Rita update. Looks like the storm isn’t going to do much to my area other than a good bit of rain. (yes!)

I shouldn’t start linking to insert credit threads, because if I were to start, I might never stop. But this idea not only knocked my socks off, but proceeded to roast my socks and eat them. The gist: In light of Xenosaga I+II for DS, FFVII should be down-ported to Chrono Trigger/FFVI-style 2-D for the DS/GBA, which would allow it to shine more as a game than it can in its current PS form. (Alleged next-gen port notwithstanding.) There’s some good arguments, if you share tim’s point of view. And I do, so they are.

Rantiness follows.

Square is really weird these days. Back when CT came out, I would have let them take care of my little brother. When FFIX came out, I’d have let them look after my cat. Nowadays, I might pretend to not be home when they knock on the door. I’m looking forward to FFXII to see if they can pull off something good and original.

If certain genres of games stopped relying on technical advances, they would succeed much more.

I have no reason to believe that a 3-D environment is more immersive than a 2-D one, other than that’s what I’ve been led to believe. 3-D in games takes out the immersion that I was granted in so many 2-D games, because it has to try too hard. Anything in 3-D is trying to approximate reality, whereas 2-D wasn’t trying to approximate, but to abstract from reality. The basic 3-D environment has to be perfect to be any good, otherwise it will look low-tech. The near-perfect 3-D backdrop still fails because you can tell that it’s near perfect. It falls into an area of perception called ‘the uncanny valley’. (Usually, it is applied to human perceptions of robots, or human-like things, but I believe it translates to anything that approximates something else, like a fake tree or wax fruit.) There probably can’t be any perfect 3-D environment, and it certainly hasn’t existed to this day. 2-D works well because we’ve used it for so long, you can usually forget about having to move around a camera, and it’s not trying to be real.

Immersion is being able to not think about the fact that you’re playing a game when you’re playing a game. When I play anything in 3-D, I think about how I have to guide the camera angle and play at the same time. It takes me out of the game, making me feel like the third person when I want to be the person on the screen.

Another ‘uncanny valley’ issue: Wacky things that are possible in video games become a little to a lot more absurd when done in 3-D. (This, I believe, is why Mario Sunshine wasn’t so well-recieved by everyone.) I don’t want to leave behind wacky video game logic, even though some might. It’s part of the charm of the medium. Katamari was great because it went way overboard on the wackiness, and it was designed by a guy who dosen’t even really like video games. I know Katamari’s 3-D, but it works in 3-D (and probably wouldn’t in 2-D). I’m not arguing for the complete cessation of 3-D games, I just want to critique the industry’s insistence on it. I want there to be a reason for 3-D in a game if a game is made 3-D.

I think my own preferance of 2-D over 3-D, and the reason I even write so fervently for 2-D comes from the fact that I prefer more playful, less serious things in general. 3-D is better for more serious games. First-person shooter serious. 2-D is wacky and playful, it can make its own rules. 3-D has to abide by rules of reality. The mishmash of the two thematic styles is what bugs me. Mario Sunshine is the epitome of that. I guess it could be possible in the future, as sensebilities are weaned off the “3-D=serious, 2-D=not” concept. I do like Sunshine though, but not as much as other Mario games.

As far as I’m concerned, technology came about as far as it needed to with the GBA. I grudgingly bought a PS2 this generation, and I bought a GameCube fairly lukewarmly. The only purchases that really made me happy were my GBA and DS.

I’ve decided now that it really is mostly a personal preferance. The industry just isn’t focused on making games for me anymore, and I want to fight that because, well, I still like games. And more worthwhile 2-D things are being made, it’s just that I don’t get along with my gaming bretheren a lot because of my biases.

Still though, if the industry wants to give up on me, I can pack up my laptop and emulators and my luddite self and be pretty content.