This is why I hate the term "hardcore gamer". Hardcore is often equated with pr0n, violence, competativeness, and overall macho attitude. I play games for none of these things, yet I consider myself a pretty avid gamer, probably moreso than most self-proclaimed "hardcore gamers."
I'd like to hear the term "game connoisseur", or "game enthusiast" thrown around a little more. The "hardcore gamer" is really one segment of the gamer crowd, who seems to have been able to put themselves on a pedestal above everyone else, regardless of what that really means.
I put a lot of thought into games, I like to appreciate them as both entainment and creative works. I can look at a game from any time period and enjoy the ingenuity and creativity that went into them. I'm like this with films too. I'm a big classic film buff, but I also love a great contemporary film, as well. My friends always see gobs of the latest blockbusters, and then talk about how I'm "not into films" when I haven't seen the latest superhero flick, which kinda pisses me off, because I probably have seen more films total, and a lot more different kinds of films than they have. Same with games. Call me snuty, pretentious, "gay", or whatever, but I put an ounce of thought into most of what I do, sorry if that offends anyone.
Is that you're reasoning for playing PC games? Corporate approval?
It's called quality control. And seeing that Nintendo and Microsoft make (and own companies that make) a lot of the greatest video games ever made, I think they're pretty good judges of quality. Sony hardly does any approval, and it shows (bucketloads of crappy titles). All they really ask is that developers actually do a good job on their games as to not make their systems look bad. As someone in a media design field, I'm ALL for quality control, as long as it doesn't start to single out certain views, and I've seen none of that as of yet.
So, you can continue to lead your pointless one-person rebellion against something that may or may not actually be a POSSITIVE creative force, or you can actually enjoy the games that you seem to actually want to play.
Toys are bulky, colorful, and call a lot of attention to themselves......gee, sounds like most of the PCs I see around my office.
The Mac mini is a very simple geometric shape and color that does anything BUT call attention to itself. No child would want to pick it up and shake it.
Seriously, if the computer was invented today, and someone came out with a big black tower with huge vent holes, blue LED lights, and a huge gaudy emblem (like the graphics processing PC I have on my desk at work), and then brought out a mini... I don't think anyone would have any question which one looked more like a toy.
Face it, you hate Macs, and you think calling them "toys" is a good way of making yourself feel more mature for not using them. But do they REALLY look like Toys? If you think they look like toys, then I think you need to go down to your local Walmart, in the toddler isle and get a reality check. Macs are "attractive"... and have some actual design philosophy that went into them. Say what you will about that, but that's not the definition of a "to".
Most PCs these days look a lot like the transformers I used to play with as a kid... I'm serious.
This statement doesn't make sense in context. Most games exploit all the resources available and never have free horsepower left over, so yes turning on antialiasing will reduce framerate (unless there is a big bottleneck on the CPU or memory bandwidth).
That's completely untrue. Most games use nothing near the power output of a modern console. I remember Nintendo complaining, a while back, that noone had really tried to push the GameCube as far as it can go... and it's pretty damn obvious.
Now there is SOME truth to that, but only in the fact that programmers, if they have a lot of power, get lazy and use code that takes a lot of power instead of streamlining the code down. That's actually one of the reasons why I prefer console gaming, because it eventually forces programmers to start really writing good clean code, in order to make "state-of-the-art" games, even when a console is 4 years old (where as, with a computer, they just throw in a newer video card, and call it good).
If you look at the huge difference in quality on one console, it's pretty hard to say that all those games couldn't use anti-aliasing because they were ALL using up all the horsepower. No. It takes A LOT of design work to be able to create enough models to really eat up graphical processing power, most companies don't have the resources to create enough models to come close to using up the horsepower on even something as underpowered as a PS2.
And the bottom line is, with a bit of work, some graphical tricks, and just plain cleaner design, a 480p game on the Wii can look just as good as a game on the PS3, the programmers just have to be on their toes a bit more... and a lot don't want to have to be.
Anti-aliasing essentially takes neighboring pixels, such as those in between every pixel on a diagonal, and makes them a semi-transparent color of the internal edge, thus approximating "half way to being the edge". What results is a pixel-based structure that represents more geometery than the exact location of all the pixels. Probably not a very clear way of describing it, but I don't know a better way without grabbing a sheet of graph paper and making a diagram.
Flicker occurs when "jaggies" (to use layman's terms) change their geometeric structure, usually by the simple rotatation of a diagonal line, or finely detailed texture. If you can dimish or completely stop jaggies from occuring through anti-aliasing, you also kill the flickering that occurs from the result of it's rotation. So yes, anti-aliasing, does, in fact, reduce flicker, tremendously.
There is a small similarity between anti-aliasing and interlace flicker filters used on NTSC displays, although an interlace flicker filter is much more simplistic and just a vertical gaussian blur applied to an image. But interlace flicker and alias flicker stem from similar problems with displaying abrupt edges on a pixel-based display.
