Jagged85

@project343 said:

@GrantHeaslip said:

I like to judge characters by whether or not I can picture them having a day-to-day life, and I don't think either of them really pass that litmus test. I'd say they're fairly flat characters with really interesting gimmicks.

First off, the video game medium is an inherently piss-poor medium for delivering compelling narrative (and, in turn, well-realized and utterly life-like characters). The only way to incorporate interactivity with narrative in a seamless way is to make the narrative interactive, and this can only lead to compromised quality (in terms of the sacrifice of creative vision, the sacrifice of quantity/quality for budgetary reasons, and/or via the employment of the illusion of choice). Everything else that the medium can do is inherently inferior than film. There are hardware limitations to rendering, there is a disconnect from the actor's performance, and everything has to be designed to accommodate the various ways players can affect the scene. The most that you get out of the video game medium for delivering story is the added player investment in a world that they (falsely) believe that they have influence/control over.

Disagree. I would have agreed though, if I hadn't seen Japanese 'visual novel' games that often have narratives and/or characterization comparable to films or even books. Of course, some Western gamers might argue that these are just interactive graphic novels rather than video games, but these 'visual novels' are frequently referred to as 'games' in Japan. Nevertheless, what this shows is that, when video games aren't bound by the need for action-oriented gameplay, they can have stronger narratives comparable to films or books.

What initially drew me to Japanese RPGs was the characterization. Sure, a lot of the characters are considered "cliche" today, but so are the characters in most video games in general, and even most Hollywood movies for that matter.

What really set JRPGs apart from other genres in terms of characterization was the relationship dynamics. Often in WRPGs, even to this day, the other party members rarely interact with each other, but their interactions occur mostly through the protagonist. In JRPGs, on the other hand, the other party members often interact with each other all the time irrespective of what the protagonist does. In a sense, this is partly why I found JRPG characters to be more believable, like these could be actual friends who aren't afraid to poke fun at each other even in the most serious of situations. It's group dynamics like these that initially drew me to JRPGs.

@sins_of_mosin: @sins_of_mosin said:

As a system, the PS2 wasn't all that great and compared to the Xbox, it was bad. I still remember the awful load times, horrible controller, horrible save system, and lack of features. Bought one used for $70 in 2005 and it was barely worth it at that time.

The PS2 was barely even any better than the Dreamcast. The PS2 had less VRAM and lacked key features like texture compression and anti-aliasing, both of which the Dreamcast had. Hell, even the N64 could do anti-aliasing, and yet the PS2 couldn't. The PS2's initial launch line-up also paled in comparison to the Dreamcast.

Nevertheless, the PS2's library of games expanded significantly by the time the Xbox and GameCube came out, and when all is said and done, the PS2 did have arguably the best and most diverse library of games from last-gen, and perhaps the most diverse of any generation.

Does anyone here even remember Sony's Betamax format? It was released in 1975, a year before JVC's VHS format. The Betamax had superior picture quality and was smaller in size, but the VHS won the war mainly because it was cheaper to produce. In other words, VHS was inferior tech even back in the late 70s.

It was kind of like the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD war in the late 2000s, the only difference being that Sony's superior tech won this time instead of Toshiba's cheaper tech, largely thanks to the fact that Sony included Blu-Ray support in the PS3.

My earliest childhood memories of gaming was also in the 8-bit era. The first gaming system my parents ever brought was an Acorn Electron, which was basically a budget version of the BBC Micro, a computer that wasn't very popular outside the UK. The first games I remember playing on it were ports or clones of popular arcade games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man, as well as electronic versions of board games like Naughts & Crosses and Connect 4.

The first console I owned was the Sega Master System, a console that was more popular than the NES in Europe and South America, but less popular in Japan and North America. That's when I really got into gaming, playing classic Sega games like Alex Kidd, Asterix, Double Dragon, Ninja Gaiden, Psychic World, Sonic 1 & 2, and many more. I remember playing the NES a few times as well at my cousin's house, but it didn't seem that impressive to me (I always preferred the Master System), although I did enjoy Duck Tales quite a bit (maybe because I liked the TV show a lot back then).

After that, I skipped a whole generation and jumped straight to the 32-bit era with the PlayStation, although before that I did play a lot of Mega Drive (Genesis) and SNES games at my cousins' and friends' homes.

@pixieface said:

I don't care. If you see violence in a game and feel compelled to commit violence, that is not the fault of the game. You have a preexisting condition because distinguishing reality from fantasy is a key facet of sanity. If you don't have that, you have a problem. I think a publisher has the right to make games as awful as they like but should know that they will probably be considered massive, diseased dicks for making a morally deplorable game and that no one will like them anymore. Like the guy who did the human centipede - specifically, the sequel. I mean, Christ. I will always defend his right to make that movie and to leave it unbanned, but I still think he's a fucking psycho and would not recommend what he makes to anyone, ever.

What I really want to see in a video game is the exploration of marriage. Very, very few games explore the dynamics of a committed relationship and all the pros and cons that come with it. If a couple is married, it's the husband searching for the missing wife. It's the husband protecting the wife while she stays at home. It's the husband seeking revenge for the death of his wife. This is manipulating a preexisting bond into a simple and easy motivation for the protagonist to kill stuff all by himself. There is no depth to that. It's lazy writing. To explore it, you would need both man and woman on screen and playable at all times, working together to survive.

I would also like to see motherhood explored in a game environment. I've always wanted a game where you play as a mother in a disaster scenario, trying to protect her little girl as you traverse to safety under the radar of a vicious enemy.

These things are worth investigating. Sex and violence in games is such a non-issue that I don't even know why it's discussed.

The kind of games that explore those issues are usually visual novels, an adventure game genre that's not very popular outside of Asia. One that immediately comes to mind is Clannad, which pretty much revolves around love, marriage, parenthood, etc. Beyond visual novels, some SNES RPGs like Dragon Quest V and Lufia II also dealt with similar marriage and parenthood issues, though very few RPGs since have treaded those same territories. Of course, there's always simulation-type games like Harvest Moon, Fable, and The Sims, although they usually only deal with those concepts from a gameplay perspective rather than a story perspective.

And some more...

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

Dragon Quest V and VIII

Grandia II

God of War II

Marvel vs Capcom 2

Need For Speed Underground 1 and 2

Onimusha 1-3

Pro Evolution Soccer 1-6

Shadow Hearts 1 and 2

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2

Soul Calibur 2 and 3

SSX 1-3

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Suikoden 3-5

Virtua Fighter 4

Xenosaga 1-3

In addition to the games mentioned above...

Burnout 1-3

Devil May Cry 3

Dark Chronicles

Dead or Alive 2

Final Fantasy X and XII

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Gran Turismo 3 and 4

Ico

Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2

Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence

Project Zero 1-3

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X and Resident Evil 4

Rogue Galaxy

Silent Hill 3 and 4

Tekken 5