@hailinel said:
The thing about XIII's story exposition, or at least what I got out of it, was that it divulged what you needed to know as it became pertinent. I was able to get a pretty good handle on what the fal'Cie are and how the l'Cie relate to them. The game of course has an encyclopedia, but I didn't feel like I needed to access it out of necessity. The game doesn't spoonfeed the player with lore as the story moves along and I like it for that. That's not to say that the approach FFX took with Tidus is worse in any way; both methods have their place and I felt that XIII did a good job with the way it divulged the narrative.
And though the linearity is structurally similar between FFXIII and FFX in a lot of ways, I'm not so sure that XIII would have benefited from the pacing that FFX featured. I'm not entirely sure how the pacing in XIII could be improved, though certainly, the nature of its narrative, where the party is constantly on the run, is fundamentally different from FFX's summoner pilgrimage. In FFX, the party is constantly running into NPCs that are reverent and respectful of them and their mission, and even gift the party with items if you stop them along the road to talk with them. In FFXIII, the party is a band of fugitives whose very presence threatens the safety of those around them. Lightning, for all of her knowledge of the world around her, doesn't have the luxury to window shop or get involved in some sort of sporting event.
(But really, it's nice that we've gotten to a point with FFXIII that people can have debates about without one side or the other screaming about twenty-hour tutorials.)
To be fair I like Xiii, just not as much as I like most of the series (I've played 90%+ of the titles), so I never was the type of person to have that kind of casually dismissive point of view on it. I think we've interacted enough over the last couple years that hopefully you know that about me. But yeah I get what you mean.
re: lore- It's a matter of personal opinion I suppose, but I did feel like I had to consult the encyclopedia in Xiii quite often. I didn't necessarily mind since I'm the type of person who likes reading wikis etc for fun anyway. But I did son because I was trying to figure what was an Fal C'ie etc. This was mainly only an issue early on.
But it did result in plot events occurring where I didn't feel like I truly felt or fully understand the significance of them. Right away in Chapter 1 when Fal C'ie made the heroes L'Cie it just didn't click for me. I could clearly see the characters were pretty upset, but it was hard to completely empathize with them since a L'Cie was something I didn't understand (at that point). Intellectually I got that hey this is a traumatic thing, but emotionally it didn't resonate. Later it totally made sense to me what the consequences of that transformation was. Same with when Serah turned to crystal. Those were some pretty huge events but they just did not feel intuitive and the weight of them was not it would have been if I was familiar with the lore of the Game world at that point. They don't need to explain everything, but Xiii in my opinion could have benefited from a touch more setup I think for the various Plot punchlines to really hit home for a lot of people.
I certainly agree that there are many valid ways to present Lore in a story. And the Tidus/neophyte/amnesiac protagonist approach is probably the most common one, probably an overused approach and not to mention one that can get exposition heavy. I do give them credit for trying something different. The challenge I imagine in Final Fantasy games is that each game world is so different that I feel like they have to lay more world building groundwork than most RPGs serieses.
e.g. Dragon's Dogma- Gransys pretty standard Medieval fantasy fare. Most people who play it probably know what an Goblin is, a Dragon, roadside bandits etc. What their roles in a story might be, what the rules of the game world likely are etc. The game doesn't need to establish these things. They are commonly used tropes very familiar to average player. Which allows the game designers I think more freedom to invert expectations and play around with tropes if they want to, since they can count on the player having that prior knowledge.
But otoh FF Xiii had some really neat more high concept ideas like say the whole Cocoon/Pulse subworlds in a Fantasy world unique to their game alone. But you'd have no way of knowing about them unless you read a lot about the game ahead of time. So Square didn't allow themselves the same luxury as Capcom did in that regard and has to spend more time finding ways to explain to the player about the world they are in through the plot.
re: pacing- Sure it couldn't and shouldn't have been as leisurely as X for the narrative reasons you mentioned. But being on the run is a plot device Final Fantasy has used before, e.g, Cecil and Rydia in IV after Mist as well in other games, although definitely not as pervasively or aggressively as in Xiii. I got what they were going for, it was a fun premise. I think they could have worked around it a bit if they wanted to. The old tv show the Fugitive found ways to do it, I'm sure Square could have. I don't think Xiii needed a tremendous amount more of breaks in the action, but say 1-2 more besides monster Gran Pulse chapter might have helped.
I actually think the endless running undermined that fugitive tension I think Square was going for a little. There wasn't that pace contrast to help establish the feeling of being on the run as being harried. Instead it felt normal.
all this keeps reminding me I get moving and play Lightning Returns while it's still fairly new!
Log in to comment