rpgs

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 )

Game Artists’ Manifesto

  • Reading time:10 mins read

Skies of Arcadia — there’s little I did in that game that didn’t result in something rather wondrous. And little that didn’t feel important in some way. Everything about Arcadia, it’s set up to build anticipation and wonder. Even just the dungeon and town design.

Take that ruin near the beginning; the tower where the moonstone lands, just after the intro events. There’s this long walkway, above water. The camera follows behind Vyse’s shoulders. There’s a fish-eye effect, which seems to make the path stretch on forever. And way on the other end is the dungeon. As Vyse runs toward it, his feet and elbows flail back toward the camera. He seems eager to get where he’s going. And we’re following him, seeing what he sees. It’s not really that far, but there’s this buildup of tension as you approach. And — inside, it’s one of the first real 3D dungeon environments I’d encountered in a console RPG.

That is to say: it takes its third dimension into account. As it it’s a real space, with is own logic. As you progress, you begin to understand the importance of features that you didn’t more than notice before; elements of the dungeon’s structure. And eventually, you solve it like a Rubick’s cube of sorts. You’ve unlocked its secrets, and mastered some skills, and begun to own some space.

It leads you on, but it does so by trusting you to follow your intuition. And when you do that, you’re rewarded. That is what is glorious about the game. It is built to reward curiosity, and gut instinct. And it does a great job at creating that curiosity to begin with. That is its genius. Then there’s the fact that most of the elements that are required to understand are in plain view through most of the game — it’s just that you need to play the game, to understand the significance of everything in the world well enough to put it all together. It’s a real place, and you get to know it by living there.

By the end of the game, there’s this sense of great enlightenment. So that’s why the world is the way it is. And — there’s still more left to discover. It leaves one with the feeling of possibility. Like anything could be out there, if one just were to work hard enough to find it. It’s incredibly inspirational. And this is all… intentional. Maybe not fully conscious, but it’s part of the game’s design.

Part of this comes from the protagonist, Vyse. There aren’t a lot of positive models in modern videogames. Not a lot of hope. After all of this cynical angsty Squareish teenage punk nonsense, it’s refreshing to see a lead who is actually a hero. Who has some spirit. It makes me feel like… I can do things. It’s all about attitude. That is to say, what you make of your situation. I feel that he’s the condensed center of Kodama’s message to her audience: Never give up. Never look down. Be proud. There’s always a way.

It’s not just the actual events within the game — it’s the strength of the conceptual significance behind them. I mean. It’s fiction. But fiction illustrates a lot about normal life. One of the best traits of fiction is the capacity to illustrate possibiliy. Whether this is tangible possibility, or just the emotional sense for where it comes from and what it means.

This isn’t something that you honestly get from most videogames. I’ve only gotten it from a handful. The original Zelda. Phantasy Star II. Riven. Skies of Arcadia. They all have made me look at the world differently. They’ve strengthened me, personally, in one way or another. That’s a sign of pretty good literature, I’d say.

I find it really interesting that Kodama is responsible for two of the games on that list. She… well. There’s a reason why I cite her as my favourite game creator. Shenmue has a bit of that, although its clunky (if endearing) AM2-ish edges keep it at a bit of an emotional distance.

The reason why I cite these games as amongst the best I’ve played is because they aren’t content with just being videogames, as such. They carry a deeper meaning. And not a contrived one, just for the purpose of being “deep”. They… stretch outside the boundaries of their medium and do something, emotionally. They actually speak some pretty inspiring messages to their audience, if the audience is willing to listen.

Most games are too calculated. Most games are designed by programmers. Or worse, by people who want to make videogames. Kodama and Miyamoto are both artists, foremost. Miyamoto has become… entrenched in Miyamoto in recent years, unfortunately. Still, he started as a slacker art school kid who didn’t even know that the company he was joining made videogames. Kodama didn’t exactly know what Sega did either, from what she says.

Rand and Robyn Miller, behind Myst — well. They certainly didn’t set out to be game designers. And by the time they’d gone through their first rough draft (that being Myst itself), they had amassed a pretty huge trove of mythology. They just… wanted to make their own world, with its own history and logic. And all of that work came to fruition in their second game.

This stuff, you can’t teach it. Being taught means being told “this is how to do things”. Generally speaking. Learning, on the other hand, means coming to recognize the organic patterns behind things and how to relate with them. It’s about communication. This isn’t something that can ever be pressed into you. It’s something you have to have the will to seek out on your own. The most someone can do is to set all of the right pieces before you, and to illustrate what they might mean. But it’s up to you to approach, and to add those pieces to what you’ve already collected. And to pick up the hints as to what else they might imply about you and your world.

