Monthly Archives: June 2004

Frickin’ Fantasy XII

  • Reading time:7 mins read

It’s one of those laws. If you say anything negative about Final Fantasy, you’re just asking for trouble. To be fair, the complaints I have gotten have generally been civil. I just haven’t had much patience to reply in any helpful manner.

>I see gameplay in an RPG to be a bonus if it is really great gameplay.

If a game is designed well, it is designed well. This genre is developmentally stunted, as a whole. The reason you say this is that you have not seen what greater expressive potential would be possible, were the design philosophy intrinsic to this genre as mature in its development as it could be, at this point in the overall history of game design and in the evolution of game hardware. Pretty much anything is possible now — yet developers have not yet caught up with this potential; increased their ambitions to fit it, and find a new set of limits of expression within the medium; preferring to stay with the same limited design decisions that they have, more or less, been using since the 1980s — decisions which were instituted at the time merely because of the inherent limitations in technology and in design theory at the time.

This is a problem in all genres. It’s just that RPGs are the most prominent example. In a broad sense, they have not grown to fit their bigger shoes. Developers are more or less doing the same dumb things they always have, out of habit — or out of a lack of understanding for what these design concepts originally stood for, or why they were instituted. Or because the audience itself has not matured enough to ask for something more substantial.

You must understand that videogames are not what they could be, artistically. There are few developers at present who are actively trying to explore the expressive power of the medium; the rest are content with absentmindedly churning out reiterations of games which have already been made dozens of times in the past — games which worked, once, in a specific context. They might have even been clever for their time, for the solutions to contemporary hardware and design problems that they happened to find. What so many people fail to understand, however, is that those solutions are relevant within a specific context — timeframe, developer, hardware — alone.  The solutions that Shigeru Miyamoto found and applied within Super Mario Bros. were ingenious for that moment, for that game, for that history. They were an evolution of ideas that Miyamoto nurtured through several previous games: Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Mario Bros. Although some of the principles that he developed in that game — such as his general concept of level design, whereby the game implicitly teaches you how to play it without ever telling you what to do, as such — will probably always be applicable in one sense or another. Others are inherent to that game, to that one man. They are his ideas. Anyone else who uses them as-such — who just takes them and sticks them into his own project, without understanding why the ideas existed to begin with — is making a big mistake. Those parts of that project will be false, because they do not come from the subject at hand. They do not grow out of what this second person is attempting to accomplish. They are an easy and proven solution, yes — yet within their context. This new person, with this new project, has created a new context. And that new context, especially with knowledge of what has come before, demands a new series of questions and demands a new series of solutions which evolve from the demands at hand.

Here. Take a look at what Toru Iwatani has to say. It’s interesting.

http://www.insertcredit.com/features/gdc2004/iwatani.html

The techniques that Yuji Horii created for Dragon Quest are great for Horii and for Dragon Quest. They are his own ideas, which suit what he is personally trying to accomplish. The gameplay choices he makes are perfect for his games. Outside Horii, the situation is different. The question has to rise: what are we trying to accomplish here, and what is the best way to realize that, given current technology and what we understand so far about the potential of game design? If, in the case of, say, a Final Fantasy game, our goal is to tell a story, then how rich a story can we tell? What kind of a story? What manner of game design would lend itself most well to what we wish to accomplish within that story? Ideally, the game design would be invisible. You would not distinguish between it and the ultimate goal of the project — because the design itself would come from that goal. It would be designed in order to facilitate that goal. The game design itself, the game play itself, would be part of that story, and the story would come from the gameplay.

It’s not like this is hard, today. Take a game like, oh, Metroid Prime. The goal in that game, really, is exploration: communication with the environment. To facilitate this, the game is set in a first-person perspective. That way, you’re left looking at the game world rather than Samus’s ass. The game has a rather profound story to tell, yet to do this it draws from the main goal of the game, and from the established gameplay decisions. It is in the process of playing the game, and of inspecting the environment, learning about the game world, that the story unfolds.

Although story is secondary or tertiary in this particular framework, and it evolves organically out of the more primary elements of design, without interfering with them, you see the structure. There is no reason why it cannot be turned on its head, such that the gameplay, the overall design, evolves from the story. If that is the primary goal. Of course, that means that the game design would depend on just what the story is; what its own focus is; what the writers hope to get across.

