Final Fantasy VII: Kind Of REDACTED In Retrospect

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If/when you get to BGII, make sure you get Aerie, Jaheira and Viconia all in your party at the same time, fun-time lolz.

also massive lolz here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate_NPCs:

Khalid

* Jim Meskimen
* Half-Elf, Fighter, Neutral Good.
* Jaheira's bumbling husband, and almost her polar opposite. Khalid is a nervous, easily panicked warrior with a pronounced stutter. Like Jaheira, he is a member of the Harpers. Jaheira and Khalid were Gorion's good friends, and Gorion leaves instructions for the protagonist to meet with them at the Friendly Arms Inn after he is killed in an ambush at the beginning of the game. Canonically, the events of Baldur's Gate I are completed with Khalid in the party, however, he is killed at the outset of Baldur's Gate II.

Khalid was described in a 1998 PC Gamer review as the character most likely to be taken out into the woods, stripped of his gear, and shot, a reference to both his personality and his position as an inferior party member who cannot be removed without losing Jaheira, causing many players to kill him themselves.[citation needed]

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Monday, 9 March 2009 20:35 (fifteen years ago) link

lollollollolo @ "citation needed"

Lamp, Monday, 9 March 2009 20:40 (fifteen years ago) link

Jaheira's the useless one! I actually sent her into a house by herself, then switched to the rest of the party and booted her out, that way she couldn't walk up to me and take Khalid with her.

also i love that Minsc is the only one with his own wiki article

boner state university (cankles), Monday, 9 March 2009 20:41 (fifteen years ago) link

I spent most of BGII running around with a posse of ladeez so I didn't think Jaheira was useless.

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Monday, 9 March 2009 20:45 (fifteen years ago) link

(there are still some pathing issues but MAN the story is about a bazillion times better)

!!!! This is so incomprehensible to me, I remember being really bored & disengaged by BG2's story after loving BG1's?

I totally don't understand JPRGs, I get that people whose opinions I respect get pleasure from them, I just can't understand how.

Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 15:53 (fifteen years ago) link

i think the success of stuff like disgaea (another game for my genre-changers thread) means that their are a good # of challenging JRPGs its just that they tend to be hard in a much different way. also superhomo

Can you elaborate on this?

Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 15:55 (fifteen years ago) link

!!!! This is so incomprehensible to me, I remember being really bored & disengaged by BG2's story after loving BG1's?

I really liked the "romance" stuff, plus the side stories for all of the companions seemed much more fleshed out to me in BG2. Also, the cutscenes with Irenicus torturing Imoen were super creepy and some of the plot twists genuinely took me by surprise.

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 15:57 (fifteen years ago) link

the superhomo part?

boner state university (cankles), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 16:01 (fifteen years ago) link

what made bg2 so good is making your part in the story really important and world-historickal right from the beginning, something they nicked from jrpgs i think! rather than earlier d&d-based games where the important stuff starts to happen at like level 45 and you have to grind up from level 1

mas how i break it down tuo an extent (goole), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 16:09 (fifteen years ago) link

also the voiceover in bg2 was uniformly excellent

mas how i break it down tuo an extent (goole), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 16:09 (fifteen years ago) link

speaking of superhomo i was always pissed that as a male character u had many fine bytches to mack on but as a chick the romance scripts were with the lamest dude in the game. </3

mas how i break it down tuo an extent (goole), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 16:11 (fifteen years ago) link

haha yeah! There was a planned romance with Haer'Dalis but they pulled it due to time constraints and turned it into him mackin' on Aerie.

One of the most fun parties I put together was playing a male character with Jaheira, Viconia, Aerie and Haer'Dalis and trying to get everyone to hook up.

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 16:13 (fifteen years ago) link

my biggest narrative-related beef with BG1 is that your party members feel fairly faceless - aside from some canned, 'spontaneous' dialogue, they don't really react to events or environments.

boner state university (cankles), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 16:16 (fifteen years ago) link

They fixed that in BG2, largely by drastically reducing the number of possible party members (in general, the only ones with personalities in BG1 are the ones in pairs and the ones with serious full-on beefs).

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 16:18 (fifteen years ago) link

i think the success of stuff like disgaea (another game for my genre-changers thread) means that their are a good # of challenging JRPGs its just that they tend to be hard in a much different way. also superhomo

Can you elaborate on this?

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, March 10, 2009 10:55 AM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

okay off the top of my head jap games tend to create challenges by emphasizing randomness (where is the grail? search an empty square behind a house in a town two islands away!) and leveling enemies (lol those knights have 1000 hp and u r level 2!). they also - much more than western games - assume the player is a completist so a # of games are structured to punish that. want the only golem's bell in the game? well replay this battle until u get the 1/32 drop!!! and of course all that bell does is unlock a crappy class that you will never use

at its worst these games are just an excersize in mindless grinding but at their best they both require and punish repetition. think of ffv or march of the black queen's reputation/moral system. which is often where the strategy is - the tension between leveling/grinding/replaying enough so that u dont get slaughtered but still can get the "best ending" or the actually unhelpful "myrddian helm"

whereas the stuff the makes western games difficult is a lot closer the game's mechanic rather than structure. they also tend to place a lot less emphasis on filling item slots or unlocking things. i can go on more abt this but thats the gist of my thinking

Lamp, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 17:09 (fifteen years ago) link

my biggest narrative-related beef with BG1 is that your party members feel fairly faceless - aside from some canned, 'spontaneous' dialogue, they don't really react to events or environments.

