Final Hallyway Simulator XIII
June 4, 2012
12:00 am
This was more or less how I was talked out of buying the most recent Final Fantasy game that came out. I’m more into rpgs for the “wandering around the world and poking everything” aspect and less for the “watch cutscenes and dick with random encounters” part.
I’m probably doing it wrong.
Granted, this problem isn’t exclusive to JRPGs.
ALSO! It would really mean a lot to me if folks would have a looksee at this post on my Tumblr to see how to help contribute to my continued employment. I’ll probably make a big post on the site when I get a chance to, but for now that link should help explain things!
Final Fantasy 13 in a single comic… Love it! Just, entirely too accurate…
More like Final Hallway 13, amirite?
Final Hallway, lol
Final Fantasy 1, the first dungeon is one room, of decent size, but 99% of it is completely optional, as the exit is just walk forward 10 ft from the entrance, in the direction you were already facing…a hallway…
To be fair, the first dungeon was basically, “Okay, you’ve saved the princess. Now let’s start the real game.” It’s not hard to get lost in the rest of the game if you don’t know where to go, or even if you do in a couple of places.
I just WISH it was the final damn hallway… Ive been walking in a straight line for hours with nothing but an occasional random encounter and that damn clip clop footstep noise.
When it comes to dungeon design, he’d wind up getting fired from his first day at TSR or Wizards of the Coast.
Woo! The site’s back up!
I feel for ya, that’s why I picked up the Fable series and eventually Skyrim and the other Elder Scrolls games. Rpgs are just no fun if you have to do the same thing everytime you play through.
I am suddenly very glad I invested in Bastion instead.
Don’t get me wrong, Bastion was an awesome game with beautiful levels, an awesome story, and a unique difficulty system, but wasn’t it completely linear paths?
In fact, I thought it was a plot point (ground forms around you and all).
I enjoy fable for the silly whimsy of it and Elder Scrolls for the open world and oodles of backstory. TES got me into mythology by being deeper and more interesting than most of them.
Or … buy minecraft, make your own dungeon crawl and see if you can’t kill everyone! Gravel falls, everyone dies!
That’s….actuallly a really good idea for my minecraft server >w> Thank you~
I freaking love Minecraft! It is everything a world-builder game should be!
Actually the only thing i did not like about Skyrim were the straight (one way) dungeons
Welcome back and thanks for the update..
Pretty much why I stopped caring about the FF series.
FF is what got me into RPGs in the first place, 4 and 6 remain some of my favorite games, but the more recent releases are kind of heart breaking.
FF6 is my favorite FF. I started caring about FF pretty much after 9.
Chrono Trigger, however, is the greatest RPG of all time, in my opinion.
Chrono trigger was good, one of the few RPGs that I realy enjoyed. Best though? I’d say Tales of Phantasia gives a run for it’s money.
Tales of what now?
most people in the US never played it as the SNES version never made it overseas, and the GBA release came out in 2006 with little to no fanfare. Brilliant game…with voice acting…and custom hardware in the cartridge to boot (48 meg storage and sound processor). The Devs hated it though, because the company changed everything from art to character names to key plot points to make it “fit the audience” They left and made Star Ocean…which is why the two games are near identical…even down to the custom sound engine and expanded memory.
My bad… it should read, “I STOPPED caring…” not started. Fail.
I legitimately cannot wait until Commander Badass is back to normal. The longer he is an awful kawaii parody, the sadder I get. :(
Agreed. I miss the old gruff Commander…. Mentally hearing his voice coming out that punk-ass looking mouth just keeps screwing with my head.
On a different note, yes, I can totally relate to wanting to get the random encounters over with. Give me a choice to fight, dammit! I don’t wanna get dragged through the whole fight set-up scene just to press run! I whine, I know. But it’s fun to whine sometimes. :D
On the flip side, it seems like games that use random encounters are growing ever scarcer these days. Almost all of them feature monsters walking around on the map that only trigger combat when touched by now, except for a few that still use them as throwbacks to the old days.
Not being able to choose is part of the charm. The tension of not knowing if you can make it back to town or not can be great.
Being able to scale the amount random encounters based on your level and area would be pretty nice, though.
There IS a game like that (level scaling/random encounter): Wild Arms 3.
Agreed. I’m starting to get used to seeing Commander Badass like this, and it’s frightening me.
That’s why I stopped playing JRPG games save for a few, they are so repetitive
also I will spread the word about that kickstarter where I can I don’t have money but I’ll tell my friends :)
not all of them are that bad…in fact the majority aren’t…it’s just that the localization companies figure that’s the only thing that will sell to a western audience (which is stupid as all they have to do is look at their sales figures to see it isn’t)
I have no idea what happened to Square though…unless their dalliance with EA turned them to the dark side…Now they follow the western game publisher trend of buying a small dev company, slapping their logo on all the old games, let them make one or two more games, then fire everyone.
Ah glad to see the site is up, and things are starting to get back on track for you. Big thanks to Corbin Simpson and Jon Hayward for helping you get things sorted and up. Really suck that this came up to hassle you.
Love the page XD. I have to say every now and again I do like the chance of seeing your pages in WIP form. <3 I'll see what I can do to help with the Dick Figures movie, even if it's just spreading the word around.
Sweet! I’ll back that.
So the mastermind of this whole plot is Hawke? I wonder why she did it. Wasn’t allowed in the agency?
That would be Gackt, not Hawke.. Guess you’ll see when color is done.
Gackt is a recolor of hawk?
If you are mistaking that for Hawk, then Hawk must be based on Gackt, like so many badly designed protagonists these days.
Short but sweet version: No, Hawk is a recolor of Gackt.
To tell the truth, I don’t see any color in the comic, is mine broken? :o
Yes. Your whole internet is broken.
