Yup, agreed with Bongo. On average Japanese RPGs were more linearly telling the story of a very definite pre-made protagonist who you must inhabit, as opposed create or define by yourself. Almost like JRPGs began as one part linear adventure story game, one part western RPG. In the same breath I don't blame any Japanese developers for resenting the term one bit, considering the history mentioned above.
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Final Fantasy XVI
- Thread starter Mogri
- Start date
That's the thing about normalizing and not really caring about othering language. 1) Even if you don't mean anything bad by it, you're giving all the bigots in the room cover keep doing their thing, and 2) it isn't really about you and your intentions, when the people being othered are feel the sting of it regardless. I knew a lot of people growing up who said "Jap" and didn't mean anything remotely malicious by it, they just said it because their parents said it, thought it was normal, and didn't know why it was wrong. That doesn't mean it's ok or that I didn't wince when it was said around or at me.
Edit: lol here's another good one
Edit: lol here's another good one
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"JRPG" as I've personally encountered it was in use at least since the '90s, with the main difference being that in that era's context it was mostly a term meant in endearment by enthusiasts whose context for this medium was still half in the exoticized import scene, and so they ended up othering the subject matter regardless of intent--a pretty common pattern for orientalism. When the anti-Japanese games sentiment became prominent in "Western" press and was at its most pronounced and mainstream in the, say, 2005 to 2015 period, the term survived (I do not think it was coined as late as that), but the context and use-case of it simply turned derogatory and pejorative by default to accede to the presented values of the era. I'm not going to pretend much of this was clear to me at the time when it occurred, but in retrospect it has been useful to wean oneself off the term entirely--not only for its particular history but its pungent ahistorical labeling and simplistic reducing of an entire nation and culture's creative output to a set of semiotics not even defined by the creators themselves.
Since we're sharing and rousing our collective memories, here's my "favourite" example of X-Play racism from the era, for a look at Boku no Natsuyasumi 3. The inclination is to say that their behaviour in this respect was exceptional for the time, but none of this would have been as clearly noticed or remembered by those it affected if it was. It was normalized, allowed, and encouraged.
Since we're sharing and rousing our collective memories, here's my "favourite" example of X-Play racism from the era, for a look at Boku no Natsuyasumi 3. The inclination is to say that their behaviour in this respect was exceptional for the time, but none of this would have been as clearly noticed or remembered by those it affected if it was. It was normalized, allowed, and encouraged.
It's pretty easy to spot this racism toward Japanese stuff still around today going by Jeff from giantbomb the day this became twitter discourse heroically using US internet post usage history to downplay the racism and pin it all on phil fish in order to say we don't need to respect the feelings of japanese devs on the matter (literally his words). As racist rhetoric typically does he happily forgot that its usage back then would've reached Japanese devs most heavily from the loudest platforms affecting their game sales like say, game reviews.
I did see someone pointing out the dissonance coming from Yoshida talking about JRPG feeling racist, while previously trotting out his explanation for the lack of diversity in FF16. But honestly that "dissonance" is easy to understand to me (people can understand direct racism applied to them immediately) so idk if that person was making a good point really.
R.R. Bigman
Coolest Guy
This certainly seems to have gotten a lot more traction in the western games discourse. I suppose self reflection is easier to talk about than another country’s internal prejudices.
Japanese console games in general got pretty rough in the early HD era, and that happened to coincide with a lot of mainly PC studios from North America and Europe finally getting into the console scene and bringing different ideas. I remember nearly everybody was asking if Japan was no longer the video game powerhouse it once was around when DMC4 came out, and that thought didn’t really go away until Dark Souls became one of the most influential games of the 2010’s.
Japanese console games in general got pretty rough in the early HD era, and that happened to coincide with a lot of mainly PC studios from North America and Europe finally getting into the console scene and bringing different ideas. I remember nearly everybody was asking if Japan was no longer the video game powerhouse it once was around when DMC4 came out, and that thought didn’t really go away until Dark Souls became one of the most influential games of the 2010’s.
