You ever notice something about the Breath of Fire games? Ryu kind of hogs the limelight in the final battles. Its like, you level up all these people, feed them potions, lug their stuff around, and then: "ok everyone, I'm going to transform into a dragon and take care of this one." They go "hey, at least we'll be in the credits!"
In the first one its all Ryu, he transforms, everyone else disappears, and that is the criteria for the true final boss and the best ending.
Here Ryu is temporarily transforming to deliver the big points attack as a dragon, and everyone else, all gussied up, is just feeding him wisdom fruits and candy like they're his assistants.
Here Ryu does not transform, he's got this Super Saiya-jin thing going on and while the team is still giving him support, at least he isn't phasing them out to deliver his home runs. Notice there is one less party member.
Seems like incremental democratization is going on over the course of this series.
This all makes me thing about auteur theory and how it may or may not apply to game development.
I remember when Greg wrote his Scratchware Manifesto his description of three person teams made me think of Starcraft, Rock, Paper, Scissors and Chrono Trigger's three-person party. That's my best guess as to the idea way to make games. Doesn't have to be three people, could be four or five, or two, or one, but I like the number three in particular. I think that's the answer. And sure, if someone can turn into a Dragon then they should be encouraged to do that with no ego friction.
What do you think?
game 1
The first game had it the worst: the higher dragon forms "absorbed" your party, so on bosses you'd just turn into super-mac-daddy dragon and hit "attack." Forever.
I was thinking about that,
I was thinking about that, the genre has made some progress in terms of mechanics since then. Not just in the Breath of Fire series, but generally. Its still ass-backwards though.
I wanted to spin this into a discussion thread on autuerism and individual vision vs. team collaboration as being the best thing for game dev. I´m more on the individual side of things but with some balance. Anyone want to share some of their experiences and insights on the matter?
JRPGs
Much as I love them, JRPGs certainly suffer from case of "telling a linear story while you fight random monsters by picking things out of a menu." I have trouble going back to play most of them now. Certainly the combat systems have gotten much better, and at least the Breath of Fire series had good stories to begin with (and also actually followed each other in sequence, which is nice).
As for writing games, or anything, I think there's some benefit to working in groups. Games, especially, have gameplay restrictions that can limit a writer's vision. It's great when you can do everything yourself, but I imagine at some point when the game engine and graphics, etc. get complex enough, you will need to work with the whole team to make sure everything fits together (and is even possible or fun). The story may have to be modified to best fit the most enjoyable gameplay, and parts may have to be dropped to even make a playable result at all. Even for small projects, I can't do "good" graphics on my own, so if I were to ever embark on any decent-seized project, that's one thing that would go out of my purview immediately and would result in a loss of creative control.
I think if you want to keep all control with one person, they better have extraordinary vision and a wide base of skills, as well as fairly strong management skills in order to make other people feel like their participation is valuable while still controlling the output. Or just make your games really, really retro/basic so you can handle all the graphics, sound, and programming while doing the story.
Re: game 1
Actually, that was only his Agni form, which IIRC was only usable on the final boss. Pretty weak compared to the others to begin with. Also, saying Agni "absorbed" your party is kind of misleading- he was essentially the psuedo-furry version of Voltron, which is why he looks more like a Chimera than a Dragon. This is why you couldn't use him if your thief had one of his own combo transformations in effect: you needed all eight party members available. So, I guess the first game was a notorious aversion.
Also, I never played the second game to the end, but that vid is labelled as a low-level run, which probably means nonstandard tactics are in effect.
Later games?
I don't recall Ryu being all that powered up in BoF 4 relative to other party members, but it's been awhile so I might just be misremembering.
The spinoff Dragon Quarter was more interesting in this regard. Yes, Ryu could transform and become this uber-powerful boss killer... but you paid a price for it. Each time you used his abilities, he would become slightly closer to a permanent game over, so his primadonna nature actually ended up being something of a liability. The more you could rely on your party members, the better.
Thanks for that Ian, never
Thanks for that Ian, never played past the 3rd.
Great comments everyone!