Evolving this medium - Final Fantasy 6 improvement?

[DaMullet]

So I watched the Extra Credits video on Narrative Mechanics.

And it got me thinking about how we can do this and create that kind of story telling in other genres. The one that really strikes me as a problem is final fantasy 6. Great game, but comparing it to missle command, seems more like an interactive book then anything else.

I'm just trying to think of places and events in the game that could have used less text and more gameplay to show the same plot, maybe even better.

What are your thoughts? How would you improve the Narrative Mechanics of Final Fantasy 6?

 

[CleverNickname]

why did you pick FF6 specifically? Every story-heavy game tells its story through text, in later ones you just didn't have to read it anymore because it was voice-acted.

And FF6 was still cutscene-heavy, as in visually. And sometimes you played a Flashback (Maduin for example). The environment-tells-the-story thing also theoretically tells the story in the half-destroyed towns, if the NPCs wouldn't go "Oh noes, my house was destroyed" all the time

Actually, I'm not sure this would work in any RPG. Or most games, really. Missile Command has a background narrative and a world. The most common games, and especially RPGs, have stories. Stories that start, have a middle and end. One you can gleam and deduce, the other needs to be told. Half-Life 2, for example, has both. The state of the world and the past 10 years are told through your surroundings (idle chatter you overhear included); the story of the game itself is told like everywhere else. Bioshock does that sometimes, too, to a lesser extent.

Final Fantasy is Little Red Riding Hood; Missile Command is your mom telling you not to talk to strangers. Or whatever LRRH was about...

 

[Cheesepower5]

Boy - you callin' FF6 a problem? You best not be callin' FF6 a problem... *cocks shotgun*

The thing is, telling a story through environments and actions can only go so far. And FFVI was a SNES game, so there's really not much to work with on that. Besides, in those days the way the characters had ACTUAL FACIAL EXPRESSIONS was pretty unique and said a lot about the plot and characters the game otherwise couldn't have. And the small details of the scenery and music in the final battle tells more about Kefka than the whole rest of the game.

 

[CleverNickname]

Yeah, even though the whole final boss encounter starts with him monologuing, the actual ascending fight probably told just as much. I played it for the first time this year, even though I had a SNES (Secret of Mana is my favourite game ever) and let me tell you: I have never seen anything like it

 

[Gralian]

The problem i have with the Narrative Mechanics episode is that "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

I feel that they're really grasping at straws when they talk about the 'moral choice' over 'who lives or dies' and the consequences of nuclear war affecting the player. It's been a while since i saw it, but from what i can remember that's roughly what it was about. I get the idea but it just feels like they're trying a bit too hard to create an argument by analogy for narrative mechanics.

Games that are designed to be 40 hour long epics should just be left as so. It's like saying we have our 3 and a half hour long Lord of the Ring films, but we also have our 2 hour long action flicks. Both films are good, but one is intended to be a real "sit down and soak it in" story while the other one is designed to be more forward-driven.

I don't think FFVI could have seen any improvement with fiddling with the style of narration and delivery with the story, but i think EC's points could be applied to more action oriented titles that could use gameplay mechanics to drive narrative, like perhaps a first person shooter with a gimmick, or a tactical game that requires more than just spamming units to the enemy until you win.

 

[DaMullet]

Seems my original example wasn't good... at all....

BUT; it did point out some things that did work that I didn't actually notice that did tell a story without words.

The music and scenery.

Heading into the World of Ruin with Celes all alone on a raft and coming across towns that you had once visited that now lay in ruins told more story then words ever could.

Tracking down Terra and seeing the house that she torched...

The ascending battle up to kefka

Kefka's laugh... still haunts me

Every character having their own music score.

The Veld's (not spelling that right) music that didn't go away when you got into a battle.

Hmmm....... I guess the question would be, what made FF6's story so awesome that didn't involve telling it through words?

 

[Erana]

Seems my original example wasn't good... at all....

BUT; it did point out some things that did work that I didn't actually notice that did tell a story without words.

The music and scenery.

Heading into the World of Ruin with Celes all alone on a raft and coming across towns that you had once visited that now lay in ruins told more story then words ever could.

Tracking down Terra and seeing the house that she torched...

The ascending battle up to kefka

Kefka's laugh... still haunts me

Every character having their own music score.

The Veld's (not spelling that right) music that didn't go away when you got into a battle.

Hmmm....... I guess the question would be, what made FF6's story so awesome that didn't involve telling it through words?

The actions were powerful. The game embraced "Show, don't tell." You're given what makes the character's tick, why you should care, then are simply shown what happens and are left to feel out your own reaction.
Imagine how much more powerful Resident Evil's story would have to be if, say, Wesker's evil could successfully have been summarized by visuals?
(Not saying RE isn't enjoyable, its just that by nature, camp bad guy plots don't come off as deeply emotional.)

The idea behind Extra Credits is that they're trying to analyze what an individual game's goal was, and how it could have better succeeded in that thing. Sometimes it comes off a bit as applying one standard to another game, but they're usually pretty good about looking at each case.

Missle Command is just one of those lucky "Everything comes together" games, to an extent... I didn't think of it all that much when I played the game myself.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Seems my original example wasn't good... at all....

BUT; it did point out some things that did work that I didn't actually notice that did tell a story without words.

The music and scenery.

Heading into the World of Ruin with Celes all alone on a raft and coming across towns that you had once visited that now lay in ruins told more story then words ever could.

Tracking down Terra and seeing the house that she torched...

The ascending battle up to kefka

Kefka's laugh... still haunts me

Every character having their own music score.

The Veld's (not spelling that right) music that didn't go away when you got into a battle.

Hmmm....... I guess the question would be, what made FF6's story so awesome that didn't involve telling it through words?

To spell Veldt right, well you just look at my name

Anyway, VI is amazing in both the way it tells the story through words, dialogue etc and also how the little details give so much information.

It's been improved in later games too, now that we're in the era of cinematic games we can portray any number of things just by using onscreen grammer. Even what side of the screen villians appear on, what angles characters are shown at etc etc.

Cinematic scenes could be good for gaming, they just arent used well.

 

[DaMullet]

To spell Veldt right, well you just look at my name

Anyway, VI is amazing in both the way it tells the story through words, dialogue etc and also how the little details give so much information.

It's been improved in later games too, now that we're in the era of cinematic games we can portray any number of things just by using onscreen grammer. Even what side of the screen villians appear on, what angles characters are shown at etc etc.

Cinematic scenes could be good for gaming, they just arent used well.

I guess I should have mentioned WHY I chose FF6 to try and improve.

its because I'm planning on making my own FF6 style game for the Android Phones and I want to make sure that when I make something the first time, its the best it can be. I'd rather not have to come back and redo my work because I was lazy in designing it.