I think it's safe to say that Bioware has dethroned Square.

If only it was just Enix, the true king of JRPGs.

Damn, ActRaiser rocked hard.

This is pretty much what I've been saying :)

Square's games have been getting increasingly linear and have been taking more and more away from the aspects of player-driven narrative and exploration, and it's been getting worse ever since Final Fantasy VIII. In Final Fantasy VIII, you were pretty much doomed to have the exact same story no matter how you played, even if you hated it. Example: you may have thought Quistis was awesome and that Rinoa was an annoying, clingy, self-absorbed brat who just wants to make daddy mad, but no matter how hard you try, Squall is always going to end up with Rinoa, and he's going to act like a douche towards Quistis. That's the only way Square wants you to play, and if you don't like it then too bad.

In a Bioware game though, you can play however you want. Don't like character X? You don't have to be friends with them if you don't want. Like girl A more than girl B? That's fine, because you can pick either, or even go with girl C if you don't like either of them, or just make your character celebate. Is your character a goody-two-shoes and you don't like it? Then stop making goody-two-shoes choices during conversations, and start making darker ones. Don't want your character to be a douche? Then make him act nicer. You don't have to bang your head on the coffee table going "Why do I have to play as a character as moronic as Squall?" because the character is whoever you want them to be.

In FFXIII, Square has actually taken a few steps BACKWARDS from their previous games by removing actual exploration from their games and replacing it with linear paths through non-interactive environments. At best you may find a fork in the path that leads to an item box, but that is mearly a tangent in your workflow, not exploration. Square's ethos with FFXIII seems to have been "Make the game as efficient to play as possible, so that theyre's not much coming in between the player and the story we've written." The problem is, the story isn't even that good, and on top of that the player doesn't have an influence over it.

To paraphrase that dude from Bioware, "You can put a J in front of it, but Final Fantasy XIII is not an RPG." This may sound like an extreme stance, I don't think it's without merit. The first electronic RPGs were an attempt to make a computerized clone of Dungeons and Dragons. What these early games lacked though, was the ability to actually role play-- that is, a conversation between the player and the game master, who takes on the role of an NPC, and must interpret the player's dialogue as per what will make sense within the scenario he is overseeing. It's taken many years for RPGs to come close to recapturing interactivity like that, and yet Square seems set on moving even further away from it, with as little player input over the narrative as possible. If the "RPG" in "JRPG" no longer stays for "Role Playing Game," then what is it?

Timstuff

FF is simply an adventure game, as there's little (if any) role-playing or decision-making. I played FF VIII, X, and X-2. I prefer WRPGs: they are RPGs.

I don't really blame Bioware because it is not their fault that Square been releasing crappy spinoffs.

Yet, FF13 dominated Dragon Age and ME1,2 in sales....................ff13 might have sold more than all those combined...........not to mention the RPG's on DS and PSP....................i think bioware might still be the jester in the kings court.......eh? Im enjoying Dragon Age at the moment though......excellent game.TheExaltedOne

FFXII sold extremelly well,but so did turds like Enter the matrix or Driver 3,among many others.What does that tell you?

Popularity of the franchise dictated the sales of FXIII,not the quality of the game,wich is by no means a turd,but it´s quite inferior when compared to any bioware game,even Jade Empire,usually seen as the worst bioware game still has a better average metascore than FFXIII...

When sales are being used as a last resort to have some sort of ownage,you know something is wrong.

Bioware definetly > Square ( only on consoles though, I don't even think Bioware makes handheld games ? )

Bioware dethroned Square with Baldur's Gate 2.

akbar13

Bioware dethroned Square with baldur's gate 1 LOL and then Diablo before that.

[QUOTE="Timstuff"]

[QUOTE="xXTalismanXx"]No, but no one is a true RPG fan until they play Chrono Trigger.

Modern Square < SNES Square

JRPGs adn WRPGs are different beasts.

[QUOTE="porkysownu"]

question: is it wrong for a self proclaimed core gamer such as myself to never have played through a square game, and probablly never will?

Square's games have been getting increasingly linear and have been taking more and more away from the aspects of player-driven narrative and exploration, and it's been getting worse ever since Final Fantasy VIII. In Final Fantasy VIII, you were pretty much doomed to have the exact same story no matter how you played, even if you hated it. Example: you may have thought Quistis was awesome and that Rinoa was an annoying, clingy, self-absorbed brat who just wants to make daddy mad, but no matter how hard you try, Squall is always going to end up with Rinoa, and he's going to act like a douche towards Quistis. That's the only way Square wants you to play, and if you don't like it then too bad.

In a Bioware game though, you can play however you want. Don't like character X? You don't have to be friends with them if you don't want. Like girl A more than girl B? That's fine, because you can pick either, or even go with girl C if you don't like either of them, or just make your character celebate. Is your character a goody-two-shoes and you don't like it? Then stop making goody-two-shoes choices during conversations, and start making darker ones. Don't want your character to be a douche? Then make him act nicer. You don't have to bang your head on the coffee table going "Why do I have to play as a character as moronic as Squall?" because the character is whoever you want them to be.