This is pretty exactly what I preferred about BG1 - it presented you with all these interesting characters and then left to you think up what they were doing and feeling, whereas BG2 felt like reading a fantasy novel? Possibly I am alone in this?

I mean, to clarify - I don't want to be left, Eye of the Beholder style, to do all the work myself - I want to be given a setup, and for the game's own ideas of who the characters are to come to the surface in discrete chunks and chafe and align and make friction with my own, to give me the pleasure of reshading my ideas to incorporate new evidence as often as I can cope with it. Anyway that is why I loved that game?

Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 18:37 (fifteen years ago) link

Lamp's post is good and interesting!

Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 18:42 (fifteen years ago) link

I love Minsc a lot too but I'm not reading the rest of this thread for fear of BGII spoilers, still haven't got around to playing it cos I haven't OCD'd on BGI quite enough.

SB ya later, alligator (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 18:56 (fifteen years ago) link

GP, I think that is kind of exactly what BG2 did...?

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 18:59 (fifteen years ago) link

BG2 & David Warner's Irenicus is what finally made realize the importance of great voice acting in anglophone games, and the how great it was when you had a classically trained actor in the role.

Actually, David Warner and Paul Darrow both highlighted how greatly improved genre entertainment can be with classically trained actor types, as opposed to whatever cheap stringer a casting director or voice-over studio found living around Vancouver/L.A.

kingfish, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 19:38 (fifteen years ago) link

Of course, I encountered both actors at an age when I could finally appreciate what they brought to the game, as it were.

kingfish, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 19:39 (fifteen years ago) link

Yeah I mean people def def have hugely different thresholds for this, it's a totally personal thing! Some people are happy to make stories around stairscumming in roguelikes, some people want animated cutscenes to feel involved, whatever - I was just positioning the games on a spectrum?

Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, 10 March 2009 19:50 (fifteen years ago) link

all game voices should be by billy west

boner state university (cankles), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 20:28 (fifteen years ago) link

and ron perlman

boner state university (cankles), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 20:28 (fifteen years ago) link

BuuuuuuUUUuuuut SEEEEEpiroooooooooth.....

ILM is a gross place full of coersion and sexual manipulation (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 10 March 2009 20:28 (fifteen years ago) link

One thing I do want to mention, which may or may not be obvious, is that I find my personal enjoyment of a game to jump by several levels when there are actual characters & dialogue. I offer up the contrast of BG2 and the Icewind Dale games; ID1 & 2 had better technology and an equivalent story, but it was due to the characterization, dialogue, and attendant voice-acting that puts BG2(and its predecessor of Planescape) as some of the greatest rpg/computer/video games ever made.

One of the criticisms of this I've read goes along the lines of "oh you can just make a story for your characters, why should you actually need somebody to talk it out," which always seemed like bullshit to me; if I wanted to do that, I'd write up dialogue for when the lego men on my desk got sick and tired and decided to declare war on a toy dalek. It's a 6-parter, but I could have edited it down into a real 'crackling' 4-parter.

kingfish, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 02:36 (fifteen years ago) link

Final Fantasy VII: Kind of Retarded in Retrospect: A Baldur's Gate II Thread

I f'd up the word rear (Z S), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 02:39 (fifteen years ago) link

I'm just butthurt because when I played BGII about 8 years ago, it was the first non-JRPG I had ever played, and it confused the hell out of me. I quit after a few hours.

This FFVII thread is making me want to reinstall it!

I f'd up the word rear (Z S), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 02:50 (fifteen years ago) link

I actually first entered the world of rpgs thru the game that helped spark jprgs: Ultima III(a.k.a. the NES 'Ultima'). I played mainly pc rpgs for years(w/ the exception of some nes games) and it wasn't really until i played ffvii in 1999 that i got to get the feel for how jrpgs worked. I was used to stuff like Ultimas IV - VII and a Half.

And now it's interesting to see what happens when americans deliberately make jrpgs, see 'Anachronax' and all the summons in 'Planescape'. (they even tip their hand to the FF series in the game thank-yous)

kingfish, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 03:16 (fifteen years ago) link

Do the BG games hold up today if I've never played them? I think i'm in the mood for a good rpg

turtles all the way down (Face of Wolf), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 06:28 (fifteen years ago) link

No, they don't, unless you're really into generic D&D environments and rulesets.

