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[PA Comic] Monday, March 23, 2015 - The Facts
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[PA Comic] Monday, March 23, 2015 - The Facts
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I gotta say, Mike. You're really starting to hone in on your expressions for these two. What you're doing is fuckin' impressive.
The action which you performed, I perceive it.
That's also my issue with the more recent Final Fantasy games. Silly nonsense words. Like, Type-0 is a really cool game, but some of this shit just leaves me sitting there with my eyes glossed over because I have no idea what half the words being thrown at me mean...
Thankfully I get the general idea of the story, and it's pretty rad.
You're right, these RPG's expect too much of the player to figure it out themselves. Maybe a FF/Call of Duty crossover will be more your style? All the characters have shaved heads, no more glam metal hair. They have names like "Steve" and "Pete", they wear camoflauge instead of all those BUCKLES!!! Oh, and no more swords, only guns.
You'll forget that you're fighting Nazis/terrorists for the umpteenth time in a row when you hear that sweet, familiar PEP-PEP! PEP-PEP-PEP!
I mean yeah some might say it's low brow gaming with no vision, substance, or creativity, but at least the characters don't look like they're from a BOY BAND, amirite? Heh, nerrrrds!
That straw man - you've both shot it and cast Ultima on it. Best crossover 2015.
Shot and Ultima'd? So he's playing Tactics A2?
As to the comic, I've not played the game yet, but it doesn't sound too hard to follow, made-up words aside.
So you've for [global macguffin, probably Crystal based] of which the [local example] is just one. And if you don't have [stabalizing item], it's fucking [bad thing, probably plague or monster based] city.
Yes, though the claim is that the story will be pretty straightforward this time.
Then we have this new game, Type-0, and in the opening cutscene, with no context at all they throw all these words at you and expect you to care when people start dying.
The opening sequence of Type-0 is one of the worst video game intros I've ever seen. They have this war break out and they hand wave the whole thing in an explanation that makes no sense to a first-time player. Then they start talking about L'Cies, but is this game even in the same universe as 13? I have no idea. I don't remember any of these kingdoms, names, or terms from playing any of the Thirteen trilogy.
The point isn't that they need to dumb it down and do a crossover with CoD. The point is that these games don't make any fucking sense.
Don't worry, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense even when you can follow it. Just remember: It has Lightning!
Final Fantasy 13, Agito-13(Type-0) and Versus-13(FF 15) were all intended to be a set of games in the same universe, but still totally unrelated to eachother because they all occur on different worlds. (making me wonder what the point of that even was, then)
They were all intended to be released within a short window of eachother for different platforms, but Square couldn't get Agito-13 and Versus-13 released in anything resembling a reasonable time frame, so Agito-13 was made into Type-0 but apparently retained the being-in-the-same-universe-ness, and I assume 15 will be as well? But I haven't played the demo or seen any other info on it so I have no idea.
This is their problem, is that they think everyone outside of their writing circle is equally aware of all the nonsense terms they throw at the player. The problem with nonsense terms is that they are precisely that until you have some kind of context for it, usually granted by explanation or experience. They just do it ass backwards in throwing terms around at a billion miles an hour and then give you context... 20 hours later.
It's shitty writing and not because of "Durr I want to go back to Call of Duty". I don't know how else to put it.
Also for a lil' context, Type-0 is set in the same universe as XIII and Versus (XV now...) but on a different world. The mechanics of magic and gods are the same, but none of the cities, kingdoms, characters etc are carried over.
Each one of those terms comes with, at the very least a contextual explanation. The problem is that they're not real words, they use a half-baked grammatical system, they only really explain each term once and don't explain the wait any of the suffixes and prefixes mean.
This extra credits seemed relevant:
Edit: I should note that I haven't played any of the modern FF games and I'm not directing this at any particular game (well, except skyrim I guess). This comic just touched on something that I find irksome about RPG writing from time to time. I would be somewhere between Gabe and Tycho here, heh.
Wii U NNID: TJandSam Steam: BrokenBrik
As for L'cie, well when the term comes out you see a person doing really fantastical things so okay a L'cie is some kind of superpowered person. Then later I find out they're tied to the crystals and there's variants in them. Okay, still keeping up. Then in one of the classes I learn the L'cie obey the will of the crystals (meaning their Focus) in exchange for something called crystal stasis or if they disobey they turn into something else, which is probably bad. Then I meet another L'cie with glowing eyes and okay they've lost their humanity a bit, cool. Then later two L'cie fight and wipe out a town and I now have context for their immense power.
