/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5189746
They had to cover with good writings what they couldn't cover with the graphic / animations.

>>5189754
But what's the secret?

rpgs benefit from having no voice acting
soul reaver and mgs were great even though they had voice acting

>>5189746
There's a secret file they open and put different text into for each game. Once they do that the game displays different stuff. Technology is fucking amazing.

>>5189746
vidya writing is really just riffing off the anime writing of their time. The PS1 coincided with Neon Genesis Evangelion (super obvious when looking at Xenogears) which raised the bar by a mile.

>>5189746
BoF4 is a masterpiece. I have no idea how you got Xenogears jumbled up with it though. Most of the writing in most PS1 games was shitty.

Xenogear's script, written by Soraya Saga, was originally intended for Final Fantasy 7. But it was too dark and complicated.

According to interviews she writes character motivations and relationships to fulfill the plot.
She also wrote Sabin and Edgar for Final Fantasy VI. She basically just started with "Monk" and "Machines" and wrote with a desert landscape in mind. From there they became brother kings.

Kos-Mos was her husband's creation. They meant her to be a fragile soul in an indestructible body - the opposite of humans having resilient souls with fragile bodies. Soraya left during episode 2, their 6 part story was cut to 3 creating major changes.
Knowing that Soraya writes characters to fulfill a plot, it kinda informs you were the story was headed and how much of Kos-Mos' story wasn't told.

>>5189764

The secret was that the games didn't have to cater to broad appeal so the developers could focus on making a good game for their core audiences and anything over that was just gravy.

>>5189787
>BoF4 is a masterpiece

I love BoF4. Filler Island was probably my favorite part of the game. Im not kidding it was just such a nice and much needed break to relax and take in things so we're fresh and ready to take in the even more horrible things we're about to witness.

>>5189765
>rpgs benefit from having no voice acting
this

>>5189864
>when you can read faster than the characters talk

I think it goes beyond just no voice though. Like, limited animation can really be more of a benefit than you realize. Limited sprites or cut ins have to focus on conveying emotions in a very relatable almost universal way. When you can make full on movies a lot of the times character's... let's call them "mannerisms" can come off like they're all off their rocker insane. Maybe it's a translation barrier thing but trying to watch whatever to fuck Vanille from FF12 was doing was mind boggling whereas someone like, say, Yuffie comes off more endearing with her quick jabs or all the ways the characters reacted to Aerith's death. All very simple emotions being convey in a way where you didn't need a whole of flash bang to get what everyone was feeling. I get it probably all goes back to Japan being big on stage and theater but dial it back a bit for fuck's sake.

Xenogears has horrific writing though.

>>5189765
>>5189848
These.

>>5189879
There is something to be said for not being able to clearly see every aspect of a scene and our imaginations' ability to fill in the gaps.

>>5189765

I highly disagree. It's just that bad or so-so voice acting can make things so much worse. Good voice acting can enhance things a lot but sadly a lot of /vr/ stuff does not have that.

>>5190003
wrong. Voice acting appears to enhance things, but all it does is it removes further engagement from the player to read and process the information, by making the game do it for for him. It's also likely the character you listen to has a less likable voice than you'd imagine. For that not to happen the voice acting direction and actors themselves have to be really fucking good, which makes costs so high they detract from overall development.

It's just not practical and has too many downsides for games unless used smartly, which means sparingly. Morrowind would be a good example. In fact they could have added a few more lines here and there.

>>5189746
Plenty of drugs. The economy in Japan being as bad as it was in the 90s making everyone who was writing bitter as fuck also helped their creativeness too.

>>5190003
Voice acting means a hard development deadline past which the story is locked with zero further improvements.

>>5190003
>Good voice acting can enhance things a lot
Yes, but usually at a significant cost, including monetary costs to hire actors, restrictions on writers to write good speakable dialog, and the cost of players time to watch/listen every second of the recorded dialog. And even then, individual scenes can still go either way.
I'd estimate there's enough content in Xenogears to fill 2-3 seasons of a Game of Thrones style TV series.

also this: >>5189879
>Maybe it's a translation barrier thing but trying to watch whatever to fuck Vanille from FF12
I think Vanille is definitely a case of a Japanese-style character intended for Japanese audiences and the English version specifically tried to preserve that character.
But I think your point still stands.

>>5189998
I think this is especially true in the RPG genre, which was originally designed to do exactly that. The gameplay systems oriented around player character stats and tactical decisions are meant to stimulate your imagination to fill in the gaps (or in a tabletop setting someone might narrate the details on the fly).