Video doesn't share this problem because the chip on a video camera already acounts for neighboring pixels. But in a 3D graphics envirnoment, not accounting for neighboring pixels will create jaggies and huge amounts of flicker.
And obviously, no, anti-aliasing doesn't reduce framerate if you have the horsepower to do it. It's extremely graphically intesive because you're forcing the computer to calculate geometetric positions far more detailed than the screen resolution itself. But I can make a strong case that anti-aliased graphics appear to be much higher resolution than the same graphics at 4 or 5 times the ACTUAL resolution. If you would like, I could go into more detail.
As a graphic designer, I have to know a certain amount about the ins and outs of the visual perception of graphics.
I've never seen a situation in which anti-alaiasing is a BAD thing. No matter how fine your resolution is, antialiasing reduces flicker during motion, as well as increasing percieved resolution.
I think most people don't know what anti-aliasing is, exactly, and what it can do. But the difference very is apparent at the subconscious level.
I'm playing Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, right now, on the PS2. Arguably the best graphics on the system (way above FF12 in quality, for instance). But the lack of anti-aliasing is still a bit problem. every time movement stops, everything looks beautiful, but every time you move, all the diagonal lines and finer details just flicker as they scan along, and it's very hard on the eyes. The unfortunate thing about this is that the more detailed the graphics, the more flicker is going to become a problem.
An anti-aliased game just looks more polished. It's why no PS2 game could ever quite look as good as a GameCube game, no matter how detailed they made the models (well that, and the lack of lighting effects).
And from what I've heard, no, the PS3 doesn't have it built-in, but MOST software developers code it into their games. The XBox, 360, GameCube, and Wii, however, all have anti-aliasing subroutines built into the platform.
Well, one of the distinctions isn't so much "profits" overall, but "when" the profits will come. Most countries in the world tend to think longer term than we do in the US. Most decisions in large corporations, these days, are made by the quarter or the year. Then again, many corporations in the US get big very fast, and then die very fast. American companies aren't very good at, and aren't too concerned with longevity. Japanese companies notice that what's good for the consumer is often good for the corporation, in the long run. paying employees higher wages, for instance, insures that the quality of living remains high in the surrounding area, and that people can continue to purchase their products for years to come. Also, paying higher wages means more productivity, and higher quality products.
- In the US, the difference between highest and lowest paid workers is somwhere around 600:1 in a given company
- In most industrialized nations, the difference between highest and lowest paid workers is about 50:1
Honestly, am I the only person who thinks that, regardless of horsepower and snazzy mapping effects, hardware anti-aliasing is the SINGLE most graphically enhancing thing out there? Seriously, the difference between the GC and PS2, at least to me, is like night and day because of it.
I saw Need for Speed: Carbon, on the PS3... and I swear, with all the flickering (on a large screen HD display), it looked like it STILL didn't have anti-aliasing. I'm going out on a limb here and am going to say that any Wii game, in 480p mode with anti-aliasing, looks better than a PS3 game at 1080p without it... regardless of what kind of gimicks they use.
If it turns out the PS3 doesn't have hardware anti-aliasing, I'm going to laugh.
I really don't know why they bother, and this is coming from a Mac user. I think it's just as well that they keep games of the Mac platform. The Mac is a production tool, not a toy. I just got my new Mac Pro in yesterday, and I'm not planning on loading any games onto it, at least not until I have a really stable work environment.
A Mac is a tool. And, as fun as it is to play games with a hammer, it always ends badly.
Gameworld size or linearity is fairly irrelivant. The thing that takes up space are FMVs. And FMVs, in the RPG realm, are almost always in a linear fashion. Even if they aren't completely linear, they're going to be fairly linear. jRPGs like FF13 have strictly linear plots, that's one of their main appeals (at least for me, anyway), so I don't think that we're going to see Fallout style FF games anytime soon (I hope not, anyway).
In sandbox type games, however, you are correct, that could be a big problem. I don't play/like sandbox games, however, so for me, I could really care less. But obviously, my opinion is kind of irrelivant to this topic. So yes, the 360 is going to face issues... especially since it's basically the second home (second to PC) to the sandbox genre.
Great, glad there's a style for you. Myself, however, I abhore games without pre-composed structure and storylines. As an artist and creative person, I'm much more comfortable with a distinct creator/audience separation. If there's a particular conceptual reason to break down that barrier, I'm all for it, but to me, PC/American RPGs are not "works" so much as they are toys, and I have no interest in toys, anymore. I play games as an alternative to literature and cinema.
The bottom line is that we play games for fundimentally different reasons. We also see the role of games as being fundimentally different.
The way I see it, PC/American RPGs are a way of playing out fantasies, "what-if" scenarios, if you will, and have an emphasis on super-imposing yourself as the main character. It makes sense. It's part of the developmental process; children do it all the time as a way of defining identity, they try out different characters, and in their own worlds, can do things that they normally couldn't or shouldn't do. Many times, these fantasies can persist into adulthood. It's probably healthy, in fact, the popularity of "sandbox" style games, may show that there's a distinct lack of outlets for adults to play out such fantasies, since our society has become so obsessed with growing up.
