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The PS3 (at least the second generation, with half of the PS2 hardware emulated) is supposed to have an upscaling function for PS1 and PS2 games if you are using HDMI, but I've never tried it so I don't know if it works as well as increasing the resolution via emulation. I think if you use the PSN version you're stuck with the original resolution.
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Jun 15, 2011 14:31
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Krumbsthumbs posted:I'd guesstimate the Buster Sword to being about 40-45 lbs. 40 lbs is roughly picking up a weightlifting bar without added weights. Try swinging that with just your hands. Most of the muscles you'll use just to hold the thing will come from your wrists and forearms. I think weightlifting bars are hollow, though. The Buster Sword is about the same length, but solid, and with a larger area. A plate of steel about the same thickness would weigh much more. I'm pretty sure the artists and animators intentionally created the contrast between the sword's size/mass and Cloud's effortless handling of it (including the victory spin) to illustrate his strength. Nightmare's animations in the Soul Calibur series are probably closer to how someone with even superhuman strength would handle a sword of that size. Most swings use the entire body as a counterweight or rely on momentum to carry the sword through a sequence of swings. Cloud just nonchalantly swings it with a loose two-handed grip and makes short, abrupt cuts with no follow-through. It might also be due to technical restrictions in the battle scenes; most (all?) other characters' attack animations are also short and jerky. Maybe they only had so many frames/keyframes to work with for each type of action, and they didn't have enough to have Cloud wind up with a swing as if the sword was heavy, so they decided to run with it and have him spin the sword in one hand after battles. It's been a long time since I played FFX and X-2, but I remember the girls dragging the Samurai (more like one-edged greatswords than katanas) class swords on the ground before swinging them; it looks more natural than a short overhand chop. Auron even swings his sword starting from a position resting on his shoulder, leaning into the attack.
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Jun 25, 2011 05:03
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Pesky Splinter posted:I think it smells of ozone. Just because. It smells like ozone, but slightly minty. This update reminded me of that one specific animation where Cloud and Sephiroth (possibly others, I forget) -Laugh -Laugh with hand on forehead -Head tilted back psychotic laugh -Slow head shake It's been a long time since I played FF7, but I seem to remember it being used about fifty times or more over the course of the game.
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Jul 1, 2011 15:41
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Phoenix Taichou posted:I've only really noticed this and it's bugging me. After a battle, it shows you what items you can get, right? And I'm pretty sure you can move the cursor onto each of the items it shows, yet there's a "take everything" option, which you always use, but no option to take just one item or not take anything (which you'd never do anyway) Doesn't it tell you the item description when you have an item selected? I think it's there so you can see what any new items do.
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Aug 24, 2011 13:04
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It seems like odd programming to give you a pointless choice like that.
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Another vote for the informative style. It works really well here because FF7 is both: -written well enough to be funny on its own without naming every character BUTTS or having some alternate story and dialogue written over it -complex enough that you have a lot to say about the game mechanics, the secrets, and the major and minor points of the story people don't notice. I really liked the Rio information too, it's always great to get some extra perspective on something that has parallels to the game being LP'ed, like The White Dragon's Hawaii stories in the FFIX LP. I'd love to read more of these, if the opportunity arises. Also more end-of-update terrible FF7 cosplay photos.
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Feb 8, 2012 18:00
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Paracelsus posted:a nod to actual practicality that would disappear from Nomura's repertoire before long I wonder what made him go off the deep end with outfit and character design. FF7 has a lot of characters with fairly plain, practical designs that are still some of the most iconic designs in games. Did he get bored of drawing normal clothes and develop a strange addiction to nonfunctional belts and zippers as he descended into madness, or was he just restrained in FF7 and what we see in 10 onwards is him taking more and more control of the art direction in the games? Saucy! posted:I especially liked the part about Cloud being "Star Wars dirty." I never really consciously realized it but that's exactly how most of the game and especially Midgar feels; probably smells like gasoline and axle grease or something. I feel like this is the part of FF7 that never made it into the EU, or into later games in the series, except FF9: the dirt and grime and debris that accumulates in places where people actually live. The tanks, fighter planes and industrial equipment lying around Midgar and elsewhere hint about the history of the world in a way that forced exposition does, and most of the urban architecture has that "dieselpunk" feel where buildings have thick, curved walls like ship bulkheads. Compare this to FFX, where technology is banned due to the fear of being wiped out by a giant apocalypse monster, but magic fills in most of the gaps and everyone seems to live fairly comfortably in a tropical-temperate paradise. I don't remember seeing many "lived-in" details in most of the towns, either. I think the conflict between technology and fear would have been more effective in a  frozen tundra with little magical assistance, where there's more weight to the drama between people who'd like to use technology to improve their lives and the people who live in fear of giant-monster reprisal.The opening area of FFXII is odd, too. There's supposed to be a class conflict with Vaan and Penelo living on the streets/in the slums, but the "slums" are very clean and resemble a modern indoor mall. Even the sewers are huge and relatively clean, except for the monsters. From what I recall, some areas in the game are fairly detailed, but still pretty sterile.
