Sulphur on 15/12/2015 at 05:46
Quote Posted by Pyrian
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.
That's what physically means in this context - removing your imagination from what's presented on the screen.
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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.
I really can't tell how it's good for world building if you're not actually able to see the world. If you hate travelling so much, I guess I can see your point of view, but for lots of folks, the ability to traipse around and explore around every corner is part of the appeal of a good RPG. Now, if these points you're travelling to are actually supposed to be far off, and they're not, that is breaking mimesis, and games shouldn't be doing that, or at least as little of it as possible.
Does it mean that the illusion of the world is shattered? No. Frankly, if it does hurt mimesis, so does having a chibified version of the protagonist sharing the same physical dimensions with a village on the map. They're both on the same level as far as I'm concerned.
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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.
There's no reason they wouldn't, either, except as I said, people like exploring. Either you tailor your game to that, and shrink the world down and stuff it with things to discover, or witness people complain that 'there's nothing to do on the map most of the time, so what's the point?'. At the end of the day, a balance must be achieved.
Pyrian on 15/12/2015 at 13:21
Quote Posted by Sulphur
That's what physically means in this context - removing your imagination from what's presented on the screen.
In that respect, smaller is better; any unnecessary space is filler rather than content. Enabling the removal of that sort of filler is one thing that using an overmap accomplishes.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I really can't tell how it's good for world building if you're not actually able to see the world.
Just like how literature never does any world building, right?
Quote Posted by Sulphur
If you hate travelling so much...
Don't be silly. That isn't about me. People play
Desert Bus for charity, not for fun. Fast travel options are ubiquitous even in modern maps crammed full of content. Virtually nobody actually wants a realistic map they have to travel across; they don't even want an
unrealistic map they have to travel across. You can't pin any of that on me being a special snowflake.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
...the ability to traipse around and explore around every corner is part of the appeal of a good RPG.
You don't lose one iota of that by expanding the points of interest at the expense of (the content of) the spaces in between.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Frankly, if it does hurt mimesis, so does having a chibified version of the protagonist sharing the same physical dimensions with a village on the map.
I hate that convention, too. :D I want my maps to look like maps! Oh, well, at least I'm consistent.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
There's no reason they wouldn't, either, except as I said, people like exploring. Either you tailor your game to that, and shrink the world down and stuff it with things to discover, or witness people complain that 'there's nothing to do on the map most of the time, so what's the point?'.
I don't think that has anything to do with it. The size-to-content ratio is completely independent of whether the map is seamless or chunked with only overmap between.
Sulphur on 15/12/2015 at 18:11
Quote Posted by Pyrian
In that respect, smaller is better; any unnecessary space is filler rather than content. Enabling the removal of that sort of filler is one thing that using an overmap accomplishes.
Exactly. And smaller overmaps give no sense of distance or scale except if you blow them up in your imagination.
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Just like how literature never does any world building, right?
It's a different medium with different execution. Literature can portray scale outright or suggest it in the space of a few sentences - games do not have the same freedom as they are primarily visual, and we mostly stopped reading our games once Infocom was subsumed by the first graphical adventure games.
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Don't be silly. That isn't about me. People play
Desert Bus for charity, not for fun. Fast travel options are ubiquitous even in modern maps crammed full of content. Virtually nobody actually wants a realistic map they have to travel across; they don't even want an
unrealistic map they have to travel across. You can't pin any of that on me being a special snowflake.
I'm going to have to disagree. Not with you being a special snowflake - by all means, be one, or don't be. You're just as unique as the person next to you and the person next to them and all the people they're next to, too! :D
People don't play Desert Bus to get any fun out of it, because it ain't fun. But lots of people do play Morrowind and Skyrim and GTA for the joy of discovering new stuff on their own, not because it's highlighted on a map and lets them zap to it at will so that they can get on with the (frankly, in Bethsoft's case, interminably boring) main campaigns.
