ForceStealer
Double Growth
...I'll bite. What's your narrative bias against chapters? lol
...I'll bite. What's your narrative bias against chapters? lol
They're unimmersive, especially when they have titles. Once Chapters 1 and 2 are concluded, you can tell reflexively the length and breadth of all following chapters - with a general trend towards longer and broader. Titled chapters set up an expectation about what's coming next. Combined with the knowledge of roughly what a "chapter" means in terms of time, scope, and breadth, and suddenly I see this game as a series of interactive short films instead of a story unfolding before me. It also forces certain story beats to bulk up or be condensed down into steady chunks of time.
And I'm not saying it's always a bad thing. Final Fantasy Tactics uses "Chapters" to great effect, because it's framed as a historian's account. There are four chapters in Final Fantasy Tactics, each long enough that you forget the story is even segmented. And the titles are so generic that they don't spoil anything that the prologue hadn't already.
"Chapter 1: Mako Reactor" comprises about 15-30 minutes of the OG's gameplay, probably now an hour. You can extrapolate out and "name" every 30-minute-long chunk of the OG and it starts to feel unnatural.
So yeah, a mod to remove that text would be greatly appreciated by me.
I recommend downloading this uncompressed version of the trailer if you haven't already:
None of these issues really applied to FFXV, and most of that game is even open world.They're unimmersive, especially when they have titles. Once Chapters 1 and 2 are concluded, you can tell reflexively the length and breadth of all following chapters - with a general trend towards longer and broader. Titled chapters set up an expectation about what's coming next. Combined with the knowledge of roughly what a "chapter" means in terms of time, scope, and breadth, and suddenly I see this game as a series of interactive short films instead of a story unfolding before me. It also forces certain story beats to bulk up or be condensed down into steady chunks of time.
And I'm not saying it's always a bad thing. Final Fantasy Tactics uses "Chapters" to great effect, because it's framed as a historian's account. There are four chapters in Final Fantasy Tactics, each long enough that you forget the story is even segmented. And the titles are so generic that they don't spoil anything that the prologue hadn't already.
"Chapter 1: Mako Reactor" comprises about 15-30 minutes of the OG's gameplay, probably now an hour. You can extrapolate out and "name" every 30-minute-long chunk of the OG and it starts to feel unnatural.
I see your point, but it's kinda funny that chapters make you think of a series of short films instead of a story, when stories (or rather novels) are the ones with chapters in the first placeCombined with the knowledge of roughly what a "chapter" means in terms of time, scope, and breadth, and suddenly I see this game as a series of interactive short films instead of a story unfolding before me.
I sound like a broken record, but FFXV again.I think it depends what they do with the Chapters. Chapters (or quest titles) are needed to create natural starting/stopping points if a game ever wants individual Chapters/Quests to be repayable without starting a New Game +. Which in a story as narrative focused as FFVII would be fantastic.
I sound like a broken record, but FFXV again.
Ditto. I wish there was a Japanese SE Press site (nor do I understand the lack of one).Always annoyed me how the press site only has English language trailers, as obvious as the reason why is.
I wonder why they changed Hair Tonic for Banora White ad. Seph running around taking down posters so noone can discover secret of his beautiful hair?
I'm doing this with the ff15 compilation. The lore and story of 15 intrigued me a lot. I'd love to check out your ff7 bookChapters came about because "novels" were invented as serialized short stories published in newspapers/magazines (Great Expectations was one of the first novels and it was published in that way.) Chopping up a fully published book has a different function these days that isn't based on serial publication. Chapter breaks in modern novels are kind of like save points for readers, a natural place for you to put the book down. Scanning ahead for a chapter break is kind of like saying "is there a save point soon? It's 1am."
Naming chapters in novels usually happens in YA fiction such as Harry Potter where it helps set expectations for the reader. It's sometimes used in adult fiction but rarely. It's not a convention that I enjoy.
I should admit that during my first pass novelizing FF7 I titled every chapter, and removed chapter headings from the second draft onwards for precisely this reason.
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