GigaWyvern's Blog: The Repetition

I'm not being creative right now, so here is something that I wrote on GS for anyone who didn't see it earlier. I am tired and I hope that no one thought that I was complaining in that last thing I wrote. I also wonder if anyone has noticed me stretching out my sentences with more frequent inclusion of words like "that"

I realised how boring it can be for me to just run around in a game, sometimes breaking up that almost-soporiferous activity with a few presses of the 'A' and 'Y' buttons on the Xbox 360 controller. Even then it's still too repetitious for most. The appeal of role playing games, for me, was in the quality of the story and the characters. I have, for most of my life been drawn towards games that seem to have colourful (but not too colourful, as it can ruin the effect when it becomes too rich), effervescent scenery; well-written dialogue, unique and memorable characters; an epic, even drawn out story; addictive gameplay; and at least one, just as with the gameplay, addictive mini-game.
   The game that made me realise some negatives in the genre is Enchanted Arms, which I had bought for $45, if my mind isn't playing with me. By looking at the cover I could see that it is a colourful game, just as I would have hoped, though I could not be as sure as I would have liked to be (Black Stone: Magic & Steel lied to me). The game is satisfactorily vivid, so that's one thing out of the way, discounting the foreseeable barren areas, such as the caves.
   I see it as being ironic that my favourite game, Final Fantasy VIII, has less colour than Enchanted Arms has. What I like about FFVIII is the atmosphere, the thing that makes all of the towns, forests, caves, etc. worth running through for hours and hours and, well, days. Also, to break up the monotony with more than just the simplistic pressing of two buttons regularly for a simplistic action, is the card game, which is also my favourite mini-game, Triple Triad. The game is highly addictive and throughout most of the game world I will have someone who I will want challenge to a game of it.
   Something that I think would be very good is having at least one mini-game in the game that you are making, unless there is no way for a mini-game to fit in without it feeling intrusive to the experience. Another thing would be to have hundreds of people just sitting, standing, walking around the cities and towns. Though the people don't move around much (in comparison with other games) in Final Fantasy XII, they add immensely to the feel of everything, mostly because they work in accordance with the audio, making you feel as though you are there among the people who occupied the streets.
   Running around in an RPG, fighting randomly appearing monsters can be very boring if that is all that there is to do, but it can all be vastly improved if the need is felt to improve it (which it should be). Just some people well-distributed around the world with an above-average audio track to accompany them, a mini-game or two that is/are easy and addictive to play, interesting and colourful scenery to make any game world feel more vibrant, and a battle system that keeps you involved and thinking about strategic opportunities.

I could definitely keep going on about numerous subtleties that can add so much to a game, specifically an RPG, but this could begin to get overlong (I had to restrain myself from making the previous paragraph just that).

Do you have any favourite subtlety that improves a game in a huge way?

(real paragraphs!)

Something new coming soon... I hope.