If a gameplay decision does not lend itself to the ultimate goal of the project, directly or indirectly, then it probably doesn’t belong there. It’s the whole deal about too many strokes spoiling the painting. Even more so when the strokes are misjudged to begin with. Or when they are put in place just because that’s the way it’s always been done, or that’s what people expect, rather than because that’s what the painting calls for.

As long as developers continue to cram their ideas into existing, prefabricated molds — which describes most of the persistent mechanical facets that people have a tendency to associate with the RPG genre, in favor of the more integral goal of the genre (mainly, showing the personal growth of one or more people through a set of difficult trials, and what effect their actions along the way might or might not have on the world around them — thereby, with luck, expressing something meaningful about the nature of life) — they will be stuck in a creative rut. They will not grow as artists. The genre will not grow. The medium as a whole will fail to mature.

What I was trying to say, in that preview, is that Final Fantasy XII seems like it might be one big step toward pulling the genre as a whole out of its current rut. Toward making people /think/ about what constitutes an RPG — or just a videogame, in general — and what what they’re really trying to accomplish.

The rest was just a bit of passing commentary, to help explain why I said that.

Vocal Hill

  • Reading time:3 mins read

This is all interesting, particular in the breakdowns of the plot and the character and monster origins for the first two games. Something that strikes me, however, is the marked difference in approach to the third game. Whereas in Silent Hill 1 and 2, the monsters were all consciously designed as manifestations of this or that, and the names for all of the characters and places were carefully (if perhaps overly-so) selected based upon relevent literary references and themes — like Harry and Cheryl’s names originally coming from Kubrick/Nabokov’s Lolita (before some alteration), and James and his wife’s names coming from elements of the Jack the Ripper case — very little of this consideration seems to have gone into Silent Hill 3. Monsters don’t seem to be particularly explained, either in their presence or in their design. They are there because the game needs creepy monsters. Names are increasingly arbitrary. Heather was named after her voice actress. Douglas was named after Douglas Fairbanks, for no particular reason. All of the attention in the creation of the third game seems to have gone into dissection of the plot to the first game, and into attempts to tie up everything prior to some comprehensible framework.

Although impressive in a certain right, I am unsure how truly constructive this approach is — as it kind of overlooks exactly the strengths of the first two games: namely, their ambiguity, and their strong inner motivation to illustrate one or another principle, or theme. Their subjectivity, really. In Silent Hill 3, the role taken by strong central themes in the first two games is usurped, in a manner, by convoluted and overt plotting as a new motivation. An attempt at aimless reason where highly-focued irrationality had previously been the whole reason for being.

This method just strikes me as rather clumsy, in comparison.

I guess that might be part of why Silent Hill 3 reminds me so much more of Biohazard than do the previous games.

EDIT: Notice also how many locations in Silent Hill 3 (once the player actually reaches Silent Hill) are lifted straight from the second game. Same geometry. Same fences still crumpled in the exact same way. Didn’t bother to change a thing, for the purposes of the game at hand. This seems to work into the above, somehow. One monster model is even taken straight from Silent Hill 2, although that should not be, given the explanation for the monsters in the first two games. The director of the third game didn’t seem to much care for these subtleties, though.

E3 Errata

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I really wanted Nanobreaker to be a step toward something excellent — or at least something compelling and odd. Or for it to show that Igarashi knows what he’s doing with 3D games. I don’t think it accomplishes any of this, in the state in which I saw it. I mean. It’s… sort of interesting in the sense that it’s just so damned bloody. Or. I guess Igarashi insists that this isn’t really blood, but oil or something. Whatever it is, it’s red and it’s goopy and it’s everywhere.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Final Fantasy XII

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I have never been all that hot on Final Fantasy. A few games in the series have managed to amuse me, on one level or another. In general, I am bored by what Square has continually tried to accomplish with this series. I feel often that they have gone in the wrong directions, for the wrong reasons, and have as a result — given how much political influence they have within the design community, and how misdirected and conservative their design philosophy has been — been largely responsible for the lack of substantial evolution in the Japanese console RPG genre which they helped to popularize. They just set a bad popular precedent, for the rest of the industry to follow. And follow, you know the industry will. Biohazard was another problem; Mikami is now on his way toward fixing it. Now, though, I think Square might be on its way to joining Capcom in this trend toward repairing a whole genre.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Myst IV: Revelation

