I recently started playing Final Fantasy IV again for the first time in a long while and it really feels like that in three hours more significant plot developments and events have occurred in that short span of time than a lot of modern games would do in 10 times that. There's been,-A crisis of loyalty and conscience -A tragic inciting event-The loss of loved ones and regaining the will to fight-Vengeance sworn-A grand battle-betrayal from your closest friend-love triangle drama-moral apotheosis -heroic sacrifice of innocents-a rescue of the love interest IN THREE HOURS. And I'm not even rushing the game.
>>12635267You can do a lot if you don't waste any time and get your characterization in two lines or less per scene
>>12635465That's kind of the thing though. I don't really think a lot of more long winded games do give more complex characterization. It usually still boils down to the same amount of information just with more roundabout and drawn out dialogue. Brevity IS the soul wit.
>>12635267Part of it is because FFIV is a great RPG and is considered a classic for a good reason.The other part is Square assuming that their audience is bad at RPGs and that it would take the typical player three hours to get through the Mist Dungeon. (Definitely true when I was a kid, I sucked at RPGs back then.) So they paced the story based on the playing speed of a low-skill player.
>>12635267Yup, FF4 is just the best game ever made. There is more packed into this game than the average modern JRPG wishes it could have.
>>12635527Yep. It was going downhill just a few years later with the effectively unlimited text available on a CD-ROM. But it got really bad when voice acting came along. Even the FF4 DS version drags a bit due to the cringe voice acting.
Decompressed storytelling / Joss Whedon writing are to blame. At the tail end of the 90s and beyond this became the standard across all media. Just look at how American comic books used to tell an entire complete story in under 30 pages every month, with character development, a three act plot, and an actual ending. Now you can barely get one conversation and fight scene in 24 pages and it takes 2 years to finish a single storyline.
>>12635827I wasn't quite so slow but when I was younger I did like to just take more time to explore things. Even just fucking around once you got the air ship.>>12636007There really is something to be said about limitations breeding creativity. Voice acting was impressive at the time and I'm no Luddite against technological development but I feel like there is a case of less being more. The whole game won't take you very long to beat at all but every hour feels more impactful. A lot of longer games are only longer because they have so many cutscenes, it takes so long to have the actors read their lines that it's just padding. Then every action involves 100 different overly long animations and camera swoops and pans. You can't even so much swing a sword without it being overly animated. Is a game really 30 hours long if you spend 15 of those hours watching it rather than playing it? In the DS version you can't even really hurry up the dialogue.>>12636021>Just look at how American comic books Brother, you're preaching to my choir. What a revoltin' development this is.
>>12636021>>>/tv/shit pls.while i do enjoy "snappy' dialog and plox, that has little to do with retro americanism or old tech. try playing the /vr/ eroges and VNs. they do have a lot of useless text and "sound effects".
>>12636827shut the fuck up tripfaggot
>>12635827I miss that in newer RPGs. There's way more dialogue and cut scenes now but the story bits actually felt like a reward in older RPGs and now they practically feel like a chore to sit through.
>>12635267There was a Nintendo power interview I read where they said only 20% of FF4's original scenario actually made it into the game due to cartridge limitations and it explains a lot about modern FF and how bloated the writing is. Old FF was accidentally good due to technical limitations.
>>12636898Right, you'd get a bit of story or some big reveal after clearing a dungeon. Now it feels like the dungeons and gameplay are getting in the way of the movie the developer wants to tell. >>12637056There's definitely a lot of places I can see where they intended more and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in what was cut but limitations make you focus on what actually matters.
>>12636007DS has slower battle animations too. Nothing terribly offensive (especially compared to other FFs), but you can really feel the difference from how blazing fast the original is.
>>12637127You'd think with the advancement of technology things would feel snappier but the DS version on the whole just really has a heavy sluggy feeling to it.
>>12635267Yeah, that's a big reason I love old JRPGs. The pacing is much faster. Modern games you often have to sit through hours of voiced cutscenes before you're out of the intro.It's why I'm baffled when people say old JRPGs "aged poorly." Like, what has changed fundamentally about the genre that makes old ones obsolete? The gameplay hasn't changed all that much.
