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The inspiration may have been theatrical like many other things in FF9. Cutting away to other scenes and characters can be quite practical in that setting of course (give other actors and stage crew time to set up things), but it does promote a certain flow to the presentation that other kinds of media don't necessarily follow as much, and as you said, this helped FF9 feel a bit different to surrounding entries in the series in its storytelling. Not to say that others never had cutaway vignette cutscenes, of course.
It was also a great way of directing the player of where to go to progress at certain points. In Dali as the example when you watched the ATEs you would generally head to that location in order to talk to the character to progress to the next part of the story.
Yep, great point and Dali's a fine example of that where you'd want to find out more from these small vignettes... Vivi getting kidnapped, Garnet in the vegetable patch, Steiner talking to the old man about the cargo ships etc etc
Actually, ATEs were just a fancy, on the nose name for the FF5 system. Basically, all of the character development in FF5 is hidden in optional, time sensitive scenes that required unintuitive backtracking to previous towns or hidden in optional villages/places. Needless to say, this is amazing for replayability since you're not forced into character cutscenes unless you want to. That being said, Star Ocean 2's Private Actions were the best implementation of this type of mechanic probably ever made (and it also precedes FF9). PAs had the same qualities of ATEs , Xenoblade Heart-to-Hearts or Tales of "Skits" except they were much, much more. PAs enabled 80 ending variations, secret character recruitment, pairing of friendship/romance between all characters (and some NPCs), chaining of future events and PAs based on previous ones, side quests, and the most impressive of all: more often than not they recontextualized the entire city as if it was a new place, always hiding opportunities exclusive to that PA such as unique NPCs that only appear during that PA (with unique items for you to steal), even entire shops only available for that event or unlocking optional dungeons through said events. Of course, this is a logistical and completionist nightmare but at the same time it is an exploration wet dream.
As a body of work they are probably my favourite pre-rendered backgrounds of any game, even the throwaway and non-key environment scenes are works of art.
One of those things from a more experimental era of video games. Now that everything in many games is mocapped and fully voiced, publishers don't want things like this that would drive up budgets. Instead we get boring notes scattered around that hardly one actually reads.
Yeah, notes and journals went from a very effective novelty that built a scene or sidequest (e.g. a corpse with a note in Resident Evil etc), to something that became, at its worst, a stand-in for storytelling and world-building. I thought it was just lazy design but you make a sound point about modern budgets
I do miss those times. Most recent memory of anything like this was the division games with fully voiced cassettes that describe times as the virus spread, from different points of view. Brought to mind the jecht spheres from ten and similar systems after. Kinda sucks you just get plain notes in very recent games more often than no
In later years I've been thinking about how this could be resolved. I really wonder if an approach is to fully develop a game with very cheap assets and graphics etc, just focus on getting the gameplay and story and whatnot right. Then when the game is finished, then finally spend time on design, animations, voice acting and whatnot. Fit the graphics to the gameplay and story etc, not the other way around. Not only would it improve the gameplay experience, but it could potentially cost less if done right. Less expensive changes and unused work etc.
@@MMasterDE The problem I was talking about was pretty much isolated to AAA games (and AA games with higher graphics) Smaller games that use pre-done animation libraries and have less emphasis on graphics can do things like this. I love the Trails games from Nihon Falcom. They have amazing stories and fun gameplay, but the graphics looks a couple generations behind. However, they can do cutaway scenes like this to develop the story without having to do a whole bunch of work.
@@fattiger6957 I think you misunderstood if you think I wasn't talking about AAA. Just to be clear, what I suggested was another development process which would still give you the excellent graphics, just not at the expense of gameplay, story etc.
This was such a great mechanic for character development. It's weird that they never reused it. Xenoblade 1 has the Heart-to-heart system that was somewhat similar and also a great way to develop characters.
There was certainly a jankiness to it, I think you would get prompted for missed ones if you went back and forth between screens, but sometimes you wouldn't.
