Killer7 SINdicate

[Jack]

Post whatever regarding jrpgs.
This is a genre that started off as Ultima wannabes, Wizardy hybrids, and are now just a bunch of Visual Novel Harem games.
This is why this thread won't focus on any era, and will be about Jrpgs as a whole.


Shin Megami Tensei Nine, that's the game that SMT 3 should've been.

It's basically like a Digimon Cyber Sleuth version of SMT1. The cyberpunk metropolitan setting is intact, and you're mostly fighting against other devil summoners.

Every demon has their own walking animation. Why is that so noteworthy? Every damn demon in SMT, & the DDS series had no walking animations at all. They just skied or slid on the floor, lol.
I wish they had kept the Mezzo Forte artist. I think their work when combined with Kaneko's demon art, made for the best aesthetic.

The music is pretty funky & ravish.



Have you ever noticed how Jrpgs from the 90s & 2000s had much darker, more mature plots than current-era rpgs? The best example is Final Fantasy 7. Look at how personal that game's plot was.

Tifa: I wonder what Aeris felt... when she was on that altar...?

Cloud: I'm sure she wanted to give her life for the planet...

Tifa: Really? I wonder? I don't think that's it at all.
I think she didn't think she would die at all, but that she planned on coming back all along.
She always used to talk about the 'Next time'.
She talked about the future more than any of us...
Although she never talked about it to us she must've had a rough life...
I think Aeris looked forward to tomorrow and the future more than anyone...
she must've had many many dreams...

Compare that to how FF7 is now with the Remake. It's no longer a story about discovering your true sense of self, and overcoming personal traumas.

FF7 Remake is now a story about defying destiny and all sorts of Fanfictiony garbage, which rewrites the game to be about a tale of saving the world, when the original FF7 wasn't like that at all.

In the original FF7, we didn't even know if they saved the world or not. It was left ambiguous because saving the world wasn't the point.
What's really annoying is what they did to Sephiroth. Seph in the original FF7 was like a metaphor. Sure he existed, but the only times we've ever met Seph were during the flashback, and the final encounter.
Sephiroth didn't have any actual dialogue at all during the one time that we meet him in the present era.
Seph & Cloud didn't even have an Arch-nemesis rivalry in the original game. Now all of that has been rewritten.

I liked the moral ambiguity of the original where Cloud & Avalanche committed terrorist acts against Shinra, which lead to millions of innocent people (who had nothing to do with Shinra.) dying through collateral damage from Cloud's actions.
Even that got retconned in the Remake. In the Remake, Shinra blew themselves up, to blame it on Avalanche, lol.
Sounds like a fucking retarded real life government conspiracy theory that I see countless of morons make on the internet, but now it's cannon in FF7.



Xenoblade series is like the only modern Jrpg series that retains the spirit of the 90s & 2000s era but with gameplay that's actually challenging and fun to play. (Old school jrpgs were either too grindy or had no game balance & challenge at all.)
Some would says Trails of Cold Steel, but I don't really think so. Those games are boring ass exposition dumps that need an editor. On one hand, it's cool haw every single character in that game, even the shop keepers & the NPCs all have full-fledged stories that span multiple installments.

I just feel it's unneeded, due to the focus of the game being centered around one Shonen hero, Rean.
Who fucking cares how powerful each country's militaries are when it's all made obsolete since the story centralizes around a group of school kids who are actually far more powerful than the worlds' militaries combined.

Cold Steel just has way too much bloat. I do like the worldbuilding and lore, but it just feels like too much when most of the game actually revolves around the school kids and their relationshits with each other.
This is why I've never finished a Cold Steel game. There's just way too much text, and most of it doesn't fucking matter. It's what a Xenoblade game would feel like if you were forced to play all of the sidequests and the main story. There wouldn't be any tonal consistency, which has been Cold Steel's problem since the original.

XB Torna does force you to complete sidequests but it's actually part of the plot

Spoiler

Everyone you help gets murdered by Malos or nuked by Mythra.

, and the actual game is like only 15 hours anyway so it doesn't feel overbearing since the story actually stops when it comes time to finally do those pesky sidequests.



Rpgs used to be my most hated genre, but as the decades fly by. The more & more I realize that Jrpgs actually had some crazy good plots that you still don't see being topped.
FF7, Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, Innocent Sin, Shadow Hearts 1 & Covenant (Your girlfriend dies in the first game, you die in the 2nd game lol.), Suikoden 2, Dragon Quest 5, Phantasy Star 1 - 4 (PS2 & 3 had really dark endings.), etc.
It was near endless. This isn't even including Japanese only games like Treasure of the Rudras, Live A Live, or Dark Half & Dark Law. (My Retro gaming cade actually came with the english version of the first Dark Law game on the NES. I forget what it was called.)

I've already explained part of FF7. The main conflict of FF7 was actually an Eldricth being that was eating up the planet & mind controlling everyone. It's somewhat similar to Xenogears, except XG's plot is about a Mechanical God that created human civilization, just to eat it as an infinite source of energy.
The similarity between the two are the cults, cultures & religions that formed around both beings.