Yeah and watch all that plot go to shit because the game randomly hits with a cutscene where a party member dies and wants you to switch to someone else. It does this so many fucking times and its a complete asspull every time, no buildup at all.
>>12637889Japanese people love to wait. That is what I have gathered from decades of playing their video games. The more powerful a computer is, the harder they will work to make it do slow, pointless things for their countrymen to deliciously wait through.
>>12638084It's called momentum and if there was "Buildup" you'd just be whining it was too obvious.
>>12635267It's really great. My favorite FF, narratively.
>>12637056>it explains a lot about modern FF and how bloated the writing is.Most other Japanese RPG series have always been at least as bad (often worse).>Old FF was accidentally good due to technical limitations.FF7 was good. Text volume skyrocketed but they made a good story out of it and kept the pace reasonable and combat fast.>>12638084I just realized last week's FF4 thread was so great partly because there were no mindless NPCs parroting this retarded troll meme. Just one guy doing a real playthrough with honest reactions (had both praise and criticism).
All of the SNES games could do with more padding between major story segments. FF4 in particular feels like the dramatic scenes happen back-to-back-to-back.
>>12639137>FF4 in particular feels like the dramatic scenes happen back-to-back-to-back."CliffsNotes story" as I would call it.Great for brainrotted zoomers accustomed to short-form content.
>>12639117It's important to look at things when how they were made and whom they were made for. This was 1991 and any kid playing it wouldn't really be this jaded, cynical or force themselves to be genre savvy. They'd just take it for what it is.>>12639137>>12639171The only brain rot would be to pad out and bloat a game because you can't focus on what's important and need extra exposition to understand things.
>>12639196I'm not asking for FF7R tier padding but some inconsequential mini-dungeons along the way just to break up the huge story moments would be great.
>>12639196>pad out and bloat a game because you can't focus on what's important and need extra exposition to understand things.I get the feeling you are not a person who reads much
>>12635267just wait until the second half when the story takes a big fat steaming shit on you. it was great for the time but total bullshit now. also, amano rosa owes me sex
waaah le evil macguffin made me do everything!! omg everyone dies and its so sad :'( omfg jk they're alive again!!incredible writing, truly.
>>12639234>just wait until the second half when the story takes a big fat steaming shit on youKain fan? lol
>>12639237>DAE thimk emperor... is bad man?>NOOOO EMPEROR WAS BAD MAN ALL ALONG*GASPS SO LOUD MY PUPPERINO WAKES UP*
>>12639238I'm a kaincel, I'll admit it.
>>12636763>we know Cecil prefers stout women because of the Lustful Lali-Ho>gets fed all the silver/golden apples to increase her "HP">becomes as much of a tank as the boys despite only wearing a bikini>only mainline entry in the series where you can literally be turned into a pigForget being a Paladin, Cecil's true job class is "Architect"
>>12636021Short fiction also used to be very popular. A lot of authors got their start with short stories or novellas getting published in magazines.
I haven't played it in 25 years. But I remember it being the milquetoast FF. Everything was just... acceptable. I really don't feel the urge to play it a second time. I do feel the urge to play the PSX games for the twentieth or so time each.
>>12639276lol get fucked
>>12639525It was the first FF where everything mostly worked (unfortunately there were still bugs and some odd design decisions outside of that), probably because Nasir didn't fuck shit up with his dogshit programming. FF5 is when they really started getting more interesting and experimental, which makes sense because it was intended to be THE Super Final Fantasy, and 4 was kinda spur of the moment because they didn't want to make it for NES anymore (probably because GD Leen beat them to the punch of being the first SNES RPG). 4 is basically the crash course FF for beginners to jump in with, since it refined the consistent aspects started from 1 (and "promotion" moments for a few characters changing their classes and/or unlocking their true powers), had a rotating cast like in 2 (along with similar story beats and a few loosely implied references to it), and a variety of different classes that you get to mess around with before finally setting on a well-balanced party like 3, along with using "puzzle bosses" where you have to use aspects of your current party's classes to overcome (plus the moon has similar aspects to Eureka in 3, especially with powerful bosses blocking your access to the best gear in the game). It might feel "milquetoast" because of that, but that was kind of what the bonus content from GBA/PSP and then the DS remake was for.