I was staying at someone else's place over the weekend so I'm now just catching up on how this went over on twitter and it is absolutely wild watching most of the people (who I see talking about it, anyway) responsible for the way Japanese devs think of JRPG as a term the way they do become defensive and triple down on it instead of doing ANYTHING else.
In retrospect, the framing that "the early HD era was rough for Japan" is quite bizarre to me, given the fact that it was also quite rough for western developers too. Like, we can't forget stuff like how Oblivion is still one of the ugliest AAA releases of all time, can we?
Becksworth
Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
There is some truth to the statement, given this the around the time a) middleware became pretty much a prerequisite in all future development to keep cost and dev times in line, so b) Japan's traditional strategy of bespoke engines for each game series was becoming untenable, but c) the most popular and well developed middle ware tools at the time still had really shitty non-english documentation.
The thing about this is that it only makes sense as a critique if you assume by default the way "Western" devs were doing things, is default the best and only way to do things. Which, I dunno how anyone can say, especially with like 15-20 years of hindsight. Meanwhile, a lot of the more successful Japanese studios that did pivot and change with the times, didn't do so by adopting middleware or chasing a "Western" model of game design/studio organization in seeking to make "AAA" games. They did so by pivoting to mobile development. The DS/3DS/Switch (and to a lesser extent the PSP/Vita) were all powerhouses for platforms, required lower dev costs, and sold tons of games. That type of game development was much more suited for the Japanese market as a whole, and still made tons of money overseas as well. And this emphasis also made shifting to mobile phone game development easier as well. Franchises like Monster Hunter or Pokemon didn't become the behemoths they are by chasing "Western" gaming trends. To me, this kind of attitude is pretty indicative of the kinds of pro-Western bias that just permeates and dictates the entire discussion surrounding game development over here.
Studios with a background in developing for the PC had an advantage when coping with the economic demands of AAA development in HD; PC game development as a whole had pushed the technological envelope far enough and early enough that they had practice in producing with what higher-fidelity products require, and furthermore, they had done it on their own terms rather than being driven there by platform holders. For various reasons, For various reasons, these veteran PC studios were far more European and American than Japanese, so those regions did tend to have more early success adapting to the niche of AAA console games. They also were correspondingly less able to adapt to the very un-PC-like emerging handheld platforms, which could be approached much more like legacy console development.
Western enthusiast media of that period, to an extent even greater than since and I think also greater than before, privileged AAA products as the most worthy form of gaming, minimizing other types of game and by extension the experiences and preferences of those not in the AAA target demographic (males aged 18-34). It is not a coincidence that chauvinistic elements in reporting and criticism of AAA games reached their apex at the same time that there was the most extreme (or at least most noticeable) difference in the ability of domestic and foreign developers to pander to the tastes of western AAA players.
Western enthusiast media of that period, to an extent even greater than since and I think also greater than before, privileged AAA products as the most worthy form of gaming, minimizing other types of game and by extension the experiences and preferences of those not in the AAA target demographic (males aged 18-34). It is not a coincidence that chauvinistic elements in reporting and criticism of AAA games reached their apex at the same time that there was the most extreme (or at least most noticeable) difference in the ability of domestic and foreign developers to pander to the tastes of western AAA players.
That's some alright analysis Bongo, but what it's missing is the blaring racial undertones of the time. Something I was keenly aware of, but the discourse around was largely complicit at best, and actively supporting at worst.
I had half of a big long effort post written up, but I'm too tired to finish it. To TL;DR the basics of it though, the "for whatever reason" these "Western" devs were PC-only, was because their origins came from a pre-Nintendo gaming landscape that forced a lot of these devs to be PC-only devs. And I firmly believe they bought into the entire 80s/90s economic Yellow Peril that dominated and suffocated popular discourse from the 80s and onward, because literally everyone in America at the time did. The shift to the HD Era wasn't why PC devs were suddenly making console games. The HD Era just happened to coincide with Microsoft - an American company - throwing unlimited money into breaking open the Japanese dominated console market, with their machines that were essentially PCs.
