When I did my Fallout 3 DLC rant, I thought at the time that the next game I would be giving a similar review of would be Dragon Age Origins. But as it turns out, Bioware just keeps releasing one thing for it after another, and supposedly has no intention to stop for a while. So whilst I wait for that to end so I can answer the question I ended with in the Fallout 3 DLC rant (whether or not other RPGs would be able to follow Fallout 3's example with as much, less, or more integrity), let's take a look at semi-old school RPG Downloadable Content with Mass Effect 1.
Bring Down the Sky: This is a very good DLC. First of all, it's free (to PC users, at least; X-Box gamers might have to pay for it, but I can only speak from a PC gamer's perspective here). That's always good. More importantly, though, it adds a new mission to the game that's about an hour long, and has a small but reasonably exciting plot and premise while introducing a villain and species that further expand and flesh out the Mass Effect universe interestingly, giving you a glimpse at certain aspects of galactic society and humanity's private inter-species concerns that the game proper doesn't explore. It also gives another couple opportunities for the player to further develop Shepard's personality. A solid add-on, to be sure.
Pinnacle Station: After Bring Down the Sky, Pinnacle Station is a disappointment. It's basically just a combat simulator for you to test how long you can survive a constant stream of enemies, with a few different locations and objectives to very slightly mix things up. The story to go along with the station is tiny and utterly meaningless; just calling the events of Pinnacle Station a "story" at all is an exaggeration. Bland, meaningless, not worth the cost, and disappointing. Still, I HAVE seen considerably blander, less meaningful, less monetarily worthwhile, and more disappointing DLCs by far, so I can't be too terribly harsh, I suppose. At least it wasn't outright stupid, the way Fallout 3's Mothership Zeta DLC was.
Actually, those 2 are the only add-ons released for Mass Effect 1. ME1's DLC seemed to be an experiment for Bioware in large part, testing out their ability to do DLC packages, and both gamers' immediate (Bring Down the Sky) and long-term (Pinnacle Station) interest in continuing the game. I'd say the experiment was positive on the whole--Bring Down the Sky outweighs Pinnacle Station, in my opinion, so the overall feeling I take from this game's add-ons is a good one. But once I can do a complete rant on Dragon Age Origins's add-ons, we'll see whether Bioware took this experiment's results and went in the right or wrong direction with them.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Fallout 1 and 2's Stupid Protagonists
A common trait of Western-style RPGs is the ability to choose what kind of person your protagonist is through their actions. In games like Dragon Age Origins, the Knights of the Republic series, and the Mass Effect series, you have the opportunity in most of the game's situations to choose how your character will respond to dialogue or deal with a situation. This typically boils down to your character being a super nice, understanding fellow who saves everyone always, makes everyone feel good about themselves, and walks on water, which he has turned into wine...or a complete and total douchebag who destroys everything, pees on puppies, and eats children.
It's a fairly good idea, making the games into actual Role-Playing Games by giving you some control over who your character is, and the RPGs I've played usually do a good job of it, allowing for quite a lot of distinction between the characters you can create.* But Fallout 1 and 2 gave players a 3rd option--you could be Good, Evil...and Stupid.
Basically, when you start a Fallout game, you get to choose the stat build of your character, deciding what areas he/she will be strong in, what his/her skills will be, etc. This, of course, affects the game in many ways, and a character with higher Intelligence will have more and better dialogue options in many situations. However, the Fallout designers had some fun with this idea, and made it so that having an extremely low Intelligence score (3 or below) would actually get rid of most normal dialogue options, and replace them with entirely new ones--the often meaningless babble of a complete imbecile.
And man, is it hilarious.
Although you only get a few really funny moments in Fallout 1, Fallout 2 is just full of extremely amusing situations arising from a world-saving protagonist who is dumb as a stump. Stumbling around the post-apocalyptic wasteland as a simpleton more interested in ice cream and shiny objects than with their mission and the fate of the world is just loads of fun. Granted, you don't get to do as much stuff, as many people don't want to entrust all their problems to a grinning moron, but there're still plenty of side quests available to a stupid character, and all the necessary stuff on the path to completing the game will work out for you. It's actually funny to watch a stupid character basically manage on dumb luck to do everything a regular character has to work at to save the world.
There are even occasions where being a stupid character makes parts of the game easier, or provides a better reward. A stupid character can more or less just walk into Vault City and gain access to its Vault, where normally you have to buy or fast-talk your way into the city, and then do a long quest or have crazily good stats to get into the city's Vault. A stupid character will, in the town of Modoc, get paid with a partially eaten cookie for a pest control job, an option not open to a regular character. You wouldn't THINK that's actually a good thing, but the cookie is a very rare item that can temporarily boost how many actions you can take in combat, which is a pretty big deal in a tough fight. And in San Francisco, a stupid character who completes the Brotherhood of Steel's tasks will be rewarded as a regular character would, but be given the bonus of having the tanker ship fully fueled, something that a normal character has to do an extra quest for.
So the game does play a bit differently here and there for this third character path. More importantly, though, the dialogue is just absurdly funny quite often. In a generally dark and serious game, you get to watch a nitwit run around and...
Have his/her feelings hurt by jeering 10-year-olds, and try to get them back by telling them that he/she is going to go to a party with cake and ice cream and presents and that THEY aren't invited.
Walk off in the middle of an involved conversation because he/she becomes distracted by some nearby sand.
Obtain plot-essential computer parts only because he/she is hungry and they look like electronic Pop-Tarts.
Get electrocuted while exploring the insides of a computer, having confused an automated voice for a woman trapped inside the computer in need of rescue.
And so on. It's a really fun third alternative to the usual Good and Evil way of playing through the game, giving the game not only a lot more replay value, but also an entertaining extra perspective that helps to emphasize the games' tongue-in-cheek humor, which is almost as large and important a component to their storytelling as the serious and dark aspects. I was really disappointed that Fallout 3 eliminated the option for a stupid character, but at least the upcoming Fallout: New Vegas is supposedly bringing it back--although I'm not sure, from reading about it in Game Informer, whether or not it will be in a significant capacity. Still, here's hoping.
* Though not all of them--Risen's protagonist, while not lacking a personality, is fairly mild in general and doesn't seem to vary too much in how he acts regardless of what you choose his actions to be.
It's a fairly good idea, making the games into actual Role-Playing Games by giving you some control over who your character is, and the RPGs I've played usually do a good job of it, allowing for quite a lot of distinction between the characters you can create.* But Fallout 1 and 2 gave players a 3rd option--you could be Good, Evil...and Stupid.
Basically, when you start a Fallout game, you get to choose the stat build of your character, deciding what areas he/she will be strong in, what his/her skills will be, etc. This, of course, affects the game in many ways, and a character with higher Intelligence will have more and better dialogue options in many situations. However, the Fallout designers had some fun with this idea, and made it so that having an extremely low Intelligence score (3 or below) would actually get rid of most normal dialogue options, and replace them with entirely new ones--the often meaningless babble of a complete imbecile.
And man, is it hilarious.
Although you only get a few really funny moments in Fallout 1, Fallout 2 is just full of extremely amusing situations arising from a world-saving protagonist who is dumb as a stump. Stumbling around the post-apocalyptic wasteland as a simpleton more interested in ice cream and shiny objects than with their mission and the fate of the world is just loads of fun. Granted, you don't get to do as much stuff, as many people don't want to entrust all their problems to a grinning moron, but there're still plenty of side quests available to a stupid character, and all the necessary stuff on the path to completing the game will work out for you. It's actually funny to watch a stupid character basically manage on dumb luck to do everything a regular character has to work at to save the world.
There are even occasions where being a stupid character makes parts of the game easier, or provides a better reward. A stupid character can more or less just walk into Vault City and gain access to its Vault, where normally you have to buy or fast-talk your way into the city, and then do a long quest or have crazily good stats to get into the city's Vault. A stupid character will, in the town of Modoc, get paid with a partially eaten cookie for a pest control job, an option not open to a regular character. You wouldn't THINK that's actually a good thing, but the cookie is a very rare item that can temporarily boost how many actions you can take in combat, which is a pretty big deal in a tough fight. And in San Francisco, a stupid character who completes the Brotherhood of Steel's tasks will be rewarded as a regular character would, but be given the bonus of having the tanker ship fully fueled, something that a normal character has to do an extra quest for.
So the game does play a bit differently here and there for this third character path. More importantly, though, the dialogue is just absurdly funny quite often. In a generally dark and serious game, you get to watch a nitwit run around and...
Have his/her feelings hurt by jeering 10-year-olds, and try to get them back by telling them that he/she is going to go to a party with cake and ice cream and presents and that THEY aren't invited.
Walk off in the middle of an involved conversation because he/she becomes distracted by some nearby sand.
Obtain plot-essential computer parts only because he/she is hungry and they look like electronic Pop-Tarts.
Get electrocuted while exploring the insides of a computer, having confused an automated voice for a woman trapped inside the computer in need of rescue.
And so on. It's a really fun third alternative to the usual Good and Evil way of playing through the game, giving the game not only a lot more replay value, but also an entertaining extra perspective that helps to emphasize the games' tongue-in-cheek humor, which is almost as large and important a component to their storytelling as the serious and dark aspects. I was really disappointed that Fallout 3 eliminated the option for a stupid character, but at least the upcoming Fallout: New Vegas is supposedly bringing it back--although I'm not sure, from reading about it in Game Informer, whether or not it will be in a significant capacity. Still, here's hoping.
* Though not all of them--Risen's protagonist, while not lacking a personality, is fairly mild in general and doesn't seem to vary too much in how he acts regardless of what you choose his actions to be.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Final Fantasy 7's Cait Sith's Worth
For someone who criticizes SquareEnix's poster child series as much as I do, I sure do wind up defending its characters strangely often.
Cait Sith. If you had to list the most universally hated characters from the Final Fantasy series, he'd be up at the top with Final Fantasy 9's Quina Quen. Nobody can seem to stand him. And, as is often the case with overly disliked Final Fantasy characters, all this scorn is nearly entirely undeserved.
So, here's what I gather are the major reasons to hate Cait Sith:
1. He looks stupid.
2. He's not useful in combat.
3. He betrays the good guys at one point.
4. He's annoying.
So let's see. First off: looking stupid. I probably shouldn't even dignify this with a response--if you're a shallow enough person that how a character looks is going to be the major determining factor in your opinion about that character, then you're not worth wasting words on. Nonetheless, I would like to point out that, beyond the fact that it's moronic to judge a character's worth by how they look, this is FINAL FANTASY. Stupid-looking people are not exactly a rarity in these games. If you're going to dislike Cait Sith for not looking particularly awesome, you might as well hate the majority of the characters in the series, because most of them look ridiculous one way or another.
Next is my personal favorite, his use in combat. I actually find this to be an even less intelligent reason to dislike Cait Sith than his looks. I mean, to start with, I really don't see the point of liking or hating someone according to how immediately useful they are to me personally. But putting that aside, this opinion is wrong on multiple levels. To start with, Final Fantasy 7 is a game where differences in combat abilities between characters are so minimal that they almost don't exist--the only major skills that distinguish one character from the next are the Limit Breaks, which are only rarely available to use. Other than that, combat skills are determined by the Materia the player puts on a character. So for most regular battles, and the majority of each boss fight's duration, it's the abilities granted by Materia--most prominently, the Magic and the Summons--that determine how useful a character is. So Cait Sith's only going to be about as useless as the player is inept.
So in general, it's Materia, not Limit Breaks, that's going to determine how useful a character is going to be for the long haul. So, while the Strength stat is handy if you put on the right Ability Materia to enhance the regular attack (and the good ones for that only come late in the game), it's the Magic stat that more determines how powerful a character is going to be, since most offensive Materia provide magic spells and Summons. And hey, guess what? Cait Sith's Magic stat is one of the best in the game. So unless you're really fond of tripling how long each battle takes by just using the Attack command every time and ignoring Magic and Summon (and E. Skill, always damn handy), he's going to actually be one of the more useful characters you can get.
And about his Limit Breaks, which everyone says suck: for his Slots Limit Break, there's a tiny chance of getting a match-up known as Death Joker. Now, Death Joker is simple: it kills everything in battle. Enemies and your team both die, no questions asked, doesn't matter what enemy it is. This can be countered by the famous Materia combination of Final Attack + Phoenix (or Final Attack + Life, I guess, but that's not nearly as handy), which makes it so that when a character gets KO'd in combat, they cast a spell as they die--in this case, Phoenix, which restores them and any other party members at 0 HP to fighting condition.
So, basically, Cait Sith can pull off a Limit Break that will kill a Weapon, and can be countered by a common Materia combination trick. Yeah. That's not precisely what I would call useless.*
Lastly, his betrayal. Okay, yeah, Cait Sith betrays Cloud and company. THIS is actually a legitimate strike against him. Acknowledged. That said, however, it's still not fair to hate him for it. To begin with, the betrayal isn't his final defining act. He pulls his traitor act while you're still on the first disc of the game--every moment after that, he's working to help Cloud as best he can, making sure that those dear to Aeris and Barret are safe, becoming Cloud's informant about Shinra's activities, fighting alongside the group, and so on. He makes up for his misdeed plenty times over, no mistake about it.
