Do you think this cows had enough milking?

[DLPB]

yeah it never ceases to amaze me how the fated children and sociopath ready to give love another chance, went right over the heads of some...

Instead we get the old "the baddy sux"

 

[Alex]

Neither Final Fantasy VII OR VIII were well written man, and sometimes the pacing is truly staggeringly bizarre.

AERIES IS DEAD ;.; NOOOOOOO...Hey lets go snowboarding.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Final Fantasy VII had its moments. None of us would really be here if it was shit.

Fang, I'm on board with what you're trying to say. However, while the Final Fantasy series won't win any writing awards with the heavy literature crowd with their pipes, armchairs, and bathrobes, or hell, even compared to some other games, the writing is well, pretty good. I don't want to fall into the video game cynic crowd that constantly goes "VIDEO GAME WRITING IS TRASH AND YOU'RE A PLEBE FOR ENJOYING IT/EXPECTING IT TO BE GOOD"

Ya know? Just tossing that out there.

 

[Alex]

Oh no I can definitely agree with that. Final Fantasy is getting much better in the writing department (at least if X, XII and XIII are anything to go by. The Compilation of FFVII is trying hard to disprove this claim).

And video games definitely can have writing as good if not better than movies and tv shows. Its a rather unpleasant stigma that I certainly don't adhere to.

 

[DLPB]

AERIES IS DEAD ;.; NOOOOOOO...Hey lets go snowboarding.

Aerith dying was a bold move for a video game, or any story where the norm is the main characters surviving. What about Aerith's death do you think makes poor story telling?

I don't quite follow your point. FF7 was well written, it has so much depth that it could easily be made into a book. Some of the story is centred around gameplay because this is a game.

It seems to be this concept you are having difficulty with, so no surprise you don't see why XIII differs drastically. Also XII had wafer thin character devlopment.

 

[Neo Bahamut]

Oh boy, the ever popular "the series is going downhill" thing. I have frequently said & still maintain that it is too early to tell. We haven't had many main series games since IX, which most people thought were pretty good. We've had a bunch of spin-offs, but...meh.

In particular focus to the spinoffs, I don't mind if it's "milking" because they're...good. Compilation, anyway. Ivalice Alliance can suck my left nut. You can say what you want about the Compilation, but it's clear that they're still trying. Hit-or-miss, the materia, materia fusion, shop, & DMW elements of Crisis Core were all pretty finely tuned versions of gameplay elements that we've seen before. The DMW even had some really neat scenes where it tied into the story, such as Zack's death.

Dissidia, while not a Compilation game, also did its fair share of tweaking. The Brave System, again kind of hit-or-miss, was a pretty unique element for a fighting game. If nothing else, it DID successfully turn the game from "button mashing combos" to "you may actually have to plan a little."

In terms of writing, yes, I would say that the series is very well-written at its height. Maybe not well translated, but that's something different entirely. But the question is kind of unfair, you know? What are we comparing it to?

EDIT: TWELVE is "good writing"? SERIOUSLY?

As to what he's saying, he's commenting that some story elements aren't put together well, giving you sort of an "emotional whiplash." While I don't agree, especially considering the specific example is nearly an entire disc apart, he's not saying that Aerith's death was a shitty plot element.

 

[Alex]

Aerith dying was a bold move for a video game, or any story where the norm is the main characters surviving. What about Aerith's death do you think makes poor story telling?

I don't quite follow your point. FF7 was well written, it has so much depth that it could easily be made into a book. Some of the story is centred around gameplay because this is a game.

It seems to be this concept you are having difficulty with, so no surprise you don't see why XIII differs drastically. Also XII had wafer thin character devlopment.

Yeah way to completely miss the point.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Aeris death, it was bold, plot-advancing, character developing stuff.

But it is in no way good storytelling or pacing when you have your characters go snowboarding of all things less than an hour of gameplay later. Depth doesn't equal good writing or even storytelling, and simply bizarre segues like that are jarring and a complete blockage of character development. There was no reason we couldn't have faced a nce fat snow themed dungeon to get to Gaea's Cliff instead.

Yes, FFVII has an excellent story, I wouldn't be here if it didn't. But its execution is flawed, its writing could have been better but was handled much better than the Compilation's and Advent Children's in particular.

I first said the point that 'it has gameplay so it is a game' when that idiot before was trying to tell me that FFXIII was an interactive movie.

 

[Max Payne]

I wouldn't really call FFXIII's animu story and characters all that much better than what we've got in past FFs alex.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Oh good, we're on the same page, Fang! Yeah, I totally agree.

Especially about the snowboarding thing.

 

[DLPB]

But it is in no way good storytelling or pacing when you have your characters go snowboarding of all things less than an hour of gameplay later.

Snowboarding is not a story element. IT has nothing to do with pacing. It was a minigame after you had left a village. Oh yes, that is right, XIII doesn't have anything like this lmao

I first said the point that 'it has gameplay so it is a game' when that idiot before was trying to tell me that FFXIII was an interactive movie.