PC gaming in the early 2000s was approaching a dead-end, what with the advent of internet piracy destroying their business model (the same way it destroyed the music industry), cost-prohibitive ecosystems, and digital sales in their most nascent form and barely off the ground. PC devs went from insecure, on their heels, and staring down oblivion, to bailed out and positioned perfectly for success overnight. And that economic insecurity, tinged with racial bias, birthed a lot of condescension and braggadocious hate now that they were suddenly in a position of power and seemingly no longer threatened by getting left in the dustbin of history.
I had half of a big long effort post written up, but I'm too tired to finish it. To TL;DR the basics of it though, the "for whatever reason" these "Western" devs were PC-only, was because their origins came from a pre-Nintendo gaming landscape that forced a lot of these devs to be PC-only devs. And I firmly believe they bought into the entire 80s/90s economic Yellow Peril that dominated and suffocated popular discourse from the 80s and onward, because literally everyone in America at the time did. The shift to the HD Era wasn't why PC devs were suddenly making console games. The HD Era just happened to coincide with Microsoft - an American company - throwing unlimited money into breaking open the Japanese dominated console market, with their machines that were essentially PCs.
PC gaming in the early 2000s was approaching a dead-end, what with the advent of internet piracy destroying their business model (the same way it destroyed the music industry), cost-prohibitive ecosystems, and digital sales in their most nascent form and barely off the ground. PC devs went from insecure, on their heels, and staring down oblivion, to bailed out and positioned perfectly for success overnight. And that economic insecurity, tinged with racial bias, birthed a lot of condescension and braggadocious hate now that they were suddenly in a position of power and seemingly no longer threatened by getting left in the dustbin of history.
Becksworth
Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
Note my comments were specifically about the technical issues surrounding developing for the PS3 and 360, to wit I should also add d) Cell architecture was fucking weird.
My point about documentation I wouldn't exactly call a criticism of Japan. Hell, anglo-centrism in the coding world has long been, and still is, a problem.
And I certainly wasn't trying to diminish racist attitudes coming from the influx of former PC devs to consoles in that era. There was nasty stuff coming from all the place on the PC end at the time. Have you seen the old DirectX codenames?
My point about documentation I wouldn't exactly call a criticism of Japan. Hell, anglo-centrism in the coding world has long been, and still is, a problem.
And I certainly wasn't trying to diminish racist attitudes coming from the influx of former PC devs to consoles in that era. There was nasty stuff coming from all the place on the PC end at the time. Have you seen the old DirectX codenames?
I've settled into oscillating between frustration at how Yoshida conducts himself in a PR context in promoting this game, and resigned amusement at most details that come out about its creative aspects. In a recent interview, Yoshida, Hiroshi Takai and Ryota Suzuki were asked about the media that's foremost inspired the game's direction, and the answers are both expected and illuminating:
- Yoshida: A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones, The Dark Knight
- Takai: Game of Thrones, God of War
- Suzuki: John Wick, Blade
4-So
Spicy
Well. That was intense. Comparisons to Game of Thrones are not without merit but the whole thing still feels very "Final Fantasy", especially the visual language, the iconography. Great work by Soken on the music. I don't play a lot of action games and even using some of the accessibility rings it was a bit much. Going to take some practice to get used to.
I'm too distracted to finish the demo, and what's distracting me is how annoyed I feel at the tiny UI text. I can read it (my eyesight isn't going quite yet), but I have to lean forward to distinguish the button icons, which were designed to be easy to distinguish! The screen has acres of negative space at all times, but heaven forbid they use a single pixel of it to bump the font size up. They even let you increase the size of subtitles - but not the menu text, which you'll be reading a lot more of. HDTV has been popular for 20 years, and developers are still fucking this up?
This is a major pet peeve of mine, but I'm surprised at how much this is pissing me off. I'll finish the demo later once I've regained my composure. Fuck!
Is there a feedback form or something?
This is a major pet peeve of mine, but I'm surprised at how much this is pissing me off. I'll finish the demo later once I've regained my composure. Fuck!