You might need to refresh it, your browser could be caching the black and white version.
Ah, thank you.
I thought Hawk was a chick.
Don’t let anyone tell you that wandering around poking things because you feel like it is the wrong way to play a videogame. A lot of videogames keep giving us “quests” and “achievements” and “scores” and “timers” and shit like that to keep us staring where the videogame designers intended to point us, but that sucks. Videogames should be big enough that one person could play it as an economy/strategy game, someone else could play it as a brawler, someone else as a FPS, someone else as a adventure game (roleplaying game minus the XP and loot grinding), and nobody has to play the other game modes unless they really like that kind of game too.
I think that’s taking it a bit far. I see no compelling need for “Super Mario Bros.” to have an FPS mode, for example.
(I mean, it would be *awesome*, I’ll give you that, but it’s not somehow failing its duty to the player by not having one.)
That’s why there are so many options for different games out there. No one says you have to play FF, so just go pick up whatever style game you like to play. The FF producers make those games because certain people like to play them and always will, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to. But that doesn’t mean they don’t make some real stinkers…
the problem is that FF and to a great Extent all other jrpgs have lost touch with themselves, they’ve become movies with boss battles rather than members of the genera they helped create (and are still being sold as.)
It’s rather like if you picked up the next Call of Duty and found that it was a side scrolling plat-former or or a Farming Sim rather than a FPS.
I’d heard the companies that pioneered the JRPG genre got their start with “visual novel” style games, if that’s true it could be a return to their roots?
They actually tried that before, it never got out the door
Well, it was called “Spore” and it was a horrible let down, but that aside…
…thereby upping budgets for every AAA game by millions and limiting the releases to one new game every decade or so?
Okay, you got me, I really want to see the commercial gaming industry as it exists cease to be. The reason for that is because it enslaves kids who don’t know better to a “career” of shit wages and sweatshop hours with a boot out the door once the overwork breaks them.
I also think that the value proposition on videogames sucks, those companies are demanding way more than their crap is worth: The fair price for shit with rootkits, user monitors and other DRM in it is free to whatever fool is willing to download it I figure.
Well, that’s a valid point. But the mobile market and the indy market are breaking the game cost paradigm in a good way, so we need to let the consumers learn how to sort the wheat from the chaff now. Once they start doing that, things will get better.
But in all honesty? I don’t want a game that does everything. What I want is a game that does one or three things VERY WELL. That’s the reality. We’ve had game try to cram in every genre and suck balls. No more of those, please.
I’m a games designer and I love my job – as low paid as it is. I love working on small mobile games ‘cos I get more input, some love working on massive console titles because it’s cutting edge and great bragging rights. I’m in no hurry for the industry to come crumbling down. Less crunch would be nice though :)
Seriously, if they made a game with all those modes, it wouldn’t be one game. It would be an engine designed with a generator to randomly create a game with a random plot (if you want plot) based on user input (Think Dwarf Fortress advanced world creation, but more complex for the various genres) beforehand.
If they designed a program that COULD create random, fully custom games like that, though, I would be dancing in the streets, and working my extended family to death to afford it. ’cause it would cost that much. And be that awesome.
I figured they meant more don’t let people tell you how you’re suppose to play a game as long as you’re enjoying it. Like people who ignore the story in Skyrim to see how high they can stack cheeses and then knock their cheese stacks over and then try to beat their best time racing the falling cheese down a hill. Or those guys who figured out how to have fun in Moonbase Alpha.
Oh, that too.
If you pay money for a toy and it doesn’t hurt anybody else you should get the final word in how to play with it.
You care if it hurts anybody?
Oh god, I totaly lost it at the John Madden comment in the clip xDD I can’t belive there are people who managed to make Moonbase Alpha fun. ♥ Kudos to them :) Also I enjoyed your take on Final Hallway XIII too, seem pretty accurate and legit to me.
I disagree, I think that’s just the fair deliverable for over fifty bucks USD at retail, without DRM. That’s real money and the marginal cost of delivery is near nothing when you consider that a pressed CD or DVD in bulk is somewhere between a penny and a quarter in price to physically make (online delivery could be even cheaper). That saving should be passed on to the consumer, but it usually isn’t for a lot of stupid reasons I don’t want to subsidize. They also piss it away in game-review marketing bullshit, a pile of contract bullshit with the store/chain outlet, promotional boxes of air requiring something like a hundred times as much shelf space as the CD Jewel-case they should be selling would take, the DRM, and many other stupid things that are all impediments to delivering the desired product to the consumer.
Fuck that shit, these jackasses are overpaid. If you want seventy bucks from me you better give me something for it.
Now hang on a minute.
There’s more factored into the cost of a game than the CD/DVD and the box it comes in. Someone has to pay the designers, the developers, the testers, QA, technical writers, coders, etc. That all factors into the cost of the game.
Advertising, on the other hand, does not. Advertising has it’s own budget, and they have to spend that budget, independent of the game’s cost. Trust me on this – advertising does not factor into the cost of anything, except after the game is released and the profit is calculated. And then if the game shows low profit despite good sales, it’s because they spent too much money on advertising (and you’ll see that the next batch of marketers will try to do more with less, otherwise their jobs are gone).
I find it somewhat amusing that you decry the poor wages and long hours in the game industry, and then say that games should be bigger and better for the same retail price… or cheaper. Believe me, we’re doing the most as cheaply as we can. There are some inefficiencies in the industry for sure, but in general we do things as cheaply as we can without just outsourcing absolutely everything. I’m sure there will be someone who will figure out how to eliminate some of the wasted work that goes on earlier in the iterative process, but even that would only increase efficiency by maybe 10-20%.
