| Scoobes said: I'm gonna comment on your post into two parts: 1. Chill out! The whole point of games is they're meant to be fun and a form of escapism. That means some people like to do things that they blatantly couldn't do in real life. Not every game has to have a full and over-arcing story to be fun. A lot of people enjoyed GTA games because they gave the player complete freedom to mess around in the sandbox whilst having an element of dark humor to them. You keep wanting to apply some structure or add a more strict moral system but these aren't important to the fun and appeal of these games. The moral structure is simply what you the player decides it to be. In the case of RDR and GTA most people would laugh at calling them innocents because quite simply people distinguish between real life and a virtual world. It's simply a form of dark humor as most people don't care about depth in games and just want fun and escapism. In many ways it's why Call of Duty has become so big, player can just enter the multiplayer and start playing without even having to think about the motivations. Just plug n' play. 2. I'm not sure why you seem to think these games require more thought to be put in when the story is being told passively rather than interactively. You have to put relatively little thought into the story as the characters and motives are their for you to see.You don't have to think about their motives, you're told them and then you decide whether you agree or think they're a whiny idiot. In fact, FFXIII is probably one of the worst examples of storytelling in video games. The basic story is told through cut-scenes (which is fine), however, the details have to be read in a datalog. This technique may have been fine 15-20 yrs ago, but in this day and age the interactive element of games needs to be used. Past Final Fantasy games actually did this (e.g. FFVII: Go back to Nibelheim before the final fight and discover the secret of Cloud's past and the story of Zack). Also, freedom doesn't take away depth from a game but it does completely alter intensity and pacing. You may enjoy this but others want to control the pace instead. I also find it funny you name FFVII as the PS1 classics are fairly open world after a certain point. It's completely contrdictory to the point you're trying to make. They had multiple and optional side-quests that didn't really add much to the game. FFVII is a good example as meteor is heading to the planet, but you can still go off and breed chocobos, right? It seems your complaints about freedom have more to do with storytelling methods/pacing rather than actual player freedom. |
1. I am calm. I just do not see why that would be fun to shoot and kill simple pedestrians. They are not attacking you and they are bearing no weapons. Thats a simple but important difference to having fun in an egoshooter-multiplayer mode. And I don't get your argument of running amok as element of dark humour...
I did not say that Sandbox games are bad, just that I get bored of them because I feel them lacking. That does not imply that noone can have fun with them. I just don't understand the general praise of open world and seeing linear gameplay as outdated and boring as some reviews implied (FF13 for example).
2. Just because you see the cutscenes simply does not mean that you automatically understand what is going on. You have to think about what is going on and there are many things that are not directly spoken out, but only hinted at. If you just passively watch the cutscenes you will probably not get the whole story experience because there is purposely left enough room for interpretation. Thats often the case with japanese storytelling.
Final Fantasy XIII has a really deep story. You can sure see that one of the underlying theme is the holocaust and how people reacted to the minority. The deporation trains in the beginning cutscenes and that the people in the train would in reality be killed on arrival although the public opinion was that they would simply be brought to Grand Pulse.
The Fal'cie are more powerful, but they lack free will. So regardless their power they are not able to destroy Cocoon by themselves. So they had to make a plan spanning over thousand years to incite fear in the hearts of the people in Cocoon, so that they eventually will destroy themselves in a civil war. There are many things that are only hinted at and not everything would be clear if you just watch the cutscenes without thinking about what is going on. But I will not going further into Detail.
How is FF VII Open World? You have a clear oath that is simply going from A to B until the last CD (with Wutai being the exception). There are some minigames like Gold Saucer or the digging game, but I would not call that sidequests. And the "sidequests" like the 3 Weapons and Chocobo breeding are not normal sidequest, because you can get extremely powerful Materia through it. I would rather call them secrets than sidequests, because there are only a few, they are optional, giving valuable items (knights of the round 2xsummon mime?, omnislash and level 4 limits?) and are more more difficult/time intense than the normal game was. Sidequests in typical western games ( like borderlands or Deathspank) are available throughout the game and they offer not really the strongest items in the game There was a world map, but the there was not much exploration possible and the only difference was that your position on the world map decidede the possible random enemies. You could not access the whole map from the beginning, you gained access only after you progress in the story.
In the end the whole game was almost completely linear with only a few optional secrets at the end of the game (last cd) and a few minigames in Gold Saucer. And you had very little benefits of visiting old areas again late in the game...
Tell me, how can you create depth in a game where you have freedom to do what you want? FF X dealt with the dilemma of personal benefit vs group benefit. Square did put much efforts in showing how the people of Spira were suffering through Sin. There were so many little Details that showed the fear of the People and how much hope they put into the summoners. How much they expect from Yuna, since her Father brought the last calm. And then how Yuna is slowly falling in love with Tidus. Thats what made the moment so special when Tidus and the gamer finally realized what was the prize for the calm. It wouldn't have worked so intense if the whole game wasn't build around the key moments of the game. If you break the linear storyline you would ruin this whole moment and take away from the intensity of the whole game.
I can play FF for several hours because I always looking forward to the next cutscene... Borderlands or Deathspank however are getting boring after an hour because there is no thrilling story to keep me interested. Often I stop bothering with reading the actual sideqest because it is just a totally unimportant task...Go there, kill x enemies and return, repeat procedure. In FF, you see the character develop and you often have a different impression from them at the end of the game that you had in the beginning. You see the character grow. In Borderlands, I stopped bothering since there is almost nothing to see. The whole game does feel different after 30 hours of playing. It is just doing the same things over and over again ...