Xenogears was actually a discarded script of FF7 and it even has a Chrono Trigger cameo. Chrono Trigger itself got really dark with Chono Cross. I really hated Crono Cross, but I'd prob like it now if I replayed it since there were a lot of Jrpg stories that I didn't really understand back then.
Obviously, I used to think of FF6 as the cream of the crop when FF6 is like a fairy tale when compared to FF7's complexity.
Ironic since they are basically the same story. Difference is, the rebel group in FF6 never do anything questionable. (FF7's avalanche killed countless innocent people through their terrorist bombings.)
A few FF6 characters became depressed & suicidal. FF7 has an entire cast filled with people who have personality-disorders.

Parasite Eve 1 was also yet another discarded FF7 potential plot. What's ironic, is that Parasite Eve is the game which actually shows the protagonist & the antagonist constantly interacting with each other.
That wasn't the case in FF7. In FF7, we saw a monster of a man who left dead bodies everywhere he went, even killed gigantic beasts. It's how we followed his trail throughout the entire game, through the trail of dead bodies.
The Sephiroth we trail though, was actually just Jenova. Jenova functioned like how Miang does in Xenogears. it had multiple hosts.

_________
Persona 2 Eternal Punishment deserves a special mention, because the plot that game had is even more relevant now than it was back when it was made. EP revolved around a reality being shaped & conformed by fake rumors that are spread through cell phones.
It's similar to how we see the same thing happening today with social media & cell phones, because it took the West this damn long to finally catch up with Japan's cellphone culture.

P2EP was made back in the early 2000s, way before social media became as corporatized as it is today, so they represented the culture of memes through image boards & BBS, that would then spread the rest of the rumors through cell phones which would go on to shape & change society according to the collective belief of the masses.
This is what results in Clown World in our real life.
The main difference with Persona, is that they were literally changing the world through rumors.


What's happening in real life is that perception is reality. Our actual reality is the same as it always has been, but it doesn't feel like it is due to how so many of us are connected to the internet or phones 24/7, that the fake reality that's propagated on internet & tv, has become our new reality.
The media merely perpetuates the lie to profit off of the paranoia.
What's fucking hilarious to me is that even Persona 2 Innocent Sin had the rebirth of Hitler (He's not actually Hitler.) through the spread of rumors. Which cracks me the fuck up since in our current world, nobody can shut the fuck up about Hitler. You have SJW fags constantly crying about Hitler and you have Alt-right fags constantly crying about Hitler. All of this is just clown world meme culture. it doesn't actually exist once you plug out of the internet or tv.

That's what the Persona 2 games were getting at too, but they wanted you to get off your ass and actually live your life. Both P2 games were criticizing people who complained a lot about their lives but were too lazy to make the changes they needed, instead they relied on spreading rumors to better their life which created a world that spiraled into chaos & insanity.
It's funny, coz that's exactly what I'm seeing in modern Real life society.



I'm just posting this song to show how fucking awesome Jrpg osts usually are.


Another Gud one.

That was composed by Masashi Hamauzu. For some reason taht dude sucks ass now. Although I did like the FF7R remix of the normal battle theme. That's like the only good song though.

[Jack]

Often times when I play a Wrpg, the drama feels fake, or forced. It feels like I'm reading a copy & paste from Wikipedia. Modern Jrpgs are even worse, because everything is just an escapist fantasy where every single girl in the game loves you and the entire game revolves around you.

In classic Jrpgs, I often felt that the stakes were raised high.
Dragon Quest 5's plot doesn't fully start until your dad gets killed, trying to protect you from a monster-ambush. He tells you with his dying breath to search for your mom, but before that could happen, you get taken prisoner and slave away in that prison for several years until you've grown up into a teenager. You finally find your mom at the end of the game, which took you 2 generations to do. In fact, you don't even control the same guy that you started as, anymore. You control your kids, who found your mom, whom you've been searching for since you were 9 years old. Now you're a middle-aged man. She later dies and it just makes the entire quest feel so, bittersweet.

It ends on such a bittersweet note, but that's exactly what made the journey of Dragon Quest 5, Persona 2 Innocent Sin, Eternal Punishment, Shadow Hearts 1, SH Covenant, Xeno series, Final Fantasy 7, Lufia 2, etc. So damn memorable.
These games didn't end with classic happily ever after stories. They ended with the main cast making so many sacrifices to finally overcome the main conflict, but along the way they've all lost something dear to them, which has changed their lives forever. They'll never be the same again.
Which is why these games generally don't have direct sequels, coz there's no plausible way to follow up the plot. At least none, which actually respects the game that they're a sequel of.