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Jun 21, 2012 21:36
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Pesky Splinter posted:While on the topic of character designs, as much as I love Amano's work, I think his stuff for VII is terrible: Nomura's designs here make a lot more sense; there's so much stuff on Amano's designs that doesn't mean anything. Like previous posters have said, character design does a lot of the work in filling in the history and attitude of a character, but Amano's woodblock-style flourishes don't really say anything about the nature of a character, and just come across as noise in the design. Amano-styled Cloud made me recoil a bit, because it ironically looks like an FFX- or Kingdom Hearts-era Nomura design.
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Jun 21, 2012 21:53
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Pesky Splinter posted:The term I've seen used is "Used future". Star Wars is the obvious example, but another is the Nostromo from the Alien film. Dirty, grimy with a diesel-ly feel to it. The lived-in feel, to contrast with the sterility of say...2001: A Space Odyssey, or THX 1138, or Star Trek, where all the ships are clean and ordered. I think the level of dirtiness can say a lot about the setting. For example, 2001's sterility suggests that space travel is still risky and dangerous; everything has to be in its place and tied down, and repairs to a ship involve meticulous care and risky spacewalks to the outer hull, much like current space technology. In Star Wars, Cowboy Bebop, Firefly and other "used future" universes, you just leave a cardboard box of tools next to the part of the ship that breaks down the most, because it isn't a big deal to fix it, just a chore. The ship is solid and tested, and nothing bad's going to happen if the antimatter flux coils aren't tuned up in fifteen minutes. There's a sort of "Wild West" flavor where the universe is still quite dangerous but people and ships are tough. I think this is why I don't generally care for super-tech or super-magic glass fortress style design; most of the time it lacks any detail that adds to our view of the world or the people in it, and it's just huge shiny facades. The Combine tech and architecture in Half-Life 2 is the only instance I feel is used very well, but it's because: A. Everything seems to have a purpose; there are barricades, fortifications and military installations and the Citadel gameplay at the end shows off what the Citadel is doing and producing, rather than being a Halo alien-style empty hallway. B. Many of the Combine objects are corrupted/enhanced versions of Earth technology, or converted from other species' designs to be human-usable like the rifles, computers, trains, and biological aircraft. C. The sharp, clean, jagged black metal everywhere provides a contrast to the aging Soviet-era urban sprawl and industrial ruins, and is sprinkled throughout the game, not just dumped all at once into the last big level. ANYWAY, FF7's version of "used future" does a great job of suggesting the aftermath of war and industrial expansion, followed by a depression. It seems like there was a big industrial expansion to make use of Mako power following, or during, the war with Wutai. There are a lot of signs that Shinra was planning greater things for a while and then just...quit when they realized they could run the world with Mako power. The cancelled space program and unfinished giant highway at the edge of Midgar speak volumes. Apart from the coal miners and other people directly put out of work by Mako power, I imagine many of the destitute people in the Midgar slums were employed in military manufacturing or building the Mako reactors, and work dried up when Shinra became the undisputed rulers of the planet. In Corel and elsewhere they promised jobs and prosperity in building the reactors, but a look at any of the reactors visited in the game suggests that they are mostly automated and don't need anyone to run them once built. They have that same indestructible, heavy-industrial "used future" design that looks like it will stand for ages, sucking life out of the planet and maintaining Shinra's comfortable status quo. 
