The Art of Video Games Smithsonian Exhibit

Walpknut said:
well at least they didn't cram it with horrible Final Fantasy shit, just imagine the future generations being inspired to make characters with pants with a boot larger than the other, and a bunch of tape coming from nowhere coupled with emo haircuts.
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FFVIII, FFX, and FFXIII are really the only offenders there, with FFVII being very anime inspired.

Ausdoerrt said:
Not ALL FF character design is horrible. A lot of it is actually quite good (FFIII/IX) or very original/exciting (FFTA/FFXII, love it). None of those are on the list though. I've never much liked their approach to sci-fi as well.
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FFVI actually had some of the most interesting art direction (for FF) in my opinion.

Ausdoerrt said:
IX yes, it's basically same design as III, but XII? Not so sure... In any case, they should do more fantasy settings and less sci-fi, they do fantasy a lot better. Last Remnant was great, too.
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XII is a meshing of Ivalice, which hasn't been a good setting since it's inception in Vagrant Story and FFT, and the classic Final Fantasy crystal stuff. Mechanically that game was a cluster fuck. As for "sci-fi" (it's magepunk in most of the games), VII did a good job with it.

Ausdoerrt said:
Lies, VIII, IX, FFTA2 are all great games.
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VIII has some pretty giant mechnical and other design flaws, even if I did like the plot. X was good mechanically but had some shit level design and two of the worst protagonists in JRPGs. I've heard that XIII is good after the 40 hour tutorial.

Anyway, I'm glad that they at least have Chrono Trigger up there. It's probably the best designed JRPG (which no one has learned from...) so it definitely deserves a spot.
 
XII is a meshing of Ivalice, which hasn't been a good setting since it's inception in Vagrant Story and FFT, and the classic Final Fantasy crystal stuff. Mechanically that game was a cluster fuck. As for "sci-fi" (it's magepunk in most of the games), VII did a good job with it.
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Ivalice from FFT and FFTA/XII isn't the same thing. It's boring in the former and (imo) great in the later. XII may not have been a great game (never tried it), but the art and setting are gorgeous. One reason I've always liked FFTA over FFT despite the latter getting lots more critical acclaim. They used a similar setting in Last Remnant, and it's once again great.

VII was an OK game, but imo artistically unappealing.
 
I guess it comes down to preference then. I preferred the more medieval Europe inspired setting of FFT and Vagrant Story to the less focused setting of FFTA and XII. I didn't feel like it had the creativity that the original Ivalice or FFVI had. I also felt that it was very much so building off of FFXI (Japanese MMOs in general really) artistically. It's not that I don't like the art direction of it, I just don't think that it's the best art direction that they've had. I'll also admit that I'm biased by my general feelings towards FFXII. I don't think that's unjustified either as the plot and quality of the writing are a huge chunk of what defines the setting in addition to the art direction. It's a large part of why I prefer the original Ivalice as it was much darker.

Also, I thought that FFTA took place entirely within a book and wasn't the "real" Ivalice? I got the impression that FFTA2 was actually in Ivalice, but I haven't played it. That said, FFTA's side quests are obnoxious, I really loathe them randomly appearing and disappearing and needing to complete them all to get certain unique characters. It's a distraction from the main game, and not a very good one at that. FFT had much better "jobs" with only a few, generally better written/developed/designed side quests. I'd say that FFT was generally better overall, writing, level design, and quest design were all better. The class (job) systems in both were good, just different approaches.

As for FFVII, the art direction is very stylized. I feel like Midgar had excellent art direction and that the art direction seemed to excel in places where it could do the slums or the advanced technology. I liked the used industrial feel to it. Still, it is stylized and had a much more anime oriented art direction, so I can see why some people may not like it so much. Add in that all of the 3D models were polygon-tastic and that all you have to go on is the backgrounds and the concept art. I feel like FFVI probably had the best settings of the main FF titles.
 
I'm yet to play through FFVI so I wouldn't know. Looks steampunk-y.

FFT/Vagrant are more 'dark', but also more generic. The world FFTA/XII is more colorful, original, but still balanced and sort of makes sense. You're right, FFTA is technically 'in a book', but that's obviously what the Ivalice of FFXII was based on. In FFTA2 you also get transported there through a book, but it's also tied in to the FFXII world through some characters etc. So it's sort of hard to tell which one's which.

As for FFVII, I don't hate anime, I just dislike it's approach to sci-fi most of the time, unless it's 'hard' sci-fi, or a classic (-style) space opera, and those are very few. I felt that in VII the different pieces didn't come together enough to create a complete, logical whole. Some areas were great, but others were completely out of place. Same is true for FFVIII but to a lesser extent.
 
sea said:
Mrxknown said:
There's a great article at gamasutra that tears into where they went wrong with this.
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I wrote that article. :D Thanks for the kind words.
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Oh didn't see you posted it above.

I had just read it (at work) and had to let NMA know.

I was actually going to the Smithsonian that Saturday and because of that article opted for a different exhibit. Much appreciated.
 
sea said:
Mrxknown said:
There's a great article at gamasutra that tears into where they went wrong with this.
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I wrote that article. :D Thanks for the kind words.
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I think you just won the game.

In other words, I too read your article and I think it's great. Nice work.

I really hope that this is just a preliminary thing to gauge numbers and not a final assessment.
Would they really trust an online poll for their actual exhibit?
 
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