Why are old school RPGs held in such high esteem?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rezo

aside: Regarding games and books. All of the prose and technical ability that goes into it is entirely lost in games, save for dialogue. The descriptions become an issue of art direction, and so you get to have the fun of saying Tolkien described a forest better than someone actually created one. The scenarios in books, while more focused than RPGs, are directly comparable to scenarios in adventure games. Bilbo's tussle with a spider is not terribly greater than the end scenario of Grim Fandango, if at all. And in the end, it isn't a matter of skill so much as it is the manner in which the scenario is presented. A problem with many RPGs is that the story telling is broken, just as it is with a game like Ninja Gaiden. While reading about some people wandering through a cave in a book is just as interesting as reading about their fight with the monster at the end, there's a definite detachment from the story when you're wandering through a cave in an RPG. The solution to this is to simply integrate the story into the gameplay as is done with adventure games. Like Magus's castle(or the fat Green fellow's castle in the same game) in Chrono Trigger. Console RPGs are set up like the adventure games anyways(with combat taking the place of puzzle solving as the "gameplay"). They need to borrow more from that genre.

---

I cannot argue that in the descriptions one cannot rely on the written word, it comes to art direction which is something else entirely. I think Films (lets say the Lord of the Rings films since we're nailing a million things on Tolkiens corpse) suplant alot of Tolkiens words with imagery and does a fantastic job at it. Other games have, like I mentioned, Panzer Dragoon Saga did wonderfully even with its old Saturny graphics. This is a matter of taste naturally, FF7 did well at that too but what was missing, in my opinion, was the artistry and well craftedness of the dialouge and the development of the characters - in which case even Tolkien did nothing revolutionary, George Lucas did the same thing that Tolkien did with his characters as Tolkien did the same as authors before him like Homer had done with the Odyssey and The Illiad. Joseph Campbell has a book called (my favorite) The Power of Myth and within it describes "The Heroes Journey." Basically, it's a template that all great authors have followed for centuries. This paradigm may seem to cheapen works like LOTR or.. well... anything else but it has always been applied diffrently (more obvious and straight-forward with Lucas and Tolkien) like within Hemmingway's Old Man and the Sea which does not nessisarily deal with a "Hero." Still the same concepts are applied to the story and its characters (you need not either hero or villian to make it work, just characters). A game like Final Fantasy 7 has this in theory - if you imagine it - especially with Sephiroth who could be termed as a Tradgic Character. But few of the main characters exhibit any change in thier wills or demeanor or, if in some cases they do, they simply change without any reasonable (or at least appearant) cause. As shallow as Luke Skywalker is, he at least follows a logical design that some games don't even bother with. Not all, or maybe not even most but quite a few (I can think of Grandia 2 for instance) that just throw weighty topics and clechés around like water without ever giveing you anything to care for these characters. They were the same when you met them as they were in the end. That's a lame story to me. It's like argueing that Tomb Raider has a good well told story... Lara Croft is no more or less diffrent from game to game and the attitude the character has is never augmented due to her surroundings or actions taken by her or people or forces around her. It might as well be Marble Madness... except Marble Madness was much more fun. Frodo Baggins, Hobbitt of the Shire in Bag-End was not the same kind of person as Frodo Baggins, ring bearer. Tolkien not only progressed his characters but decribed thier situations and thier feelings well. A tormented or tradgic character in just about every Japanese RPG is typically represented like this "..."

Humor, however, has been well delivered in games - Adventure games as well as Console styled RPGs which are closer (as rezo mentioned) in relation than Console RPGs to Western or PC RPGs. Discworld II wasn't bad since it was the last one I played... I had fun :)

Quote:

---

game like Final Fantasy 7 has this in theory - if you imagine it - especially with Sephiroth who could be termed as a Tradgic Character. But few of the main characters exhibit any change in thier wills or demeanor or, if in some cases they do, they simply change without any reasonable (or at least appearant) cause. As shallow as Luke Skywalker is, he at least follows a logical design that some games don't even bother with. Not all, or maybe not even most but quite a few (I can think of Grandia 2 for instance) that just throw weighty topics and clechés around like water without ever giveing you anything to care for these characters. They were the same when you met them as they were in the end. That's a lame story to me.

---

I agree with your this. I've just thought of it as a problem with story-telling in general rather(Best example: Cinderfella- Someone could excuse it for being a comedy, but its not funny in the slightest). I get the same impression from most books I've read and movies I've seen. I suppose the difference is that what I consider badly told RPG stories are the ones that are respected.I think a statue crying to clue me in to the fact that the scene is "sad" is laughable, and a fan of FF7 finds it poignant perhaps. But thats not really different than people saying a "Star Wars or" "The Matrix" or "Hip movie 2010" is the greatest one ever made . Scenario's like being stranded on an island in BOF4, or holed up in Muse in Suikoden 2 are my favorites. Or the private actions in Star Ocean 2(I would not have liked the game if they weren't in there).Something like. . .say... Whatever her name was in Lunar 2 ranting about the power of humanity for five minutes , or Tellah's entire role in FF4 just annoy me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rezo