Wages are low because so many people want the job, so it goes to the people willing to work long hours for low wages. It sucks and I wish I made more money, but I’ve gotten to the point where I’m pretty used to swearing like a sailor at work so I have few other options.
Sadly, in many cases indies aren’t any better as far as work hours and pay goes – what you get for going indie is less stability as a tradeoff for more creative liberty and passion. I’m not saying that’s a bad payoff, but I know a lot of indie devs go without health insurance. Hell, from the stories I heard last night drinkin’ with people after E3, indies are often worse when it comes to hours. The “sleeping-under-your-desk-for-a-month” stories were noticeably more common with indies.
I am aware of the hits versus flops system; the industry loses money on the majority of top-tier projects but the true successes are enough to keep everybody still interested. That’s just how it goes with products with high fixed costs and low variable costs usually. One of the problems is that the industry has pushed the bleeding edge in production values too far. The industry standard for the last fifteen years was that you need ever greater numbers of artists and advance-of-market graphics hardware on loan from ATI or nVidia to develop your game with to fit the treadmill of selling videogames by pretty screenshots, with graphics settings that are never turned on except for when you want screenshots that are really pretty. This overinvestment in production values has made the industry afraid to innovate outside of small-budget games, and drives up their costs of producing content.
Then they further push up the cost level by establishing servers for authentication and adding other DRM to the product, then they launch the cost figure into the sky by shipping huge boxes of air when they have to fight and bribe tooth and nail for inches of shelf space in game stores. What ever happened to selling your game by how good its demo is? (Yeah, I know, the business-majors talk about competing with your own demo and how you want to make people pay to play your game instead of giving them a chance to play it and decide they don’t want to pay for it. It’s a total lack of faith in the product that leads to this thinking.)
Overall, I think the only thing that can solve the idiot-management problem is the de-commercialization of videogames, or at least the collapse of the seven figure and up development market. The historic trends in big budget videogame production just suck too much and are too prevalent in the industry.
Makes me think of all the games where just a door or 6ft gate is all that’s separating you from the boss…
Girly Man:”You mean to tell me you didn’t get caught in that labyrinth of corridors underneath this castle in order to find the key to my door?”
CBA: (Pathetic attempt at his way of speaking) “Course we didn’t. We just kicked in the damn door. Yer tellin me no one’s ever thought of kickin in a 3 inch thick piece ‘a wood before?”
Girly Man:”I can’t say anyone has.”
There are plenty of times I’ve bemoaned Kratos for the same apparent oversight. For a guy who can kill a titan in hand to hand combat, you’d think he’d have less trouble breaking architecture and pushing statues.
Seriously. Grow a backbone and just break stuff! It’s cathartic! >:-)
“But it doesn’t scream when I hit it! And nobody is going to die when I do it! Whats my motivation for doing this? At least if I go the convoluted way I get to murder more things.”
At least thats what I’d imagine his motivation being. Going for the maximum kill-count!
“MURDER -ALL- THE THINGS!”
It’s like Pac Man, with more blood.
One of the things I loved about Arcanum (and I loved Arcanum) was that you could HAMMERFELL LOCKPICK or almost everything if you didn’t feel particularly attached to your weapon’s durability. Carrying a spare Fire Axe +1 and a couple of Strength Potions made /not/ rolling a thief character a viable party choice.
Nevermind that you could just murder quest givers to get the stuff that they were offering you as reward if the quest was something you felt the quest giver had no business bothering you with. :D
I just wish Arcanum hadn’t had ass-ugly graphics and such bizarre voice acting choices.
Apparently there’s a Dragon Age mod that uses a strength check on warrior class characters to open chests instead of just lockpicking on a rogue.
There is. I never play without it.
AND I’M JUST NOW HEARING ABOUT THIS?!
Wait, does it go with DA:O, or DA2, or both?
One for Skyrim too :D
Don’t forget good ole Neverwinter Nights and the Monk Class – don’t need no lockpicks OR weapons AND no worrying about poison traps either *smirk*.
The one foible of that game was that everyone identified you by the class you chose for first level despite being primarily another class … ie. Ranger 1 Fighter 3 and monk17 …..
leads to situation like – he’s Ranger, take all his stuff, poison him and he’s helpless Earl. *PUNCH* … Earl? Hey Earl! What just happened?
Xenosaga has the infamous ‘sewer level’.
You go through an entire tedious plodding level to get from one side of a corridor to the other.
Not like, one end to the other. One *side* to the other. You start on the right-hand edge. There’s a three-foot wide gap between the left edge and the right edge (where the sewage flows), and of course you can’t just step over it. Even if your characters can jump over six feet vertically, both in cutscenes and by pressing the X button.
Oops, I meant xenogears. My mistake.
I can’t say much since I never liked an FF past VI (with the exception of IX), but yeah, hearing about XIII pretty much killed any interest I’d ever have in the franchise again.
And I’m still annoyed with VIII for Square stripping Xenogears’s budget in order to finance it…
Glad to see somebody besides me likes IX. And yeah, VIII was crap and it is a travesty that Xenogears got the shaft because of it.
What I didn’t like about IX was I could get the best equipment just by stealing from every boss, so I didn’t come close to dying once.
FFX is still my favorite… but any past that are just a bit too emo for me, too.
I liked FFX. It was a really good movie and a pretty passable video game besides. :P
Whiny crybaby Tidus, not emo? Squall “I’m the first emo guy ever” Leonhart? Seriously?
In FFX’s defense, it got really entertaining if you switched all of Wakka’s lines with Bender’s and there was Auron, because, Auron. He and Jecht both countered Tidus’ sissyness.
At least with Squall it’s made perfectly clear over the course of the game that’s he’s acting like an immature idiot and grows beyond it (slowly of course, one doesn’t fix over adecade of emotional retardation over night) with the help of the others.
