Can a western RPG ever match the narrative majesty of FF7?

[flyingjohn]

Sigourn suckled the Dark Souls teat for a year, praising its gameplay, art direction, and narrative choice before even playing it. When he finally did get to playing it, he rage quit before killing the Gargoyles, cursed the game's existence and swore not to pick it up again. I'm too lazy to find the post in the Dark Souls thread, but I'm fairly certain there's very little embellishment in my anecdote.

Tl;dr - Sigourn likes edgy graphics, but sucks at games

Got you covered:
"
I used to think I found my new favorite game, but now I'm questioning this game more and more. Most important of all: enemy respawning, and bonfire placement. The respawning gets tiring very, very fast. And the bonfire placement which forces you to walk long stretches every time you die doesn't help at all. I know what difficult and what tedious are. Dark Souls is both difficult (IMO), but also extremely tedious.

I just returned to the Undead Asylum and fell through the floor... I'm not calling you morons, FromSoftware, but this is a retarded design decision if I've ever seen one. For what purpose, other than annoy the player?

The more I play Dark Souls, the more convinced I am it's not so much "difficult" as it is retardedly designed. Any game can be made difficult with retarded design.

The difficult of the final product is a lie. I'm not saying it is not difficult. I'm saying it's a bullshit type of difficulty."

The butt hurt is glorious.

Also why would anybody praise a game for years and not play it?
Makes you wonder.

Bonus points for anybody guessing from which codex sub forum this image came from.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Bonus points for anybody guessing from which codex sub forum this image came from.

nigga plz, any bro worth his salt will tell you the exact origins of that image

 

[Sigourn]

Sigourn suckled the Dark Souls teat for a year, praising its gameplay, art direction, and narrative choice before even playing it.

Literally when did this happen? I praised all of that as I was playing it.

When he finally did get to playing it, he rage quit before killing the Gargoyles, cursed the game's existence and swore not to pick it up again.

Wrong. I kept playing until Sen's Fortress, at which point I decided I wanted to play other games instead of enduring the constant framerate issues I was having on my PC. I've made it a point to return to Dark Souls in the future, since the game is glorious. Being mad at it is part of its greatness.

EDIT:

Does it upset you that much when someone calls your precious JRPGs "shit"?

 

[Vorark]

The FF7 summons were super cool despite the animations taking forever to play:

 

[InD_ImaginE]

as InD_ImaginE said, FF7 is pretty cool until you leave the giant grunge metal thingy

in an alternate universe, FF7 was about the ethics of terrorism in trying to fight oligarchs, not desu ne JRPG shit. if i remember correctly, you bomb a reactor destroying an entire city sector. that's cool as fuck. I want to destroy more city sectors.

Nah we didn't destroy whole sector. The only thing we did is blowing up the reactor sucking the energy. The whole destroyed sector thing is because Reno and Turks being a dick and turn the destroy whole sector button on because: 1. 7th sector slum (right below the destroyed sector) is AVALANCHE base of operation. 2. to paint AVALANCHE as true terrorist (which they kind already are, but the never attacked civilian before. with the blowing whole sector up now they are in public eyes)

 

[HoboForEternity]

trails >>>>>>>>>>>>> every fucking final fan-casualty combined. even FF Tactics

 

[DraQ]

^
BROS!!!

Maybe we should indeed distinguish jRPGs and JRPGs?



DISCUSS!

Anachronox is a wJPG.

 

[spekkio]

^
MOAR like wJRPG, amrite?

 

[DraQ]

^
MOAR like wJRPG, amrite?

There is no more role in JPGs than in, say, Mario, where you play the role of Mario.

 

[Cael]

There is no more role in JPGs than in, say, Mario, where you play the role of Mario.

Stick a wrench on the puppet and call it a day. Mario is RPG.

:D:D:D

 

[Sigourn]

People unironically believe that JRPG is the same as Japanese RPG? That's like saying Skyrim is like Wizardry just because they are both American.

 

[Somberlain]

What is a JRPG?

 

[Sigourn]

What is a JRPG?

A sub-genre of RPGs made popular by the Japanese. Well known JRPGs: Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Tales of Phantasia, amongst others. Japanese RPGs, on the other hand: Demon's Souls, Shin Megami Tensei, Vagrant Story, and basically any Japanese RPG that doesn't belong to the "JRPG" sub-genre. Here's a good article on the subject.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I prefer FF Tactics' story and Xenogears but yeah, I essentially agree.

Funny enough, all the good story in western games is going to other genres. Red Dead Redemption, Last of Us, Far Cry 3/4, etc.

 

[Jacob]

I think the Mario RPG series are well done games.

 

[Hobo Elf]

FF7 was pretty cool back in the day when you went into it without knowing jack diddly squat. At the time the titanic scope of the game felt natural, but looking back at it now, especially when comparing it with modern Square Enix games, makes it and the other games of its era feel a bit more special. I don't think we'll see a game like it ever again.

Anywhoo, FF7 isn't really a narrative master by any stretch of the imagination, but it had some cool plot ideas. The Lovecraftian elements were kinda neat.

 

[Vorark]

FF7 was pretty cool back in the day when you went into it without knowing jack diddly squat. At the time the titanic scope of the game felt natural, but looking back at it now, especially when comparing it with modern Square Enix games, makes it and the other games of its era feel a bit more special. I don't think we'll see a game like it ever again.

It's a shame both Squaresoft and Enix Corporation died the moment the behemoth Square-Enix was born. I remember people back then (circa 2002, even!) speculating about how it wasn't necessary for Squaresoft to accept the deal offered by Enix. While they were fucked over by that shit Spirits Within movie tanking, they were recovering: Sony had their backs and they had managed to release two successful games: Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts. Enix was the desperate one at the time.

It's clear how the Squaresoft IPs went to hell after the fusion and they hardly dared to venture into new directions (eg. Parasite Eve, KH). On the Enix side, Dragon Quest got more coverage, at the price of their experimental side succumbing. I believe Square-Enix was one of the worst things to happen to the JRPG scene: on one hand, killed the creative side of both companies; on the other, left Squaresoft's delusions of grandeur (eg. the aforementioned shitty movie) and Enix's usually risk-averse culture intact. So you get high production values containing more of the same.

The whole merger is a fascinating story.