From my memories, PS2 was predicted to break records, and did, and PS1 nobody knew what to think because it had to history. I don't see any comparison at all to what was being said in those generations.
I don't think announcing the release date of one of the big three (Metroid Prime 3 - August 20th), and updating the smash website from 8 months of dormancy, along with all the composers (to speculate about), counts as "no news". Add to that last weeks announcements about the Chrystal Chronicals series, and you have some pretty big stuff. In fact, this has been Nintendo's most bauntiful few weeks for months.
No shit the Wii will have a short lifecycle, but you say that as if it's a bad thing.
Two years from now, we'll be treated to a WiiHD (or whatever) that's just as powerful as the PS3 and 360, but at half the cost.
You really think the Wii was MADE to last for 8-12 years, like the 360 and PS3? By the time Sony is financially able to justify a PS4, we'll be on Nintendo's 3rd console of the generation... guess who'll have the huge graphic-to-price advantage, then?
I hated Kingdom Hearts. I played it for about 8 hours and gave up. The battle system was terrible, the characters were unappealing, and it was no fun to play. Give the Tales series a shot (either Symphonia or Abyss, both are incredible). They have an action element, but their game philosophy, overall, stems more from the turn-based side of things. Basically, they are like a turn-based RPG in every way, until you hit the battle screen.
In many ways, it's sort of the perfect action-rpg for those who hate action-rpgs... sorta like Metroid Prime is the perfect FPS for people who hate FPSs (myself included).
Yeah, no telling for sure... although the rumor is that it's multiplatform, and the style would fit very well with the Wii (and the graphics look simple enough), I could easilly see it going that direction.
Have you played any of the recent Tales games? Namely Symphonia and Abyss? Abyss is one hell of a great game, with amazing characters and dialog... and I must say that the battle system is lots of fun too, regardless of it being action based. If not, you're really missing out, it kicked the shit out of FF12 for traditional RPG of the year, IMO (exclusing Okami and Zelda).
I'm speaking, specifically, about meaningful characters and dialog, of which the rest of the series sourly lacked. I could care less about how good a plot is, if it serves the purpose of highlighting great human interaction (which it does), than I'm more than happy, regardless of its originality.
Really, no plot is truly original, anyway, hasn't been for hundreds of years. People, on the other hand, are much more interesting.
I've really got to play that game. I went out and bought a used cartridge, but then I bought a DS, someone borrowed my GBA, and I haven't seen it since.
I'm hoping that they add GB/GBC games to the Virtual Console simply so I can play that game. GameBoy games are the one console that don't emulate well, either, so I'm kinda pissed. I've heard such amazing things about that game, though.
First of all, I'm not sure your assessment of gamers is true. It's definitely true for some, but many people play games as an extension of literature and film, in which the gameplay isn't as important.
Also, TP gets into gameplay fairly quickly. In fact, it's the story that takes a while to ramp up. Within 20 minutes, you're hacking at monsters, and within the hour, you're in a dungeon.
1) It's partially an FPS 2) It's non-linear 3) I've liked very few American made games (not really a bad thing, just an observation) 4) It uses a keyboard and mouse 5) It's on the PC
I'm still going to give it a shot, but I'll warn you, it's probably not my kinda thing.
I just think that's flat-out wrong. It's an aesthetic choice. I'm a composer, myself, I've arranged music for various ensembles because the style of music fit the instrumentation. Basically what you're saying is that any time I don't arrange for full orchestra, I'm living on the cheap. Sometimes all I really want is piano, bass, and drums, though, because that's what the music calls for.
Come on, man, let's call a spade a spade.
You really think I'm just saying this to defend Nintendo? Fuck you, man. You have the right to your own opinion, but don't pretend to put words in my mouth!
If you don't want to hear the voice acting, turn the Voice volume to zero and the captions on. But there's no reason (other than cheap) to not even hire the actors in the first place.
