Totally with you on the repetition thing, although a lot of the stuff that's come out in the past 6 months has been relatively free of the typical cliches.

Suikoden V - NO romantic subplot unless you really read a lot into the relationship between Prince and Lyon.

FF12 - Suikoden-esque approach to storytelling. The characters are already (sort of) coupled at the beginning of the game Vaan/Panello, Balthier/Fran, but their relationship are not at all important to the plot.

Okami - A love story between a thub-sized painter and his female wolf-god.

Tales of the Abyss - not finished yet, but the story definitely doesn't center around romance. The game is relatively free of the normal cliches, and the storytelling is grade A, so I'm happy with whatever.

But it is unfortunate that noone ever dies anymore. And when they do, they don't stay dead. The stupid thing is that when a character actually DOES DIE (Aris, Titus), the fans get hopping mad, and imply that the character is really still alive, or could be brought back, and the company is forced to bring them back in a sequel. I'm a fan of good storytelling, if that means that a main character bites it for dramatic reasons... then except it, enjoy the beauty of it, and shut the hell up!

Mine:

RPGs:
Suikoden V
Final Fantasy 12
Wild Arms 4 (except for the final boss)

Semi-RPGs / Adventures
Zelda: Twlight Princess
Okami
Metroid Prime Hunters (except for the final boss)

Games I got bored with and just gave up on:
Grandia III
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (right near the end, but I don't care)
Wild Arms 3
Dragon Quest VIII (over 120 hours, and still no end in sight, great game, just got old after a while)
Hotel Dusk

Currently playing: Tales of the Abyss

This is BAD, I never used to not finish a game. But between DQ8 and some duds, I wasted a lot of time this past year. Thankfully, the last 6 months have completely made up for it. I was starting to think that I may be losing interest in gaming, there, for a while. Then Suikoden and Okami came and blew that idea right out the window.

Hey, anything can happen ;)

But anyway, yes, Grandia III had its merrits, but it lost them about 1/3rd of the way through the game, when the story ditched the mother and the ship captain (forget their names). Their relationship was probably the only truly unique thing in the game. They had this wonderful thing going on, and what do they do? They ditch the two characters for no particular reason (stupid excuse) in exchange for some puppy-love romance and a few stupid comments from the peanut gallery. I just got this "been there, done that" kinda vibe about 40 hours in, and gave up the ghost; never finished it. Grandia II, however, had some of the most well defined characters I've seen in a game, a great spiritual sequel to the Lunar franchise.

Nice catch with the username, btw. I've used it for some time now on various sites, and you're the first one to pick up on that. Most people just think its simply a reference to cartesian philosophy (which it is, just in a roundabout way).

BTW: I've been lurking here for about 8 months now... I just started checking the boards a few weeks ago, though. Spend most of my time over at slashdot.

Heh... you got me there, naw, he doesn't do much else (Eternal Darkness, a few TV shows, blah blah blah), so I guess I shouldn't have put him down. But you have to admit, he does a killer job as Snake, very distinctive. I would like to say I'd like to see him in other parts, but he's so attatched to Snake, it would be hard to shake that. Sort of how it was hard to shake the "Leonardo" off of Cam Clark.

BTW, I just looked him up on IMDB, and he IS officially listed as doing the voice of Snake for Brawl... I'm not surprised, but I was worried that they'd just go with grunts and things from the Japanese voice actor. That makes my day.

AMEN! I'll agree, heavily with all of those there. Star Ocean 2 was a fun romp... SO3 was pretentious, boring, and tried too hard to be serious. Grandia 3 was "meh", the battle system was great, but the characters and dialog were nothing compared to Grandia 2s (well, G2s voice acting is second to none in my book, which helped). Chrono Cross is my least favorite game EVER... I was so dissapointed that I wanted to toss my TV at the wall. It was like Chrono does Evangelion. Everything about that game screemed pretentious, cheesy, and full of itself; total mental masterbation with no substance or sophistication. I have so much hate in my heart from that game, don't even get me started.

Xenosaga... I never particularly loved Xenogears to begin with, both were alright I guess (if you didn't already notice, I really hate religo-mecha kinds of things). Xenosaga had some great story, and the storytelling was DEFINITELY a notch up from its predicessor, but the gameplay was incredibly boring.

On the flip side, many other series have seen great sequels as of late. Suikoden came back with a bang, V being one of the best in the series, with a very mature theme, and more sophisticated dialog. Twlight Princess did the same for Zelda, as did FF12 for Final Fantasy. I'm absolutely loving Tales of the Abyss right now, and I never thought I'd say this, but I think it's even better than Symphonia (except for the graphics, which are a real downgrade from the GameCube... but whatever).

