Mini-Retrospective: Final Fantasy X

I'd been feeling cravings for my PS2-era Final Fantasy games, so I recently played through Final Fantasy X again. I have many fond memories of the game: it was the first game my wife (girlfriend, at the time) and I played together, start to finish. But now I'm older and my critical analysis muscle is much more developed. Years later, I have realized two things about Final Fantasy X:

1. The translation and voice performances are worse than I remember.

This isn't really news to anybody. Whether we loved or hated the game, we all knew the vocal work wasn't perfect. It didn't stand out so much when it was released, back when voice acting in games was pretty mediocre across the board. But looking back today, it's pretty poor.

And it's understandable. This was Square's first attempt to include voice acting in their biggest franchise. You can't expect them to nail it perfectly the first time. And considering it was their first attempt, they did a decent job. Much better than many of their Japan-based competitors were doing at the time.

But playing through FFX today, especially after seeing the amazing translation and voice work Square-Enix pulled off with Final Fantasy XII, the flaws really do stand out. The occasional awkward sentence structure, the prolonged pauses, the unexpected shifts in dialogue pace from "very slow" to "very fast", etc.

The easy place to assign blame is with the voice actors themselves, but I don't really believe they were the ones at fault. Most of these performers have proven themselves to be capable -- if not exceptional -- voice actors over the years. I imagine the real source of the problem lay in other factors: most of them to do with Square's localization pipeline.

But once I got past the awkwardness of the voice work, I noticed something else:

2. The story is actually better than I remember.

I was a bit shocked to realize how strong the underlying story to FFX was. If you can see past the translation and voice acting, there are some powerful themes and character arcs happening under there. The death cycle that is the world of Spira, the recurring theme of accepting death, the reality behind a summoner's pilgrimage and the weight that realization adds to earlier scenes. Even the love story that develops much more subtly than that of FFVIII, but turns out to be so much more moving by the end.

It's a shame you have to look past the animation and voice performances to see the quality underneath. I started watching the cutscenes and shutting out the voices, focusing on the text and not the speech. I was impressed by how much easier it was to take the story seriously.

In fact, I'm prepared to say that Final Fantasy X might have the strongest story in the entire franchise. It's too bad it was told so clumsily.

I'll probably move on to Final Fantasy X-2 next. It should be very interesting to see how well that one has aged.

Lecture Update: Script Finished / Narration Recorded

First off, I want to apologize for updating this thing so infrequently over the last couple months. Life has been pretty jam-packed for me lately, but the whole point of having this blog here is so I don't vanish for long periods of time. I'll be working to keep the updates a little more frequent.

Second, the script is complete for the next lecture episode and the narration is recorded. James is back at the wheel and has some great topics lined up for us. The upcoming topic: Controversy.

Third, if you haven't checked out the Digital Cowboys podcast yet, I highly recommend it. They asked me to join them again last week to talk about storytelling in games and I think the resulting episode turned out rather well. Why not go have a listen?

Hatin' the Sports Games

Kotaku's Luke Plunkett recently put up an article examining why we gamers get so cranky over sports games. Quite an interesting read.

I recall feeling some indignation over sports games in years past, but I can't really remember why. I've actually enjoyed plenty of sports games throughout my gaming "career." Tecmo Super Bowl and Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball on the SNES. Madden on the N64. Since then, I've drifted away from the licensed "simulation" sports games and stuck with the "video game-y" type. You know, the kind that abandon realism to ramp up the fun: NBA Street, the SSX games, Mario Tennis, etc.

I've been wondering exactly why so many of us get riled up over the sports genre. I've come up with a few guesses.

1. Electronic Arts.

Until recently, EA could be counted on for two things: making piles of money and making gamers angry. They've been working hard since 2008 to make up for past transgressions, and I forgave them completely when I heard they were picking up Tim Schafer's Brutal Legend after Activision abandoned it. But for years, you could always rely on EA to bring gamers' blood to a boil. And a lot of the time, it seemed like their sports game franchises were at the center of it. Like when EA got exclusive licenses to NFL teams, eliminating competitor franchises. Or the fact that each annual full-priced release of a franchise felt almost exactly like the last with a new roster.

