I have not played this game, largely because it is not out yet. Currently writing a review on Minecraft: Story Mode and I think I should totally turn this " I have not played this game" into a seried on this blog.
So on to Final Fantasy 15 and the Ramuh summon that was revealed earlier this year. As a fan of jrpgs I played many of the classics, like the old FFs and the Tales series, with Golden Sun 1 and 2 being the ones closest to heart. Many of these games lets the players' character summon gods and beasts from various mythologies as their most powerful attacks to deal good damage, and the Golden Sun series' djinn setting and summon system makes it very unique within the sea of jrpgs. But here is the issue I have, these summons don't seem to FEEL powerful. Yes the summons do destroy the sun and earth and solar system in the process of the summoning animation (You know what I am talking about), but in the end the damage shown done by these powerful summons is merely represented by damage on the opposing player. FF15's open world style and way superior graphical fidelity, I feel, has allowed it to let summons mean something. Here are a few things that I think it did right:
Firstly, the use of contrast. Noctis being picked up by Ramuh during the summon shows to us the size of the summoned creature. I remember Ramuh being just a tiny old man when playing FF4 and for whatever damage he does the summon itself doesn't feel powerful. The contrast between the epic summon music and the quiet atmosphere during the summon charging time gives one the sensation that shit is going down when Ramuh appears on the field. Golden Sun does have specific summon animation, but the same tune playing just makes the summon a part of the battle that is nothing special, instead of the "Man invoking the power of Gods" sensation FF15 gave.
Secondly, the use of space and more specifically environmental destruction. In a classic rpg style summons can't really do much to show impact because of the nature of battles, and most of the time when a summon destroys the world and yet your character is still standing there simply breaks the immersion than making it feel epic. In FF15 nearby trees are burnt and the game environment in such an open world setting allows for such an implementation. They need to work a way out on how the summons don't hurt the teammates not picked up by the summons, though.
Now a caveat to this is the reasonable assumption that one will get bored of long summon animations after a few watch. And the way to mitigate this is to switch off animations, but I suspect this game has another trick up its sleeves. And that will be item number three, the use of conditions. Noctis seems really injured before being able to perform the summon, so it may be that summons can only be invoked when certain conditions are met, such as being of low health, or can only be used once per a certain period of time. Firstly this resolves an old problem I have with summons in the old games, how spending 10mp gives you small ball of fire and maybe 50mp gives you the roaring God of Thunder bringer of storm and destruction. The God of Thunder feels nothing more than 5 fireballs, and probably took up that much sprite space on the screen too. Making it hard to call upon summons allows them to feel special, and justifies the use of over the top music, animations, and dealing way too much damage to the opponent and the environment. Making them not so much a part of core gameplay mitigates the problem of seeing them too frequently, and perhaps it can be a thing to fight with normal spells and finish off with a chain of summons (it will be cool if one can use multiple summons and have them animated at the same time too!). Dedicating a specific summoner in the party in the Tales and FF game does help, but when they are just dealing the same damage as other characters are it diminishes the power of the summons so much they become pointless and boring. Summoning, if FF15 manages to pull this off, becomes something that is special again.
If any other game has already done this, then good for them. I'm simply excited for FF15 and maybe I'll buy a console just for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment