Killiana1a said:
Not knowing your age, let me give you a little background of how I came to be. I was 12 years old in 1996. Before-hand, since age 5 I grew up on Nintendo. There wasn't a SNES game in the video store that I did not rent and beat at least once, the Lion King game included. I am old enough to remember back when Earthbound, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 6, Ogre Battle, and all the JRPG we now consider classic first came and my friends rubbed it in my face the day after Christmas. I played the hell out of all them and in my older teen years, I got more and more into WRPGs starting with Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, Deus Ex, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and on. My experience playing RPGs harkens back to the golden age of JRPGs in the 1990s. Henceforth, every JRPG coming out today has nothing on Final Fantasy 6, Earthbound or Secret of Mana. The formula of turn-based combat is largely still there, but all the new ones have is better graphics, but not as great as the graphical leap from Final Fantasy 6 to Final Fantasy 7.
My experience is not a criticism or brag; it is background for people to understand where I am coming from. However, looking back, I did have it good coming of age when I did. I couldn't have asked for a better time to have hit my impressionable years than the mid- to late-1990s.
Character and story has become less important to me as I have aged. It seems to be that each RPG (JRPG or WRPG) who has defined protagonists and antagonists with a novel like story is the creation of some developer with Hemingway fantasies. I don't want to play his game, I want him to create the bare essentials for me to create my own adventure in his world.
I want a story and love games with a good story, such as Red Dead Redemption, but story is not everything for me. It is becoming apparent to me the more story driven a game is, like Alan Wake, the more rails they put in the game. By rails, I mean the developer limits the way you can play in order to advance the story.
Sorry, but I take story-driven, rail games the same way a grown man who knows how to swim is encouraged to wear water wings. There is a certain point after you have gained enough confidence and experience where the rails need to go and the entire pool is yours to create your own fun. Same goes for me and video games, if I can't create my own fun, then I don't play it.
If I want a good, epic story I will read a book by an author such as Jonathan Tropper. I don't expect video games to give me such, eventhough they have in the past.
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I was born in 1981 and am 29 years old, just for your information. I grew up on the NES and my favourite games were Zelda, Mario and Metroid. Then the SNES came and graphics advanced. As I live in Europe, we didn't get most of the great RPGs (Final Fantasy, Super Mario RPG, etc.) at all. During the Playstation era more and more of the japanese Games were released in Europe (although some smaller games still are not released in the EU although they were in the US) and most of the best games were Japanese. The PS2 made another major step forward and still most of my favoured games were japanese games. Final Fantasy X, Dragon Quest VIII and Kingdom Hearts I II were simply amazing.
The PS3 brought a real software drought in the first 1-2 years and very few brilliant games were released. So I had to delve deeper into "Western Games". First Party Western games are usually pretty good (I really like Ratchet & Clank, Jak and Dexter, etc).
What I like about Japanese Games is that they have more Focus on the characters and Story. They are putting more effort and details in creating their worlds and have more detailed characters. Maybe thats why a japanese game often has a longer development cycle than a western franchise with yearly sequels.
I like that japanese games often have a clear focus and that they really concentrate on story and character development. The linearity often makes these games more memorable and enables more emotionality in story telling.
GTA 4, for example, had some sort of nice story, if you see it as a Gangster parody. But it suffers from all the sidequest stuff (playing mini games, hunting seagulls, etc.) that ultimately distract you from the main point of the game. Being called by friends to go out for activities was quite a novelty but after the 10th time it was more annoying than fun. The monster stunts and seagull hunt were just a waste of time (just did it for the platinum trophy) and the online gaming killed the game for me. Thats why I refuse to buy Red Dead Redemption and maybe I will refrain from GTA 5 too.
Oblivion was the most boring RPG I have ever played. The lack of a clear and focused story and a the "silent character" totally killed it for me. Being able to creating your own character often hurts the story. Oblivion had so much content and you could play for hundreds of hours... but without a clear focus and a thrilling storyline it felt like wasted time for me. Sidequests often are meaningless, repetitive and shallow. DeathSpank had a very good sense of humour...but my wife fell asleep after an hour several times. Sacred 2 had over 500 sidequests, but after 4 playthroughs (again for the Platinum) i still can't see the whole sense of the game. It became soo boring after 50 hours that we only rushed through to finish the game.
FF X made me think about some topics like "Should someone trust religious organisation", "social responsibility vs. personal needs" etc. FF XIII made me think about how the Nazis incited hatred against the Jews in Germany. Kingdom Hearts has a deep story about friendship etc... Japanese Games (especially JRPGS) often deal with moral aspects and want people to think about what is going on. That is what I feel western games are missing.
Since I have only 1-2 hours per work day and the week-end, I do not want to waste time with meaningless tasks in games (although i still try to finish every game I have started). I want pure entertainmant. The video game combines the storytelling with a book with the impressions of cutscenes and spoken dialogues and personal interaction with the medium. I read around 12-15 books per year, but the video game simply offers a greater experience if it is well done. The game FF XIII is simply better as a book or a movie could ever be.
Thats why I can't understand why US and UK reviewer often generally count linearity as weakness when it totally depends on the target group. Linear games just have more powerful storytelling because they can be more focused. In the end it comes to personal preference. Sales numbers show that "Western RPGS" are strong in the US and also in the UK, but not that strong in Continental Europe. (Fallout New Vegas 1 million in the US, only 350k in EMEAA).
In the end, I don't feel that I am limited by story-driven games. I think sand-box games or WRPGS limit my experience because the developers don't have to put that much work in the overall story and characters, watering down that even further with "minigames" and "sidequests". I just don't want to "play myself" in a videogame.
