FF XIII was one of several post FFVII , Square Enix classics that I have only played the first hour of , before I started counting virtual sheep and pulling some zzzzzs . Whoa I almost nodded off just typing about it.
Of course Square and Enix are game development gods , but after the zenith of JRPG that FFVII represents , they have constantly made the mistake that all recent faltering Japanese coders have , they tried to appeal to the West too much . And in so doing lost the charm and unique qualities that so enchanted a generation, a generation of gaijin like me for that matter! . If I were to shout Sephiroth at you , it would spark fond memories , no ? Or talk about that nice girl Tifa , would that not bring a tear to your eye?
Did you feel that? The key rush in a great RPG , and the great JRPGs is that they evoke emotions , from early Rogue and Ultima games , Bioware classics , Silicon Knights Blood Omen Legacy of Kain,Planescape Torment,the Fallout series , Castlevania SOTN , and of course Miyamoto san with Zelda , and the many Snes rpg classics , all the great role playing games make you FEEL .
In FFVII Square gave us an rpg with the greatest emotive power ever in a video game. It is quite ironic then that although the Playstation 2 was heralded as having an EMOTION ENGINE by its creator none of its games seem to take advantage , including the many Final Fantasy games released for the PS2 . To this day it is a Playstation one game that makes generations cry when they play it - due to the power of the plot! . FFXIII , XII , X-2 etc do not ,well at least not in that way!So it is all very good to have the finest artists , musicians , beautiful cgi , but where's the soul of the game? I do not remember the name of a single FFXIII character , I should , I remember it looking gorgeous , but apart from that what can I say ...
On the other hand Cloud Tifa Sephiroth and co are permanent residents in the part of my brain that stores video game data and so are the emotions they evoked
Lets hope Hironobu Sakaguchi san includes the emotion this time...................
and may be we will be bothered enough to find out :
