Favorite FF

[Jake]

Unthinkable for RPG genre, that's what I mean (sorry if I don't make it clear the first time, though I've wrote it after that).

You did make it clear; I just think it's a totally indefensible position. There's absolutely no reason why any of the things FF7 did were 'unthinkable' for an RPG. The only reason would be if you irrationally believed that "hey, there are textured 3D character models running around on a pre-rendered backdrop in Resident Evil, but there's no way it could happen in an RPG because RPGs aren't allowed to make use of that kind of technology for no apparent reason".

I mean: seriously, if a "big sword" is unthinkable for a JRPG, then the people who play and make JRPGs have the worst imagination ever. And apparently never read Berserk.

It could take 10 discs... if you want an RPG that like RE or Tekken (I mean the characters models and textures, sound and voices, BGs, etc). How much discs do you need for FFXIII?

"Voices" is the only thing in your list which would have made FF7 take 10 discs - or any other RPG, modern or otherwise, for that matter. But I wasn't talking about that, and you know it - I was talking about the things FF7 actually did. Like I said: look at Vagrant Story, it has fully-textured 3D models running around in a fully-textured dynamic 3D environment, even, and yet it fit on a single CD for the original Playstation.

FF7 raised the bar within the RPG genre? Maybe. But so did FF6, and FF4, and Xenogears, and Lunar, and innumerable other titles. The bar is constantly being raised. Hell, even FFX "raised the bar" in some respects, given the voice acting in all the important scenes, despite the terrible characters, plot, unimaginative designs and setting and lousy battle system. You know why? Because it was the first in the series on a new system with new capabilities and the devs tried to do use them to better than their last game. Same with FF7.

Now, both games have their irrational fans and both games have people who think they're the best FF game ever, yet FF7 enjoys more popularity than FFX (thank Sanakan), so why is that? Well, it had well-designed characters and excellent music and a fairly compelling story, which helped, but I think a lot of it is still down to the fact that it was the first JRPG a lot of people gave a chance, and people remember their first whatever a lot longer than they remember other things. I expect for a lot of the people who think FFX was the best in the series it was the first FF title they played when it was new. What I'm fairly certain of is that FF7's popularity is not really directly down to any of these things you claim were 'unthinkable' - the 3D pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D fight scenes and so on. That's cargo-cult design ("game X had pre-rendered 3D graphics and it was good, so if we put pre-rendered 3D graphics in Rise of the Robots it will be good"), and it's something that Square seem to have been guilty of recently, but it doesn't work. Otherwise one of the many games which have done all those same things since, only better, would have stolen all those fans away.

[tigerkidde]

Weighing in the FF7 discussion, at the time, 3D in RPGs was uncommon across the U.S. consoles. The PSX RPG market consisted of Beyond the Beyond and Persona, maybe Wild Arms. Voices, curse words, and black people aren't things found in a U.S. console RPG and then FF7 gets released (minus the voices which were available on Turbo Grafx CD and Turbo Duo games). Technologies that were being used for years in other PSX games breached the U.S. console RPG market. And for FF7 in particular, the U.S. sales were significantly higher than other RPGs across any of the consoles and of previous Final Fantasy games. And it may have been my imagination or just the market becoming ripe, but more RPGs started showing up in the U.S. after that. And although the story and music were personally, fairly forgettable and never thought of Sephiroth as a good villain and I didn't like Cloud until the latter half on disc 2, the game was a long experience nonetheless.

Given the technology for awareness and access at the time, the manga reading audience was smaller back then. I doubt many had exposure to Berserk. Unfortunately for any other creative works after FF7 release, if a character showed up with a large weapon or a single shoulder pauldron, they were seen as a Cloud-imitation.

This is only a U.S. perspective on it though, as FF7 may have had different impacts and results in other countries.

[Wintermoon]

I'm going to have to disagree that Final Fantasy 7 raised the bar at all. Compared to Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy 7 seems like a huge step backwards in pretty much all regards. Especially graphics.

[LVUER]

Unthinkable for RPG genre, that's what I mean (sorry if I don't make it clear the first time, though I've wrote it after that).

You did make it clear; I just think it's a totally indefensible position. There's absolutely no reason why any of the things FF7 did were 'unthinkable' for an RPG. The only reason would be if you irrationally believed that "hey, there are textured 3D character models running around on a pre-rendered backdrop in Resident Evil, but there's no way it could happen in an RPG because RPGs aren't allowed to make use of that kind of technology for no apparent reason".

