EternallyBored said:
You're kidding right? Please tell me you're kidding. There is no way something that stupid can be real.
-looks it up-
Well then... I stand corrected.
The Best Explanation for why FF 13 was a Terrible Game
- Thread starter gavinmcinns
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You're kidding right? Please tell me you're kidding. There is no way something that stupid can be real.
-looks it up-
Well then... I stand corrected.
This just struck me; the fal'cie want Lightning and the peanut gallery to destroy Cocoon, so that God will come back and figure out why there's a pile-up outside the pearly gates or whatever. Question; why'd the fal'cie choose Lightning for this task? Given what a "master manipulator" the fal'cie leader is supposed to be, wouldn't it be easier to get Cocoon destroyed if he got someone like, oh I dunno, Kefka, or some other omnicidal maniac to do the job? Someone who wouldn't mind destroying the world because they're already batshit-on-a-biscuit crazy?
I can do one better: Because Final Fantasy 13 tries as hard as it can to not be a game.
Battles are 95% automated. All you do is change Paradigms and occasionally buff/debuff.
Crystarium is pointless filler that might as well be automated.
Level design is restrictive to an absolute; exploration does not exist at all until Gran Pulse, and even that exploration is nothing special (it may only appear cool and good because you had to endure 20 hours of The Hallway to get there; taken on its own merits, it's adequate if not a bit underwhelming).
These aren't little things I'm nitpicking; they're core elements of RPGs: Combat, Character Progression and Exploration.
THE PLAYER'S INVOLVEMENT IN ALL OF THOSE THINGS IS KEPT TO THE BAREST MINIMUM, IF NOT OUTRIGHT ELIMINATED.
FF13 goes to great lengths to remove the most fundamental element of a video game: Player Agency.
I don't call FF13 a game, because it's trying to not be one.
It's more akin to a railway tour. You see the sights, ride the rails, but do nothing of your own initiative.
FF13's story, is one of the greatest failures I've ever seen in a visual medium. But I'm not even going to bother commenting on that since shitty story and characters aren't enough to disqualify it as a game in the first place.
Battles are 95% automated. All you do is change Paradigms and occasionally buff/debuff.
Crystarium is pointless filler that might as well be automated.
Level design is restrictive to an absolute; exploration does not exist at all until Gran Pulse, and even that exploration is nothing special (it may only appear cool and good because you had to endure 20 hours of The Hallway to get there; taken on its own merits, it's adequate if not a bit underwhelming).
These aren't little things I'm nitpicking; they're core elements of RPGs: Combat, Character Progression and Exploration.
THE PLAYER'S INVOLVEMENT IN ALL OF THOSE THINGS IS KEPT TO THE BAREST MINIMUM, IF NOT OUTRIGHT ELIMINATED.
FF13 goes to great lengths to remove the most fundamental element of a video game: Player Agency.
I don't call FF13 a game, because it's trying to not be one.
It's more akin to a railway tour. You see the sights, ride the rails, but do nothing of your own initiative.
FF13's story, is one of the greatest failures I've ever seen in a visual medium. But I'm not even going to bother commenting on that since shitty story and characters aren't enough to disqualify it as a game in the first place.
The whole thing is convoluted as hell, but the main thrust seems to be that the Cocoon Fal'cie are the ones with the plan to destroy themselves, and summon the creator by sacrificing humanity with them. The Fal'cie leader, Barthandelus, does this by trying to summon Ragnarok, which is a creature that Fang and Vanille turned into centuries ago when cocoon was at war with Pulse, when they scarred cocoon, the goddess of death, Etro, turned them to crystal in order to prevent them from destroying cooon.Mangod said:
Why do Fang and Vanille have the power to turn into a giant doomsday monster? Fuck if I know, maybe it's hidden in a datalog or expanded on elsewhere, but I don't remember them ever explaining why Fang and Vanille have that particular power. Anyway, so after being turned to crystal, Fang and Vanille are brought on to Cocoon where they hibernate for centuries, until they wake up and threaten one of the Cocoon Fal'cie, which turns Sazh's son into a L'cie to protect itself for some reason, dunno how a kid was supposed to accomplish that, but whatever, the whole L'cie thing in general seems to operate on really inconsistent rules. Moving on, Fang and Vanille waking up seems to also wake up a hibernating Pulse Fal'cie, which is the one that turns most of the main characters into L'cie. While Barthadelus, seems to only really be concerned with Fang and Vanille, he includes the others by trying to manipulate them into destroying Orphan, the entire point seems to be pushing Fang and Vanille into transforming into Ragnarok again.