Fuck that, that means I lose the music too. I'd like to experience a game the way the creators intended for it to be seen. It's up to them whether to put voice acting in, because it changes the overall style, and I'll respect their creative license... and not simply chalk it up to fincancial reasons (voice acting is extremely cheap compared to the amount that gets put into games these days).
That's sorta like saying, "adding a drumset improves a piece of music". Oh yes, let's add some double-bass-drum action to Beathoven's 9th... that should improve things greatly!
It's turn based with an action element. As I said, think Grandia (stop-time turn-based, but where the characters run around on the screen, so distance and location plays into the strategy), mixed with Tales (battle screens are button-mashers with combos and special attacks). From what I've heard, it's stop time, but then when every character takes a turn, they have a certain amount of time to perform a series of attacks executed in real-time. This way, you control all characters, and at it's heart, it's a simple Grandia-style turn-based system, but with a little more interactive element. Pretty far from an action RPG like Kingdom Hearts (which I HATED because of the action element). Even more turn based than FF12.
Sure, but I'm just saying, it's not exactly as if Deus Ex is a pinnical of starting out with a "bang" if the game needs a plotless training section (I would have been completely lost starting out without it, the controls are very different from what I'm used to), I'd like for a game to go along and teach me as I go along.
That doesn't mean that the game can't start out with a bang... FF7 does this, but the gameplay is still incredibly simple at the beginning. Not that I'm holding up FF7 to be a pinnical of any sort, it's just a reference that everybody knows.
Ummm, Fable? WTF? It's nothing like Fabel. It's a cell-shaded, story-driven, jRPG that takes place in a dream world with a battle system about halfway between Grandia and Tales. How could you get any farther from Fabel?
Are you sure you saw the right video? I don't know how anyone could say it looks anything like Fabel. To me, it looks more like Tales of Symphonia.
To be fair, though, even if Miyamoto did take the wolf idea, it's sort of like Apple stealing a windows idea... seriously, I love Okami, but there was SO MUCH TAKEN FROM WIND WAKER, that it's really silly to call Miyamoto a thief in return.
I don't have a PC right now, so no. But I'm ordering a Mac Pro... so possibly. But I've already got a game of Ar Tonelico going, and I'd like to get around to playing Valkarie Profile 2 SOMEDAY, so it might be a bit. I'm a little concerned though. I usually HATE (and I mean HATE) non-linear RPGs. But I've heard enough interesting things about this one, that I might give it a shot.
I loved Okami. Just for the record, my top 3 games of 2006 were Twilight Princess, Okami and Tales of the Abyss (with FF12 coming in a distant 4th). That said, Okami had some huge flaws. It's battle system was incredibly uninspired, repetitive, and boring. The final few boss battles FINALLY become interesting, but most of is pretty blah. Thankfully, the concentration on battles was so minor that it didn't really bring down the game... but if you're not going to have decent battles, why have them at all? There were all these wonderful skills that were just really cool to use... but it really took the fun out of them when they really weren't required in the battles, because the battles were so darn easy.
And I completely dissagree with you about the voice acting. You can read my lengthy post about why these titles should never have voice acting, I won't repeat all of it here, but my basic point is that these games rely on a certain level of abstraction... that the voices represent the emotions and state of mind of the NPCs, and are separated from the content. That abstraction is key to the charm of the series. This is a choice by the creators, not a mistake or laziness. That said, Okami's VA was a problem in that it really didn't serve its purpose well. The gibberish would have been great if it reflected the emotion of the character at the time, but it didn't change... every character had a specific gibberish voice, and that was it. In that sense, Zelda was much better.
Overall, the writing in TP was steller... I mean, Lunar or Tales quality writing. Obviously, there's always room for improvement, but TP had some of the best dialog I've seen in games for a while... unfortunately I also played Tales of the Abyss this year, which tops it... oh well, boo hoo.
Okami was extrordinary for a first game in any series. Its polish and charm just was breathtaking. If it had been allowed to continue as a series, I could imagine the third game easilly topping TP, but there were just a bit too many flaws in Okami to do that.
