generation is not for me. I didn't grow up playing PC games, so I have no real love for them. I don't know how to play them, and I don't really feel like learning (especially when I have the sneaking suspicion that the older PC games are far better - I mean, come on, Fallout 1 & 2, or Fallout 3; System Shock 1 & 2 or Bioshock).

They are. I still have to find a game half as good as the original X-COM.

[TonyTheTiger]

There's nothing wrong with belts. What does matter, however, is that the belts are around the wearer's waist. Same goes for zippers. Zippers are fine so long as they are on something that should need to be zipped up or down.

Squall's FFVIII embellishments are subtle enough that it doesn't look like he got sloshed at Party City. The issue with current Nomura is that he changed the focus. With FFVIII's Squall your focus is drawn to the jacket that could conceivably exist, his white T-shirt, and the black (leather?) pants. The embellishments are just that, embellishments. He's wearing more than one belt but they're mostly around his waist and don't scream "LOOK AT HOW WACKY I AM" because they're brown and look like normal gunslinger belts.

Same goes for FFVII Cloud. In that case it's his sword and hair that draws most of the focus but his clothing composition, while not something anybody would likely wear, has a makeup that is at least appropriate. Things are where they're supposed to be.

Compare that to what is possibly Nomura's most egregious example:



Forget even the fact that Sora has belts around his shoulders and zippers on his shoes. Look at the color scheme. It's actually designed to make you focus on the wacky shit. That's the worst part of it. Not so much the accessory placement but the fact that Nomura is consciously trying to make those misplaced accessories the focus of the ensemble. You may as well stick a lampshade on his head.

FF7 was the beginning of the end for the Square. They basically made the JRPG version of Neon Genesis Evangelion. If you know the history of Gainax, you'll know how badly creating a cultural phenomenon that legitimized a genre and made a buttload of cash fucked that company up. That's basically been Square's problem. The exaggerated stereotypes for characters, the over-reliance of FMV and bombast, the needlessly complicated character customization system that discarded the very notion of one person being good at anything so your characters can master every damn spell in the game, and the angst, my god the angst!

While you're right in principle...FFVII is not the right game to lay that on. Mostly because either it doesn't do the things you say it does or earlier games do what you say it started. The characters in FFVI can learn every spell in the game, too. It takes a stupid amount of time but it's possible. The Esper system and Materia system are not very different from each other at all. In fact, FFVI and FFVII aren't that different as a whole. There are a lot of parallels.

The overuse (or rather misuse) of FMV really started with FFVIII. That was the game where each character was introduced with a 30 second clip of them walking up to the camera and striking a pose. But that was the game where things forced you to slow down to watch the pretty pictures throughout the game. The battles were slow on purpose. FFVII was actually pretty fast.

And FFVII didn't have much angst, either. At least not any more than FFVI did. Depending on what you did during a certain scene, FFVI had one of your characters attempt suicide. For whatever angst FFVII had, nobody tried to off him or herself.

The angst that gets attributed to FFVII was retconned into it by later games. Cloud was actually pretty assertive in FFVII. Then Advent Children comes around and he's all lethargic about life.

I think what you're getting at is at some point (whenever that was) Square went the route of style over substance and then wrote the games' scripts in a way that front loaded it with a lot of pseudo-philosophical existential nonsense that pretended to be deep but only served to be confusing. Not unlike Evangelion does. If you want a really good example of a fairly simple story made nigh indecipherable thanks to obtuse writing, play through Chrono Cross.

And, believe it or not, I don't mind style over substance. Sometimes it's nice to turn off your brain and just go with it. FFXII pretty much has no substance. It's just a "kill the evil king" story. But what I like is that it doesn't try to pretend there's more to it than there is.

[mobiusclimber]

That's the thing tho: FF7 was hugely popular and made Square insane amounts of money. I agree that 8 was were they went wrong, but it was b/c of how successful 7 was and the blatant attempts to figure out what it was that people loved about 7. Sephiroth and Vincent were the popular characters, so angsty pretty boys and goths w/ weird clothes must be the focus of every game from here on out!

I wouldn't call the suicide in 6 to be particularly angsty. She doesn't write a suicide note like Winona Ryder's in Beetlejuice. I don't want to get into the particulars for anyone reading who hasn't played the game, but considering what just happened and what the implications are, it makes perfect sense to just want to give up.

And yeah 6 did have the Esper system where anyone could learn any magic spell. I really liked that in 6 b/c the game was one of the few RPGs that was "leaderless." Pretty much anyone could be at the head of the party and you weren't really stuck w/ that one person in the immovable top spot. I also really liked 7's system, but if I'd have known that's where the series was going from then on, I think I would have been less happy about it.

[TonyTheTiger]

How can you say an attempted suicide, whatever the reason, is less angsty than something like Tidus whining about Yuna in FFX? If you can justify suicide because of the situation surrounding it, then you can certainly justify Tidus's attitude because his girlfriend was going to die and all of his friends were pretty much OK with it. You can trace "angst" even back to FFIV with Tellah going apeshit on Edward. I don't think there's really anything special about FFVII or even the later games.

The angst isn't the problem. The problem was that what Square followed through with was the "wacky" part of the characters and cranked the dial up to 11. They took a superficial look at FFVII, saw that their popular game had wild hair and exaggerated weapons/clothing, and then ran with that. Hence Sora up there.

