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Setting Sun - On Final Fantasy And Western Design Philosophies
Thanks to 1UP for its feature discussing the still-declining state of the Japanese videogame industry, despite recent figures showing a small increase in sales for the first half of 2004. Nevertheless, it seems that "Japanese hardware and software revenues [were] down 11% in 2003 and nearly 40% since the peak of the PlayStation generation in 1997". The piece muses on reasons for the decline: "Complex, lengthy, story-driven [Japanese] games demand an awful lot of care and feeding these days, and often offer paradoxically little replay value... [whereas Western developer] DMA Design hit on a formula with Grand Theft Auto III that... offers activities suited to both long stretches of gameplay and short sittings of cruising or random action." In a similar vein, a OPM-reprinted column from Andrew Vestal suggests a solution: "One possible catalyst [for design change] is the upcoming Final Fantasy XII. In an interview, character designer Akihiko Yoshida readily admits that 'many team members are huge fans of non-Japanese games,' and... the game disposes of large parts of console-RPG design expectations." He concludes: "It's possible the game will act as a Trojan horse, introducing Western design philosophies to a wide swath of Japanese gamers and designers."
Here's hoping they don't go too far with this GTA-fication of RPGs. MTV-style gameplay is alright, but sometimes it's nice to sit down and get a story too. And considering what seems to happen when Square Enix diverges from what they're actually good at (see Crystal Chronicles) I'm not sure how much I trust their ability to mess with the formula too much before alienating their fanbase and diluting that which makes their games so popular. Final Fantasy doesn't sell the way it does by trying to be all things to all people.
We already saw the beginnings of that with FFX-2 as well, with its mission-centric storyline. And it was an interesting gimmick that was sort of neat for such a non-serious entry in the FF series, but it also seemed to give rise to a far less involving storyline and less sense of 'progression' as the game went on. Hopefully this trend doesn't continue in future FF games. Once you take the story of out FF, there's a lot less seperating it from every other RPG out there.
Some people enjoy games with deep storylines that take forever to beat. They had these kinds of games in the time period of Contra, Super Mario, Sonic. In fact, most games then and now are still in the gategory that you describe. They aren't the norm for any platform.
Personally I consider it a good value if I get 60-80 hours of gameplay out of one game before I beat it. Those 10 hour action games don't cost any less. There are times when I want to pick up something simple for a short time, but I can also just load a save game from an RPG, play for a little while, save again and quit.