It’s just like how you can’t tell a person how to write a novel. Or else you’ll get… a bunch of form-feed novels. The best way to learn is to simply have the right environment. To have the right materials around. To be given enough context and enough carrots to inspire you to look for meaning on your own — to care about the world, and about life. And to have someone or something you can use to reorient you, whenever you’re lost. And this is why art is so very important. That’s part of what it does — it provides some of that context. It helps to hint you in the right direction to finding your own meaning in life.

Art is actually a strange term. It’s rarely used correctly. Even I misuse it. Art is a process, more than a thing. A thing cannot Be art, in and of itself. Art comes in the process of interpretation of that thing, by the individual. It’s a way of looking at the world, really. As is science. Hamlet is not art, unto itself. It is art To Me, because I appreciate it as such. Because its meanings are strong enough, and I’m able to find something within them that has relevancy to my life. There is no objective Art. By its very nature, art is subjective. It’s when people try to put art on a pedestal that it gets… well, pretentious.

Something to think about: the only way you know the world is through your own senses, and your own understanding of the world. Whether the world really exists, you can’t know. The only basis for verification that you have is your own self. Objectivity — removal of one’s self from the picture at hand — is useful for understanding the inner workings of a system within the world that you perceive. However — whether or not thost things really exist, that you choose to be objective about, really comes down to a subjective decision. Therefore: in order to gain understanding of the world, the first step should be to search for what the world means to you. Through that, you can do anything else. You can play with your subsets of objectivity all you like. Of course — once objective understanding is established, that automatically gets kneaded back into your overall subjective understanding of life, your world, and what sense it all makes.

Science can, in a very real sense, be considered an art — inasmuch as it is a subset of the same methodology of understanding, with its own unique behaviors — just as philosophy differs from painting, differs from film direction, yet all are the same thing in the end. It’s all life, really. It’s all about understanding, and communication.

Videogames, too often, are held as objects; as important for their own sake. It’s easy to be fetishistic about them. I certainly am, at times. This is a problem of interpretation, all across the board — on the part of the “consumer” (read: the audience), as well as the critics as well as those who actually produce the games. The average videogame is no more important, artistically, than the average Hollywood explode-a-thon. Or romantic comedy, or whatever other tired formula you like. All the same.

Now. There’s something to learn from that as it is! You know what they say: there’s more to learn from bad art, than from good; from carelessness, compared to compassion. Provided that you’re willing to put in the effort to find it. However: something needs to change.

If this medium is ever going to become respectable, and to come unto its own as a form of expression — we need more people communicating through it. And using it as a medium to inspire understaning. We need to change our expectations, and stop considering videogames as important for their own sake, rather than for the the sake of the meaning they contain for us personally. And for the sake of the life which goes into them as an outlet for their creators.

Comfort is a dead end. Life is change. The moment you stop, you die. Either inside or outside. The body itself is ever changing; it’s different from one day to the next. All of the matter in your body now will be gone in seven years. You’ll technically be a completely different person. The moment that’s no longer true – it’s the same thing. It’s just the nature of life. Stasis doesn’t fit into that.

Gradually, I’m allowing more and more change into my life. And the more I let in (within my tolerance levels), the more I indeed feel that life. The more I learn to appreciate it, simply for what it is.

Videogames have the potential to convey so much meaning. And it’s not really a medium that’s been tapped well, on either end of the divide. Maybe I can help bridge the gap a bit. I don’t know. Help to give people one more outlet, to gain and express meaning for their lives. I guess… I’m pretty much doing the same thing.

Riven from the world

  • Reading time:2 mins read

There’s this place on disc 3 of Riven. After one steps off of the maglev and passes through the brief frog cave, there is a long stairway that winds up a rocky hillside. The sun is warm, yet the shadows are deep. The birds are chirping. The gentle ripple of the bay, below, carries on the slight breeze. If one progresses down the stairs, one sees the easily-startled sunners lazing on their rock. Up, meanwhile, leads to a rope bridge stretching toward the forest.

I want to spend all day on that set of stairs. There is a small landing where one first emerges from the cave, about large enough for one or two people to sit, and draw.

To some extent I ache that this location doesn’t really exist, as I would so like to visit — at the very least. I would like to nap there. Curl up in the shadows when the sun became too warm; emerge into the light when a chill came over me.

I believe it is that one small location which makes Riven what it is, for me. Everything else revolves around it. Every time I pass through, I linger. I can never seem to get enough.

There are only a few games which have given me a similar sensation. The Legend of Zelda is one. Shenmue is another. Skies of Arcadia comes darned close at times.