I think it was early last gen that saw the terrible sequels. Late "last gen" (still current gen for me, since the PS2 is still my main console), was unbelievably good, save Grandia 3. The point is, I think things are on the up-and-up now, with developers finally learning from their mistakes. I'm not going to hope for much from Monolith, Tri-ace, or Game Arts, but Tales Studio, S-E, and Konami have some great things going on. Not to mention we have some new players in town like Mistwalker and Seeds, that should bring in some new blood.

Here's a vote against the Abyss intro (US). Sure, this time around there isn't an annoying vocalist, but the tune is just aweful. The guitar production is incredibly weak (single recorded... even), the arrangement has no depth, the melody just sounds childish (very childish). Completely opposite of the feeling I get from the game. It just sounds like a pop group trying to do alt-rock, and failing misserably. The Tales of Symphonia intro was nothing to write home about, but it was a lot less obnoxious. I'm not familliar with the Japanese intro, I'd like to hear it. I'm not a fan of J-Pop, but I'd probably like it better than this A-Pop crap.

What do you people see in it? It just screams "weak" and "cheesy" in my book.

Ya know what had a great intro, this year? Suikoden V, that was a great intro.

Nomura did a great job on FFVIII, yes, but after that, all his characters became serious fashion victims, and their faces all start looking the same. He got into doing this aesymetrical clothing thing with FFX, with bucketloads of gaudy accessories and high saturated colors. Back in the day, through FF9, at least, character clothing was fairly simple, either functional, or cultural, but never distracting. A single outfit wasn't comprised of 4 different shirts, 3 different types/lengths of leggings, metal garb around the left elbow, and a chain around the crotch. I think this was much more effective.

This is why I think the strongest outfits in FF12 were Balthier and Pannelo's. Both had a unified presentation, a defined color-scheme, with subtle textures that fit the persona and overall appearence. Characters such as Vaan, Ashe, Bosch, etc. looked silly, because their clothing was incredibly lavish and un-utilitarian. I mean, how the hell can you justify, Vaan, a street urchin, dressing in anything but fairly plain colors and completely utilitarian accessories? Panello's outfit didn't distract, Vaan's definitely did.

Compare this to FF8s clothing models, which, even though used less polygons, were much more effective in their presentation. Rinoa had a simple, yet elegant blue dress, with a dash of uniqueness in its trailing tale. Quistis's firey red shirt with black leggings. Zell's character warrented something a bit over-the-top, and he got it, with brash colors. Still a bit out of place, considering the fact that you'd really want body armor or cammo for fighting, but the outfits felt correct for the character personalities, without going overboard.

I think some people are missing the point of Fran. She looks like a sultry "bunny girl", but that's not her personality at all. I almost wish that they had made her, visually, very different, because a lot of people seem to be confused about this. They expected an exotic, sexy voice, when in actuality, her character is almost completely asexual and has some definitive weight. She's quiet, proud, a bit sarcastic, and only likes to speak when she's got something important to say. I thought her voice fit PERFECTLY, sure it isn't "cool", but that's not the point of her character either.

On the subject of bad voice acting... I detest bad voice acting, it's ruined more than just a few games. Batten Keitos remains the only game I've ever demanded money back for, largely due to incredibly obnoxious voice acting (which you could turn off except for the battles, which were the worst part)... it didn't help that they tried to make them sound like they were recorded inside a tin can, or that the dialog was laughably bad.

I work as a TV producer, and do quite a bit of my own voice-over / voice-acting work, and I swear I could have done a better job then some of these hacks. When you have an entire city (LA) ready to jump at the chance of doing voice-over work for peanuts, there's just no excuse.

If a game's voice-acting is done well, it works really well, but if the designers not going to go all the way, forget it. Some examples of great voice acting include the Tales series, Dragon Quest VIII (damn brits have all the fun!), FF12, and Grandia II. I'm also am quite charmed by a lot of psuedo voice-acting like in Zelda, Okami, and Golden Sun, where the style requires a bit of abstraction. I'd go as far as to say that I think these series would be weaker with voice-acting.

As for japanese vs. english... unfortunately, I'm starting to realize that Japanese is often prefered (especially in anime) because its harder to notice bad writing. Don't get me wrong, I love good Japanese voice acting, but I think one of the other reasons that so many anime fans prefer Japanese is because it masks bad dialog. That said, until recently, the US hasn't had a good assortment of great voice actors, so there are other reasons for prefering Japanese with subs, but that's changing quickly. The US is quickly emmassing a number of great voice actors such as Cam Clark, Scott Menville, David Hayter, Kari Wahlgren, etc.

