61 Frames Per Second : mass effect

Whatcha Playing: Persona, Fallout, and the Trans-Pacific RPG Ideal

John Constantine — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Somewhere, probably not too far from Hawaii, the perfect role-playing game is waiting to be discovered. A volatile, volcanic outcropping boiling over with an expert blend of relatable, colorful characters, deep, directed narrative, and open, exploration-rich adventuring, alongside intimidatingly deep avatar customization. Its game world is both fantastic and hyper-real, vast yet structured enough to inexplicitly guide the player along scaling challenges.

Alright, I’m kidding. I know this game isn’t real. Of course it isn’t. But after the past couple of weeks, I sincerely wish it was.

It’s been a very long time since I last took a two week vacation, and even longer since I took one where I played so few games. It was strange that I spent so few hours with a controller in hand, especially considering what I was playing when I fired up one of the boxes. Coupling Persona 4 and Fallout 3 as your outlets for digital shenanigans might seem like a recipe for life-threatening anti-social tendencies, but I managed to keep things in check, a couple of hours here and there for each game. But now that my vacation’s over and I’ve barely dented either, I almost wish they could be a single game. I wish they could be that mythical mid-Pacific island I just described.

This is the first time I’ve ever played a Japanese RPG and a Western, D&D-style RPG simultaneously. Detailing the differences between the two styles of game is a like pointing at the moon. They’re flat-out different genres. Heather Campbell of Play said it best: JRPGs are a story that’s told to you, whereas WRPGs are a world that you investigate. But why is it that, with East and West borrowing and imitating one another so frequently in the past decade of game design, no game has successfully made an RPG that marries the best bits of both into a single game? Why can’t I have the freedom of Fallout 3 but also the cast of characters with rich personalities and stories of their own that I get in Persona?

There are great games that have come very close to pulling this off. Bioware RPGs, particularly Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, effectively marry the directed narrative of JRPGs with the customizability and freedom of your average Elder Scrolls adventure, but even those suffer from extreme linearity. You can choose whatever you want to do next, but eventually you have to go to the one planet/town to go any further, and there’s no masking the inevitability of that choice. (The same can be said of Peter Molynuex’s Fable and its sequel, but those games are concerned with their own sort of freedom and narrative.)

Strangely enough, I think the makings of a model blend of Eastern-aesthetic and Western-mechanic can be found in Quest for Glory II and III. Those games are less classic adventure than they are role-playing games, asking you to constantly solve moral quandaries that will affect a plethora of very well-defined characters in unreal yet familiar landscapes. Maybe some development team will look at those games again and see an opportunity to offer RPG fans something altogether new. In the meantime, I’m off for some more post-apocalyptic roaming and high school classes. See y’all in a couple of months when I re-emerge.

Related links:

Whatcha Not Playing: Persona 4
Persona 4: Harrowing, True Pre-Order Tales! With Prizes, Prizes, Priz-izes!
Too Soon? No Nukes for Japanese Fallout 3
For Love of the Game: Quest for Glory II
Screen Test: Fallout 3

F**k Your Future: Mirror’s Edge, Blade Runner, and the Future City

John Constantine — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The image above is a little bit of Deus Ex 3 concept art from Eidos Montreal, the crack design team who broadened our sexual horizons with Fear Effect and taught us that controlling sociopathic murders is boring as sin with Kane & Lynch. I can imagine the dialogue between the artists and producers when this image was submitted for approval:

"What do you got for us today, concept artists?"

"Check dis!"

"This isn't Deus Ex! This is just a screencap from Blade Runner with the guy from Deus Ex 1 smoking in front of it!"

"I'm fired aren't I?"

"No! It's perfect! That’s all these nerds want anyway."

