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twesterm on 05 September 2009
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Words Of Wisdom said:
twesterm said:

The reason RPG games are a dying breed is because:

  • They take a lot of time because they are expected to have a lot of varied content
  • They take a lot of time because they are expected to make a game that stays interesting for 100+ hours
  • They take a lot of time because they are expected to be full of the best looking eye candy ever

No offense twesterm but every bullet point is bullshit.

RPGs are expected to be the least varied of most game types.  People go through entire games pushing the exact same commands into the exact same menu getting the exact same results and watching a few numbers go up in between.  If anything, people hate straying away from that as many see minigames as a plague in RPGs rather than something they would want.

Who expects a 100+ hour RPG in today's world?  I mean, most RPGs clock in at 30-40 hours and how much of that is actual new content?  By that I mean, how much of that 40 hours is spent in different areas and how much is spent in battles, menus, and the like?  If anything, RPGs are getting shorter and people are adapting to it.  Quoting 100+ hours isn't just an exaggeration, it's exaggeration to the point of absurdity.

No, Final Fantasy is expected to be full of eye-candy.  I don't know if you've actually played a majority of the RPGs available this generation, but they're not the prettiest games on the field (partially because like 80% of them are on the DS).  No one is criticizing the bloom in RPG screenshots like they were in Killzone 2 and GeoW 2.  No one is posting side-by-side comparisons of RPGs.  If anything console RPGs like the Tales of series are only modestly improving the graphics over past iterations. 

Sorry, by content I meant story.  I generally don't expect a lot from RPG's gameplay wise (which isn't a bad thing, FFVI had terrible gameplay and it's my favorite game of all time).

And sure, we can say 30-40 hours instead of 100+ (I was using FFXII here as the benchmark and people love to say how they easily spend 120 hours on it) but even that is still really hard.  It takes A LOT of effort to make even an 8 hour game, why do you think a game five times longer wouldn't take more effort?

And I'm mainly talking about the console RPG's because we are talking about the main Final Fantasy games.  I was actually using those points to say that more RPG's should go to hand helds because there can actually have a budget based in reality.  Console RPG's constantly either get bashed or praised for every little thing they show as does every other console game.  If it isn't the best or even near the best, it's crap according to most fanboys.