Not "not allowed" but rather "not effective for RPG" or simply "not good". Kinda like it's usual for an action game to have full voiced, but for 50+ hours RPG? It's wasting lots of space. So it's normal for an RPG to have voice only for important cut-scenes. Vice-verse, it's strange if an action game (or high quality commercial VN) to have voice only for some events.

Also it's not unthinkable in the term completely new or never across minds of many people. But rather unthinkable to apply them in RPG. Of course the technology itself musn't be completely new (that's what we call creative minds)

I mean: seriously, if a "big sword" is unthinkable for a JRPG, then the people who play and make JRPGs have the worst imagination ever. And apparently never read Berserk.

Whatever you may said, but it's a fact that it's uncommon/considered uncool if a character to wield large blade/sword in RPG game at that time. Perhaps it's considered unrealistic... or simply uncool? I don't know, really. Most main guys from pre-FFVII era wields normal sized (or the biggest is bastard sized) sword. Post FFVII era, big sword (or long sword) = cool.

Again, it's no that big sword is totally unheard pre-FFVII era; Berserk and Kenshin are just few examples (oh, and BTW, I love Berserk).

It could take 10 discs... if you want an RPG that like RE or Tekken (I mean the characters models and textures, sound and voices, BGs, etc). How much discs do you need for FFXIII?

"Voices" is the only thing in your list which would have made FF7 take 10 discs - or any other RPG, modern or otherwise, for that matter. But I wasn't talking about that, and you know it - I was talking about the things FF7 actually did. Like I said: look at Vagrant Story, it has fully-textured 3D models running around in a fully-textured dynamic 3D environment, even, and yet it fit on a single CD for the original Playstation.

Now that I think again, full 3D and textures actually saves more spaces than using pre-rendered BG (since they're considered large sized pictures). But I didn't only consider graphics but also lots of other things. Starting from higher polygon count and bigger resolution texture (Vagrant Story's graphic is very blocky and the texture is kinda lo-res compared to other action game, but no one complain since it's RPG game... and Vagrant Story have kinda low playing time). Interactivity and variety (and size) of BGs (both inside and outside battle). Item models, the detail of enemies, and so on, and so on.

FF7 raised the bar within the RPG genre? Maybe. But so did FF6, and FF4, and Xenogears, and Lunar, and innumerable other titles. The bar is constantly being raised. Hell, even FFX "raised the bar" in some respects, given the voice acting in all the important scenes, despite the terrible characters, plot, unimaginative designs and setting and lousy battle system. You know why? Because it was the first in the series on a new system with new capabilities and the devs tried to do use them to better than their last game. Same with FF7.

Oh yes, I'm very agree with your argument: FF4 and FF6 also raise RPG standard one more bar. So do FF7. The bar is constantly raised and FF7 did it a lot (and so FF4 and FF6). Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean raise the bar a lot too... FFX-2 on the other hand, didn't. WA raise it only a little bit. Lots of other RPGs didn't raise it even a little bit!

Now, both games have their irrational fans and both games have people who think they're the best FF game ever, yet FF7 enjoys more popularity than FFX (thank Sanakan), so why is that? Well, it had well-designed characters and excellent music and a fairly compelling story, which helped, but I think a lot of it is still down to the fact that it was the first JRPG a lot of people gave a chance, and people remember their first whatever a lot longer than they remember other things. I expect for a lot of the people who think FFX was the best in the series it was the first FF title they played when it was new. What I'm fairly certain of is that FF7's popularity is not really directly down to any of these things you claim were 'unthinkable' - the 3D pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D fight scenes and so on. That's cargo-cult design ("game X had pre-rendered 3D graphics and it was good, so if we put pre-rendered 3D graphics in Rise of the Robots it will be good"), and it's something that Square seem to have been guilty of recently, but it doesn't work. Otherwise one of the many games which have done all those same things since, only better, would have stolen all those fans away.

You could be right. No, you are right too. But my argument is right too. I mean if FF7 is the RPG I play the first time, or FFX is the one I play first. So what's the difference? I mean FF7 is popular, that's a fact. If a crappy RPG is the first RPG I play, then is that game would become awesome to me?

About FFVII and FFX, which is the best... well, that a different topic from this (I only focused to FFVII only... at least for now). Though FFX boast beautiful graphics, voice acting, and so on, we're all already accustomed to beautiful 3D graphics (both pre-rendered and full 3D) and all other grandiose feature (not FFX bad or inferior from FFVII). But FFVII appeared when there's still not many games built so beautifully. And just like I said, that made a big impact on people's mind.

