[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Azisien

Final Fantasy X-2 was awesome fun.

This. This RIGHT HERE. TRUTH! People can argue all they want about it, but I've found in every FF game I've played or have seen played by Phantom (essentially all but XI of the main series and half the spin-offs), there is merit to be found. Even in X-2, which, while people like to bitch about it because it makes them feel like less of a pervert, has a really good battle system going that can prove both intense and fun.

random battles

I despised XII partly BECAUSE of a lack of random battles. There's nothing wrong with the system and it works. It also takes the hassle out of training my party to ludicrous levels because it negates the need to leave an area and come back to have the enemies respawn. If we were arguing about trip tiles, I might agree.

innovation

Square has shown TONS of innovation in their titles. Innovation is more than just "make something new that I like." They've undergone visual innovation, trying to update the appearances of their worlds and characters and summons. Tell me the last time something like this came around and whipped out even HALF as much awesome. They've undergone systems innovation with things like the Junction system and the Sphere Grid, among others. They've undergone plot innovation, attempting everything from a love story (FF8) to political intrigue (FF12).

In short, what the hell do you want? This series isn't going to shoot candy out through the screen for you, and neither will any other.

changes to the battle system

When you have something good, it's not on the top of your list to toss it out. ATB is something that entered FF in earlier titles and basically defined their system as different at the time. They later added Desperation Attacks and Limit Breaks, which no other series offers. Is it a wonder they took what worked and put their energy into fine-tuning it? Grandia did the same with a much different system, but I rarely hear complaints about theirs being the same thing all the time. Tales is another example of this. People actually BITCH about Abyss taking it to a 3-D field, right here on this forum.

story

Chrono has multiple endings to its games. Squeenix makes that, too. Yet people have said right in this thread that they don't want Square to make another one. Why? Lack of trust? Pfft! So, what, then? On one hand, Square has a series with an innovative storytelling style that people don't want them to continue, and then they have one that people want, but want to have an innovative storytelling style.

I'm well aware these views are expressed by different people, but it shows pretty damn clearly that Square just can't win. People who don't want Squeenix to "ruin" Chrono by making Chrono Break need to get over themselves and open up to a potentially good game. FF became highly refined over many tries, which Chrono didn't have the luxury of. People who complain about cutscenes need to do the same and remember that there are only so many ways to tell a story and our technology is not so advanced that you can have an effect on everything in the virtual world. AI is getting better, but I could have sworn I saw a complaint about Radiant from the Elder Scrolls games, which itself took a big leap from Morrowind to Oblivion. As computers get faster and more powerful, better will come along, but at the moment, the technology is still limited. Radiant and its future advances and children will be great for open-world games, but it might not even be appropriate for a title like FF, where the entire game structure is different and the play style might actually be hurt by it.



Edit: While I'm at it:

bad way of telling a story

I suppose by that logic that books are a TERRIBLE way of telling a story, what with having so few choose-your-own-adventure novels around with so few options in the ones that are.

The honest truth is that a good story finds a way to get the reader involved one way or another, without necessarily making the reader a direct part of it. As a writer of currently several books and more than one game, plus an avid reader, I can personally vouch that storytelling is the art of making your audience care about events that happen only in text on a page and in the inner senses of their own mind, usually without any direct input from them. By that logic, a game's story is bad by its own merits, rather than someone's arbitrary and incredibly narrow definition. Yes, it's outright bad of a game to throw your input out and do whatever the hell it wants. MGS, in this case, is a terrible storyteller, from what I hear. However, if the story flows naturally from the actions of a player, even if those actions are fixed, then there isn't a problem in that respect. If you win a battle and the story hinges on you winning it, then the flow makes sense. If you win and still lose in the following scene, then yes, something is totally borked.

Again, it comes down to actually having limits to our technology. Any linear story is going to have the same beginning and end regardless of the middle because you have an intro scene and assume that the player wants to actually finish the game and win. An open world aspect is therefore prohibitive to having a complete story, because at most you'll have a choice of stories to follow to their linear conclusion. It's just life. You can mitigate linearity by offering choices, but we're back to Chrono and limitations on just what the player can choose.

Games will never be on par with your uncle bullshitting tales for you around a campfire.