>>5189967
>Xenogears has horrific writing though.
No, it doesn't. The writing in Xenogears is a mix of very good and very bad. It has high highs and low lows, both for individual segments and the big picture. It has a lot of great characters portrayed with care and subtlety (Fei, Bart, Citan, Elly, Ramsus, Krelian). But some characters aren't that great and their storylines are just dropped (Rico), others are cool but kind of ridiculous and convoluted (Grahf/Wiseman). It does a fantastic job of weaving Fei and Elly's storyline through multiple eras, but gets hung up with too many named concepts and complicated supernatural relationships. It does a great job slowly developing Fei as a protagonist, showing real growth and maturation over the course of the game. But the plot fucking drags at numerous points (Kislev, that stretch on the Thames).

>>5189746
I actually have a theory about this.

My idea is that everything from art direction, to innovative gameplay ideas, to plot and dialogue all seemed better back then, because devs had to work around a lot of limitations.

If your game can't have amazing graphics, amazing frame rate, 40 characters on screen at once, blah, blah, blah, then you take things not hardware intensive (like dialogue) and work that shit to cover up the technical limitations. Basically showing off how awesome you are with non-technical stuff.

By contrast, modern games look amazing and anything you can think of can be done. So devs don't spend so much time focusing on anything but graphics and such.
And I don't think it's a contious thing either. I really think it was gradual, and as it got easier and technical limitations got less restrictive, devs just went with the flow.

Like, imagine developing a game for PS1, having a vision, realising "oh, we can't do this, or that" and having to rework a lot of shit. In contrast, imagine deving for ps4, where your original idea just gets done and works. So no need to rework jack shit, and no need to make your game appealing in non technical ways.

Or at least, that's my theory.

>>5190003
Yes thats true, but how much do you need?
And if one is to be honest: Are we talking full VA, VA for important set pieces, dialogue you can mash trough ala KOTOR/Witcher?
And how do it compare with things like voices turned into Soundfonts, so it sounds like Pingu or Zelda: With its gibberish for dialogue, matching with the scrolling text?

I find your statement to be inhonest, or not self reflected. And if its not reflected, it will never stand a argument or examination.
I find the VA vs not to be a large dishonest debate where people can't even examine the options, and just try to go like Witcher 3 vs Final Fantasy 1 to even argue about. Instead of Fallout 2 vs Zelda64, where both feature "Voice lines" to various degrees.
And as a non English speaker, i can only appreciate quality. I don't masturbate to peoples names, or them doing "the role i did in that movie, now everyone wants me to do that". There exists things like Legacy of Kain which is CARRIED on the quality of Voice Acting.

>>5189746
>tfw sh1 had a great script in japanese but the translation doesn't hold a candle
I wish jeremy blaustein was around for sh1, his sh2 and 3 translations are top tier

>>5189746
>What makes Ps1 game scripts different?
Your nostalgia.

>>5190152

>butthurt n64 manchild

>>5189746
Good Writing

>>5190156
What does the N64 have to do with anything?
It doesn't even have games.

>>5190164
anon made a reasonable assumption that a stupid comment like that came from a nintendrone.

>>5189851
I'm right there with you. It's like the nurse scene in Romeo and Juliette where the lightness of it gives that breather so the tragedy then hits even harder.

>>5190134
Not him but I agree with him. When it's good voice acting really added to a game. MGS is probably the best retro example. But when it's bad, like in Grandia for example and there's no way to turn it off then it can really ruin a game.

I like the Witcher 3 approach when it's done well (as in that game) but if the quality of it is less than excellent I would much rather have no voice at all.

>>5190120
>because devs had to work around a lot of limitations.
What complete nonsense. On the NES and SNES devs were working around limitations. The PS1 gave us MGS and Vagrant Story, showing us there are no limits to creative cinematic story telling in 3D.

>>5190218
fewer to be sure
but still, those games had to fit on CD-ROMs. It became much more realistic in 6th gen with DVDs.

>>5189879
Don't even TALK to me if your game doesn't have an instant text speed option.

>good """writing"""
*Pause for effect*
*music swells for emotional impact*
*cut to black*
"Disheartened, Anon closed the browser tab. He had come no closer to understanding NPC characterization. Why on Earth would he take writing advice from people who couldn't read."

>>5189746
You're imagining things. You were just younger back then so they seemed better written and deeper than they actually were.

Also, you're probably comparing the top PS1 games to bad/average modern games.

>>5190218
>missing the point this hard

Ever think those games turned out so great is b3ecause they had to work around mad limitations?

How many PS1 games look as good as Vagrant Story? It honestly doesn't push the hardware all that hard, as it's a 40 hour long game that takes up less than 100 mb of space. Lack of cgi is one cause, sure, but the polygonal models aren't that complex. The textures are blurry shit compared to today and the frame rate is 30fps or less.

The gameplay is half real time half turn based, and they clearly used sound design, art direction and creative problem solving to work around all the limitations ofnthe hardware.

Mgs isneven worse. It's 2 hours of gameplay, a ton of super small areas, up close the graphics look pixilated even for PS1 standards and etc. If they could just do exactly what they wanted, they'd both have looked like PS3 games, had no load times and lprobably been drastically different games all around.

