[Ransom]

I agree with everything you say here, but I don't think graphics will reach their limit that soon.  Well let me rephrase that.  I don't think visual realism will reach its limit for a very long time.  We've still got to overcome the Uncanny Valley.  Personally, I think that's going to leave a lot of room for improvement.

That's true. What I mean is I think it'll only be a couple of years before it's no longer profitable to pool all your resources into graphics. Right now visuals are developing at a rate almost faster than companies can develop them. Fairly soon that's going to slow down and we're going to see less of a technological gap between games. (And incidentally, that'll also give developers an opportunity to focus on artistry rather than the graphics technology itself, which will provide a solution to the problem of the Uncanny Valley.)

With regard to Final Fantasy, while they do seem to put a lot of effort into their stories, they are (with a couple of exceptions) overwhelmingly generic and shallow. This doesn't really make them bad -- it's just that there are far superior fantasy stories out there.

[Mefustae]

I don't really mind if the story isn't all that great, just as long as the game has at least a few 'Holy ****!!' moments. Y'know, moments like in Ocarina when you emerge from the Temple of Time after 7 years to see an utterly ravaged Hyrule, or when the surprisingly cool Flood first attack in the original Halo, or when you finally get to see the Sath in all her daemonic beaty when she jumps in through the wreckage of the Knossos.

As long as the game has at least 2 or 3 moments like these, I don't really mind either way. The unfortunate fact is that i've not had nearly as many 'Holy ****' moments in this past generation as I really should have.

[aldo_14]

The last 'holy ****' moment I can think of, games wise, is the storming of Stalingrad scene (not the landing mission, but where you get sent on a suicide run into MG-42s across Red Square) of the original Call of Duty.  Nothing else comes to mind; even HL2 I think lacked any truly intense moments.

[Mefustae]

The last 'holy ****' moment I can think of, games wise, is the storming of Stalingrad scene (not the landing mission, but where you get sent on a suicide run into MG-42s across Red Square) of the original Call of Duty.

Ah yes, twas indeed a great moment in gaming.

Nothing else comes to mind; even HL2 I think lacked any truly intense moments.

HL2? No. Episode 1? Did you see the Dark Energy Reactor?!

[aldo_14]

I have no intention of playing or buying another Steam based game after the horrors of previous installation, so no, not seen Ep.1.

[Turnsky]

I have no intention of playing or buying another Steam based game after the horrors of previous installation, so no, not seen Ep.1.

hence why having a hard copy of the game will defeat any internet delivery system

[Mefustae]

Okay, gimme 5 minutes, i'll entice you into buying it...

Edit: Okay, fine. Your loss. Why you're passing up a damn good game and essentially what HL2 should have been because you dislike Steam [which really isn't all that bad, as long as you don't use it often], i'll never know.

[aldo_14]

Okay, gimme 5 minutes, i'll entice you into buying it...

no you won't, so don't even try.

[Turnsky]

HL2: Ep1 is a good game, but as aldo said, Steam isn't anything great at all. as i've stated before, you can get it on a disc, instead of purchasing it over steam (it's completely standalone from HL2), but that's your choice, aldo, i'm sure you have better things to do than to gripe about what is wrong with steam (it's easy to praise it 'cuz there's not much to list that's actually good about it!  )

[Kamikaze]

Best example:  Look at the Final Fantasy series.  It seems to me that gameplay took a hit post FFX-2.  Anyone play the FFXII demo?  The controls just felt wrong to me...  I can understand the drive for innovation, but it just didn't feel like their new system was "working" for the series.

I played through the full game. FF12 was disappointing in almost all respects for me. The active battle system, surprisingly, was even more tedious than the turn-based combat of previous FF games. I think it's because turn-based combat gives the player some time to think and plan (that's what I liked about FFX's battle system), while FF12's gameplay just relies on clever gambits (basically a simple scripting system for characters) and heal spamming. The most disapointing part of the game was the boring plot and almost complete lack of character development (I'll stick to FFVIII for that). OTOH, the cutscenes with airships (and the airships in FF12 are more like air-battleships and air-carriers) were amazingly cool. I don't think I'll be buying FF13 though (mainly because I don't want to buy a PS3).

[Nuclear1]

The last 'holy ****' moment I can think of, games wise, is the storming of Stalingrad scene (not the landing mission, but where you get sent on a suicide run into MG-42s across Red Square) of the original Call of Duty.  Nothing else comes to mind; even HL2 I think lacked any truly intense moments.

