| selnor said: Anyone here old enough to remember the nes and she's original releases and reviews will remember no awesome CGI. In fact for the first 6 iterations final fantasy was never known for uber visuals. Plenty of games at that time looked better. Back then final fantasy was known solely for a huge playable story and fantastic turnbased combat with great exploration. At the turn of the ps1 era, moving into 3d square wowed us with the uncanny ability to show us visuals that weren't possible on those consoles in game. They were fantastic rewards for progressing throgh the game. But more importantly in that transitional ps1 time, square kept all the gameplay elements that made ff the series it was. Great battles, diverse level system, exploration, towns, discovery. You wanted to check every corner of a house. This held TRUE to the last iteration of the ps1 era. As time went on through the ps2 Gen, the CGI remained. And to an extent still wowed. But the effect was less. Why? Because ingame visuals were starting to look great.This proposed an issue. The series started to show signs on the gameplay front that hinted to streamlining. Ff10 still retained most of the tidbits from previous iterations. But take a closer look and you will see things changing. Going in houses was less apparant. Searching them even less so. Leveling system much more streamed and set. Move on to today and final fantasy is almost unrecognisable in gameplay. People are much less impressed about CGI these days than the ps1 era. Because ingame visuals have taken such a high turn. But think of this a moment. What is the first house you enter in final fantasy 13? .......... Disc 2! What is the first draws or pot or cat or dog or bookshelf you interact with or search? What's the first shop keeper you have an unusual conversation with? In fact until the end of disc 2 you are Laays entirely on a street with no doors houses, sell nothing or some pathway through some area again with no life. final fantasy used to connect you to the world it created. You could interact with people. Go through their wardrobes. Go back and play any final fantasy game on ps1. See the difference in gameplay. Even the battle system is easy as pie now. You can complete ff13 by simply not thinking. Just level up along a line. Always have a healer as was one of the options and press a. yes ff still has guys called cid, moogles and a horrible excuse for gfs. But it doesn't have anything remotely close to the gameplay the series is known for. Tales, eternal sonata and especially lost odyssey have more in common with final fantasy than final fantasy of today. Rant over. |
To say the truth all the FF games are technical masterpieces, FF3 is one of the best looking game on the old NES, while FF6 is probably the best looking game of the SNES (with Star Ocean). Even FF1 is a very good looking game, compared to the contemporary Zelda (!) and Zelda II (!!). So I'd say that the technical part has nothing to do with the evolution (or devolution) of the gameplay.
It seems to me that dumbed down gameplay is a characteristic of this late age of videogames, and it is not just a problem of FF or other JRPGs. Probably it is a phenomenon that's more evident among story driven videogames (JRPG, not action RPG, Point&Click Adventures, Heavy Rain-like and so on...) because this kind of games already had good stories years ago, so they cannot improve on the story, while their gameplay worsens. Action-driven games, on the other side, used to have shitty stories, so they still seem to be good just because their stories improved. I.E. to me Bioshock was a dumbed down FPS.