Speaking of Squall & co, I read the website “Squall’s Dead” and it changed my perception of that game from a load of vapid nonsense that made no sense to “ooh, mindscrew of Fight Club proportions!”
The game does make sense, they just left a few things out that really should have been in. And Squall Isead is like Rinoa Is Ultimecia, fun to think about but not remotely close to true.
Coelasquid, you’ve pretty much summed up why I rarely buy big-budget games any more, and stick mostly to indie games. I want what’s fun in games, not what’s pretty. That’s why eagerly spent a whole $3 (would’ve paid $10-15 easily) for the Wrath of the Lamb expansion to The Binding of Isaac within the first 20 minutes of its releases.
Satirical comments on modern video games? In a video game webcomic? HOW DARE YOU?!
BSing aside, it’s great to have the site back. Thanks again for your continued hard work!
Congratulation for getting the site back up again ^^
Fun comic as always :-)
I have to admit that the game was pretty lame for only allowing you to explore once you got to the third disc, and even then you had to get to a certain place before that became possible.
Doubt it means much but I’ll tweet that kickstarter, Holy crap I never knew you guys made the drawn together movie.
IT WAS THE BEST MOVIE EVAR
I like the idea too, I am prepared to donate a few hundred… how do I do that?
first of all nice work getting the site back up online annd second nice to own the boss by skipping the dungon he he he mejoras mask all over ^^
Now this is something I just posted after caching up today, and is just a comment on basicly the previous three to four comics.
One thought retains to castlevania the other to the staight shot dungeons.
In fact both thoughts merged one and the same, as though it led to my specutation that wasn’t castlevania1 for the NES a straight shot,
or was that part of the last three comics as one larger joke.
P.S. I wanted to also throw out an idea for a future idea, mainly this a thought for the producer of the comic but if anyone is to go for this make it reality I would be much obliged. I was walking home from a convenient store in the location I live at and overheard a song I knew. It was the song “I need a hero”
by Bonnie Tyler if I’m not mistaken, when I had heard it an idea popped into my head. It was that of Kratos from GoW yelling at Bonnie Tyler while shaking her
saying “I AM A HERO!” While Bonnie has this terorized face, there being old style boom box in the backround playing the song.
WOW! I made that a bit longer than the original comment, didn’t mean for that to happen.
See, this is why a scheme to turn everything pretty won’t really make front page news. A hero fighting through moving walls of fancy pillows and traps that throw rose petals just doesn’t have the same impact as death rays and spike pits.
Colesquid, you have no idea how you have made my week by posting this… at the risk of sounding like a whiner this week has been terrible in the fact that I had to go through surgery, and due to the fact that I have been sick for the last 2 weeks I was unable to visit my grandmother before she died. on top of those 2 acts of god, it seemed that I was cursed as my favorite webcomic was down due to an act of god…. While this webcomic doesn’t make up for the pain or the loss, it is a good Omen that things may be looking up.
happy that you are back,
Roukov
Good to see the site’s back up. Do you have any advice for a fellow webcomic person who is worried about what to do if the site goes offline?
Have friends like Jon and Corbin.
And keep redundant backups.
Back up every time you update, really. That way you’ve always got a fresh backup waiting to go. Hardware failures happen more often than you’d think.
Rotate backup tapes or backup harddrives. Don’t rely on just one, and don’t buy two from the same batch either – nothing worse than having one crap out when you don’t quite have enough cash to replace it instantly, and then have the other crap out the next week.
Test your backups regularly. Also sucks: Having your live go blooey, and then find out your backups quietly died several months ago.
Backup your site, the HTML and scripting and web-resolution copies, and backup your original files on your home computer, the ones that are your high rez masters. You’ll REALLY regret it eight years from now if you want to do a book and only have web resolution kicking around.
Get an off-site backup if you can. If you have two (or three, or ten) backup drives but they’re all in your apartment when some asshole breaks in and steals everything, you’re screwed. You’re equally screwed if your unit burns down or gets flooded or blown away by a hurricane, or a crazy ex breaks in and takes a fireax to all your stuff, so get an off-site backup if it’s important to you that everything keep working after a total disaster.
THIS. <3
The one-straight-path-to-the-end thing is why I just can't get into some games. I do not want a story that occasionally asks for me to smash a button, I want to be able to eff up somewhere, have to backtrack to get to the goal and feel like I accomplished something instead of bludgeoning whatever interrupted the cutscenes this time.
To be honest, i don’t know why everyone hates on XIII so much. OK yeah, a lot of exploration was kicked out, but the game more than made up for it with the graphics. Most of the time it was straight-shooting because it was trying to tell a STORY. You had to read the back story in order to find out whats driving the character. I understand this was difficult for most people, but once you do the game becomes a lot cooler.
Great job getting the site back up btw, made me cry on monday when it was broken =3
The exact problem with that, Psychee, is that it’s NOT playing like a GAME if it plays like a MOVIE. We’re GAMERS. We want GAMES. Don’t you dare cut up our GAMEPLAY for the sake of anything else. It’s a spit in the face of someone who desires to PLAY a game, not watch one. And being forced to read back story to enjoy it? That’s a rubbish idea if I’ve ever heard one. “You can’t really enjoy this game until you’ve read this book that gives all the details.” …NO. Don’t EVER sacrifice the gameplay of a game for some cosmetic facet. That makes you a shit game designer. End of story.
I guess the TL;DR version of that is that Squeenix ought to just make FF movies from here on out.
They tried that once. Didn’t work out well for ’em, as I recall.
It might have if they’d gone with something a little more Fantasy oriented than The Spirits within.