In FFXIII, Square has actually taken a few steps BACKWARDS from their previous games by removing actual exploration from their games and replacing it with linear paths through non-interactive environments. At best you may find a fork in the path that leads to an item box, but that is mearly a tangent in your workflow, not exploration. Square's ethos with FFXIII seems to have been "Make the game as efficient to play as possible, so that theyre's not much coming in between the player and the story we've written." The problem is, the story isn't even that good, and on top of that the player doesn't have an influence over it.

To paraphrase that dude from Bioware, "You can put a J in front of it, but Final Fantasy XIII is not an RPG." This may sound like an extreme stance, I don't think it's without merit. The first electronic RPGs were an attempt to make a computerized clone of Dungeons and Dragons. What these early games lacked though, was the ability to actually role play-- that is, a conversation between the player and the game master, who takes on the role of an NPC, and must interpret the player's dialogue as per what will make sense within the scenario he is overseeing. It's taken many years for RPGs to come close to recapturing interactivity like that, and yet Square seems set on moving even further away from it, with as little player input over the narrative as possible. If the "RPG" in "JRPG" no longer stays for "Role Playing Game," then what is it?

Timstuff

Is it just me or did you just compare 2002-onward games to FF8 which was made in 1999?

Mass Effect 2 is no Final Fantasy 6.

LegatoSkyheart

I would much rather have a single, well fleshed out storyline than a bunch of branches which many times rarely make sense when you examine the ethos behind the main character's actions. This was especially apparent in Heavy Rain. You can have all the fake choices you want, but many times the choices just lead to really crappy, vague storytelling. Vandalvideo

This is what i think. I have never been involved in a video game's story like i was in Half Life 2, which was as linear as games can get. Non-linear games just always seem to have poor story telling from my experience.

FFVIII is my favorite FF game of all time, so that doesn't bother me. However, the ever since the merger with Enix, FF games have been crap.

[QUOTE="Timstuff"]

[QUOTE="xXTalismanXx"]No, but no one is a true RPG fan until they play Chrono Trigger.

Jesus_on_fire

Modern Square < SNES Square

Add Xenogears to those 2 and you have the best of what Square had to offer.

They had other great games like Final Fantasy IX, Chrono Trigger, Live a Live (Never came to US), but that was a long time ago. SE has been steadily going down hill ever since the merger. It won't be long before they lose most of their fans. What they need to do is fire everyone that made the last 3 Final Fantasy. Especially their story writers. With the mountains of cash SE sits on they could at least hire good story writers.

[QUOTE="Vandalvideo"]I would much rather have a single, well fleshed out storyline than a bunch of branches which many times rarely make sense when you examine the ethos behind the main character's actions. This was especially apparent in Heavy Rain. You can have all the fake choices you want, but many times the choices just lead to really crappy, vague storytelling. hoola

This is what i think. I have never been involved in a video game's story like i was in Half Life 2, which was as linear as games can get. Non-linear games just always seem to have poor story telling from my experience.

Yep. Half Life 2 is the best form of video game storytelling. It uses one thing unique to games: the 3D interactive space. Of course its linear, but rather then have a story that says "I AM IMPORTANT" it uses the enviroments and charectars to tell a story. A house with knocked over chairs and open cuboards suggests a family in panic of an attack (most basic example). And rather then charectars blurting out nonsense, they have subtle things to tell their story

[QUOTE="LegatoSkyheart"]

Mass Effect 2 is no Final Fantasy 6.

texasgoldrush

now that you mention it. It kind of does. Like the Fact Shepard was out of commision for 2 years...how long was Tetra under the Empire's Control?

JRPGs adn WRPGs are different beasts.

XboximusPrime

I do not think the divide should be as ridiculously big as it is, though. An RPG at it's core should have the following:

1) Character management and / or customization

2) Evolution, growth, and specialization of character skills

3) Exploration and treasure hunting

4) Decision making

The only ones of those things that Final Fantasy XIII has are character management and evolution. The exploration element is a joke and doesn't even count, because you're really not exploring anything, but rather just being forced to go out of your way to get a trivial item. You're on a fixed, linear path that has a few option branches that you can look at, but you are not actually exploring. As for decision making, you don't really make any decisions at all except whether to upgrade your gear and skills now or later.

There are PLENTY of JRPGs that do not have this problem of leaving the role playing out of the experience, and only recently have developers been trying to move the genre as far away from its roots as possible. Busywork, grinding, and XP points do not an RPG make. You can get rid of all of those and you'd still have an RPG, as long as the core elementes I listed are still there! JRPGs do NOT have to be non-RPGs, even if that's the direction that some stupid corporate tools are trying to pull the JRPG label towards.

Not many JRPGs have decision making anyway if at all. The focus on a single fixed storyline can be better in some cases. I agree that Square is no longer big as they used to but thats their own undoing not because of Bioware.

I don't really consider SW and Bio games the same genre.

I would much rather have a single, well fleshed out storyline than a bunch of branches which many times rarely make sense when you examine the ethos behind the main character's actions. This was especially apparent in Heavy Rain. You can have all the fake choices you want, but many times the choices just lead to really crappy, vague storytelling. Vandalvideo