Nhex, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 07:37 (fifteen years ago) link

the writing is still great

kingfish, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 10:44 (fifteen years ago) link

The graphics are sketchy nowadays but I still like the storyline a lot.

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 13:52 (fifteen years ago) link

I'm just butthurt because when I played BGII about 8 years ago, it was the first non-JRPG I had ever played, and it confused the hell out of me. I quit after a few hours.

yah i had a pretty similar history w/the game so i d/l (ðôíòõ peace) bg1+2+expansions and started playing bg1 last nite. its... okay so far but tbh im not feeling the interface that much and the layout seems really clunky compared to say nwn. makes u pine for blue menus

i guess basically it seems okay but i shoudve just d/l nwn2 or morrowind i think?

Lamp, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 16:50 (fifteen years ago) link

nwn2 isn't as good as nwn1 and I can't imagine playing Morrowind

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 16:53 (fifteen years ago) link

this reminds me that i used to play might & magic iv: clouds of XEEN on the pc, and all i remember is that there were these teleportation portals where you had to type codes to get where you wanted to go, and if you typed XEEN it would take you instantly to the last boss, who would kill you. i always wondered if you could just grind for hours and hours and then kill XEEN without going anywhere in the actual game.

Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 16:57 (fifteen years ago) link

were already so far o/t i guess it doesnt matter but ime nwn1 is the pinnacle of these games. y/n??

on the first computer i ever put together myself i played one of the ad&d games with a desert setting that was pretty dope i cant remember the name tho woulda been like 95/6. i also sorta played bg and planescape: incalculable, so morrowind is no good?

Lamp, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 16:58 (fifteen years ago) link

was clouds of xeen the one with the darkside of xeen expansion? i played that for like ~20 hours of random quests, went looking for the main quest, got immediately killed, forgot about it entirely

thomp, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 17:23 (fifteen years ago) link

I rank Planescape: Torment, NWN1, BG2 and KOTOR1 all about the same; I would replay any of these games in a heartbeat (and have done so with all of them).

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 17:25 (fifteen years ago) link

never played Planescape, I'd love to give it a (console) go sometime.
Did anyone do Jade Empire? Is it worth it?

WOOKIE JOHNSON (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 17:29 (fifteen years ago) link

Planescape never came out for console.

Jade Empire was fun but nowhere near the league of these other games, IMO.

Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 17:32 (fifteen years ago) link

i have KOTOR on xbawks but whenever i have tried to play it, it crashes when i try to exit the opening area

boner state university (cankles), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 17:34 (fifteen years ago) link

Yeh, i know there was no planescape console game, it's just that i have no interest in returning to pc gaming these days.

WOOKIE JOHNSON (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 17:52 (fifteen years ago) link

i think that's the one, tom.

i remember getting pretty far in the ad&d game that came out for sega genesis, until it lost my save file, forcing me to go back to playing eternal champions or whatever.

Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 17:57 (fifteen years ago) link

so im pretty sure the game i was thinking of upthread was a ravensloft game for pc. it was fun but comparing that and eye of the beholder (so awful) to the saturn/snes jap ish from that era western games feel so sweaty and stupid and cruel

nwn is the only pc rpg ive really "got" i think. still im going to give bg a chance

Lamp, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 18:14 (fifteen years ago) link

the ad&d megadrive/genesis game - WARRIORS OF THE ETERNAL SUN? i finished that. you had to go to one hidden square behind a hidden door in a more or less random dungeon and a guy was behind it and said "oh hey! i want to trade with you guys! guess that means you win the game!" it was dreadful.

it was the only videogame rpg my ex-RL rpg player brother ever played, i think. then i saved over his save file in a sort of involuntarily spasm of brattiness when i was ten or whatever and he never went back to it. otoh in retrospect it certainly seems like a favour

thomp, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 20:20 (fifteen years ago) link

yeah, that must have been the one.

Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 20:26 (fifteen years ago) link

Forks, if you liked Fallout, you gotta go for Planescape someday. The writing is really leagues above what passes for it in most video games, even today.

Man this thread has gotten off-topic! I do wonder if FF VII had gotten a remake on DS or whatever I'd give it more slack, but I still don't think it's as replayable or as worth going back to as the SNES-era games. I can't see all the endless re-trekking, loading, cutscenes and summons being tolerable today, but then it was the last Final Fantasy I've really played.

Nhex, Wednesday, 11 March 2009 22:29 (fifteen years ago) link

A remake with an option for skipping through summons would convince me to play through it again.

I f'd up the word rear (Z S), Thursday, 12 March 2009 00:27 (fifteen years ago) link

Honestly, i've played FF VII so many times by now that when i now start to replay it... it's not that it doesn't hold up, it's just that I've done it all like 50 times.
and I don't care about graphics so am going to check out games that for some reason passed by me - BG, NWN, and Fallout

turtles all the way down (Face of Wolf), Thursday, 12 March 2009 08:43 (fifteen years ago) link


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