What I find irks me is that story has gone from something that would be nice to have to something that absolutely must take precedence. It's gotten to the point where gamers and journalists alike are absolutely massacring otherwise enjoyable games because they didn't like the story, or, heaven forbid, it didn't take precedence over everything else.
This is especially damning for me because RPGs are my favorite genre, and over the years what's considered a good RPG has changed and we've been getting more uninspired games. The draw to lengthy cinema and pretentious storylines in JRPGs kicked into full gear around FF7's time and now I hear the most important thing about an RPG is its story and that people would play shitty games if the story was good. I'm sorry, but I'm from an era where we actually play games. If the game plays like shit I could care less about its silly storyline. It's not fun and it's a waste of my time to drag myself through the "chore" of actually playing a crappy game for a few cutscenes.
Ironically just the opposite lands some games in a heap of trouble. Off the top of my head would be the example Grandia Xtreme. Now, Grandia has one of the best, most enjoyable battle systems I've experienced in an RPG. Grandia Xtreme was an experiment, a dungeon crawler that pushed story aside and focus mostly on gameplay and let the battle system flourish into what is arguably the best iteration of that combat system in the series to date. But GX is often the victim of attacks by critics and angry fanboys alike, described as "trash" because "there wasn't enough story." I'm sorry, what? You're angry because you had to get your kicks from a masterpiece of gameplay rather than whatever storyline you were expecting before you even picked the game up?
Tag - "No trolling on my watch!"