The game does not need to explain every nuance of a word because when the word is used it always gives context as to what it means. I have never played FFXIII and never heard of L'cie prior to Type-0 and I still know enough about what they are to follow along.
The issue is it's actually not. Take ANY fantasy game or book - a character will go "He's an X!" and another character will go "What's an X?" and then they tell you - or sometimes they let it stew.
Today's gamers are probably not the book-reading sort, so they want instant gratification. They want to know what X is before it's even mentioned. Sometimes that's not the best way to tell a story - or even the way the author wants the story told. Maybe they want you to wonder what an L'cie is until they get to show you.
If it can't be any simpler; The three words, Fal'cie, L'cie, Cieth, are just synonymous with God/Servant/Monster. If your enjoyment hinged on them using three words to describe something so innately linked to the mythos S-E put forward with FNC, then you're not the target audience.
But my guess? Since these people have never brought up this qualm with ANY other form of media, I'm thinking this has more to do with the fact that it's FFXIII than the way they approached language or storytelling.
Type-0 has a few faults, one of which being the camera - but if the intro movie, which is like watching a History Channel documentary of an alternate, more awesome universe was just too obtuse for you, then I feel sorry for you, because this is honestly one of the best games in the entire series and your own inability to try robbed you of it.
To me, these are the same people whom movies cater to when they go "They're terraforming the planet", and one of the scientists in the room asks on the behalf of the viewer...
"What's terraforming?"
I dunno if you can really say that. The comic is where the issue was raised first, and they're definitely not "I refuse to read, final fantasy sucks" dudebros.
Final Fantasy likes to take fantasy tropes up a notch, including the excessive introduction of gobbledigook.
Also randomly naming just bizarre things after various mythos gods. "Well of COURSE the giant robot horse is an Odin."
I want to enjoy it. I want to understand. And usually after I've spent 20-40 hours I do understand. But the cold open of Type0 is just horrible writing. You're given a war with no context. You don't know anything about any of the kingdoms, other than one has a turtle, one has a tiger, one has a dragon, and one has something else that I'm not remembering. That's it. That's all the context I've got. Then tiger kingdom attacks turtle kingdom and we don't know why. Are the tiger people the villains because they are the aggressors? I don't know. Maybe the turtle guys were complete dicks and they had it coming.
Then they introduce Class 0, but there's no context for them either. What are they a class of? Is there a school? Is it a military academy? Is it supposed to be just a normal highschool? What nation does the school exist in? Are these characters citizens of the turtles, dragons, or the other forgotten animal? What makes them different? Why do these teenagers have a chance of stopping the war when the trained military of the turtle kingdom got completely destroyed by the tiger kingdom?
The point is that there's literally zero context after the opening cutscene, and then they drop you into this war of no context and you're playing these kids who you have no idea who they are or where they come from.
I realize that a cold-open is a legitimate form of storytelling. They call it "en media res," and it puts you in the middle of the action. I get that. But typically when there's an en media res opening, you've got some sort of cultural context to help you out. When your only context is a lot of jargon and nonsense that they just spouted off during a cutscene, it is hard to understand or care.
Wii U NNID: TJandSam Steam: BrokenBrik
Dang bro. I like and play RPGs plenty. I just don't care for ones that have an over abundance of made up words. Particularly when they don't bother to explain them or if the explanations are overly complicated.
And it's okay for me to not like that!
Haven't played it yet, but you mention dragons and tigers and turtles, you don't even have to mention that the 4th is a bird. There's a lot of established mythology that doesn't need explaining in Japan so we're not going to get an explanation in the translation. When they open on scenes like this you're not supposed to know a whole lot, but since much of Japanese media is a play on existing tropes you can know this much:
There are 4 such facilities, each with its own "unique" characteristics. They likely have have a complex relationships with at least 2 of them outright hating each other, but it can be compared to the changing of the seasons with one beating the other beating the other, etc... They likely all have a common founder who had some sort of purpose almost forgotten. They probably start you with a player character is likely new and probably had something about his past that makes him/her stand out, etc, etc... These is all basic anime/jRPG tropes.
This article will tell you a lot: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFourGods
Moral of the story is: Don't expect mythology rich games from other cultures to make a whole lot of sense without letting them build on themselves if you don't know much about their cultural tropes.
/sarcasm
I agree with Jerry's post about FF. I want to love the final fantasy series and I think it always has superb costume design and set design, but they go waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too far with the story, straight off the cliff into Incomprehensibleville. But going big isn't necessarily bad!
