Let us Speak of Narrative

Hours played: 8.15
Played up to Chapter 5: Vanity

Disc two bitches! I've made it far, but can I make it farther! Oh the suspense.

Eek. Something that has been really bugging me about my play through with FFXIII has been how they throw in countless little cinematics while you move through a level. My real problem isn't the cinematics (though I don't really care for them), it's how they're interspersed between these useless moments of game play that are supposed to be tutorial. It's like one type of shit I don't like gets interrupted by another type of shit that I like even less, thus preventing me from getting through that first shit. Wait, why am I even playing this? Oh yeah, because it's supposed to get better. I WILL SEE, hopefully.

I understand mechanically how this first bit (HAHAHAHA) of the game should work. There are three interwoven elements: tutorial, time to learn, and narrative/back story. I've already talked about how I think the tutorial elements sort of fail, but what's really becoming jarring is the shift between these three elements.

My assumption is that the part of the game I'm in right now, is slowly introducing me to the complexity of the combat system, thus I only have to control two characters. The designers want me to understand how classes compliment/interact between two classes before they'll give me the chance to work with three. I understand this idea, however, because you don't have a full team the fights have to be easier, and so when I enter combat I never really have to do much. I'm button mashing again, auto-chaining and every once and a while paradigm shifting, almost out of an attempt to better understand the system, not because I need to.

So given the ease of progress right now, and the simpleness of combat, all I do is run along the path into enemies, then button mash them to death, and after about four minutes of this I get pulled into a cinematic. And that's what I've been doing for hours now. I walk forward, through battles, and watch cinematics. I don't feel like I'm being offered a great amount of game play, and even this limited game play is constantly interrupted by the cinematics. It's a repetitive cycle that makes this "tutorial" the most trying thing to get through.

The cinematics, hmm. I don't want to be too harsh, but I tend to find the way the characters act, and their dialogue to be either trite, cliched, or melodramatic. Maybe I should just say unsubtle, something that could have been improved with further drafting. Now, this isn't uncommon for video games, so maybe I should shut my mouth. But no, FFXIII isn't a normal video game.

FFXIII purposefully places narrative front and foremost in the game. The story and characters are supposed to be good, supposed to be epic, sweeping and riveting. I mean, people love these games for a reason, and it's not because of the role-playing right? FF is about characters and stories, and so these cinematics need to be held to a higher standard. I'm not attacking the story, because I'm not far enough in to it to talk about it intelligently but I do find the characters (only some) and dialogue to be grating. But the characters will grow, so maybe the cinematics will too.

That's a long argument, so fuck it, quick notes after the jump.

• At one point Lightning and Hope ride a robot. FFXIII is really trying to woo the western audience: useless vehicle sections.
• There is also a section where Sazh and Vanille explore a rock factory place. But its scored with this jazz guitar song. The music doesn't fit the environment and it also comes out of left field in terms of the rest of the score. Weird choice.
• There is a flashback where you have to play Snow after Sarah broke up with him. The location is beautiful actually, but it's pretty irritating to have to run around the area just to acquire the next cinematic. Guh. Also, I couldn't fight the beach bums. Double guh.
• Lightning gives Hope a knife because she is trying to toughen him up. First, why is she trying to make this kid a warrior? He's a kid, he doesn't need to be a warrior. But whatever, still, why does he need a knife; HE HAS A GIANT BOOMERANG. He can throw it around and get monsters from far away and it can also hit multiple monsters in the same pitch, plus it comes back after throwing it. A knife does none of these. Maybe it's also a gun.
  

Out!