So yeah, that's kind of why the Fal'cie use the more unpredictable characters, because they are Pulse L'cie, and they really only wanted Fang and Vanille anyway, but that's never explained very well. You get the impression throughout the game that Ragnarok isn't absolutely eseential, and that the Fal'cie will use other methods to kill everyone on cocoon if the heroes fail to kill them, but Ragnarok is their preferred method since it can apparently destroy Orphan or something. Except they never really make it clear if Ragnarok is the only thing that can do that, since they seem to imply that just blowing Orphan up conventionally would work too, but then you wouldn't be able to have Ragnarok save cocoon at the last second by freezing it in a crystal lava geyser.
TL;DR: the whole L'cie, Fal'cie thing is really inconsistent, and the rules seem to change at the convenience of the plot, but basically Fang and Vanille are the ones the Fal'cie want to destroy cocoon, except they may not actually be necessary, in which case, yeah, the Fal'cie could have just opened gates to Pulse at any time, and had the powerful wildlife just stonp every human into the ground. The Fal'cie aren't very good at this whole planning thing.
gavinmcinns said:
It gets even better, Spoilers incoming:Tank207 said:
Chocolina, that's the chocobos name, gets ejected from the time stream at some point in XIII-2, while the world is falling apart. While drifting through infinite time and space, the little chocobo starts wishing really really hard to help people, and her prayers are answered by the motherfucking Goddess of death, Etro, who turns her into a human chocobo hybrid in order to travel through time and sell stuff apparently. She exists simultaneously in all time periods, being everywhere and nowhere, so kind of like Schrodinger's cat, if the cat was a chocobo woman in a feather bikini.
When you finally do get her backstory, she travels back in time to fuck with Sazh by revealing that she is the chocobo he bought for his son, this being time travel, he still has that chocobo on him as she's revealing this. The then fucks with him further by pretending that telling him this resolved some sort of time paradox and then proceeds to pretend to get wiped from existence. As of Lightning Returns, Sazh still has the actual baby chocobo, that never grew up because the end of 13-2 involved freezing time and leaving everyone immortal, including the kids spending centuries never growing up. Simultaneously, the human Chocolina also paradoxically still exists, implying that the baby chocobo gets turned into an adult human woman at some point. Although that would explain the childish voice, and the annoying tendency for her to insert the phrases choco, and boco into all her sentences.
When you finally do get her backstory, she travels back in time to fuck with Sazh by revealing that she is the chocobo he bought for his son, this being time travel, he still has that chocobo on him as she's revealing this. The then fucks with him further by pretending that telling him this resolved some sort of time paradox and then proceeds to pretend to get wiped from existence. As of Lightning Returns, Sazh still has the actual baby chocobo, that never grew up because the end of 13-2 involved freezing time and leaving everyone immortal, including the kids spending centuries never growing up. Simultaneously, the human Chocolina also paradoxically still exists, implying that the baby chocobo gets turned into an adult human woman at some point. Although that would explain the childish voice, and the annoying tendency for her to insert the phrases choco, and boco into all her sentences.
Eh the only time he has a really out of place personality is in Advent Children other than that he is fairly consistent in the other FF VII media.Maximum Bert said:
OT: Well there wasn't no exposition of Lightnings past same as everyone else in the game there just wasn't enough of it and enough of the right stuff to ground most of them as characters with any repeatability.
