cheapLEY's Off-Topic Roundup (Noclip looks at DOOM, FFXV) (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Sunday, December 11, 2016, 17:43 (2904 days ago) @ Korny

We know Cody didn't like it, but is anyone else playing it? I have never enjoyed a Final Fantasy game. I played a bit of FF7 when a friend got it for his Windows computer in '98, but, to ten-year-old me, it didn't even come close to the joy of playing Ocarina of Time, so I wrote it off. I never tried another FF until FFXIII on Xbox 360, which I also didn't like. So I have basically no experience with the series.

It's fascinating, because the storytelling in the series has essentially shifted from the stage to film. Games Prior to 10 were essentially presented the same way a stage play would be, where we have a mostly unchanging, wide perspective of the characters while they converse. The characters in the old games had to use broad gestures. Jumps and stuff like that in the 16 bit games, and flamboyant animations in the Playstation era. This actually kind of worked well because it distanced you from what was actually going on and injected a certain amount of imagination into the experience. As a player when you have this distance, the lack of interactivity of the world and limitations of the world building are not felt nearly as much.

If you walk into a town in say, FFVII, you will find that there are a very limited number of places where you can go. You can maybe enter 5 houses. Which is ridiculous sounding right? Hundreds if not thousands of people should live there. People just stand around and have maybe 3 or 4 different phrases when you speak to them. But that doesn't bother you nearly as much because the method of presentation does not line up with how we perceive the world.

But when you switch to 3D, now the towns feel small. People standing around feels weird. None of the 3D games have overcome this. We don't get our characters in broad strokes and without voice acting, but we get cinematics with characters than are now more real and can emote much more effectively, which only more highlights the faults with the games.

Like Bioshock Infinite, these games take us to an uncanny valley becoming all the more common with games. The aesthetics suggest a world that the designers can't deliver.

So what you're saying is... games made with a bigger budget have made immersive gaming worse... huh... so #codywaswrong according to Cody.

No that's not exactly it. Case and point Uncharted 4 with the market. Feels totally real. The problem is that they need even MORE money and time to solve these problems if they refuse to design around it. It's a misapplication of the resources on primarily aesthetics instead of a balance between aesthetics and mechanics.