If you disagree, that's fine, but you're still wrong.

>>5190394
I picked this up from an RPG Maker community. Good character dialogue is revealing their life: activities, motivations, and relationships.

At the beginning to Xenogears the villagers are preparing for a wedding. The groom is excited and looking toward the future. The bride is a little hesitant of the change, looking toward the past. The bride's brother doesn't want the groom as a brother-in-law and wishes you would marry his sister instead, focusing on the present. Soraya says explains a theme of questions, "Where did we come from? Who are we now? Where will we go from here?"

In FF8 the garden NPCs are students and faculty. Although people live at the garden year round, the beginning of the game it's basically the end of a semester with exams and graduation - which is what everyone talks about. And then after becoming a SeeD, everyone is looking forward to next year and what they can change the next go-around to be different.
They maintain an awareness of events throughout the game too. So while they're standing in the same place, it's suggestive that they are doing things while you're away.

It's a different treatment of modern rpgs where NPCs have no life and stand around to explain the kingdom's history or treasure that contextualizes the plot points but doesn't characterize the NPCs at all.

>>5189746
It was an experimental era, JRPGs got too big after that

>>5190218
So you disagree with my point, then bring ip cinematic story telling, which was an invention of the PS1 era, basically provong my point?

If PS1 could do anything any dev wanted easily, there would be a lot fewer story driven games with prerendered backgrounds, you dolt. Because work arounds like that are needed for weaker hardware to make your product appealing.
Also why techniques like prerendered anything and cenematic gameplay aren't overly used now. Because any modern hardware can just do whatever you want, and story driven games are usually AAA horseshit designed to be beaten once and forgotten about (until the dlc comes out). But that's another topic entirely.

>>5190487
Also, I'd like to add that if VS came out today, it would just be a straight ARPG, and probably have no chain system or risk.

And yes, I'm implying those things are a product of hardware limitations forcing the team to think outside the box to provide a halfway decent game.

>>5190461
you can argue better or worse but anon did specify:
>What makes Ps1 game scripts different?
>games like Xenogears and BoF4 have a way of bringing NPCs to life with just a little bit of dialogue. What's the secret?

>Also, you're probably comparing the top PS1 games to bad/average modern games.
What about a game like Xenoblade Chronicles 2? Setting aside the waifu/shonen shit for a moment.
The writing is professional and probably a much higher standard than Xenogears overall. Many scenes are crafted exceptionally well from a dramatic standpoint. But it's also anime as fuck, way more than Xenogears. Dialog is often drawn out, characters are constantly striking stock anime poses (such as Malos and Jin). Scenes like the first one at the Central Exchange feel kind of boring, like did this really need to be a voiced cutscene? I think that's the kind of thing OP is talking about. In PS1 era Melolo would have been made distinctive with just a few lines of text, not a whole 60 second cutscene.

>>5189746
Well in Xenogears the script is completely unfinished and the second half is a hilarious mess. That's what makes it different.
>>5190095
>No, it doesn't.
Yes it does. There's the seeds of a good script in there but what we got is a fucking disaster. It needs at least 12 months more developement and several re-writes.

>>5190592
If you have nothing specific to criticize fuck off, you aren't impressing anyone.

Look, guys, this is definitely a situation where occam's razor applies. I respect how passionate people can get with theories like this >>5190120 but at the end of the day, it's very simple: talented developers do good work. That's it. Good writers write good scripts. That's it. There's no bygone magic that was lost in the PS1 era. There's no deep, profound reason why Xenogears and other PS1 JRPGs have comparatively good scripts - it's just because the people who made the games were good at what they do. What makes PS1 game scripts different? Nothing. They aren't different. It's just bias and retro game fetishism that would make you think that way. Good people did good work then and now.

(Of course, NES games and the like were severely limited by cartridge space and couldn't include large scripts because of this, but that's another story entirely).

>>5190617
so you're saying that given equally talented developers and writers, there are literally no differences at all between a script for a game intended to be entirely text and a script meant for voiced actors? Nothing we could possibly talk about?

>>5190487
>goes on about graphics in a script thread

>>5189764
>>5189746
A decade of game making where they couldn't make the stories they wanted due to limitations. They had material saved up. It's that simple.

>>5190594
he pops up in every XG thread, the game must have raped and murdered his mother or something; hide the posts and move on

>>5190668

They're more connected than you'd think. The way you can tell and present a story greatly effects how it needs to be written.

>>5189879
Bravely Default has a neat trick to compensate for this, where the characters speak as concisely as possible in their first line of text, and go into more detail and by the time you finish reading the text, they usually finish that first sentence.
Also helps if you don't want to skip a scene, but you've already seen it, you just hit next after every first sentence.