They could do a few movie follow ups to some of the games, some of them could definitely use a follow up, clear up a few things.
It wasn’t the sci-fi part. I mean, that seems to be what irked FF fans the most, but to the general public it was the fact that it was a vapid cliche storm crammed with textbook bad dialog. It was just a bad movie regardless.
Only major genre problem was how awkwardly it mixed what fantasy elements it had with the sci-fi setting. I don’t think the it was meant to be as new-agey as it came across: IMO that was just the unintended product of trying to mash fantasy tropes into a hard sci-fi style “our future” setting. Should’ve either gone more full sci-fi, or else set it in a more blended non-earth world.
It did have great visual design though.
Gah, I guess that’s not actually all that different than saying “if they’d gone with something a little more Fantasy oriented”, sorry. I suppose I’m mostly reacting to all the games’ fans I’ve heard in the past griping as if the movie’s dissimilarity to the games was it’s biggest problem. It really, really wasn’t.
I remember advent children as quite popular, and I loved it, personally.
I’ve only ever played one FF game, and that was Dirge of Cerberus, though.
Feel free to yell at me for not knowing a thing about a real FF game.
It doesn’t hurt to have readable lore in a game, as long as it’s in balance. Like Mass Effect. The first few games had tons of lore you could read as you found it, and it definitely made the game cooler. So I didn’t have to sit through massive cutscenes about how every race in the galaxy came into existence.
Gameplay >>>>>> Graphics
Graphics aren’t worth shit if the game isn’t fun to play. That’s one of the biggest problems with the Final Fantasy series these days, it’s dropped gameplay in favor of looking pretty and it’s just not worth it anymore. The stories aren’t given the attention in game they’d need, if it can;t stand on it’s own it’s FAILED.
Look at FFVII. It was a blocky, visually unimpressive mess for the most part but the story gave us enough information to care and the gameplay was fun and it’s one of the popular in the series. These latest games do the opposite, the story isn’t adequetely explained in game, the gameplay’s been scaled down and it all looks pretty. It’s not a fair trade.
I’m definatly of the Gameplay > Graphics school of thought on games as well. not only is it killing game quality, but because they’ve pushed the budget cost of each game so high the number of new games coming out each year is dwindling.
Also their current business model makes no sense whatsoever they are sinking in billions of dollars and countless man-hours on each game and only the years big blockbusters even have a chance of breaking even, they would have better odds taking all that money to Vegas and hitting the craps tables.
Instead those that lose and go broke are simply bought out by the winners or split off into new companies and the cycle continues for another year.
TL;DR: Quality and Quantity have been sacrificed on the alter of Graphics while video game execs play Russian runlet with their Companies.
That’s not exactly fair. They’ve been able to tell pretty rich stories in their previous games without cutting off an aspect of the game. Not being able to explore is a pretty serious mistake for an rpg, and graphics can never make that up.
A problem going into a franchise game is that not only does it have to compete with the entire franchise as far as story and graphics goes, it has to do as well or better in actual gameplay. And most people will probably agree that the order of importance is typically gameplay, then graphics, then story. Because, if I don’t like playing your game, it won’t matter how impressive your story might be.
Hooray, your site’s back up and the archives seem to be intact! So glad that things worked out.
Congrats on the site being back up and having an update besides! I appreciate your effort, Coelasquid.
I love the fur the evil overlord is wearing at neck and wrist, and I love the old microphone he’s boasting into. Nice touches to the arch evil bad guys of old. Also a nice touch is Jonesy’s shocked look throughout this exchange; of all the horrors of the dungeon, this one renders her speechless. Thanks!
Gackt’s hair has always mesmerized me. I keep expecting it to be a tupe made out pf a live bird that will someday suddenly fly away. You have kept that belief alive.
I expect it to deflect bulets due to all the gel.
Due to unnecessary voice acting, graphic, cutscene, and download packs, it takes too much effort to create a good story, compelling world, character growth, just to make the same amount of money. I miss old gamers.
Huzzah~!! Commmander is back in action!! \o/
Yep, FFXIII in a nutshell. I didn’t really particularly care much about FFXII either, but at least it had a ton of land to run around in and explore just for the heck of it. Hell, they even had hunting marks that took you to the four corners of the map.
FFXIII is like…the grand flowchart that just goes in a straight line down to the bottom.
I dunno. I dont quite agree with the link’s OP(This link”Granted, this problem isn’t exclusive to JRPGs.”)
I mean essentially what would happen is on the left: “Where the hell am I? And where am I going?”
On the second is “Right this way sir to the next cutscene.”
Both have its flaws but if I had to choose I’d take the linear path.
Otherwise…
“Where am I going? Am I supposed to shoot these guys? What this button do? Nothing? Does it open a door somewhere? Am I supposed to know where this door is? Does it have a time limit? Where am I going? What am I doing?”
Still in an ideal world I’d like a map/level that rewards exploration but also has a clear defined “Go here to progress in the game.”
It’s nice to see the up… and had a laugh at gackt taking dungeon design cues from the FFXIII team as opposed to the early tales teams (which made some difficult dungeons)
But it’s sort of deplorable how fashionable bashing on jRPGs has become these days. As much as I’d like to rip into something deserving, people are bashing the recent screw ups in the genre so much that they’ve taken any fun I might had in ripping into it. I only feel sorry for it now.
I believe that’s called the Oshawott sympathy reflex.
Hey now, that pokemon has a pretty bad ass evolution. But back on my original point, FFXIII (both) and the somewhat recent flood of idea factory games (Argrest, Neptunia, etc) has given jRPGs a sizable black eye. That doesn’t mean there’s not good ones out there… they just don’t have much publicity.
