Once upon a time, cinematics were the delicious, velvety icing on the game-cake. They were those sweet moments of jaw-dropping reward for accomplishing something. They captured the feelings of epicness in perfect narrative peaks, setting the context for the next arc of story. For example, in Warcraft III watching an archdemon effortlessly crush an entire city after you?ve ushered in his cataclysmic return to the world, knowing that you were the one that fought for it. Your participation in the game?s narrative culminates in a beautiful cinematic climax. They channeled the storytelling experience and set it on a course, highlighting and shaping both.
This happy balance, however, has become disrupted in recent years. Gameplay has been flagellated and harshly sodomised into submission by the large, sweaty inmate of flashy cinematics. With technology growing by leaps and bounds, it seems that developers feel almost morally obliged to spank it as hard as they can. The focus is on creating the slickest, most polished aesthetic possible, often at the expense of interaction and the gaming experience. And it is at this juncture that we meet our friend, Final Fantasy XIII.
The FF series has always been loved for the scope of its story ? the creation of new worlds and actors, each so wonderfully characterized yet retaining a sense of continuity through the hallmarks of the series ? moogles, chocobos, Eidolons and the beloved, ever present Cid, Biggs & Wedge. The love of the series came with the freedom within that world, combined with a narrative that lead you on a circuit of it, before throwing you skywards in an airship that let you explore it at will. Such a thing survived in one form or another, even in X & XII. But the concept of free direction, the power to explore and be in participant in the world as an active person was something mesmerizing. The gameplay and the progression of game narrative combined almost seamlessly. Granted, every game had its flaws, its weaknesses, but it still had a fundamental charm which flowed from that freedom.
Cinematics within that experience were, as I have said, the icing upon this delicious, enormous, free-form cake. The snow capping the epic mountains of bad metaphor storytelling. Yet this freedom, the centrality of gameplay and sense of agency in the game has been reduced to a back-seat in FFXIII. A cold, lonely back seat. Where you?re forced to sit next to someone that smells of old biscuits and mumbles quietly to themselves, just loudly enough to feel like red hot barbs of annoyance in your ears. Most reviewers have commented that the large, sprawling dungeons have been turned into corridors. Predominantly single-pathed. Town areas have been all but obliterated. Meaningful dialogue, freedom to explore ? all dead. Whilst I remain sad at the death of the overworld map, its replacements in X / XII with an up-close representation of the world was something I can work with, as you still retained that sense of narrative progress. It felt like you tangibly did things and had a firm impact on the world around you. And this is my major, horrible sticking point with what could have been a beautiful game. You feel powerless. The game halts you every 50 paces for another awkward, cinematic bit of exposition and slightly questionable voice acting. Then, you?re awkwardly jerked back into gamespace, and plodding along to your next steaming helping of failpie. Here and there, the odd epiphany, the odd bit of exposition is nice. Interesting. It adds depth to what you?re doing, to what you?re learning about the world. But the reconstruction of the world through this plethora of mandatory cutscenes destroy any fluidity in the actual game.
The sad thing is that the mechanics of the game itself are lovely. The crystal grid system is what the Sphere Grid system should have been. The paradigm system is lovely ? slick and powerful. Granted, it sits very awkwardly with me that you only have control of a single character, but the dynamism it grants your party would make it almost impossible to keep changing your ability sets and not get horribly confused. The fact that each character performs uniquely in each particular role adds some wonderful flexibility and makes you think extremely tactically about who you end up adding into your party and how to grow your characters. The combat is hugely streamlined and minimized, but not at the loss of tactical depth. The soundtrack and visuals are beautiful and do create some genuinely stunning environments. The plot, too, has the same compelling epicness as other titles in the series. Dystopian governments, personal conflicts, rich back-stories and enigmatic superbeings. Tense philosophical and political themes underpin the evolution of the storyline and its retroactive reconstruction would be effective, if it weren?t so agonizingly staggered.
In so many ways, it?s still fun to play. The shape of an excellent game is there. But the gameplay is diluted by the sheer weight of cinematic and narrative exposition. You almost get the feeling that the devs were trying too hard with this one. They wanted to say too much, to control too much. Their vision came at the cost of the gamer?s freedom. Instead of creating a world and weaving a thread of narrative through it, the narrative is the world, the player helplessly dragged along through it, being bludgeoned by cutscenes all vying for attention. And this is what I object to. Where I feel most betrayed. We have made the transition from being active participants in the gaming world, to passive consumers, dangling from a terrifying plot structure by emaciated-looking threads of gameplay. It feels like the designers have such grand artistic vision for their worlds that they forget that us humble, unwashed gamer-types actually exist.
FFXIII is one of a number of games that are heading away from being ?games? and more towards being a new form of genre ? towards the realm of the cinema. However, a fundamental tenet of good roleplaying is active immersion. To coin a truism, good role playing involves the good playing of roles. Whilst FF is unique in that it doesn?t follow the predominantly approach of giving you a blank template for your protagonist, the series has always succeeded in presenting a lead character whose role you can effectively play. Yet with FFXIII, it feels as if the role is being played for you. The balance between passive and active has shifted too far in favour of the former. That which was a highlight of the unfolding story and strengthened it has instead crushed and crippled it. The game leaves me with a strong feeling of ambivalence, but and even stronger feeling of disappointment. I paid £35 for a game ? not a 30 hour film with sub-par voice acting and ridiculous haircuts.