Here's an interesting interview between the guy who created the Xeno franchise & the main director of the Persona series.
https://xenogearsxenosagastudyguide.blo ... gamer.html

A Legend Because it Was Incomplete

Hashino: “Xenogears”, the game Takahashi-san made while at Square Soft has a lot of fans among my team staff. At the time, people were very shocked about the fact that disc 2 would become more of a novel. There’s probably a lot of reasons why it had to be that way, but to choose that path out of all the options, I think there was a stroke of genius in that.
It might be a bit rude to call it “the beauty of simplicity”, but because of it, there was a different layer to “Xenogears”, unlike other games. (Note: Not really sure what he means by “layer” here)
Because, you can’t just do that [what disc 2 did]. I was surprised to find someone in the vast video game industry, in a big company such as Square Soft no less, doing something like that. I was young at the time, and I really thought it was sick. I felt a sense of craftsmanship from that.

Takahashi: It was more like punching my way through. (laughs) I think I felt a sense of “I will NEVER give up” at the time.
During that time at Square Soft, there was a one year and a half cap on development. We begged them to extend it to 2 years for “Xenogears”. Even with the extension, we weren’t going to meet the deadline, and I was told to “just cut it off somewhere”. But if I cut it off, all of it would have disappeared forever, and I thought really hard about it, and the outcome is what you see in the game.
I think in the end, it probably worked out for us. If we didn’t have any of that pressure and just worked on the game until completion, there wouldn’t have been any effort to try harder.

Hashino: And you didn’t abandon your goal. The world that came about because of all that hard work has touched the hearts of many people, myself and Eguchi-san included. In its own way, it’s an impressive feat. It’s a legend.

Takahashi: It was a simpler time back then. If I did that now, I would NOT have been forgiven. (laughs)

Eguchi: And the players could tell that something was going on behind the scenes.

Because the game was so good up until that point, they wanted to see more; the what-ifs. That fed into the game becoming an even bigger legend, I think. It’s surprising, but that’s why it has a lasting impression.

Hashino: You could feel the humanity in the game. That someone would do something like that [disc 2]. It was more like a small art project than a product.

…I’m sorry that we’ve only been talking about “Xenogears”, but my staff really wanted me to ask something.
For “Xenogears”, you’ve said before that the game is six episodes. What happened to that? This is just a question from a fan. (laughs)

Takahashi: For as long as I’m alive, I want to release the “answers” someday.

Everyone: Woahh!

Hashino: I think the fans will love that answer. Thank you very much.

Eguchi: The reason why people are in such a frenzy about “She’s [KOS-MOS] Coming Back!!” in Xenoblade 2 is probably because there are so many devoted fans out there, I would say.

Takahashi: At that point, it’s more just for fun than anything. If we’re going to to do it, let’s go all the way. We actually wanted to ask Atlus for a collaboration, too. There are characters in “Xenoblade 2” called “Blades”, and a lot of artists have pitched in to design them. I had always said to my staff that I wanted to ask Shigenori Soejima to design a Blade. I was actually told by my director before I came in today that it’s not too late. (laughs)

Hashino: Is that so. (laughs)

Takahashi: But yes, that’s how playful we were about it. If it’s fun, why not? When “KOS-MOS Re:” was announced on Twitter, we got about ten thousand retweets, which was pretty amazing.

This is what draws me in to Xenoblade the most, the setting. I like how alien & foreign the settings come off only for the surface-layer setting to slowly peel away at itself to reveal a world that looks a lot like modern day Los Angeles, Tokyo or New York. In XB2 itself, I believe it was meant to be New York. XBX was L.A. I think, or a recreation of it.

The Desire to Create “The Entirety of a Universe” in an RPG

Eguchi: So the theme of today's discussion is “What is at the core of a JRPG?”. Both of you have the fact that you have continued to make RPGs in common. Why RPGs? Hashino-san, you’ve made Rhythm games and “Catherine”, too.

Hashino: The rhythm games and fighting games are made by another team within the company or another developer.

As for “CATHERINE”, we made it the same way that an RPG would, so put it that way, there wasn’t much of a difference. How about you, Takahashi-san?

Takahashi: Only RPGs. Sometimes I wonder myself why I make RPGs, but I think at the core, it’s just that I like them. After all, why would I make something I hate?
With that being said, I’ve been someone with low self-esteem ever since I was a child, so it might be that I want to play god, within the world that I create.
There’s also the desire to be in that world I create, and to try and create the entirety of a world, so to speak. I think it’s just that the easiest way to go about that is through an RPG.

Eguchi: You want to make a world, more than you do characters?

Takahashi: I would say so. I’m not much of a person to focus on characters, personally. I put more weight on the universe. That hasn’t changed since “Xenogears”.
Of course, I’m not saying characters aren’t important. We’re making a game, so I want to please players as much as I can.
But if I were to say which that I personally put more weight on, it’s the universe.

Hashino: When you’re creating a world, you need a sort of realism to make the world believable.
My understanding is that western games often take the design approach of “If they’re in this era, they would be wearing this”, while fantasy JRPGs tend to ignore that and try to go for another approach of trying to convey the fantasy aspect in the design.
This [fantasy designs] is completely foreign to me, so I wanted to hear Takahashi-san’s thoughts on the subject.