>>12639664The bosses are something have been a real stand out. You got some duds, but there's a lot of them and a good chunk of them really make you pay attention than just focusing on big damage. Calling it milquetoast is pretty unfair because while it certainly feels of it's time it was of it's time and we wouldn't have gotten the series to evolve if not for earlier installments. Of course it's not going to be as complex as later games, I would hope it wouldn't be. But I don't think that renders it useless either. It's good to go back and remember things.>but that was kind of what the bonus content from GBA/PSP and then the DS remake was for.It's sort of interesting how the later installments let you shake up the party for the climax. It's a nice addition to make things a bit more interesting I suppose but I ended up sticking with the original group anyways. I think 4 might strangely be the most ported game in the franchise so I appreciate square not neglecting it but with all the fuss over seven's remake I wonder if there's not more perfect versions of older games waiting in the wings. Not a huge fan of the pixel remasters honestly.
daily reminder the ds version is the best way to play it
>>12639682You'd only want to change them out for a challenge, to mix up dialogue a bit, or when fighting the bonus dungeons, especially when getting their extra gear that makes them better. Everybody knows that Big Ed can (potentially) roll stupidly good stats at Level 70+, but a lot of people sleep on the fact that his true final weapon has ridiculously good coverage on pretty much every enemy in the game.>but with all the fuss over seven's remake I wonder if there's not more perfect versions of older games waiting in the wings. Some people have theorized that FF4 is going to be the next HD2D FF if Resonance does well, and I honestly believe it for the reasons I noted on it being the perfect "crash course" into the series. Even if it is, I get the feeling they're going to fuck it up somehow. The coolest of all possible paths would be "yeah okay it's HD2D" but we included the augments from 4-nDS, made it to where you don't have to give them to members who leave the party, and also give you the bonus content from GBA/PSP. However, I sincerely doubt that SE would be that cool, since they have this retarded aversion to bonus content nowadays because "muh developers' original vision" or some other retarded excuse. The thing I actually wish would happen (and sadly never would happen) is that if they're gonna remake an FF in HD2D style, that they do it for FF8 and FF9. Perfect choices, too, since they have FF8 as the more "modern-urban-aesthetic FF" and FF9 as the more "classic-fantasy-aesthetic FF".>Not a huge fan of the pixel remasters honestly.Same, outside of 3, and that's only because it's a weird what-if mutant bastard child of 3-nds and the lost 3-wonderswan.
>>12639729while I appreciate a closer approximation to Amano's art in 3d I don't think I much liked it. God how much does that suck. Graphics get good enough to represent the art just in time for the art to suck.
>>12639729I'm curious what someone who played the DS version first felt about it compared to those who played any "original-style" version of it (as in SNES, or the ports on GBA, PSP, or Pixel Remaster which play pretty much the same). Gotta be a different perspective since the DS version is full of "gotcha" moments if you try to play it like the original. Someone playing the DS first obviously wouldn't fall into those traps, at least not in the same way intentionally.
>>12639734If we talking remakes I'd like to see something closer to how Trails of Mana went. Just pretty it enough with an appropriate art style but keep it a more focused mid level project so things don't balloon out of control.
>>12639742That's potential an option as well but I guess we'll have to see. This makes me think though, that Haccan's style transferred well enough for Trials' remake, but I'd be curious to see Akira Oguro's artstyle in "better-than-DS" level polygons. Even when he did work on FF4TAY and FFDimensions, I thought his art was pretty cool, but it never really got that much a chance to shine past low-res pixel art and low-poly 3D.
>watch a video about FF4 because of this thread>hit with the insane realization that this game introduced save points (at least in FF)Jesus CHRIST how did we live before this shit?
>>12639770>FFDimensionsI can't believe that never got a port to anything else. But right, I'd really like to see something were the art can shine through more and not just be that weird Octopath look that everyone seems to like. At least kill the bloom some. >>12639783You think this is a joke
>>12639742i like her remade vagina bones
>>12639742>>12639929The fact that she is not real and not my wife causes me great distress
>>12639974You wouldn't even know what to do with her, shut up
>>12640056Well she's not yours either FAG