And you also must remembered that we're talking "at that time". I sense that you're talking a lot from present POV. Of course, looking now, FFVII is just another plain old game (if you want to be mean ^_^ )... but at that time, FFVII is a huge hit. At that time, full 3D game is quite a rare (even Tekken game and RE2 have "ugly" model, compared to beautiful (though simple) 3D model of FFVII), let alone a full 3D RPG game (well, FFVII is prerendered... but still built from a 3D graphics).

[Jake]

And you also must remembered that we're talking "at that time". I sense that you're talking a lot from present POV.

Not at all - I'm mostly talking from the point of view of my memories of first seeing the game on a friend's PSX when I was seventeen. Having previously played FF6 - but not owning a Playstation myself at the time, and thus not having been following any hype around the title - I was completely un-stunned by most of the game, which was more or less what I was expecting for a follow-up to FF6 on the newer and more-powerful console. Except for the field character models, which I found inexplicably ugly.

But I'm also someone - and was when I was seventeen - who understand development and has at least a passing interest in both graphics programming and game design. So maybe I'm crediting the average JRPG player with too much when I think that it's not beyond the realms of possibility for one of them to make the tiny logical leap of "this thing is clearly technically possible on the platform, so it's technically possible in any genre of game". Apologies if that sounds insulting, but honestly, it seems trivial and blindingly obvious to me, and I can't understand why you're arguing against it.

Maybe you're on to something with the 'not good for an RPG' notion, though - but again, this is cargo cult design, which is stupid. The same fallacy that brought us such inane genre tropes as "JRPGs have always featured people who don't care when you walk into their house and steal all their stuff, so all people in JRPGs for all time have to not care when you walk into their house and steal all their stuff", culminating in ridiculousness like Blue Dragon where you're encouraged to go up and examine every single object in the game, no matter where it is or what the situation is, because something like 75% of them have minor bonuses hidden away inside that cumulatively you really need to get through the game.

[LVUER]

And you also must remembered that we're talking "at that time". I sense that you're talking a lot from present POV.

Not at all - I'm mostly talking from the point of view of my memories of first seeing the game on a friend's PSX when I was seventeen. Having previously played FF6 - but not owning a Playstation myself at the time, and thus not having been following any hype around the title - I was completely un-stunned by most of the game, which was more or less what I was expecting for a follow-up to FF6 on the newer and more-powerful console. Except for the field character models, which I found inexplicably ugly.

But I'm also someone - and was when I was seventeen - who understand development and has at least a passing interest in both graphics programming and game design. So maybe I'm crediting the average JRPG player with too much when I think that it's not beyond the realms of possibility for one of them to make the tiny logical leap of "this thing is clearly technically possible on the platform, so it's technically possible in any genre of game". Apologies if that sounds insulting, but honestly, it seems trivial and blindingly obvious to me, and I can't understand why you're arguing against it.

Maybe you're on to something with the 'not good for an RPG' notion, though - but again, this is cargo cult design, which is stupid. The same fallacy that brought us such inane genre tropes as "JRPGs have always featured people who don't care when you walk into their house and steal all their stuff, so all people in JRPGs for all time have to not care when you walk into their house and steal all their stuff", culminating in ridiculousness like Blue Dragon where you're encouraged to go up and examine every single object in the game, no matter where it is or what the situation is, because something like 75% of them have minor bonuses hidden away inside that cumulatively you really need to get through the game.

If you're talking from technical (only) POV, then you are right. But too bad it's not all. I hate repeating but perhaps it's the most obvious reason... you just don't want to accept it... perhaps it's all just because a difference in mindset.

If we're talking about "possible", really, what is not possible for human being? Perhaps in 1000 years more, we'll be able to revive the dead or go to past using "200 times faster than light" device. But most of time, simply possible isn't enough. How about the time? Money? Skill? And so on.
Also, is it possible to do that in RPG (yet).

And... although other genre already do that, FF7 is the first to do that in RPG. That is all needed and it is enough. Why should we care, hey... we could do that in action game times ago, oh and in horror game times ago. That's funny you know.

Oh, and to avoid misunderstanding. I'm not FF7 fanboy and I'm not obsessed with FF7. I love FF7, I dig the fact about it, and I research the reason behind of its popularity. That's all. And I think I never state that FF7 is the best RPG all the time (but at that time).

OOT a little, FF6 could be better than FF7, not strange... since Square already spent years developing games for SNES. Perhaps we should compare FF6 (last FF in SNES) with FF9 (last FF in PSX), though FF9 is... well, not exactly set a new bar too high in RPG standard, unlike other FF.

Oh, and don't worry, I don't feel insulted at all. Just FYI, I'm also a programmer and know (and interested) in game development, graphics, and things like that.

[Jake]

And... although other genre already do that, FF7 is the first to do that in RPG. That is all needed and it is enough.