Takahashi: Let me use the example of something we use in our daily lives, like a cup. In fantasy and sci-fi, there’s an inclination to design interesting-looking cups, but I avoid that.
I try to keep things that are related to our everyday-lives and familiar to us as is, but for things that aren’t related, I go for interesting designs. That’s my approach.

Hashino: I see. So, you carefully considering what kinds of things the characters are eating and drinking?

Takahashi: Not just that, but everyday items like shoes and whatnot. Stairs too. Things you can relate to like that, we leave as is, but as you go on, we put in more and more unrealistic things. That’s the approach.

I’d like to say we do that perfectly, but we’re still not there yet.

Hashino: So, you value the interaction the characters have with the world.

On the other hand, the clothing is quite flashy. Have you seen the butt of “Xenoblade 2”’s heroine? (laughs)
Even with that, the world feels like it exists, and it must be because of your philosophy of how the people interact with things.

Takahashi: Yes, because I don’t want it to feel like it’s not everyday life. With that being said, I do put in my fetishes. (laughs) It’s hard to balance it all. (Note: I assume he is talking more broadly about fantasy designs, and not specifically his fetishes)

As the years pass by, I'm starting to realize just how unique the Jrpg genre was. It's like the only genre out of the entirety of gaming that actually has some pretty unique stories.

Take for example The Witcher 3. That game does have good writing, but it doesn't actually have a good plot. The actual plot is like only 3 hours long and it never elaborates. We don't know a damn thing about that Elf dude who helped out Ciri, nor do we know anything about Elf-dude's Elf whore. At first, we were given the impression that Elf-dude had somewhat of a relationship with Ciri, but he really was just guarding her.

Witcher 3's entire main plot is just about searching for Ciri. You'd think it have some twists and turns, but it doesn't. That's literally all you do. If you play New Game +, you can beat the main plot within 3 hours, although only 1 hour of that is story. The rest of Witcher 3 is just side stories, but the actual side stories are far more interesting than the main game.
Even-so, they're side stories for a reason. None of the side story plots are big enough to carry an entire game.
The Dijkstra subplot would work for a Grand Theft Auto style game, since his story line is just a political crime lord story arc. As interesting as that plot was, it had an awful conclusion where Djkstra suddenly shows a lapse of judgment forcing you to betray him in favor of Roche. You could side with Djkstra if you wanted, but it doesn't feel justified.

What I really don't like about Western War plots within rpgs, is that there's hardly ever any in-fighting or vying factions.
Wars in Wrpgs usually take an Us vs Them mentality. Everything is just so binary & divided between dogmatic guidelines. You believe the way you do, because you're heroic and just. They're the bad guys, because they're not heroic & just. Or so you've been told.

Usually when a massacre happens in a Wrpg, it was the bad guys who are 100% responsible for it.
Not so in Jrpgs, some times you actually play as the people who killed the entire village. My first rpg was Final Fantasy 4. Which is not a well-written game at all. It did pique my interest back when I played it as an 11 year old coz it starts with you killing so many innocent people during a cutscene (we know this is so, because Cecil has inner-monologues where he's questioning why he had to kill so many people for the King.), then when you actually play the game.
The first boss is a female summoner, you killed her summon which also killed her. You later find out that she was the mother of a little girl who eventually joins your party. Before that happens, you actually murdered everyone within that entire village when you opened up the package that the King sent you to deliver.

This is what I really like about Jrpgs. They do such a damn good job of setting up a conflict, and laying down the results of what happened, making every moment feel meaningful.
Or should I say, this is what I liked about Hironobu Sakaguchi directed Rpgs.




I'm mostly talking about the story. I'll probably get to gameplay in a later post, but classic Jrpgs generally had shit combat. Jrpg gameplay was so shit, that SMT Nocturne's combat is considered good, that's how fucking awful Classic Jrpgs were on a gameplay front.
It's much better now with stuff like World Ends with You, Xenoblade series, Bravely Default, Trails, and the like.

[Iwazaru]

That was composed by Masashi Hamauzu. For some reason taht dude sucks ass now. Although I did like the FF7R remix of the normal battle theme. That's like the only good song though.

Hmm. I quite liked his FF 13 trilogy soundtrack and earlier works (Unlimited SaGa is best to me), haven't listened to more recent stuff.

[CENSORED]

It's basically like a Digimon Cyber Sleuth version of SMT1. The cyberpunk metropolitan setting is intact, and you're mostly fighting against other devil summoners.

Every demon has their own walking animation. Why is that so noteworthy? Every damn demon in SMT, & the DDS series had no walking animations at all. They just skied or slid on the floor, lol.
I wish they had kept the Mezzo Forte artist. I think their work when combined with Kaneko's demon art, made for the best aesthetic.