I've heard comments like yours a lot, before. Friends who wouldn't touch a Zelda game because, "You can't kill the NPCs". I think it goes to show that there is a strong desire to play out fantasies like this.
I, on the other hand, for one reason or another, have little interest in fantasies. I'd rather analyze and be engaged in a good epic piece of music, film, or video game. The way I see it, I play games for the same reason I watch movies, but games allow me to play "videographer" (which is funny, since it's also my profession), and chose my own pacing. I want to experience someone elses work of narrative, for my own entertainment, AND because I love the analytical inspiration it sometimes provides. Granted, games are in their infancy in terms of storytelling level, but that is changine rapidly, and probably the most interesting thing to watch is the fairly quick maturation that games are taking, it's very exciting.
I'm guessing that a lot of what I'm saying will sound very dull and unrewarding to yourself, and that's okay. Ballders Gate and Deus Ex seem incredibly dull and uninteresting to me. Now, Fallout is starting to intrigue me, because of it's very unique style, so I might have to go try it out.
But basically, yes, we play games for very different reasons. The fact that they're both called "RPGs" is very misleading and wrong (jRPGs aren't even RPG... I wish we would call them something different, but I can't seem to find a term without defaulting to "interactive movie" which is incredibly demeaning and wrong).
Honestly... when was an RPG ever about tactics and strategy until a boss fight, though? Well, a few more recent ones: Grandia series, and Valkyrie Profile 2. But for the most part, the more complex subtleties of RPG battle systems are usually obsolete until the boss. And ya know what? That's okay. I actually don't care for small-fry battles very much, they're tedious, and obnoxious. Even if they do require strategy, like VP2, they become tedious.
Here's what I'd like to see: An RPG that plays like an action adventure during the bulk of the dungeons and world map (sorry, I love my world map, don't take it away from me), but then switches to some sort of turn based system during the boss battles. Zelda's a great game, and it doesn't have all the battle tediousness that traditional turnbased games have. However, turn based battles are GREAT for longer battles, like bosses. Why not combine the two?
This can even be explained through the story: one character scouts along ahead, and clears the way of the small fry, so the others can get through. Eventually, when you come to a boss, the rest of the characters all run in to fight. This could make for some great dungeon puzzles and character switching, too.
FF12 didn't emotionally grab me, either... but ya know what? In the grand scheme of things, I think that was probably a good thing, and an actually fairly gutsy thing for Square to do.
As of late the FF games have been becoming more and more mellodramatic, with cheesy un-explainable romances (FFX), and unrealistic dialog, bathed in an overall psuedo-realistic format. I think it was wise for Square to step back a little bit, and concentrate on other aspects of the game. The dialog that was there was actually pretty damn good, a huge step up from FFX, anyway. During no part of the game did I want to put cotton balls in my ears from terrible writing... sure, I never shed a tear over anything either, the entire experience was a lot more flatline, but it was also a lot more believable.
No, it wasn't the quality of FF6 through FF9 (what I consider the pinnicals of the series) but I think it was a good experience for Square to have had, and I think they'll make a better game next time, than if they had once again gone all out with the mellodrama.
FFX disgusted me, btw. I don't mind flawed and even obnoxious characters, if done well. But FFXs dialog was so incredibly unrealistic and all-over-the-place, that I just wanted to pummel the writers. I think they were trying to handle story situations which were WAY over their heads, and probably were not very good character developing scenarios, which lead to bad dialog. FFXII was a lot more mello in its overall portrayal, and allowed for some actually very good quality writing to come through, even if it wasn't so high-tension or gripping.
Actually it very much surprises me that Square will not port it to the Wii. People say that the Wii doesn't have the graphical power... but why does that matter?
Do you think anyone who owns a Wii is specifically NOT going to buy a game because it looks better on another system? No, that's just crazy talk. If you're a marketing person, you're going to look at what system is going to move the most amount of product. Wii owners aren't going to boycott the FF series just because the PS3 counterpart looks better.
Actually, it's not all that unrealistic. The GameCube was a good head & shoulders above the PS2 graphically, due to its builtin anti-aliasing and superior lighting effects. The Wiis hardware is about twice the power of the GC, and it has a lot more graphical goodies (bump mapping, a few more shaders, more lighting effects). So think about it. The last FF game released was FF12, which, at the very least, looked about the quality of an early GC game, but with more jaggies (no anti-aliasing). The next FF game on the Wii is going to look like A LOT better than FF12, much larger than the graphical difference between any of the other recent FF games (FF9 -> FFX for instance). It would actually be right about in line with the graphical progression of the rest of the series.
Secondly, while a lot of the recent Final Fantasy games have had graphical flash... that has NEVER stemmed from horsepower, but from the design teams having great design sense. For the past 2 generations, the FF games have been on the lower powered systems of their time, and still they never fail to amaze. This has nothing to do with horsepower, but with just making great stylistic decisions.