You get the same feeling from Final Fantasy VI that you got from FF13. That makes no sense to me but to each their own. For the record, I like them both.Sanunes said:
It was a terrible game because it didn't have gameplay. Seriously, mashing X in battle was the best way to go about it. For the two hours I played, mashing X on auto-attack (which is the default freaking option) was always faster and more efficient than choosing moves myself, since it would always pick the best attack for the situation (the ones I would have picked anyway.) If I have to go through 20 hours of that to reach gameplay (and still have auto-attack as the default, mind you) then there is no reason to play it.
You nailed it. The general premise of the game was an intriguing one. What does one do when faced with a hopeless situation? If you faced doom no matter what would you continue forward toward your task or stop and accept your fate? This is where the linearity is needed as they face a ticking clock of sorts. Unfortunately they spend far too much time whining about things that have already transpired. The whole game you've got one foot in the past and one in the present making you confused about both. A lot of character reveals that would have given us insight into their motivations are kept from the player and revealed in confusing time jumping cuts making things needlessly convoluted requiring a datalog to properly follow. Even when they agree to come together the story gives them no way out so when it comes time to face the final boss they are forced to pull a deus ex machina out of their ass to end up with a super happy ending that felt at odds with the nature of the story. What exactly happened and why? Dont worry about it. If you are going to sacrifice exploration and everything else in favor of the story then the story better deliver or the game will fail. This story was simply not good enough to hold up the game.nullplan said:
That being said I actually really liked the battle system and it was what kept me playing to the end.
This game doesn't play itself, you will get your ass handed to you quickly if you attempt to let the game play itself.GiantRaven said:
I'll try to answer your questions but I may be wrong on a few things since it's been awhile.Tank207 said:
What's a Fal'Cie?
A Fal'Cie is a member of a machine race.
Where do they come from?
I don't know but then again, I don't know where Cloud came from either and I never thought about it.
What's a L'Cie(this gets explained a bit in-game at least)?
A human cursed by a Fal'Cie to do it's bidding.
Why can Snow punch a Metal Gear in the face without breaking his hand?
Fantasy world stuff, kinda like asking why Tidus can breathe underwater.
Who are these people you're traveling with?
They all have their own back stories in the game, I think.
Why is Snow such an idiot?
Some people like the macho but stupid male type in their entertainment. I don't. In 13-2 they made him self loathing, which was worse.
Why is there a Chocobo living in that guy's afro?
If memory serves, that Chocobo was picked up on the day Sazh's son became a l'Cie while at the Chocobo park. I don't know why it chose to live in an afro.
Yeah, without reading the datalog, the game makes little sense. Using similar, unnatural words is a problem. Pulse l'Cie and Pulse Fal'cie for example.
Er, sort of, Fal'cie were created by the god of Light alongside humanity. While Fal'cie are given tremendous power, they are unable to defy their established tasks and are sort of like machines insofar as they are unable to overcome their established directives. They envy humanity, whose willpower and freedom allows them to overcome the limits set before them. In turn, part of the reason Fal'cie create L'cie is that it allows a Fal'cie to overcome their ordained destiny and directives, in part by directing the L'cie, who are not intrinsically bound by fateWeepingAngels said:
FF VII tells us exactly where Cloud came from, where he grew up, why he joined SOLDIER, even what he did in SOLDIER, and why and what his relationship with Sephiroth was, hell there was an entire game dedicated just to telling us the backstory of Cloud's original Buster Sword. Cloud is probably one of the most fleshed out character backstories in the entire FF series, that was a terrible comparison.
Also, as stated above, the Fal'cie were created by the God of Light Bhunivelze to help run the world, they are basically the machinery behind the world that keep everything powered and running smoothly, basically magic A.I.