I agree with your this. I've just thought of it as a problem with story-telling in general rather(Best example: Cinderfella- Someone could excuse it for being a comedy, but its not funny in the slightest). I get the same impression from most books I've read and movies I've seen. I suppose the difference is that what I consider badly told RPG stories are the ones that are respected.I think a statue crying to clue me in to the fact that the scene is "sad" is laughable, and a fan of FF7 finds it poignant perhaps. But thats not really different than people saying a "Star Wars or" "The Matrix" or "Hip movie 2010" is the greatest one ever made . Scenario's like being stranded on an island in BOF4, or holed up in Muse in Suikoden 2 are my favorites. Or the private actions in Star Ocean 2(I would not have liked the game if they weren't in there).Something like. . .say... Whatever her name was in Lunar 2 ranting about the power of humanity for five minutes , or Tellah's entire role in FF4 just annoy me.

---

Let me guess, you liked Skies of Arcadia. :p

Not really. Why'd you pick that game in particular?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OmniGear

That's not true at all.

Anyone who's played more than one Final Fantasy knows that they change everything up with each new installment. They're all completely different games.

---

lol. YEAH, o...kay.

When you get in to a battle, you still get the menu with Attack, Magic, Summon, Items, etc. That's the core gameplay elements that have stayed the same in a Final Fantasy since the beginning.

They're the same games with a new facelift.

That's why it's all about story with a Final Fantasy or RPG. And the ones of recent haven't done anything overly brilliant or astounding.

They're all set in a drab, doomed or oppressed culture with a 'troubles' hero to save the world. Final Fantasy X was a little bit different because of the time issue and the ending, but in the end it was even worse, character wise.

You seemed to get all the characters in the first few temples and shrines without too much backstory until later on in the game. I didn't like that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by supermario

When I play a new RPG [ ] today, the games usually shower me with great graphics and a tremendous amount of cinema scenes....... This in my opinion is being forcfully fed an environment that the creator wants you to see.

When I play an RPG on SNES, the graphics for the most part are very primitive, and the cinema scenes are reduced to only reading dialogue. Thus the creator lets YOU the player use his or her imagination to take the words and graphics and make it to what YOU interpret the game to be saying. AKA reading a good book.

---

ditto

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Andrew

lol. YEAH, o...kay.

When you get in to a battle, you still get the menu with Attack, Magic, Summon, Items, etc. That's the core gameplay elements that have stayed the same in a Final Fantasy since the beginning.

---

Summons weren't in the first half of the series, and the only thing that's stayed the same is that menus exist. If you think FFVIII plays just like FFVI which plays just like FFI... then you clearly haven't played at least two of those. Whether or not you realize it from screenshots, there's a lot in the tuning of the battle system that changes, especially in the time priority Grandiaish system of FFIX compared to the combo-based nature of FFVII up next to the abusive power-hungry Juctioning of FFVIII (these being just the PS FFs).

Selecting an attack may not change, but the way it's executed does. Shinobi and Gungrave both have buttons for attack and jump, so selecting what to do remains the same but they hardly play alike.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rezo

Not really. Why'd you pick that game in particular?

---

Just because the games you cited (or scenarios) seem to be of a light-hearted nature (as opposed to something heavy-handed like Xenogears), and so is Skies of Arcadia. Just wondering if there was any correlation. :p

Andrew: What Mech said.

I didn't like the scenarios because they're light-hearted(the Muse one in particular isn't). They just have a nice immersiveness to them. In Muse, you're waking up and going to sleep each night at the inn and the story develops at a nice gradual pace. When you're stranded on the island in BOF, you're just wandering around and fishing for food. No big melodramatic plot point to be shuffled through, dungeon to march through or etc

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MechDeus

Summons weren't in the first half of the series, and the only thing that's stayed the same is that menus exist. If you think FFVIII plays just like FFVI which plays just like FFI... then you clearly haven't played at least two of those. Whether or not you realize it from screenshots, there's a lot in the tuning of the battle system that changes, especially in the time priority Grandiaish system of FFIX compared to the combo-based nature of FFVII up next to the abusive power-hungry Juctioning of FFVIII (these being just the PS FFs).

Selecting an attack may not change, but the way it's executed does. Shinobi and Gungrave both have buttons for attack and jump, so selecting what to do remains the same but they hardly play alike.

---

Summons were in Final Fantasy 2. Remember Chocobo in the sand cave? They play the same. Gameplay is how you play the game (psst, through a menu system. Everything else is largely out of your hands) Even in this regard, Final Fantasy 3 had the mimic system, the tool system, the painting system, the animal system (for Gau) and the combo system (for Sabin), Morphing for Terra, the original slot system for Setzer.

If you're looking for the variety, then this older title has that up the kazoo as well.

Enough of that though, because my point was that RPGs revolve around their storylines and character development. I simply believe something like FF2 or 3 did a better job than 9 or 10. That's how they add up with things today.

I think a good part of this may be because that's all they really had. They didn't have teams of artists depicting scenes. They had to act it out with a style that lent more to imagination and underdeveloped characters weren't an option.