Final Fantasy used to be my most looked-forward-to jRPG series, but that's over now. Not that FF12 wasn't an incredible game (it was), but there were better, this year, and I find myself looking forward to others more than FF13. I find myself actually more interested in the next FF:CC game for the Wii, as it looks to be a sort of hybrid between Zelda and Skies of Arcadia, two of my favorite games. Also Trusty Bell/Eternal Sonata just interests me a lot more, and in many ways, the Tales series has supplanted itself, in my mind, as the next BIG really well-done jRPG series to follow, so I'll be interested to see what Namco has instore for us next time.
I'm sure FF13 will be amazing, it will have a polish and cleanliness that my inner-graphic-designer will weep at. But, seeing as though Squares best game in a while, FF12, got a distant fourth on my list of RPGs this year (after Twilight Princess, Okami, and Tales of the Abyss), I dunno if I'm going to be all that sad if I miss out on FF13.
Firstly, the average jRPG is nearing the 100 hour mark. FF12 was about 120 hours, Dragon Quest VIII was upwards 140 hours, Tales of the Abyss was about 90 hours... hell even Zelda was around 75 hours! Last generation, FF7 was around 35 hours, Tales of Symphonia was about 60 hours, and Zelda: OoT was approximately in the 30hour range (although TP was the first to actually include an hour counter). Don't get me started on the Suikoden games, of which should probably be nearing 200 hours by the end of the decade.
Secondly, PC game disc switching has always been very different. Most multi-disc PC games switch in both directions. Probably the most eggrigious being Riven, in which every island was on a different disc, and some only took 2 minutes to cross (blech).
How it's done on console RPGs is that the entire game (dialog, game-engine cut-scenes, music, etc), which takes up very little data, is put onto every disc, and then the rest of the disc consists of pre-rendered FMVs. It's a very easy process to do.
The bottom line is, Square's going to ask themselves, "would putting the game on multipul discs detter anyone from buying it?" and the answer is going to be a very definite "no". In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the jRPG community has come to look forward to multi-disc games, because it makes for good benchmarks and helps you to mentally keep track of long-form epics.
Having to reach over and switch out a disc every 20 hours isn't asking for much. It's not even a question of "in the current generation, it shouldn't happen", it's sort of expected, and sometimes even liked.
I sorta miss the 4-disc aspect of FF8 and FF9, I can look back and think about how each disc was structured, as a four-act work. When I try to think about the structure of FF12, I just can't keep it all straight.
Actually, I made a post about this earlier. The 360 is tied down to HD resolution, which sucks up storage. The Wii can't do HD (well... technically, it can, just as the GameCube and PS2 could, but didn't), so it actually can put a lot more cut scenes on a DVD, because it's not required to be in HD (yes, microsoft requires HD).
However, that's not a very strong arguement. Over the course of a 120 hour game (liek FF12), switching a disc once every 20 hours isn't exactly much to ask... I mean, FF7 and FF8 were utter marketplace DISASTERS because they had multipul discs, right?
The thing is, Final Fantasy's graphical prowess has never come from technical wizerdry, but from cleanliness and attention to detail. In actuality, the games have usually been run on the lower end systems of its time (since FF7, anyway), but Square just has such a great design sense, that they can make low powered output look amazing. If anything, the Final Fantasy series is a testiment to how a good grasp of stylistic principals can overcome technical inferiority.
The only game that was graphically, "the pinnical of its time" was FF8. FF1-5 were extremely behind, FF6 was about average, FF7 was either average or behind, depending upon who you talk to, FF9 was pretty much the same level of graphics as FF8, just with a completely different style, FFX was about average, and FF12 was extremely behind the times.
All I want is to put a video camera in a room with Jack Thompson, John Dvorak, Bob Cringely, and George W. Bush, and see which one makes the most amount of sense.
Jack "video games will rape your kids" Thompson John "I support John McCain because he likes Steve Ballmer" Dvorak Robert "self-proclaimed sex-symbol dorkus" Cringely George W. "God put sand on this earth so we could nuke it into glass" Bush
It's 2007, it's a sequel to a series that's built on a psuedo-3D graphical style (isometric) from a time when 3D graphics weren't good enough to give users what interplay wanted... no shit it's going to be 3D. Probably the best route would be sorta like FF12s camera, but even higher up and farther back... basically the same view as the original three Fallout games, but that could be swivelled around the player and possibly "realed in" to being fairly close behind, when need be.
3D != First Person. Heck, most 3D games aren't first person. Why is everyone jumping to conclusions?
Ummm, what makes you think it's going to be first person? The trailer didn't show any gameplay footage. I don't think they'll make Fallout first person. In Bethesda's other games, first person made sense. Not to defend them, Bethesda's made a lot of bad decisions in the past, but let's not jump the gun until we actually have any evidence.
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This is why I hate the term "hardcore gamer". Hardcore is often equated with pr0n, violence, competativeness, and overall macho attitude. I play games for none of these things, yet I consider myself a pretty avid gamer, probably moreso than most self-proclaimed "hardcore gamers."