This logic is equivalent to saying "Sure, I know we make trucks that run on diesel, but nobody's made a diesel car yet, so it's unthinkable that somebody might do it in the future". Or "It's true that there are military jet fighters and jet bombers, but nobody's used jet engines on a commercial passenger plane yet, so it's unthinkable that we could ever fly in a passenger plane moved by anything other than propellers!".

I'm not saying that it's without merit that FF7 used polygon models walking around pre-rendered backgrounds, I'm not saying that it isn't part of a reason for its popularity or that it wasn't a good feature. I'm just saying that calling it "unthinkable" is as huge and unwarranted an exaggeration as suggesting that it's the greatest game of all time is. You seem to be getting so wound up in your assertions about hypothetical fully-voiced 10-disc JRPGs that you've forgotten why I'm disagreeing with you in the first place.

[LVUER]

And... although other genre already do that, FF7 is the first to do that in RPG. That is all needed and it is enough.

This logic is equivalent to saying "Sure, I know we make trucks that run on diesel, but nobody's made a diesel car yet, so it's unthinkable that somebody might do it in the future". Or "It's true that there are military jet fighters and jet bombers, but nobody's used jet engines on a commercial passenger plane yet, so it's unthinkable that we could ever fly in a passenger plane moved by anything other than propellers!".

You made a wrong example. It should be like this :
A: We have train with electric power, how about car with electric power too?
B: Nah, it would be too costly, unpopular, and besides fossil fuel does better job than hypothetical batteries for car.
A: I don't care, let's make it anyway!

You see, right now we're almost forced to switch using electric car (or other alternative power source) after fossil fuel rarity (or soon would be depleted). Right now it's usual to see electric car on road, but 8-10 years ago? I don't think so...

Did we have the technology at that time, to make electric car? Oh yes we do! There are already several prototype of electric car (but too costly and the juice run out too fast). But is it thinkable that soon we will have electric car running around as a common vehicle? No sir, I don't believe so.

If it's really thinkable, lots of big company would already make extensive research about electric car so that they would have an edge compared to other companies

I'm not saying that it's without merit that FF7 used polygon models walking around pre-rendered backgrounds, I'm not saying that it isn't part of a reason for its popularity or that it wasn't a good feature. I'm just saying that calling it "unthinkable" is as huge and unwarranted an exaggeration as suggesting that it's the greatest game of all time is. You seem to be getting so wound up in your assertions about hypothetical fully-voiced 10-disc JRPGs that you've forgotten why I'm disagreeing with you in the first place.

And yet you seems forgetting that I just wrote that I never consider FF7 as the best game all the time but rather as best RPG at that time...

I'm not really wound up on my hypothetical 10 disc JRPG, I don't really care about that. That argument only shows up when you keep meshing in RPG genre with other genre which is irrational and unfair.

[Jake]

You made a wrong example. It should be like this :
A: We have train with electric power, how about car with electric power too?

I'm afraid that the last exchange looks to me like this:

- FF7 using polygonal characters over pre-rendered BGs was unthinkable because no RPG had done it before
- That's like saying jet passenger aircraft were unthinkable because nobody had built one before
- No, it's like talking about electric cars because FF7 was unthinkable

It's a bit of a circular argument.

Are you seriously telling me that the average game-player considered things like disc-space before what was possibly the first multi-disc game? (I certainly can't remember any prior). Or even stuff like processing power and number of polys on-screen at once? I doubt it very, very much. I think it's far more likely that most players would have looked at something like Wild Arms and said "other PSX games are in 3D, why isn't this game in 3D? The programmers must not be very good". I don't know if you remember, but amongst a lot of gamers circa 1996, 'sprite' was a dirty word.

Thought experiment: Stop thinking about disc space and textures and polygon count, and picture yourself in 1996, talking to a 15-year-old kid. Show him the difference between Streetfighter 2 and Tekken, and the difference between Dracula X and Resident Evil (not that they're exactly the same, but I can't think of any pre-3D survival horror), and the difference between Outrun and Ridge Racer, and ask "these other games have moved into 3D on the latest console. Does it seem likely to you that JRPGs will start to move into 3D as well?"... there's an obvious answer, and it isn't 'no'.
Not every fighting game was 3D on the PSX, but the transition had started; not every JRPG was 3D on the PSX, but the transition had started. It wasn't a surprise.