This happy balance, however, has become disrupted in recent years. Gameplay has been flagellated and harshly sodomised into submission by the large, sweaty inmate of flashy cinematics. With technology growing by leaps and bounds, it seems that developers feel almost morally obliged to spank it as hard as they can. The focus is on creating the slickest, most polished aesthetic possible, often at the expense of interaction and the gaming experience. And it is at this juncture that we meet our friend, Final Fantasy XIII.
The FF series has always been loved for the scope of its story ? the creation of new worlds and actors, each so wonderfully characterized yet retaining a sense of continuity through the hallmarks of the series ? moogles, chocobos, Eidolons and the beloved, ever present Cid, Biggs & Wedge. The love of the series came with the freedom within that world, combined with a narrative that lead you on a circuit of it, before throwing you skywards in an airship that let you explore it at will. Such a thing survived in one form or another, even in X & XII. But the concept of free direction, the power to explore and be in participant in the world as an active person was something mesmerizing. The gameplay and the progression of game narrative combined almost seamlessly. Granted, every game had its flaws, its weaknesses, but it still had a fundamental charm which flowed from that freedom.
Cinematics within that experience were, as I have said, the icing upon this delicious, enormous, free-form cake. The snow capping the epic mountains of bad metaphor storytelling. Yet this freedom, the centrality of gameplay and sense of agency in the game has been reduced to a back-seat in FFXIII. A cold, lonely back seat. Where you?re forced to sit next to someone that smells of old biscuits and mumbles quietly to themselves, just loudly enough to feel like red hot barbs of annoyance in your ears. Most reviewers have commented that the large, sprawling dungeons have been turned into corridors. Predominantly single-pathed. Town areas have been all but obliterated. Meaningful dialogue, freedom to explore ? all dead. Whilst I remain sad at the death of the overworld map, its replacements in X / XII with an up-close representation of the world was something I can work with, as you still retained that sense of narrative progress. It felt like you tangibly did things and had a firm impact on the world around you. And this is my major, horrible sticking point with what could have been a beautiful game. You feel powerless. The game halts you every 50 paces for another awkward, cinematic bit of exposition and slightly questionable voice acting. Then, you?re awkwardly jerked back into gamespace, and plodding along to your next steaming helping of failpie. Here and there, the odd epiphany, the odd bit of exposition is nice. Interesting. It adds depth to what you?re doing, to what you?re learning about the world. But the reconstruction of the world through this plethora of mandatory cutscenes destroy any fluidity in the actual game.
The sad thing is that the mechanics of the game itself are lovely. The crystal grid system is what the Sphere Grid system should have been. The paradigm system is lovely ? slick and powerful. Granted, it sits very awkwardly with me that you only have control of a single character, but the dynamism it grants your party would make it almost impossible to keep changing your ability sets and not get horribly confused. The fact that each character performs uniquely in each particular role adds some wonderful flexibility and makes you think extremely tactically about who you end up adding into your party and how to grow your characters. The combat is hugely streamlined and minimized, but not at the loss of tactical depth. The soundtrack and visuals are beautiful and do create some genuinely stunning environments. The plot, too, has the same compelling epicness as other titles in the series. Dystopian governments, personal conflicts, rich back-stories and enigmatic superbeings. Tense philosophical and political themes underpin the evolution of the storyline and its retroactive reconstruction would be effective, if it weren?t so agonizingly staggered.
In so many ways, it?s still fun to play. The shape of an excellent game is there. But the gameplay is diluted by the sheer weight of cinematic and narrative exposition. You almost get the feeling that the devs were trying too hard with this one. They wanted to say too much, to control too much. Their vision came at the cost of the gamer?s freedom. Instead of creating a world and weaving a thread of narrative through it, the narrative is the world, the player helplessly dragged along through it, being bludgeoned by cutscenes all vying for attention. And this is what I object to. Where I feel most betrayed. We have made the transition from being active participants in the gaming world, to passive consumers, dangling from a terrifying plot structure by emaciated-looking threads of gameplay. It feels like the designers have such grand artistic vision for their worlds that they forget that us humble, unwashed gamer-types actually exist.
FFXIII is one of a number of games that are heading away from being ?games? and more towards being a new form of genre ? towards the realm of the cinema. However, a fundamental tenet of good roleplaying is active immersion. To coin a truism, good role playing involves the good playing of roles. Whilst FF is unique in that it doesn?t follow the predominantly approach of giving you a blank template for your protagonist, the series has always succeeded in presenting a lead character whose role you can effectively play. Yet with FFXIII, it feels as if the role is being played for you. The balance between passive and active has shifted too far in favour of the former. That which was a highlight of the unfolding story and strengthened it has instead crushed and crippled it. The game leaves me with a strong feeling of ambivalence, but and even stronger feeling of disappointment. I paid £35 for a game ? not a 30 hour film with sub-par voice acting and ridiculous haircuts.