It also makes no sense to hold it against him when other RPG traitors rarely have such grudges held against them. I mean, just going by the Final Fantasy series, look at Kain. Kain from Final Fantasy 4 turns traitor TWICE during his game, and while mind control is involved, it's only made possible because he already has within him the negative emotions of jealousy and anger that betrayal is created from. The way I see it, that makes it a more earnest case of betrayal than Cait Sith's--with Cait Sith, he probably doesn't have much choice, given that he's employed by a company with military power that is not particularly nice to anyone who doesn't play ball with it, and Cait Sith's actions and dialogue throughout the game paint the picture of a character who wants to help people and do everything in his power to keep others safe from danger. His betrayal isn't motivated by bitterness the way Kain's is. Yet Kain nearly never receives the kind of badmouthing over his multiple betrayals that Cait Sith does about his one.
While we're on the issue of comparisons, other RPG traitors often tend to do worse things when they turn on the good guys. I mean, think about it. Cait Sith's traitorous act is to feed Shinra information for a while, and then to give the evil corporation a key item that it needs to get at the Black Materia, which Sephiroth, who both the good guys and Shinra are opposing, wants to destroy the world with. End result? Shinra keeps up-to-date with Cloud's group of do-gooders, which it basically was doing fairly well anyway before Cait Sith came along (the Turks know he's coming in the cave outside the marshes, Hojo sights Cloud in Costa del Sol, and they obviously know he's going to the Gold Saucer since they place Cait Sith there to find him), and Shinra gets a head start on obtaining the Black Materia--which, while bad, would still be better than Sephiroth getting it. Compare that to the betrayal of, say, (MAJOR BATEN KAITOS 1 SPOILERS) Kalas from BK1. Kalas is a double-agent the entire first half of the game, and his betrayal of his friends, which is motivated solely by his own selfish desires, results in the releasing of a freakish, malevolent god's power, the capture by an enemy military of the girl that was digging Kalas up to that point, and the finger being given to you, the player, as Kalas actually attempts to forcibly eject you from the game's events. Yet you never hear of people holding a major grudge against Kalas for how royally he screwed everyone over (even considering the much smaller fanbase for the Baten Kaitos series). So why the ever-lasting hatred for Cait Sith on this count?
Finally, the annoying factor. Well, frankly, I'm not sure I get it. I mean, Cait Sith's role in the general plot and dialogue of the game is on the lower side of average, and his major acts and speeches, from what I can see, are focused on his betrayal and his desire to help people and make up for his earlier deception. Not all that annoying a focus, and his personality itself is a fairly mild-mannered, yet energetic, guy who adopts a southern accent at random. And without him, Cloud and company wouldn't have gotten the Black Materia, Barret wouldn't have escaped Junon during the Weapon attack, and Elmyra and Marlene wouldn't have been kept safely away from Meteor's ground zero. He also provides intel to Cloud about Shinra's movements once his connection to them is revealed. So it's not like he was just some hanger-on; he significantly contributed to the world-saving effort, more than several other members of the party who are rarely criticized. Honestly, he doesn't have a loud enough or dull enough personality to be all that annoying. I just think that most people who say he's annoying do so because they dislike him for one of the other criteria I've mentioned.
Cait Sith gets way, way more resentment sent his way than he deserves. That's what I think, and that's what I stand by. People forgive poorer characters for worse acts, and half of the complaints people have against him are groundless, stupid, or both.
* Yes, I know, the chances of Death Joker are crazily rare. But I'm willing to bet that if you compared the time it takes to keep trying for a Death Joker to hit the Weapons against the time it takes to get the levels and the rare Materia and the levels for said Materia, along with the best weapons and armor and such, plus a goodly amount of healing items, all of which is required for the standard way to take out a Weapon, you're probably going to spend less time waiting for the Death Joker. The time it takes to get a goddamn Golden Chocobo alone...
Cait Sith. If you had to list the most universally hated characters from the Final Fantasy series, he'd be up at the top with Final Fantasy 9's Quina Quen. Nobody can seem to stand him. And, as is often the case with overly disliked Final Fantasy characters, all this scorn is nearly entirely undeserved.
So, here's what I gather are the major reasons to hate Cait Sith:
1. He looks stupid.
2. He's not useful in combat.
3. He betrays the good guys at one point.
4. He's annoying.
So let's see. First off: looking stupid. I probably shouldn't even dignify this with a response--if you're a shallow enough person that how a character looks is going to be the major determining factor in your opinion about that character, then you're not worth wasting words on. Nonetheless, I would like to point out that, beyond the fact that it's moronic to judge a character's worth by how they look, this is FINAL FANTASY. Stupid-looking people are not exactly a rarity in these games. If you're going to dislike Cait Sith for not looking particularly awesome, you might as well hate the majority of the characters in the series, because most of them look ridiculous one way or another.
Next is my personal favorite, his use in combat. I actually find this to be an even less intelligent reason to dislike Cait Sith than his looks. I mean, to start with, I really don't see the point of liking or hating someone according to how immediately useful they are to me personally. But putting that aside, this opinion is wrong on multiple levels. To start with, Final Fantasy 7 is a game where differences in combat abilities between characters are so minimal that they almost don't exist--the only major skills that distinguish one character from the next are the Limit Breaks, which are only rarely available to use. Other than that, combat skills are determined by the Materia the player puts on a character. So for most regular battles, and the majority of each boss fight's duration, it's the abilities granted by Materia--most prominently, the Magic and the Summons--that determine how useful a character is. So Cait Sith's only going to be about as useless as the player is inept.
So in general, it's Materia, not Limit Breaks, that's going to determine how useful a character is going to be for the long haul. So, while the Strength stat is handy if you put on the right Ability Materia to enhance the regular attack (and the good ones for that only come late in the game), it's the Magic stat that more determines how powerful a character is going to be, since most offensive Materia provide magic spells and Summons. And hey, guess what? Cait Sith's Magic stat is one of the best in the game. So unless you're really fond of tripling how long each battle takes by just using the Attack command every time and ignoring Magic and Summon (and E. Skill, always damn handy), he's going to actually be one of the more useful characters you can get.
And about his Limit Breaks, which everyone says suck: for his Slots Limit Break, there's a tiny chance of getting a match-up known as Death Joker. Now, Death Joker is simple: it kills everything in battle. Enemies and your team both die, no questions asked, doesn't matter what enemy it is. This can be countered by the famous Materia combination of Final Attack + Phoenix (or Final Attack + Life, I guess, but that's not nearly as handy), which makes it so that when a character gets KO'd in combat, they cast a spell as they die--in this case, Phoenix, which restores them and any other party members at 0 HP to fighting condition.
So, basically, Cait Sith can pull off a Limit Break that will kill a Weapon, and can be countered by a common Materia combination trick. Yeah. That's not precisely what I would call useless.*
Lastly, his betrayal. Okay, yeah, Cait Sith betrays Cloud and company. THIS is actually a legitimate strike against him. Acknowledged. That said, however, it's still not fair to hate him for it. To begin with, the betrayal isn't his final defining act. He pulls his traitor act while you're still on the first disc of the game--every moment after that, he's working to help Cloud as best he can, making sure that those dear to Aeris and Barret are safe, becoming Cloud's informant about Shinra's activities, fighting alongside the group, and so on. He makes up for his misdeed plenty times over, no mistake about it.
It also makes no sense to hold it against him when other RPG traitors rarely have such grudges held against them. I mean, just going by the Final Fantasy series, look at Kain. Kain from Final Fantasy 4 turns traitor TWICE during his game, and while mind control is involved, it's only made possible because he already has within him the negative emotions of jealousy and anger that betrayal is created from. The way I see it, that makes it a more earnest case of betrayal than Cait Sith's--with Cait Sith, he probably doesn't have much choice, given that he's employed by a company with military power that is not particularly nice to anyone who doesn't play ball with it, and Cait Sith's actions and dialogue throughout the game paint the picture of a character who wants to help people and do everything in his power to keep others safe from danger. His betrayal isn't motivated by bitterness the way Kain's is. Yet Kain nearly never receives the kind of badmouthing over his multiple betrayals that Cait Sith does about his one.
While we're on the issue of comparisons, other RPG traitors often tend to do worse things when they turn on the good guys. I mean, think about it. Cait Sith's traitorous act is to feed Shinra information for a while, and then to give the evil corporation a key item that it needs to get at the Black Materia, which Sephiroth, who both the good guys and Shinra are opposing, wants to destroy the world with. End result? Shinra keeps up-to-date with Cloud's group of do-gooders, which it basically was doing fairly well anyway before Cait Sith came along (the Turks know he's coming in the cave outside the marshes, Hojo sights Cloud in Costa del Sol, and they obviously know he's going to the Gold Saucer since they place Cait Sith there to find him), and Shinra gets a head start on obtaining the Black Materia--which, while bad, would still be better than Sephiroth getting it. Compare that to the betrayal of, say, (MAJOR BATEN KAITOS 1 SPOILERS) Kalas from BK1. Kalas is a double-agent the entire first half of the game, and his betrayal of his friends, which is motivated solely by his own selfish desires, results in the releasing of a freakish, malevolent god's power, the capture by an enemy military of the girl that was digging Kalas up to that point, and the finger being given to you, the player, as Kalas actually attempts to forcibly eject you from the game's events. Yet you never hear of people holding a major grudge against Kalas for how royally he screwed everyone over (even considering the much smaller fanbase for the Baten Kaitos series). So why the ever-lasting hatred for Cait Sith on this count?
Finally, the annoying factor. Well, frankly, I'm not sure I get it. I mean, Cait Sith's role in the general plot and dialogue of the game is on the lower side of average, and his major acts and speeches, from what I can see, are focused on his betrayal and his desire to help people and make up for his earlier deception. Not all that annoying a focus, and his personality itself is a fairly mild-mannered, yet energetic, guy who adopts a southern accent at random. And without him, Cloud and company wouldn't have gotten the Black Materia, Barret wouldn't have escaped Junon during the Weapon attack, and Elmyra and Marlene wouldn't have been kept safely away from Meteor's ground zero. He also provides intel to Cloud about Shinra's movements once his connection to them is revealed. So it's not like he was just some hanger-on; he significantly contributed to the world-saving effort, more than several other members of the party who are rarely criticized. Honestly, he doesn't have a loud enough or dull enough personality to be all that annoying. I just think that most people who say he's annoying do so because they dislike him for one of the other criteria I've mentioned.
Cait Sith gets way, way more resentment sent his way than he deserves. That's what I think, and that's what I stand by. People forgive poorer characters for worse acts, and half of the complaints people have against him are groundless, stupid, or both.
* Yes, I know, the chances of Death Joker are crazily rare. But I'm willing to bet that if you compared the time it takes to keep trying for a Death Joker to hit the Weapons against the time it takes to get the levels and the rare Materia and the levels for said Materia, along with the best weapons and armor and such, plus a goodly amount of healing items, all of which is required for the standard way to take out a Weapon, you're probably going to spend less time waiting for the Death Joker. The time it takes to get a goddamn Golden Chocobo alone...
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Dragon Age 1's Morrigan: Why I Don't Like Her
Well, I've played the game a few times over, seen everything there is to see, examined the merits and flaws of each of the characters pretty thoroughly, and discussed it all with a few people whose opinions and tastes are trustworthy. And the verdict is in: Morrigan is my least favorite part of Dragon Age Origins.
There are quite a few small aspects about her that don't exactly ingratiate her character to me, of course. Her general attitude is one. She's kind of a bitch. While she treats the main character pretty decently, more or less, she's unceasingly cold and hostile to everyone else in the party, while they, aside from Alistair,* continue to attempt to be civil to her. While other characters in the game may criticize each other in a light-hearted way or with a constructive purpose in mind, Morrigan's jabs and insults are ever done spitefully. So she's not exactly the most likable person to begin with.
Still, annoying personalities I can get over, if there's a decent character beneath. I mean, look at Final Fantasy 10's Tidus--you all know I really like his character, but I'll be the first to admit that he can be really annoying at times. I've also always been a fan of Chrono Trigger's Magus, and he's not exactly friendly to the rest of the party, either.
The true problem for me with Morrigan is that her inner character is rather shallow, and far less likable than her bitchy exterior. Fundamentally, Morrigan believes in looking out for number 1, that connections to other people are meaningless farces, that religious belief is foolish, and that the mages who follow the Chantry's laws and allow themselves to be regulated are weak. Now, these are all things that I disagree with myself. But what makes her such a lousy character compared to all the rest of the cast, and what makes me really dislike her, is how she holds and expresses these beliefs.
Morrigan is a raging, senseless hypocrite who cannot extract her head from her ass. She criticizes the mages who live under the shackles that society places on them, even though she has grown up free because her adoptive witch mother, Flemeth, kept her relatively safe and almost totally secluded from the society that would have imprisoned her. She has absolutely no experience of the difficulties a mage faces when they try to escape, and she doesn't care. Even when confronted with the fact that she could have been brought up in this imprisonment and been the same as any other mage, she dismisses the argument without really addressing it, rather than even consider that the situations of other mages and herself could have been reversed. She scorns others for not fighting for the freedom she enjoys when she herself has had little role in attaining and keeping that freedom.