It wasn't Cloud's attitude that caused Square to go nuts. It was his hair. Cloud wasn't angsty. Hell, Sephiroth wasn't even angsty. He wanted to become a god because he had a superiority complex. Usually angsty people have the opposite, an inferiority complex. The FF character people use to argue angst is Tidus. But, like I said, his girlfriend was going to die and everybody was telling him that it was necessary. I'd probably be pretty "WTF is wrong with you people?" too. And even if that is angsty, he never jumped off a cliff. But Tidus's outfit is ridiculous. And he has that outfit because ever since Cloud's hair showed up "wacky" shit was the popular trend.

[mobiusclimber]

There's angsty suicide and non-angsty suicide. FF6 didnt have a big "woe is me, boohoo" angsty suicide. It was quiet and reflective. There was no bad emo poetry. So yeah the "whining" is what makes it angsty.

[TonyTheTiger]

I don't know. I think suicide is pretty much as angsty as you can get regardless of the verbal cues. After all, it's pretty much the ultimate "woe is me" action to take unless it's for some greater cause or something. Celes just gave up on life right then and there. Tidus complained that his friends wanted his girlfriend to get her ass killed. I'd call the former the more angsty and far less justified.

And, like I said, Tellah was bitching about Edward back in FFIV and for reasons that are arguably less serious than what Tidus was bitching about. So you can't blame FFVII for any of that.

[Kyle15]

I never thought the whole belt thing was very bad until I saw this. Here's what I'd do:

-Remove those arm belts.
-Cut those mini trouser-snaps on his leg.
-Get rid of the belt under the two brown ones! Those two can stay.
-Everything else? Stay as is.

If I had good photoshop skills I would totally edit that for comparison. He'd look so much better that way.

IMHO, Nomura did wonderful on The World Ends with You. Sure there were zippers and belts, but not like the above example. It must have been because he based the character's clothes on real fashion instead of tossing around loads of un-needed equipment and fantasy trinkets.

[Astrocade]

While I'm not into the FF series, I really don't think that the character designs are that terrible. What I do find intolerable is the human beings that feel that dressing like their favorite FF characters will make them "cool". If I see one more emo flamer with his hair styled like Cloud I will spray him in the face with Windex.

Back to shitty character designs; I refused to play Resident Evil 4 for almost two years based solely on the stupid emo haircut that Leon Kennedy has.

[Famidrive-16]

Back to shitty character designs; I refused to play Resident Evil 4 for almost two years based solely on the stupid emo haircut that Leon Kennedy has.

uh, wow

[shopkins]

No one needs more than one belt. If you have one belt to hold your pants up, you're good. Okay, I guess gunslingers are an exception, but there's no way that huge honking Gunblade is going to fit in those belts around Squall's hips so he can't use that as an excuse.

[Richter Belmount]

While I'm not into the FF series, I really don't think that the character designs are that terrible. What I do find intolerable is the human beings that feel that dressing like their favorite FF characters will make them "cool". If I see one more emo flamer with his hair styled like Cloud I will spray him in the face with Windex.

Back to shitty character designs; I refused to play Resident Evil 4 for almost two years based solely on the stupid emo haircut that Leon Kennedy has.

The post that has made the most sense so far

[Poofta!]

Oh yeah. He said that shit. What do you think about it?

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http://www.strategyinformer.com/news...13-isnt-an-rpg

Talking with Strategy Informer about the upcoming release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, Daniel Erickson, Writing Director for Bioware said that Final Fantasy XIII isn't an RPG. This was in reply to a question about the main staple of The Old Republic being its story, and how the game might be affected without good game play to support it, much like Final Fantasy XIII was.

"Well, before I address the main point I just want to take a slightly more controversial route: You can put a 'J' in front of it, but it's not an RPG. You don't make any choices, you don't create a character, you don't live your character... I don't know what those are - adventure games maybe? But they're not RPG's." said Erickson.

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As someone who has been playing JRPGs since Dragon Warrior, has completed dozens of them, has enjoyed them immensely, who has more than a hundred easily in his collection but still drools at the pics of more accomplished collections posted here, and who still regularly buys new ones...

I agree. They can be great games and a lot of fun but they're for the most part misnamed. JRPGs combine stats, visual novel storytelling and adventure elements in a wonderful stew, but somebody decades ago looked at them and saw superficial resemblances to Dungeons and Dragons and now we're stuck with the inaccurate name.

i agree with you as well, shopkins. and i am someone who has literally hundreds of JRPGs and just about every major PC RPG. =]

[Ed Oscuro]

The phrase "role playing" doesn't necessarily imply a lack of constrictions, to me.

That might be because it means that you are, in fact, playing with constrictions, by a set of rules: in a role.

I agree with Shopkins agreeing with me (thanks!), these are Adventurish games. TACTICOOL too (but not tactful )

The entire battle engine of Mass Effect, Bioshock and Fallout 3 is an FPS with stat building thrown in.

There's a screamer. Did you not read what Mister Sothy wrote?

The entire battle engine of JAPANESE ADVENTURE GAME X is a Sim City with stat building thrown in.

The post that has made the most sense so far

Especially the part Famidrive-16 quoted.