GMDX Dev on 14/12/2015 at 15:28
Except Deus Ex had a load of room for improvement (FF7 does not) and I handle it with care (see earlier post ITT: "If handled with care & faithfulness I'd be accepting"). So no.
If I took Deus Ex and made it into something else in principle akin to as they have in this video I'd welcome criticism, because I'd likely be a shameless sellout. You don't take someone else's IP and throw everything away mostly everything that makes it an IP to begin with as they clearly have.
faetal on 14/12/2015 at 15:32
Well yes, you do - it happens all of the time. They can do what they want with their IP - permission not required.
These people do not answer to you and they aren't taking anything from you. Your upset is just weird entitlement over something someone else made and you happened to enjoy. No one owes you anything.
GMDX Dev on 14/12/2015 at 16:13
Give it up for fuck sake. Where does any entitlement even come into this? I was expressing my disdain for the concept of such a remake, nowhere did I say nor imply anybody owes me anything. Sure, a Japanese corporation is going to drop all plans for huge money milking that will see them out of the red just because I feel I am entitled to it.
Again, I was ranting. We see something we don't like, we do that.
faetal on 14/12/2015 at 16:30
I'm just doing the same. It's the same tired old thing very time anything gets re-made.
"Oh no, why did they have to ruin MY favourite thing!?"
Meanwhile, thing gets made anyway, some people enjoy it or it tanks massively and a lesson is learned. No one loses anything, some people get entertained and it keeps happening for the reason that enough people buy it to make it worthwhile.
Manwe on 14/12/2015 at 18:48
Quote Posted by faetal
I'm just doing the same. It's the same tired old thing very time anything gets re-made.
I'd like to express my disdain for people who complain about the people who rant about remakes.
No but seriously, like a few others here, I don't particularly enjoy turn-based RPGs, and have no emotional attachment to FF7 (or FF in general to be honest), so I'm happy about the direction the series seems to be taking (sorry if that means ruining someone's childhood memories).
Also I'm glad they're finally ditching the totally obsolete CGI cutscenes, and that their games look properly modern, at last. By that I mean not just graphically but in terms of their mechanics as well. Having a game that relied on 2 buttons only (well ok, 3 counting the inventory screen) might have made sense during the NES era, but it just felt out of place when playing with an 16-button controller.
The same goes for the overworld map. Made sense in the 16-bit era, but then a little something called Ocarina of Time happened, followed by GTA 3, Oblivion, and a billion other open-world games, proving that you could actually show the game world instead of merely suggesting it. It seems JRPG developers have finally pulled their head out of their ass and are entering the 21st century. They're only 15 years late.
Now to get rid of the spiky hair...
Pyrian on 14/12/2015 at 19:32
Quote Posted by Manwe
The same goes for the overworld map. Made sense in the 16-bit era, but then a little something called Ocarina of Time happened, followed by GTA 3, Oblivion, and a billion other open-world games, proving that you could actually show the game world instead of merely suggesting it.
...By reducing an entire world to a few square miles at most, breaking any sense of scale, realism, or economy. I prefer overworld maps, thanks. The notion that you use a single interface for a wide variety of settings/scales inevitably means that you get an interface that's not particularly good at more than one of them.
Sulphur on 14/12/2015 at 19:39
You do realise that overworld maps were also at most, physically, a few miles around as well, right? As abstractions that asked you to fill in the gaps with your imagination, they weren't particularly useful in a worldbuilding context or even functional, except for getting you around the world faster by making you some sort of giant-headed doll tripping over random encounters every other step through the five foot gap between your (usually) burning hometown and the next dungeon.
*If that. They were usually smaller.
Pyrian on 14/12/2015 at 20:25
Quote Posted by Sulphur
You do realise that overworld maps were also at most, physically, a few miles around as well, right?
What does "physically" even mean in this context? Yes, they were small. Scaling issues make it almost impossible to say
how small. But that just makes it easier to imagine them as being much larger.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
As abstractions that asked you to fill in the gaps with your imagination...
Indeed.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
...they weren't particularly useful in a worldbuilding context or even functional, except for getting you around the world faster...
I think they were great for world building. The constraint of forcing the player to move continuously between points that are supposedly far away is that they're
not far away. That's world-destroying. As for being not functional except for getting around, well, that's praising with faint criticism. How dare they be good at what they're for!? Their replacements notably aren't - so much so, in fact, that they almost invariably
do provide an overmap and "fast travel"/teleport option.
There's no reason game designers couldn't generate realistically large, realistically empty realms, and focus on the points of interest. The insistence on making it impossible to travel by overmap except by teleporting to places you've already been is the primary limiting factor.
Yakoob on 15/12/2015 at 04:12
Ugh, I'm with Pyrian, I really hope they do NOT create a massive sandbox world ala Skyrim. Either most of it will be dead space or repetitive grinding caves and random loot spawns.
This is where an overview map comes in handy - it can communicate the same information (the geography of the world, iconic places, sense of distance) without needing any filler. It also contributes to the game's overall mood way better than a drawn map with quick-travel, and FF7 is a prime example.
When you first got out of Midgar after hours of oppressive and claustophobic urbanization, ans saw the big green space with complete freedom to roam around, it felt great. It was exactly like the moment in Fallout 3 when you first leave the shelter but I'd argue more powerful due to longer gameplay before.
Then, when you learn about the meteor heading for Earth, the whole music and color scheme changes. Going from the happy-go-lucky Gold Saucer or stylized Wutai back to the grim world map was a reminder that "oh yea you had your fun but, shit's still not looking good..."
Yea, the same stuff can be accomplished with Skyrim-style world map but it just feels different. Which one is better - neither, it's entirely subjective. I guess I'm opting for overview map partly due to nostalgia, partly because I do not feel it's an outdated mechanic.
GMDX Dev on 15/12/2015 at 05:18
Well said.
It's a "less is more" approach to world design. With a fully-realized, closer to scale game world there'd be no way they'd be able to fill it with meaningful content, just as Skyrim is full of copy-paste boredom. Furthermore it keeps the pacing of the plot on course.
It provides the illusion of a grand world rather than levels interconnected by loading screens and provides some satisfactory exploration without the downsides of a fully open world game. It's similar to the Looking Glass approach to level design of self-contained, tightly-knit sandboxes.