Every genre has its turds, though, JRPG, shooter, platformer, etc. With the JRPG genre in particular however it’s as if reviewers look for every reason to crap on every game now.
I’ve noticed people docking points and expressing disappointment over criteria that other games are never held to. Like Tales of Graces f getting complaints from certain reviewers about things like its combat system operating on the same basics as previous entries but with a few new changes and improvements to keep it fresh – things that are the entire point of being a game in a series in the first place, and other games don’t so much as get a comment on it. Or even worse, one review flat-out lies and says the gameplay is the same as the other entries in the series, despite that particular entry’s combat being majorly different from any of the other 3D Tales games, and despite the gameplay being the best part of the series in the first place.
Reviews are supposed to be objective but they sure don’t feel like it anymore. Not to say that a game like Tales of Graces f didn’t have its own flaws (the main plot, mostly) but it’s as if reviewers go out of their way to turn everything in a JRPG into a flaw these days.
That’s what happens when a genre stops being very widely popular or other genres prove more popular/money making (Companies like Activision outright BRIBE reviewers practically with spa stays, etc.)
Namco has never shown Tales much love and I’d imagine this’d extend to money spent on magazines, futher hindering things.
But yeah there’s a real double standard as Tales’ considerable overhaul is ignored while Modern Warfare is mostly the same.
You can’t be seriously bagging on Hyperdimensional Neptunia.
Have you seen how popular that game was in Europe and Canada? Just because the US didn’t really pick it up doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful and fun to play. I actually LIKED that game compare to other IF titles (because it actually made fun of itself while trying to be somewhat true to the JRPG scene).
I wonder what his obligatory-second-form-with-no-real-purpose-beyond-meeting-a-standard will be… Evil French Maid? Evil School Girl? Maybe he’ll go in the opposite direction and become Bald Gackt from Bunraku, and then he’ll spend the whole fight lamenting his hideousness!
Wherever this is going, I’m looking forward to it!
Yeah, XIII was pretty high on the crap-o-meter. XIII-2 is pretty good though.
Except the “ending”, of course, which consists of “buy the next sequel/downloadable content for the actual ending. To be continued!”
Except in plot… ugh…
Gackt should’ve moved into the Swamp Cave from the original FF game. Man, that place’ll give you nightmares.
Do not speak about the Swamp Cave, you do not mention the Swamp Cave *curls up in fetal position*
Wait why is the swamp cave bad.
It’s a multilevel maze which is actually pretty easy to get lost in in which about 80% of all the monsters inflict poison at a point in the game where you might be able to buy ten antidotes without serious grinding. And the boss of that particular dungeon is variable between 1 and 9 psychodemons(mindflayers), which, if I remember correctly, can confuse you.
Don’t forget the haunted forest south of Stormwind in WoW. Just turn off or down the region music, set up the ambient sounds and then turn down the room lights as you enter and explore the woods. [place still makes me jump]
Just don’t spend too much time in the Plague Lands with the parasite infested bears – that is just plain way too creepy.
If Gackt were smart, he’d keep his princess in another castle.
I hate toad.
Final Fantasy aside, this is what’s wrong with most modern video games. While we’re at it, just follow the floating arrow.
This is so very true. We rented 13, put it in for eight minutes maybe – most of which was loading and patching – went ‘that’s very interesting’ and took it out again and back to the store. It’s a shame because I really used to like FF games, but if I wanted nothing but free-action combat without even much of a pretense at a story and it all on rails, well – I think that’s the point at which I’ll give up games.
This is exactly why I pretty much gave up on FF after X, not to mention to complete battle overhaul, much preferred the older turn based system. Time to download VIII and IX, and cut through them again, I think.
For Dungeoneering there are several good guides, Anything relating to Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon Keeper and Dungeons for starters. for more modern versions, Evil Genius.
have you ever played legend of grimrock?
Gackt is finally here. Time to kick his ass and turn everyone back!
Commander’s chops on Panel 4 look really really weird, like they’ve suddenly gotten very long just for that panel (they don’t look so much in, say, Panel 6)
half the time i don’t know whats going on in this comic but i love it anyways the commander needs to get back to normal though and soon :/
One minor issue with the second link…
wasn’t most of the criticisms of the Duke Nukem Forever its misogyny, its poor sense of humour, its tendency to break up actual run and gun gameplay with too many puzzles/other distractions, and its co-opting of modern mechanics (limited arsenal and regenerating health) making it feel like a sub-par modern shooter as opposed to the old school run-and-gun type gameplay people were hoping for?
Sure, the graphics were noted as being behind the times, but they were never the main flaw the reviews jumped on and tore the game apart over.
The guy’s pro-DNF argument is pretty flawed even in the sense that he’s saying it was non-linear.
I found the game somewhat enjoyable, despite the addition of modern elements, I ay invest.
ack, just noticed a goof… should be the ‘first link’ sorry
So like the Elder Scrolls?
I sat through a good chunk of FFXIII because I heard that it eventually opened up from a single narrow path into a massive world with tons to explore.
Then I got to the massive world and realized that it was still a single path, they just made it wider.
…At least it looked and sounded nice. Gameplay and story be damned, the superficial qualities were there.
This is a post saying how much I appreciate Jonsey’s face in every single comic.
Longtime reader, first time poster.
I love this comic, it is seriously one of the weekly reads, and it is gonna be fun to see how this story arc ends.
As for the main topic of discussion, I kinda enjoyed FFXIII, not as much as the previous games in the serious, but I cannot say I regret buying it. But I must admit, I have become a bigger fan of RPGS by “From Software” after trying out their “Kings Field” series and Soul series, ” Demon’s Souls ” and ” Dark Souls “.
Migth be the fact that standing in dragon fire will actually kill you if you stand in it.