Basically right, nothing to add here except that a L'cie also receives part of a Fal'cie's power when they are marked, which is why the magic thing is such a big deal
Both of these have answers, Tidus can hold his breath due to extensive Blitzball training, other characters do it through technology. Snow has his strength because he wears a trench coat that has a device similar to the one Lightning uses in cutscenes, except instead of allowing him to defy gravity, it amplifies his strength, that's why his weapons are patches on his coat.
The difference here is that the underwater thing in X is explained through talking to people in the game world. Snow's super trench coat is only explained by digging into the data logs.
This is true, they do all eventually get their backstories explained, even if some are done rather poorly or in a half-assed manner in my opinion, they do at least make an attempt, although they still hide a lot of information that would have been better served with actual in-game scenes, by moving a lot of character background information and relationships in the data log.
This is also true, Snow was designed specifically to appeal to Westerners, so he's big and stupid because that's what the Japanese developers thought would appeal to Western fans, most likely Americans. They kind of abandoned that after Westerners tended to find Snow less interesting than other characters, so they didn't try that again for FF XIII-2. Western popularity polls tended to favor Sazh and Fang when XIII first released, and even Lightning tended to come out ahead.
Yeah, pretty much this, the chocobo was supposed to be a gift for his son. The game never explains why the chocobo follows Sazh around so loyally, the afro thing is probably just for comedies sake. Considering what happens to that chocobo after the first game, the less questions you ask about it, the more of your sanity will stay intact.
EternallyBored said:
Thanks, you taught me a few things I didn't know. It's really not a bad story once you put all it's pieces together.
The thing that bothers me is that when they announced 13-2 I saw an interview where they admitted that they could have told the story better than they did and that the sequel gave them a chance to do that. Then the sequel came out and it's didn't clarify anything in the first game.
At its base, the story had potential, the concept of defying fate and destiny, and battling the inevitable is a story that's been done well before, and FF XIII had the building blocks to make that theme work. The game itself, unfortunately suffers from a far too long stretch with the characters just kind of wandering around from pretty location to pretty location without getting anything done, and then when it finally looks like the story is getting kicked into high gear the heroes all get kicked to Gran Pulse, where the combat system opens up, but the actual story flat out admits in the data log that the characters are just wandering aimlessly waiting for the villain to come and tell them its time for the final chapter.WeepingAngels said:
It doesn't help that the story suffers from a distinct lack of compelling secondary characters, NORA gets very little screen time compared to AVALANCHE, the Al Bhed, or the SEED gardens, and the Psicom leaders are criminally underused compared to other secondary antagonists like the Turks, Seifer, and the Yu Yevon church. Cid doesn't get nearly enough time for a character that they try to set up with the level of importance he's got, and Barthandelus pops in way too late and isn't nearly compelling enough to carry the speaking villain role all by himself. Shunting so much of the information behind the datalogs, that in previous games would have been dialogue given by NPCs or cutscenes, doesn't help matters either.
And finally, yes, it is annoying that both XIII-2 and Lightning Returns basically hit the character development reset button/ XIII-2 does it by having time travel just rewrite everything, and making the entire plot of XIII basically pointless, Snow's entire relationship with Serah is thrown out the window so Serah can be a protagonist and pal around with your standard anime bishonen pretty boy, Hope is a super Scientist now, Fang and Vanilles sacrifice is rendered moot, and the time travel basically makes everything even murkier rather than clarifying the point of XIII.
Lightning Returns basically does the same thing, the game takes place centuries in the future, but all the characters look the same because their immortal now, except they are all acting completely different again, essentially wiping any character development from both XIII and XIII-2 out of existence. Hope is back (sort of) except he's a kid again, Snow is back, but he's lost all hope in anything, Sazh lives out in the middle of nowhere with his kid and his time travelling chocobo; and am I the only one that finds it creepy that all the kids in this world have basically been young for centuries, dear god have all the toddlers been stuck as babbling infants for centuries too?