By the way... why doesn't the new TMNT movie use Cam Clark? That just pisses me off, he WAS Leonardo back in the day.

I'll agree with his comment about production. Okami got zero mainstream marketing, which was a shame. Hearing that it was Clover's fault for not letting Capcom market it is a shame. But what's the other side of the story? Capcom is upset that Clover wouldn't look to them to PRODUCE it, which is more than marketting... it's giving the game a pass/fail, as well as total veto power over its development. Seeing Capcom's current record, I could understand Clover developers being weary of handing over control.

Also, he's completely wrong about artists not having to market their work. As someone on another board wisely said, "In NYC, it's only the painters who are able to hype their stuff up that can get into the SoHo gallery." I know that we artists have high and mighty ideals about how art should be pure and free of financial constraints, but they're not. There's really nothing wrong with marketting your work, but similarly, I don't think there's anything wrong in trying to make a work artistic (which this guy seems to have a problem with). It's pretty clear that Clover felt that it was producing art... and I can't think of any arguement as to why they were incorrect in thinking so. Okami could have been a smash hit, had it been marketed correctly, virtually everyone who played it gave it extremely high marks (myself included).

But even this guy's examples are off. Picasso was fucking RICH by the end of his life, due to his ability to hype his work, while Van Ghogh was never able to make ends meet.

I take it you're not a hardcore gamer. It's funny that you should look it at this way, because I blame violence for been the #1 thing that began to alienate the hardcore crowd in the first place, since it appeals to the more primal, primative side of humanity that the bulk of mainstream america seems to be attracted to. You see it every day, 16 year olds mindlessly playing FPSs and commenting to their friends about how they can smash a guys face up against a wall and beat him to death. THAT'S your casual gamer, right there, and they make up a good majority of mainstream gamers here in the US. The bottom line is, real hardcore gamers don't care about the violence in-of-itself unless it serves some neccessary in the game, which I would argue is not reliavent in 95% of games.

So, if anything, taking violence out of games is bringing it back MORE to the hardcore crowd.

Example, I say "300" last night, I went because I was interested in the style in which the movie was done, and enjoyed it immensely. But you can be sure that the bulk of people who went to see it simply wanted to see hundreds of bad guys impaled on the end of spears, and bloody heads knocked off of carcasses. Their perception may be fine and all, but I believe that, as a casual viewing audience, most of them were missing the far more unique aspects of the film at the expense of watching the blood run. The same is true in games, the more "EXTREME VIOLENCE" you get, the more the game becomes a dumb teen-angst fest, at the expense of the hardcore gamer.

Thankfully, this is not true of the Japanese mainstream, which is much more pacifistic and detests needless bloodshed. So, in effect, the only people that Miyamoto are alienating are us blood-hungry westerners who have no depth of taste. This, unfortunately, could have resulted in a large hit to their sales... but so far, it seems to be working even better than they expected.

I both applaud his speech, but am also a bit warry of it. He's on the right track, but a few of his points concern me. For one, I don't think that there's anything wrong with the "stories" to video games, per say, but more the characters. Game characters are shallow and hollow, and no matter how good of a plot you have, if it doesn't have characters that are interesting and that the audience can relate to, you're not going to provide a good experience.

First of all, cut the "The world is black & white" crap. No person is truly good or truly evil. But even in games where its hard to tell which is which, the question is always about figuring who is truly evil and truly good, not about exploring the perspectives and subtleties of people in conflict. A good character you can sympathise and understand, whether or not they're a protagonist or antognist. But this is rare in games, there is almost always a truly evil side. Games need to reach their "Film Noir" era, where characters are all a shade of grey, and you can understand everyone's point of view by the end of the story.

Secondly, be VERY careful about the "get off of rails" routine. I applaud the post-modern "creator has no identify, audience is everything" mentality, but it's a fairly preachy and sometimes fatal mistake. I'll agree that interactivity is what gives video games, as a genre, their unique identity, but you do have to provide the audience with some direction. Drama is all about structure, flow, and timing, and these are things that only an overall creator can provide. It is the very reason we turn to story-telling mediums, rather than only living our day-to-day lives. I don't really care about my personal identity in a story, it's not about me, it's something that I'm supposed to learn from and be guided by.

It's becoming a problem in our society; more and more, people only wish to hear about and talk about themselves, instead of learning from the experiences and decisions made by others. Our entertainment becomes more self-centered, and we demand control over all decision making, and learn nothing from the experience. The more we try to control our experiences, the more rigid we become as individuals.