Do you think this system will be handled differently if they remake FFIX? What could they do different and what new scenes would you like to see that wasn't showcased in the original game? Love your videos they always bring good discussion and intrigue in the comments.
Thanks! I guess if they remake FF9 they might simply abandon ATE and make the game much longer with sidequests/mandatory scenes that build out the characters a different way. I say this based on modern FF's and modern games often using quests to build out secondary characters rather than narrative being a reward unto itself. If they did retain ATE, which I would hope they would, they might simply become more cinematic scenes, and it would be cool if you could store them and watch them back later. Regarding new scenes - I would like to see Amarant Coral built out a little bit more, I think he suffered the most in the original game for his comparative lack of motive or backstory which is only fleetingly touched on in a flashback scene of Treno. Also non-essential characters like Tantalus, seeing their backstories would be interesting to me.
The reason I didn’t like this mechanic is because there were missable events sometimes only because you spoke to one of the characters out of order, for example. How are you supposed to know as a player?
Yeah in some instances when I missed the event trigger i'd be running around trying to find it again. Particularly when there was more than one ATE to view
Your channel is exactly what I, a 35 year old man with far too much of his identity tied up in these games, require to be happy. As an aside: how interesting that English speakers, when discussing Garnet, almost never called her Dagger. I think it's comfortably the worst character name in almost any media I can think of. Maybe as "ダガー" it sounds and means something far more interesting to a Japanese speaker.
Thanks for watching 💙 If you enjoyed the episode please consider subscribing to support the channel. If you'd like to support the channel further you can do so here: -
Patreon: www.patreon.com/gamediscourses
Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/gamediscourses
The inspiration may have been theatrical like many other things in FF9. Cutting away to other scenes and characters can be quite practical in that setting of course (give other actors and stage crew time to set up things), but it does promote a certain flow to the presentation that other kinds of media don't necessarily follow as much, and as you said, this helped FF9 feel a bit different to surrounding entries in the series in its storytelling. Not to say that others never had cutaway vignette cutscenes, of course.
It was also a great way of directing the player of where to go to progress at certain points. In Dali as the example when you watched the ATEs you would generally head to that location in order to talk to the character to progress to the next part of the story.
Yep, great point and Dali's a fine example of that where you'd want to find out more from these small vignettes... Vivi getting kidnapped, Garnet in the vegetable patch, Steiner talking to the old man about the cargo ships etc etc
Actually, ATEs were just a fancy, on the nose name for the FF5 system. Basically, all of the character development in FF5 is hidden in optional, time sensitive scenes that required unintuitive backtracking to previous towns or hidden in optional villages/places. Needless to say, this is amazing for replayability since you're not forced into character cutscenes unless you want to.
That being said, Star Ocean 2's Private Actions were the best implementation of this type of mechanic probably ever made (and it also precedes FF9). PAs had the same qualities of ATEs , Xenoblade Heart-to-Hearts or Tales of "Skits" except they were much, much more.
PAs enabled 80 ending variations, secret character recruitment, pairing of friendship/romance between all characters (and some NPCs), chaining of future events and PAs based on previous ones, side quests, and the most impressive of all: more often than not they recontextualized the entire city as if it was a new place, always hiding opportunities exclusive to that PA such as unique NPCs that only appear during that PA (with unique items for you to steal), even entire shops only available for that event or unlocking optional dungeons through said events.
Of course, this is a logistical and completionist nightmare but at the same time it is an exploration wet dream.
I'm a simple man. Alleyway Jack video comes out: I watch it.
🙏
The pre-rendered backgrounds in this game are so well done. Remind me a bit of Saga Frontier 2, though not as watercolor-esque.
As a body of work they are probably my favourite pre-rendered backgrounds of any game, even the throwaway and non-key environment scenes are works of art.
One of those things from a more experimental era of video games. Now that everything in many games is mocapped and fully voiced, publishers don't want things like this that would drive up budgets. Instead we get boring notes scattered around that hardly one actually reads.