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Jun 21, 2012 22:37
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Looper posted:It also started what would be refined in FFXIII: areas that consist of entirely straight lines and little else but eye candy. I think FF10's linearity worked very well in the context of the story. At the beginning it helps to underline Yuna's quest: many summoners have walked the same road and it's her destiny. But then it eventually opens up at about the same time Tidus starts convincing everyone that the summoner's journey is pointless. Flying the incredibly advanced airship around is a big middle finger in the face of the anti-technology traditions, and I think by the time you get it, the party has already decided to try to beat the system. The structure of the game complements the story pretty well. What I feel FF10 didn't do right was establishing a connection to most of the towns and characters. I feel no FF game has done this better than FF9. Even a single visit to any town is a richer experience than the cities in FF10 I can't really remember, and almost every town is visited multiple times with both significant and subtle changes as a result of events in the story. In FF9, every single character you could walk up to had at least one thing to say, and usually had a name and often a small plot arc. In FF10, there are a lot of nameless townspeople just shuffling around. Compare Sin's attack on Kilika the first time you visit to the damage done to two of the major cities in FF9; we see the cities before the attack several times and subtle things change with time, and later in a "wrecked" state with townspeople grieving, and finally in a "recovery" state where people are determined to rebuild and move on with their lives. Back on topic, I think FF7 succeeds pretty well in showing us interesting people and places connected to the narrative in both obvious and subtle ways, as we've discussed before with Shinra talk. We don't see a lot of change in most of the cities we revisit, which reinforces the bleakness of Shinra's dominance of the world. In addition, like only showing small parts of Midgar, it makes the world seem a little bigger. Even though it might be due to limitations on the console at the time (compare to the impressively dense and polished FF9 which started development before FF8 was even finished), by chance or design it works well with the story. Our party is a group of emotionally damaged superheroes but the world, as seen by the average citizen in FF7, doesn't revolve around them. Cloud and company aren't on wanted posters (despite being environmental terrorists, Shinra hasn't really tried very hard to stop them), they aren't international celebrities, and they aren't legendary heroes prophesied to defeat evil forever. Even the villains have other things to do than spend all of their time hunting down the party. In that sense I think FF7 is quite unique. It's not often that the player characters are still unknown to the world at large halfway through the game. edit: To put this in further context, which character is a celebrity and war hero? General Specific fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Jul 10, 2012 |
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Jul 8, 2012 16:10
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Indeterminacy posted:FF10 commentary I don't think the problem is that FF10 is linear without a world map; I did mention earlier that the linearity fits the narrative, for better or worse. The PS1 FF games are all pretty linear for a good portion of their respective plots, despite having a world map to travel in between cities and major events. It's not the lack of a world map, but the lack of detail and characterization of the towns and their people. As far as I can recall, nothing really happens in the towns and there isn't much to do. I can't even remember what the towns look like, other than Besaid. If part of a pilgrimage is visiting towns along the way, the game does a poor job of connecting us to the towns or the people who live there. Countless palette-swapped generic townspeople don't exactly inspire empathy, especially if a major disaster occurs before we even get to know any of them. Compare to the Sector 7 Slums residents and "tutorial crew" who we see frantically evacuating before the plate drops, or countless named, grieving people after disasters in FF9. If you haven't played FF10 in a while, can you count even 5 or 10 characters not directly related to the main story that were memorable?
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Jul 9, 2012 17:00
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Indeterminacy posted:The problem with this is you're assuming Barrett would have access to a properly functioning mechanical arm. Given that he was just a miner who'd lost his home and been targetted by Shinra, his artificial arm was probably more like a conventional prosthesis. I think when his prosthetic arm was installed (or when the first gun was installed) they grafted on a universal connector first. All of his other arms including the gun arms are standard attachments. Even if the first prosthetic arm was clumsy or nonfunctional it might have just been the most basic attachment. penguinmambo posted:I don't know what would stop him from, yknow, just holding a weapon IN that hand. I don't think he got the Gatling arm for practical purposes. It's symbolic of his stubborn, driven character that he'd replace his arm with something only suited for violence and revenge on Shinra rather than something that would be more useful in general. General Specific fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 18:37
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The hexadecimal thing wasn't that hard to figure out. If you paid attention to which cards you won (or found) you'd notice that A cards started showing up shortly after 9 cards in rarity, and similarly up to E. To be honest, there were only really two issues with Quad Mist: 1. The mechanics of the second character in the card's stats aren't immediately and clearly explained (It's a mystery, figure out the rules!) 2. I'm not sure if I imagined this, but I'm pretty sure there was an RNG applied to the fights between cards, even when you played a card with a clear advantage according to the rules of the game and the card strenths were assigned based on their stats and attack methods. Your 200-HP Lindblum card vs their 20-HP Sahagin card? Guess who's losing this fight!