This is more or less how it goes every time Morrigan comes across something she doesn't approve of. She criticizes the people and society of the world around her unflinchingly, while having never had to experience it--by her own admission she knows more or less nothing of civilization, since Flemeth raised her alone in a swamp her whole life.
But it's more than just ignorance bordering on hypocrisy, here. There's also just complete and utter hypocrisy, too. One of her big things is to criticize the followers of the Chant of Light, the major quasi-Christian-esque religion of this world, for being unthinking followers to laws and beliefs that they're told. The problem here is that, again, by her own admission, most everything she knows of the world (which is, again, not very much) is what Flemeth has taught her. Nearly every opinion she has and holds is formed before she's properly out in the world to experience that which she holds the opinion on. Of all the characters in the game, she's the one whose beliefs have been determined the most by what she's been told, and she also ends up being the character whose views are the most unchangeable. Sten can learn to accept outsiders and embrace at least a precious few aspects of other cultures. Alistair comes to accept his place in the world and has his preconceived hopes about family's acceptance challenged. Oghren comes to recognize that it truly is himself and not circumstance that brings him to his lowly states. Zevran, Shale, Wynne, Leliana, they're all at least open to views other than their own. But Morrigan? On almost every point, the woman who criticizes the Chantry's followers for their blind, unquestioning obedience to the moral codes given to them absolutely refuses to entertain the possibility that what she's been told could be untrue.**
Now I'll give you the fact that Morrigan is not 100% a loathsome hypocrite. She CAN come to appreciate the friendship and/or love that the main character offers her (if the main character is a good fellow/fellowess and gives her gifts and does her a huge favor), and she doesn't deny that she values it. And that much IS fairly touching, I'll give you that. Although it does seem to be a thing so private that only she and the main character can ever know it; in all other ways and situations, Morrigan continues to scorn human connections as worthless. But I'll still admit, that's a highlight to her, and one moment where she does learn that her preconceptions are wrong.
Nonetheless, this one occasion of her appreciating someone going to extreme lengths for her for the sake of friendship does not change her overall character, and that is one of an ignorant, venomous hypocrite. While this may put me at odds with the general gaming community, which seems totally enamored by her,*** I seriously dislike Morrigan, and consider her the low point of the game's cast.
* And she gives Alistair plenty of reason to dislike her, at that.
** And while it's really neither here nor there, I'd like to point out that her religious criticisms never graduate past the most rudimentary level. Morrigan isn't bringing up any more insightful arguments about the fallacies of faith and organized religion than those you would expect to hear from a teenager testing the waters of religious rebellion.
*** Which I think is largely because she spouts those empty but "edgy" anti-faith arguments here and there, and is a goth chick that shows a lot of skin--proof that Bioware can shamelessly exploit an audience just as well as SquareEnix!
There are quite a few small aspects about her that don't exactly ingratiate her character to me, of course. Her general attitude is one. She's kind of a bitch. While she treats the main character pretty decently, more or less, she's unceasingly cold and hostile to everyone else in the party, while they, aside from Alistair,* continue to attempt to be civil to her. While other characters in the game may criticize each other in a light-hearted way or with a constructive purpose in mind, Morrigan's jabs and insults are ever done spitefully. So she's not exactly the most likable person to begin with.
Still, annoying personalities I can get over, if there's a decent character beneath. I mean, look at Final Fantasy 10's Tidus--you all know I really like his character, but I'll be the first to admit that he can be really annoying at times. I've also always been a fan of Chrono Trigger's Magus, and he's not exactly friendly to the rest of the party, either.
The true problem for me with Morrigan is that her inner character is rather shallow, and far less likable than her bitchy exterior. Fundamentally, Morrigan believes in looking out for number 1, that connections to other people are meaningless farces, that religious belief is foolish, and that the mages who follow the Chantry's laws and allow themselves to be regulated are weak. Now, these are all things that I disagree with myself. But what makes her such a lousy character compared to all the rest of the cast, and what makes me really dislike her, is how she holds and expresses these beliefs.
Morrigan is a raging, senseless hypocrite who cannot extract her head from her ass. She criticizes the mages who live under the shackles that society places on them, even though she has grown up free because her adoptive witch mother, Flemeth, kept her relatively safe and almost totally secluded from the society that would have imprisoned her. She has absolutely no experience of the difficulties a mage faces when they try to escape, and she doesn't care. Even when confronted with the fact that she could have been brought up in this imprisonment and been the same as any other mage, she dismisses the argument without really addressing it, rather than even consider that the situations of other mages and herself could have been reversed. She scorns others for not fighting for the freedom she enjoys when she herself has had little role in attaining and keeping that freedom.
This is more or less how it goes every time Morrigan comes across something she doesn't approve of. She criticizes the people and society of the world around her unflinchingly, while having never had to experience it--by her own admission she knows more or less nothing of civilization, since Flemeth raised her alone in a swamp her whole life.
But it's more than just ignorance bordering on hypocrisy, here. There's also just complete and utter hypocrisy, too. One of her big things is to criticize the followers of the Chant of Light, the major quasi-Christian-esque religion of this world, for being unthinking followers to laws and beliefs that they're told. The problem here is that, again, by her own admission, most everything she knows of the world (which is, again, not very much) is what Flemeth has taught her. Nearly every opinion she has and holds is formed before she's properly out in the world to experience that which she holds the opinion on. Of all the characters in the game, she's the one whose beliefs have been determined the most by what she's been told, and she also ends up being the character whose views are the most unchangeable. Sten can learn to accept outsiders and embrace at least a precious few aspects of other cultures. Alistair comes to accept his place in the world and has his preconceived hopes about family's acceptance challenged. Oghren comes to recognize that it truly is himself and not circumstance that brings him to his lowly states. Zevran, Shale, Wynne, Leliana, they're all at least open to views other than their own. But Morrigan? On almost every point, the woman who criticizes the Chantry's followers for their blind, unquestioning obedience to the moral codes given to them absolutely refuses to entertain the possibility that what she's been told could be untrue.**
Now I'll give you the fact that Morrigan is not 100% a loathsome hypocrite. She CAN come to appreciate the friendship and/or love that the main character offers her (if the main character is a good fellow/fellowess and gives her gifts and does her a huge favor), and she doesn't deny that she values it. And that much IS fairly touching, I'll give you that. Although it does seem to be a thing so private that only she and the main character can ever know it; in all other ways and situations, Morrigan continues to scorn human connections as worthless. But I'll still admit, that's a highlight to her, and one moment where she does learn that her preconceptions are wrong.
Nonetheless, this one occasion of her appreciating someone going to extreme lengths for her for the sake of friendship does not change her overall character, and that is one of an ignorant, venomous hypocrite. While this may put me at odds with the general gaming community, which seems totally enamored by her,*** I seriously dislike Morrigan, and consider her the low point of the game's cast.
* And she gives Alistair plenty of reason to dislike her, at that.
** And while it's really neither here nor there, I'd like to point out that her religious criticisms never graduate past the most rudimentary level. Morrigan isn't bringing up any more insightful arguments about the fallacies of faith and organized religion than those you would expect to hear from a teenager testing the waters of religious rebellion.
*** Which I think is largely because she spouts those empty but "edgy" anti-faith arguments here and there, and is a goth chick that shows a lot of skin--proof that Bioware can shamelessly exploit an audience just as well as SquareEnix!
Friday, June 11, 2010
General RPGs' Lack of Significant Homosexual Characters
Thanks muchly to Ecclesiastes for correcting me on the matter of Juhani.
It's less prominent nowadays than it was a few years back, but if you're at all tired of hearing tirades about furthering gay rights, you might wanna skip this rant.
So. Homosexuals in RPGs. There really aren't many. While homosexual and bisexual characters are starting to show up in the genre with more frequency, gay women and especially gay men are rarely given any significant roles in RPGs. You are way, way more likely to have a fantasy creature for a party member than a human being with even a hint of bisexual tendencies,* let alone an actual gay person. Hell, there are more DOGS in RPG parties than there are people that you could even reasonably infer are homosexual.
It's not that I want to see gay people everywhere I look in my RPGs. And I realize that, while it's estimated that 10% of America's population are homosexual, the estimate is only about 1% for Japan's population,** which is where most of the games in this genre come from. So it's not as big a cultural thing for the game makers, and it's not a big cultural thing for their primary and most profitable audience.
Still, when I looked over the list of RPGs I've played to this point--and not to toot my own horn or alternately make myself look extra pathetic, but it's a sizable list--these are the occurrences I can see of homosexuality being shown (beyond reasonable doubt, I mean; no speculation, even if Final Fantasy 7's Sephiroth DOES look like a chick in bondage gear that likes holding long swords and obsesses over a pretty sword-user in purple). I may have missed 1 or 2, because my memory's not perfect, but I'm confident I didn't miss more than that 1 or 2. Here we go:
1. Shadow Hearts 2 and 3: Pierre, Gerard, and Buigen are gay characters who serve in the game both as merchants and as "hilarious" stereotypes.
2. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4: Kanji has some confusion about his orientation early in the game, and it's mentioned (and then forgotten forever) that Yukiko has had a passing interest in her friend Chie.
3. Star Ocean 3: Claire and Nel are, from what I understand, canonically a couple according to the SO3 manga. It's only vaguely hinted at in the game itself, but I guess I'll count it.
4. Suikoden 5: Lucretia and Lelei are very clearly implied to be together.
5. Tales of Legendia: Elsa has a pretty clear romantic crush on Chloe (which Chloe has little to no reaction to one way or the other, oddly enough).
6. Fallout 2: You get the chance to marry a guy or a girl regardless of your protagonist's gender. Female protagonists also get a few chances for a quickie with various female NPCs.
7. Knights of the Old Republic 1: Juhani mentions having loved her female Jedi Master, if I remember correctly. She can also fall for a female main character and have those feelings returned, though few people will find this out without guidance because the requirements for doing so are supposedly fairly unusual.
8. Mass Effect 1 and 2: Female Commander Shepards can hook up with Liara in ME1, and either stay faithful to Liara or hook up with Kelly in ME2. Female Shepards can also have a one-timer with Sha'ira.
9. Dragon Age Origins: Leliana and Zevran are both bisexual and are romantic options for the protagonist regardless of the protagonist's gender. Protagonists of either gender can also hook up with a partner of either gender at the game's brothel.
10. Sailor Moon: Another Story: Sailors Uranus and Neptune are established as being together.
11. Baten Kaitos 2: Geldoblame and his superior Verus are together for most of the game.
12. Wild Arms 2's Caina was a man in the original Japanese version, and had a serious crush on his boss.
Now that list doesn't just fall short of hitting 10% of game characters that I've seen. That list also falls pretty damn short of hitting even that 1% ratio that Japan has (again, according to the internet). And that's a pretty generous list, too. I mean, the Sailor Scouts really shouldn't even be counted, since they were established in the show as being together before the game existed, especially since the game seems to generally ignore or downplay it. Not sure I should put on Caina, either, since I haven't actually SEEN that, given that he became a she for the US release. And frankly, including the Shadow Hearts guys is generous, too, because blatant and fairly offensive stereotypes aren't exactly the step in the right direction that I'm looking for. And you'll note that a lot of the examples I list come from Western RPGs. As far as just including non-heterosexual characters and relationships goes, Western RPGs seem to be on the right track, mostly. I do think that they could try including a homosexual relationship or two between characters who aren't the protagonist, but I'm satisfied overall with this hemisphere's work. Most RPGs, however, come from Japan, and, when you compare how many more Japanese RPGs there are than Western ones, my list shows a much smaller ratio for them--and as those Shadow Hearts nitwits prove, instances of homosexuality in Japanese RPGs aren't always handled well.
Now, an argument I hear defending Japanese RPGs on this matter often is that since it's not a significant issue or demographic in Japan, it's not fair to expect anything more of their games than what we've got. Well, I call bullshit on that. Deep, smelly, steamy bullshit. And the reason for this is the same one that I had for not accepting the same defense for why there's not much racial diversity in Japanese RPGs: the very foundation of the RPG genre in Japan lies almost ENTIRELY with Western culture and mythology. The vast majority of RPGs from Japan, past AND present, have drawn huge influence from Western culture--the medieval weapons and worlds, the most important monsters (even if dragons are a multi-cultured thing, most dragons in RPGs fit into the European styles), the clothing and cultural design, and so on. Just look at Christianity--how many RPGs have a structured religion clearly based on the basic principles and/or practices of Christianity? Christianity's as tiny and alien a thing to Japanese society as homosexuality, from the vague impressions and information I've got. They bend over backward to throw THAT into every other RPG they make. So why not throw a few more decent and more-than-extremely-vague-implication instances of homosexuality into the games? In addition, homosexuality is all OVER the place in anime, which is a Japanese artistic medium whose tropes, styles, and ideas are tied pretty strongly to the video game industry over there. So not only does it not make sense to have the issue all over the place in one and not the other, but the argument that it's not a big enough part of their culture to show up in the games more often is that much more flawed--they MAKE it a part of their entertainment culture frequently already.