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

This was a surprise; I had heard nothing of a new Myst. I knew about Uru, and I knew of its troubles. It has been a long time since I have bought a PC game, however; I just haven’t had the computer to run anything made after 1997. Then, since there hasn’t been a lot interesting going on with the PC scene since the mid-’90s (unless you’re into whack-a-rat or first-person shooters, or you absolutely must have the fastest graphics card and processor, to show off the newest tech demo), I have for some time felt safe to ignore that whole segment of the industry. Yet, it seems like there is still some activity worth tracking. I think.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Altered Sega

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

There was nothing going on at Sega. Perhaps that’s why they decided to hide the booth in a small room off a little-used hallway, apart from the show floor, where no one who found it did so by accident and few who did intend to take a look remembered to do so. Out of sight, out of mind. Yu Suzuki strolled around, gently sipping his bottomless Coca-Cola. Some other high-level Sega staff sat crosslegged on the carpet in the hall outside, chatting. No one paid attention.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Sunder Land, where all is asunder

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I just beat both scenarios of Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams in one day. In one sitting, really. I first had to play to where I left off in the PS2 version, although that took an atom of the time it did the first time. (I notice that James no longer comments, of a map of the United States, “It’s a picture of something. I’m not sure what.”) Perhaps I was in a better mood or perhaps I was just prepared; the goofy world-logic did not distract me as much, today. Instead, I was distracted by the atmosphere and narrative. This really is a sophisticated game, artistically; one of the most-so I have encountered. Although it falls short on the actual game mechanics, that’s okay. Its mind is elsewhere.

I think I actually respect this even more than the first game, although they are rather different in their approaches and intentions. Where Silent Hill 1has its crushing sense of fear, that makes a person think twice to play it in the dark — or even to play it at all, at times — this does something more subtle. It is about all-encompassing, numbing sorrow and guilt — with all of the haziness and tempermental bursts and aimlessness and self-effacement and strange obsession that come with it. It is a portrait of a man willfully falling apart. A trip through his head, as he fights to either self-destruct entirely or to confront his demons and accept what he has been unwilling to accept. Whatever brings an end to the murmur. The entire game is focused around illustrating that picture.

A common enough theme in literature. In videogames, not so much. It’s too adult a depiction of pain. The scope of the game, by which it does illustrate this theme, is far more ambitious than I am used to. The original Silent Hill deserved enough praise just for being bright enough to understand how fear works better than any of its contemporaries. That seemed like a stroke of genius. This… is something else entirely.

Then Silent Hill 3 seems like an attempt to go mainstream with the series. It plays (and, in general, feels) much more like Biohazard than either of the first two games do. It tries to directly follow the plot of the first game, and to provide some more stable answers about just what this “Silent Hill” place is — something that really did not need to be done. It has a sassy, sarcastic lead. The music is more oriented toward pop, over the metal machine of the first game and the drones of the second. It’s just so… polished, and pretty, and palatable. Then The Room is supposed to follow after the second game, in some respects. I… well.

I guess I should reserve comment until I have seen them through. Something just feels a little unnecessary here.

Anyway. I am making progress.

A while ago, Justin Freeman made reference to a list of the top five (or was it “only five”?) significant games in this hardware generation: Metroid Prime, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, ICO, Rez, and Grand Theft Auto III. He said “Maybe Silent Hill 2” — although that would make an unusual five. I’ll throw it in. I will also throw in Ikaruga, Wind Waker, and Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. These nine games seem, to me, to be the sum of all of note that we have learned this generation. I have yet to find a tenth candidate.

Some will be surprised that I include Wind Waker, given my attitude toward the game. Some who know me better will know that it is precisely that attitude which puts the game on the list. Evolution finally comes through and admits what a meta-fighter Virtua Fighter has always been, as a series. It says some things about fighters, and about videogames, and the way we interact with them in a broader sense, that should do some permanent damage if you think about it too hard. And Ikaruga is, frankly, one of the most perfect and elegant game designs around — one which helps to illustrate on a base level, along with Rez, what videogames are, at their spine — and one which demonstrates the “pure” videogame (that is, videogame-as-design) at its most ideal. There is a level of truth here that, although related to the games of the early ’80s, could not exist in any previous hardware generation.

