SHADOWTEXT'S PROFILE

author=Viscount Vid the Venerable link=topic=1226.msg18430#msg18430 date=1212208547

author=Shadowtext link=topic=1226.msg18415#msg18415 date=1212190615

author=Viscount Vid the Venerable link=topic=1226.msg18375#msg18375 date=1212164089
And TWEWY sales don't really have much to do with this, because it wasn't out until April overseas, or Fiscal Year '08. Come to think of it, what DID Square-Enix release here last year? Dragon Quest Swords barely counts, having been released in February. And of course Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker in November. But that's about it, I think.

Fair enough, but if TWEWY were selling like hotcakes, I think the boss wouldn't be so cheesed. Anyway, the Japanese sales would be pretty important here, too. I'm pretty sure that even with the larger number of gamers in America, Japan's the more lucrative RPG market.

More likely than not, I imagine he just saw sales are dropping, and even if the outside-the-box games were selling fairly well (that is to say: more than making back their budgets, not selling well compared to Final Fantasy), he'd zone in on them as problems because they cost more to make than remakes and don't sell as many copies even on a good day.

-_- Honestly, though, what does he expect? Video games are a luxury item and a dollar doesn't go as far as it used to. American sales are going to be less than every company wanted, I imagine.

Well, if TWEWY didn't sell well in Japan, why did they release it here? Usually, original titles that don't do well in Japan do WORSE in the states.

Hey, I don't have sales figures or anything, but given the reaction I've seen on the tubes, I would expect that TWEWY was a modest success. Enough to localize maybe (but then again, Squenix localizes everything that isn't an International Version or Final Mix of a title that was already released in America these days), but not enough to make it safe from the anger of an executive whose stocks dropped and sees a game they devoted time to that didn't make as much money as their newest remake of Final Fantasy 1 and 2.

author=Viscount Vid the Venerable link=topic=1226.msg18375#msg18375 date=1212164089
And TWEWY sales don't really have much to do with this, because it wasn't out until April overseas, or Fiscal Year '08. Come to think of it, what DID Square-Enix release here last year? Dragon Quest Swords barely counts, having been released in February. And of course Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker in November. But that's about it, I think.

Fair enough, but if TWEWY were selling like hotcakes, I think the boss wouldn't be so cheesed. Anyway, the Japanese sales would be pretty important here, too. I'm pretty sure that even with the larger number of gamers in America, Japan's the more lucrative RPG market.

More likely than not, I imagine he just saw sales are dropping, and even if the outside-the-box games were selling fairly well (that is to say: more than making back their budgets, not selling well compared to Final Fantasy), he'd zone in on them as problems because they cost more to make than remakes and don't sell as many copies even on a good day.

-_- Honestly, though, what does he expect? Video games are a luxury item and a dollar doesn't go as far as it used to. American sales are going to be less than every company wanted, I imagine.

Keeping in mind that it would be pretty insane to go to extremes and not have any attention to the other one, I'd say accessibility is the more important thing to look at here. Games should always strive for accessibility, and making things simple for the player. Only after the gameplay has been made as elegant as possible should the aesthetics come into question, and as little as possible should be sacrificed to make an elegant map aesthetically pleasing.

But really, there's no reason an accessible map can't be pretty, and a situation where a map isn't both is a pretty clear example of failure on someone's part....either the art director or the map designer or the programmers. Not that failure is unforgivable (especially in the amateur community), but it's a failure nonetheless.

author=Sir Craze the Unhinged link=topic=1222.msg18245#msg18245 date=1212086994
:<

I really don't see the point in this.... in my mind, blurbs like the character intros in FF6 or FF12's A RABBITGIRL WITH WEAPONSKILLS or whatever are way better than any detailed list.

Seriously, who needs to know about the hero's grandparents? Maybe if they get killed by the villain... boohoo?

Eh. Maybe I haven't played enough serious, character-focused RPG stories?

MODIFY: Okay this would be great for D&D or something, but in a console/PC RPG all the dialogue and interactions are canned. So, like... why? kentona, I know you've always wanted to make GOOD CHARACTERS but you don't really need a list like that to do it. Just write a short blurb about them and use it!

I feel that these lists are TOO RESTRICTING. Once you make one you're like I PUT ALL THIS THOUGHT INTO A BUNCH OF PIXELS NOW I HAVE TO FORCE IT DOWN THE PLAYER'S THROAT RARRRRRGH

If you're worried about not fleshing out your characters enough, pretend to be them and take a myspace quiz or a CLICHE-O-METER quiz. If you have a whim that the character would lie about a question-- not because you wrote down BALTHIER LIES ABOUT THE STONE but because you randomly thought of an answer while pretending to be the character.