Is there a feedback form or something?
Sprite
(He/Him/His)
FYI: After you finish the demo you unlock a vertical slice set later in the game where you can experiment with Eikon juggling and using the dog. I was really disappointed when they announced the demo as just the first two hours of the game instead of a showcase of the battle system, so imagine my delight at discovering it was both!
I liked it! The first hour I was really iffy on the tone but it got more and more Final Fantasy-ish as it went on, though everything except the dog feels joyless and brown. The battle system is indeed good, though, and started to click when I unlocked the charge abilities and saw how varied your approach can be. Magic feels especially good, because you can keep chipping away at a boss while you're waiting for an opening. It felt like I was always doing damage, even if it was minor. I hope some of the Eikonic abilites are more ranged-focused.
Bringing in Action genre veterans was definitely the right call, as moving in this game feels a lot more deliberate and precise than the floatiness of Kingdom Hearts or the I-don't-even-know-what of XV. Dodge windows seem pretty generous by Action game standards, though the sheer number of buttons you're juggling definitely taxes the old noggin. My brain kept confusing the "dodge away" button and the "teleport towards" button, which led to some embarrassing snafus. I hope the easy mode and rings make it easy enough for most people to make it through the game.
The music is great. I hope Theatrhythm gets some DLC from this game.
I liked it! The first hour I was really iffy on the tone but it got more and more Final Fantasy-ish as it went on, though everything except the dog feels joyless and brown. The battle system is indeed good, though, and started to click when I unlocked the charge abilities and saw how varied your approach can be. Magic feels especially good, because you can keep chipping away at a boss while you're waiting for an opening. It felt like I was always doing damage, even if it was minor. I hope some of the Eikonic abilites are more ranged-focused.
Bringing in Action genre veterans was definitely the right call, as moving in this game feels a lot more deliberate and precise than the floatiness of Kingdom Hearts or the I-don't-even-know-what of XV. Dodge windows seem pretty generous by Action game standards, though the sheer number of buttons you're juggling definitely taxes the old noggin. My brain kept confusing the "dodge away" button and the "teleport towards" button, which led to some embarrassing snafus. I hope the easy mode and rings make it easy enough for most people to make it through the game.
The music is great. I hope Theatrhythm gets some DLC from this game.
fanboymaster
(He/Him)
Did not much care for that demo, felt little draw to the characters, world felt generic, art direction marred by an insistence on a dull pallete, combat just felt "fine" compared to its pedigree. Feel fine waiting for a few price drops on this.
Why did they have to go and tell me they were assessing my performance against boss battles? I hate that. Being graded on whether I win hard enough is probably the biggest reason I avoid character action games to begin with. I also hate that there are, apparently (???) rewards for clearing some unspecified threshold, which I only managed against the Gigas. If I'm not performing up to standards, just make me lose, dammit!
Anyway, aside from those pet peeves this seems pretty cool so I'm probably gonna pick it up.
Anyway, aside from those pet peeves this seems pretty cool so I'm probably gonna pick it up.
I just had the strangest buying experience with this at Target. Poor clerk was absolutely not in the right department.
"Let me check in the back for... what did you say? Final Fantasy 2?"
"Sixteen."
"16? Wow, they made a lot of those."
Anyway, this game is out now.
I have heard the story is... not great.
"Let me check in the back for... what did you say? Final Fantasy 2?"
"Sixteen."
"16? Wow, they made a lot of those."
Anyway, this game is out now.
I have heard the story is... not great.
I'm some ways past the Garuda battle and Benedikta's death.
Mostly I feel embarrassed playing this game. Embarrassed for the developers for making this; embarrassed for the wider discourse it's received which is in the process of failing to acknowledge its issues coherently; embarrassed for myself for interacting with it and contributing to its propagation and measurable "success." You can peruse other threads on this forum for the pertinent material that I'm mainly objecting to, but to put a pin on a narrative that I've seen repeated on occasion: no, it made no difference that details about the game leaked before release and that those following pieced them together from second-hand accounts and summaries--the "proper context" of actually seeing the material firsthand in the process of playing the game has only exacerbated those points of criticism, from what I have so far seen.
