RPG irritations

[Monica]

I'm gonna have to quickly agree with the person who said the Japanese makeChristian-type stuff evil. ToS is an example but it's a great game, I don't hate it at all, but I'm thinking about Xenogears. If I understand, Fei is on his way to becoming the slayer of the Christian God, yes? Well the man in black told him to and he seemed evil, but does that mean that guy is evil or God is evil? And can someone tell me yes or no, is Fei gonna fight and kill God in this game?

We need to make an RPG that kills buhda if that's the case...;_;

[Blonde799]

I don't think the RPGs mentioned make God or christianity out to be evil, but the leaders of those in faith are out for their own selfish gain or those mentioned worship a false/evil god unknowingly(which they usually are), which conveys the message that the line between good and evil isn't always straight, and that even religion isn't safe from those distinctions.

[Darth Marsden]

I've had both versions of the game, and it does seem to me that the random encounter rate has been cut down a bit for the Gamecube version, although it's possible I'm just hallucinating. Unfortunately, my gripe with Skies of Arcadia comes from the battles themselves... they go too damn slowly. When it takes your character 10 seconds to perform a normal attack, it drives me nuts.

Yeah, the battles take entirely too long. When I was playing Final Fantasy I, I could literally just hold down the attack button and do nothing else. Wizzed through the battles and made them much more bareable.

Oh! Another major gripe of mine - Crappy endings. This goes double for Skies of Arcadia, which was the most cheese-infested thing I've ever been forced to sit through, and I've watched every single Arnold 'I was in Terminator, you know' Schwartzenegor movie.

If I've just spent god-knows-how-much of my life playing through a game, I want an ending that makes it all worthwhile. I want to be amazed. I don't want to see the Happy Little Tree elves suddenly appear and make everything better, nor do I wish to see the lead character suddenly realise "Hey - you know what? That babe who's been after me all through the game is actually kinda hot". I want to be reassured that my wasted month was, in fact well spent, and I want to be satisfied that my 30-40ish pounds were well spent. Failure is not acceptable.

[DarkFlameWolf]

so what exactly do you look in a ending darth, you never did specify in your post.

[Darth Marsden]

so what exactly do you look for in a ending Darth, you never did specify in your post.

Didn't I? Huh. I guess I just stated what I didn't look for.

What I look for in an ending is, smply put, something that makes you think "That was totally worth it". A well-written script, good voice-acting (if applicable), believable character reactions and a safisfying end to the story are what I, and really ANY, videogame player expect from a really great ending. We've invested time and money in these games and at the end we want to be reassured that it was all worthwhile. This applies twice as much to RPGs, as the story is, literally, the most important part of the game and it needs to end well.

[DarkFlameWolf]

Okay, in the rpg I am making in rm2k3, the ending depends on what you do over the course of the game. Do no sidequests and you'll get the middle of the road ending, not entirely satisfying, but it works. Do a bunch of good-based sidequests and you'll get the best ending and the most happy one. Do a bunch of evil-based sidequests and you'll get the evil ending and the most sad one. If you decided to do ALL sidequests, both good and evil, it'll come out with the good ending being the one you'll see since there are more good sidequests than evil. So it all depends on what extra stuff you want to do in the game and what aspect each sidequest you do is. For example, save a town from a dragon and you get some good points added to your ending score. Make an assassination attempt and it'll be an evil sidequest.

[Cloral]

I think the most important aspect in an ending is closure. The ending should resolve the story to a point where the player can walk away from it feeling satisfied. FF4 did a good job of this - it showed what happened to all the characters as a result of the events of the story. It wasn't flashy and didn't have any special effects, but it did what it needed to. And this puts it above many later endings in my book.

[Darth Marsden]

Okay, in the rpg I am making in rm2k3, the ending depends on what you do over the course of the game. Do no sidequests and you'll get the middle of the road ending, not entirely satisfying, but it works. Do a bunch of good-based sidequests and you'll get the best ending and the most happy one. Do a bunch of evil-based sidequests and you'll get the evil ending and the most sad one. If you decided to do ALL sidequests, both good and evil, it'll come out with the good ending being the one you'll see since there are more good sidequests than evil. So it all depends on what extra stuff you want to do in the game and what aspect each sidequest you do is. For example, save a town from a dragon and you get some good points added to your ending score. Make an assassination attempt and it'll be an evil sidequest.

Oo, evil sidequests. I guess we all know what I'll be doing. :evil grin:

I like the ideas you're throwing up, Wolf. It's certainly an interesting take, and I'm REALLY looking forward to it. The only thing I'm concerned about is that I'm going to want to see all 3 endings and I won't really want to play through the whole game three times in order to do so. Minor niggle. Sounds great otherwise.

With regards to closure Cloral, you don't tend to get that much in this sequel-mad empire we live in, which is why I never really mentioned it. It's a valid point and I wish more developers really would close off every loophole, but this then means that they have to create an all-new title, which the big-wigs are loath to do.

One way of having closure AND a sequel is to do it the Final Fantasy way. Another is to set your sequel in the far future, or just make a prequel. Although I'd rather companies take the plunge and make original titles, if they have to make sequels I wish they'd follow those ideas rather then use the old 'Oh dear, <Generic Evil Bad-Guy> has risen from the dead - let's get the old gang together and go kill him again' approach they seem to do. But I'm going off the point. Closure = Good.