I wouldn’t let that discourage you entirely. It’s still a good game, even if it is quite linear. I found it a bit of a trade off. What parts of the world they did make was breath taking.
Were* This is what happens when you don’t re-proof read after altering an earlier part of a sentence…
The more I read about you and learn about, Coelasquid, the more it seems you have the same exact tastes as I. You work on Ugly Americans AND Dick Figures. WTF! PLEASE TELL ME YOU WERE THE ONE WHO DREW THE MANBIRDS!
One of the first RPG style games I ever played as a kid was a gameboy color game called “Magination”. It had a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor about itself, especially if you inspect certain objects around the world. Ever since then, I obsessive-compulsively have to press A at everything in every room in every RPG I play.
Been to Tumblr, went to Kickstarter, funded. Now I just hope enough other people do the same so that this project works out as well as the one for Wasteland 2 did.
Huh? Kickstarter? What? What project?
I thought wasteland 2 was a bomb? Maybe I’m thinking of a different wasteland.
i wonder when and even if she is going to introduce zack fair
I don’t quite understand the dungeon part but the gameplay I sure as hell understand. Final fantasy XIII and it’s sequel had such clustered turn based gameplay. It was too akward to control anything and the impact of what was happening was so dull in battles. I had wished they stuck to the normal turn based system like in FF IV. At the very least the fights were more whole hearted into surviving and attacking rather than sitting back and watching 3D character models take a few swings or movements occasionally. Something like Crisis Core would turn it up a bit atleast.
The main page still claims “Updated Mondays” in the title thing (I don’t know what to call it; the text and icon that show up on a tab for the page). No offense, but maybe you should change that to “Updated Weekly.” It’s pretty rare the comic actually goes up on Monday; changing it to weekly would probably stop people from whining, and it would be more accurate.
Since headers are apparently legally binding I changed it for you.
I can’t complain as long as it’s “one comic sometime before Sunday each week OR a reason why not” – gives real life a chance to intervene and lets me look forward to a nice surprise later in the week so not EVERYTHING is necessarily on a Monday.
Also, the hallway issue – that’s part of why I really like FFXII, as the areas are monstrous. Same goes for Xenoblade Chronicles with little areas off to every side that give rewards for locating them. For a compulsive explorer like myself, it’s almost heaven.
xD I like the new one.
I honestly didn’t mean to offend you or anything; I just thought it shouldn’t say Monday if it isn’t typically Monday.
Regardless, I love Manly Guys Doing Manly Things; I hope you continue to find time to make these, because it’s one of the only webcomics out there that has legitimately made me laugh out loud on numerous occasions.
Hey Humble Bundle is poor, they are trying to make money to make better games, give them a penny get 4 games give em eight dollars get 8 games, they’re all worth more than 10 so hey to the people complaining about overpriced games here’s your chance to get 4 for the price you decide…or eight if you’re a big spender. https://www.humblebundle.com/
Coelasquid and to anyone who is arguing about Final Fantasy 13 and the first half being a hallway map, Final Fantasy 10 would like a word with all of you. Seriously, Final Fantasy 10 was just “go down this hallway to a dungeon-like town and repeat till end of game”. They just made it look “bigger” than it really was. How is that any different than what Final Fantasy 13 did?
Personally, I thought Final Fantasy 13 was much better and had more replay value than:
FF11 (Boring)
FF12 (HATED and boring)
FF14 (Didn’t even pick it up after hearing the word “MMORPG” in the initial trailer, way before I found out it was disaster)
FF1 (rusty)
FF2 (damn mess)
FF3 (boring)
FF5 (okay, but just meh)
FF8 (GAH THAT CARD SYSTEM. THOSE CHARACTERS (except for Laguna, he’s cool). THAT STUPID LOVE PLOT. I HATE THIS GAME. Why can’t LIghtning punch Squall and tell him to wake up?)
I nearly got out of FF until 13 came along. I didn’t buy FF13 until 6 months after it came out because FF12 gave me such a bad taste in my mouth. I do like both types of styles (open and linear) so I guess I was more forgiving. Then again, my first FF game was FF10. I guess I was being nostalgic about it.
I do agree that the FF series is declining after FF10 though. It’s gone from “generally agreed upon” to “personal taste and opinion”. If I can only find one numbered game out of four titles that is entertaining, then I’m probably going to be done with the series. Kingdom Hearts is still really good and I want to see what Versus 13 has in store though. However, if this wave of “25% chance of finding a fun game” keeps going, then I’m out.
The real problem is the japanese gamers. They are 5 years behind western gamers. They would rather buy a linear game than an open world. That is why there is a big gap between eastern and western gamers. These Japanese gamers barley bought the game of the year “Batman Arkham City”. Batman sold 400,000 copies, which is less than the initial week of FF13-2’s 528,000 copies. Japan was also negative towards sales on Xenoblade chronicles. It sold the best in America, but the worst in Japan. (A JRPG that was bad in Japan and successful in America? Go figure, right?)
I’m not saying that the Square is not innocent on this ( I have to pay to see the fully explained ending of FF13-2, really? And fire Wada and his greedy ass, he’s a problem too.) However, eastern gamers are not innocent victims either. Their stubbornness on linearity is hurting FF’s outlook as well. Until Japan learns that open world is the only way to move gaming forward, I’m afraid we will never see a “generally positive to masterpiece” Final Fantasy ever again.
It’s unfair to say “An entire society of gamers is wrong” if that’s what Japanese gamers want to play, that’s what Japanese companies are gonna make. I’m not sure why it would be baffling that they didn’t buy a game Western Society decided was game of the year.
But that’s just it. Gamers are there to give feedback to gaming companies. However, the complaints have to be generally agreed upon, or a majority.
