LogFAQs > #929756007

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I'd still put SMT DDS 1 & 2 up against .hack// buffoonery any day

I wouldn't.

SMT is just one of those franchises that did absolutely nothing to appeal to me in any way, and always left me shaking my head whenever someone got down on their knees to fellate the hell out of it. And the Persona games are even worse - that franchise as a whole makes me cringe so hard I can feel my pelvis brushing up against my brain.

It's actually hard for me to say "X, Y, and Z are the reasons why I don't like it," because it always felt like everything was the problem for me (or, at least, nothing was appealing). But those games all definitely fall into the "This is way too fucking Japanese-y" vibe that kind of turned me off JRPGs in general. There are too many culturally-specific tropes that just don't connect with me on any level.

I hard nope out after reading the plot of any of those games. But with .hack, it had the advantage of coming at a time when the idea of a VR MMO was still both novel and generally unexplored (before Sword Art Online and basically did the exact same idea with less creativity yet somehow managed to be more popular at it), and when there was still interest in digital identity issues in the post-Matrix/Thirteenth Floor world, before the Matrix sequels came along and kind of squelched that appeal.



WhiskeyDisk posted...

The only argument you're going to get in hack's favor relies on the weab DVD half.

Ehh, if we're going to talk about weeb-ness, I'd argue that SMT/Persona is WAAAAAAAAAY more weeb wank material than .hack ever was (Persona especially).

But with .hack, it's not even the weeb-ness of it having an anime, as much as it is the idea of cross-media integration. Having a game with prequel animation of any kind (which allows you to connect to characters more), as well as books (again, ditto) allows you to sort of see the same story/world from different angles, which fleshes it out way more than any game alone really can. More so because a lot of the .hack material is deliberately exploring tangential stories. You don't NEED to know what's going on it .hack//Liminality to understand the main game, but it gives a new perspective if you do watch it. You don't NEED to know what Haseo was up to in .hack//Roots to appreciate what he's doing in GU, but it gives you an entirely new perspective on him as a character (and even more so if you realize, from the supplementary material, that he's the same person who played Sora in the original games).

To reference the Matrix again, it was like how Final Flight of the Osiris and Enter the Matrix (the plot of which I loved, even if the game itself was kind of meh and somewhat buggy) recontextualize events in Reloaded. They're not NECESSARY, but they flavor things in interesting new ways if you're willing to make the investment to appreciate them. Sure, it was a marketing ploy, but it was also incredibly interesting artistically and aesthetically, and it's kind of a shame it didn't become more of a thing. But that was likely inevitable, because it will always take longer to develop a good game than it does a good movie.

I'd say that kind of storytelling structure was also an early strength of the Halo series (maybe the first six novels or so), until 343 went all-in on the idea of tie-in novels and made them almost a requirement to understand or care about stuff in the new games (which, combined with the new games being kind of crap, led me to stop caring about the games, the books, and the franchise in general). Fall of Reach alone does FAR more to flesh out that universe than any of the first four games (ie, the Bungie ones). Reading the books absolutely makes the games better as a whole.
---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family