Call Of Podcast| Episode 103: Liquefaction |
| Written by Esteban Salazar |
| Monday, 05 December 2011 01:23 |
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Does it terrify you to think that the ground underneath your feet is shifting? Does it seem crazy that that very ground could lose its cohesion and turn into a sinkhole? We are in shifting times, with great shifts in every area of our lives. Japanese folks are shifting towards not having sex. Japanese games are shifting towards a "by Japanese, for Japanese" model, as is Japanese pop culture. Games themselves are shifting. The old model is dying- the new model is unproven. Game discussed: Oblivion (Nehrim) Section 8 Assassin's Creed: Revelations (Haiku!) Assassin's Creed: Recollection(Effed up pricing!) Next week, Paul Taylor from Mode 7 joins us to talk about the development of Frozen Synapse! Please tweet, etc and let everyone know. If you have any questions you'd like asked, get them in ASAP.
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| Last Updated on Monday, 05 December 2011 01:35 |
Comments
About FF13, it sold about 2.2 or so million I believe, just in Japan. Count is right that it was dirt cheap second hand only weeks after release (famously, 500 yen at some Tokyo store). I usually see it for around 1500 at my local stores, which is about 500 yen less than what the International version of FF12 goes for these days.
Commiserations to Esteban on the break-up :-(. But good for all the other needy Japanese hotties out there.
Now, people certainly do grow out of interest in things like fantasy sci-fi, but it's not like that is the intent on the part of any serious creator. Something that is aimed squarely and exclusively at a shonen demographic ceases to have any artistic merit in my eyes.
I don't feel like FF was always like this. I think this shift all began with FFVII. That was the first entry where adolescent power fantasy blatantly stole the show, and I think it's been downhill ever since for FF and Square as a whole, with a handful of exceptions along the way.
That song was also played in a nasty film, Boxing Helena(iirc) during a sex scene.
Oh, did you guys ever think that song was the inspiration for the opening track in Streets of Rage 2?
http://youtu.be/ZOIkvOXM8Pw
Esteban, what happened to your old lady? Wasn't she just cooking you lunch in the last show?
I've since gone back to those earlier games, FF1+2 on iOS, FFV on PS1, and FFIV on GBA, and they really don't impress me. I almost played FFIV to completion and, even with the retranslation, the story isn't particularly interesting. A lot of it is to do with cart sizes limiting the amount of text you could include and graphical limitations of the time. Almost any 8/16bit JRPG is the same these days.
Chrono Trigger is the exception for me. Those gorgeous sprites still hold up and I find the story of time travel and changing time lines really interesting (I always like a bit of sci-fi mixed in with my fantasy). I haven't played Final Fantasy 6 yet but I suspect I might be equally impressed by that game based on what I've heard about it.
I'm a big fan of the game but I think the learning curve is really high for a lot of my friends.
Are there any thoughts of refining the GUI to make it more accessible to a larger audience?
Examples:
Showing an arc to show the range of a shotgunner.
Cleaning up the main menu interface to it's easier to access the various features like replays.
Exposing math behind firefights so players can identify if they're going to win the encounter.
During the trial run, allowing the time to go beyond the default of 1 turn.
I got into FF with 4 on SNES and then went back and played the original before 6 came out, and loved them to bits. I also loved Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and just about every half-decent JRPG available in the States at that time. You're right that those games aren't very impressive in this day and age; for the most part they're youthful adventures--just a few shades of marketing away from what came later, and what we get even now with NeoFF.
I think the difference is in authorial intent. I loved FF7 when it was released. I was 16, just on the edge of the window in my life when things like FF7 resonated the most with me. You should really play FF6 (but do yourself a favor and skip the PSOne port--horrendous load times), because I think that game has a central narrative and ensemble cast far more mature than any other game in the series. X-2 and 13 excepted, of course, because I haven't played them. Basically, I think I felt more adult playing FF6 on my SNES, with its various themes of leadership, rebellion, revolution, nihilism, suicide, vengeance, etc. etc., than I did a few years later with FF7.
I don't think the games post FF7 improved on it, either. You didn't like FF9, which makes sense because it was a total throwback to the SNES and pre-SNES era of the series. As I recall, it was entirely lacking of mature or thoughtful content; I liked it as a breath of fresh air after 7 and 8, which by that time (I was 19, I think) I had kind of come to see as pretentious.
So, to sum it up, I see FF 1-5 as like area-of-effect generic fantasy adventures, 6 as incorporating that but having elements interesting on a more mature level, and 7 and on as irredeemable pandering to the Shonen Jump set. ;)
I sell them short for comedic value; they just don't appeal to me now in the way that they might have once, and in the way that the first 6 games in the series still can. I think before 7 the games were probably aimed at a broader audience than after--this kind of dovetails with the discussion we had on the podcast this week about Japanese culture zeroing in on a certain audience and thereby losing the rest of the people it used to appeal to.
I was always planning to pick up FF6 on the GBA but I think I didn't have a way to comfortably play GBA games by the time it came out (if it did). I know that FF6 has bad load times on the PS1 (I dabbled in it back when it came out) but am hoping that it would be mostly fixed by playing off the memory card. Anyway, I will probably wait to see what people say about it before I drop my money.
I've never heard of the AKB48 voting but it's pure genius. Whoever came up with that idea knows their market so well.
After reading the article, I watched a video and yeah that's some kinky shit.
Furries kissing each other, panty shots, and eating cake of their face. Such a fetish market.
http://www.lastofus.com/
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