And as it goes, early jet engines were completely impractical - people first started trying to put jet engines in aircraft before the first world war. And even when they'd refined the design they were fuel-hungry, had a lousy range for all their speed and were prone to breakdown. But you know what? They kept going, because it was far from unthinkable that jet engines would work - and even after they'd got them working for the deep-pocketed military who didn't care so much about fuel costs, they kept working on the design until it was practical to use it for passenger jets, because it was far from unthinkable that passenger jets would exist.

If it's really thinkable, lots of big company would already make extensive research about electric car so that they would have an edge compared to other companies

Oh, wait, that actually happened, and there are already electric cars on the market. But again, you're ignoring an important point, and disproving your own at the same time.

Firstly: electric cars have a big infrastructure barrier - for them to be practical enough to be commonplace, we need charging stations around countries with uniform interfaces and the same regularity as petrol stations today. Replicating features seen on other videogames on the same platform has no such infrastructure requirement - the infrastructure is there already. It has only the requirement that the programmers at the company doing it are good enough. Trying to release FF7, in the state it was released, on the SNES - that would have been a good electric car analogy, because the SNES didn't provide the infrastructure necessary to support the game. The PSX did, and provably did because several other games exploited it already.

Secondly: if you want to use that kind of logic, then - using the technology in FF7 for an RPG was obviously not unthinkable at the time, because Squaresoft thought of it and developed FF7, Q.E.D.

I'm just saying that calling it "unthinkable" is as huge and unwarranted an exaggeration as suggesting that it's the greatest game of all time is.

And yet you seems forgetting that I just wrote that I never consider FF7 as the best game all the time but rather as best RPG at that time...

I don't mean to offend, but I'm beginning to think that the reason that this argument continues is that you don't have a good enough grasp of English. I apologise that I can't communicate with you in your native language, I'd be far, far worse at it than you are at English, but you do seem to be reading the wrong meaning into a lot of my statements.

What I wrote up there means, in an alternative wording: "You know that calling FF7 the greatest game of all time is a huge overstatement - it's not true, by a large margin. I understand that you know this. However, I suggest that calling the use of technology "unthinkable" is just as much of an overstatement."

I don't believe that you think FF7 is the greatest game of all time, and I didn't try and suggest as much. Maybe we differ in our understandings of 'unthinkable' as well?

you keep meshing in RPG genre with other genre which is irrational and unfair.

Irrational?! Seriously? How so? It seems perfectly rational to me, I've explained my reasoning more than once.

[dott.Piergiorgio]

-And perhaps the most important aspect is Aerith's death. It's not common (or perhaps the first) game to feature permanent death of one main (and important party) and likeable member (and also potential romance character too). I believe it caused quite an uproar that time (perhaps even now).

Well. not to be critical of you, but you have done the sin of putting plain what is still considered THE FF VII spoiler, fifteen years later

Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio.
(still trying to find time for Ren'py gaming/dev/experimentation...)

[blankd]

Amusing tangent.

The PSX RPG market consisted of Beyond the Beyond and Persona, maybe Wild Arms. Voices, curse words, and black people aren't things found in a U.S. console RPG and then FF7 gets released (minus the voices which were available on Turbo Grafx CD and Turbo Duo games).

If you know Persona then you should know the "localized" Mark of that time period. And the dungeon BG were 3D and firstperson, there were also limited voices (ok ok in battle, just saying). If you're somehow talking about P2 then they HAD voiced cutscenes. Both also have the concept of taking place in a "modern" world with added supernatural factors. But yes the graphics were terrible by comparison.

[tigerkidde]

Amusing tangent.

The PSX RPG market consisted of Beyond the Beyond and Persona, maybe Wild Arms. Voices, curse words, and black people aren't things found in a U.S. console RPG and then FF7 gets released (minus the voices which were available on Turbo Grafx CD and Turbo Duo games).

If you know Persona then you should know the "localized" Mark of that time period. And the dungeon BG were 3D and firstperson, there were also limited voices (ok ok in battle, just saying). If you're somehow talking about P2 then they HAD voiced cutscenes. Both also have the concept of taking place in a "modern" world with added supernatural factors. But yes the graphics were terrible by comparison.

Forgot about the old Mark, his PSP incarnate was still in my head. Persona 1 had battle voices? The P2 voices echo in my head, but I can't remember P1 voices. Maya's "It's whoop ass time" and Tatsuya's cop brother, "It's over" are in my head.

I've also completely omitted Turbo Grafx CD and Sega CD RPGs with voice overs (i.e. Cosmic Fantasy 2, Theron's Quest, Lunar, Vay). Although I imagine that far less people got to experience those games pre-emulation days.

[Aurelia-Aurora]

*votes for what I THINK is seven because I can't understand stupid roman numerals*

That one was awesome. Newer ones are crappy. The first few were unappealing.