>>5190902

How is that better? That's exactly the problem Im talking about. It doesn't matter how concise the sentence is. It's a drag waiting for them to catch up.

>>5190502
This. It wasn't about compensating for limited technology, it was the opposite. Making RPGs of this quality was new and exciting, people had tons of ideas. from playing older RPGs, or DnD sessions.


...not to mention Japan blatantly copied from each other all the time, and no one cared.

>>5190916

Man I miss when anime developers understood that the anime needs to be able to exist on it's own even if it meant taken some liberties. Yeah it will piss off the LN/Manga fags but you're gonna get more people into your series by introducing it to them in a way they can enjoy rather than wasting however much money and time just to make some crappy 12 episode commercial for a book Im not going to read.

>>5190912
A character says:
"Wait! Something's lurks nearby."

By the time he's done saying 'wait' you'll already have read the rest (and the period leave a slight pause in between) so you can skip to the next line without feeling like you've missed anything and still getting the emotion of the voice acting.

>voice acting is good "writing"
>animation direction is good "writing"
>camera techniques is good "writing"
>Things that have nothing to do with written text is good "writing"

>>5190943

Or I could just read it all and not be a line skipping faggot because I don't have ADD.

>>5189746
It's because the closer games get to cinematics, the closer they get to (((Hollywood))). I'll get banned for saying any more, so I'll leave it at that.

>>5191078
That's some great reading comprehension there.

>>5191090

Except, and this is the key issue, I read faster than they talk. Even if they skip to their next line it doesn't change that Im still faster.

>>5191106
Why are you pressing the Enter key twice after quoting someone?

>>5191134
Le Reddit boogeyman oh noes

>>5191137
I said nothing about reddit. Why are you pressing Enter twice after quoting someone?

>>5191154
Le Reddit boogeyman ohh noes

>>5191158
>says nothing about reddit
>you make it about reddit
Kill yourself. Put a fucking shotgun down your soiboi throat.

>>5191161

Le seething oldfag is le buggmad

>>5191106
Maybe if you read slower, you would have realized the following:
That's what I meant when I said skipping to the next line! I meant that you skip to it before the voice clip finishes, not skipping before you finish reading it.

>>5190394
Play Legend of Mana fagot

>>5191003
>choreography is "writing"
>Silent FMVs is "writing"

Has fuck all to do with NPC dialogue. How do you manage to take it this far out of context when OP put it into context for you? It sheds some doubt on your ability to comprehend a 40hr+ rpg when your idea of staying on topic is reinterpreting what the OP wrote into something wildly different as an excuse to speak to your own points.

>>5191249
Put a fucking bullet in your brain.

>>5189845
>Xenogear's script, written by Soraya Saga, was originally intended for Final Fantasy 7. But it was too dark and complicated.

The Eldridge was to be a colony drop that killed 400 million people. Concept was cool, Square brass wasn't.

>>5190617
Agree with most of this but there are still some modern issues. I think the main thing is any game with a large budget these days gets way more oversight than they used to. For example >>5190630 applies because devs probably don’t have the option to forego VAs in a big RPG even if they want to. Big RPGs aren’t allowed to be as experimental as they once were because almost no game is. A big RPG these days is either going to be anime as FUCK instead of just having anime influence, or it’s not turnbased.

>>5190617

This surely reeks of a game developer wannabe trying to convince people that scripts can still be as intense and truthful as ever. As if. There are plenty of external factors that ensure that sort of script can't be written anymore.

>>5191505
>There are plenty of external factors that ensure that sort of script can't be written anymore.
Such as?

>>5191496

Even back on the PS2 people where bitching if the games didn't have voice acting.

>>5191512
Oh, I don't know, how about the sociopolitical state of the world? What about high as fuck development costs that require any entertainment product to do virtue signalling and hurt both ludo and narrative aspects in order to make its money back? AAA games will never gamble like that anymore. You won't get another Xenogears, another MGS2. Those were experimental times in more ways than one. Japan's game industry took a big hit. They somewhat recovered nowadays, but still nowhere as big as the 90s.
You could argue that such a script could be in a indie game, but that sort of smaller game seems to be a western practice, and indie games have nothing but liberal propaganda as far as story goes.

>>5189746
Because there was a lot of good anime for video games to rip off from. People still don't seem to realize that video game directors and writers are seen as being 3rd rate, below the ones in the anime industry. That is why those in the video game industry are always so desperate to break out into anime or live action, like Kojima tried (and failed). Successfully doing so is a way of legitimizing one's self as being truly talented. Modern anime is ass though so modern games will be equally ass.

>>5191738

Remember when Square was riding off all that FF7 money and got really crazy and made a bunch of insane shit like fighters, racing games and even a schmup for no reason other than they could? I miss that time. When games where a big profit but the required returns weren't so retarded that a game hitting a million units was considered a big deal.