They pretty much hit the character reset buttons between each XIII game, and it really does make it hard to develop an attachment to any of these characters, knowing they will be acting completely different by the next game
I can break it down into even simpler terms: the game was written by someone with a teenagers understanding of storytelling. All style, no substance. It's like Sucker Punch, in that someone grabbed a 14 year old journal and threw it on the screen. Thankfully, Mr Plinkett has us covered. Just replace "Star Wars" with "FF13.":
Describe the following [FF13] characters without saying what they looked like, what costume they wore, or what their job was.
The characters are purely reactionary, and fail to become a real driving force in the plot. The things in the story are beyond their understanding and control. They don't even understand what their goal is, and there's no clear cut motivation behind their actions. It's not clear where the story is going, or what the story even is. Square needs to return to the basics of story telling and build themselves from the ground up. The Last of Us was simple, but it was clear and coherent, and I loved the characters. The same is true for Persona 3, which had simple but believable character development.
It also wasn't clear what the story wanted to be. Was it trying to be a tragedy? That would indicate a story that goes from good to bad. That way we get to see the characters as they normally are, and grow attached to them before bad things happen. Instead, the story started out bleak and hopeless and stayed that way throughout the narrative. It was melodramatic and overwrought. When the story starts out in such a shitty place, there's nowhere left to go. The characters start out miserable and stay that way throughout the vast majority of the story, and even when there are minor changes they feel unearned and lack a realistic cause and effect. Ultimately the story was a confusing, incoherent mess.
Describe the following [FF13] characters without saying what they looked like, what costume they wore, or what their job was.
The characters are purely reactionary, and fail to become a real driving force in the plot. The things in the story are beyond their understanding and control. They don't even understand what their goal is, and there's no clear cut motivation behind their actions. It's not clear where the story is going, or what the story even is. Square needs to return to the basics of story telling and build themselves from the ground up. The Last of Us was simple, but it was clear and coherent, and I loved the characters. The same is true for Persona 3, which had simple but believable character development.
It also wasn't clear what the story wanted to be. Was it trying to be a tragedy? That would indicate a story that goes from good to bad. That way we get to see the characters as they normally are, and grow attached to them before bad things happen. Instead, the story started out bleak and hopeless and stayed that way throughout the narrative. It was melodramatic and overwrought. When the story starts out in such a shitty place, there's nowhere left to go. The characters start out miserable and stay that way throughout the vast majority of the story, and even when there are minor changes they feel unearned and lack a realistic cause and effect. Ultimately the story was a confusing, incoherent mess.
Everything you said is true, but I have to disagree with you on the last point. We aren't just talking about games in general here, were talking about a jrpg. The story is far more important than in most other genres. Its what makes the game worth playing, because otherwise you don't have very much motivation to grind it out. Unfortunately the golden days of compelling narratives and character arcs are loooooooong gone. The jrpg today is a hollow plastic shell of its former self. I blame our collective obsession with unsustainable growth. Why can't we ever just be satisfied with what we have in terms of superfluous crap like graphics, in everything there is a point of diminishing returns, and we are far past that point this generation.Atmos Duality said:
This is why 7th gen is going to fail so miserably, no one is going to be able to develop for the next graphical upgrade because the costs are so prohibitively expensive, and the install base for these consoles is so small. People in general buy consoles for good games and when there are none, sales just die for the hardware, so its a destructive cycle.
The death of AAA jrpgs is a microcosm of the death of AAA period, I just want it to be done and over with so that these geriatric giants can just die and rot and make room for true talent and passion and vision. Graphics will never be a substitute for any of these things.