OTHER PEOPLE'S SHOES > LISTS

I am both in agreement and disagreement with you. First of all, you're totally right that the player does not need to hear much of the stuff that you put into the character's backstory, and you should avoid telling the player anything they don't need to hear.

But on the other hand, trying to keep a consistent narrative without having things planned out ahead of time is inviting disaster. I know a lot of people are convinced that they're good enough at improvising or thinking like their characters to pull it off, but almost no one is. For one thing, as you're writing things down, a character tends to change from your initial conception, often becoming better as you go along. This is fine and dandy, and makes for great character development. But it means that subplots and character arcs you had set up earlier no longer make any sense for that character, and practically guarantees you'll have a number of Chekhov's Guns lying around that never get fired, and worse yet: asspulls.

Part of the good thing about planning things out is that it allows you to go back and change things that happen earlier in the arc when something later in the arc requires it, either to provide some foreshadowing (one of the best defenses against Deus Ex Machina), or to provide plot symmetry and juxtaposition that just makes everything much more elegant. A clear character arc makes characters much more memorable than just making it up as you go.

And the thing is, on-the-fly improvisation offers no advantages. Any improvisation you can do as you go along could just as easily be done while you're writing down the outline for the scene....and even better, since it's just an outline, when you finally commit the line to the final version, you'll get a chance to tweak it to make the dialogue snappier or fit better with the character's idiolect, or even just to make it scan better. It's not like you're giving up the chance to make stuff up and get in the character's shoes, you're just giving yourself a chance to rethink things and put them into perspective.

Still, I don't feel like this sort of list is all that useful. I'm much for in favor of prose description of a character's backstory in a little write up you can consult later--a Design Document, for choice. You don't need to keep a word count or anything, but the amount of backstory you know for any character should be pretty closely related to how significant the character is to the story.

author=Lady Trance the Demure link=topic=1099.msg18094#msg18094 date=1212014135

author=TMAC link=topic=1099.msg18063#msg18063 date=1212004501
Hell, there's plenty of nifty artifacts and legends. The Lance of Longinus, Gram/Balmung, The Book of Thoth and Tezcatlipoca's Smoking Mirror to name a few. Those all have the possibility of being abused by some ner'do'well villains and whatnot.

I was thinking about this after watching the movie. Isn't that that spear that pierced the side of Jesus? It'd fit with the semi-religious theme they had going (the Ark, strange Indian death-god-worshiping religion, Holy Grail).

The Spear of Destiny / Lance of Longinus (actually two different artifacts, but they've been conflated in popular culture so we may as well treat them as one) actually has a pretty neat history going for it, too. Hitler was searching for the Lance of Longinus frantically, because of the legend that whoever controlled the Spear would have the power to rule the world. He apparently found it. And Patton was also pretty into the occult, and had his own researchers look at the artifact they captured from the nazi forces and his guys confirmed that it was indeed the "true" Lance of Longinus. (I have yet to read anything that actually details how they came to this conclusion or really any evidence behind it, but we're talking folklore here so it's not like verifiability is a huge deal) After the war was well and safely over, Patton returned the Lance to Germany, and I think today the "real lance" is kept in the Museum of Vienna. I forget if that's the specific place or the right name for the museum, but it's what I can remember at the moment. Wikipedia would have it.

The cool part here....soon after America took control of the Lance of Longinus, World War II was won by the allies, and America unleashed the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki....totally pwning the rest of the world (except Russia) and more or less immediately being elevated to the status of Super Power. And now we're the sole remaining super power (for another couple of years, until China catches up).

The Spear of Destiny part may be even older than the Lance of Longinus part. Pagan cultures have had for a long time the concept of an ancient and powerful spear that keeps showing up throughout history that would give people power. This is where the part about it having "the power to rule the world" probably comes from. The Lance of Longinus, on the other hand, was bathed in the blood of god. Some traditions (okay, possibly just Evangelion. I don't know if it was part of the tradition before that, but I've definitely seen it since then) have it that "since it cut God, it now has the power to pierce anything." So not only does it have a deep destiny/spiritual power, but a huge physical power as well.

I've digressed a bit. SO THE POINT IS: We've got an artifact in recent history (just the correct time period for Indiana Jones, too) with some really ripe material for turning into an epic that fits in perfectly with the Indiana Jones mythos.

...but I think the problem might be that, if anything, it was too obvious. The thing would feel like a rehash of the others. Most of the complaints here seem to be about how too many liberties were taken with the franchise in this one....but that's better than just sticking to what you've already done, isn't it?