Unpopular opinions welcome. Not trying to stew in negativity but you ever see new trends and features everywhere and feel like an old person cranky that things aren’t necessarily advancing or improving in ways you think they should at times?
Here are some of mine:
-Voice acting everywhere seems to be seen as a universal positive but I don’t mind reading in games? And often find myself preferring to read and develop my own internal voice for a character and how dialogue lines are being delivered. Sure, sometimes you can turn this stuff off, but then when it’s packaged as the default, I feel like I’m turning off part of this game I paid for, and then I’ll get FOMO and need to hear how they presented the characters and lines. It just feels like a big added expense for a lot of game projects that’s not really needed but pushed all the same.
-A greater emphasis on cinematic, cutscenes, etc. over gameplay. Seems like a trend in some bigger franchises like Doom and Final Fantasy lately is to keep pushing more frequent and longer story scenes devoid of gameplay in the newer games. Maybe it’s just the “boomer gamer” stereotype I’m falling into here, but I’d prefer if developers could let the player stay active while advancing the story, and not via something like shudder quick time events.
-I increasingly don’t understand the “anti-woke” backlash against diverse representation in games. Whether it’s “forced” or not. Haven’t we seen the atypical white male protagonist sexy characters, etc everywhere enough at this point in the medium of video games to find it a little boring or played out? It’s not like they are hard to find in new games or would ever be gone from representation completely. I just assumed more people would be ready and excited for more varied characters at this point, instead of the opposite.
I’ve definitely come across voice acting that detracted from my enjoyment of a game. Disciples Liberation comes to mind. I didn’t especially like the game overall but the voice acting (both the actual voices as well as the flat delivery) really detracted from it. Voice acting can certainly add some atmosphere and better atmosphere is always good. But it can detract from it, yes.
On representation, something that all of the ‘critics’ of it seem to implicitly acknowledge through their complaints is that representation matters to people. Otherwise, why raise a fuss about it? I’m 48 and I’m old enough to remember when White men like me were very well-represented in all media. There were some Black men leads (Will Smith, Bill Cosby) and a few women (Ripley, Samus) but they were the exception not the rule. So, I completely get people wanting to see themselves in the stories they love. Even now, I can see for myself that my 12 year old son gets plenty of representations in his media. I mean, his favorite TV show is a Japanese anime whose protagonist is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy. So, anyone critiquing that it’s “gone too far” in the other direction is just full of BS. There’s plenty of stories for everyone.
I suppose some people could say that the ‘forced’ part of it can lead to poor stories. I know there were criticisms of Rey that she wasn’t provided the option to fail and then grow because she was depicted as amazing at everything all of the time. That failure/growth arc is a key element of every good hero story. I didn’t really enjoy those movies and just watched them for my son so maybe I’m not being fair in describing her arc that way.
But if it doesn’t hurt the story, who cares? Did medieval Japan have Black people? Probably so few that they would have left a negligible impact on the country. But if Assassins Creed Shadows is good, who cares? The Baltimore Orioles haven’t won a World Series since 1983 but I simulated them to do just that in a fictional video game baseball world whose reality is not ours.
So, unless it becomes an excuse to make a bad movie/game/show/book, I have no sympathy with people kvetching about representation.
Voice acting definitely doesn’t need to exist in every game possible. It doesn’t automatically make a game better. It’s still an asset of the game that takes effort to make sure it’s a positive addition to its development.
I enjoy farming sims but sometimes the progression of time is too fast and makes picking/choosing what to focus on is pretty stressful. I’m not sure what the correct answer here is but maybe a way to balance this more or maybe choose how quickly time goes by as an option. I understand it’s part of the “difficulty” and gameplay loop though and I am used to it so I’m just curious if there’s another way to approach farming sims and passage of time, especially since night time doesn’t seem to be used very often in farming games.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I love cutscenes in games. Now I’m not saying the game should primarily be cutscenes or arguing cutscenes should occur frequently in a game, but a fantastic cutscene will make me want to revisit moments in a game over and over. With that being said, it’s not often that I feel the cutscene magic but for the ones that do, they stay with me forever. Final Fantasy X immediately comes to mind. The Last of Us was pretty great too (specifically the first one). I would also argue that Final Fantasy has always had cutscenes since its creation so to me, it’s part of the Final Fantasy magic.
Balancing time and resources in farming games is an interesting dilemma. I’m not sure what the answer is but I liked one Harvest Moon’s approach of time and stamina where you could upgrade your stamina and recovery options over time to get to do more as a form of progression.
Interesting take on cutscenes, especially with Final Fantasy X as an example. Out of the ones I’ve completed (2, and 5 thru 10), 10 was my least favorite. I remember really annoyed by how clumsy the introduction to the game felt to me compared to the other intros that I liked, namely 6, 7, and 9’s. 10 has this habit of letting you control Tidus for a short time then jumping back and forth to scenes you just have to watch and it felt really unintuitive to me to keep taking and giving back control in bursts like that.
I think cutscenes for major moments have been a big part of most FF games but it seems like the newer titles got a lot more trigger happy with them for my liking at least.
Another possibly hot take: I don’t think Pokemon should have gone 3D. I think it worked best and kept a stronger ‘visual identity’ as a 2D sprite-based dungeon exploring monster collecting rpg. I don’t gel with the new direction of the new games, the Switch ones especially, and as a result have moved on to a plethora of different monster battling games that I like more.
I’d love to see the parallel universe where the Pokémon games stuck to 2D Sprites and simply continued to evolve the aesthetic of the series in that vein.
I have this sentiment with a lot of series. I would have loved to have seen a few more 2D Final Fantasies. SNES cartridges were still coming out in Japan through FF9’s release, so who knows what that history would look like, but even one more late 90s title between 6 and 7 would have been awesome to see how much more they could push it.
The changes to the FF series have been wild. I feel like there was always these steps towards more emphasis on presentation but from PS1 onward you saw it in leaps and bounds with more cutscenes and other elements. Square was also not shy about showing off tech demos showcasing that cinematics was definitely their focus over gameplay.
At least with spin offs like Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default they are still giving more of that emphasis on gameplay that I prefer in JRPGs.
oh 100%. I usually just see the gameplay loop of dying and starting over as the core game, and I’m seeing more of it and getting better each run. And bonus to those roguelites where you advance a sub plot or can improve some abilities each run. Actually, I think somewhere I read that “Roguelikes” are the ones intentionally designed to not advance anything between runs, and “Roguelites” are the ones where you can get a little stronger each run.
If anything I always thought MMORPGs looked like a “waste of time” to me cuz they cost monthly subscriptions and never seem to end.
