Monthly Exclusive Podcast Questions!

I don't know if we'll see a renaissance, but I do think people who are tired of the AAA game trends carrying the industry now can find exactly what they're looking for in the Indy scene, and it looks like even that small niche market is looking competitive and healthy right now. There is certainly a demand!

Resonant Arc

I'll get back to you when I figure this out myself!

Resonant Arc

I think one of the big problems video games still suffer from is a failure to follow the rule of 'Show don't Tell'. So many games still rely on large segments of expository dialogue to inform the player about the setting. I don't know why this is the case because video games are setup perfectly to show the player as opposed to telling them. Perhaps they fear a key piece of information being missed or misunderstood by a segment of players.

Through your previous podcast I came across the term of "escapism" in relation to videos games. I had a look online about that term and found a relatively negative connotation attached to it. I have always said that I like games like Death Stranding / horizon zero dawn/ nier automata because I can get lost in their digital worlds. But that doesn't mean I am actually escaping from reality trying to avoid every day life. Since the nuances of the term are not clear to me, what are the differences between "wanting to imagine you are walking in an imaginative landscape" and the traditional interpretation of escapism that you do so in order to avoid having to live your real life? The former is a form a temporary escape too

I think Chrono Trigger pulled this off quite well, but it left room to be expanded upon. Random encounters are the biggest problem I see related to this topic

Toni Gröndahl

I think mentally less engaging jobs definitely makes more space for your creative thoughts! Cool idea

Toni Gröndahl

What do you think about the Nvidia leak? Any thoughta about possible Final Fantasy 9 Remake?

Toni Gröndahl

I know this is way too soon to ask but which Squares will be making FF17 or the rumored FF9R? I doubt it will be Kitase's team since they are working on FF7R and I don't know if Yoshidas team wants to do multiple projects at the same time after 16

Toni Gröndahl

For me I'm waiting patiently for FFXVI, new Yoko Taro console game (Nier or something else), Mother 3 western release... Breath of the Wild 2 aand the moment Square is done with FF7R so they can move on to another project

Toni Gröndahl

I would love to see a massive 16bit story driven JRPG with today's scale, with animated cutscenes too. And Octopath didn't scratch that itch for me

Toni Gröndahl

Do you think that world building and good pacing are opposites, in the sense that one has to be sacrificed for the sake of the other? While I feel there are games that strike a good balance between the two (such as The Witcher 3), does world building too much intrinsically ruin story pacing, and does focusing in good story pacing means you have to make compromises on your world building? Or are there enough good ways to do your world building that don't slow down and drag down the plot pacing? Perhaps it's an issue of quality world building vs quantity (efficiently building your world up without huge exposition and dialogue dumps) I ask this because I see a lot of games get praise for their world building and I find these plots to be paced too slowly for me - sure, the world building is interesting, but the plot pacing is so slow I become completely dettached from the game because I lose interest in caring about what happens next. For me this happened in games like Xenoblade Chronicles X and Trails in the Sky Trilogy, which are touted for excellent world building. I find that the world building in both games comes at the sacrifice of a well paced plot.

Edrees Hatef

Personally, I think you can leave DETAILS up to interpretation, but you cannot leave CONTEXT up to interpretation. Because without context, I am not going to feel invested in what's happening. Not knowing WHAT is going on or WHY I SHOULD CARE is the literal definition of "alienating."

Personally, I prefer knowing that a character is going to die ahead of time (I often go out of my way to spoil for myself what happens in stories for just this reason; it's my plan for the forthcoming FF7R installments, in fact), because it builds up adrenaline as you're waiting to see HOW and WHEN it will happen. It creates a sort of dramatic irony, and if the character is similarly aware of their impending doom, it can even make the story more dramatic as they struggle to accept their fate. It taps into the fear which we all have of our own mortality.

Have you ever felt emotionally attached to a fictional character whose death was easily predicted ahead of time? SPOILERS: FF7, FF7 Intergrade, FFX, Crisis Core For example, Aeris is a character who dies and no one sees it coming. By contrast, Sonon, in FF7R: Intergrade was obviously not going to survive, and I do not care about him terribly. Does death have to be a surprise, the first time consuming fiction, for the death to be meaningful? Other FF examples might include Zach of Crisis Core or Yuna of FFX

Robert Molt

I would love to hear what you gentlemen feel about the artistic merit of open-to-interpretation endings. FF7, as an example, has an ambiguous ending: did humanity survive Holy or not? Midgar is destroyed within 500 years, and it seems to imply humanity is gone, but we do not know. Is this a strong feature of good story-telling? Is the famous ending to Lost in Translation great, in that people still debate what Bill Murray whispered to his lover? Are there times when ambiguous endings are bad, because decisive endings are better? I do not mean this question in the trivial Lady or the Tiger sense, but whether or not letting our imaginations wander is part of what makes something great. As a contrast, I would describe the ending of FF13 as so open to interpretation that one has no idea what is going on, such that this is a bad ambiguous ending.

Robert Molt

I would very much like to hear you analyze what is the Promised Land in FF7. I think this is a very tough question, as different FF7 characters give very different opinions on what they think it is, and the ending is very open to artistic interpretation in how it describes the Promised Land. Is it an actual physical place? Some Aeris/Cloud dialogue implies so. Is it a metaphysical concept? The ending somewhat implies this, as do some Cosmo Canyon people. If it is a physical place, where is it?

Robert Molt

With retro style games getting green-lit on kickstarter, and the growth in retro game collecting, do you think we'll see a modern day renaissance of games that bring back the style of 90's RPGs but with modern technological benefits? Obviously we don't need fancy graphics to tell a great story. But how important were the technical limitations of the time in sparking creative solutions that lead to games we all remember so fondly? Can that ever be recreated without those limitations?

re-ask from last month: Right now, the traditional structure of overworld-dungeon/town- battle doesn't leave a whole lot of room for the individual battles telling a story (and the sheer volume of fights tends not to help) I know some titles have had a couple of fights that had some amount of narrative intergration to them, like nier/ff15 with the field banter and ff6 with some of the in battle conversations(terra's first spell where others could see it). I've also seen SRPG's do this a fair bit out of necessity(Final fantasy Tactics did this a lot, but really most SRPGS of the era did). Do you guys have any other ideas about how gameplay and story could be more tightly integrated in the context of JRPGS (especially turn based ones)?

What is the best way to pitch a script or story you have developed?

What are you guys currently looking forward to most (could be an upcoming book, movie, game, or whatever else media related)?

Does boredom facilitate creativity? So I had an interesting thought experiment the other day, does doing a low mentally engaging job create room for creativity. Many years ago I worked in a car wash, which was not very mentally demanding, basically pretty simple work but I found my creative side flourish. Now I don't know if this is for already creative people or for everyone as I am a musician. I found myself writing songs, vocal hooks, lyrics etc while washing Cars. Last 10 years Ive been working as a tradie which is equally mental and physical and haven't really had this happen at work, but the last year I've been changing jobs and one of them was just moving boxes and found this thought experiment returning as the job required very little mental attention. Just curious on your thoughts on this idea. I would find myself not only thinking about music writing but even just ideas for games, ideas for activities for me and my kids etc.