I kid. There is no Deus Ex without Blade Runner, after all. While its influence isn’t quite on the level of Aliens, Blade Runner’s vision of a nightmare cityscape in the far-flung-but-familiar future is a close second. Its towering super-skyscrapers and dank alleyways are the aesthetic meat of beloved games like Shadowrun and Snatcher, but you can also see them in mid-period Contra, Flashback, Abe’s Odyssey/Exodus, and even recent blockbusters like Mass Effect. Then again, it’s not just games. Syd Mead’s Los Angeles has been the template for depicting the urban landscape of the future in all media for close to twenty-five years.

I’ve been curious for awhile now as to what the next popular conception of the cityscape is going to be. The Blade Runner type came on the heels of the ultra-slick Logan’s Run-style, cities of spires all white and sterile that typified science fiction from its 1950s heyday through the 1970s. This may not be the most academic logic in the world, but since sci-fi literature gave us our Future City model post-WWII, and sci-fi film bore its successor, I’m looking to videogames to create the next archetype.

If you’ve been reading 61FPS regularly, you probably won’t be surprised to hear me say that I think Mirror’s Edge features the most likely model for tomorrow’s City of Tomorrow. Edge’s nameless city has the same whitewashed sterility that was the hallmark of the 60s/70s future city but twists the model by coating it in streaks of primary color and keeping the architecture familiar. The buildings, subway stations, and shopping centers recall today’s Montreal but with a consistent modernist bent. Edge’s dystopia is also a recent institution. The story constantly reminds the player that the totalitarian government responsible for the city’s current shape hasn’t been in power long, and so the omnipresence of architecture-as-construction-site provides a fine narrative metaphor: you play behind the future city’s façade of perfection. Whether or not this model fully captures the zeitgeist of 2008 and beyond remains to be seen, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing Edge’s city more often then Blade Runner’s, especially in games, going forward.

Note: Forgive my hate against Eidos Montreal. Yeah, Fear Effect and Kane & Lynch suck, but they made Soul Bubbles. They’re alright.

(Link: Gamereactor via Kotaku)

Related links:

The Three Stigmata of The Halcyon Company: Philip K. Dick Comes to Games
Mirror’s Edge: Everything You’ve Heard Is True
Trailer Review: Mirror’s Edge
The Eternal Question: Why Is Super Mario Bros. Fun?
Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming

Turning Japanese: Microsoft’s Latest Ditch Effort to Win the East

John Constantine — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Microsoft held a press conference yesterday in Tokyo to show off their upcoming slate of six Xbox 360 role-playing games. Aside from the Japanese edition of 2007’s Mass Effect and a look at Peter Molyneux’s Fable 2, Microsoft showed off four Japanese developed RPGs. Two of which are the latest in entries in Namco and Square-Enix’s long-running Tales and Star Ocean franchises. Microsoft’s also pulled a slight coup with the announcement that Square-Enix’s new IP Last Remnant, developed to appeal to both eastern and western audiences, will now release on Xbox 360 before Playstation 3.

Since the Xbox 360’s release in 2005, Microsoft has been trying to woo Japanese audiences with high-profile role-playing games. Namco’s Trusty Bell: Chopin’s Dream and From Software’s Enchant Arms were the first J-RPGS to see release this console cycle. Microsoft also secured the exclusive rights to Mistwalker’s Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy-creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s first post-Square-Enix work. But in the past thirty months, both Trusty Bell and Enchant Arms failed to find a significant audience in Japan and have since been ported to the Playstation 3. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, despite being heavily promoted under Sakaguchi’s name, have also done poorly despite strong debuts. Microsoft’s RPG Premiere Event shows a commitment to a failed tactic. Having the support of both Namco and Square-Enix might have been a winning strategy ten years ago but the fact of the matter is that Japanese gamers have never, and most likely will never, be interested in purchasing an American made game system. While western fashion, film, and food brands have significant cultural currency in Japan, the culture’s taste for consumer products has always been exclusive. Japanese gamers want Japanese systems and Japanese games. Additionally, the pool of Japanese gamers who play home consoles has been on the decline for half a decade as tastes have shifted to quicker, portable experiences.

All of these new RPGs look fantastic. But they won’t make a lick of difference for Microsoft.