You'd think so wouldn't you, but there are people who defend the game! More than a couple.Dexterity said:
It something that I find impossible to reconcile with a supposedly rational world.
see... i thought this was a good dissection until we got to the part where you stated 'cloud is a good character'... no... just no... Cloud and Sephiroth are the reason i will forever cast FF7 into the bowls of a dark, bleak, acid-filled hell...
you want a good character where they're 'mysterious' yet their crazy is explained, play Xenogears, ya know, the half-finished game where their people were stolen to finish the 'magnificence' that was FF7? yea, basically Cloud can be summed up as a cheap copy of Fei Fong Wong, and i say cheap, because he's a whiney ***** who doesn't really 'grow' he just continues to stumble down his path never quite reaching that true hero quality... seriously, look at Advent Children, he's saved the world and just moping about some emo stuff... really? that's a 'hero' for you? a 'good character' for you...
whatever, i felt FF13's main issue was that is was basically trying to recreate FF7 in a fraction of the time, but with pretty effects... all the characters are basically rips from FF7 along with the plot, its a checklist of 'how can we make this the same and get the same success?' sadly it worked, as the damn emo-drama-fun-fest has two sequels and the same 'fame' and 'love' as FF7... i found it very boring and forced, pretty, but boring, forced, and very cliche...
i slightly want Yuna to just pop up while Cloud and Lightning are having their emo-fit and bitchslap the both of them... she still is, in my opinion, the best MC for any FF game, because i don't care what they say, X and X-2 were all about her XD
you want a good character where they're 'mysterious' yet their crazy is explained, play Xenogears, ya know, the half-finished game where their people were stolen to finish the 'magnificence' that was FF7? yea, basically Cloud can be summed up as a cheap copy of Fei Fong Wong, and i say cheap, because he's a whiney ***** who doesn't really 'grow' he just continues to stumble down his path never quite reaching that true hero quality... seriously, look at Advent Children, he's saved the world and just moping about some emo stuff... really? that's a 'hero' for you? a 'good character' for you...
whatever, i felt FF13's main issue was that is was basically trying to recreate FF7 in a fraction of the time, but with pretty effects... all the characters are basically rips from FF7 along with the plot, its a checklist of 'how can we make this the same and get the same success?' sadly it worked, as the damn emo-drama-fun-fest has two sequels and the same 'fame' and 'love' as FF7... i found it very boring and forced, pretty, but boring, forced, and very cliche...
i slightly want Yuna to just pop up while Cloud and Lightning are having their emo-fit and bitchslap the both of them... she still is, in my opinion, the best MC for any FF game, because i don't care what they say, X and X-2 were all about her XD
I agree that story is quite important for the jrpg genre; it's not completely genre-defining (I can name JRPGs where the mechanical interactions are far more fun and important than the story) but it is important.gavinmcinns said:
That said, I'm basing my argument on fundamentals.
The single most fundamental element of video games, the one that separates it from other creative mediums, other visual mediums even, is player involvement. That applies no matter what genre of game. And I don't just mean player involvement as it impacts the story, but in general down to the most basic problem solving level.
And FF13 goes out of its way to remove the player from that process so it can tell its shitty story.
I can count on one hand in the 30 hours of "playtime" the number of times I felt my decision made any difference.
Saying that story is just as important as the player agency in a JRPG is like saying the acting is as important as the actual film for movies; qualitatively true since great acting is required to make a great movie, but fundamentally false because without the film you have absolutely NOTHING, no matter how good/bad the acting is.
As a game, Squeenix needed to fix their priorities for gameplay FIRST and then story second; ideally linking one to the other to get the most out of the medium. Without the gameplay, why the fuck am I even bothering in the first place? If I just want to watch a story, I have movies and TV for that, and they don't cost 60 bucks a pop.
I'll let others offer a defense for modern JRPGs, because I haven't been as invested in the genre for several years.
(the last one I played through and enjoyed was Infinite Space; and while it was a pretty great story, its gameplay was sorely lacking)
What I do know, is that the genre has gone from the juggernaut to niche in the last decade.
AAA thrives on hype and pandering to the lowest common denominator, so I'd say that's mostly accurate.
Mostly, because JRPGs are far more niche than what pays the bills for most AAA these days, but I know Squeenix still employs "Style over Substance" in most of their titles to this date. (Bravely Default is the first game they've developed in years that's the exception to that)
The real barometer for AAA death would come when something like Call of Duty and Halo fails (or more topically, Titanfall and Watch Dogs).