>>5191505
>>5191738
I don't think this is accurate. "AAA" back then was about the same scope as many indies are now. The problem isn't that you can't make good stuff, it's that it'll just get drowned out by the sheer volume of other stuff around it.

>>5189787
BoF4 sucks dude lol, stupid minigames, stupid story with stupid moments like "ershin's death", and stupid minigames.

Xenogears sucks too

>>5191813

Makes sense that a faggot with wrong opinions would use a picture of MGS4.

>>5191003
Do you realize that writers write more than dialog?

>>5192160
Do you realize this isn't a general topic?
Do you realize op specified dialogue?
Do you realize how off topic and unsociable it is to recontexualize someone else's point so you can rant and rave about hardware limitations and anything and everything to do with the verb "writing".

>>5190013
>Voice acting appears to enhance things, but all it does is it removes further engagement from the player to read and process the information, by making the game do it for for him. It's also likely the character you listen to has a less likable voice than you'd imagine.
This, and it's also the reason books are almost always better than the Hollywood films based on them. When reading you fill in the gaps with your imagination. When playing a game on dated hardware like the PS1, there's enough detail that you can see what's going on but with no or limited voice acting and rudimentary polygons, some things are still left to imagine. Compare FF7 to Advent Children. The same characters and setting, but almost everyone would agree that FF7 had better writing and character exchanges. Why? Because the way you imagine Cloud, Barret and Tifa interacting during dialog and a limited amount of lego brick hand gestures is always going to be more interesting to you personally than the way some Japanese director, mocap actor and voice actor have collectively decided this person acts like.

>>5192320
That's nice. I think movies go better with popcorn but I'm not going to judge the writing based on the theater's concession stand. That's insane.

>>5189746
It's a product of the 90's. Everything back then had a certain higher quality to it and I believe it had to do with an excitement for the future world wide, not being tethered to 'smart' devices. People were more balanced and bringing to their work the experiences they had growing up in the 70's and 80's.

Nowadays, what are the experiences this newer work force has had? The product given to them in the 90's and 00's, but less human experiences, leading to more watered-down writing and ideas. Creativity is on a major decline because we're spoon fed.

>>5192305
If you can't stop sucking cocks there are more appropriate boards for you.

>>5192341
so talk about the writing retard

Keeping the script more concise while still retaining its quality is what made those games stick out so much. Japan has always been really good at expressing a lot of character through clever visuals and really concise, condensed scripts, that's anime and manga in a nutshell. That's why Chrono Trigger practically exudes character from every pixel. Or, hell, look at fighting game characters.
Now, the reason why you don't see as much quality anymore is another story entirely.

Silent Hill was on the PSX PlayStation 1.

>>5191976
What's a good jrpg, anon? Legit interested as I was pretty underwhelmed by xenogears and bof4. Lunar and suikoden were good, I thought.

>>5189764
I think that people in the past read more, and that reading makes you a much better writer than does watching film or playing games.

>>5191417
>colony drop kills 400 million

that's all?

>>5192357
>spoon fed
I didn't plan on posting in this stupid thread but something about your word choice rubs me the wrong way. It implies that modern devs grew up in an environment where too little was demanded of them, and that's why they didn't become strong men who create good times. And that's bullshit. In fact, it's backwards. Modern society demands MORE of children, at a younger age. It puts them in an office-like environment where everything they do is measured and they have deadlines to meet. They adapt to this, and survive it, but they come out believing that deadlines are the only things that matter.
Old devs played. They went outside. The creator of Pokemon played with bugs. The Zelda devs went for walks in the woods. They had time to themselves where they could destress and let their minds wander. They had unstructured social interaction. They thought about shit that didn't matter and experienced life at their own pace. That shit prepares people to be better writers whether or not they're planning to make a career out of it. Younger devs skipped all that to get through increasingly shitty school systems that only prepare them to have anxiety. Couple that with equally soulless managers, sacrificing quality wherever they can for the sake of cutting costs, and everything is fucked.

>>5192513

>seething game dev

>>5192513
it's rare to see such violent agreement on this board.

>>5192513
You have a good point. Maybe our system was just in a sweet spot during that era.You have a good point that our school systems are becoming increasingly demanding, but I do think people are becoming increasingly lazier.

>>5192513

>it's the systems fault
>its the education fault
>its the economy's fault
>anything but me

Good old millennials

5th gen fags have no awareness. All the cinematic stuff started in that time, and the writting doesn't really differ as much.

Less is more.

The more detailed the graphics become, the more obvious bad animation becomes.

>>5192559
Nobody likes to admit faults you dumbnumb.

This reads less as a critic of young fags and more as an attempt to elevate old geezers because you realize when you're old your life is at a dead end so you make up some bullshit that youngs "have no real experiences" or whatever.

