Now that the dust has settled, can we finally admit Mother 3 was terribly written?
joylessness: the game
>>12693935I don't know about joylessness, but it definitely wasn't keeping me interested. I gave up shortly after Lucas took over the plot.
Who cares? You don't have to like every game.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you didn't play it in the original language, don't complain about the writing.You can complain about the quality of the fan translation you played, but you can't complain about the original.
Other examples of a retro game that buck breaks you?
It's a great game. But it didn't have the same appeal to me as Earthbound. Felt too constrained in comparison with the chapter system and all. Not inherently bad, just not what I prefer.
>>12693980You can when all your complaints are the same as the complaints the Japanese fans had.
>>12693980I can complain about whatever I want anon
>>12693928the image was retro
>>12693985Nights
>>12693990They had no complaints.
>>12695348They had a lot of complaints. Such as the game having a dark and serious tone for its entire runtime while the prior two games were generally cheerful and whimsical adventures, the tone being inconsistent even within scenes, a huge portion of necessary backstory being relegated to a single conversation at the end of the game, the game being relatively short and much more linear than the prior two, and the ending being too abrupt and unclear.
>>12693990When I played Utawarerumono in English, I thought the writing was complete ass, and I assumed it was just as bad in the original too..I gave it a second chance when I learned Japanese, and now I think it's one of the best written video games ever made.Whether most Japanese people agree with the former or latter opinion is irrelevant. I was wrong and I had to change my mind.Don't be stupid like me and try to judge writing you've never even really read. An English translation of a Japanese story gives you about as much basis to judge the writing of the original as reading the "Plot Summary" section on Wikipedia.
>>12695664>you're not allowed to have any criticism for any Japanese story unless you read through it in JapaneseNot sensible. They complain about exactly the same thing the western fans complain about. Saying western fans are just wrong for saying exactly the same things because of their language is foolish.
>>12695663Not to be semantic, but those aren't complaints about writing. Those are complaints about plot, structure, tone, and length.You can't read Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats and say it's poorly written because it's too short, or because you don't like poetry, or because the tone was too silly for you, or because the plot doesn't make any sense. All of those things can be true, and it wouldn't change the fact that it's a wonderfully written book if it is. (It is.)If you want to complain about Mother 3's plot structure or dourness or linearity or brevity, then sure, you can do that without having played the original. But it wouldn't constitute an objective criticism of the game's writing. Some people like short, sad, linear games.
>>12695671Yes, but if those Western fans played the game in Japanese, it's extremely likely that a good percentage of them would change their minds.I have strongly different opinions on the English and Japanese versions of various games. It's actually quite rare for me to like them equally; I can count the number of times it's happened on one hand.
>>12695686>Not to be semanticAcknowledging that you're being semantic doesn't negate that you're being semantic.>If you want to complain about Mother 3's plot structure or dourness or linearity or brevityThose aren't my complaints, they're all from a site that Japanese players use.https://w.atwiki.jp/gcmatome/pages/2536.html>>12695693Actually based on how many criticisms the Japanese fans echo, and how they additionally complain about their version of the game being buggy, I imagine they'd be more likely to dislike the game even more.>I have strongly different opinionsGood for you bro.
>>12695708Do you agree with my point that it's impossible to fairly judge the capital-w "Writing" of game without having the ability to read the language it is written in?Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I think Planescape Torment is well written. If a monolingual Japanese gamer plays the world's shittiest katakana-only AI-translation of PT, and goes online and call Chris Avellone the worst writer in the history of humankind, are his opinion and my opinion equally valid? Or is my opinion more valid than his opinion is? Or, third option, I highly recommend this one, is his opinion COMPLETELY invalid?
>>12695762>Do you agree with my pointNope, I think it's schizo nonsense.
>>12695772Well, we appear to have reached an impasse.
>>12695785Any criticism of a story, regardless of the language it was experienced in, is valid. If you think saying Mother 3's story is too dark or too inconsistent in tone is invalid because the person making the criticism played it in English, the onus is on you to prove that doesn't apply in the original Japanese. Just like when people point out that the stories in games like Sonic Adventure 2 or Metroid Other M (not /vr/) were made worse in translation.