Well, that's one way of looking at it. And I'd agree for all previous games in the series, and quite a bit of anime (the real reason why I think most people prefer the Japanese, because they don't have to think about how utterly contrived the dialog sounds). But I would completely disagree with TP. TP was the first game in the series to actually have GREAT writing (for video games, at least). I'm talking almost on par with the Tales series (which I consider to have some of the best writing in gaming).
I think you're correct about why some games are better without voice acting, and Ocarina would have been HORRIFIC with VA, because of that. TP, however, could have survived just fine, and I think that's possibly why so many people are sorta wanting VA with it. I'll stick to my guns, though, and say that TP shouldn't have voice acting as a stylistic principal.
What are you talking about? My friend just had me start a game of Deus Ex the other day... and for the fist 45 minutes, I was in training rooms learning how to play the game. Sure, the normal campaign may start right off... but it doesn't count because I couldn't have done it without knowing the controls.
Needless to say, I was DISGUSTED by Dues Ex's choice of tacking on a training section on the beginning. A game is a learning process, part of the reason for playing the game is to learn how to play the game... why should I have to take a training session before I even begin?
I'm of the feeling that the best games hold your hand a bit and walk you through the gameplay, but make it interesting and reliavent to the story. Twilight Princess did that, FF8 did that, and those are probably my two favorite games. I haven't played through Deus Ex yet (and I want to, it looks good), but the beginning REALLY turned me off.
Then tell me this, then... if it hadn't been announced, then how did Miyamoto and his boys get ahold of it? It's not like theres a magical link between Capcom and Nintendo these days.
I dunno, it's possible, but I think highly unlikely.
And lets face it, all gameplay changes are gimmicks. There are various ways of getting people focused on a task, one is to entice them by having fun toys to play around with, but a more prolonged and rewarding exploit is to have them rivitted to characters and story elements.
Games have gotten pretty damn good with gameplay elements, it's what they do best, maybe it's time to pull back a little and work on the quality of character portrayal and dialog? I think the designers of Twilight Princess felt that way.
If you played the game for an hour and a half, then I can totally understand. But... AN HOUR AND A HALF???? The game is about 70+ hours! In dramatic narrative, usually writers suggest that about 1/3rd be exposition. In epic form, such as Zelda... there's usually multipul rising actions, so the exposition should probably be more like the first 1/6th. In a 70 hour game, that's about 12 hours. Zelda: TP moves into the action in about 3.
In some works, the whole work is meant to have consistantly riviting material. But in other works, the entire work is meant to lead up to a few key, extraordinary moments. Zelda: TP is one of those works. There is a moment about 4 hours in that is truly disturbing, one at about 18 where I wanted to cry. These moments were so incredible that they took hours to lead up to, and when the game is over, all that matters is those specific key points, and they made the game, IMO, the best game I've ever played (and I've played dozens of long-form titles).
Some games that start out with a BANG are great... like FF7, but probably the best start out quiet and subtle, and build into amazing things, like FF8 or Tales of the Abyss. Zelda falls into that category, in fact... Zelda typically falls into that catagory, it's just that TP is about twice the length of any other zelda, so its exposition NEEDS to be about twice as long to have the correct balance.
Okay, that Okami comment is just wrong. You do realize that Twilight Princess began developement 2 full years before Okami was even concieved, don't you? And that screen shots of Wolf Link first surfaced long before we ever saw the face of Ameratsu?
Okami was incredible, but the fact that both featured wolves was, believe it or not, a complete coincidence. If anything, Ameratsu was fashioned AFTER Wolf Link, but I highly doubt it, as I'm guessing that both games sat in the mind of their creators for a good couple of years prior to developement.
Twilight Princess may have done NOTHING to develope storyline or gameplay, but it highly developed something MUCH more need of updating: storytelling. The story may have been rehash and simple, but the storytelling was so greatly improved, it's not even funny. The dialog was fresh, the characters actually were given personality and developement! Hell, this was the first Zelda game where I've ever given two-shits about the characters. Before, they were just an excuse for gameplay, now, I actually care about them.