What I will agree with is it would be nice to have the best of both worlds - let people zip around, or trundle about on foot/car/horse/helicopter/wotsit, as is their wont.
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You don't lose one iota of that by expanding the points of interest at the expense of (the content of) the spaces in between.
If everything is content
everywhere, you run the risk of exhausting a player with information overload. There's a reason filler exists, and that's because a decent amount of downtime provides healthy pacing and contrast.
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I don't think that has anything to do with it. The size-to-content ratio is completely independent of whether the map is seamless or chunked with only overmap between.
It's independent only if you consider the amount of workforce available to invest in populating a realistically scaled gameworld with interesting stuff throughout as infinite - which it isn't. We're not here to develop games with pie in the sky demands, though it would be very nice to do that.
Yakoob on 16/12/2015 at 07:17
Quote Posted by Sulphur
. But lots of people do play Morrowind and Skyrim and GTA for the joy of discovering new stuff on their own, not because it's highlighted on a map and lets them zap to it at will so that they can get on with the (frankly, in Bethsoft's case, interminably boring) main campaigns.
Yea but... FF7 has never been about that. None of the franchise has. Yes you get random caves and side quests here and there but exploring every nook and cranny, stealing from every single house, or doing MAD CAR FLIPS has never been the central focus like it is in Skyrim or GTA. It would fundamentally change the game. I'm not against trying new things but, given its sup posed to be a remake and not a spinoff, I'd expect it to try to stick to the core experience at least.
Pyrian on 16/12/2015 at 13:50
Sulphur, your post misses the points completely. I don't know if you don't grasp my fairly simple explanations or if you're deliberately misrepresenting them so you can just argue for the sake of arguing, but either way, I'm not interested.
EvaUnit02 on 16/12/2015 at 19:14
Quote Posted by GMDX Dev
One more thing: anything that touches Uematsu's compositions is going to be shit by default to me because I have a great fondness of the originals. It will be difficult to judge them by their own merits.
I'd disagree there, you can usually improve upon MIDI (see "remasters" of Doom 1/2's, Duke 3D's scores for use with eDuke32, jDoom, etc). I thought that the Advent Children film was utter garbage, but its operatic metal version of One Winged Angel was pretty rocking.
Sulphur on 16/12/2015 at 19:43
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Sulphur, your post misses the points completely. I don't know if you don't grasp my fairly simple explanations or if you're deliberately misrepresenting them so you can just argue for the sake of arguing, but either way, I'm not interested.
I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I'm definitely not interested in arguing this either especially when you're pretty dogmatic about your views, and refuse to look at anything from a different perspective. It's pretty ironic, when the entire topic of debate is a matter of perspective to begin with. To each their own.
Yak: this may surprise you, but I don't want Square Enix touching FF7's structure either. It worked well enough, and there's no point fixing what wasn't broken. The debate here was more of a general airing out of views on the old jRPG standards vs. what's currently in vogue.
faetal on 16/12/2015 at 20:10
And of the course, not one part of the whole thing is even slightly destructive as the original game remains playable for anyone who thinks it didn't need a revisit.
Seriously, it's right here: (
http://eu.square-enix.com/en/games/final-fantasy-vii)
Sulphur on 16/12/2015 at 20:25
Yup. I have that installed right now, as a matter of fact. It even comes with, uh, cloud saving.
...anyway, I don't see why anyone would see a remake that doesn't live up to its potential as damaging to the original game either. I mean, I think Homeworld: Remastered is a mess, but that doesn't change the fact that the original Homeworld is one of the finest games I've ever played in my entire life. It's still there for whenever anyone wants to experience it in all its original glory.
faetal on 16/12/2015 at 22:39
I think the point is that if you enjoy a game enough, it's YOUR game, so it should only be available to other people in a state which YOU'RE OK with. Anyone who disagrees is some kind of philistine or it isn't THEIR game - either way, they're wrong and their arguments are invalid or whatever. In other words, I still don't understand anyone's problem with distinct homage / re-make / re-boot IP.