Time to Opine

New Releases 10/23 MIA?

 

This week's lack of a proper RPG release provides me the opportunity to talk about something that has bothered me quite a bit this generation of video games. Namely, the decline in RPGs being produced period. When Final Fantasy VII took the world by storm in 1997, the number of RPGs increased exponentially as developers scrambled to produce similar products to cash in on the success of the venerable franchise. RPGs had been mostly a niche until FFVII achieved mainstream success, becoming the first RPG played for many people. The first Playstation (hereafter forever more referred to as PS1) became the premiere RPG console, boasting a library that contains some of collectively-agreed upon classics, classics like Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana, Legend of Dragoon, Dragon Warrior 7, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, and Star Ocean: The Second Story, to name a few.

Shout out to Google's image search.

RPGs typically had a slew of text back then in lieu of the voice acting prevalent in today's games. Text is much easier to develop than voice acting, as it doesn't require multiple voice actors and it can be rewritten without having to redo lines. Furthermore, lines have to be recorded, often well in advance of when the rest of the game is completed. This reduces some of the flexibility in designing games that developers used to enjoy back before voice acting became the status quo.  These days, in order develop a decent RPG, you almost need a cast of voice actors. Sure, there are indie games and handheld games that still rely on text to convey their narratives, but the majority of RPGs developed are AAA titles (the titles that get the largest budgets and are the most highly anticipated by fans).

Video games require voice actors not only capable of delivering their lines, but delivering them in a way that is believable in a medium that can be difficult to do so. To voice a cartoon character is an abstraction; the actor is one stepped removed from reality, representing an animated avatar that they must project personality through. I can only imagine to voice polygons it would  be even more of an abstraction. Some voice actors may not even see their characters in action until after the game is finished.

Although there were some games with voice acting on the PS1 (Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid come to mind), it wasn't until the PS2 that voice acting hit its stride, as the newly embraced DVD format allowed 4.7GB of storage, a dramatic increase over the CD's 750MB max.  Final Fantasy X proved that the series could benefit from voice-acting (at least, according to most fans), and the PS2 had a somewhat sizable RPG library, the newly found costs of voice-acting prohibited smaller studios from creating titles that rivaled juggernauts like Square-Enix.

This generation has quite arguably seen the fewest RPGs released. Halo and Call of Duty rule the roost, and developers flock to make similar titles in order to cash in on those respective franchises' successes. Does this sound familiar? The same thing happened with Super Mario Bros. on the original Nintendo. After Nintendo's success, the platform was flooded with platformers, many of them mediocre copies of Mario, but there were also unique games that improved upon the formula, just like some of the RPGs that followed Final Fantasy VII. I hope the next generation of games sees something for everyone being released, but I also secretly hope for the resurrection of RPGs dominating the charts. Perhaps I just yearn for a more simple time when I had to read games instead of them playing themselves for me. No doubt the first Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior helped me develop the skill when I was younger. They were like genre novels married to cartoons with computer graphics. These days most RPGs seem like soap-operas with overly melodramatic and cliché characters.  But maybe it's just me.

Now, get off my lawn.