Yeah, notes and journals went from a very effective novelty that built a scene or sidequest (e.g. a corpse with a note in Resident Evil etc), to something that became, at its worst, a stand-in for storytelling and world-building. I thought it was just lazy design but you make a sound point about modern budgets
I do miss those times. Most recent memory of anything like this was the division games with fully voiced cassettes that describe times as the virus spread, from different points of view. Brought to mind the jecht spheres from ten and similar systems after. Kinda sucks you just get plain notes in very recent games more often than no
In later years I've been thinking about how this could be resolved. I really wonder if an approach is to fully develop a game with very cheap assets and graphics etc, just focus on getting the gameplay and story and whatnot right. Then when the game is finished, then finally spend time on design, animations, voice acting and whatnot. Fit the graphics to the gameplay and story etc, not the other way around. Not only would it improve the gameplay experience, but it could potentially cost less if done right. Less expensive changes and unused work etc.
@@MMasterDE The problem I was talking about was pretty much isolated to AAA games (and AA games with higher graphics) Smaller games that use pre-done animation libraries and have less emphasis on graphics can do things like this.
I love the Trails games from Nihon Falcom. They have amazing stories and fun gameplay, but the graphics looks a couple generations behind. However, they can do cutaway scenes like this to develop the story without having to do a whole bunch of work.
@@fattiger6957 I think you misunderstood if you think I wasn't talking about AAA. Just to be clear, what I suggested was another development process which would still give you the excellent graphics, just not at the expense of gameplay, story etc.
This was such a great mechanic for character development. It's weird that they never reused it. Xenoblade 1 has the Heart-to-heart system that was somewhat similar and also a great way to develop characters.
Great video as always 😍
🙏
Wake-up babe alley jack vid just dropped
🙏
I was never sure if there were some ATEs that you could miss if you chose the wrong one first
There was certainly a jankiness to it, I think you would get prompted for missed ones if you went back and forth between screens, but sometimes you wouldn't.
hey can you make video about the atomos eidolon lore?
Do you think this system will be handled differently if they remake FFIX? What could they do different and what new scenes would you like to see that wasn't showcased in the original game? Love your videos they always bring good discussion and intrigue in the comments.
Thanks! I guess if they remake FF9 they might simply abandon ATE and make the game much longer with sidequests/mandatory scenes that build out the characters a different way. I say this based on modern FF's and modern games often using quests to build out secondary characters rather than narrative being a reward unto itself. If they did retain ATE, which I would hope they would, they might simply become more cinematic scenes, and it would be cool if you could store them and watch them back later.
Regarding new scenes - I would like to see Amarant Coral built out a little bit more, I think he suffered the most in the original game for his comparative lack of motive or backstory which is only fleetingly touched on in a flashback scene of Treno. Also non-essential characters like Tantalus, seeing their backstories would be interesting to me.
The reason I didn’t like this mechanic is because there were missable events sometimes only because you spoke to one of the characters out of order, for example. How are you supposed to know as a player?
Yeah in some instances when I missed the event trigger i'd be running around trying to find it again. Particularly when there was more than one ATE to view
Alleyway Jack now needs to teach more than card games now in today's economy
Ain't that the truth.
I didn't know you could skip them😂. I wouldn't, but its still surprising
Yep about 70% could be skipped, but some story-specific ones (like Vivi getting captured in the Evil Forest if I remember right) were mandatory
@@AlleywayJack But would anyone skip them (at least in a normal playthrough)?
Watch the “Treno Tradition” Active Time Event. Dagger get mugged and I lose a 1,000 gil. Game devs do a little trolling.
Your channel is exactly what I, a 35 year old man with far too much of his identity tied up in these games, require to be happy.
As an aside: how interesting that English speakers, when discussing Garnet, almost never called her Dagger. I think it's comfortably the worst character name in almost any media I can think of. Maybe as "ダガー" it sounds and means something far more interesting to a Japanese speaker.