After FF13’s release, director Motomu Toriyama felt that the lower-than-expected review scores for a main Final Fantasy series game came from reviewers who approached the game from a Western point of view. These reviewers were used to games in which the player was given an open world to explore, he said, noting that “this expectation contrasted with the vision the team set out to create.” He states “Some value it highly, while others really don’t like it.” He then added, “Should Final Fantasy become a new type of game or should Final Fantasy not become a new type of game? The customers have different opinions. It’s very difficult to determine which way it should go.”
When you have such diverse opinions like east and west today, which audience do you sell to? Do you go with the opinion to your home country, or is the opinion of outside countries greater than that? Even if Square focused on selling to America instead, FF13’s initial sales week was 1.7 million PS3 copies in Japan. While FF13’s initial sales week in America was 800,000 copies with PS3 and 500,000 copies with the Xbox 360. That is still less than Japan’s sales. It’s just not good business decision. And this has been always like this, way before FF13.
FF7 Japan: 2.3 million copies in the first week
FF7 America: 500,000 in three weeks
FF10 Japan: 1.4 million copies in the first week
FF10 America: 1 million copies in the first week
FF12 Japan: 1.764 million in the first week
FF12 America: 1.5 million copies in the first week
We Americans have ALWAYS been the minority in sales and in audience focus. This has not changed. What made FF7-10 to be regarded so highly was the fact that both audiences had the same exact to generally same taste. Now our tastes differ and it’s because Japan, as a majority, is behind us. They need to get with the times: Linearity is in the past. It’s the old thing. Free world and exploration is the new thing.
Western society claimed that Batman was game of the year, but it also claimed Xenoblade Chronicles was the “JRPG of this Generation”. And that said JRPG did not do very well in Japan. So what about that Coelasquid? Wouldn’t it be more logical for the home country to buy the “JRPG of this Generation” more than America like FF7 did, or is it that Japan gamers do not seem to realize they are the ones behind the times and therefore partially responsible of the decline of a franchise like FF?
I honestly don’t know or care what you’re so completely indignant about.
Oh one more thing:
I wanted to ask you if Lightning Farron from FF13 would show up in this comic? I remember seeing Cloud, Squall, Sora, and Tidus show up as flashbacks and had to wonder if Lightning would make a cameo in this.
Lets put it this way:
First scene Lightning is in is her kicking ass in the train she is on. Afterwords she proceeds to punch Snow (bishonen male character) in the face several times, tells the whiney kid Hope (another bishonen male character) to “go away and she can’t take care of him at one point”, then proceeds to whip Hope into shape as best as she can when he won’t leave.
After that, she slaps Fang (another character in FF13) for being the cause of what happened to her sister (bad stuff happened), starts leading the smaller characters like an army unit and then proceeds to kick even more ass in the last 2 chapters of FF13.
Basically, she has the most balls that I have seen in a main character or character of this series since Auron from FF10. I have to wonder what the Commander’s response to Lightning would be?
Get your own God damn blog, you filthy vagrant.
Yeeeeeeah. I’m not contributing to a project other when other animators are saying you’re asking about 5 times more than what it actually costs. The young male demo the show attracts likes to piss away money so I’m sure you’ll get enough for a movie in no time.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the “Five times more than what it costs” number from. Dick Figures is very much about using simple designs to pull off high quality animation. When it started it was very much a low budget shown, something that Ed and Zack did in their spare time after work and recruited help for on the weekends, but since then the budget and production schedule has increased with a dedicated team assigned to the show. The boards are immaculate and the action and staging has been pushed far beyond where it started, especially if you compare something like First day of Cool or Kung-Fu Winners to their earlier episodes like A Bee or Something. Even just the style guide for animation and design on Dick Figures in more detailed than any other show I’ve worked on (Prime Time included), because it needs to be crude in exactly the right way so every animator’s work blends seamlessly.
If you’re skeptical that simple designs could rack up a big budget when you’re dealing with professional animators being paid professional wages for professional quality, just remember that the South Park movie cost $21 million (even your average 22 minute South Park episode supposedly costs $300,000).
Only Final Fantasy games I have played are the GBA remakes of 4 and 5.
Dragon Warrior/Quest are probably my favourites. Now if only I could find the cable to connect my NES to the TV sometime before they stop making compatible televisions.
SWEET JESUS! …I had no ideea you were involved with the production of Dick Figures O.O
And what is this I hear about a full feature-film?!
Gakt is going to spend the next episode sounding like he/she is passing a kidney stone…I mean “powering up”.
Personally, I love both linear RPG’s and non-linear RPG’s. For linear RPG’s, I play them for the story. For non-linear RPG’s, I play them for the freedom.
Example: Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts 2 are some of my favorite Square Enix games, because while they were linear, the story was also quite gripping. On the flip side, I love Fallout 3 and Oblivion, because although I never paid much attention to the story, it was only because I was having so much fun messing around.
A lot of people around the internet make it sound like these kinds of issues are black and white. You either love the 360 or you love the PS3. You either love Pepsi, or you love Coca-Cola. You either like chocolate, or vanilla. You either like Marvel, or DC. You either like — you get the picture.
I say, can’t we have both? There’s no shame in liking both sides. By liking both sides, your enjoyment pretty much doubles!
BTW, not sure if I ever commented on here, but I really love this comic.
FFXIII … If it being a Hallway Simulator is your first criticism, that at least implies you made it to the end.
I have no issue with how linear it is.
I do, however, take issue with the fact that the game crashed in the first battle once I got down to the planet… and cannot progress beyond that point. If I get in a battle… the game crashes. End of.
And apparently I got lucky. SOME people who had crash issues with FFXIII had it actually screw up their console… permanently. Square Enix, of course, just dismissed the complaints.