The Existence of Old and New RPGers

by Mark Gross

After reading countless FF6 vs FF7 editorials, I've begun to notice some frequently cropping up comments, criticisms, and opinions from both sides. People write about how FF6 or FF7 was more meaningful to them, how nostalgia is coloring opinions, how technology has only served to dilute the RPG experience, etc. This in turn has led me to wonder if an age-old problem is occurring here. A problem that has plagued debaters from the beginning and hampered the process of intelligent resolution. Put simply, the two sides are talking PAST each other.

Like a biologist and a geologist debating creation/evolution. Or like John Calvin arguing predestination with Ghandi. Or perhaps like an old-school RPG-er arguing the merits of FF6 or FF7 with a new-school RPGer. That is, not only are the two sides coming from completely different angles and backgrounds, they are near-incapable of incorporating the opposing view point.

First, let me digress somewhat. While the terms 'old-school' and 'new-school' have been tossed around a fair bit, half the time it almost seems to contain a thinly-veiled insult in its use. But regardless, 'old-school' generally seems to apply to those who got into RPG's BEFORE the advent of FF7. 'New-school' is the other half of the equation. Based on such a line, I myself would be grouped in the first group, as Dragon Warrior 1 and Secret of Mana were the two games responsible for corrupting me at first.

But is that _all_ the terms mean? I think not. Someone who considered FF7 to be the epitome of RPG's, but picked up the hobby back in the days of DW and FF1 would probably be still labeled as a 'new-schooler'. So what's the defining line between the two groups?

Perhaps it's just a big-fat-grey-fuzzy line, but I'd like to submit that a possible line centers upon how the two groups approach and interpret the RPG's they play. That is, men may be from Mars and women from Venus, but I think the aforementioned RPG groups have their own different planets as well.

To better illustrate this, let me use an example somewhat close to heart. While I don't really have any fond memories of DW1 (Other than my friend who hit level 12 by beating nothing but slimes), Secret of Mana is a game that I still love, even after having sold my SNES (For $25!!!), and retain many fond memories for.

In retrospect, this doesn't make a lot of sense. SoM had less dialogue and character development in its entirety than some RPG's have in the first twenty minutes of play. The characters were simply 'the boy', 'the girl', and 'the sprite'. Many newer RPG's won't even let you change the character's names so that more dialogue and FMV is possible. Despite the length of the game, the actual plot scenes in SoM are quite short. For the boy, you basically have the opening scenes where he's kicked out of his village and told he has to seal eight mana seeds, scattered across the world. Then you have the ending scenes where he learns his heritage and manages to get up the guts to hurt/kill someone close to him. For the girl, you see her trying to rescue her boyfriend throughout the game, then you have the cumulation where she fails/succeeds, depending on how you want to interpret Dyluck's fate. For the Sprite, you have him in the beginning, swindling the boy out of money and without a memory. In the end, you have him facing death willingly on behalf of the world.

In between? At first glance, jack-squat. Only a little with relevance to character development. A pretty half-assed storyline, all in all. I mean, there's practically no transition at all. Take a story like FF7 in contrast. I don't think I'm up to recounting the entire story, but even looking at the match-up of Cloud and Tifa is enlightening. After Aeris dies, you don't immediately see the two starting up a romance. There's transition. There's other business to deal with. Cloud disappears. He's found. Tifa watches over him. The lifestream incident. They start fighting alongside each other again, with past events "cleared up" and "resolved". And THEN you start to see some legitimately believable romance potential in the air.

See the differences? In the case of SoM, you're given the beginning and end. In the second, you're given the beginning, the in-between, and the ending. In the first, you have to fill details in yourself for a truly meaningful story to come out. In the second, the story is meaningful to begin with.

Back to my original intent for this editorial - I'm wondering if that isn't one of the crucial differences between the old and new schools. Overall, the 'old-school' players have become trained to extrapolate and fill in those plot gaps without even realizing it. When they play FF4, they see Cecil bow his head and say "...Rosa...". And they immediately internalize this statement as being representative of his pain, sorrow, frustration and helplessness. But at the same time, these feelings are also taking up the forefront as his prime motivator, his goal, his raison d'etre. His future acts of heroism will ultimately all stem from these very feelings. On the other hand, a 'new-school' player is either trained or accustomed to having such details included from the start. When they read this same "...Rosa..." statement and decide that Cecil's probably a little down because his girlfriend isn't around. End of thought-train.

The FF6 vs FF7 debate is perhaps another example of this. Invariably, I see both sides of the debate stressing how their preferred game meant so much more to them. How the other side is either corrupted by technology or else an elitist bastard. And I think a big part of the problem is that both sides are playing the games differently.