I always thought SMT NINE looked very interesting, but for some reason that game was constantly dismissed as being garbage by the western fanbase despite none of them having played it at all.
Which is weird to me because I notice how every single rare game, is very often overhyped just for being rare.
Meanwhile SMT NINE and Devil Summoner were always dismissed as garbage by people who never played them (I guess because most people were still parroting HG101 when it came to obscure games back in the day lol) while Soul Hackers was overhyped as the greatest game ever made.
(The first half is boring as sin. Though I agree that it does eventually get good. It's nowhere near the best game in that series.)

Have you ever noticed how Jrpgs from the 90s & 2000s had much darker, more mature plots than current-era rpgs? The best example is Final Fantasy 7. Look at how personal that game's plot was.

Japanese media nowadays is mostly marketed at autistic NEETs who have never stepped out of their houses, but they have rich enough parents that they'll spend insane amounts of money on brands for no real reason.
That's why FF7R is episodic, and that's why the plot plays out like a modern anime where it's some overconvoluted time travel bullshit where there is no human connection to anything going on and the plot is not complex because it has any reason to be, it's just overcomplicated for no reason at all than to sound interesting.
In moviemaking, that's actually considered a bad thing and some of the most complex western movies ever made (the shining, 2001, mulholland drive) actually have very straighforward plots that are easy to follow. But for some reason Japanese NEETs eat that shit up lol. Americans do too occasionally as shown by the success of garbage stories such as Bioshock Infinite.

That's exactly what Yoko Taro has been parodying all these years, though somehow he ammassed a fanbase that just takes these things at face value (much like no more heroes.)
Drakengard 1 was a satire of the visual novel branching structure, and several anime fetishisms of the time, namely shotacon, yandere and imouto.
All these things that are framed as entertainment by anime and videogame writers, were reframed by Taro as existential horror where the main party is made up of a crazy murderer, a pedophile, a child eater and some kid. The MC is a crazy murderer specifically because videogames are always about a guy who kills millions, yet it's never addressed in the narrative. His sister is a submissive woman who secretly wants to fuck him (Taro was inspired by his disgust for Oreimo lol, his words not mine) and when he turns her down, she actually kills herself causing the apocalypse and in some of the endings she turns into a monster herself.
All the ending keep getting worse and worse as reality breaks down around the main characters.
I'm not saying it's deep or genious, just that these trends have been around for a long time, and they've only gotten worse. Drakengard 3 was a parody of anime tropes of the time and the main villains, are just as shallow and single minded as stereotypical anime girls, with the ultimate reveal being that they're actually one year olds in adult bodies lol.

I find it offensive that this new FF7 direction is probably going to be understood to be in the same vein as Suda 51 stuff, much like MGS4 was once paraded around as "Lynchian" LOL.
Surreal stories usually have some confusing plots because they're depicting a fractured mind, inner world, or even a fractured society. In Killer7's case, the main character himself is living in a fake reality concocted by his own broken ego, and the world itself is so muddled by propaganda that discerning reality is impossible.
In FF7R, the storyline appears complex because it's actually just bullshit meant to sell you all sorts of merchandise. The reason why the true villain is a time travelling sephiroth from fucking advent children, a movie which everyone hated but is somehow "good" now, is because Square wants to sell you that movie again, and oh yeah zack is alive again in this timeline (I guess Cloud just thought it was dead or they're gonna be dimension hopping like in Bioshock Infinite lol), you know that's not because Zack was particularly relevant in the original FF7, it's because yeah there's a zack spin off on PSP just waiting to be re-released or remade thus cutting costs on a new product which will also be a 60$ release lol. Lest we forget that they already teased Genesis will be a character in the remake series, so throw dirge of cerberus in there too, one of the worst games I have ever played in my life but that's gonna be relevant for things to come so don't forget to fire up your PS4 and buy it on PSN or whatever the fuck LOL!
FFXV was actually the same exact thing, where the main plot was unintellegible because they wanted to sell you a movie, an anime show, a manga, DLC and all sorts of other shit so you can fully understand a story, that isn't actually saying anything at all. Because no character acts like a human being, and the story is not really about anything that exists in reality, just a series of fantasy macguffin that lead into one another with no themeing.
I guess in theory, FFXV is about the nature of kingship and sacrifice yourself for your subjects but it doesen't actually say anything about it because it's treated like a superpower you inherit, that kills you when you use it.
The FF7R theme would be to "fight against your fate" but it has nothing to do with anything going on in the real world, because it actually refers to a time travelling mutant who is not actually himself but kadaj turned into sephiroth who died at the end of AC but I guess he didn't or he found another host (?????)