I might talk about this all in more detail, later.

Or. Maybe not.

Iconoclasm

  • Reading time:5 mins read

This is a note to myself, for later reference, on the ICO thing.

I climb a ladder, and walk along a raised pathway supported by arches and pillars. The pathway ends in a door that opens when I stand on a pressure plate in front of it. I walk through. I walk across another parapet-styled bridge, to stumble through a side entrance into a room. The main door to the room — a big, solid wooden thing — is closed. To open the door, I climb a ladder to a platform near the ceiling, jump to a pipe which juts out of the wall next to the platform, sidle hand-by-hand along the pipe to another platform, which happens to be positioned right where the pipe turns off and ends in the wall again. On the other side of this second platform is another pipe, that runs straight across the room, toward a parallel platform. I again hang from this pipe until I reach platform number three. Here, I find a third pipe, parallel to the first, which leads to a fourth platform. This platform also happens to be in front of a window. I walk through the window, and climb down another ladder which does not quite extend to the ground below. I will not be able to climb back up it, once I drop. Next, I open the door by pulling a nearby lever. I then go back in, grab Yorda by the hand, and leave.

This is all clever level design. It uses my character’s abilities well. It is clear what I have to do. On a technical level — one of pure mechanical design — there are no problems. The situation is even to be commended, for the ingenuity in its scupture.

However, as far as world-logic goes: huh? The game seems to want to suggest that the game world is a real place, with a certain reason to it. This is why it gives me pipes and ledges and windows and comprehensible architecture. Yet the only function this architecture holds is to be traversed by the player character. The back-entrance to the room could have any explanation. The pipes, although arbitrary, are similar in this respect. What, however, about the two (latter) ladders? The platforms? Why are they placed just where there is a break in the pipes? The ladder surely is there for no other reason to reach that first platform — which serves no purpose but to allow access to the pipe/platform “puzzle” (as it were). The window needs no reason — yet what of the drop-off ladder which leads from it? There is no access to the window other than the pipe, which I assume no one but the player character would have reason to hang from in order to reach that far platform. There is no way up to the ladder from the ground below, nor would there be reason if there is no way down from the inside. And what of the lever to open the door? Unless the room serves no purpose but to keep someone in, there is no practical reason to put a single lever on the outside of the room. Yet that is an unlikely purpose for the room, because of the back entrance.

All of this might sound like quibbling — yet it is in leaving room for questions like these that the game world betrays itself. And it is so unnecessary. Only a few extra details would be necessary to give context to the game world. Don’t make it so easy for the player. Or don’t just give a single route. Put some more pipes in the room, which don’t just lead to the exit. That one happens to, will seem arbitrary. Rather than the convenient ladder, force the player to find his own convoluted way up to the pipes. Let him notice the pipes through his own observations and then devise a plan for maybe using them. And rather than putting a single lever on the outside of the door, give the door an internal switch. Just make it broken. Or, perhaps, put a bar on the inverse, that the player must remove. That would be adequate. Either get rid of the platforms or find some other rationalization for why that geometry would be present. Turn them into hay lofts, perhaps. Or maybe force the player to swing from one pipe to the next. Maybe have one pipe break off, when the player puts his character’s weight on it, allowing him to swing to the next — which will itself creak, and maybe pop a rivet, but not collapse. Or devise some other scheme. It’s not hard.

This is my issue with the game. It can all be rationalized, sure. Should I have to rationalize it? No. Is it appropriate to make up my own connections? I fear not.

The game does far more right than it does wrong. It’s just, it is an experiment. And this is one of its lessons.

Smile, Apollo, Smile.

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I found a copy of Space Channel 5 Special Edition, for the PS2, for twelve dollars. The localization perplexes me a little. Of course, none of the voice actors save Apollo Smile return for Part 2 — so several flashbacks to the first game are redubbed. Yet, the title screens and packaging have been changed to both games. In no obvious place is it stated that discs 1 and 2 are supposed to be two separate games; they are just packaged as discs one and two of a single game. This makes the sudden change in (quality of) voice actors sort of peculiar.