I'd like to hear the term "game connoisseur", or "game enthusiast" thrown around a little more. The "hardcore gamer" is really one segment of the gamer crowd, who seems to have been able to put themselves on a pedestal above everyone else, regardless of what that really means.
I put a lot of thought into games, I like to appreciate them as both entainment and creative works. I can look at a game from any time period and enjoy the ingenuity and creativity that went into them. I'm like this with films too. I'm a big classic film buff, but I also love a great contemporary film, as well. My friends always see gobs of the latest blockbusters, and then talk about how I'm "not into films" when I haven't seen the latest superhero flick, which kinda pisses me off, because I probably have seen more films total, and a lot more different kinds of films than they have. Same with games. Call me snuty, pretentious, "gay", or whatever, but I put an ounce of thought into most of what I do, sorry if that offends anyone.
Is that you're reasoning for playing PC games? Corporate approval?
It's called quality control. And seeing that Nintendo and Microsoft make (and own companies that make) a lot of the greatest video games ever made, I think they're pretty good judges of quality. Sony hardly does any approval, and it shows (bucketloads of crappy titles). All they really ask is that developers actually do a good job on their games as to not make their systems look bad. As someone in a media design field, I'm ALL for quality control, as long as it doesn't start to single out certain views, and I've seen none of that as of yet.
So, you can continue to lead your pointless one-person rebellion against something that may or may not actually be a POSSITIVE creative force, or you can actually enjoy the games that you seem to actually want to play.
"Oh shit, Nintendo's back... what are we going to do???"
Toys are bulky, colorful, and call a lot of attention to themselves... ...gee, sounds like most of the PCs I see around my office.
The Mac mini is a very simple geometric shape and color that does anything BUT call attention to itself. No child would want to pick it up and shake it.
Seriously, if the computer was invented today, and someone came out with a big black tower with huge vent holes, blue LED lights, and a huge gaudy emblem (like the graphics processing PC I have on my desk at work), and then brought out a mini... I don't think anyone would have any question which one looked more like a toy.
Face it, you hate Macs, and you think calling them "toys" is a good way of making yourself feel more mature for not using them. But do they REALLY look like Toys? If you think they look like toys, then I think you need to go down to your local Walmart, in the toddler isle and get a reality check. Macs are "attractive"... and have some actual design philosophy that went into them. Say what you will about that, but that's not the definition of a "to".
Most PCs these days look a lot like the transformers I used to play with as a kid... I'm serious.
That's completely untrue. Most games use nothing near the power output of a modern console. I remember Nintendo complaining, a while back, that noone had really tried to push the GameCube as far as it can go... and it's pretty damn obvious.
Now there is SOME truth to that, but only in the fact that programmers, if they have a lot of power, get lazy and use code that takes a lot of power instead of streamlining the code down. That's actually one of the reasons why I prefer console gaming, because it eventually forces programmers to start really writing good clean code, in order to make "state-of-the-art" games, even when a console is 4 years old (where as, with a computer, they just throw in a newer video card, and call it good).
If you look at the huge difference in quality on one console, it's pretty hard to say that all those games couldn't use anti-aliasing because they were ALL using up all the horsepower. No. It takes A LOT of design work to be able to create enough models to really eat up graphical processing power, most companies don't have the resources to create enough models to come close to using up the horsepower on even something as underpowered as a PS2.
And the bottom line is, with a bit of work, some graphical tricks, and just plain cleaner design, a 480p game on the Wii can look just as good as a game on the PS3, the programmers just have to be on their toes a bit more... and a lot don't want to have to be.
Anti-aliasing essentially takes neighboring pixels, such as those in between every pixel on a diagonal, and makes them a semi-transparent color of the internal edge, thus approximating "half way to being the edge". What results is a pixel-based structure that represents more geometery than the exact location of all the pixels. Probably not a very clear way of describing it, but I don't know a better way without grabbing a sheet of graph paper and making a diagram.
Flicker occurs when "jaggies" (to use layman's terms) change their geometeric structure, usually by the simple rotatation of a diagonal line, or finely detailed texture. If you can dimish or completely stop jaggies from occuring through anti-aliasing, you also kill the flickering that occurs from the result of it's rotation. So yes, anti-aliasing, does, in fact, reduce flicker, tremendously.
There is a small similarity between anti-aliasing and interlace flicker filters used on NTSC displays, although an interlace flicker filter is much more simplistic and just a vertical gaussian blur applied to an image. But interlace flicker and alias flicker stem from similar problems with displaying abrupt edges on a pixel-based display.
Video doesn't share this problem because the chip on a video camera already acounts for neighboring pixels. But in a 3D graphics envirnoment, not accounting for neighboring pixels will create jaggies and huge amounts of flicker.
And obviously, no, anti-aliasing doesn't reduce framerate if you have the horsepower to do it. It's extremely graphically intesive because you're forcing the computer to calculate geometetric positions far more detailed than the screen resolution itself. But I can make a strong case that anti-aliased graphics appear to be much higher resolution than the same graphics at 4 or 5 times the ACTUAL resolution. If you would like, I could go into more detail.