I think the "problem" with most Final Fantasy games is that they're all about the immersion. There's no reason Lightning or any of the residents of Cocoon wouldn't know what l'cie, fal'cie, c'ieth, etc. are, they live in that world, that is every day stuff for them. Sazh isn't going to ask Lightning, "A L'Cie? What's that?" I mean, take FF7 for example, it does the opposite. Your Super Duper First Class SOLDIER uber-badass spiky haired hero is all like "Durr. What's a Materia Barret?" Like, I'm pretty as an elite military guy he knows how to use the equipment. So, it doesn't make in-game sense for him to be asking. It makes game design sense, yes.
I think the BIGGEST problem with games like this however is that it takes the Bioware approach of saying "Read the Codex" if you want any answers. The game isn't going to spell it out for you. They live in this world, your characters all know what's up, you're the one who needs to take a crash course in world history in the Codex, not them. The problem with this being that in Dragon Age and Mass Effect, MOST of the characters you played were able to be totally clueless because you could roleplay them that way, there was wiggle room to meet an alien species and have them explain shit to you because you're some dumb Earthling who doesn't know anything or you're some dumb Mage who has only lived in a Tower all his life so you don't know shit about shit. Unfortunately for FF13 and FFT0 you play these badasses who have lived in the world long enough to know everything about it, and that's where they goofed with the Codex idea.
Anyways, overall, it's not THAT complex. By the end of the first mission everything about the world you need to know is clarified. Do you need to know why the war started? Not if your characters don't (which seems to be the case IMO.)
I realize that wasn't the point of your post, but still, they usually had Cloud explain things he would know to others.(Which raises some questions once you learn the truth)
8 was great, 7 was awesome, loved 9th, 10th was ok, 12 was great...
Then 13th came out, i bought it, i played it, and after 17 hours, i just got so damn bored with it all, the combat, the characters, the story, but mostly the combat.
I just could not bother with the constant tunnel running anymore, and then i quit.
Wasn't even aware they were releasing a new one until i read the last strip of PA, and, somehow, don't care enough to check on them.
I have absolutely no skin in this game, but it seems like that's more hits than misses. Why not try the demo?
Wii U NNID: TJandSam Steam: BrokenBrik
Most fantasy books I've read, the ones I'd want to read again anyway, don't throw all kinds of terms at you in the first five pages, explanations notwithstanding. I'm perfectly willing to do some legwork to follow a story: I'd consider the world of, say, the Wheel of Time, to be fairly complex and it's one of my favorites. But I don't owe a story my time--it needs to convince me to put in that work by engaging me with a story first. Show me some characters I can care about in a situation I can relate to or at least basically understand before you start with the history lesson. Even in an exotic fantasy setting, if it's a good setting it's populated by people essentially like you and me who go through similar struggles, even if its in the context of all this crazy alien stuff. Get me invested in their struggle and I'll be happy to start investing in the crazy alien stuff around it.
The problem with both Type0 and FF13 is that they don't build up the complexity over time. They throw the entire dictionary of unique terminology at you all at once. It's an issue of pacing and jargon-overload, not an issue of complexity.
Clearly I and others disagree.
You're right. That's the Tutorial portion after the Reactor Mission. But, when you get your first Materia from Barret (I don't think you start with any, and he gives you like Bolt or Ice or something) he explains what Materia is and what it does.
Then you guys suck at context clues. I'll give you that all the similar sounding names gets confusing, but this isn't any different from any other Final Fantasy game. I think the fact they tried to show it as a "History Channel" thing may have been confusing to some because of how they casually say things without giving much context, but like I said, I think that's the intent of the intro because the characters themselves aren't privy to why the war is happening beyond what you're told in the intro. I'm sure that will be revealed in some big "twist" as you progress through the game. Other people have also brought up "Western Privilege" and I think that plays into it a lot, Final Fantasy games and most jRPGs play heavily into either Theology or Japanese Folklore, and if you're not familiar with it these themes and ideas may need more explanation... which they won't give you because these games are designed for a Japanese audience.
"Monster Hunter road trip + heartthrob warlocks" seems like the most apt description of FFXV so far.
Nah. You're just willing to put up with the nonsense more. Also, I didn't specify any particular FF game. And I've played plenty of other JRPGs. I'm perfectly familiar with them. I just don't care for FF's style of throwing out a constant stream of nonsense I have to constantly figure out to understand what's going on. You do enjoy constantly figuring it out and that's fine. We can like different things.
Prologues in fantasy usually get more slack I think.