I also have a problem with the importance placed on what few homosexual characters there are--or rather, the lack of such. Now, again, Western RPGs aren't so bad in this area--from the list above, we see multiple game protagonists that can be gay or bisexual, and the characters they can start a relationship with are major ones, genuinely important to the game's events. But if you look at the Japanese-born RPG characters from that list, what do you see? No protagonists, that's for sure. I've played about 140 RPGs that came from Asia, and not ONCE in all of them have I seen a homosexual protagonist. I'll give them that most of the Eastern RPG examples I've found at least have fairly important secondary characters--the Persona 4 kids, Star Ocean 3's Nel, and Suikoden 5's Lucretia are all very important to the plot, and I do at least appreciate that. Still, with as few homosexual characters to be found as there are in Japanese RPGs, the fact that none of them are protagonists just makes the problem seem worse.
There's also a really major problem I'd like to point out that occurs regardless of which side of the planet makes the RPG: lesbians. Now look, I am all for gay women characters in RPGs. All for them. What I am NOT all for is them being the ONLY homosexual characters being put into the games. Look at that list again. Even if you count the crappy Shadow Hearts embarrassments, gay female characters outnumber gay male ones by a ratio of about 2 to 1. As unfairly absent as homosexual characters are from RPGs in general, the problem is doubly bad for gay males.
Oh, I know WHY this is. Something a lot of people mistakenly thought after my old complaining rant about the lack of guy-guy romances in Mass Effect 1 was that I didn't get why they did it. I do. It's because it's marketable. Since the major demographic of gamers is young, typically stupid guys (even for more intellectual games, as RPGs can be), their main audience is going to be eager to see lesbians in their game, while they'll have considerably less interest--profitable interest--in seeing gay guy romancing. I do get it.
I just don't accept it.
It's not a good reason. Shallow marketing ploys do not interest me. What I want is to see intellectual integrity in my games. That is what I care about. Games, RPGs in particular, are vehicles for ideas, opinions, and creativity, and it is and always will be my firm belief that THOSE are the aspects that should hold ultimate importance in creating an RPG. Maybe I'm the minority--in fact, there's no "maybe" about it, I just am--but creative, intellectual integrity is what I want to see in my games, and so I'm going to keep complaining about the lack of gay male romances in RPGs when compared to the number of gay female ones even if I understand the reason why it's that way.
So yeah. Ultimately, I think there needs to be way more homosexual characters, important or minor, in RPGs in general, particularly male ones. I mean, not every single game or anything, but not once every 15 games, either. I don't need them in the spotlight, I don't need them to always be happy and perfect and all that jazz, but I do need them to BE there.
* A REAL hint, I mean. Yaoi fangirls can find romantic undertones in the greatest of hatred or apathy between any 2 (or more) attractive boys in any RPG, I know. Their perverse optimism notwithstanding, though, there's not much actual, reasonable evidence of homosexual tendencies in game characters in general, is what I mean.
** This is not exhaustively researched. This is just a ballpark estimate from a few sites Google pulled up. But the internet is never inaccurate, right?
It's less prominent nowadays than it was a few years back, but if you're at all tired of hearing tirades about furthering gay rights, you might wanna skip this rant.
So. Homosexuals in RPGs. There really aren't many. While homosexual and bisexual characters are starting to show up in the genre with more frequency, gay women and especially gay men are rarely given any significant roles in RPGs. You are way, way more likely to have a fantasy creature for a party member than a human being with even a hint of bisexual tendencies,* let alone an actual gay person. Hell, there are more DOGS in RPG parties than there are people that you could even reasonably infer are homosexual.
It's not that I want to see gay people everywhere I look in my RPGs. And I realize that, while it's estimated that 10% of America's population are homosexual, the estimate is only about 1% for Japan's population,** which is where most of the games in this genre come from. So it's not as big a cultural thing for the game makers, and it's not a big cultural thing for their primary and most profitable audience.
Still, when I looked over the list of RPGs I've played to this point--and not to toot my own horn or alternately make myself look extra pathetic, but it's a sizable list--these are the occurrences I can see of homosexuality being shown (beyond reasonable doubt, I mean; no speculation, even if Final Fantasy 7's Sephiroth DOES look like a chick in bondage gear that likes holding long swords and obsesses over a pretty sword-user in purple). I may have missed 1 or 2, because my memory's not perfect, but I'm confident I didn't miss more than that 1 or 2. Here we go:
1. Shadow Hearts 2 and 3: Pierre, Gerard, and Buigen are gay characters who serve in the game both as merchants and as "hilarious" stereotypes.
2. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4: Kanji has some confusion about his orientation early in the game, and it's mentioned (and then forgotten forever) that Yukiko has had a passing interest in her friend Chie.
3. Star Ocean 3: Claire and Nel are, from what I understand, canonically a couple according to the SO3 manga. It's only vaguely hinted at in the game itself, but I guess I'll count it.
4. Suikoden 5: Lucretia and Lelei are very clearly implied to be together.
5. Tales of Legendia: Elsa has a pretty clear romantic crush on Chloe (which Chloe has little to no reaction to one way or the other, oddly enough).
6. Fallout 2: You get the chance to marry a guy or a girl regardless of your protagonist's gender. Female protagonists also get a few chances for a quickie with various female NPCs.
7. Knights of the Old Republic 1: Juhani mentions having loved her female Jedi Master, if I remember correctly. She can also fall for a female main character and have those feelings returned, though few people will find this out without guidance because the requirements for doing so are supposedly fairly unusual.
8. Mass Effect 1 and 2: Female Commander Shepards can hook up with Liara in ME1, and either stay faithful to Liara or hook up with Kelly in ME2. Female Shepards can also have a one-timer with Sha'ira.
9. Dragon Age Origins: Leliana and Zevran are both bisexual and are romantic options for the protagonist regardless of the protagonist's gender. Protagonists of either gender can also hook up with a partner of either gender at the game's brothel.
10. Sailor Moon: Another Story: Sailors Uranus and Neptune are established as being together.
11. Baten Kaitos 2: Geldoblame and his superior Verus are together for most of the game.
12. Wild Arms 2's Caina was a man in the original Japanese version, and had a serious crush on his boss.
Now that list doesn't just fall short of hitting 10% of game characters that I've seen. That list also falls pretty damn short of hitting even that 1% ratio that Japan has (again, according to the internet). And that's a pretty generous list, too. I mean, the Sailor Scouts really shouldn't even be counted, since they were established in the show as being together before the game existed, especially since the game seems to generally ignore or downplay it. Not sure I should put on Caina, either, since I haven't actually SEEN that, given that he became a she for the US release. And frankly, including the Shadow Hearts guys is generous, too, because blatant and fairly offensive stereotypes aren't exactly the step in the right direction that I'm looking for. And you'll note that a lot of the examples I list come from Western RPGs. As far as just including non-heterosexual characters and relationships goes, Western RPGs seem to be on the right track, mostly. I do think that they could try including a homosexual relationship or two between characters who aren't the protagonist, but I'm satisfied overall with this hemisphere's work. Most RPGs, however, come from Japan, and, when you compare how many more Japanese RPGs there are than Western ones, my list shows a much smaller ratio for them--and as those Shadow Hearts nitwits prove, instances of homosexuality in Japanese RPGs aren't always handled well.
Now, an argument I hear defending Japanese RPGs on this matter often is that since it's not a significant issue or demographic in Japan, it's not fair to expect anything more of their games than what we've got. Well, I call bullshit on that. Deep, smelly, steamy bullshit. And the reason for this is the same one that I had for not accepting the same defense for why there's not much racial diversity in Japanese RPGs: the very foundation of the RPG genre in Japan lies almost ENTIRELY with Western culture and mythology. The vast majority of RPGs from Japan, past AND present, have drawn huge influence from Western culture--the medieval weapons and worlds, the most important monsters (even if dragons are a multi-cultured thing, most dragons in RPGs fit into the European styles), the clothing and cultural design, and so on. Just look at Christianity--how many RPGs have a structured religion clearly based on the basic principles and/or practices of Christianity? Christianity's as tiny and alien a thing to Japanese society as homosexuality, from the vague impressions and information I've got. They bend over backward to throw THAT into every other RPG they make. So why not throw a few more decent and more-than-extremely-vague-implication instances of homosexuality into the games? In addition, homosexuality is all OVER the place in anime, which is a Japanese artistic medium whose tropes, styles, and ideas are tied pretty strongly to the video game industry over there. So not only does it not make sense to have the issue all over the place in one and not the other, but the argument that it's not a big enough part of their culture to show up in the games more often is that much more flawed--they MAKE it a part of their entertainment culture frequently already.
I also have a problem with the importance placed on what few homosexual characters there are--or rather, the lack of such. Now, again, Western RPGs aren't so bad in this area--from the list above, we see multiple game protagonists that can be gay or bisexual, and the characters they can start a relationship with are major ones, genuinely important to the game's events. But if you look at the Japanese-born RPG characters from that list, what do you see? No protagonists, that's for sure. I've played about 140 RPGs that came from Asia, and not ONCE in all of them have I seen a homosexual protagonist. I'll give them that most of the Eastern RPG examples I've found at least have fairly important secondary characters--the Persona 4 kids, Star Ocean 3's Nel, and Suikoden 5's Lucretia are all very important to the plot, and I do at least appreciate that. Still, with as few homosexual characters to be found as there are in Japanese RPGs, the fact that none of them are protagonists just makes the problem seem worse.
There's also a really major problem I'd like to point out that occurs regardless of which side of the planet makes the RPG: lesbians. Now look, I am all for gay women characters in RPGs. All for them. What I am NOT all for is them being the ONLY homosexual characters being put into the games. Look at that list again. Even if you count the crappy Shadow Hearts embarrassments, gay female characters outnumber gay male ones by a ratio of about 2 to 1. As unfairly absent as homosexual characters are from RPGs in general, the problem is doubly bad for gay males.
Oh, I know WHY this is. Something a lot of people mistakenly thought after my old complaining rant about the lack of guy-guy romances in Mass Effect 1 was that I didn't get why they did it. I do. It's because it's marketable. Since the major demographic of gamers is young, typically stupid guys (even for more intellectual games, as RPGs can be), their main audience is going to be eager to see lesbians in their game, while they'll have considerably less interest--profitable interest--in seeing gay guy romancing. I do get it.
I just don't accept it.
It's not a good reason. Shallow marketing ploys do not interest me. What I want is to see intellectual integrity in my games. That is what I care about. Games, RPGs in particular, are vehicles for ideas, opinions, and creativity, and it is and always will be my firm belief that THOSE are the aspects that should hold ultimate importance in creating an RPG. Maybe I'm the minority--in fact, there's no "maybe" about it, I just am--but creative, intellectual integrity is what I want to see in my games, and so I'm going to keep complaining about the lack of gay male romances in RPGs when compared to the number of gay female ones even if I understand the reason why it's that way.
So yeah. Ultimately, I think there needs to be way more homosexual characters, important or minor, in RPGs in general, particularly male ones. I mean, not every single game or anything, but not once every 15 games, either. I don't need them in the spotlight, I don't need them to always be happy and perfect and all that jazz, but I do need them to BE there.
* A REAL hint, I mean. Yaoi fangirls can find romantic undertones in the greatest of hatred or apathy between any 2 (or more) attractive boys in any RPG, I know. Their perverse optimism notwithstanding, though, there's not much actual, reasonable evidence of homosexual tendencies in game characters in general, is what I mean.
** This is not exhaustively researched. This is just a ballpark estimate from a few sites Google pulled up. But the internet is never inaccurate, right?
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Suikoden Tierkreis's Bad Reputation
So, for reasons I can't quite understand, I have not completely given up on the Suikoden series, even after the bland pretense that Suikoden 5 was, and the abominably boring yawn-fest that Suikoden 4 was. Then again, I keep giving Wild Arms chances in the hopes that they'll have a series with more than 1 good game in it, so maybe I'm just a hopeful glutton for punishment. Or an idiot.
Anyway, I recently played Suikoden Tierkreis. Now, if you speak this game's name in front of a Suikoden community, you're more likely than not to attract sneers, hisses, retching sounds, and sometimes threats on your life. People call this game the black sheep of the series, an embarrassment to it, a stain on its good name. I didn't actually KNOW this, mind, when I got and started playing the game, but I didn't have high hopes for it myself. First reason was that, as I mentioned, the Suikoden series has not been particularly impressive in the past...8 years. Suikoden Tactics wasn't bad, but it wasn't notably good, either, and the other 2 games we've seen since Suikoden 3 have been lackluster and outright boring, respectively. I'll give Suikoden 5 that it followed the series formula and mimicked a Suikoden game convincingly, but it just lacked the emotional impact and heart that characterized the older games. Suikoden 4 was so abysmally bland that it wasn't just unenjoyable, but playing it actually, I think, lessened the joy you could feel in life from that moment on. And Tierkreis's opening is not exactly awe-inspiring, as I mentioned in my Opening Sequences rant. Even the first parts of the game are kind of off-putting, with main character Sieg, AKA Motormouth, jamming words together so rapidly that you'd swear they put him on fast-forward, except his voice isn't all squeaky. It's like listening to a low-voiced Chip and Dale, only faster.