This is how Riven succeeds. It creates a place which feels real; which rings so true that one desires to understand it better. Then, it follows through. Everything makes sense, if one gives it enough time; the only thing holding the player back is his own internal wiring. The more time one spends there, the more one pieces together. The more one understands how the world works, and the more real it becomes.

It is essentially a masterpiece of world design, unlike any other that I’ve seen. That’s all that it is; a fully-conceived world, to enter and interpret as one sees fit.

Have moved some money and files around. Have bought some new pants. Not a lot remaining to do before I leave — which is in… three days.

Oy!

Hey. I should be able to sneak into the secret press-only rooms, seeing as how I’m… y’know, press.

Storytelling as a craft

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Wind Waker just came today.

Jesus. I had no idea how right I was about the whole legend/storybook aspect. That’s precisely what this game is. The introduction sequence lays it all out.

Link has a lobster on his shirt!

In terms of gameplay and general structure, Wind Waker is almost identical to OoT. The controls are much more polished, mroe responsive, and generally nicer-feeling than in OoT. We’ve still got the god-damned fetch quests. (In fact, I think we’ve got more than in OoT.) Dungeons and towns and shops are generally laid out in the same way as before.

So, yeah. Basically imagine a really buttery OoT, with just about all of the interface problems removed, and you’ve got a good starting point.

At least in the first few hours, the game seems oddly linear. The player is given a boat right near the outset, and free roam of the ocean (which now covers almost the entire world) — but if the player decides to head off on his own whims, the boat begins to complain.

Yes, I know I’m not going in the right direction. Thank you. I don’t care if I’m not ready for that island yet; I want to visit it anyway.

There are more natural contraints for the player than simply not allowing him to go where he pleases.

Honestly, I’m starting to get tired of the post-Adventure of Link Zelda gameplay style. I wasn’t fond of most of the changes in Link to The Past, but one of the things which most irritated me was the way that items came to be used.

I’m not going to elaborate right now on exactly what the distinction is, but OoT backpeddled a bit in this regard; its item system — the items available; the manner in which they, the player, the environment, and enemies interacted; the manner, timing, and order with which the items were acquired — reminds me far more of the way things worked in the NES games than in LttP.

Wind Waker feels more like LttP, as far as items go.

Take that as you will.

Actually, given how integral the whole item collection system is to the game structure (as in Metroid), this has a pretty big effect on the general tone of the game.

In Wind Waker, I feel like I’m just collecting random doodads. Some of them are useful; some aren’t. But the only reason the game is giving them to me is to enable me to progress. At the point I’m at now — around five hours into the game — I’m ceasing to be thrilled when I find a new inventory item.

What’s worse is that about half of the items in the game so far seem to serve no purpose other than as keys in fetch quests. Argh. I don’t care! This is an adventure game convention which needs to die. Soon.

Further, even the interesting items — such as the grappling hook — are often hindered a bit by needless irritation. Every single time the grapple wraps around a post, for instance, the game halts to show me a four-second cutscene. I don’t need this more than once ever, thank you.

The good parts so far: the atmosphere and general graphic design are just fantastic, now that I’ve got some context for all of their elements. Link actually has a lot of personality; his facial expressions add a bunch to the game. Almost every object in the environemnt is interactive in some vague way or another. The water and fire and smoke and heat effects are very well-executed.

There’s this one kid on the first island who has a perpetual, enormous drip of snot hanging from his nose. I don’t know if that was really necessary.

I have a feeling I know who Zelda is. I’ve had this feeling since about half an hour into the game.

Where the atmosphere is original, it’s great. Where it’s not, it’s tiring — at least for me. All of the forced OoT-ish trappings quickly began to wear on me — but in the cases where the game takes a full left turn into its own universe, there’s a ton of life to be found. These moments tend to evidence themselves when the player is either left free to explore and bond with the environment, or when the game locks the player into a tightly-scripted plot sequence. Where I begin to lose patience is where the game tries to yank me around and force me to do things for it for no other reason than the fact that it’s a videogame.

I’m not fond of manipulation. I don’t mind wasting time of my own accord, but I don’t like my time to be wasted for me.

To be fair, I’m still only a few hours into the game. The plot hasn’t fully picked up yet, and I’m not yet as free to wander — so perhaps things will become less annoying in the future.

As far as sailing goes — it’s a mildly interesting mechanic, for a few minutes. The problem is that it takes so long to get anywhere. And once you set your coordinates, you don’t… really do anything. If you try, you’ll probably end up stopping the boat. The best thing to do when travelling is just to put the controller down and get a sandwich.

Again — maybe something else happens with this later. Right now, though, I’m perplexed. There are a lot of really good ideas in this system — so why did they combine them in such an obviously tedious manner?