Unless you are Japanese or a fluent reader of Japanese, you literally do not know how good or bad the writing in any JRPG is. There's no point having this discussion when the very foundatioon of your argument is completely flawed.

>>5192623
うるさい

>>5189746
Who is this handsome shota and why is he so dreamy?

>>5192628
*五月蝿い
If you want to show off at least do it properly

>>5192632
腹立つが...

>>5192632
nigger what, no one uses kanji for that shit. you have no practice reading nor writing nor speaking japanese. kindly remove yourself from the premises.

>>5189746
Who is this cute shota and why do I want to kiss his forehead?

>>5192648
The point is that you're a faggot for showing off your basic as fuck elemental grade japanese BOKU NO NIHONGO HA TOTEMO JOUZU DESS

>>5192320
>Compare FF7 to Advent Children
>The same characters and setting

Yeah, just like any Disney live action remake. Totally the same.

>>5192559
Anon... It's you. You, personally. You are the one individual at fault for every problem with the game industry today. It's all on your shoulders. What are you going to do about it?

Seriously, now, in what reality can a widespread, systemic problem be blamed on each individual? Do you think human nature is somehow different for other people than for you?

>>5192473
See haikus for short consist yet conveys meaning well.

>>5192665
It is a direct sequel with the same characters, just because you don't like it doesn't make it any less canon.

>>5192665
It is the same though. The only thing that's changed is voice acting and mocap. If you took FF7AC and rendered it in FF7 in-game with text bubbles accompanied by 1997 squats and arm waves you'd probably like it a lot more. Not because it would be higher quality, but because your memory of the characters as they were would not be sullied by VA.

>>5192559
>>5192596
It means the reverse is true. That if it's good, then credit goes to those thing too.

But allow me to demystify this, because the writers didn't get replaced with a new generation. They're still working.
There's 2 explanations for why a writer's work would suddenly be trash. 1) They had a stroke. 2) They were never good, and their career was riding on the editor/ghostwriters talents that realize the script beyond an outline.

Everything went to shit in 07-08 because of a writer's guild of america went on strike. These were the editors and advisors who "punch up" punchlines and reword drafts to be more effective. This included translators and localization teams. Tokyopop had to restructure their company at this time too. It wasn't just the economy that contributed to the suck factor, they lost all their hired talent in the process. Japan experienced a similar crisis a few years earlier with many writers walking away halfway through development. It wasn't as noticeable because overseas would tiddy it up for their release. 2006 was the overlapping year when nobody was around to polish their turds.

>>5192724
AC being an actual video game with interactivity would do far more to its service than the visual and aural delivery you put so much ridiculous emphasis on. I believe what you say has a role to an extent, but AC's problems were largely from being a movie that cannot be interacted with whatsoever.

Text bubbles and vague, cute emotes invites the imagination in a way, but being able to engage with the world through combat and exploration accomplishes the same far more significantly, and the lack of that is what bugged people about FF7AC more than anything else.

>>5192786
>an actual video game with interactivity
>implying interactivity makes it a game.
GTFO and take you visual novels with you.

>>5192724
>If you took FF7AC and rendered it in FF7 in-game

If I did that the two games' art directions would clash like a bitch, for starters. But you have a point about the text bubbles and arm waving, plus the slow pans and general scenography. All paired by the cutesy Shibuya styled overworld models that helped the game keep a lighthearted storybook feel, while still facing rocky themes. I cannot imagine FF7 in any other way, and I love FF8 to death, so I'm not averse to more grounded presentations (even though FF8 still had a lot of that anime charm that went away after 10).

>>5192320
>This, and it's also the reason books are almost always better than the Hollywood films based on them.
Movies are a bad comparison to novels because they have very different constraints. Movies must compress a narrative into a single 90-120 minute event (up to 180 in extreme cases). They have no room for extraneous characters and very limited room for any kind of digression or secondary plotlines.

So anyone that has read a novel is likely to find some reason to be disappointed by a movie when compared side-by-side.

It's not an issue of old vs new. It's an issue of size and creative control.

Older Final Fantasies, RPGs etc are going to reflect more on the development team because they were created by smaller, tighter-knit groups of people. Modern games in that sense take on two forms where you either have the auteur heavily in control of the story or a game that's essentially developed by ruthless business sense and market research. Older games tend to have a lot more rough edges which adds to the charm because you can see the concessions the development team or writers had to do with the limited technology.

That's why I like playing RPGMaker games or indie games like CrossCode. Some modern RPGs can be close to what I'm looking for (Like Lost Odyssey) but for the most part the hyper-polish and design by committee approach AAA games take is something that I just don't care about.

I've read a bunch of good arguments in this thread. Good discussion.

Personally, I think the 90s in general were just a sweet spot for video game storytelling. Writers finally had some advanced tools and methods to tell their stories, but they were still limited enough that a) they had to get creative, and b) people still had to rely on their imagination to fill in the gaps.