For better or worse, when you think "sports games", chances are that your first thought involved an EA sports franchise. And that connection probably didn't help sports games gain favor with the gamer crowd.

2. Not "For Us."

I'm not sure what causes it, but we gamers tend to act openly hostile towards game genres and franchises that don't cater to our tastes. I don't know why we do it, but it happens all the time. We hate on sports games. We mock "kiddie" games. We scoff at fishing games, hunting games, movie tie-ins, Hannah Montana karaoke games. We seethe with anger when we see a developer "dumb down" a franchise to appeal to people besides ourselves, the hardest of the core. Maybe it ties into the same part of us the drives fanboyism. I don' t know.

We get especially indignant when we see games cater to the "frat" demographic, the "bros". It almost feels like a personal insult or being cheated on, in some weird way. "Games are our thing! We're your dedicated audience!" Our resentment of the audience causes us to resent the games that target them. And sports games tend to fall in that category.

Is this reasonable of us? Hardly. But it still happens.

These are just a couple of possible explanations for the sports game hate, and I'm sure there are many others. What about you guys? Why do you think we whine about these games so much?

Yet Another Podcast Appearance! (yeah, same guys)

I have quickly become a fan of the Digital Cowboys podcast. I've been listening ever since Alex approached me about coming on the show. This week's episode is a fun little deviation from their usual format: they've pooled the guests from multiple episodes and given them each a chance to rant on something they hate about video games.

I actually had a hard time thinking about something to hate. Sure, there's the standard complaints about DLC money-grubbing, Quick Time Events and everything Activision does, but that seemed too easy. In the end, I chose to whine about game difficulty. I'm not great at thinking on my feet (as you may have noticed with all the stuttering I do in these shows) but I think it turned out well. It's a solid episode, so go to that fancy new website of theirs and check it out.

And if you haven't seen it yet, those guys made a great little Project Natal/Milo spoof too.

One of the things that has surprised me is how much I actually consider these guys to be buddies of mine now. I've appeared on their show like twice and played a few hours of Rock Band with them (they aren't lying when they say Paul is a top-tier vocalist), but I already feel like I've made some new friends. And that's pretty damn cool.

In lecture news, the script is coming along nicely. I think it's going to end up being a shorter episode, but James has really nailed it this time. I'll keep you guys posted!

Busy Busy Busy

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading all the commentary on the new lecture over the last few weeks, both here and on other sites. Hearing all the feedback and seeing debates spark up everywhere is the best part about this whole series.

Soon after the release of Video Games and the Female Audience, James sent me two drafts for new episodes, both awesome. I've started writing the script for the first one, but I also recently started a new job. Keeping up with that, school and life in general has kept my hands tied over the last two weeks.

For those of you who might have been hoping for more "Game Design Corner" episodes, the lecture after next will grant your wish. Stay tuned!

Video Games and the Female Audience

Finished at last!

Update: Next Lecture is Nearly Complete

I'm between school quarters this week, so I've spent almost every day working non-stop on the next lecture. It looks like it's going to clock in as my longest lecture yet: over ten minutes.

After I have the audio recorded, I usually start assembling the video from beginning to end. I just passed the seven minute marker last night, so I'm pretty much in the home stretch now. If all goes according to plan, the lecture should be ready for release tomorrow!

Back to work ...

Animation: Class 3 Reel

One of the main reasons you guys don't see lectures more often is because I'm pursuing a career in animation. I'm currently studying at Animation Mentor and set to graduate this March. With some luck, I'll be working as an animator in the video game industry soon after.

Anyway, I figured I'd post my latest progress reel as proof that I'm not just sitting around playing Team Fortress 2 all day.

Daniel Floyd Class 3 Animation Reel

For some extra good news, releasing this reel marks the end of the school quarter for me, which means I now have about a week and a half to work on the next lecture. Hurray!