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Why are Japanese designers averse to immersion?
Sam
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The only exception I can think of is MGS4, and apparently an American staffer had to push hard to reform the camera philosophy.
Even good Japanese games seem to have this sort of hands off quality to them- a highly polished veneer that has an almost "baroque" sense of artisanship. By this I refer not only to camera angles and interactivity, but also animation, the interface of the game- i.e having giant calligraphic text splash on the screen as opposed to a more...software oriented approach.
I don't really play American games over Japanese games, given that 3 of my favorite games ever are Shenmue, Rez and SF2 but Japan seems to hold on to antiquated gameplay and design philosophy.
Even good Japanese games seem to have this sort of hands off quality to them- a highly polished veneer that has an almost "baroque" sense of artisanship. By this I refer not only to camera angles and interactivity, but also animation, the interface of the game- i.e having giant calligraphic text splash on the screen as opposed to a more...software oriented approach.
I don't really play American games over Japanese games, given that 3 of my favorite games ever are Shenmue, Rez and SF2 but Japan seems to hold on to antiquated gameplay and design philosophy.
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Keep in mind that Japan is really to small a market to make HD games profitable, so only a small subset are going to make those kinds of games and market them world wide. The others are making mostly DS games.
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Sometimes they do come up with stuff that really breaks the mold though and gets repeated forever. The controls in Mario 64 for example.
In other words, the average JRPG says "Pick your stats now, ok" whereas say Fallout or Mass Effect go through the subterfuge of you assigning a backstory that establishes character traits.
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I think it was his attempt to defend Japanese games by pointing out the flaws in western ones.
It failed.
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1,000-year-old demons that just happen to look like 12-year-old girls.
Take Kingdom Hearts 2 for example.
The first 2 hours of the goddamn game is a tutorial!
And it seems like they're just getting worse. Instead of having the player figure stuff out on their own, they decided that it's much more artistic to cleverly (not) make the first 3 hours of a game a tutorial and force you to sit through hours of introductions and hand holding, and hide all of this as some prologue or something.
As opposed to not telling you anything at all. Hell in Fallout 3 half the people on this BOARD didn't know you can use the PIP boy for a light.
e: I wouldn't say the first two hours was a tutorial. It was the intro.
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Oooh, another fine example! :^:
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It does. But how many people read those...?
If only there were some kind of documentation that these people could supply with their game. Some means of letting the player know how they can interact with the game.
I have never opened a manual for a game since............ Maybe Harvest Moon, the original one, but that was toilet material. Most games tell you the controls in the game. Not Western RPGs.
I think he means that a lot of american RPG's are sort of "choose your own adventure" open world games, where as the Japanese RPG's and games generally have a very clear and linear direction in their plots.
Just walk to the goddamn train station, geez. You don't need to do chores or get money.
I laugh at anyone that complains about this "problem" in Kingdom Hearts II.
When this was first mentioned waaaay back in like the first or second Mass Effect thread, people had gone through entire playthroughs without knowing.
But what I was going to say originally is that some folks from Bungie offered an interesting insight into a difference between Japanese and American video game aesthetics - they like third-person WAAAAY more than first-person. When the aforementioned Bungie folk were showing off Halo 3 at TGS, it was several minutes into the demo and the audience was entirely silent until the demo player ripped off a mounted gun and it went to third-person view - then the audience all went "ooooooooh'.
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They also love games where you grind for levels. I hate them.
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance got major brownie points when Ike defied this trope during his stay in the Empire.
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Last Remenant the main character im 100% sure has an IQ so low he is mentally retarded. It annoys the crap out of me every time he opens his mouth and says something so painfully obvious and in the most infuriatingly annoying way....grrr...
And.. what does this tell you?
Tells me that Western Developers need to let us gamers know how to do something useful in the game.
By writing it in a handy manual and placing it in the case with the game.
So what you are saying is this forum lacks subtlety?
Camera angles can play a part in the immersion but they aren't everything. Story with the ability to make you feel like you are making choices with consequence add more to immersion than just being able to play over the shoulder or in first person. I could care less how the script is presented, provided it is legible.
Explain the Pipboy light then. You have to hold a button, which means many people would look over it by pressing every button.
It's the whole 'video games as an art form' argument. Western developers are more concerned with presentation.