Why are old school RPGs held in such high esteem?

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Originally Posted by xS

All of these RPG stories are shoved down your throat. If the games were a little less linear, I might be tempted to sit back and think about them.=\

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In my experience, saying that is all very well, but when you actually come across a game that IS non-linear, it disappoints wildly.

Besides, they're no more linear than the book trilogy that you just drew a comparison to.

If you cut out the filler dialogue, meaningless sub-plots etc from most RPGs, I'm sure their script can fit on a single page too.

Anyway, as for PS2, don't want to give away too much but if you saw the ending, you would realize that it would have been a waste of time to try to develop "relationships" between the characters like most RPGs do.

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Originally Posted by red_war_machine

My personal feelings as far as LOTR are concerned would mean that I would agree with this, but disregarding that, I'm pretty sure you're being facetious. ;)

If the first Dragon Warrior, as you envisage it in your head, has a better plot than Lord of the Rings then... yes. What do you want me to say? It's all a question of interpretation and imagination.

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I respect your opinion and all, but an 8-bit RPG telling a better story than...LotR? Tolkien is spinning in his grave. :p

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Originally Posted by Hero

No, now I do remember that ^^U

Still doesn't change the fact that the game is pratically impossible without the guide it came with. Which is why I'm so mad trying to play through PS2 again (on GBA).

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http://www.phantasy-star.net/psii/psiihint-1.html

http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/g...kthrough.shtml

http://pscave.com/ps2/ps2w/ps2w1.html

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Originally Posted by red_war_machine

I've said it before in this thread, and I'll say it again. Use your imagination (that so-often-neglected wonder of humanity) and you'll find that PSII (and, even, PSIII) has more fantastic set pieces than most of the Final Fantasies put together.

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If I want to imagine a game, I can do it for free. You want a game that has you actually using your imagination and role playing? Go play PC games. But seeing:

"Hah, I am the evil bandit!"
"No, I will kill you. Oh, he was my father."
The End.

...is not remarkable and dramatic. It's a vacuous, throwaway experience that has no bearing on anything that happens in the game after that. The characters don't respond in any meaningful way. They do not develop as characters at all. And this isn't one of those Chrono Trigger "oh, you're supposed to be playing that character" deals, because they do talk, they just don't say anything interesting. Saying you're supposed to imagine emotional resonance and drama is a complete cop-out.

You can say PS2 compares favourably to the games of its time, but in this day and age it comes off like someone's first year Digipen project.

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Originally Posted by Gutsman

If you cut out the filler dialogue, meaningless sub-plots etc from most RPGs, I'm sure their script can fit on a single page too.

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And I'm sure they can't.

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Originally Posted by StriderKyo

If I want to imagine a game, I can do it for free. You want a game that has you actually using your imagination and role playing? Go play PC games. But seeing:

"Hah, I am the evil bandit!"
"No, I will kill you. Oh, he was my father."
The End.

...is not remarkable and dramatic. It's a vacuous, throwaway experience that has no bearing on anything that happens in the game after that. The characters don't respond in any meaningful way. They do not develop as characters at all. And this isn't one of those Chrono Trigger "oh, you're supposed to be playing that character" deals, because they do talk, they just don't say anything interesting. Saying you're supposed to imagine emotional resonance and drama is a complete cop-out.

You can say PS2 compares favourably to the games of its time, but in this day and age it comes off like someone's first year Digipen project.

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You're dramatically underplaying a scene which involved a man going insane, trying to kill one of the main characters and then MURDERING HIS OWN DAUGHTER because he was sent insane, presumably by something within the world we are playing in. Did the resonance of that go completely over your head? Because it affected me quite deeply.

You mean you weren't affected by the fact that you tried so hard to rescue this girl in the hope that it would cure her father of his insanity, before seeing her brutally killed by him in a five-second scene?

I've seen people kill their daughters in the Sims. I wasn't too moved by that.:)

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Originally Posted by red_war_machine

You're dramatically underplaying a scene which involved a man going insane, trying to kill one of the main characters and then MURDERING HIS OWN DAUGHTER because he was sent insane, presumably by something within the world we are playing in. Did the resonance of that go completely over your head? Because it affected me quite deeply.

You mean you weren't affected by the fact that you tried so hard to rescue this girl in the hope that it would cure her father of his insanity, before seeing her brutally killed by him in a five-second scene?

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No, because your description of the event was longer than the actual dialogue involved. I had no idea who any of those people were. No attachment to them was developed. They had no particular personality. The bandit didn't even get a character portrait, ranking him somewhere in importance below that one guy who says "I heard there are monsters in the Biolab. You should go there." What do we know about the father? He went crazy and won't let people pass a bridge. Deep.

The scene ends as abruptly as it comes about, with almost no comment whatsoever from the main characters. The plinky-plonky happy music comes back on, and you go merrily about your way watching the computer fight giant bugs some more, and the 15 second event is never mentioned again. You now have 6 hours of silent wandering until the next meaningful plot text.

If I say "one time, a guy killed his daughter", are you moved to tears? Because that's basically all this game says. If you have to imagine the story, that means THERE ISN'T ONE. Take away the plot, and what have you got? Pictures of monsters that looked good in 1989, ponderously dull dungeons, and one of the lamest battle systems in the history of rpgs.

Cool setting, nice soundtrack. But that does not a playable game make.

I thought there was a bit more background to that bandit than Strider Kyo is describing...

There were people in the town who would tell you more about his story if you talked to them. His daughter also told you why her father was doing this after you rescued her.

Anyways, considering the technology that was available at the time, what more could have been done for that particular story arch? Would it have been really better to force you to sit through 10 pages of dialogue of the bandit telling you the story of his life?

Of course, in a modern RPG you would have a cinematic sequence that plays out the entire drama for you to see, but the story would be essentially the same.

Do people just prefer long, drawn out dramatic scenes like the ones in Metal Gear Solid? Where when someone is dying, they would stay alive for 10 mins to tell you their lifestory? Personally I felt more impact from the story of the bandit in PS2 than any of the story archs in MGS.

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with almost no comment whatsoever from the main characters

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Why would there be? YOU are the main character. The game shouldn't create your emotional responses for you.

I sometimes prefer the exaggerated jumps, beads of sweat, and other exaggerated reactions that 16-bit RPGs had to the FMV of today.

Not always, just sometimes.