I don't know about everyone else, but to me, the strength of the interactive side of gaming isn't in its ability to allow me to control my environment, but as a more vivid way of experiencing the world that is given to me. Let me go where I want to go, to explore, for myself, the world in which I'm playing in, but continue to tell me YOUR story and show me the various personalities of which you've populated the world. Do not sacrifice the basic elements of story-telling simply because your audience is too selfish to listen.

I find this to be a stupid-as-hell comment, but really, I'm not surprised to see it. He's basically a PC developer in a time when Sony and Microsoft are becoming more and more like PC game machines (and thus taking over the PC game market), and Nintendo is moving farther and farther away from the philosophies surrounding PC gaming.

I'm not too bewildered about his artistic comment when it comes to the Wii, it's an opinion, and I could understand it from some perspectives. But what puzzles me is how he immediately turns around to site Sony and Microsoft as the bastions of artistic gaming. Huh? WTF? This is where he totally lost my respect as a person interested in game design philosophy and the industry.

What I hear, more and more, is people siting specific elements of games that are artistic: graphics, music, dialog. And that's great, I love games that present artistic elements... but does that make the GAME any more artistic? No, not in the sense of it being an artistic "game". Myst is a great example: Myst included, in itself, a series of CG stills that were, in and of themselves, truly artistic. But they would have been just as artistic had they been sitting on a wall in a gallery. That doesn't bring anything new or artistic into the field of gaming. Curby's Canvas Curse, on the other hand, is true genious, and I believe to be a true work of video game art. It presents a creative and unique way of interacting with a computerized environment. This is something that was only possible within the genre of video games, and is an example of artistic game developement in its most primal form.

The reason this is often overlooked is that there's nothing to compare it to. If a game soundtrack echos strains of Mahler, then it's gotta be fine art, right? If the graphics remind you of an impressionist painting, then it must be art. While this is important, it's also a very shallow way of looking at the artistic merrit of a creative genre, by comparing its likeness to other art forms. There's too much of that going on these days, and not enough thought on how games can be artistic in the ways that they (and only they) can be artistic. If we can't understand that, then what's the point? You'd probably be better off listening to a concert or going to a gallery.

This is where I think Kojima is wrong and even a bit dangerous, as his comments imply that games, in of themselves, are only artistic in that they contain artistic elements from other genres. Of course, the most truly artistic works are so because they marry the elements unique to its genre with elements from other genres, and do so in a fresh and creative way. Cinema has learned, and is still learning, how to do this, and I believe video games, as an interactive medium, will eventually do the same.

In finality, even if you do base your concept of artistic merrit on external elements alone, Sony and Microsoft do not offer any more of an artistic canvas than Nintendo. After all, complex, pretty games may or may not be any more artistic than ones with simple graphics. It's like saying a Japanese water color is inherently inferior to a 17th century example of european realism. I'd argue that the one that's more abstracted from reality could possibly have more creative thought in it than the one that is simply a technically perfected reproduction (I say 'could' because some forms of reproduction are done in very artistic ways).

Interesting that the game with the most artistic elements (non-game specific) of our day is probably Okami, which could have run on a GameCube without any problem... but instead ran on a system with far inferior graphical capabilities.

This guy has no room to speak as an art philosopher. He'd be laughed out of a high school class on the subject.

I find myself replaying RPGs from time to time, especially last year during the pre-Christmas draught (before Okami, FF12, Tales of the Abyss, Twilight Princess, etc.) But I notice something, I hardly ever finish a game that I'm replaying. I usually get about 3/4 the way through and think, "eh, that was fun, onto something new". The only epic games I've only completed multipul times are Chrono Trigger (twice, and not on +) and Metroid Prime (about 3 or 4 times, all within a period of about a year). But so many great games, while being even better the second time through (FFVIII, FFIX, and Skies of Arcadia, in particular), I find myself turning off just before the point of no return.

That would require that I know Japanese, which, unfortunetly, I do not. I took french during HS, and ignored foreign languages during college to concentrate on music…

Nope, it wasn't posted along with the list of 25 (+2 demos) launch titles. And by launch titles, they seem to mean games released within the first month of the system's release, which seems fair enough to me.

Zelda: Twilight Princess, in both GCN and Wii versions, however, is a launch title, along with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Red Steel, Wii Sports, and Mario Galaxy (this last one will not be released on day 1, however, but within the first couple weeks of the Wii's launch)

Games that will definitely NOT be launched with the Wii:
Smash Bros. Brawl (spring 2007, it seems)
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (title unknown)
Super Mario 128