This is an astonishingly poor showing from its individual writer, its larger team, and the series it's part of if precedent matters at all; even compared to the previous low point of XV it is exceptionally misogynist, and the racial politics of it don't limit themselves to just Yoshida's PR stumbles but are integral to its thematic core which is utterly failed from the premise for its refusal to include anyone but European white people in its tale of "slavery: what if it's a bad thing." It's clumsy, allegorical bullshit and so self-serious about its own drama that it's sometimes genuinely offputting to listen to and witness. There are other aspects to talk about, and they may feel worthwhile to discuss later, or they may not; the above are the parts that most impact my ability to enjoy this game in the immediate now, and almost certainly on reflection. Whether it will be good in some other ways will likely not balance the scales against how it's already failed to clear even the remarkably low bar and expectations that I had for it.
Mostly I feel embarrassed playing this game. Embarrassed for the developers for making this; embarrassed for the wider discourse it's received which is in the process of failing to acknowledge its issues coherently; embarrassed for myself for interacting with it and contributing to its propagation and measurable "success." You can peruse other threads on this forum for the pertinent material that I'm mainly objecting to, but to put a pin on a narrative that I've seen repeated on occasion: no, it made no difference that details about the game leaked before release and that those following pieced them together from second-hand accounts and summaries--the "proper context" of actually seeing the material firsthand in the process of playing the game has only exacerbated those points of criticism, from what I have so far seen.
This is an astonishingly poor showing from its individual writer, its larger team, and the series it's part of if precedent matters at all; even compared to the previous low point of XV it is exceptionally misogynist, and the racial politics of it don't limit themselves to just Yoshida's PR stumbles but are integral to its thematic core which is utterly failed from the premise for its refusal to include anyone but European white people in its tale of "slavery: what if it's a bad thing." It's clumsy, allegorical bullshit and so self-serious about its own drama that it's sometimes genuinely offputting to listen to and witness. There are other aspects to talk about, and they may feel worthwhile to discuss later, or they may not; the above are the parts that most impact my ability to enjoy this game in the immediate now, and almost certainly on reflection. Whether it will be good in some other ways will likely not balance the scales against how it's already failed to clear even the remarkably low bar and expectations that I had for it.
Kotaku agrees, stating the story as the worst part in their new article.
kotaku.com
The Best And Worst Parts Of Every Mainline Final Fantasy
Every Final Fantasy game has something new to love, but also to hate
kotaku.com
As far as professional outlets, I've thought Gita Jackson and Ash Parrish to have keyed in on relevant narrative criticism the best... and even then, there are more directions in which those criticisms could easily be branched out into, if you wished. The saddest and most damning thing about this game and its storytelling is how diversely bad it usually manages to be, on multiple distinct layers.
I've been watching a friend go through this for most of his like ~35 hours in the game now (talking about the gameplay has done a lot of heavy-lifting there) and I was waiting to see if there was any improvement on any layer of the writing and wow yeah the writing is Atrocious. I've left all of my thoughts that are not a direct complaint from what I've seen at the bottom of my post.
I wish the gameplay was in a less shitty story cuz combat sure looks fun.
Like sure it is very extremely bad in very specific ways like all the intense hatred of women that Peklo's posted at length on, but for instance I also find myself feeling a sort of sickeningly relieved that their racist idea of an "accurate medieval setting" prevented them from subjecting another group of real people to this horseshit tactless cruelty happening for literally no reason except that the writer wanted Clive to feel bad at this specific moment. I do wanna give the biggest problem its due though. The Benedikta stuff is truly damning. The narrative completely forgets the very first scene she's shown in, positioning her as a political powerhouse pulling strings, the moment it ends; and then on top of everything that's already been mentioned Clive just fucking forgets his own damn motivation for getting in that fight with Garuda so that he can have an angry man shouting match where he tells a guy that cared about her a total fucking lie that he did it on purpose for Cid's benefit, and they forget to say jinx after telling each other to die at the same time in the same tone of voice, which seems to happen purely so they could cut it into a trailer somewhere because damn is it a stupid scene. Annabella somehow has NEGATIVE foresight when you hear literally anything about her for the first 30 hours. Like imagine if Little Finger's "chaos is a ladder" quote included him climbing a physical ladder and it was just on fire as he spoke the line, and like a Looney Toons skit he just isn't falling off of it as it turns to ash because he hasn't looked down to invoke gravity.