He was no idiot, he was telling it as it is. XIII is basically a movie inside a game, or about as close as you can get to it without being MGS4. The fact it has 10 hours of cutscenes and forces you into 1 linear path demonstrates that. The fact the games designers have openly stated that was the intention, is also proof of that.

You do need to learn the difference between a game and an interactive movie, the original poster was correct.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Snowboarding is not a story element. IT has nothing to do with pacing.

But it's one of the elements that's presented to the player. People need to stop distancing story and gameplay so far away from each other. It has its places, but making excuses using that logic is juvenile. By your logic, a Whack A Mole minigame right after the Jenova-LIFE battle would have been cool because it isn't a story element?

 

[DLPB]

Snowboarding was not a story element. Jenova is. Your anology does not work.

The minigame was just a nice idea to get you from the village to the great glacier. That was all. And as I said, XIII has nothing like this fun minigame.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

Snowboarding was not a story element. Jenova is. Your anology does not work.

You're on a roll with the missing points again thing, aren't you?

The point of what I'm saying is that whether it's a story or a gameplay event is irrelevant. Story and gameplay within the same game still must have proper and appropriate pacing concerning events within a narrative. They're not totally separate entities that someone can go willy nilly with and completely mishmash shit together.

An epic battle with Jenova after the tragic death of a party member is appropriate pacing of a gameplay element of the plot. Conversely, having a Wacky Races snowboarding event right after the tragic death of a party member is not appropriate pacing of a gameplay element with the plot.

 

[Max Payne]

What?

The snowboarding thing does not take place right after Aerith's death. It happens a good piece afterwards.

 

[Ryushikaze]

It happens a rough half hour to hour later, and it's after the cutscenes of Icicle Inn at the least, including 'Elena sliding down the hill scene'

It's not the most serious thing in the world, but it's not like the party was 'Ups, Aerith died, welp, back to the gold saucer for ARM WRESTLING!'

 

[Cat Rage Room]

What?

The snowboarding thing does not take place right after Aerith's death. It happens a good piece afterwards.

Not right after, but still, it's the next 'event' or so.

It's not a deal breaker, but still.

 

[DLPB]

Not to mention there are some pretty hefty and optional story points there about the crisis (jenova), aerith, gast and weapons.

That is right XIII lovers, they were optional

 

[Max Payne]

Not right after, but still, it's the next 'event' or so.

It's not a deal breaker, but still.

I don't really see what was so jarring, it took me like an hour and thirty minutes to get through the cutscenes after the girl croaks, out of the Ancient City, through the world map to the north, then up to the Icicle Inn and through the cutscenes there.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

I suppose it depends on the players interpretation. It's not exactly an uncommon viewpoint, but it's not right for me to force it on everyone.

I thought it was pretty weird myself.

 

[Max Payne]

I doubt it actually took them that short a time to get from the Forgotten City to up north that quick.

Then again according to materials regarding AC the time it takes to traverse the world is retarded

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Snowboarding was not a story element. Jenova is. Your anology does not work.

But it is part of the story that they snowboard their way there. It's even in the Ultimania Omega's Story Playback section.

In any event, Mog was more concerned with the impression on the player, I believe, though I don't share his point of view here. Honestly, I think adding something like that and the Elena custcene in after all the fucking misery you'd just waded through (seeing Aerith die, then watching a video of her father murdered while she and her mother are kidnapped three weeks after Aerith's birth) might have been the best move.

It was time to lighten things up.

Of course, even the lighthearted minigame was delivering you into a frozen deathwaste.

 

[Max Payne]

I forgot about those fucking depressing ass videos.

 

[Alex]

He was no idiot, he was telling it as it is. XIII is basically a movie inside a game, or about as close as you can get to it without being MGS4. The fact it has 10 hours of cutscenes and forces you into 1 linear path demonstrates that. The fact the games designers have openly stated that was the intention, is also proof of that.

You do need to learn the difference between a game and an interactive movie, the original poster was correct.

A movie inside of a game? Thats something truly shocking. You might even get the impression that the developers might have been trying to get a story across or something.

The 10 hours of cutscenes are bropken up pretty steadily by nicely sized chunks of gameplay. I'm really not seeing a problem, it doesn't often ask you to sit down and watch 15+ minutes of cutscenes, which I assume a 10 hour long 'interactive movie' would be all to eager to do.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

A movie inside of a game? Thats something truly shocking. You might even get the impression that the developers might have been trying to get a story across or something.

As a gamer I fundamentally disagree that a game needs a movie, or movie(s), to tell a story, though. A great plotline can be interweaved directly into the game. Just look at the Half Life series, specifically Half Life 2.

 

[Alex]

I suppose it might just be something I personally look for in a game. Just using Half-Life as an example, I know its a solid game, but it never really appealed to me.