• 5Sep 05

  Pretentious Games and Where they Belong

  Let's face it - all science-fiction RPG games of the modern century are pretentious. They have to be, or else they wouldn't be, to be honest, science-fiction RPGs in the first place. The entire genre, which is loaded with hyperspace theorems, calculations to get from one point in space to the next, created ship parts and intergalactic weapons and so forth, have become a prerequisite as well as a rite of passage when it comes to popping in a new sci-fi RPG game in your system. It's not that we don't appreciate all the jargon that one might have to sloth through when it comes to playing these games - heck, if you're like me, you might even enjoy knowing what they're talking about since you referred to the lexicon in the game - but it's getting to be a fact in the community that there are two sides to the argument. Or, to be more correct, two debating teams on the argument.

  On one side, we have the science-fiction fans, the dedicated RPG fans, the people who like realizing hte developed world of the game, and those who simply enjoy a bunch of fictional technology coming together in a fictional world to create a believable future, and those that think having to listen to a bunch of voice-actors constantly repeat terms and names that honestly don't make sense is a waste of time and a waste of money. Let's face it - there are those gamers who appreciate it when a writer takes the time to incorporate all forms and types of miscellaneous points and background information in their characters and settings, and those that don't. It's become that some gamers really appreciate it when a world is fleshed-out, and those that state that it's a little too fleshed out for it's own good. More often than not, those same people tend to be gamers who aren't really experienced in the RPG genre yet, or, worse yet, haven't experienced the true horror of an RPG that has no idea what it's setting is.

  So, where do 'pretentious' RPG games belong in this modern day and age, you ask? If the debate is still going on, than it must mean that they don't really belong in the gaming community at all, right? Wrong. In fact, the very existance of those debates of a game being too realistic for it's own good actually bring about the question that we should find a niche particularly for these games. Now that graphics can reach a truly remarkable form of beauty on our systems, the game mechanics and systems truly fleshed out and original, game designers, developers, and producers have now turned to the game script *writer* to come out with a smash winner nowadays. The olden days, of which the hero rescued the princess from a mean monster that returned every 1,000 years is no longer suitable to the gaming public, and it shows: and the RPG developers from Japan are respectively ramping up the complexity of their plots to match this trend.

  Casual RPG gamers are going to have to realize that the future of RPG gaming may result in larger, bigger, and better plots in general - gone are the old conventions in which a hero is forced to save a maiden simply because of moral contraceptions. No, if you're going to stay a RPG gamer, you're going to have to realize we might soon have to encounter plots like Final Fantasy Tactic's epic and sweeping tale (still a personal favorite for me) in any commonplace RPG. GameSpot has even put this revered title in its hall of fame classics, and from a designing standpoint, it seems like other games are going to have to follow suite if they're going to catch up with giants Square-Enix and Namco, with its acclaimed Xenosaga series, as well as what I believe to be up-and-coming Level 5. Although the next-generation systems have higher specs and graphics chips when it comes to our previous next-gen machines, it stands to reason that in a couple of years, when developers have hit the roof in the power ratings of their games, that they're going to have to revert back to increasing story values once more.

  It's true that the next-generation consoles, being the Playstation 3, the X-Box 360, and the Nintendo Revolution, may bring about another graphics rush when it comes to developers and designers to put out even more money and effort to develop more games with flawless graphics. But we as gamers have to ask ourselves this question - along the road, will somebody hit the limit and find that they can't increase the graphics of their game any further? At this point, I believe that developers will once again return to good plots instead of awesome graphics to increase the value of their games. However, when this happens is as good as anybody's guess, and it's only a speculation. One must also worry whether or not we might even get some plot-worthy games in the wave of the next-generatoin consoles, and only hope that we get decent quality scripts before somebody gets it in their head to write a powerful, moving plot to accompany those jaw-dropping graphics.

  However, I'm straying from the point - where do pretentious games belong in today's market of RPGs? Hopefully, we'll say the future and leave it at that. If pretentious games begin to infest the next-generatoin market, we'll have rather plot-worthy games on our hands for the next consoles; leaving enough good RPGs in hopes that we'll find even better ones as developers don't ditch story development for graphics improvement. However, the battle for better graphics will never truly end - it's the question of getting a good plot on our hands that seems a bigger dynamo.

  • Posted Sep 5, 2005 9:16 pm PT
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