Nonetheless, by the end of the game, I found the game was decent. Maybe even good. There are some decent characters (Chrodechild's pretty neat, Dirk's alright, and Fredegund is okay, though she had WAY more potential as a deep, involved character than they ever tried to realize), the semi-main villain was decent enough, the plot had a lot of creative aspects and neat ideas, and there were a few moments that were pretty touching. So I wound up pleased with it in the end. Then I hopped onto the internet forums, and found out that this was NOT the typical reaction from Suikoden fans. My curiosity was piqued at this wide-spread hatred, so I investigated a little further to find out why, exactly, the game earns such scorn.
There are a lot of reasons I've been given as to why people don't like it. There's the voice acting, which I mentioned, although I honestly can't say I'd ever dislike a whole game significantly for its voice acting. That's just ridiculous, honestly. Sometimes people don't like the final boss, and feel like he was lame and sloppy. I can't say I thought much of The One King, either, honestly, although I felt that his gimmick of passing himself on was actually somewhat neat, but...this is SUIKODEN. Sloppy, lame, silly, out-of-nowhere over-blown final bosses is one of the most consistent aspects of the series. I mean, it's something to dislike, sure, but how can you hold The One King against Suikoden Tierkreis and not hold Barbarossa randomly becoming a dragon against 1, or villains magically being able to invoke corporeal forms of the True Runes to fight at the end of the game even when there are people with True Runes on your side with better knowledge of them that can't do the same against 3 and 5? And let's not forget that stupid fucking magic tree in Suikoden 4.
Smaller complaints aside, though, it seems to me that most of the hatred for Suikoden Tierkreis is that it's different from other Suikodens. Ultimately, that's what every major complaint seems to boil down to. People complain about the system of magic, not because it doesn't work just fine (it mostly does), but because it's different from the previous Suikoden rune-based magic system. People complain about the setting and characters, not because they aren't just fine (they are), but because it's not the regular world Suikoden takes place on and none of the characters have a connection to previous titles. They complain about the focus points of the plot, not because the themes of multiple worlds and fate-containing books don't make for a decent basis, but because the focal point isn't the 27 True Runes. There are complaints about the country-versus-country conflicts, not because they aren't there and aren't fairly okay, but because they don't have the same tactics and political machinations of the previous Suikodens. And so on.*
Basically, the consensus I'm getting is that Suikoden Tierkreis is actually a completely fine game, but that Suikoden fans won't allow themselves to enjoy it because they expect everything to be exactly the same.
This isn't rational, nor is it fair. The fact that Suikoden Tierkreis is a decent game and has notable merits in its storytelling is what should count, not whether or not those elements of plot and characters happen to be like previous games'. You can go ahead and compare it to previous Suikodens and say it's not as good as them, but you can't say that the game is a bad game just because it doesn't compare to a predecessor. If it's a decent game, it's, y'know, a decent game.
I also think that some of the comparisons are silly. I mean, people complain about the lack of the True Runes in Suikoden Tierkreis, but what about Suikoden Tactics? They served no purpose in that game and had nothing to do with its plot that I can remember. Didn't hear much complaint then. And why are people expecting a setting, plot, and overall game that continues the overall story of the main Suikoden world and its people and mysticism from a game whose title clearly denotes it as a side-story off-shoot? I mean, it's not like Konami named the game Suikoden 6 and then had it have very few significant ties to the previous games. It seems obvious to ME that it's going to be some kind of offshoot from the regular series when the regular series is numbered and this one is given a word title. Suikoden Tactics might have been set in the same Suikoden world and have plot and character ties to previous games, but its focus and plot were set on things completely irrelevant to the focus of the main series, so why the big deal with this one?
Suikoden Tierkreis is just fine. It does not deserve its reputation. And rabid Suikoden fans need to get off their groundless high horse, get real, and calm the hell down.
* I mean, I'm not saying that Suikoden Tierkreis is perfect, or even really good, on any of these points, but I am going to have to stand by the idea that it's still at least decent on each.
Anyway, I recently played Suikoden Tierkreis. Now, if you speak this game's name in front of a Suikoden community, you're more likely than not to attract sneers, hisses, retching sounds, and sometimes threats on your life. People call this game the black sheep of the series, an embarrassment to it, a stain on its good name. I didn't actually KNOW this, mind, when I got and started playing the game, but I didn't have high hopes for it myself. First reason was that, as I mentioned, the Suikoden series has not been particularly impressive in the past...8 years. Suikoden Tactics wasn't bad, but it wasn't notably good, either, and the other 2 games we've seen since Suikoden 3 have been lackluster and outright boring, respectively. I'll give Suikoden 5 that it followed the series formula and mimicked a Suikoden game convincingly, but it just lacked the emotional impact and heart that characterized the older games. Suikoden 4 was so abysmally bland that it wasn't just unenjoyable, but playing it actually, I think, lessened the joy you could feel in life from that moment on. And Tierkreis's opening is not exactly awe-inspiring, as I mentioned in my Opening Sequences rant. Even the first parts of the game are kind of off-putting, with main character Sieg, AKA Motormouth, jamming words together so rapidly that you'd swear they put him on fast-forward, except his voice isn't all squeaky. It's like listening to a low-voiced Chip and Dale, only faster.
Nonetheless, by the end of the game, I found the game was decent. Maybe even good. There are some decent characters (Chrodechild's pretty neat, Dirk's alright, and Fredegund is okay, though she had WAY more potential as a deep, involved character than they ever tried to realize), the semi-main villain was decent enough, the plot had a lot of creative aspects and neat ideas, and there were a few moments that were pretty touching. So I wound up pleased with it in the end. Then I hopped onto the internet forums, and found out that this was NOT the typical reaction from Suikoden fans. My curiosity was piqued at this wide-spread hatred, so I investigated a little further to find out why, exactly, the game earns such scorn.
There are a lot of reasons I've been given as to why people don't like it. There's the voice acting, which I mentioned, although I honestly can't say I'd ever dislike a whole game significantly for its voice acting. That's just ridiculous, honestly. Sometimes people don't like the final boss, and feel like he was lame and sloppy. I can't say I thought much of The One King, either, honestly, although I felt that his gimmick of passing himself on was actually somewhat neat, but...this is SUIKODEN. Sloppy, lame, silly, out-of-nowhere over-blown final bosses is one of the most consistent aspects of the series. I mean, it's something to dislike, sure, but how can you hold The One King against Suikoden Tierkreis and not hold Barbarossa randomly becoming a dragon against 1, or villains magically being able to invoke corporeal forms of the True Runes to fight at the end of the game even when there are people with True Runes on your side with better knowledge of them that can't do the same against 3 and 5? And let's not forget that stupid fucking magic tree in Suikoden 4.
Smaller complaints aside, though, it seems to me that most of the hatred for Suikoden Tierkreis is that it's different from other Suikodens. Ultimately, that's what every major complaint seems to boil down to. People complain about the system of magic, not because it doesn't work just fine (it mostly does), but because it's different from the previous Suikoden rune-based magic system. People complain about the setting and characters, not because they aren't just fine (they are), but because it's not the regular world Suikoden takes place on and none of the characters have a connection to previous titles. They complain about the focus points of the plot, not because the themes of multiple worlds and fate-containing books don't make for a decent basis, but because the focal point isn't the 27 True Runes. There are complaints about the country-versus-country conflicts, not because they aren't there and aren't fairly okay, but because they don't have the same tactics and political machinations of the previous Suikodens. And so on.*
Basically, the consensus I'm getting is that Suikoden Tierkreis is actually a completely fine game, but that Suikoden fans won't allow themselves to enjoy it because they expect everything to be exactly the same.
This isn't rational, nor is it fair. The fact that Suikoden Tierkreis is a decent game and has notable merits in its storytelling is what should count, not whether or not those elements of plot and characters happen to be like previous games'. You can go ahead and compare it to previous Suikodens and say it's not as good as them, but you can't say that the game is a bad game just because it doesn't compare to a predecessor. If it's a decent game, it's, y'know, a decent game.
I also think that some of the comparisons are silly. I mean, people complain about the lack of the True Runes in Suikoden Tierkreis, but what about Suikoden Tactics? They served no purpose in that game and had nothing to do with its plot that I can remember. Didn't hear much complaint then. And why are people expecting a setting, plot, and overall game that continues the overall story of the main Suikoden world and its people and mysticism from a game whose title clearly denotes it as a side-story off-shoot? I mean, it's not like Konami named the game Suikoden 6 and then had it have very few significant ties to the previous games. It seems obvious to ME that it's going to be some kind of offshoot from the regular series when the regular series is numbered and this one is given a word title. Suikoden Tactics might have been set in the same Suikoden world and have plot and character ties to previous games, but its focus and plot were set on things completely irrelevant to the focus of the main series, so why the big deal with this one?
Suikoden Tierkreis is just fine. It does not deserve its reputation. And rabid Suikoden fans need to get off their groundless high horse, get real, and calm the hell down.
* I mean, I'm not saying that Suikoden Tierkreis is perfect, or even really good, on any of these points, but I am going to have to stand by the idea that it's still at least decent on each.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Final Fantasy 9 AMV: Porcelain
Basic Fact of Life: If it's a Final Fantasy and it has Full Motion Video, there are dozens, even hundreds, of AMVs featuring it. If it weren't for Kingdom Hearts, the FF series would easily have the most AMVs made for it out there on Youtube and AMV.org and personal sites and wherever else you can find an AMV.
Addendum to that Fact: None of them are worth watching.
Okay, yes, that's a little extreme, but it's close enough to the truth--after watching every Final Fantasy AMV I could stomach for the FFs I've played through, I'd say that 3%, maybe less, of them are worth actually sitting through. The rest range from predictable to lame to messy crap. Lord, if I have to sit through one more Final Fantasy 8 AMV about the horribly-written romance between Squall and Rinoa to annoying, sappy love music...
Anyway, of the few FF AMVs out there worth the watching, I've only found 1 thus far that was worthy of a rant. But it's a damn nice one--an old classic back from nearly a decade ago, made by a talented AMV-maker known as AnimePROPHECY.
Final Fantasy 9: Porcelain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0ZlkegegC4
Poetry in Motion: Visual quality's good throughout. Final Fantasy 9's FMVs were visually stunning in a fairly time-transcending way, so even though they come from a Playstation 1 game, all you need is a decent-quality representation of FF9's cut scenes to have a really lovely AMV to watch.
The visual artistry on the part of AnimePROPHECY here is simple, but effectively so. Many quick fades from one scene to another are used, but they correspond perfectly to the song's pitch and changes, becoming impressive just from their placement. The song is elegantly simple, so these simple tricks, coordinated elegantly, match it quite well. There are also occasionally some fades not from one scene to the next, but from one scene into a blank screen, then to the next scene, again arranged to perfectly compliment the song's rhythm. The beginning of the AMV's an excellent example of this, although it continues on to the very end just as well.
That's most all there is to find for cinematic tricks that AnimePROPHECY uses, but that's really all there should be--the visuals of Final Fantasy 9 really do grab attention and speak for themselves; adding any more complex visual artistry to the mix than simple fades would distract from the natural visuals that the game provides to the AMV, and be overall detrimental to the AMV because of it. The aim of the visual aspect of this AMV is to show the game in all its beauty and wonder, and that's exactly what the AMV achieves.
I Gotta Have More Cowbell: This AMV uses the song Porcelain by Moby. I would normally say in an AMV like this that the song is the greatest strength to it, as it's the focal point that the rest of the AMV is arranged around, and it works damn well in that capacity, but honestly, the other aspects of the AMV are also so strong and attention-grabbing that the music, though the heart and soul of this AMV, is no more or less important than its video component nor its purpose and meaning.
The scene selection to accompany the song's lyrics is quite good. Examples: the line starting at 1:22 talks of a "kaleidoscopic mind," to a scene of characters falling through rushing, circular lights and colors, looking quite like a kaleidoscope, with the camera going for a close-up on the reflection of them all in Zidane's eye--kind of like seeing his mind reflecting the kaleidoscope of colors, the line at 1:44 saying that "this is goodbye" to the scene of Zidane seeing off Dagger and his friends at the end of the game, and the line at 2:53 which talks about waking and "going out of my mind" to an opening, mad-looking eye, a twisted landscape, and crazy main villain Kuja.
However, the lyrics to this song are, ultimately, really not too important to it--the song's focus and memorable trait is its melody, the lovely, upbeat yet ethereal quality of its tune. And the AMV definitely reflects this quality, and uses it to its utmost. The FMVs of Final Fantasy 9, loaded with bright mysticism, colorful magic, awesome events, and eye-catching settings, often perfectly match to the song's tone of wonder, beauty, and the magical unknown, often matching the scene shown to the slightest shifts of instrument and tone in the song. The most easily notable example is how perfectly the scene changes are timed to the music's shifts, but that's really only the beginning of the synchronization of video to the song's mood. It's honestly very difficult for me to put into words, this intangible coordination of soothing wonder between song and video, but it really is there, as I'm sure you can see.
Guy, You Explain: This is another AMV whose purpose is simple, like the last one I did, Fallout 3: Mad World--to summarize and glorify the game, to bare its heart to you and show you or make you remember how great it is.
