LogFAQs > #901219807

The Popo posted...

Red_Frog posted...

It always struck me as odd the N64 got so shafted in the RPG department. RPGs excel at reusing assets, you'd think with the limited space on those cartridges it would have been the premiere genre.

I was going to say the opposite, that a cartridge-based system hurt RPGs due to the direction they were heading (3D enviromnents/characters, larger worlds, FMVs, highly detailed backgrounds, etc). N64 using cartridges instead of CDs was a main reason for Squaresoft jumping to PlayStation, after all.

The 3D is exactly what would have saved the space. Keep in mind, geometry was much simpler in those days. Games could be quite small so long as you could avoid some things. Take EverQuest as an example, released in '99 and didn't quite hit 500MB in its original form. EQ was humongous, you could spend hours traveling from one place to another. As you did mention, the FMVs and prerendered backdrops were what was space consuming, and while they were the new hotness for CD based systems, because they had the space, they weren't really necessary for a good game. There's no reason they couldn't have put the N64's reasonable power advantage to use handling things like cutscenes in engine, sort of like Skies of Arcadia did some years later. Not that every RPG needs to be huge, but I believe with some judicious texturing they could have created some things with pretty impressive scope. It just would have required they confront and accept the machine's shortcomings, while playing to its strengths.