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| Ishmael 359th Post
 
Silver Customer
  
    
|  "Hodgepodge"
, posted Thu 12 Dec 12:44
A few questions and some random musings. No real theme to this, rather it's a collection of a few things I've been thinking about the past couple of days.
Has anyone heard who is doing the soundtrack to Tenchu 3? I loved the soundtrack in Tenchu 1 and was hoping for more of that from the latest installment.
Exactly when did learning magic turn into nothing more complex than carrying rocks? When one thinks of a fantasy story style wizard you normally think of a person who has dedicated their life to learning difficult, arcane spells. Yet now in a number of console RPG's you can have everybody in your group perform magic and even swap spells around between party members, making magic just another type of item. Was there a specific game where magic went from being a learned skill to being something any clown off the street could perform with the right rock, scroll, or gem?
How much plot does a game need or, more accurately, how should the plot be presented? The question occurred to me thanks to Metroid Prime. When I first fired up the game I was thrilled to be back in the familiar but refurbished world of Metroid, happy to see Samus back in action, and even glad to see Ridley back so I could pummel him for a third straight time. It wasn't until I saw claims on a message board speculating that MP was somehow taking place before Super Metroid and had elaborate explanations for a time line for all the games that I began to wonder what those players saw in the games that I missed. To add to the mix was an interview with the creators of MP where they noted, quite correctly, that the Metroid games didn't really have much in the way of plot development. There was some background information in the instruction booklet and something at the beginning and end of the game but a majority of the game featured nothing more than Samus working her way through tunnels while whomping on space bugs. I realized that while I was playing Metroid the environments, game play, characters, and so on all gave me the feeling that I was in a fully formed world so that my imagination filled in the blanks in of what little plot there was. The details and inconsistencies didn't worry me while I was caught up in the game. When the discussion of "story" comes up in games it's often viewed as being something that is very linear. MP, however, reminded me that games are a different medium from movies, books or other methods of presenting a story and shouldn't be expected to conform to the same rules and restrictions.
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| Sensenic
78th Post
Occasional Customer
| "Re(1):Hodgepodge" , posted Thu 12 Dec 15:41
quote:
Exactly when did learning magic turn into nothing more complex than carrying rocks? When one thinks of a fantasy story style wizard you normally think of a person who has dedicated their life to learning difficult, arcane spells. Yet now in a number of console RPG's you can have everybody in your group perform magic and even swap spells around between party members, making magic just another type of item. Was there a specific game where magic went from being a learned skill to being something any clown off the street could perform with the right rock, scroll, or gem?
Well, first of all, I think that magic is a very ambiguous concept that doesn't really say or mean anything, it just came out to explain unexplainable phenomena ("Oh! What's that?""It's magic, period.").
Because of that I think that anyone who wants to tell a story about magic can make up anything that he/she desires about it, as long as it's well explained and relatively coherent (always from some unavoidably incomprehensible point of start). And if it's well done I like it over the usual standard about huge libraries, old beared men, flying brooms, stupid words (or Latin)etc. Two examples would be FF6:
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
Where magic is just the few remainings of the allmighty 3 Goddessess' power who created everything and put order to it but then weakened a lot. Even with that, at human scale it's still a huge power.
End of Spoiler
or FF7:
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
Where magic it's just some "knowledge" that allows to use the nature's own properties at its maximum efficiency. This knowledge discovered by the Ancients gets into the Materia and humans can use this Materia to receive the knowledge
End of Spoiler
quote:
How much plot does a game need or, more accurately, how should the plot be presented? The question occurred to me thanks to Metroid Prime. When I first fired up the game I was thrilled to be back in the familiar but refurbished world of Metroid, happy to see Samus back in action, and even glad to see Ridley back so I could pummel him for a third straight time. It wasn't until I saw claims on a message board speculating that MP was somehow taking place before Super Metroid and had elaborate explanations for a time line for all the games that I began to wonder what those players saw in the games that I missed. To add to the mix was an interview with the creators of MP where they noted, quite correctly, that the Metroid games didn't really have much in the way of plot development. There was some background information in the instruction booklet and something at the beginning and end of the game but a majority of the game featured nothing more than Samus working her way through tunnels while whomping on space bugs. I realized that while I was playing Metroid the environments, game play, characters, and so on all gave me the feeling that I was in a fully formed world so that my imagination filled in the blanks in of what little plot there was. The details and inconsistencies didn't worry me while I was caught up in the game. When the discussion of "story" comes up in games it's often viewed as being something that is very linear. MP, however, reminded me that games are a different medium from movies, books or other methods of presenting a story and shouldn't be expected to conform to the same rules and restrictions.
Well, in the case of games that are supposed to have argument (not Tetris and so), I like them having a worked and coherent storyline. It's not that I'm not gonna like a game with coherence mistakes or one that the story ain't the most important part of it. But I "hate" (not literally) the case when something that has been stated in the story previously is later (in another game or in the same one) ignored on purpose because the makers wanted it; because they now don't like it, because they can't find an appropriate continuation or explanation for it (that's what DKW said about KOF's story), or even because they absolutely don't care (Monkey Island 4: they only took the funny parts of the story and completely forgot about the other ones, making their own version and blowing the original away. As far as I'm concerned, for me MI ended in the 2nd or the 3rd chapter).
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Metroid Fusion is Metroid 4. (The game says this explicitly). I guess Metroid Prime happens before Fusion otherwise Samus would have a different suit.
New suit that I don't like, BTW. And even less the new ship. The game's great though
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As for me, I play soccer with knights of the round materia.
The ugliest Solid Snake ever is watching you...
-I thought you were arian....
-I'm vegetarian...
Dialog between Schulz and the jewish barber -The Great Dictator-
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