Does it succeed? Oh yes. The beauty of the Final Fantasy 9 fantasy world and its epic plot are portrayed wonderfully in its cinemas, and the merging of Moby's Porcelain sums it up perfectly, covering the captivating events, grand sense of adventure, soft and poignant love story between Dagger and Zidane, great characters, and general majesty of Final Fantasy 9 with the same grandiose, yet so very subtle beauty that makes the game such a great RPG. This AMV's goal is to invoke within its audience the moving emotion and wonder that the game should be remembered with, and to that end, AnimePROPHECY succeeds brilliantly.
Addendum to that Fact: None of them are worth watching.
Okay, yes, that's a little extreme, but it's close enough to the truth--after watching every Final Fantasy AMV I could stomach for the FFs I've played through, I'd say that 3%, maybe less, of them are worth actually sitting through. The rest range from predictable to lame to messy crap. Lord, if I have to sit through one more Final Fantasy 8 AMV about the horribly-written romance between Squall and Rinoa to annoying, sappy love music...
Anyway, of the few FF AMVs out there worth the watching, I've only found 1 thus far that was worthy of a rant. But it's a damn nice one--an old classic back from nearly a decade ago, made by a talented AMV-maker known as AnimePROPHECY.
Final Fantasy 9: Porcelain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0ZlkegegC4
Poetry in Motion: Visual quality's good throughout. Final Fantasy 9's FMVs were visually stunning in a fairly time-transcending way, so even though they come from a Playstation 1 game, all you need is a decent-quality representation of FF9's cut scenes to have a really lovely AMV to watch.
The visual artistry on the part of AnimePROPHECY here is simple, but effectively so. Many quick fades from one scene to another are used, but they correspond perfectly to the song's pitch and changes, becoming impressive just from their placement. The song is elegantly simple, so these simple tricks, coordinated elegantly, match it quite well. There are also occasionally some fades not from one scene to the next, but from one scene into a blank screen, then to the next scene, again arranged to perfectly compliment the song's rhythm. The beginning of the AMV's an excellent example of this, although it continues on to the very end just as well.
That's most all there is to find for cinematic tricks that AnimePROPHECY uses, but that's really all there should be--the visuals of Final Fantasy 9 really do grab attention and speak for themselves; adding any more complex visual artistry to the mix than simple fades would distract from the natural visuals that the game provides to the AMV, and be overall detrimental to the AMV because of it. The aim of the visual aspect of this AMV is to show the game in all its beauty and wonder, and that's exactly what the AMV achieves.
I Gotta Have More Cowbell: This AMV uses the song Porcelain by Moby. I would normally say in an AMV like this that the song is the greatest strength to it, as it's the focal point that the rest of the AMV is arranged around, and it works damn well in that capacity, but honestly, the other aspects of the AMV are also so strong and attention-grabbing that the music, though the heart and soul of this AMV, is no more or less important than its video component nor its purpose and meaning.
The scene selection to accompany the song's lyrics is quite good. Examples: the line starting at 1:22 talks of a "kaleidoscopic mind," to a scene of characters falling through rushing, circular lights and colors, looking quite like a kaleidoscope, with the camera going for a close-up on the reflection of them all in Zidane's eye--kind of like seeing his mind reflecting the kaleidoscope of colors, the line at 1:44 saying that "this is goodbye" to the scene of Zidane seeing off Dagger and his friends at the end of the game, and the line at 2:53 which talks about waking and "going out of my mind" to an opening, mad-looking eye, a twisted landscape, and crazy main villain Kuja.
However, the lyrics to this song are, ultimately, really not too important to it--the song's focus and memorable trait is its melody, the lovely, upbeat yet ethereal quality of its tune. And the AMV definitely reflects this quality, and uses it to its utmost. The FMVs of Final Fantasy 9, loaded with bright mysticism, colorful magic, awesome events, and eye-catching settings, often perfectly match to the song's tone of wonder, beauty, and the magical unknown, often matching the scene shown to the slightest shifts of instrument and tone in the song. The most easily notable example is how perfectly the scene changes are timed to the music's shifts, but that's really only the beginning of the synchronization of video to the song's mood. It's honestly very difficult for me to put into words, this intangible coordination of soothing wonder between song and video, but it really is there, as I'm sure you can see.
Guy, You Explain: This is another AMV whose purpose is simple, like the last one I did, Fallout 3: Mad World--to summarize and glorify the game, to bare its heart to you and show you or make you remember how great it is.
Does it succeed? Oh yes. The beauty of the Final Fantasy 9 fantasy world and its epic plot are portrayed wonderfully in its cinemas, and the merging of Moby's Porcelain sums it up perfectly, covering the captivating events, grand sense of adventure, soft and poignant love story between Dagger and Zidane, great characters, and general majesty of Final Fantasy 9 with the same grandiose, yet so very subtle beauty that makes the game such a great RPG. This AMV's goal is to invoke within its audience the moving emotion and wonder that the game should be remembered with, and to that end, AnimePROPHECY succeeds brilliantly.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
General RPGs' Minigames 7: Torneko's Weapon Shop Employment
It has been a long time since I did a Minigames Rant, folks. And I was okay with that. I was okay with that, because it meant that I had not encountered or remembered any particularly terrible minigame in an RPG since that latest Minigame Rant. And the fewer notable minigames in my life, the happier I am. But alas, all good things must end.
So I was playing Dragon Quest 4, finally. I've kinda had it on the back-burner for a year or two now, but other games just kept distracting me, as each of them had the attention-grabbing virtue known as not-being-a-Dragon-Quest-game. But I finally did get around to it.
So. Chapter 3 of Dragon Quest 4. You're in control of an aspiring merchant, Torneko, who works in a local weapon store, with the hopes of opening his own and becoming a legend in the business. Well hey, that's fairly different, right? There's some creative potential there. You find yourself, against all odds, becoming ever so slightly interested in a Dragon Quest game. So you send Torneko over to his job, and get ready to make some cash.
And that's basically where the fun stops, clutches its heart, and collapses, never to rise again. For the next 5 or 10 minutes, however long the working day is in the game, you stand behind a desk, and when a customer comes in, you either sell them a weapon they ask for, or you buy a weapon they're selling. Then they leave, and you sit there until the next one comes in and does the same thing. Occasionally the customer will realize they don't have the money or inventory space for the item they want, and leave without making a purchase. If this process does not sound very interesting to you, then congratulations, you have more game development sense than DQ4's makers.
And even though the very concept of this minigame is boring and annoying, it isn't even as interesting as it should have been. Customers will make a note that they can't use the item they're about the buy if they're not the right job class or something, but as far as I can tell, that actually makes absolutely no difference--as far as I can tell, you don't get penalized if you're pushy and sell it to them anyway, nor do you get rewarded if you don't try to sell them the item, so there's really no thought or skill involved with this beyond hitting the "Yes" option over and over. And you can try to haggle the price, sort of, but the process for doing so usually involves you refusing to sell the item for its marked price, the customer assuming you're joking, and then the customer attempting to buy it again for that price. You have to repeat the cycle for half a dozen times before the customer offers to pay a tiny, tiny bit more for it, making it a waste of time--not to mention that you run the risk of having the customer just leave after all. So what tiny variations are available to you just make this game a greater waste of time than ever.
So after turning all sense of self-awareness off for 10 minutes so you can properly appreciate "Wait for People and then Hit the A Button: The Minigame," the day ends and Torneko's boss comes up to pay him his commission on what's been sold. And how much is that reward? For a full day, it's usually around 100 Gold. Now, there are a few RPGs out there in which 100 (insert appropriate currency here) is a significant chunk of change. Dragon Age Origins, for example--100 Gold Sovereigns would be a tremendous reward for a minigame, or really anything else. But in most RPGs, 100 Gold is more or less nothing. And Dragon Quest 4 is in this majority.
Reeling at the fact that Torneko makes the worst commission in the history of mankind, I hopped online to see whether there was something I was missing to all this, whether there was some secret reward beyond the pocket change required to buy a small handful of bottom-tier healing items. And hey, turns out there is--the customers seeking to sell a weapon will, on rare occasions, have a Cautery sword for sale, which is massively more powerful than every other weapon available to Torneko for the rest of the chapter. You can apparently have the store buy the Cautery Sword, then leave and come back to buy it yourself--as long as you can manage to get the hell out of the place before another customer walks in, wants it, and you get stuck telling them No three dozen times before they finally get the hint and leave. So hey, there's SOME reason to keep doing this, at least, so I figured I'd stick it out and get that sword.
Here's an idea of the time this will take to do.
First of all, of any given customer that walks in, I'm gonna say there's only a 1/4 chance that he/she will want to sell instead of buy. Once you've got a seller, there are 6 possible weapons they can choose from to sell, 3 that are in the store and 3 that the store doesn't normally carry, of which the Cautery Sword is one. But the chances of them selling any of the 3 that the store doesn't carry is only about...1/3, I'd say. Rough guess. And of those 3, based on how often I saw each come up as an option, I'd say there's only a 1/4 chance, at best, that it'll be the Cautery Sword they've got. Again, rough estimate.
So. 1/4 x 1/3 x 1/4 = roughly 0.02083, with the 3 repeating after that. So at any given time, the chances that the next customer to walk into the shop will sell the Cautery sword is about 2%. I don't know the actual values in the game, so maybe the odds are actually better, but based on how long I was sitting there bored out of my mind, I'd say this is a fairly accurate number. So chances are that you're going to be bored by this nonsense for a good, long time if you're playing it for the only reason there is to play it at all.
I really don't know what the hell they were thinking when they made this thing. I mean, minigames are stupid wastes of time in general, but this is just incredible in how terrible it is. I mean, just plain wow. This minigame is so mind-numbingly dull...I don't know if I can even properly describe it. It's like Enix wanted to give you a break from the normal boredom that comes of playing Dragon Quest so that you could do something MORE boring. "They might not be bored enough after 2 chapters of no character development, a vague plot, bland music, and endless, boring random encounters--let's give them a REAL treat and crank up the monotony!" the developers said. This minigame is so terrible and dull that it makes me actually wish I were back at my REAL retail job. The act of brushing your teeth is a more exciting venture than playing this minigame. It's so boring, I'm surprised it didn't come from Suikoden 4--and THAT game is so dull that it feels like someone took enough Novocaine to numb an elephant and injected it straight into your brain's pleasure center. Ugh.
So I was playing Dragon Quest 4, finally. I've kinda had it on the back-burner for a year or two now, but other games just kept distracting me, as each of them had the attention-grabbing virtue known as not-being-a-Dragon-Quest-game. But I finally did get around to it.
So. Chapter 3 of Dragon Quest 4. You're in control of an aspiring merchant, Torneko, who works in a local weapon store, with the hopes of opening his own and becoming a legend in the business. Well hey, that's fairly different, right? There's some creative potential there. You find yourself, against all odds, becoming ever so slightly interested in a Dragon Quest game. So you send Torneko over to his job, and get ready to make some cash.
And that's basically where the fun stops, clutches its heart, and collapses, never to rise again. For the next 5 or 10 minutes, however long the working day is in the game, you stand behind a desk, and when a customer comes in, you either sell them a weapon they ask for, or you buy a weapon they're selling. Then they leave, and you sit there until the next one comes in and does the same thing. Occasionally the customer will realize they don't have the money or inventory space for the item they want, and leave without making a purchase. If this process does not sound very interesting to you, then congratulations, you have more game development sense than DQ4's makers.
And even though the very concept of this minigame is boring and annoying, it isn't even as interesting as it should have been. Customers will make a note that they can't use the item they're about the buy if they're not the right job class or something, but as far as I can tell, that actually makes absolutely no difference--as far as I can tell, you don't get penalized if you're pushy and sell it to them anyway, nor do you get rewarded if you don't try to sell them the item, so there's really no thought or skill involved with this beyond hitting the "Yes" option over and over. And you can try to haggle the price, sort of, but the process for doing so usually involves you refusing to sell the item for its marked price, the customer assuming you're joking, and then the customer attempting to buy it again for that price. You have to repeat the cycle for half a dozen times before the customer offers to pay a tiny, tiny bit more for it, making it a waste of time--not to mention that you run the risk of having the customer just leave after all. So what tiny variations are available to you just make this game a greater waste of time than ever.
So after turning all sense of self-awareness off for 10 minutes so you can properly appreciate "Wait for People and then Hit the A Button: The Minigame," the day ends and Torneko's boss comes up to pay him his commission on what's been sold. And how much is that reward? For a full day, it's usually around 100 Gold. Now, there are a few RPGs out there in which 100 (insert appropriate currency here) is a significant chunk of change. Dragon Age Origins, for example--100 Gold Sovereigns would be a tremendous reward for a minigame, or really anything else. But in most RPGs, 100 Gold is more or less nothing. And Dragon Quest 4 is in this majority.
Reeling at the fact that Torneko makes the worst commission in the history of mankind, I hopped online to see whether there was something I was missing to all this, whether there was some secret reward beyond the pocket change required to buy a small handful of bottom-tier healing items. And hey, turns out there is--the customers seeking to sell a weapon will, on rare occasions, have a Cautery sword for sale, which is massively more powerful than every other weapon available to Torneko for the rest of the chapter. You can apparently have the store buy the Cautery Sword, then leave and come back to buy it yourself--as long as you can manage to get the hell out of the place before another customer walks in, wants it, and you get stuck telling them No three dozen times before they finally get the hint and leave. So hey, there's SOME reason to keep doing this, at least, so I figured I'd stick it out and get that sword.