As a graphic designer, I have to know a certain amount about the ins and outs of the visual perception of graphics.
I think the bottom line is that people believe whatever they want to believe, and then just use whatever commonly regarded text to rationalize it.
I've never seen a situation in which anti-alaiasing is a BAD thing. No matter how fine your resolution is, antialiasing reduces flicker during motion, as well as increasing percieved resolution.
I think most people don't know what anti-aliasing is, exactly, and what it can do. But the difference very is apparent at the subconscious level.
I'm playing Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, right now, on the PS2. Arguably the best graphics on the system (way above FF12 in quality, for instance). But the lack of anti-aliasing is still a bit problem. every time movement stops, everything looks beautiful, but every time you move, all the diagonal lines and finer details just flicker as they scan along, and it's very hard on the eyes. The unfortunate thing about this is that the more detailed the graphics, the more flicker is going to become a problem.
An anti-aliased game just looks more polished. It's why no PS2 game could ever quite look as good as a GameCube game, no matter how detailed they made the models (well that, and the lack of lighting effects).
And from what I've heard, no, the PS3 doesn't have it built-in, but MOST software developers code it into their games. The XBox, 360, GameCube, and Wii, however, all have anti-aliasing subroutines built into the platform.
Well, one of the distinctions isn't so much "profits" overall, but "when" the profits will come. Most countries in the world tend to think longer term than we do in the US. Most decisions in large corporations, these days, are made by the quarter or the year. Then again, many corporations in the US get big very fast, and then die very fast. American companies aren't very good at, and aren't too concerned with longevity. Japanese companies notice that what's good for the consumer is often good for the corporation, in the long run. paying employees higher wages, for instance, insures that the quality of living remains high in the surrounding area, and that people can continue to purchase their products for years to come. Also, paying higher wages means more productivity, and higher quality products.
- In the US, the difference between highest and lowest paid workers is somwhere around 600:1 in a given company
- In most industrialized nations, the difference between highest and lowest paid workers is about 50:1
- Japan is somewhere around 15:1, on average
Honestly, am I the only person who thinks that, regardless of horsepower and snazzy mapping effects, hardware anti-aliasing is the SINGLE most graphically enhancing thing out there? Seriously, the difference between the GC and PS2, at least to me, is like night and day because of it.
I saw Need for Speed: Carbon, on the PS3... and I swear, with all the flickering (on a large screen HD display), it looked like it STILL didn't have anti-aliasing. I'm going out on a limb here and am going to say that any Wii game, in 480p mode with anti-aliasing, looks better than a PS3 game at 1080p without it... regardless of what kind of gimicks they use.
If it turns out the PS3 doesn't have hardware anti-aliasing, I'm going to laugh.
I really don't know why they bother, and this is coming from a Mac user. I think it's just as well that they keep games of the Mac platform. The Mac is a production tool, not a toy. I just got my new Mac Pro in yesterday, and I'm not planning on loading any games onto it, at least not until I have a really stable work environment.
A Mac is a tool. And, as fun as it is to play games with a hammer, it always ends badly.
Actually, that's a really good idea. Never saw Minority Report. What could be better than video advertsing ON THE PACKAGING!
I work in advertising, I'll have to have a talk with my boss about this.
Gameworld size or linearity is fairly irrelivant. The thing that takes up space are FMVs. And FMVs, in the RPG realm, are almost always in a linear fashion. Even if they aren't completely linear, they're going to be fairly linear. jRPGs like FF13 have strictly linear plots, that's one of their main appeals (at least for me, anyway), so I don't think that we're going to see Fallout style FF games anytime soon (I hope not, anyway).
In sandbox type games, however, you are correct, that could be a big problem. I don't play/like sandbox games, however, so for me, I could really care less. But obviously, my opinion is kind of irrelivant to this topic. So yes, the 360 is going to face issues... especially since it's basically the second home (second to PC) to the sandbox genre.
Great, glad there's a style for you. Myself, however, I abhore games without pre-composed structure and storylines. As an artist and creative person, I'm much more comfortable with a distinct creator/audience separation. If there's a particular conceptual reason to break down that barrier, I'm all for it, but to me, PC/American RPGs are not "works" so much as they are toys, and I have no interest in toys, anymore. I play games as an alternative to literature and cinema.
The bottom line is that we play games for fundimentally different reasons. We also see the role of games as being fundimentally different.
The way I see it, PC/American RPGs are a way of playing out fantasies, "what-if" scenarios, if you will, and have an emphasis on super-imposing yourself as the main character. It makes sense. It's part of the developmental process; children do it all the time as a way of defining identity, they try out different characters, and in their own worlds, can do things that they normally couldn't or shouldn't do. Many times, these fantasies can persist into adulthood. It's probably healthy, in fact, the popularity of "sandbox" style games, may show that there's a distinct lack of outlets for adults to play out such fantasies, since our society has become so obsessed with growing up.