I hope there’s more use for the telescope in the near future. About an hour in, I found a camera of sorts which has exactly the same functionality, except with the added benefit of enabling me to take pictures. I don’t see what I need the telescope for, if I’ve got this other item sitting around. I hope this isn’t just an oversight. We’ll see.

So — to boil it down:

The good — the graphical style; the atmosphere; the expressiveness of the characters (similar to Skies of Arcadia in this respect (among many)); the smooth controls; the non-annoying menu system; some interesting potential with a few of the new items; the self-reflective sense of humor of the dialogue; the Koji Kondo score; the introductory sequence.

The bad — how manipulative and needlessly annoying the actual game tends to be so far; THE FUCKING FETCH QUESTS; the overall structure of the item system so far.

Again — in its best places, this game has a different atmosphere from any previous Zelda game. I hope the game takes more advantage of its advantages than it seems content to thus far. It feels like a real shame to me that with all of these great new ideas, Eiji Aonuma felt compelled to make a Zelda game out of the pieces.

So. We’ll see, we’ll see…

As for the whole Sega situation…

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Hum. I’m really not sure what to think. Perhaps I’ve just been numbed by all of these neverending rumors, but up to a point this does seem like the best way to go. As long as the DC stays, that is. As long as it gets games first, and as long as it gets games that no one else gets.

Space Channel 5, though? The only reason I can see that Sega would choose this as its first title as a third-party publisher would be to attempt to get it the attention that it so deserves. If they can push Ulala to a wider audience, I know she’d catch on — and so perhaps this is what they’re doing. It’d be great advertising for New Space Channel 5, certainly.

What I anticipated was arcade ports, rather than ports of home games. As long as Sega keeps Shenmue and Phantasy Star and Arcadia and Sonic (the GBA doesn’t figure here), the less-iconic fare can go where it needs to fund what really matters.

Hum. It’s better that Sega do this, and do it strongly, than to go bankrupt and fade away quietly. This doesn’t necessarily have to be defeat, as long as it’s done with pride. I shudder to think of Sega’s market dominance if they do this well…

But why do I keep having disturbingly analogic thoughts of SNK?

Addendum

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Just because I feel like it, here are my top ten most anticipated games at the moment:

  • Shenmue II
  • New Space Channel 5
  • Sonic Adventure 2
  • Eternal Arcadia 2
  • toejam & earl 3
  • Soul Reaver 2
  • Sakura Wars 3
  • gun valkyrie
  • Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
  • Bangai-O

I’m curious about Agartha and Headhunter and Hundred Swords and Farnation, and I eagerly await announcement of a DC port of Planet Harriers or word of the new Chakan game (which seems to have fallen off the face of the planet). SEGAGAGA sounds fascinating in its own strange way, but I doubt I have to worry much about it being released here. So…

Anyway. There’s that.

Rolling Over

  • Reading time:1 mins read

By next weekend, PSO and the two broadband adapters should be waiting for me. Also… just because it wasn’t very much and I needed a keyboard anyway in order to get as much out of PSO as I can, I ordered Typing of the Dead and its particular key peripheral. This will be the last DC game I can get for a long while, I think. Phew…

I still have to deal with these RPGs I grabbed up last month. Hrm.

here’s my advice: Never get a bunch of role-playing games all at once. If you get Shenmue, get Jet Set Radio as your next game. If you get Arcadia, pick up Typing of the Dead or MSR or something next. It just creates an impenetrable clog to have four or five RPGs sitting around, demanding one’s life.

Ah, well. I’m satiated for a while at least. Good thing it’ll be a few months before the flood starts up again.

Oh, as a note — Illustrator is keen. If I can figure out the proper way to combine this with Photoshop, I believe I might create some rather fascinating effects.

Less than Grand

  • Reading time:1 mins read

I’m not too fond of Grandia II. Arcadia I adored, but… this is just another unambitious, retreaded — if pretty — console RPG. Not even a terribly interesting one. At least the Evolution series is charming and enjoyable. Grandia is a chore… But there is an AI mode, so I don’t have to bother with the battle engine! That is one plus. And Ubi Soft took a lot of care with its localization and packaging and such. This is very nice, as well — cuts down on the relevance of Working Designs significantly.

Eternal Arcadia indeed

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Arcadia is really quite the lengthy little thing, innit? I’m still on disc 1, and over forty hours into the game. I think I might be approaching the end of this half, but before I continue on my intended way there are still several tasks I wish to accomplish. Yet it amazes me first how long this game continues to persist in being, and second how little one notices this. Evolution felt like a longer game than this, as did Soul Reaver — and yet I’ve put more progressive playtime into this game so far than I have any game in a long while. This is opposed to, say, Code Veronica, which refused to die even if I beat it with a stick.