Here's an idea of the time this will take to do.
First of all, of any given customer that walks in, I'm gonna say there's only a 1/4 chance that he/she will want to sell instead of buy. Once you've got a seller, there are 6 possible weapons they can choose from to sell, 3 that are in the store and 3 that the store doesn't normally carry, of which the Cautery Sword is one. But the chances of them selling any of the 3 that the store doesn't carry is only about...1/3, I'd say. Rough guess. And of those 3, based on how often I saw each come up as an option, I'd say there's only a 1/4 chance, at best, that it'll be the Cautery Sword they've got. Again, rough estimate.
So. 1/4 x 1/3 x 1/4 = roughly 0.02083, with the 3 repeating after that. So at any given time, the chances that the next customer to walk into the shop will sell the Cautery sword is about 2%. I don't know the actual values in the game, so maybe the odds are actually better, but based on how long I was sitting there bored out of my mind, I'd say this is a fairly accurate number. So chances are that you're going to be bored by this nonsense for a good, long time if you're playing it for the only reason there is to play it at all.
I really don't know what the hell they were thinking when they made this thing. I mean, minigames are stupid wastes of time in general, but this is just incredible in how terrible it is. I mean, just plain wow. This minigame is so mind-numbingly dull...I don't know if I can even properly describe it. It's like Enix wanted to give you a break from the normal boredom that comes of playing Dragon Quest so that you could do something MORE boring. "They might not be bored enough after 2 chapters of no character development, a vague plot, bland music, and endless, boring random encounters--let's give them a REAL treat and crank up the monotony!" the developers said. This minigame is so terrible and dull that it makes me actually wish I were back at my REAL retail job. The act of brushing your teeth is a more exciting venture than playing this minigame. It's so boring, I'm surprised it didn't come from Suikoden 4--and THAT game is so dull that it feels like someone took enough Novocaine to numb an elephant and injected it straight into your brain's pleasure center. Ugh.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Shin Megami Tensei Series's Demon Fusion
Although not present in all of its games, the Shin Megami Tensei series typically contains a merchant-type service in each game with which you can sacrifice two or more of the creatures following you at that moment in order to create a significantly more powerful entity to help you. These new monsters often have techniques and defenses that will help you to stay a step ahead of, or at least to keep up with, the game's challenges, which is important in an SMT game, let me tell you. Besides the fact that it opens up options for party-member creatures that probably can't be recruited just yet otherwise, Demon Fusion is also handy in that the demons you make will often have slightly boosted stats over what the same monster would have if you just recruited it in combat (or, in the SMT Persona games, get an experience boost that may raise its level), may have some kind of bonus item to give you, and will inherit some of the skills of the monsters you sacrifice for it.
This latter component, however, is the reason that I FUCKING HATE DEMON FUSION WITH ALL THE BITTER, BLACKENED LUMP OF ANIMOSITY THAT IS MY SOUL. You see, it's like this. Before each Fusion actually occurs, you get to see a preview of the monster that will be created. You can see which creature it is, the stats, and the skills, both the inherent ones and the one's it's getting from its parents of sorts. The inherited skills are mostly randomized--unless there's a skill in the parents' set that can't be used by this type of creature, or a skill that can ONLY be used by that sacrificed creature, then any and all of the predecessors' skills are up for grabs via random selection. If you don't see the skill(s) you want, you just nix the Fusion, then try it again.
And again. And again and again and again...simulating this process in text will be boring, so let us instead say: (And Again) x N, where N = any positive whole number less than or equal to 500.
It's not so terrible in the beginning. In the early stages of the games, the monsters you fuse don't have all that many really noteworthy skills to pass on (in fact, they don't even have that many skills, period, so there's less for the random process to choose from), so the most you'll probably want is for the new monster to have one or two varied elemental attack spells. That's not a real problem; you might even get an acceptable spell for the new creature on your first try. It'll surely take you no more than 10 attempts. No problem.
It's later in the games where this process becomes more annoying than the stupidest minigame you've ever played. You'll be sacrificing 2 or more creatures that each have probably 5 - 8 different skills for the inheriting process to randomly choose from, and you'll almost certainly have at least 2 you'll adamantly want your new beast to inherit. I think that the best way to properly describe exactly what makes this whole thing horrible is to run through how it usually goes for me.
BEGINNING: "Oooh! Look at that awesome demonI can create! It's got great resistances, and its only weakness is Fire...but one of the monsters I'm sacrificing has Null Fire, so that'll fix that and make it an ideal front-lines tank! Let's see...I'd also like to see Sacrificial Monster 1's all-healing spell and Resist Physical skills on the new one, and Monster 2's got the same all-healing spell and the ultimate Wind spell, which would be handy. The new monster's going to inherit 3 skills. I know I HAVE to have Null Fire, and I'll be happy with any combination of the other 3 skills I like for the others."
AFTER SETTING THE FUSION UP, SEEING WHAT WILL RESULT, CANCELING IT, AND TRYING AGAIN 50 TIMES: "Okay, this is getting tedious. Damn that randomizer! Fine, I won't be greedy. I'll just insist on having Null Fire and 1 of the other 3 skills I wanted. But of them, Resist Physical and the Wind spell are better, so it'll have to be 1 of them; I'll just give up on the healing spell. And whatever the last slot's filled with will just have to work for me."
AFTER 50 MORE TRIES: "Oh my GOD, how is it possible that random chance wouldn't EVER give me a skill combination I want? Fuck it, I am NOT compromising on this; I want Null Fire AND Resist Physical or the Wind spell. Sooner or later it has got to happen."
AFTER 75 MORE TRIES: "N...No...gotta...gotta stay strong...no compromises...it's gotta happen some time..."
AFTER 50 MORE TRIES: "FINE! I'll accept the healing spell for the second must-have skill. Just so long as Null Fire's with it. That betters my chances for something acceptable, right?"
AFTER 75 MORE TRIES: "Oh Jesus I give up. Just Null Fire. I'll just give up on anything else I want. Just the one damn skill. Anything to get on with things."
AFTER 50 MORE TRIES: "GRRAAAGGHH! Why won't Null Fire even come UP any more? Can this game HEAR me?"
And finally, after a few more tries during which I am screaming, slamming my fist down on my desk, and generally carrying on, I'll get a Fusion possibility that has the Null Fire in it, and I'll tearfully just accept this meager, disappointing offering, now a broken and disturbed man.
What is the POINT of this idiocy? What are they THINKING by randomizing the thing? By letting the gamer know what skills are inherited ahead of time, the SMT makers are basically encouraging the gamer to set the Fusion up over and over again to get at least SOME skill they want, so if the intention of randomizing it is to leave whether you get good skills or not entirely up to chance, the makers have failed, because the gamer has the opportunity to make sure that at least some of the skills they want are certain to be there. Why not just make a Demon Fusion process where you pick and choose a skill or two that you want to keep? I don't even care if they'd have to lessen the number of inherited skills possible down to just 1 or 2; that's really all the preferred skills I'm ever getting anyway, and it'd still save me all the time it takes to get them otherwise.
And yeah, you can try to say that it could be worse, that the creators could just not show you anything ahead of time and let you get whatever skills the game decides AFTER the Fusion, when it's too late to change anything, but I actually think that would STILL be less annoying. At least in that circumstance, you're limited by your money and monsters in the game as to how many times you can redo the Demon Fusion to get the abilities you want out of it. You would have to just accept it and move on; you wouldn't have the choice of setting up and canceling out of the Fusion 1000 times to get it just like you want it. Sure, it would still be a pain in the ass and make things more difficult...but it wouldn't be so aggravatingly monotonous. How can these games be created with such attentive care to detail in all the other aspects of game play, but keep recycling this poorly-conceived nightmare over and over?
This latter component, however, is the reason that I FUCKING HATE DEMON FUSION WITH ALL THE BITTER, BLACKENED LUMP OF ANIMOSITY THAT IS MY SOUL. You see, it's like this. Before each Fusion actually occurs, you get to see a preview of the monster that will be created. You can see which creature it is, the stats, and the skills, both the inherent ones and the one's it's getting from its parents of sorts. The inherited skills are mostly randomized--unless there's a skill in the parents' set that can't be used by this type of creature, or a skill that can ONLY be used by that sacrificed creature, then any and all of the predecessors' skills are up for grabs via random selection. If you don't see the skill(s) you want, you just nix the Fusion, then try it again.
And again. And again and again and again...simulating this process in text will be boring, so let us instead say: (And Again) x N, where N = any positive whole number less than or equal to 500.
It's not so terrible in the beginning. In the early stages of the games, the monsters you fuse don't have all that many really noteworthy skills to pass on (in fact, they don't even have that many skills, period, so there's less for the random process to choose from), so the most you'll probably want is for the new monster to have one or two varied elemental attack spells. That's not a real problem; you might even get an acceptable spell for the new creature on your first try. It'll surely take you no more than 10 attempts. No problem.
It's later in the games where this process becomes more annoying than the stupidest minigame you've ever played. You'll be sacrificing 2 or more creatures that each have probably 5 - 8 different skills for the inheriting process to randomly choose from, and you'll almost certainly have at least 2 you'll adamantly want your new beast to inherit. I think that the best way to properly describe exactly what makes this whole thing horrible is to run through how it usually goes for me.
BEGINNING: "Oooh! Look at that awesome demonI can create! It's got great resistances, and its only weakness is Fire...but one of the monsters I'm sacrificing has Null Fire, so that'll fix that and make it an ideal front-lines tank! Let's see...I'd also like to see Sacrificial Monster 1's all-healing spell and Resist Physical skills on the new one, and Monster 2's got the same all-healing spell and the ultimate Wind spell, which would be handy. The new monster's going to inherit 3 skills. I know I HAVE to have Null Fire, and I'll be happy with any combination of the other 3 skills I like for the others."
AFTER SETTING THE FUSION UP, SEEING WHAT WILL RESULT, CANCELING IT, AND TRYING AGAIN 50 TIMES: "Okay, this is getting tedious. Damn that randomizer! Fine, I won't be greedy. I'll just insist on having Null Fire and 1 of the other 3 skills I wanted. But of them, Resist Physical and the Wind spell are better, so it'll have to be 1 of them; I'll just give up on the healing spell. And whatever the last slot's filled with will just have to work for me."
AFTER 50 MORE TRIES: "Oh my GOD, how is it possible that random chance wouldn't EVER give me a skill combination I want? Fuck it, I am NOT compromising on this; I want Null Fire AND Resist Physical or the Wind spell. Sooner or later it has got to happen."
AFTER 75 MORE TRIES: "N...No...gotta...gotta stay strong...no compromises...it's gotta happen some time..."
AFTER 50 MORE TRIES: "FINE! I'll accept the healing spell for the second must-have skill. Just so long as Null Fire's with it. That betters my chances for something acceptable, right?"
AFTER 75 MORE TRIES: "Oh Jesus I give up. Just Null Fire. I'll just give up on anything else I want. Just the one damn skill. Anything to get on with things."
AFTER 50 MORE TRIES: "GRRAAAGGHH! Why won't Null Fire even come UP any more? Can this game HEAR me?"
And finally, after a few more tries during which I am screaming, slamming my fist down on my desk, and generally carrying on, I'll get a Fusion possibility that has the Null Fire in it, and I'll tearfully just accept this meager, disappointing offering, now a broken and disturbed man.
What is the POINT of this idiocy? What are they THINKING by randomizing the thing? By letting the gamer know what skills are inherited ahead of time, the SMT makers are basically encouraging the gamer to set the Fusion up over and over again to get at least SOME skill they want, so if the intention of randomizing it is to leave whether you get good skills or not entirely up to chance, the makers have failed, because the gamer has the opportunity to make sure that at least some of the skills they want are certain to be there. Why not just make a Demon Fusion process where you pick and choose a skill or two that you want to keep? I don't even care if they'd have to lessen the number of inherited skills possible down to just 1 or 2; that's really all the preferred skills I'm ever getting anyway, and it'd still save me all the time it takes to get them otherwise.
And yeah, you can try to say that it could be worse, that the creators could just not show you anything ahead of time and let you get whatever skills the game decides AFTER the Fusion, when it's too late to change anything, but I actually think that would STILL be less annoying. At least in that circumstance, you're limited by your money and monsters in the game as to how many times you can redo the Demon Fusion to get the abilities you want out of it. You would have to just accept it and move on; you wouldn't have the choice of setting up and canceling out of the Fusion 1000 times to get it just like you want it. Sure, it would still be a pain in the ass and make things more difficult...but it wouldn't be so aggravatingly monotonous. How can these games be created with such attentive care to detail in all the other aspects of game play, but keep recycling this poorly-conceived nightmare over and over?
Thursday, April 22, 2010
General RPGs' Opening Sequences
Thanks to Ecclesiastes again for another good idea for a rant.
Opening sequences. They're not a new concept--the idea of having an opening that shows the premise and characters of your work through various scenes spliced together to the main theme was a standard for television shows decades before even the concept of video games had been thought up. These original music videos were used by sitcoms, dramas, soaps, and especially cartoons without fail, and often still are.
