REBUTTAL TO: Untitled
I must say that today, RPGs in general are getting more and more complex. Powerful hardware has changed the look and feel of this genre and in ways, can be beneficial or detrimental. Like movies, we are faced with the question of, "Does the multimedia support the story, or does the story support the multimedia?" I shall discuss a number of issues that revolve around this theme. I will also address Mr. Shraifer's editorial regarding music in games.
When I think of a "classic" RPG, I think of Chrono Trigger. For its time, it sported high quality graphics, had a great musical score, but most importantly it had a smart, intricate, and very interesting storyline. Had this been an 8-bit NES game, its quality would not be worse, nor would it be better. It's would be a good game nevertheless and the bottom line is that it had a solid plot. So what makes it a great game? It has everything to do with presentation. A master storyteller knows how to weave the plot with sights and sounds in an attempt to captivate the audience. If you had Chrono Trigger, the book, while it maybe good, with a masterful presentation in the form of a game with attractive scenery and rich music, it gets elevated to greatness.
To make a balanced argument, let's change gears and look at the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. At first, viewers are blown away. It definitely is a visual masterpiece. Every possible detail in 3D animation was address and countless hours were spent pushing the animation software to its limits. But does the prettiness make a good movie? Once the viewer gets past it, a realization is made. The story and its storytelling did not come to par with the animation quality. People can debate as to why this was. The same company wrote the stories of very good games in the past, but they couldn't achieve the same in this movie. Who knows? The point is that superb graphics do not make the game, and in this case, the movie.
Now let's go back to RPGs. Xenogears is another "classic" game, but it has moments where the entire game is dominated by the story. In other words, it lacked storytelling. These scenes were often mute, and only represented characters as solitary figures against a black background. Inner monologues are fine, but when they go for 30 minutes at a time, brows are raised and questions must be asked? Was it stylistic in their methods? Could they have done more to facilitate the storytelling? I found the scenes to be interesting in content, but the lack of presentation for extended periods of time frustrated me a bit.
In a modern setting, can you have a good game with dated graphics? Sure. Valkyrie Profile is a perfect example of this. It was one of the last Playstation RPGs that boasted 2D side-scrolling action. Could it have been done in a 3D aspect? Sure. But, it didn't and it didn't matter. The 2D graphics were still good looking and the story was solid. The key is that all aspects of the game worked together and supported each other.
Sound? To most RPGamers, music is one of the things that can make a game great. I can almost bet that not one person here doesn't have a CD or MP3 that was from some RPG. Used correctly, music sways people's emotions. When Mr. Shraifer in his editorial talked about countless times he muted the sound and listened to something else instead he seemed to make a universal statement against all music and sound. Most people were disappointed with Xenosaga's lack of an outstanding soundtrack. Essentially you only had 10 songs that played throughout the game. Most of the time, there wasn't even any music. Repetitive music comes from repetitive battles. If you listened to it just once, the song is good. Just because it's repeated does not make it bad. There are many, many great RPG soundtracks such as Chrono Cross and the Final Fantasy series. If music wasn't dynamic and only consisted of 4 voice polyphony, no one would buy or even download it. Because the music is rich in content, they were able to sell out Dear Friends – Nobuo Uematsu's concert, in 3 days. My sister and I have our tickets. We had to buy the $85 ones, because all the others were sold out, even the $100+ ones. Mr. Shraifer failed to show examples in his argument regarding music. For all we know, he could be talking about unpopular and low quality games.
Let's talk about gameplay. When a person defines an RPG, they give you the meat and potatoes. You have your hero and his friends who travel around the world because they want to fix something that is messed up and along the way they fight a bunch of things, most of which randomly. Most aren't there to serve a role in storytelling. There's a hierarchy of villains in most games and the order you fight them is the easiest to the hardest. But, you can only have so many villains, and either you or your characters have to get stronger and smarter to be able to take on each one. So they created the random battles that occur between each boss. If players chopped straight through the plot, the number of fights they have should give both the character and player enough experience to fight harder enemies. We are all familiar with the turn-based battle. No matter how beautiful it looks, all you're doing is selecting options. It requires no skill, but it does require tact. Order and type of attacks must be taken into consideration. To give a higher level of interactivity, they made various fights in Chrono Trigger and a number of games optional. You can choose to fight or not, but if you do, it's still selecting options. Active time battle, real time battle, it does not matter. Any more interactivity than this, and then you've changed the genre to action-RPG and this is what people fear.
Action RPGs are characterized by the ability to independently control a character's actions at the players will. Examples of this are Zelda, the Mana games, and countless MMORPGs. Here, both skill and tact are necessary. Most of the time you control only one character, when that character dies, it's game over. You don't experience this in most standard RPGs, because there is almost always another character under your control that can revive dead ones. You develop an attachment with the character and often will place yourself in the characters shoes. Now, you're really role-playing. This is one of the reasons these games are great fun and exciting. Also, your active participation is part of the storytelling itself. But is it better than a standard RPG? Not necessarily. Genres can't be compared to each other. You can't compare action and comedy movies because they are totally different things.
So what happens to games that are apparent fusions of one or more genres? This is what happened with the action game and the RPG. We got action-RPGs. We also got tactical-RPGs, MMORPGs, musical-RPGs, dating RPGs, and more. Good games exist in all those genres. Again, genre doesn't matter, it's the story, and how you tell it in such a way that is fun and demanding for the player.
The danger of RPGs in modern times is the tendency to remove the interactivity with the player. This has been seen in all the next generation Final Fantasy games, Xenosaga, and countless others in the form of automated cutscenes and CG. When people play games, they want to interact and be challenged with something. That is the essence of the game. When you take that away, it becomes a picture book or a movie. Non-interactive parts should facilitate storytelling, but it should not be the sole basis of the game.
In conclusion, the evolution of RPGs should be welcomed as it provides many innovations to keep the genre interesting. Otherwise games would just be clones of each other. Without change we wouldn't have gotten Chrono Trigger or the Xeno games. The Tales series is another example of deviation from the norm. We just need to remember that every technical innovation should and must support the story and storytelling of a game. All aspects of a game must be intertwined in a synergetic matter. It's not just the multimedia supporting the story or the story supporting the multimedia, but they both must support each other.
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