I've heard comments like yours a lot, before. Friends who wouldn't touch a Zelda game because, "You can't kill the NPCs". I think it goes to show that there is a strong desire to play out fantasies like this.
I, on the other hand, for one reason or another, have little interest in fantasies. I'd rather analyze and be engaged in a good epic piece of music, film, or video game. The way I see it, I play games for the same reason I watch movies, but games allow me to play "videographer" (which is funny, since it's also my profession), and chose my own pacing. I want to experience someone elses work of narrative, for my own entertainment, AND because I love the analytical inspiration it sometimes provides. Granted, games are in their infancy in terms of storytelling level, but that is changine rapidly, and probably the most interesting thing to watch is the fairly quick maturation that games are taking, it's very exciting.
I'm guessing that a lot of what I'm saying will sound very dull and unrewarding to yourself, and that's okay. Ballders Gate and Deus Ex seem incredibly dull and uninteresting to me. Now, Fallout is starting to intrigue me, because of it's very unique style, so I might have to go try it out.
But basically, yes, we play games for very different reasons. The fact that they're both called "RPGs" is very misleading and wrong (jRPGs aren't even RPG... I wish we would call them something different, but I can't seem to find a term without defaulting to "interactive movie" which is incredibly demeaning and wrong).
Honestly... when was an RPG ever about tactics and strategy until a boss fight, though? Well, a few more recent ones: Grandia series, and Valkyrie Profile 2. But for the most part, the more complex subtleties of RPG battle systems are usually obsolete until the boss. And ya know what? That's okay. I actually don't care for small-fry battles very much, they're tedious, and obnoxious. Even if they do require strategy, like VP2, they become tedious.
Here's what I'd like to see:
An RPG that plays like an action adventure during the bulk of the dungeons and world map (sorry, I love my world map, don't take it away from me), but then switches to some sort of turn based system during the boss battles. Zelda's a great game, and it doesn't have all the battle tediousness that traditional turnbased games have. However, turn based battles are GREAT for longer battles, like bosses. Why not combine the two?
This can even be explained through the story: one character scouts along ahead, and clears the way of the small fry, so the others can get through. Eventually, when you come to a boss, the rest of the characters all run in to fight. This could make for some great dungeon puzzles and character switching, too.
FF12 didn't emotionally grab me, either... but ya know what? In the grand scheme of things, I think that was probably a good thing, and an actually fairly gutsy thing for Square to do.
As of late the FF games have been becoming more and more mellodramatic, with cheesy un-explainable romances (FFX), and unrealistic dialog, bathed in an overall psuedo-realistic format. I think it was wise for Square to step back a little bit, and concentrate on other aspects of the game. The dialog that was there was actually pretty damn good, a huge step up from FFX, anyway. During no part of the game did I want to put cotton balls in my ears from terrible writing... sure, I never shed a tear over anything either, the entire experience was a lot more flatline, but it was also a lot more believable.
No, it wasn't the quality of FF6 through FF9 (what I consider the pinnicals of the series) but I think it was a good experience for Square to have had, and I think they'll make a better game next time, than if they had once again gone all out with the mellodrama.
FFX disgusted me, btw. I don't mind flawed and even obnoxious characters, if done well. But FFXs dialog was so incredibly unrealistic and all-over-the-place, that I just wanted to pummel the writers. I think they were trying to handle story situations which were WAY over their heads, and probably were not very good character developing scenarios, which lead to bad dialog. FFXII was a lot more mello in its overall portrayal, and allowed for some actually very good quality writing to come through, even if it wasn't so high-tension or gripping.
Actually it very much surprises me that Square will not port it to the Wii. People say that the Wii doesn't have the graphical power... but why does that matter?
Do you think anyone who owns a Wii is specifically NOT going to buy a game because it looks better on another system? No, that's just crazy talk. If you're a marketing person, you're going to look at what system is going to move the most amount of product. Wii owners aren't going to boycott the FF series just because the PS3 counterpart looks better.
Actually, it's not all that unrealistic. The GameCube was a good head & shoulders above the PS2 graphically, due to its builtin anti-aliasing and superior lighting effects. The Wiis hardware is about twice the power of the GC, and it has a lot more graphical goodies (bump mapping, a few more shaders, more lighting effects). So think about it. The last FF game released was FF12, which, at the very least, looked about the quality of an early GC game, but with more jaggies (no anti-aliasing). The next FF game on the Wii is going to look like A LOT better than FF12, much larger than the graphical difference between any of the other recent FF games (FF9 -> FFX for instance). It would actually be right about in line with the graphical progression of the rest of the series.
Secondly, while a lot of the recent Final Fantasy games have had graphical flash... that has NEVER stemmed from horsepower, but from the design teams having great design sense. For the past 2 generations, the FF games have been on the lower powered systems of their time, and still they never fail to amaze. This has nothing to do with horsepower, but with just making great stylistic decisions.
