F4LL3N said:
FFXIII haters have the same problem CoD haters had (before it became uncool to hate CoD)... Their arguments are nonsensical and flawed in nearly every way imaginable.
I beg to differ. I've been a devoted FF fan since the NES days and I went into FF13 with a very open mind... and I walked away with a LOT of problems noticed and FF13 as my least favorite core FF title ever.
F4LL3N said:
I'll go out on a limb here and say 96% of all games ever created are linear. Yet FFXIII is the WORSE game ever for it. Great argument you have there.
"Linearity" is not necessarily the problem. In my game design classes, we were taught to follow the "string of pearls" design philosophy; what that means is you create a narrative thread, something that is linear and story-driven, and then you give the players a contained area of exploration and freedom, just enough to engage them and make them feel as if they are in control. Once they accomplish their goals, you inject a new string (cutscene, dialogue) that leads them to a new pearl (gameplay, exploration, puzzle-solving, discovery). Rinse and repeat.
That means every game is "linear". The problem is FF13's "pearls" are not very good or gameplay-centered. The "strings" are given priority. The illusion of freedom is barely there, the sense of player control highly limited, and the feeling of self-fulfillment and investment diminished. Therein lies the difference.
F4LL3N said:
"JRPGs are stagnant!" ...FFXIII innovated too much. Awesome argument you have there.
I certainly never said that. I know plenty who have, but they're wrong. That doesn't mean FF13 isn't a poor example of a JRPG. It regresses the entire genre and puts the game on a sense of autopilot, doing very little "new" yet removing so many beloved features with so little evolution.
You want examples of non-stagnant, dynamic JRPGs from this generation? Try "The World Ends With You", "Lost Odyssey", "Xenoblade", or "Persona".
F4LL3N said:
"FFXIII isn't even a game." Yet you play it... Contraception?
"Contraception" means to prevent pregnancy, dear... I think you mean "contradiction".
I've never heard this argument. Ever. Though it implies it is "less" a game and "more" an interactive movie. The gist of a game is interactivity, yet, by all reports and my own 100+ hours of experience with the game, it is the LEAST interactive game in the series. You can barely interact with the characters, story, battles, monsters, or even the level up system. It is ALL pre-planned, unlike FFXII which allowed for a wide range of customization, personalization, exploration, and modification. FFXIII strips control from the player at every turn while letting the bare essentials of its genre exist to string players along its convoluted story. Speaking of which...
F4LL3N said:
"I play games for their storylines..." FFXIII had TOO much story!1!!one!!two!
No. FF13 didn't have too much or too little story. What it had, pure and simple, was just a convoluted, nonsensical story that did nothing to ease players into its world of nonsense terms. Noxis Crystarium, L'Cie, fal'Cie, Cocoon, Gran Pulse, Paradigm Shift, Sanctum, Focus, Bodhum... what's the point of all this terms? The game never pauses to catch the player up to speed.
That's just the technical aspects of the game's terminology. The game is filled with useless characters that serve no story point. Remember Jihl? Who is she? What does she want? Why is she doing what she's doing? Why is she in the game at all? Or how about Yuj. Who's Yuj? Exactly.
The story's problems were two-fold; a lack of explanation and development, and a lack of coherence and logic.
The ending of FF13 was one of the most unpleasantly rambling, incoherent, bizarre, and pointless climaxes I've ever seen since the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Things happen for arbitrary reasons, without explanation, logic disappears, game continuity is broken, and the end "wraps up" without feeling like I, the player, had any hand in it. It was hollow, shallow, nonsensical... but, hey, that Leona Lewis song wasn't that bad, was it?
F4LL3N said:
"All you press is auto-battle!" I'm sorry, you mustn't have understood the concept of the Paradigm system.
To be fair, you can't win every battle with auto-battle... but you CAN win MOST of them. Especially at the beginning. Chapter 11 is where I was forced to abandon that practice (after around 28 hours of doing it), but then a second problem came in; you really only had one correct way of fighting the bosses and end-level monsters. You couldn't deviate from their one-way formula. I have killed so many damn giant turtles at this point that it's automatic for me... and it's also insanely dull, just as dull as mashing auto-battle.
Secondly, the game DOES auto-ability so many things I would like control over, like who my healers heal (and using a pheonix down on the party leader would help), where to place them on the battlefield (stop taking damage from the turtle's giant feet!), and the ability to summon from more than just one character (the party leader). The system isn't bad... but I can accurately say I auto-battled with no problems all the way to Gran Pulse.
F4LL3N said:
The game has been out for nearly a year and I still haven't heard a decent argument against it. The whole anti-FFXIII movement is one big copy paste.