Video games desperately need to work on storytelling. Many of the best novels and films out there have very simple, unoriginal stories, but what makes them incredible is the way they present them. Twilight Princess is exactly that. I almost always hate games with really original, complex stories, because they usually use them as a crutch and become distracted from really evolving the human elements of the narrative, which is really the only part that matters anyway. A story is nothing without its characters... no matter how good it is.
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When did they say it about PS1 or PS2?
From my memories, PS2 was predicted to break records, and did, and PS1 nobody knew what to think because it had to history. I don't see any comparison at all to what was being said in those generations.
I don't think announcing the release date of one of the big three (Metroid Prime 3 - August 20th), and updating the smash website from 8 months of dormancy, along with all the composers (to speculate about), counts as "no news". Add to that last weeks announcements about the Chrystal Chronicals series, and you have some pretty big stuff. In fact, this has been Nintendo's most bauntiful few weeks for months.
No shit the Wii will have a short lifecycle, but you say that as if it's a bad thing.
Two years from now, we'll be treated to a WiiHD (or whatever) that's just as powerful as the PS3 and 360, but at half the cost.
You really think the Wii was MADE to last for 8-12 years, like the 360 and PS3? By the time Sony is financially able to justify a PS4, we'll be on Nintendo's 3rd console of the generation... guess who'll have the huge graphic-to-price advantage, then?
I hated Kingdom Hearts. I played it for about 8 hours and gave up. The battle system was terrible, the characters were unappealing, and it was no fun to play. Give the Tales series a shot (either Symphonia or Abyss, both are incredible). They have an action element, but their game philosophy, overall, stems more from the turn-based side of things. Basically, they are like a turn-based RPG in every way, until you hit the battle screen.
In many ways, it's sort of the perfect action-rpg for those who hate action-rpgs... sorta like Metroid Prime is the perfect FPS for people who hate FPSs (myself included).
Yeah, no telling for sure... although the rumor is that it's multiplatform, and the style would fit very well with the Wii (and the graphics look simple enough), I could easilly see it going that direction.
Have you played any of the recent Tales games? Namely Symphonia and Abyss? Abyss is one hell of a great game, with amazing characters and dialog... and I must say that the battle system is lots of fun too, regardless of it being action based. If not, you're really missing out, it kicked the shit out of FF12 for traditional RPG of the year, IMO (exclusing Okami and Zelda).
I'm speaking, specifically, about meaningful characters and dialog, of which the rest of the series sourly lacked. I could care less about how good a plot is, if it serves the purpose of highlighting great human interaction (which it does), than I'm more than happy, regardless of its originality.
Really, no plot is truly original, anyway, hasn't been for hundreds of years. People, on the other hand, are much more interesting.
I've really got to play that game. I went out and bought a used cartridge, but then I bought a DS, someone borrowed my GBA, and I haven't seen it since.
I'm hoping that they add GB/GBC games to the Virtual Console simply so I can play that game. GameBoy games are the one console that don't emulate well, either, so I'm kinda pissed. I've heard such amazing things about that game, though.
First of all, I'm not sure your assessment of gamers is true. It's definitely true for some, but many people play games as an extension of literature and film, in which the gameplay isn't as important.
Also, TP gets into gameplay fairly quickly. In fact, it's the story that takes a while to ramp up. Within 20 minutes, you're hacking at monsters, and within the hour, you're in a dungeon.
Well, it's not my only complaint...
1) It's partially an FPS
2) It's non-linear
3) I've liked very few American made games (not really a bad thing, just an observation)
4) It uses a keyboard and mouse
5) It's on the PC
I'm still going to give it a shot, but I'll warn you, it's probably not my kinda thing.
That's sorta like saying, "adding a drumset improves a piece of music". Oh yes, let's add some double-bass-drum action to Beathoven's 9th... that should improve things greatly!