>>5192908
Yeah. It's important to remember that in the context of history, with the NES and SNES to an extent, developers and translators were often limited by memory constraints and in some cases, even text box size or paragraph size. It's easier to convey an idea or a statement in a couple characters in Japanese due to kanji. It's harder when you have one line of English to convey what's effectively a paragraph of discussion in Japanese. That's why we had a lot of goofy writing back then. Not even going to go into the ridiculous deadlines and tiny one-person teams many games had for translation as well.

Once more fully developed systems like the Saturn, PSX, and Dreamcast came along it became a lot easier to write whatever the hell you wanted to without worrying about time, space or budget. This is also when console gaming really took off in the west and developers were more willing to pay for 2-3 good translators instead of some random bilingual guy with no knowledge of games willing to do it for bottom dollar in 14 days.

>>5192930
People bitch about Woolsey translations a lot around here but I think sometimes they are unappreciative for the amount of effort that went into those games. I mean that was the same era as Breath of Fire 1's translation, Tecmo Secret of the Stars and lots of other games with god awful script truncation due to editing ROM and actually fitting what you want into the game being so difficult at the time. If Square had wanted the games out quicker or spent a little less money on translation the FF and CT we got could have been translated a LOT rougher. Even if you look at FF2 US, the script is heavily trimmed and many items have severely butchered or clipped names because they couldn't fucking fit anything in.

>>5192908
Well, there's also the fact that in the 90s, very few games outside of RPGs had much of a story in the first place. Sure, games like Ninja Gaiden and Mega Man had a narrative, but it was usually little more than a way to provide some structure and context for the gameplay.

>>5192908
Thanks for hijacking my thread so you could have an argument that had absolutely nothing to do with NPC dialogue.
If you created your own topic you wouldn't look like a sperg.

>>5190058
>le what were they smoking
cringe

>>5189746
Who is this qt pie and why is he so shota?

>>5189746
Theyre earnest. Compare SH1 to any of the dishonest tripe that comes out today.

>>5191813
AAA back then was closer to modern single A budget titles like those from Pirahna Bytes and Spiders/Cyanide than to current indies.

>>5192160
Writers dont do the jobs of directors or DPs

>>5192725
Most of the old writers have stopped working.

>>5192506

>that's all?

Basically. Ever notice some of the elements of Xenogears looking as if they were assets from what could have been other projects? To a degree, they were. Xenogears is the end result of a game that started as a potential FF VII, then a possible contender for Chrono Trigger 2, then the original idea between Takahashi and his wife, Project Noah, to the final result of Xenogears. Takahashi and his wife wanted to reinvent the whole JRPG experience with a science fiction series that had as broad a vision as say, Dune or the Lensmen series.

>>5192652

The father of ever single humanoid being of the world that Xenogears takes place.

>>5193095

>>5193694
Right? Xenogears had an inconsistent music font with some tracks sounding like they they belong to Final Fantasy Tactics or Chrono Cross.
Sound Effects were recycled from FFT. Pretty sure the Menu was reskinned for Chrono Cross. They had the same text window functionality in that you could talk to NPCs and still move around. In Xenogears, the save menu will load the icons from other game data. In Chrono Cross, other save data will be represented with the Xenogears icon (which still psyches me out)

As mentioned >>5189845 Soraya wrote Sabin and Edgar for FFVI.
It's no coincidence that Xenogears would also have ANOTHER blonde hair desert prince with ANOTHER moving fortress that submerges in sand and takes a secret underground path to cross between landmasses.

>>5193889

The basic treatment for 'Gears that would have been VII started with a solider who has amnesia or a forced repression of memory. This is the character who becomes Fei. Ever notice the odd looking symbols on Weltall-Id? Well, thats because it was supposed to be Omega Weapon. The base story was that once upon a time, humanity and magic creatures lived togeather, humans could not use magic and often lived in fear of or oppressed to those that could. The Moogles (those who became Chu-chu's race) knew of technology and gave humanity its secrets beyond building just airships. This took off with mankind and humanity hyper industrialized. With the works of mankind now causing issue with the natural world, a conflict was brewing. In short, Omega Weapon is piloted by the character that becomes Fei and accidents in a major conflict with what sounds like a Aeon, the space colony that is being constructed as humanities crowning achievement is crashed into the mega city killing all those people. Scarce, basic, broken, Sora was going through much at the time and to a degree its a wonder that Xenogears was even made.

>>5193694
sorry, I have no idea about anything you're talking about and have never played any of these games, I was just making a drive-by Tomino joke, becuase 400 million is a pretty small death toll for his shit.

>>5193936

Np anon, its all bullshit anyway because shit game is shit.

