There was definitely at least one old Matsuno interview where he went on about what a huge influence Star Wars had on him. I am pretty sure it predated FF12. I’m having a hard time finding it though. This is the closest I’ve gotten, but it’s pretty recent and just a quick summary of a Japanese interview so it is not what I am looking for.
Being influenced by Star Wars is hardly unusual but I do recall there being a line about how he wanted to make his own take on it someday, so when FF12 rolled around it was kinda like “oh, here it is.”
It is a nightmare searching for old game news. Maybe it would be easier to dig this up if I knew Japanese. Maybe I fabricated the whole thing. I do remember how that “Matsuno has eye cancer lol game is doomed” rumor spread, and how there wasn’t a concrete source on it for the longest time, and how it was tacky and gross. I am pretty sure the Star Wars thing had way more meat to it and wasn’t like a modern day “Treasure made all the good Konami games but quit cuz they hated making sequels” deal.
But of course I can’t find it so this post is pretty pointless I guess.
i believe once gambits become available to you in IZJS every gambit store just sells them all outright, so do what i did and spend 20 minutes on giza plains grinding wolves to build up a large battle chain and get a ton of drops to sell.
(battle chain tip: picking up loot increases the number of kills needed before next chain level. when your chain number is flashing, picking up loot incurs no penalty. it’s a very dumb system that goes completely unexplained in-game)
The difference between Matsuno-style obtuse and Kawazu-style, to me, is that in a Kawazu game, everything is batshit and you don’t understand it, but you can just kinda roll with it and have fun anyway. In Vagrant Story, you have to actually do it. Matsuno’s systems are meant to be mastered, while in my view Kawazu’s systems are there primarily to affect a particular mood.
Vagrant Story is probably an incredible videogame but it’s 3 hard 5 me :c
[quote=“boojiboy7, post:56, topic:4948, full:true”]
This thread is making me realize how boring game auteur theory is.[/quote]
You’re right about that. However, in some cases it is moderately applicable. I do think it’s useful as synecdoche. Like, when we say a “Matsuno Game,” we of course mean the combination of Matsuno, Sakimoto, Yoshida, (perhaps) Ito, and the unsung team that works with them. Since this unit so frequently works together, it’s only natural to see their combined effort as a sort of entity on its own. Even Sakimoto’s music is way different when it’s not for a Matsuno game, y’know?
I agree that the endless focus on the “Matsuno is a genius and here’s why he was thwarted before/during/after leaving the project” is unhelpful at best, grossly revisionist at worst. However, the “here’s why this team’s style of game-making didn’t work as well this time around,” discussion I think is very fruitful! The Polygon article has some insight there as well. If it is to be believed, Kawazu didn’t really change the game in any particular way, he just finished up what was already there and shipped the damn thing. Which makes sense to me.
But like the problem with that is that even in this thread, as Felix corrected, people often mistake that unit as making things they didn’t even make:
[quote=“Felix, post:31, topic:4948”]
btw, as far as I know he didn’t touch OB64 or Tactics Ogre Advance; Quest made those without him (kind of amazing that they decided the best thing for them to do as a studio was make sequels to a couple SNES games they’d let Matsuno direct when he was 28, but no argument here) after he and Yoshida and Minagawa (director of Magical Chase!) got poached for FFT. [/quote]
So if this is so useful as a synecdoche, it shouldn’t be so easily applied to things it isn’t true about, should it?
no, and I was actually going to clarify that I don’t think OB64 or Knight of Lodis have that much in common with Matsuno’s usual storytelling (they have the base trappings but they’re ultimately much more straightforward and less inspired, but also less potentially confusing), but I didn’t want to get more pedantic at that point
OB64 has some pretty unique spritework given it was a late N64 release but it’s also a less interesting, direct sequel to a fairly weird and slow (albeit impressively complex! there’s a reason it made the dude’s career) SNES real-time strategy game
I would recommend SNES TO to everyone long before GBA TO (seriously, I know none of you have played SNES TO, and the PSP version was garbage) but it’s at least pretty smooth and fun and less grating than FFTA
I’m gonna be a pedant and clarify that what I meant was that OB64 and GBA Tactics Ogre tell scrambled stories because they ape Matsuno, sans Matsuno, in the same way that FFXII fails to come together and even original Ogre Battle doesn’t completely work – illustrating how difficult that style is.
What did you like about GBA Tactics Ogre, Felix? I found it essentially unchanging through 40 hours – same units, same tactics, almost none of the unit planning/transformation of Ogre Battle.
why do all of you double the average time it takes to play RPGs every time you come back with an estimate that’s intended to contextualize just how long the dang thing is and make me feel like I’m the flash
there’s a special ending for finishing in under 25 hours and I am 100% sure I got it the first time through without trying
anyway as far as I remember gba tactics ogre uses the unit progression and the spells and such from the SNES game near-verbatim (except the balance is broken and it’s too easy and the maps don’t utilize height as much) so while I can’t give it too many points for originality there is the same shift from having archers early on to summoners and so forth
I know it took me two summers to beat that game at a time when I was heavily playing my GBA, where Final Fantasy Tactics Advance took 2-3 months; one of the first game I felt empty on completion. I’d purged it and managed only to remove a bleeding rock from my stomach.
played the dang game twice and always wound up in a broken state with the quest item economy where I could never get to the supposedly actually difficult series of battles after you finish all x00 regular ones
also FFTA is definitely way more padded, GBA TO is actually breezy as heck
don’t nobody damn ass say star wars hasn’t had anything to do with final fantasy or jrpgs in general like almost all of them crib directly from the precise chosen one journey that luke goes on. like its one thing to say “oh its just the heroes journey” but asking for like written proof that these dudes copied star wars is asinine as all hell.
you might as well be asking for proof they ever even read another book in their life or something when a bunch of these games are about dumbass kids living in remote villages who meet a crusty old dude or some comedic relief characters put them into a situation where they gotta leave home and fight an evil fuckin empire helmed by a guy in a mask or a bishounen
eeegh, maybe. I spend so much time being “on” during a given day that I can’t imagine why I’d want to be that performative while playing a videogame too