I'm not even implying that every game needs a deep narrative. In fact I would argue that nintendo made some of the best written games ever made because they have just enough exposition to justify the action taking place in the gameplay. I would even argue that games such as Ratchet and Clank had well written stories because it justified giving you objectives in a way that was coherent with its artstyle, without intruding in the gameplay at all.
I'm just laughing at the fact that "depth" is being equated with "complexity", when writing a complex plot is actually a detriment most of the time. Killer7 needed a complex plot, because it was dealing with real world political issues where as the game showed, several outfits and parties with conflicting interests will often clash and ally to tip the balance of power.
The original FF7 didn't need a complex plot, because it was a story about some characters going through shit together and overcoming their issues.

What offends me the most though, is that this supposed complex narrative for adults, has gameplay that is braindead compared to kingdom hearts, a game for little babies with mickey mouse in a jedi outfit. The gameplay is so braindead to make space for cinematic cuts through the fights, which I've never seen in a videogame during gameplay and for good reason, because they suck dick and distract me from the actual fucking game I'm playing. One of my gfs actually got it right when she claimed, "this game reeks of shit from a mile away" lol.

[Iwazaru]

I've been told that you literally can't do "no damage" runs in ff7r hard. So no balance etc.

edit:
nice guitar sound in new metal max

[Jack]

I find it offensive that this new FF7 direction is probably going to be understood to be in the same vein as Suda 51 stuff, much like MGS4 was once paraded around as "Lynchian" LOL.

How the fuck was MGS4 Lynchian? Even Death Stranding gets labeled as "Lynchian" The fuck does that even mean? When most people refer to "Lynch" they always make that dumb "Datz A GUD CUP of COFFEE :P " joke.
I played MGS4 all the way up to that stupid Snatcher level where you had to stealth through it. That shit was just not fun. I don't hate stealth games. I think Phantom Doctrine is fun as hell, coz it's a GITS Section-9 simulator. MGS4's stealth, just felt really clumsy. I didn't even know where the fuck I was going half the time in that city.

I find it funny how FF7 is being handwaved by the fans, as "I don't want remakes to be exactly the same story as the original anyway!" I understand. 80s Scarface & The Thing are nothing at all like the originals, and were actually much better.
What those two movies did, was illustrate a much better portrait of what those stories were trying to tell.
The original Scarface was so fucking Whitebread that it makes me laugh that that's probably what White people thought criminals actually were like, lol. Pacino's version is far more relatable as a power-fantasy coz he came off as a guy who was trying to make the most of his life, no matter what the cost. The classic Scarface just comes off as spoiled White people trying to be bad by breaking the law, LOL!
The original The Thing just had a giant White dude as the monster, just like Prometheus LOL!

FF7 remake isn't trying to tell the same story though. I don't even know wtf it's doing. It's just random. It's every stereotype that people have about anime. Which is prob true. I dunno. GITS 2045 really shows to me why I used to watch anime, the writing is actually interesting, and talks about real world issues, but does so in a way that feels natural since you're hearing it straight from the mouths of fucking Feds.
That's something that always bothered me about American media, they always have these characters who are trying to be political, but they're just a bunch of random nobodies who don't even understand how the government functions anyway, and I'm supposed to take their opinions seriously.

Meanwhile, GITS revolves around a Counter-Intelligence organization staffed by World War veterans, Yakuza & PSIA. ( I think Togusa is meant to be PSIA.)
What's even better, is that they actually speak like government personel, or in Pazu's case, shadow-government.

Surreal stories usually have some confusing plots because they're depicting a fractured mind, inner world, or even a fractured society. In Killer7's case, the main character himself is living in a fake reality concocted by his own broken ego, and the world itself is so muddled by propaganda that discerning reality is impossible.

What's funny to me, is that the game Phantom Doctrine uses alias identities and nearly everything else that's political about K7, as part of its gameplay.
You can even kidnap & MK Ultra brainwash potential agents in PD.
That game kinda sucks, but I love it anyway just due to the subject matter.

Even though this is basic Intelligence Agency processes, Thse K7 community still have a hard time understanding the basic process of how government-assets functions. I guess it was always easy for me to interpret coz I grew up within Military bases & was always exposed to people who do that shit in real life, lol.
I was about to say Console-plebs, but PC K7 fans are just as retarded as their console counterparts.

I'm not even implying that every game needs a deep narrative. In fact I would argue that nintendo made some of the best written games ever made because they have just enough exposition to justify the action taking place in the gameplay. I would even argue that games such as Ratchet and Clank had well written stories because it justified giving you objectives in a way that was coherent with its artstyle, without intruding in the gameplay at all.

What the fuck does that have to do with Jrpgs though? I'm saying that Jrpgs have some of the darkest, most interesting plots out of the entirety of the gaming hobby. I hate modern video game plots, because video games have such generic plots about rebelling against right wing extremists or whatever. it's just really boring coz it's not even saying anything. It's just "those guys BAD, WE GOOD!"

I don't think Jrpgs are interesting due to how cinematic they are or whatever. Hell, I don't even think that Jrpgs are comparable to movies anyway.
Their writing styles feel similar to a novel in that you're getting the background lore for the first couple of hours and then you finally get a story. It's just that the actual novel part would just be the gameplay and the imagery you're seeing. If Bloodborne were written in novel form, most of the book would just be descriptions about the atmosphere of the city. Since it's a game, we actually play & explore that city.

