| Alphachris said: If I want to sum up my experience with WRPGS like Oblivion or Dragon Age I would sound pretty much like this. After 30 hours of playing Oblivion I found not 1 thing that I liked about it. Dragon Age was also a really bad experience... At the same time FF 13 is still the best game of this generation for me (so I would be one of the 5). I do not want to change your opinion, since you just expect something different form a RPG. Yes, it is linear. And that is the strong point of the game. The story is very intense because you are bound to concentrate on it. And that is making it very memorable. It is just not possible to ignore the Main story because it is the main point of the game. It should amount to like 80-90 % of the game. What I hate about WRPGs (that I have played) is that they do not offer a thrilling Mainstory. Instead they rely on Sidequests (the old repetitive go fetch this and kill that and then return. The same thing over and over in every game). I find it sad that the "main story" often only amounts to like 20 % of the game. The quality of the Main story is also not that great and I did not found them memorable ... they were pretty generic instead. Spoilers ahead! The story of FF 13 had some very heavy main topics. It borrows from the Naziregime and wanted to show, what can happen if you use propaganda for a long time and how people start to adopt this way of thinking as their own and start to act on their own. The whole starting scene with the deportation train was a very heavy scene. The thing is that the population feared everyone who only came close to a Pulse object and were willing to deport them to Pulse which was regarded as certain death... I remember the scene where you saw Barthandelus grinning devilishly during the news report because he realized that his plans were going well. The Government did not have to order it because the citizens where demanding it earlier... The developers wanted to make the gamer think about what is going on. That was one of the main topics of the Nazi regime. Was the civil population in fear of the Regime and acted passively out of self defense or were they active supporters. Especially the young people where raised with propaganda. Did they adopt the propaganda and were truly believing the propaganda? The citizens of Cocoon were seemingly believing the Propaganda and they feared everything regarding grand Pulse. The whole story was built around that element... although you were trying to be loyal to Cocoon and protect it everyone feared and hated you. They didn't even wanna listen to you. And thats why it is okay for me that this game has only a few moments where you could run around in towns. I also found the characters portrayed really well. Hope was a strong character, although he suffered heavily during the first chapters. He was sentenced to death only because he was near the site where they found the Grand Pulse object. FF XIII was not a story about heroes... it was a very dark story about one of the darkest moments in recent history. It wants to make you think about what could happen if people give in to their inner fears and how fear can turn into hate... and how hate could ultimately lead to the destruction of the world. The main villain was not Barthandelus or Orphan... it was "Fear"... FF XIII just shows how brilliant japanese story telling can be. Another topic of the game was, that although the Fal'Cie were beings with immense Power they did not have free will. Humans, weak compared to the Fal'Cie, however have the Power of free will. The Fal'Cie could not destroy Orphan although they have immense Power. They can't force Humans to do so... Even if they make a L'Cie he just could refuse to fulfill its focus and just become a monster... so they plotted a plan spanning over 1000 years to incite fear within the population and let it slowly turn into hate. They could probably make a whole game covering the events happening 1000 years ago.. So in total I think the story is really deep because there was put a lot of thinking in it. It is not the generic "an evil force is trying to destroy the world blablabla". It was spent a lot of effort in creating the motives of the Fal'cie and the characters. The Story wasn't told mainly via the Log. Most of the story was told in the Cutscenes, the Log only gave further background information. The log is also available in the Kingdom Hearts series, so it is not a brand new FF13 exclusive feature. The Paradigm system is not preset, you can choose any available combination of jobs as you like. But you have to customize them yourself. Exploration has never been a vital element of the Final Fantasy Franchise. You were always tied to the story and had to visit the locations in a predetermined order. The games always opened up a little if you were close to the end. The world map never allowed free travel since there where always mountains and rivers blocking the paths. They were never meant to be like Oblivion where you could go wherever you want after you have left the Prison. Sidequests also never had that importance. You had several secrets available at the end of the game to get the Ultimate Weapons, spells or Summons. But they were always only a few. But since FF 7 they often put in some mini games (Gold Saucer, Triple Triad, the card game of FF9, Blitzball, Monster Hunting). FF 13 had another round of "Monster Hunting". For me FF XIII has an enormous replay value, because I just want to relive the story again. I will probably play it through every 2-3 years, because the story is so memorable. And that is the main point why I buy a JRPG. I want a story that is very deep and leaves room for interpretation. I do not take the role of any of the party members, but I watch the game and think about what is going on. I am more like a beholder and that is one of the main differences to WRPGS. They do not want to tell a story or make you think about a certain topic... They just give you a playground and give you the illusion to play as you like... That could be your problem wtih the game. You try to identify with a character and are annoyed when they do not act like you want or when you have to do a quest that you don't like to do. And thats why I find WRPGS to be so boring. You start with creating YOUR own character, the story is told through the eyes of YOUR character and YOU should decide what to say most of the time (although you do not have real freedom, since you can only choose from predetermined lines and often your choices have no heavy impact on the overall story). If I want to exaggerate a little bit I could even say that they outsource the storytelling to the gamer and make you pay for it...
|
While I'm mainly on Runa216 side of things. I understand the points you make and why. The comparisons of racism placed into a populations minds to outcast those who were different, in this case Pulse l'Cie and Pulse inhabitants in general but the same thoughts were distilled in the mind of the Pulse inhabitants when they existed all those years ago. It's mentioned in the stories and datalogs, is it not, that there was a war between the 2.
While a clever plot point, it is how it's explained that is what lacks here. No matter how good of a story, if it's not told in a good way, people watching it/reading it will not view it as good. Many previous FF games you didn't have to know everything or read through datalogs to understand the history of the world as it was simple yet explained as you went along, when you arrived at a location or if required. This game started going on about Fal'Cie this and l'Cie that and I didn't know what any of it was just that apparently it was bad at this time I had to go forward to progress the story in the hope it would be explained, adding their focus just confused things more (especially the amount of times they said it). The underlying story about the god like beings and what not is good, the extras about each person's involvement and this l'Cie stuff just confused things for me anyway.
I agree with you on exploration, most FF games start with a linear path, follow the path to progress story but allowed for freedom of movement between locations via the world map, a distinct missing factor in this game.
The Paradigms were preset, I don't remember being allowed to choose 3 I wanted to specialise in and when the other options opened up for each character, they were so more expensive they weren't really options.
I tried playing the game again recently. I completed the story once for the sake of it but did so because I felt I had to, starting to replay it again I got really bored doing the first 1hour just pushing X and running toward the next enemy, pressing X again.
Graphics are pretty though...so pretty.
Hmm, pie.