It's turn based with an action element. As I said, think Grandia (stop-time turn-based, but where the characters run around on the screen, so distance and location plays into the strategy), mixed with Tales (battle screens are button-mashers with combos and special attacks). From what I've heard, it's stop time, but then when every character takes a turn, they have a certain amount of time to perform a series of attacks executed in real-time. This way, you control all characters, and at it's heart, it's a simple Grandia-style turn-based system, but with a little more interactive element. Pretty far from an action RPG like Kingdom Hearts (which I HATED because of the action element). Even more turn based than FF12.
Sure, but I'm just saying, it's not exactly as if Deus Ex is a pinnical of starting out with a "bang" if the game needs a plotless training section (I would have been completely lost starting out without it, the controls are very different from what I'm used to), I'd like for a game to go along and teach me as I go along.
That doesn't mean that the game can't start out with a bang... FF7 does this, but the gameplay is still incredibly simple at the beginning. Not that I'm holding up FF7 to be a pinnical of any sort, it's just a reference that everybody knows.
Ummm, Fable? WTF? It's nothing like Fabel. It's a cell-shaded, story-driven, jRPG that takes place in a dream world with a battle system about halfway between Grandia and Tales. How could you get any farther from Fabel?
Are you sure you saw the right video? I don't know how anyone could say it looks anything like Fabel. To me, it looks more like Tales of Symphonia.
To be fair, though, even if Miyamoto did take the wolf idea, it's sort of like Apple stealing a windows idea... seriously, I love Okami, but there was SO MUCH TAKEN FROM WIND WAKER, that it's really silly to call Miyamoto a thief in return.
I don't have a PC right now, so no. But I'm ordering a Mac Pro... so possibly. But I've already got a game of Ar Tonelico going, and I'd like to get around to playing Valkarie Profile 2 SOMEDAY, so it might be a bit. I'm a little concerned though. I usually HATE (and I mean HATE) non-linear RPGs. But I've heard enough interesting things about this one, that I might give it a shot.
Oh good god... Just drop the others and play Okami, already. That game is 70 hours+ of pure absolute amazement.
Don't forget Eternal Sonata (RPG), which is looking to be, quite possibly, one of the greatest RPGs ever made.
I loved Okami. Just for the record, my top 3 games of 2006 were Twilight Princess, Okami and Tales of the Abyss (with FF12 coming in a distant 4th). That said, Okami had some huge flaws. It's battle system was incredibly uninspired, repetitive, and boring. The final few boss battles FINALLY become interesting, but most of is pretty blah. Thankfully, the concentration on battles was so minor that it didn't really bring down the game... but if you're not going to have decent battles, why have them at all? There were all these wonderful skills that were just really cool to use... but it really took the fun out of them when they really weren't required in the battles, because the battles were so darn easy.
And I completely dissagree with you about the voice acting. You can read my lengthy post about why these titles should never have voice acting, I won't repeat all of it here, but my basic point is that these games rely on a certain level of abstraction... that the voices represent the emotions and state of mind of the NPCs, and are separated from the content. That abstraction is key to the charm of the series. This is a choice by the creators, not a mistake or laziness. That said, Okami's VA was a problem in that it really didn't serve its purpose well. The gibberish would have been great if it reflected the emotion of the character at the time, but it didn't change... every character had a specific gibberish voice, and that was it. In that sense, Zelda was much better.
Overall, the writing in TP was steller... I mean, Lunar or Tales quality writing. Obviously, there's always room for improvement, but TP had some of the best dialog I've seen in games for a while... unfortunately I also played Tales of the Abyss this year, which tops it... oh well, boo hoo.
Okami was extrordinary for a first game in any series. Its polish and charm just was breathtaking. If it had been allowed to continue as a series, I could imagine the third game easilly topping TP, but there were just a bit too many flaws in Okami to do that.
Well, that's one way of looking at it. And I'd agree for all previous games in the series, and quite a bit of anime (the real reason why I think most people prefer the Japanese, because they don't have to think about how utterly contrived the dialog sounds). But I would completely disagree with TP. TP was the first game in the series to actually have GREAT writing (for video games, at least). I'm talking almost on par with the Tales series (which I consider to have some of the best writing in gaming).