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Dec 4, 2013 22:19
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MagusofStars posted:In contrast, while Tetra Master is part of the main quest, it only showed up for a grand total of about 20 minutes in Disc 3 of FF9 and could be completely and utterly ignored the rest of the game. Even if you wanted to win that tournament, save/reload and a bit of total luck lets you handle things easily even if you've never used it before. I think if you've been diligent until that point in finding secrets and doing Chocobo Hot&Cold, you'll have enough decent cards that you can win the tournament without having won a single card game previously. edit: You don't need to manipulate the rules in each city you visit, either.
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Dec 5, 2013 01:18
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SMERSH Mouth posted:This discussion reminded me of something I've been trying to get down for a while, for whatever weird obsessive reason. Dark Cloud 2 for the PS2 had future versions of every town you rebuilt in the present time. Not RPGs, but Snatcher, Blade Runner and Beneath a Steel Sky are all adventure games where you can explore at least a portion of their respective industrial/future cities.
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Jul 15, 2014 07:22
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So Nu is basically Tom Bombadil?
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Feb 22, 2015 20:08
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Are there any other games which have interesting characters or elements that aren't part of the main plot, and aren't really explained? As long as the main plot comes to a satisfying conclusion, I love it when stories leave a bit of mystery in the world as they conclude. Tom Bombadil is the canonical example, where Tolkien and the character himself stated that Tom wasn't really part of the world, he was just sort of a living folk tale with no explanation. The first thing that comes to mind for me is Brothers: Two Sons, which has a lot of incidental worldbuilding that serves as a backdrop to the adventure, but without pages and pages of written backstory. It's just presented as-is, and you experience it through the characters. I guess sometimes this happens when fans latch onto something unexplained, like the unique sprite for the truck being located in the S.S. Anne map in Pokemon, which you can only reach (I think, it's been a while) if someone trades you a Pokemon with surf before you're done on the cruise ship. It's amazing that there is actually a method to catch Mew without a GameShark, and it's even crazier, to the average player, than the folklore of the 90s about using STRENGTH on the truck to fight and catch Mew in a bizarre corner of the map most players never saw in the first place. I think seeing something that you never fully understand in a game, and being immersed in the mythology, is a lot better way to impress players than preaching pseudoscientific craziness at the end of the game, as JRPGs tend to do. FF7 is actually mostly innocent of this; the Lifestream is tied into the entire game and the motivations of the characters, and it's explained in the middle and not thrown at the player right before the final boss.
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Feb 23, 2015 00:07
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The White Dragon posted:I'm really surprised that they used the native resolution in the PSN versions when FF9's textures are designed to support ultra-sharpness. If you're using a PS2, you can crank up the read speed and use the double texture resolution setting I guess? It's still kinda lacking. Has anyone ROMhacked FF9 to use those high-resolution original pre-rendered backgrounds someone discovered, instead of the downsampled PSX textures? Is that possible/feasible? Combined with running in a higher resolution to show off character model and texture detail, I think that's all FF9 would really need in an HD remake, except for maybe some UI adjustment for aspect ratio.
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Apr 17, 2015 22:11
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Pesky Splinter posted:IIRC, they were the actual background images from the artists' webpages, rather than extracted from the game data. I know; I was comparing it to FF7, where most/all of the original art was discarded completely, and probably not saved anywhere.
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Apr 17, 2015 22:58
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ApplesandOranges posted:Zee-DAHN, some people thought it was Zee-DANE. Everyone I know pronounced it "Zye-DANE". I guess Aeris could have been named "Eartha". General Specific fucked around with this message at 05:48 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 05:45
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This guy are dead.
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Nov 17, 2015 06:38
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Madmarker posted:Which is the smartest move they could make. Whatever Square does, it is going to disappoint a massive chunk of the fan community and Square knows that this game requires a happy nostalgic build up. What Square is doing with this feels a lot like what Disney did with the Force Awakens. Very little actual information, some hints here and there, enough pretty pictures to keep us from complaining to much. It is a very smart move and I expect they will remain tight lipped until the game is actually released. I like this approach a lot better because it discourages people from getting rabidly hyped about something to the point that it becomes self-destructive and annoying to everyone else. I'd rather be cautiously optimistic and ignorant of the game's development until it's out. If it's a train wreck I'll probably still end up buying it just to experience FF7 in a different way. It can't take away my good memories of FF7 on the PS1.
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Jan 7, 2016 20:24
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