Dragon Quest 5 is a good example of the scope that Jrpg plots used to have. They felt like a huge adventure that starts out with you as a kid, but it ends with you as a grown man.
In some ways, DQ5's plot kinda mimics Conan but instead of growing up into a man to get his revenge. The DQ5 hero grows up into a father who eventually finds his mother, who then later gets killed by the bad guys, lol.


Phantasy Star 2 was pretty dark. You see a dude suicide after he realizes that he just murdered his daughter.
That's just a random event that happens in the game, and that's a lot of similar smaller events which have nothing to do with the plot but are there to show you just how desperate everyone has become due to climate-control going out of control. You finally find out in the ending that it was Earthlings from Earth who rewrote Mother Brain's programming so she could mismanage the climates of the planets within the solar system in order to delete life on the planet so that the Earthlings could take it over.


What I liked most about that ending, was that there was no epic heroic speech or anything. It's just the protags fighting desperately to survive against the Earthlings, after they were just told that these Earth motherfuckers ruined the lives of their solar-system's populace, just so that the humans could repopulate it.
They were just two factions who wanted to survive, through the extinction of the other race

You don't ever see writing like that in video games anymore, because everything is mass produced now to be as inoffensive as possible. Or so they claim. I find that doubtful coz why is it that the main bad guys in most modern games, are always White Supremacist Christians? LOL!

That shit is so fucking boring to me coz it's not saying anything. Who's actually going to side with the bad guys aside for other crazy White dudes? At least with stuff like Phantasy Star, you could see that they weren't clearly evil, they just didn't give a fuck about the original inhabitants of the solar system. It's relatable coz practically everyone lives in a country where that same exact scenario happened. (And I ain't just talking about the USA.) The indigenous were massacred to make way for the colonizers.

These are just scenes from 16bit games, but I recall a lot of well written scenes from the PSX era & some from the PS2 era. Jrpg plots stand out to me, because they're stories about sacrifice and personal-growth.
Modern games try to claim the same, but you never truly see any real sacrifices and if you do, it's usually from a multiple choice game like Mass Effect where the choices don't effect you much anyway. It just effects the characters around you.

Jrpgs actually show you the journey of the character you're playing as.
Take Shadowhearts for example.
On the surface, you're playing as some dude who just lives for the thrill of it. He constantly gets himself caught up in situations against the occult & world war 1 battle scenarios but by the end of the game, he becomes a man. He matures and falls in love with the lead heroine, who is killed by the game's end.

In the sequel SH Covenant, we clearly see how much meeting her has changed him for the better. He's no longer the same nihilistic freak that he used to be. He's still a cynical smartass, but the dude instantly cries like a baby when you remind him of Alice or whenever he sees Alice. It's a touching story. Sure it's a generic story about a girl turning a badboy into a husbando, but it works due to how we saw him eventually mature into that guy when he started SH1 as just some typical "Nothing personnell kid" Animu badass.

Jrpgs stories just feel much more real to me. It's not all corporate and forced like Last of Us or God of War, which relies on you being a father, and then projecting the love for your children on to the protags, even though the actual games does a poor job of developing their relationships with each other.
I recall in LOU, Joel just suddenly cares abut Elie, even though he didn't really give a shit about her throughout the whole game until the final level where he suddenly does. That happens a lot with Western games. (And Yakuza for that matter, lol.) You get an entire game where you supposed to see development, but it just happens in one event at the fucking end of the fucking game.

Jrpgs on the other hand, will use their time effectively and show the development throughout the entire game.
Hell just look at the recurring hotdog joke from FF8.
Zell always wanted them outdogs but then the game randomly & hilariously climaxes with Zell choking on those hotdogs that he's been wanting to eat throughout the entire game.

That's the type of longterm writing, that I don't ever see in video games anymore. Sure every once in awhile stuff like Xenoblade comes around, but that's a Jrpg. So it's still the same genre.

[CENSORED]

How the fuck was MGS4 Lynchian? Even Death Stranding gets labeled as "Lynchian" The fuck does that even mean? When most people refer to "Lynch" they always make that dumb "Datz A GUD CUP of COFFEE :P " joke.

For some reason, the idea of allegorical or surreal storytelling has been completely forgotten by the populace at large. When you go on the internet, literary analysis is framed exclusively as the understanding of plot practicalities.
That's what I meant when I said I can't even consider Kojima's writing allegorical, because all the supposed allegories are actually literal within the text. Like you might think that Sam BRIDGES' name is symbolical of his being a BRIDGE between two worlds and it is, but that's actually fucking literal in that he was a BRIDGE baby and even his dad (who is called CLIFF, and a CLIFF ends in nothingness without a BRIDGE...) calls him a BRIDGE within the text LOL.