>>5192850
> (up to 180 in extreme cases)
more like 430+ minutes in extreme cases and there's probably longer movies than satantango

>>5193864
OP is a faggot

>>5193941
>let me show off my obscure mopie industry knowledge

>>5193946
a three hour movie isn't an extreme outlier by any capacity

low resolution and fidelity games cause your brain to compensate more and subsequently be more immersed than modern graphics allow.
stories weren't necessarily better but you were more open to the experience due to that.

t. retard speaking right out of his ass

>>5193947
yeah but those 430 minute movies are, and they're entirely irrelevant.

>>5193949
also the lack of voice acting furthers this situation. you get to fill in the blanks for everything and find it more enjoyable.

its why you recoil when you go back to play a "remaster" . its not just nostalgia burning but the fact that that they desecrated your experience by adding stupid shit.

>>5193953
they are not in the context of looking at extreme cases. that's what extreme means

>>5193953

How is not relevant? You said IN SOME EXTREME CASES. Well guess what that's the extreme case.

Nobody cares about your shitty european 20 hour movies.

If I had to guess, probably because it was a transitional period between games where characters were characterized entirely by text and games where they were characterized by voice acting and their gestures.

>>5193947
>a three hour movie isn't an extreme outlier by any capacity
It's not an outlier but it's at the extreme end of what typical theater audiences are expected to tolerate. The Godfather is considered a long movie and it clocks in at just under 3 hours. The LOTR movies are about 11.4 combined, but only the extended version, the theatrical releases were much shorter.

The point is that the movie format will almost always cut and condense content from a longer format such as a novel (or JRPG). Xenogears has 6 major villains, for example, even in a 3 hour movie version would probably cut or merge some of those villains together.

>>5194330
3 hours is still not that extreme.

In Xenogears, NPCs have a history with the characters. Their dialogue will change depending on who is in your party.
>They talk to the characters; not to the player.

this fucking piece of shit game Xenogears just erased my save file 10 hours in.

>>5194702
It depends on what you mean by extreme. Extreme doesn't have to mean rare. 180 minutes (give or take a few) is at the extreme length of a movie that you can typically see in a theater.

On the scope of every movie made from 1930 to present? Ok maybe the extreme is more like 220 minutes with movies like The Ten Commandments. But if you scan imdb you'll see that the vast majority of projects over 200 minutes are not conventional movies. They are TV series or miniseries (a format much closer to JRPG-style storytelling). The rest are outliers and really just not part of the discussion. There's no way anon who originally made a movie comparison was thinking of fucking 7-hour experimental movies.

>>5189764

Like some mentioned earlier, the game devs of the past were the first generation. Unlike todays makers, who derive their works from earlier games, the first generation had work from scratch. That means that the talent you got into your department were more likely to have a background in more classic literally arts.

Basically, the script writers were better at writing because they probably read more books and had more solid writing fundamentals.

Also, smaller company but also lower budget costs (but not necessarily budget restraints). Also smaller dev teams. It was a more flexible work environment for the script writers.

>>5193946
>satantango
>obscure

>>5194929
It's obscure to anyone who doesn't have a hipster beard and showers regularly.

>>5189746
Your nostalgia

>>5196578
Your nostalgia

>>5194886

It's trying to save you from the prison scenario.

>>5193118
>I dont like what you said so its cringey

That's pretty cringey in itself

>>5192497
My answer: Don't waste your time playing Jrpgs.

>>5196989

Give Arcanum a shot.

>>5196635
Thats not how it works, ESL

>>5189754
I'd add that they maybe found a new freedom with the increased resources, but still had to keep in mind the limitations of the platform. They found themselves in between utilitarian counting of every byte of data and modern logorrhea unhindered by a storage ceiling. Dialogue was usually short and to the point and kept the game moving at a pace, but important moments found themselves fleshed out by writers with the freedom to expand and flex their creativity in new ways.

>>5189746

Specialization. The same thing that made graphics better. The programmers used to do everything in games from the art to the story etc. The workload of game development is too broad and heavy to pull off each part of it competently, consistently especially for people doing the programming too. Ergo the development of sub-roles for artists and story writers was necessary to bring game development to the state it was during the ps1 era. What makes it so bad these days is the development of things like agile development and gantt charts and dlcs which makes artistic content development and programming in AAA studios as systematized as any other 3rd world factory product.

>>5189746
No voice acting and instead relying on soundtrack to carry the emotional impact of dialogues, music sets the tone for everything.
Compared to now where you have full voice acting, often shit, and generic as fuck music which is there solely so that it doesn't feel empty or lacking.

>>5189746
>have a way of bringing NPCs to life

The dialogue doesn't really, no. It's probably more that the characters are being reinforced visually through the cartoony style. Cartoons are good at stuff like that. It's a lot harder to make a 3realistic5u modern 3D model that visually pushes character traits and emotions the same way a simple anime character portrait and cartoonish deformed sprite/model can.