At times the translation is amazing.

at times... not so much :P

You have to understand I'm taking my time to phrase this because you're a nice guy and I know you lov this gamee and I don't want to offend you.

It feels ... overwrought.

@ Khuutra

Is that so? Well, like I've said before, the writing is only like that some of the times (though I actually really love it). Also, like I've said before once again, you'll have to play the game up to that point to actually get a feel and understand why they wrote it like that. Xenogears is not you typical rpg Khuutra. It's on a whole other level of deepness. Writing like that can be considered "overwrought" for your average game, but not for Xenogears (at least, in my opinion).

Planescape Torment > Xenogears

That is all.

Bumped so rocketpig doesn't miss my response. :D

I'm not going to bother to respond for a few reasons:

1. I've been through this argument more times than I care to count

and

2. I would only be echoing Khuutra, only in a more drawn out way. Kinda like Xenogears, actually. It wouldn't change the point, only make it unnecessarily convoluted.

BTW, love the bit about you saying I was ignorant of gaming's role in storytelling when I brought up how different sides of the brain handle gameplay versus narrative. You didn't even come close to debating my point and I don't think you realized it. That's not ignorance, that's science, whether it's non-linear or linear. It makes no difference to the brain. You can't even debate it. Moving a player from one side to the other is a jolting experience.

That paragraph in itself was enough to show me how little you actually understand about gameplay narrative. There are plenty of articles written about it, feel free to Google them some time.

Interesting transition from this:

to this:

May I ask what so drastically altered your enthusiasm for this topic of interest?

This would perhaps make more sense if Khuutra and I hadn't been talking about a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TOPIC. Mine and Khuutra's discussion was on the storytelling merits of Chrono Trigger, whereas our's has been on the storytelling merits of the video game medium.

All you have stated is that different sides of the brain handle passive and active thought. You haven't come close to substantiating anything beyond that. Perhaps you could start by explaining what's so fundamentally different about watching a cutscene and then going on to play through a gameplay segment, then reading a book (or watching an episode of a TV show), taking a break from it and then going on to do a completely different activity. Both involve a "transition" from passive to active thought). Yet its only within the confines of a game that this ruines the pacing?

Then there's also the fact that the brain is almost always operating on both an active and passive level. The simple act of reading something involves both passive and active thought. There is no "jolting experience" because the brain is never forced to operate from one level to the other.

And yes, plenty of the points you have brought up would suggest that you are extremely ignorant of storytelling and the psychology behind it in general.

I'mma let others continue the ongoing discussion, and just toss in my two cents that Plansescape's storyline was much deeper than Xenogears.  Planescape's entire purpose was to ask "What can change the nature of a man," and it did as interesting a job of exploring that as your average theatre production.*

Xenogears was pretty bloated, so while it broadly touched on a lot of things it never went very deep with any of them.  I've read Perfect Works, and it still seems fairly shallow to me.

*I'm not much for philosophy, so that wasn't meant as dismissively as it sounds.

Bumped. :D

Dead thread is dead!

~locking~