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The One Thing Games Should Take From Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Posted by Joe Keiser

 

Perhaps you recall that one cutscene that was posted here a week ago from Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It was a beastly thing from the darkest depths of the uncanny valley, writhing grotesquely in vibrant 720p. Well, it’s even worse in English—I have embedded that version after the jump, and if you think that I did that because I hate you that is completely fair.

I’m playing the game for a forthcoming 61FPS Review, and thirty hours in the good news is that so far this wins the battle for the “Worst Cutscene in Star Ocean: The Last Hope Award”. The bad news is that the battle for that award is titanic in scale—this game is packed densely with cutscenes, many of them twenty minutes long., and eventually they all combine into a single Lovecraftian horror of wild gesticulation and ear-wrenching voice acting. The producer of the game recently talked about games surpassing film as a storytelling medium. I hope he was speaking in general terms, because his team sure can’t do it alone.

I’m off topic. “Make sure your cutscenes are consistent in their ability to cause pain” is not the lesson the industry should take from Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Instead, it’s the elegant way the game lets you skip them.



It’s just a little thing, really, but I’m completely amazed I’ve never seen its like before. See, you can skip the cutscenes in The Last Hope. But instead of just leaving you adrift without a story compass like way too many games do, this one replaces the scene with a paragraph of summarization as to what you just chose to miss. As the parts of the game that you don’t watch can actually be rather pleasant, this is the kind of boon I wish I had known about, oh, thirty hours ago (though I’ll still be watching them, actually: due diligence and all that).

I don’t know if Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the first game to do this. It’s a simple idea, so I can’t imagine it is. That’s not what I’m really talking about here. What I am saying is that, for games where story doesn’t want to be there but for some reason has to be (and Star Ocean: The Last Hope is very much one of those games), there’s no reason to not do this. So why isn’t everyone doing it?

Related Links:

Star Ocean: The Last Hope Is Creepy as Hell
Your JRPG Narrative is Bad and You Should Feel Bad
JRPG Stories: Awful


+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT

Comments

Nadia Oxford said:

I know of one other game with the same feature: Star Control 2. There's one difference, though. Star Control II's in-game's dialogue and voice acting were brilliant, so I rarely skipped cut scenes.

So, here we are. Seventeen years later and the only other game to take inspiration from an ancient PC trait helps us bypass an anime girl squealing about moe. I guess I should at least thank God for the small favours in life.

I wish other games would take a cue and implement this feature, but then again, we still have random JRPG battles nearly fifteen years after Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and God help us, Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest showed us that there's a better way.

March 7, 2009 11:23 AM

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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