Realistically, I would have to argue that more actually _happened_ in FF7 than FF6. No matter what you get out the two games, I still think FF7 had more material initially. On the other hand, I enjoyed FF6 a great deal and somewhat disliked FF7. Why? Because FF7's story had nothing for me to fill in. The ending aside, everything was laid out, with very few holes. To look at the character of Cloud, I would say that he's very well laid out for an RPG character. You learn where he grew up, why he left, his intentions, what actually happened, his problems, his doubts, and his eventual resolution. The same holds true to a lesser extent for most of the other characters. You can argue about shallowness and inconsistencies all you want, but Square began, executed and resolved the story with very few gaps in the plot's fabric. This leaves me with little room for analysis and second impressions. This might also explain why my favorite characters were Vincent and Elena. Both had a reasonably defined character, yet I don't feel that their situations were truly resolved.

FF6, on the other hand, I found a fair number of gaps in the stories of the various characters. Take Celes, for example. Her actions in the story are fairly important to the story as a whole. But there are plenty of gaps in her overall being. How did she wind up becoming a MagiTek knight? What was it like working with Kefka? What exactly were the circumstances surrounding her turning traitor? What exactly happens after she gets back together with Locke? Other characters sport similar gaps in their story. Did Terra wear a slave crown for her entire life? Is Shadow _really_ Relm's father? And other things like that. When someone refers to FF6's characterization being superior to FF7's, invariably I find that they've been extrapolating based on what the game actually provided. So is it far-fetched to think that an old-school RPG'er is accustomed to extrapolating from what the game initially provides? Take a look at a newer RPG to hit the market, namely Star Ocean 2.

I love this game. I absolutely love the battle-engine and the varied nuances in the story that come from having a different lead character and different supporting characters in the party. And I love the in-depth storyline it has. Then again... it's not really that in depth. Even the two main characters aren't unusually well-defined. To say nothing of the other ten potential characters. Maybe all those people who fault the game for having a thin storyline are right... but I found the SO2 so meaningful!!! What gives here?

I'm filling in the blanks again. Proof of this? Well, the fanfic I'm writing for the character of Opera just broke 100k. And she hasn't even joined the main party yet. Or how about Secret of Mana? The same idiot who's writing this editorial is actually _novelizing_ the game. 800k so far, and I haven't even reached the Empire. Odds are pretty good that I'm filling in a few blanks on my own, ne?

Maybe I'm just on a planet of my own, but I'd like to submit that _some_ extrapolation is necessary for a game like FF4 to strike such a resonant chord in so many players. Or how about Saga Frontier? I actually found the game rather enjoyable (Especially once I learned the easy-money trick), despite the rather thin storyline. And a good number of other people did too. And a lot of people hated the game on account of its slowness and lack of story. So who's right in a situation like this? Everyone or no one, perhaps. You may want to just sit back and decide that everybody's right. Or be a pessimist and claim that nobody's right. Or be a spoilsport and decide that you don't give a crap in the first place.

Either way, I still find it a rather interesting/amusing debate to read about in the editorials. But seriously, if I what I just wrote above is at all right, does claiming that your preferred RPG is the best mean anything to the other side? If you inform readers that FF7 had a more in-depth story than FF6, so what? I just finishing agreeing with you, disliked the game nonetheless, and previously explained exactly why. If I try to tell you that FF7 was an exercise in a style-over-substance-graphical-elitism, do you care? You and several others have already written editorials claiming that the graphics merely allowed the story to be better expressed. So we'd merely be talking past each other.

In a similar spirit, for someone to claim that after playing FF7, they then played some earlier RPG's, yet still liked FF7 the best, is what I would generously term "B.S.". As would claiming that playing them all recently gave them an objective viewpoint. Objectively is a wonderful thing, but it's a myth. I would suggest one of two possibilities are at play here. Firstly, the person approached FF7 in the first place with a pre-learned method of reading/watching a story, and that method agreed with the more seamless/gap-less story that FF7 employed. Or secondly, after having acclimatized themselves to playing FF7 and enjoying it, it deadened the person's capability to extrapolate from another plot.

On the opposite hand, I would probably say that calling the newer generation of RPG's a cop-out or a sell-out is not entirely wrong. While there are some elements that differ greatly from previous games, is it at all possible that some of the discontent on the part of the older RPG players is because the plot they are seeing has nothing for them to fill in or extrapolate? Is this what the term "uninteresting plot" has its roots in?

Whether I'm right or wrong is what I would term "subjective". I am not saying that new-school players are hard-pressed to imagine a story beyond what the RPG spoon-feeds them. Nor I am saying that old-school players have learned to instinctively imagine things on account of plot lines that were incomplete beyond the central goal. And I am in no way dictating the superiority of one over the other. But I just finished suggesting the first two, and if it matters to you, consider that you're only convincing the convinced unless you take that into account.

Any replies to intrasonic@angelfire.com

Mark

P.S. This is not worth an editorial on its own, but some people have put out opinions on music in RPG's. May I suggest that the best music ever written for an RPG was found in Secret of Mana?

-Aforementioned references to old-school/new-school opinions can be found throughout RPGamer editorials. As can the FF6/FF7 editorials.
-Aforementioned fanfic references can be found at http://www.angelfire.com/on2/intrasonic/
-Neverbeforementioned examples of story letting reader fill in the gaps can be found in reading stories by H.P. Lovecraft (Sorry, couldn't resist! 8-p)