I think you're correct about why some games are better without voice acting, and Ocarina would have been HORRIFIC with VA, because of that. TP, however, could have survived just fine, and I think that's possibly why so many people are sorta wanting VA with it. I'll stick to my guns, though, and say that TP shouldn't have voice acting as a stylistic principal.
What are you talking about? My friend just had me start a game of Deus Ex the other day... and for the fist 45 minutes, I was in training rooms learning how to play the game. Sure, the normal campaign may start right off... but it doesn't count because I couldn't have done it without knowing the controls.
Needless to say, I was DISGUSTED by Dues Ex's choice of tacking on a training section on the beginning. A game is a learning process, part of the reason for playing the game is to learn how to play the game... why should I have to take a training session before I even begin?
I'm of the feeling that the best games hold your hand a bit and walk you through the gameplay, but make it interesting and reliavent to the story. Twilight Princess did that, FF8 did that, and those are probably my two favorite games. I haven't played through Deus Ex yet (and I want to, it looks good), but the beginning REALLY turned me off.
Then tell me this, then... if it hadn't been announced, then how did Miyamoto and his boys get ahold of it? It's not like theres a magical link between Capcom and Nintendo these days.
I dunno, it's possible, but I think highly unlikely.
Exactly.
And lets face it, all gameplay changes are gimmicks. There are various ways of getting people focused on a task, one is to entice them by having fun toys to play around with, but a more prolonged and rewarding exploit is to have them rivitted to characters and story elements.
Games have gotten pretty damn good with gameplay elements, it's what they do best, maybe it's time to pull back a little and work on the quality of character portrayal and dialog? I think the designers of Twilight Princess felt that way.
If you played the game for an hour and a half, then I can totally understand. But... AN HOUR AND A HALF???? The game is about 70+ hours! In dramatic narrative, usually writers suggest that about 1/3rd be exposition. In epic form, such as Zelda... there's usually multipul rising actions, so the exposition should probably be more like the first 1/6th. In a 70 hour game, that's about 12 hours. Zelda: TP moves into the action in about 3.
In some works, the whole work is meant to have consistantly riviting material. But in other works, the entire work is meant to lead up to a few key, extraordinary moments. Zelda: TP is one of those works. There is a moment about 4 hours in that is truly disturbing, one at about 18 where I wanted to cry. These moments were so incredible that they took hours to lead up to, and when the game is over, all that matters is those specific key points, and they made the game, IMO, the best game I've ever played (and I've played dozens of long-form titles).
Some games that start out with a BANG are great... like FF7, but probably the best start out quiet and subtle, and build into amazing things, like FF8 or Tales of the Abyss. Zelda falls into that category, in fact... Zelda typically falls into that catagory, it's just that TP is about twice the length of any other zelda, so its exposition NEEDS to be about twice as long to have the correct balance.
Okay, that Okami comment is just wrong. You do realize that Twilight Princess began developement 2 full years before Okami was even concieved, don't you? And that screen shots of Wolf Link first surfaced long before we ever saw the face of Ameratsu?
Okami was incredible, but the fact that both featured wolves was, believe it or not, a complete coincidence. If anything, Ameratsu was fashioned AFTER Wolf Link, but I highly doubt it, as I'm guessing that both games sat in the mind of their creators for a good couple of years prior to developement.
Twilight Princess may have done NOTHING to develope storyline or gameplay, but it highly developed something MUCH more need of updating: storytelling. The story may have been rehash and simple, but the storytelling was so greatly improved, it's not even funny. The dialog was fresh, the characters actually were given personality and developement! Hell, this was the first Zelda game where I've ever given two-shits about the characters. Before, they were just an excuse for gameplay, now, I actually care about them.
Video games desperately need to work on storytelling. Many of the best novels and films out there have very simple, unoriginal stories, but what makes them incredible is the way they present them. Twilight Princess is exactly that. I almost always hate games with really original, complex stories, because they usually use them as a crutch and become distracted from really evolving the human elements of the narrative, which is really the only part that matters anyway. A story is nothing without its characters... no matter how good it is.