RPGs' opening sequences usually occur immediately before the title screen, after the title screen's been up for a minute or so without any buttons being pressed, or once you begin a new game. Some games will have even have more than one--like, one that happens before the title screen, and one that occurs after the title screen's been up for a bit. The purpose of the opening sequence is, as near as I can figure, to get you excited and interested in the game you're about to play, and to give you a taste of the game's themes, scope, ideas, setting, and/or characters. Most opening sequences hit on most or all of these points in one way or another. For example, take the opening sequence to Tales of the Abyss, which is a pretty good specimen of the average opening sequence. The opening is a montage of anime scenes portraying specific events from the game (which, incidentally, are usually not actually portrayed in anime FMV cinemas when they're actually happening in-game) that grab your attention, containing both scenes of action and scenes of mysticism and so on, all to a rather fast-paced main theme. The idea is clearly to grab your attention immediately. The scenes show several of the game's places and suspenseful moments (providing a taste of its scope, ideas, and setting), and has a part which shows each of the main characters one by one, thus giving you a quick orientation to them.
The concept of an opening sequence is a good one. It's entertaining, and it can be a good, effective way to get a player into the right mood for the game, which can be important. I mean, sure, if you're playing a game from the Tales of series, you probably don't need to be told that it's going to be a very colorful, anime-ish adventure, so setting the mood might not be so essential, but with a game like, say, Breath of Fire 5, setting the mood is significantly important, especially if the audience is at all familiar with previous games in the series. Breath of Fires 1 - 4 were all decidedly fantasy games with a world-spanning scope and the feeling of a save-the-world adventure.* Breath of Fire 5's opening sequence, though, is gritty and at times somewhat aggressive, showing a grimy urban underground and emphasizing a personal struggle, while showcasing the artistic style and setting, which are all major factors in the game. It helps you get into the feel of the game before you start playing, and in this case, it's helpful, because a player might otherwise feel a little disjointed at playing something very obviously not the fantasy epic they're accustomed to with RPGs.
Of course, there are some common annoyances with opening sequences, too. For one, the JPop. The terrible, terrible JPop. Now it's not like I don't occasionally (actually, "rarely" is closer) like a pop song from Japan. Hell, I'd say JPop has as good a chance of producing a quality song as any genre of this hemisphere. But I can't recall the last time I saw an opening sequence set to a JPop tune that wasn't just utterly horrible to listen to. Opening sequence JPop tunes only seem to come in one variety: Whiny and Disjointed, Interspersed with Screeching. Y'know, if the rest of the game's going to have tunes that actually fit in appropriately to the scenes they play in and don't have keening vocals "singing" one of the most annoying languages ever spoken, I don't see why the opening song, which should be, y'know, trying to create an accurate feel of the game, has to be radically different. Take Grandia 3's terrible opening sequence--the song to it is generic and pointless JPop. It doesn't get you ready for an adventure in any way, it doesn't stand out or fit the game's feel at all, and frankly, it's not particularly nice to listen to. I guess you could say that it actually IS relevant given that the game itself is generic, boring crap, but I somehow doubt that was what SquareEnix was going for.**
Worse than the vocal stylings of a talent-deficient teenager whose highest aspiration is to be one of a virtual sea of Japanese pop idols for whom the phrase "5 minutes of fame" is unrealistically optimistic by a good 4 minutes, though, is some of the visual content of some opening sequences. First of all, there are some out there that just plain spoil too much of the game. The problem with showing scenes from the game in an opening sequence, you see, is that one will usually take some of the game's best and most gripping parts to show, which tend to be plot-important enough that showing any part of them gives stuff away that would have otherwise been surprising and interesting! Giving away your better plot twists and moments of tension before the game has even begun is NOT an effective strategy for preparing your audience to maintain an interest for a plot that takes 50 hours to tell.
Another problem is the rare opening sequence that actually just has no relevance to the game. I mean, Suikoden Tierkreis's opening sequence doesn't suggest an RPG adventure that involves danger and combat and mysticism so much as it suggests a long nature walk with an abundant amount of photo ops of anime characters standing and looking out to the horizon in a thoughtful way. When the whole point, as near as I can figure it, of an opening sequence is to give a sample of what's to come and get you interested in the game's events, showing a bunch of stuff--BORING stuff--that just doesn't really have much or anything to do with the game just defeats the purpose of having it.
A personal irritation with these things that I often have is also how often opening sequences reuse Full Motion Videos from the game itself. FMVs, be they 3D or anime or whatever, are meant to be the attention-grabbers in an RPG, the moments that are so important that they have to be shown in cinema form--something to look forward to, essentially. So I kind of feel like I'm getting cheated a little when a lot/all of the opening sequence's cinematic footage is taken from the FMVs you'll already see. I mean, not only does it invite the problem of spoiling the plot that I mentioned above, but it also lessens my interest--I'll be slightly less interested in the FMVs in the game that I've already seen a decent glimpse of, and after I've seen them, I'll be less interested in the opening sequence because it's just little pieces of larger cinemas. I just feel that it's better, and gives the audience a little extra, to make the FMV of your opening sequence portray stuff that doesn't already occur in FMV during the game. You take the FMV opening sequence Square added to their Chrono Trigger rerelease for the Playstation 1--it's got lots of anime cinema in it to watch that's neat, showing various situations and scenes from the game, but the actual in-game FMVs aren't included, giving us more to watch instead of just recycling the same FMVs multiple times.
Opening sequences are more important than they're often given credit for. A good one, like the original opening sequence of Chrono Trigger, which had exciting music, good direction, and set the game's tone perfectly, can get the player in just the right mood to appreciate the game all the more--hell, a good enough opening sequence might actually buy a bad game some time before the player starts to realize that the game's not all that the exciting beginning promised. It worked admirably with Chrono Cross's 2 opening sequences, particularly FMV one--that one is so effective as a preparer for adventure that watching it STILL gets me excited and ready to play the game it's showing, even though I HAVE played it and KNOW that it is actually awful. Conversely, a bad one can just drag a game down, an irritating strike against the game before it's even begun. A little effort and good directing sense on this matter can go a long way for an RPG.
* Even though one, arguably two, of them ended up not having world-saving as their main purpose.
** Then again, who knows...considering SquareEnix's business plan and overall level of game quality from around the time of Grandia 3 up to the present moment, it very well could be that they DID intend to make a crappy opening sequence to recognize and reflect the game's poor quality. Just another in a long line of "Fuck Yous" to their loyal fanbase.
Opening sequences. They're not a new concept--the idea of having an opening that shows the premise and characters of your work through various scenes spliced together to the main theme was a standard for television shows decades before even the concept of video games had been thought up. These original music videos were used by sitcoms, dramas, soaps, and especially cartoons without fail, and often still are.
RPGs' opening sequences usually occur immediately before the title screen, after the title screen's been up for a minute or so without any buttons being pressed, or once you begin a new game. Some games will have even have more than one--like, one that happens before the title screen, and one that occurs after the title screen's been up for a bit. The purpose of the opening sequence is, as near as I can figure, to get you excited and interested in the game you're about to play, and to give you a taste of the game's themes, scope, ideas, setting, and/or characters. Most opening sequences hit on most or all of these points in one way or another. For example, take the opening sequence to Tales of the Abyss, which is a pretty good specimen of the average opening sequence. The opening is a montage of anime scenes portraying specific events from the game (which, incidentally, are usually not actually portrayed in anime FMV cinemas when they're actually happening in-game) that grab your attention, containing both scenes of action and scenes of mysticism and so on, all to a rather fast-paced main theme. The idea is clearly to grab your attention immediately. The scenes show several of the game's places and suspenseful moments (providing a taste of its scope, ideas, and setting), and has a part which shows each of the main characters one by one, thus giving you a quick orientation to them.
The concept of an opening sequence is a good one. It's entertaining, and it can be a good, effective way to get a player into the right mood for the game, which can be important. I mean, sure, if you're playing a game from the Tales of series, you probably don't need to be told that it's going to be a very colorful, anime-ish adventure, so setting the mood might not be so essential, but with a game like, say, Breath of Fire 5, setting the mood is significantly important, especially if the audience is at all familiar with previous games in the series. Breath of Fires 1 - 4 were all decidedly fantasy games with a world-spanning scope and the feeling of a save-the-world adventure.* Breath of Fire 5's opening sequence, though, is gritty and at times somewhat aggressive, showing a grimy urban underground and emphasizing a personal struggle, while showcasing the artistic style and setting, which are all major factors in the game. It helps you get into the feel of the game before you start playing, and in this case, it's helpful, because a player might otherwise feel a little disjointed at playing something very obviously not the fantasy epic they're accustomed to with RPGs.
Of course, there are some common annoyances with opening sequences, too. For one, the JPop. The terrible, terrible JPop. Now it's not like I don't occasionally (actually, "rarely" is closer) like a pop song from Japan. Hell, I'd say JPop has as good a chance of producing a quality song as any genre of this hemisphere. But I can't recall the last time I saw an opening sequence set to a JPop tune that wasn't just utterly horrible to listen to. Opening sequence JPop tunes only seem to come in one variety: Whiny and Disjointed, Interspersed with Screeching. Y'know, if the rest of the game's going to have tunes that actually fit in appropriately to the scenes they play in and don't have keening vocals "singing" one of the most annoying languages ever spoken, I don't see why the opening song, which should be, y'know, trying to create an accurate feel of the game, has to be radically different. Take Grandia 3's terrible opening sequence--the song to it is generic and pointless JPop. It doesn't get you ready for an adventure in any way, it doesn't stand out or fit the game's feel at all, and frankly, it's not particularly nice to listen to. I guess you could say that it actually IS relevant given that the game itself is generic, boring crap, but I somehow doubt that was what SquareEnix was going for.**
Worse than the vocal stylings of a talent-deficient teenager whose highest aspiration is to be one of a virtual sea of Japanese pop idols for whom the phrase "5 minutes of fame" is unrealistically optimistic by a good 4 minutes, though, is some of the visual content of some opening sequences. First of all, there are some out there that just plain spoil too much of the game. The problem with showing scenes from the game in an opening sequence, you see, is that one will usually take some of the game's best and most gripping parts to show, which tend to be plot-important enough that showing any part of them gives stuff away that would have otherwise been surprising and interesting! Giving away your better plot twists and moments of tension before the game has even begun is NOT an effective strategy for preparing your audience to maintain an interest for a plot that takes 50 hours to tell.
Another problem is the rare opening sequence that actually just has no relevance to the game. I mean, Suikoden Tierkreis's opening sequence doesn't suggest an RPG adventure that involves danger and combat and mysticism so much as it suggests a long nature walk with an abundant amount of photo ops of anime characters standing and looking out to the horizon in a thoughtful way. When the whole point, as near as I can figure it, of an opening sequence is to give a sample of what's to come and get you interested in the game's events, showing a bunch of stuff--BORING stuff--that just doesn't really have much or anything to do with the game just defeats the purpose of having it.
A personal irritation with these things that I often have is also how often opening sequences reuse Full Motion Videos from the game itself. FMVs, be they 3D or anime or whatever, are meant to be the attention-grabbers in an RPG, the moments that are so important that they have to be shown in cinema form--something to look forward to, essentially. So I kind of feel like I'm getting cheated a little when a lot/all of the opening sequence's cinematic footage is taken from the FMVs you'll already see. I mean, not only does it invite the problem of spoiling the plot that I mentioned above, but it also lessens my interest--I'll be slightly less interested in the FMVs in the game that I've already seen a decent glimpse of, and after I've seen them, I'll be less interested in the opening sequence because it's just little pieces of larger cinemas. I just feel that it's better, and gives the audience a little extra, to make the FMV of your opening sequence portray stuff that doesn't already occur in FMV during the game. You take the FMV opening sequence Square added to their Chrono Trigger rerelease for the Playstation 1--it's got lots of anime cinema in it to watch that's neat, showing various situations and scenes from the game, but the actual in-game FMVs aren't included, giving us more to watch instead of just recycling the same FMVs multiple times.
Opening sequences are more important than they're often given credit for. A good one, like the original opening sequence of Chrono Trigger, which had exciting music, good direction, and set the game's tone perfectly, can get the player in just the right mood to appreciate the game all the more--hell, a good enough opening sequence might actually buy a bad game some time before the player starts to realize that the game's not all that the exciting beginning promised. It worked admirably with Chrono Cross's 2 opening sequences, particularly FMV one--that one is so effective as a preparer for adventure that watching it STILL gets me excited and ready to play the game it's showing, even though I HAVE played it and KNOW that it is actually awful. Conversely, a bad one can just drag a game down, an irritating strike against the game before it's even begun. A little effort and good directing sense on this matter can go a long way for an RPG.
* Even though one, arguably two, of them ended up not having world-saving as their main purpose.
** Then again, who knows...considering SquareEnix's business plan and overall level of game quality from around the time of Grandia 3 up to the present moment, it very well could be that they DID intend to make a crappy opening sequence to recognize and reflect the game's poor quality. Just another in a long line of "Fuck Yous" to their loyal fanbase.
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