If we're talking 'holy ****' moments, then I'd have to say Pacific Assault for the entire Pearl Harbor sequence (or at least the PT half; watching the Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arizona get pounded all while gunning down swarms of Zeros never gets old) and most of Tarawa. The Chicago nuking in RA2, the first Beast subversion in Cataclysm, innumerable moments in Homeworld, and the Dominators' activation in Yuri's Revenge all fall into the same category.

[Ferret]

Look at the Final Fantasy series.  It seems to me that gameplay took a hit post FFX-2.

Personally, I can't play anything after VI.  Even VII rubs me the wrong way.

*Puts on anti-flame suit* 

I dislike the lot of them. The storylines are dull at best, and without that they have nothing except some pretty pictures. I like Tactics though.

Tatics was incredible but they didnt put enough effort in it as with the other FFs, the story could have been great but they try to do too many things that it ends up confusing everything and leaving god know's how many plotholes at the end. So much potential wasted.

This is my point. The great thing that makes Tactics good is that it does not rely on a story at all, it has a great gameplay system that is a joy to play and a hell of a lot of fun.

[Sarafan]

I agree but at the same moment it could've a incredible story, full with character delevopment and all, but it doesnt, I'm just saying it could have been better, much better. Also it has one the best soundtracks I've seen.

[Tyrian]

In addition to the story taking a hit in a lot of games, it seems by association, that character development has gone downhill too.  It just seems that the characters are there to avert a crisis by coincidence, rather than the fact that they have any real personal motivations.  That's what I liked about FFX, every main character in your party had reason for wanting to be there.  They weren't just put there by a game designer just to create a story.  Games with no character development tend to have a very contrived feel to them.  That bugs me immensely.

[Ransom]

That is because character development is as much a part of a story as anything else -- in fact, most of the time characters are more important than the story itself. Saying sensible character development is important for a story is kind of like saying it is important for people to have faces. And organs.

It's a common mistake of poor writers (including myself) to use characters as sock puppets for the sake of delivering the story, and this is unfortunately why we see a lot of it in games.

[Flipside]

I think the problem is that computer games are going though a stage of 'it's just like being in a movie!', when what they should be doing is trying to make into just like being in a computer game.

Computers have incredible powers, and yet I haven't seen anything commercially to challenge ideas such as Zero-Gravity pool or The Incredible Machine, which were released in the 80's originally. Nowadays, every FPS wants to be like an action movie, every RTS wants to be Lord of the Rings. Too much time trying to make computer games realistic, not enough realising the sheer joy of a computer is that they don't have to be. I can understand that RTS can only 'look' a certain way as can FPS, but the actual elements of gameplay are all mirroring each other, a new innovation these days seems to be involved with how the game looks/interacts not with how the game plays.

Everyone is calling 'Portal' an innovative idea, and it is for this day and age, but, compare the gameplay to the 80's and you'll see they've learned from the past, it's a simplistic idea that uses a computer's ability to do the 'impossible'.

[Deepblue]

Remember Halo? They worked out the graphics first and admitted that they had no story yet. (Ok, Halo turned out to have a good story twist in the end though.)

Really? Considering that Halo basically shares the same story as Marathon I find that hard to believe.

[Ferret]

Remember Halo? They worked out the graphics first and admitted that they had no story yet. (Ok, Halo turned out to have a good story twist in the end though.)

Really? Considering that Halo basically shares the same story as Marathon I find that hard to believe.

"Ugh, guys we've got this cool engine but no game to go with it."
"Yeah you're right. So it's got guns right?"
"Right."
"Hmmm..."
"Errr.."
"Oh I've got it!"
"Tell me!"
"Remember that other game we did?"
"Yeah yeah."
"Let's do that."
"But Oni wouldn't work very well as an FPS."
"No dumbass, Marathon."
"Oooo okay." *toddles off*

[Unknown Target]

The problem with most "gripping storylines," imo, is that their "storyline" consists of about maybe 20 pages of super detailed backstory, with about three pages of actual in-game story and development.

[Fineus]

It's probably a lot easier to write a backstory/cinematic than to actually try and tell the story through ingame events.

Just listen to HL2 Ep1s development commentary and you'll hear about the problems they had getting the user to look/listen/notice certain things... like creating "gates" that trap the user in a certain area so they have to be present as part of the story unfolds. It's all pretty interesting.