Besides the examples I gave? I could also point out all the rules of game design the game breaks, from little ones ("tutorials should be non-intrusive, brief, and concise") to major ones ("cutscenes, narrative, and scripting should never get in the way of gameplay or player experience").
F4LL3N said:
I won't even get into the characters. Because obviously every game developer should be recreating the same copy-paste muscle bound dickhead with absolutely no personality or individuality. It would be the morally right thing to do, imo.
I would call Lightning a "muscle-bound dickhead"... because acts just like one, even if she has boobs. I'm actually a bit offended Square Enix thought that making a "strong" woman thought that meant she should physically punch and assault all her friends throughout the game and act snippy towards them. That's not even touching the morose and ironically-named Hope, the ear-bleedingly annoying Vanille, and the rather grating not-Balthier Snow.
Now, look back at prior games in the series. A character like Terra, a woman dealing with prejudice, abandonment issues, involuntary murder of innocents, and a fear of her own powers who finds the strength and confidence to make peace with herself. Or Celes, a woman who at one point is used and abused, then her friends all vanish and she falls into a depression so deep she attempts suicide, only to recover from her low point, find the strength to find joy in life, and acts as the main character of the second-half of FF6 to recruit heroes to save the world. Look at FF9's Vivi, a small child with a great power who discovers he was created to kill people and quickly comes to learn that he will die very soon; he's only around 8 years old and he learns he will die and must deal with his own impending mortality while fighting to preserve the life he has lived and the lives of those he cares for. Look at Kain, a man whose best friend is in love with the girl he loves and can never be with, to the point it drives him mad with grief and jealousy, forcing him to do evil things, only to be repentant and seek to atone for his mistakes. Look at Locke, a man whose lover died and drove him into a state of deep grief that he masks with humor and charm, yet driving him to vow never to let the woman around him suffer and die as she did.
Characters driven by their complex histories. Characters that undergo natural story arcs as they deal with conflict, not just against god-like bosses, but amidst their own failings, and dealing with them, coming to terms with them, handling these problems like mature adults with a past they're eager to put to rest.
Now, tell me this; why is Lightning in the military? Go ahead. I'll wait. Okay, when, and why, did Snow organize a resistance force? What was Hope's relationship with his mother? Why were they there? How did Fang and Vanille wind up together? Where is the mother of Sazh's child? Why is Lightning against Snow and Serah's marriage? What does Lightning have against Snow? How did Serah and Snow meet and fall in love? Where was Hope's father at the beginning and why? Why, even, did Lightning decide to change her name to "Lightning", and why the name "Lightning"?
Notice any gaps, any character history, missing that might make people, I don't know, care about these characters? Funny how people say Lightning is a female Cloud, and yet in FF7 the game pauses to fully explore Cloud's past. We see his hometown, his relationship with his mother (and his inability to cope with her death). We see his friendship with Tifa (and his unrequited love for her). We see the reason why he left town to become a soldier, we see his return to town, his shame and embarrassment at failing to live up to his promises, we see his friendship with Zack, we see his admiration of Sephiroth, we see his pain, his trauma, and all the events of his past that lead to him becoming the man he was at the start of the game.
How did Lightning become who she was at the start of the game? Because I played the game thoroughly and I can't tell you.
F4LL3N said:
Btw, I can't wait for FFXIII-2. Whether it got 40/40 or 2/40.
Good for you. Not saying you can't enjoy what you enjoy, even if I don't understand why. I don't understand "Twilight" either, but I won't disparage anyone for liking it.
F4LL3N said:
EDIT: At the very least, I've forgotten one.
"$60 for a 5 hour campaign is borderline evil!" ...FFXIII's intro is TOO long. Oh no, an 8 hour intro. I hate when companies give me too much value for money. I truly do.
"Value"? That's VERY subjective.
I think the saying is "quality over quantity". Portal 1 is a short game, but every second of it is smart, clever, fun, and enjoyable. There are games that are 200 hours of boring, mundane actions and derivative gameplay. Guess which is a better "value" for my money, and my TIME?
In fact, I'd say time is more valuable than money. A 5 hour campaign I enjoyed is 5 hours I would treasure, but 8 hours of boring, tedious linear training wheels and auto-battles against the same generic grunts with no changes to gameplay, no new ideas, no mini-games to break up the monotony, no side-quests to pursue, no towns to explore, no secrets to discover, no character customization to engage in, no special treasures to collect, nobody new to talk to... that is NOT a good value, neither for my money NOR my time.
The thing is... FF13's foundation IS strong... but nearly every FF game had so much more depth, content, and player freedom than FF13 did. On it's own, I found FF13 decent but lacking, but compared to its prior pedigree, it's extremely disappointing how shallow and restrictive it was.
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