Let’s see. Other arbitrary changes. In Part One, the Report Two boss — remember her? There’s a bit where Ulala yells: “Is that a tongue? AAH! It’s so slimy… incredibly… slimy…” — with horror changing to a weird kind of ecstacy, in her voice. That’s been replaced with something like “Ah, get yet mitts offa’ me! It’s so slimy!” In part two (though not in part one), the ability to zoom the characters around in the profile mode has been removed. Or. I think it has. I seem to recall being able to roll the character models around and look under their skirts. Can’t do that anymore. Remember the loading screens? “Now Moloading/Roboading”? No more. Just “Now Loading”. Lots of fun, these Agetec guys. In a similar vein, most of the unimportant characters in the profile section (even returning characters, like Biluba Boriskovsky) now just have generic names — Preschool Student (Green) — rather than specific names. The teacher, Mr. Joely, has been blandly called “Mr. Nervous”. No more effort than required here.

I think one of Evila’s lines was changed, and dubbed over by a wholly different actress. And then they didn’t bother to process the voice as the voice was processed before. Also, Fuse does have voice samples for the first game where he advises you to use the “X” and “O” buttons. I’m not sure whence those came, unless Sega was forward-looking enough to get Dave Nowlin to record those during the original redubbing sessions.

A lot of the charisma of the Japanese versions and of the English dub to Part One is just missing in Part Two. Even Apollo Smile does not seem to have been directed well, or to have been given all that great a script. Or to be having much fun. As superior as Part Two is in just about every way, it is harder to tell in this case. Interesting how much a bored dub can interfere with a game’s momentum and overall energy.

Some of the dubbing even makes the game harder to play. A few commands, particularly in Report 3, are ambiguous to the ear. I swore that it kept telling me to hit “left”, but it meant “chu”. Others are mumbled or a little off-time. Not helpful.

You can save multiple states in Part One, now. I notice that Part One says “Reprogrammed by United Game Artists” — I guess because the game originally was released just before UGA had become a distinct entity. The mpeg compression is now much less terrible — as you might well expect, from a DVD. A bunch of awkward subtitles keep popping up, that I don’t remember, which explain things a bit more than I remember them being explained. I think some of the obvious synchronization issues have been fixed a little.

I also now realize that a lot of items are obtained in Part Two by a scavenger hunt through the character profile section. You talk to characters you have saved, and they tell you to talk to other characters, who tell you to talk to other characters, who give you hints or spatulas.

That’s really about all there is to it. It’s still Space Channel 5 — both parts. It’s just a little more awkward. You can pick up the US Dreamcast version for five bucks, and the Japanese Dreamcast version of Part Two for about fifty still, probably. Or you can get this for maybe around ten to fifteen bucks. Not all that bad a compromise. And all things considered, this isn’t a bad localization or package. It was a great idea to bundle the games together, and it was good of Agetec to get Apollo Smile back again. It’s just. Well, you get what you pay for, to a certain extent.

So there it is.

Touchy Touchy

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Although the Guilty Gear series has long fascinated me, today is the first day that I have opportuned to spend some time exploring, and attuning myself to, one of its games — in this case, X2.

My first clear observation is that, although this is a PS2 game, I can actually pull off any move with no trouble. I assume this is due to the effort Sammy put into adapting this game to the PS2. Just as the game comes with an optional anti-alias filter, it comes with controls that recognize how dearly Sony’s idea of a functionable controller is in need of re-examination. The game remains tight enough that I never pull off a move by accident, yet it has been untied enough that the stupid pad never gets in my way. I think perhaps Noise Factory might have studied this game (or perhaps its predecessor, if it is similarly forgiving), during the development of KOF: Maximum Impact.

This is such a relief after the likes of Capcom vs SNK 2 and The King of Fighters 2000 & 2001 — otherwise-decent ports which seem to forget which system they’re on.

Something to think about.

Another observation is that the most interesting characters tend to be the most recent. Without the new guys, the cast would be kind of dull.

Curious.