You can easily see that when you think of Twin Peaks The Return.
https://i.redd.it/la4pquo9tvnz.jpg
When you look at online discussion about the show, it's all inane discussion about how the "plot" works when the show clearly operates on dream logic. That's why I don't mind that 4h breakdown video so much, it's because at least he brings up the fact that Twin Peaks was meant as a satire/homage to television soap operas. (I still think he gets a lot of stuff wrong. But at least we're having the same conversation.)
Scenes like Cooper's face being reflected in the television, become clear when you actually realize narrative isn't necessary meant to make literal sense. Meanwhile you have to concoct fucking insane charts to try and make sense of it literally.
That's why plot summaries of the show sounded so fucking idiotic to you, and why I said in the past that the fanbase gave you a skewed idea of the show. They talk about Twin Peaks, as if they were talking about Kingdom Hearts LOL and the two Coopers were just his heartless and nobody or some shit.

I have an even better example. Italian songwriter, Fabrizio De André used basic allegory in his songwriting. In the War of Piero song, which is about a soldier's dying thoughts, he laments how it is very hard to die in May, and he would have faced death more bravely if it were to arrive in winter.
He's obviously referring to the fact that he died young (in spring) rather than as an old man (in winter.)
That was instinctively understood by everyone who would listen to the song in the '70s. Nowadays it's considered some obscure occultist shit, to the point where if I mention that Killer7 uses surveillance cameras and television screens as to imply a theme of government surveillance (something obvious to everyone with a functioning brain), I am treated like a crazy person because anything but the most literal interpretation of anything is labelled as a "conspiracy theory" (LOL as if talking about narrative has anything to do with a conspiracy. Even Rob Ager was accused of being a conspiracy theorist.

He had to specify that you can't talk about about a conspiracy theory in relation to speculating about meaning in a Kubrick movie, because Stanley Kubrick is one person and a conspiracy involves more than one individual by definition. Which is absurd to me that something so fucking stupid would need to be said, but that's the world we live in.)

What the fuck does that have to do with Jrpgs though? I'm saying that Jrpgs have some of the darkest, most interesting plots out of the entirety of the gaming hobby. I hate modern video game plots, because video games have such generic plots about rebelling against right wing extremists or whatever. it's just really boring coz it's not even saying anything. It's just "those guys BAD, WE GOOD!"

Yeah I didn't mean to shit up your JRPG thread, I just have to be very specific about every single thing I type nowadays and explain my positions a hundred times. That's because every word I say is now overanalyzed and put under scrutiny by insane stalkers, and that post would have been misconstrued as me claiming that every videogame, needs a complex plot on the level of Killer7 lol.
Funnily enough I just recently got to the point where these people are so upset by my opinions on videogames, that they're trying to pin crimes on me and I hope they are lawyered up if this goes any further LOL.
Apparently I am now this guy who ripped off some FSR illustrations for an art gallery. This is what they're saying about me, that I ripped off takashi miyamoto.
archive.is/NodTj
That's because these fucking racist pieces of shit white americans, see a surname with a vowel and assume every italian is the same person LOL. I bet they think we all look like guidos from some hineous beach reality show, or that we're all in the Mafia. (One anglo motherfucker straight up accused me of being in the mafia, just because I called him names as a joke in a chatroom.)
What's funny to me is that I now understand why CJ Iwakura suddenly started hating me and shittalking me online, to the point where when people conjured up the lie that I claimed The 25th Ward to be an SJW game he did not contradict them, despite being in the same thread as me and replying to my own posts LOL. He not only had me confused with you, he also had me confused with Jonny Tanna who ran this exibition. (I Remember coming across some posts he made in the past, where he was very upset about the FSR copyright being violated.)

You're 100% correct when you claim that white americans are extremely racist. This pale motherfucker basically fused at least three people into one because you're asian, I'm jewish and this other guy, I think I spoke to him once so I have no clue if he's italian or not.
Point is, they have prosopagnosia for anyone who isn't a white american. So we are all lumped together into one bizzarre entity, and things are attributed to whoever the fuck.

This is one step too far for me; I find it absurd and you probably do too, since you have a hint of who I am and what I do IRL, that I can escape actual threats in my actual real life yet I have to worry about obese american nerds attributing crimes to me because they don't like my opinions on videogames. So if anyone ever brings this up to my face, I really hope they are lawyered up LOL. I'm not gonna get accused of a crime and take it lying down.

[Krizzx]

Hajimari No Kiseki is the next game. Its bringing back Lloyd Banning as a main character.

[HOUSELANDER]

i like JRPGS mostly because of the stories not the gameplay,Breath of fire 2,SMT SNES,Strange Journey.glad with the Emulator i can speed up the game,i all i have to do just grinding to the sufficient level continue with main plot.
the only JRPGS gameplay that i like is Chrono Trigger,Persona 3 & 4,final Fantasy 7 Smt 3 Nocturne.

[Iwazaru]

Who needs body limbs, anyway