The writing doesn't even seem able to keep track of itself from one scene to the next. Did no one who knew what they were doing look at this script at all? Were they playing telephone with it? Clive seems to forget important things immediately, or flip-flops on what he believes between scenes constantly. The culmination of Clive's early game "growth" is just yeah, embarrassing but like a much stronger version of the word. Sometimes just as you're about to finally move on after some plot downtime they throw in a totally needless scene to give you some good ol' toxically masculine "wisdom" from a character that you were told wasn't gonna be there. They repeat themselves SO MANY TIMES. Like the meme about Kingdom Hearts repetitive jargon has nothing on this. They've faded to black to avoid repeating a given piece of information that has already been repeated at least three times before that A LOT. Really big details and questions go either unexplained or completely unasked (including such fundamentals of life as "why does NO ONE IN THIS SETTING seem to know the mundane method to light a fire?!"). I could go on for HOURS about all the inconsistencies and outright missing bones in the plot. It's truly astonishing that it manages to be on several levels worse than when the game industry as a whole collectively went through the advent of "mature games for mature gamers" bullshit. The Dragon's Dogma anime which similarly had a writer flinging their misogyny all over the place trying to imitate something better was more competently written than this and that's really worrying.
The writing doesn't even seem able to keep track of itself from one scene to the next. Did no one who knew what they were doing look at this script at all? Were they playing telephone with it? Clive seems to forget important things immediately, or flip-flops on what he believes between scenes constantly. The culmination of Clive's early game "growth" is just yeah, embarrassing but like a much stronger version of the word. Sometimes just as you're about to finally move on after some plot downtime they throw in a totally needless scene to give you some good ol' toxically masculine "wisdom" from a character that you were told wasn't gonna be there. They repeat themselves SO MANY TIMES. Like the meme about Kingdom Hearts repetitive jargon has nothing on this. They've faded to black to avoid repeating a given piece of information that has already been repeated at least three times before that A LOT. Really big details and questions go either unexplained or completely unasked (including such fundamentals of life as "why does NO ONE IN THIS SETTING seem to know the mundane method to light a fire?!"). I could go on for HOURS about all the inconsistencies and outright missing bones in the plot. It's truly astonishing that it manages to be on several levels worse than when the game industry as a whole collectively went through the advent of "mature games for mature gamers" bullshit. The Dragon's Dogma anime which similarly had a writer flinging their misogyny all over the place trying to imitate something better was more competently written than this and that's really worrying.
I wish the gameplay was in a less shitty story cuz combat sure looks fun.
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FelixSH
(He/Him)
It doesn't really matter, because I won't be able to play these for an eternity, but that all sounds like I won't play it ever. Story is essential for me, and the comparison to Devil May Crys combat means I likely won't enjoy the battle system either. I tried DMC 3 three times, and just found the gameplay boring.
Yeah, this is a lot of oof all around. I was ready to roll with the combat changes (I enjoyed XV’s combat, and have dabbled in DMC and friends and can have a good time especially when there’s some crutches available, so I expect I could find some level of assistance-jewelry that feels right), but if the plot is so much grimdark misogynist garbage and it’s not even tempered by likeable characters with decent development then it’s sounding like there’s not much FF left to love in it. Kaiju esper battles are fine and dandy but that alone isn’t enough to carry a game.
I dunno, but this sure isn’t motivating me to go out and buy a PS5 like I was expecting to at this point.
I dunno, but this sure isn’t motivating me to go out and buy a PS5 like I was expecting to at this point.