REBUTTAL TO: Untitled
Unfortunately, the gamers these days like to make broad statements and complain about absolutely nothing.
I won't bother to misspell "quibble," or do such a thing over something like the advancement of technology in console systems. Apparently, to some people, however, this is an issue. I don't think that our good friend Henry has bothered to accurately describe exactly why enhanced graphics and sound take away from the gameplay experience. And I, brave as I am, am going to attempt to tell you why enhanced graphics and sound enhance the overall game experience.
Sure, we all love to get a shiny, new PlayStation 2 game. And generally, with RPGs, we are treated to some kind of opening cinematic orgy for the senses when we first turn on a game. But, ever since the days of Final Fantasy VII, certain gamers have been complaining that these feasts for our eyes and ears are detrimental to the gaming experience. They argue that too much development time is being spent on graphics, and not enough time is spent tweaking gameplay. They argue, "Is it worth the extra 5 minutes of your time to sit there and watch something that use to take a little less the 30 seconds?"
And in my opinion, glaring grammatical errors aside, the answer is a resounding HELL YES! I have yet to see conclusive proof that time is being wasted on graphics and sound that should be spent on gameplay. In case some of you were wondering, video games are now larger than Hollywood affairs, in terms of how many people it takes to produce a product ready for today's demanding marketplace. As a matter of fact, you won't see too many people from the 3d modeling section of a development team working on coding the battle engine. There are as many people to worry about the graphics as there are people to worry about the gameplay, so the argument that game engine coders are wasting time on making pretty pictures is totally bunk. And if you really don't feel like watching a cutscene, usually, pressing "start" will skip it for you. I understand you wouldn't want to waste precious time on a cinema scene, when you could be sitting on your rump in front of a TV doing...oh wait, you would be doing the same thing.
Final Fantasy Tactics also suffers from Too-Many-Cutscenes-Syndrome, And according to our friend, the cutscenes in FFT are even more unbearable because the graphics aren't up to par with today's games! How's that for a double standard? Then he goes on to say that the scenes are super-awesome and the graphics are perfect. I wonder if he's even played a SNES RPG before...most dialogue scenes in FFVI were just as wordy, similarly paced, but with less to look at. I don't understand how above-average graphics are hurting anything here? As a matter of fact, I would venture to say that the use of modern graphics pull you into the story more. I wouldn't have cared about Ramza or anybody in FFT if they were 8-bit sprites on a TV screen. One might actually argue that because the script for FFT was so poorly translated, the detailed 2d sprites and the character and personality in which they were drawn, were FFT's saving grace. Graphics help tell a story. Does having the movie camera out of focus for a whole film make a piece of cinema better? Generally, no. People want to identify with what they see on the screen.
Of course, some feel the solution to this apparent problem is to simply "reduce the graphics and sound," whatever that means. And of course, we all know that we would have really felt for Tidus and Yuna when they kissed in the spring in FFX if they had been 4-color 8-bit sprites, making a quaint hop and an inferred peck on the lips. And of course, Aeris's murder in FFVII would have would have made an impression twenty times larger on this generation of gamers if we couldn't have seen the evil intent in Sephiroth's eyes as he glared at Cloud over his love's dead body. Sarcasm aside now, I feel that games are becoming a medium capable of moving many people. And telling a story has always been the core of RPGs, so why would we want to back down on graphics and sound?
And, my personal favorite part of the rebuttal, the paragraph on music. I, like you, have experienced "too much complicated music" during battles. Which somehow also equates to slow gameplay and redundancy. And of course, the best cure for redundant music and avoiding "the same thing over and over again" is to turn on a wrestling-rock band like Disturbed and get down with the sickness while you gain some levels. Please.
The more complex, the better. Why the heck gamers would want to sacrifice the gift of modern sound and graphics for a less-than-outstanding gaming experience is totally beyond me. If you want bare-bones video games that badly, go play Pong. I hear the two-color graphics and less-than-stellar sound make for great character development.
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