Final Fantasy used to be my most looked-forward-to jRPG series, but that's over now. Not that FF12 wasn't an incredible game (it was), but there were better, this year, and I find myself looking forward to others more than FF13. I find myself actually more interested in the next FF:CC game for the Wii, as it looks to be a sort of hybrid between Zelda and Skies of Arcadia, two of my favorite games. Also Trusty Bell/Eternal Sonata just interests me a lot more, and in many ways, the Tales series has supplanted itself, in my mind, as the next BIG really well-done jRPG series to follow, so I'll be interested to see what Namco has instore for us next time.
I'm sure FF13 will be amazing, it will have a polish and cleanliness that my inner-graphic-designer will weep at. But, seeing as though Squares best game in a while, FF12, got a distant fourth on my list of RPGs this year (after Twilight Princess, Okami, and Tales of the Abyss), I dunno if I'm going to be all that sad if I miss out on FF13.
Firstly, the average jRPG is nearing the 100 hour mark. FF12 was about 120 hours, Dragon Quest VIII was upwards 140 hours, Tales of the Abyss was about 90 hours... hell even Zelda was around 75 hours! Last generation, FF7 was around 35 hours, Tales of Symphonia was about 60 hours, and Zelda: OoT was approximately in the 30hour range (although TP was the first to actually include an hour counter). Don't get me started on the Suikoden games, of which should probably be nearing 200 hours by the end of the decade.
Secondly, PC game disc switching has always been very different. Most multi-disc PC games switch in both directions. Probably the most eggrigious being Riven, in which every island was on a different disc, and some only took 2 minutes to cross (blech).
How it's done on console RPGs is that the entire game (dialog, game-engine cut-scenes, music, etc), which takes up very little data, is put onto every disc, and then the rest of the disc consists of pre-rendered FMVs. It's a very easy process to do.
The bottom line is, Square's going to ask themselves, "would putting the game on multipul discs detter anyone from buying it?" and the answer is going to be a very definite "no". In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the jRPG community has come to look forward to multi-disc games, because it makes for good benchmarks and helps you to mentally keep track of long-form epics.
Having to reach over and switch out a disc every 20 hours isn't asking for much. It's not even a question of "in the current generation, it shouldn't happen", it's sort of expected, and sometimes even liked.
I sorta miss the 4-disc aspect of FF8 and FF9, I can look back and think about how each disc was structured, as a four-act work. When I try to think about the structure of FF12, I just can't keep it all straight.
Actually, I made a post about this earlier. The 360 is tied down to HD resolution, which sucks up storage. The Wii can't do HD (well... technically, it can, just as the GameCube and PS2 could, but didn't), so it actually can put a lot more cut scenes on a DVD, because it's not required to be in HD (yes, microsoft requires HD).
However, that's not a very strong arguement. Over the course of a 120 hour game (liek FF12), switching a disc once every 20 hours isn't exactly much to ask... I mean, FF7 and FF8 were utter marketplace DISASTERS because they had multipul discs, right?
The thing is, Final Fantasy's graphical prowess has never come from technical wizerdry, but from cleanliness and attention to detail. In actuality, the games have usually been run on the lower end systems of its time (since FF7, anyway), but Square just has such a great design sense, that they can make low powered output look amazing. If anything, the Final Fantasy series is a testiment to how a good grasp of stylistic principals can overcome technical inferiority.
The only game that was graphically, "the pinnical of its time" was FF8. FF1-5 were extremely behind, FF6 was about average, FF7 was either average or behind, depending upon who you talk to, FF9 was pretty much the same level of graphics as FF8, just with a completely different style, FFX was about average, and FF12 was extremely behind the times.
All I want is to put a video camera in a room with Jack Thompson, John Dvorak, Bob Cringely, and George W. Bush, and see which one makes the most amount of sense.
Jack "video games will rape your kids" Thompson
John "I support John McCain because he likes Steve Ballmer" Dvorak
Robert "self-proclaimed sex-symbol dorkus" Cringely
George W. "God put sand on this earth so we could nuke it into glass" Bush
Tough call...
It's 2007, it's a sequel to a series that's built on a psuedo-3D graphical style (isometric) from a time when 3D graphics weren't good enough to give users what interplay wanted... no shit it's going to be 3D. Probably the best route would be sorta like FF12s camera, but even higher up and farther back... basically the same view as the original three Fallout games, but that could be swivelled around the player and possibly "realed in" to being fairly close behind, when need be. 3D != First Person. Heck, most 3D games aren't first person. Why is everyone jumping to conclusions?
Owning a Mac Pro never felt so good!
Ummm, what makes you think it's going to be first person? The trailer didn't show any gameplay footage. I don't think they'll make Fallout first person. In Bethesda's other games, first person made sense. Not to defend them, Bethesda's made a lot of bad decisions in the past, but let's not jump the gun until we actually have any evidence.
I know that Bill Gates is, but...
Well, I don't like the guy (Ballmer), but calling him a Republican might be a bit extreme...
I mean, Steve Jobs is a Democrat (and a fairly progressive one, at that), not all CEOs are conservative. Do we know for sure?