Evan, this art discussion meshes with the Dyack interview. While it may be a little artsy fartsy, I think it's still on topic.
Alfonse. Listen. I am comparing FF6 to every single current-gen game out there. Gears of War, Halo 3, whatever. There isn't any other game that tells a story and plays like FF6. Not one. Sure, games can look more real. The special effects can get better, but there's a limit. We've met that limit for now. We met it with the Gamecube, the Xbox, and even to some extents, the PS2. Tell me, is there any difference between an Xbox game and a 360 game besides the looks? I mean, sure, the girls in Soul Calibur 4 get bigger boobs, too, I forgot that one. My point: The GameCube could play Gears of War if the graphics were toned down a little bit. The environment would be the same, the enemies would be the same, but they'd have a lower polygon count and less detailed textures. In all reality, the atmosphere would be the same. Resident Evil 4 is going to be Resident Evil 4 no matter how many extra polygons get jammed in. The game industry hit a saturation wall. Microsoft plans to plow through that wall, but guess what? They can't. They haven't yet, and they won't be able to. Their attempts already cost too much, and they've gotten literally no where beyond having the best online system.
Sony also wanted to push past the wall. What happened? They cost too much now. Games cost too much to make, Sony's losing money on their console. No new ideas are being made. No games have been revolutions of their genre, nor have any defined new genres.
With the NES, Super Mario Bros. was an amazing feat on a home console. Contra was too. Super Mario Bros. 3 just about eclipses everything else there, but it reached the limit. The Super Nintendo came along, and took sprite/2D gaming to the limits. What happened after that? Sega made the Saturn, Sony made the PS, and Nintendo made the 64. The Saturn focused on 2D gaming. Sure, it made things look prettier, but let's face it, 2D games didn't need it anymore. Sony and Nintendo pushed a new experience using polygon-based games, and both thrived, though Sony won, Nintendo remained profitable.
The next gen? Sony and PS2, Microsoft and Xbox, Nintendo and GC. All three pushed polygonal gaming as far as it could go, in relation to depth of experience. Sony and Nintendo were profitable, Microsoft didn't plan on being profitable, but made entry into the market successfully.
This time around, Sony and MS kept trying to simply push polygons, and look where they're at. Sure, the games are pretty, but the exact same experience could be done on a PS2, Xbox, and GC. There isn't a real difference. Oh wait, there is. Everything costs more, companies are losing money on decent games, and Sony and Microsoft are really headed downhill. Nintendo is making bundles of money. That tells me that I'm right. That Nintendo is right. That you're wrong on this one. Microsoft has not sold but about a million 360's since Christmas. They flooded the market then to post pleasing sales numbers for investors, and now, they're not selling anymore. Sony has just been pathetic. Nintendo is probably three months away from overtaking the 360's lead. After all, what new experience does Gears bring? What is so special about MGS4? Why should I buy the next Devil May Cry? Is Little Big Planet an actual idea, let alone a new idea? No, no, nothing, I shouldn't, and buy Mario Vs. Donkey Kong 2, as well as Four Swords Adventures, and I guarantee between the two, you'll have every gameplay experience as LBP, except the environment will be much, much more fun and entertaining.
So yes, Nintendo has taken the right path: Innovation. There's nothing innovative or interesting about the other two systems, and nearly everyone has realized it. Gears offers no new Innovative experience, neither will MGS4 or Soul Calibur 4.
My complaint is that nothing new is happening on the 360 or the PS3. Can you find anything that's worth the horsepower the 360 has? Any reason why there has to be tons of bloom on a game to create an environment? Does it make the game any better than if it had less polygons? The difference between the N64/PS-PS2/GC/Xbox transition and the transition to this generation is pretty obvious. The Xbox, PS2, and GC took a limited world, a limited number of polygons, a limited number of enemies, and made this all as limitless as necessary. Look at Pikmin. Pikmin could not have been done on an N64. That many controlled AIs, that many enemies, and a photo-realistic environment wasn't possible then. Now, there's no reason to update from a PS2 to a PS3. No reason to go from Xbox to 360. There's no point. Like I said, developers will have increasingly difficult times creating just good games, let alone great ones, as the technology buffs and buffs and buffs up. There's too much detail, too much bloom, and it isn't worth the time or attention it gets. The Wii offers everything needed power-wise to create an immersible environment. Anything else really is too much, too tacked on, too expensive, and too much of a waste of time.
Has any game topped Super Metroid in non-linear exploration gameplay yet? No, plain and simple. They've tried. Metroid: Zero Mission was pretty close, and it was made to model Super Metroid pretty directly. And that's about it. Why? Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2 had too many distractions. Too mcuh else to worry about to get the level structure just perfect. Metroid Prime 3 has taken an extra year, so maybe they'll get it this time. I'm not dissing the Prime series, but the level of exploration just isn't on par with Super Metroid. It isn't, despite having fancy hardware.
And for the record, there wasn't anything special about Halo's graphics. People played Halo because of the multi-player and the story. The game was never actually visually outstanding.
Topic: Secret Placeholder Thread! (Read 22339 times)
