It's really disgusting to see all the readers here (who are no doubt mostly japanophiles) be so negative about First Person games. As if Ueda has to stay japanese and not touch some "dirty western" genre.
We shouldn't get skiddish when someone brings up the phase "first person". IMO I would love to see an atmospheric adventure/fantasy game done in the first person. It leaves a lot of opportunity to give a very personal, emotional game experience that I believe Ueda and his team are beyond capable of. I would be more than eager to play a first person title developed by him.
..oof. No, please don't. Don't even joke about it, or say it to be nice, and get allowance points with the fans of the "real giants in the business".
Also - journalists: please stop asking japanese game-makers about when they're going to make an fps. It just makes you look stupid, even if you edit out your own question from the exchange. No one else but you admire the "mature story telling" done by Bungie or Infinity Ward.
@nipsen: Riiiiiiiight. Because big operatic fantasy storytelling is soooo much more valid than big operatic sci-fi or military storytelling.
(and I gotta say on a "mature storytelling" point that ODST has probably handled the theme's from Dante's book than EA's Dante's Inferno game looks like it's even gonna get close to. Ugh, unbaptized baby spider-monsters, seriously?)
@fearing: Most games - American or Japanese - have pretty unsophisticated narrative execution. Still, if you asked me for the name of a developer that managed to transcend that, Ueda would be one of the first that sprang to mind.
@dd528:
So.. one crazy strawman with a personal attack. And there's the "all is equal argument" as well, along with a silent approval for the suddenly decided truth that Ueda probably should make an fps.. Wow. How sophisticated we are here at Kotaku..
@dd528: Perhaps, but very good arguements could be made either way for a lot of creators that some people like to flippently insult without having actually spent any time with the work they like to insult. While I personally enjoy what Ueda does, there have been arguements that there is really very little depth or much more than a thin plot to his stories and that they are more just moody emotional situations designed to tug at the heartstrings the way a tearjerking chickflick does or the same way an Infinity Ward game (a studio I personally don't care as much for as someone like Ueda) tries to put you into the chaotic intense feel of a battlefield situation as opposed to using that to tell a story with any real significance to it. To use the other negatively described studio here, Bungie, again an arguement could be made that there are many more layers to the storytelling methods in a Bungie game, anything from Pathways into Darkness and Marathon which have very rich and complex backstories that are uncovered through the games, up to the current Halo 3 ODST game that as I mentioned previously has a really interesting strucure around Dante's Divine Comedy and deals with the theme's of that quite interestingly; from the simple jumping into Hell idea of the game, to having and AI named Vergil as your guide, to the 9 circles of audio log story each dealing with the corresponding theme of the 9 circles of Hell from the Divine Comedy, to going down into the city's sublevels to sublevel 9 where (much like the 9 cirlce of hell in Dante's work) you find it frozen.
Again, I'm not saying I agree with all these arguements. Before someone goes off and flames me for insulting Ueda, I enjoy his work and would not personally be one to make the previously described arguement myself, but I'm using this arguement that has been made by others as a counterpoint to the arguement that his studio is somehow on a so much higher plane than Bungie or Infinity Ward who often become easy targets of people who like to insult what has mainstream popularity because they think it makes them sound more intelligent somehow, when really, making the previous arguement about Ueda's games is just as unfair and ridiculous as saying, "No one else but you admire the "mature story telling" done by Bungie or Infinity Ward."
@nipsen: I sense strong japanophile in your post. If you didnt want the japanese to follow in a western devs footsteps, they wouldnt have started making videogames in the first place.
@NoBullet:
Um... you know I can't tell if you're being ironic? So you have to spoil me before I understand it, with "/sarcasm" tags at the end. Or else I'm not going to understand, and throw an embarassing and revealing hissy-fit or something.
I still don't get all the "CUTSCENE BAD GRRRR" on Kotaku. A good cutscene is the best way to tell a story. I never feel any connection to characters, or get any real feel for the world, or can tell what's going on in a game without cutscenes. When you're focusing on PLAYING THE GAME, the story goes unnoticed more often than not.
Case in point: Bioshock. Story would have been a lot more interesting if, y'know, they'd done more than have people babble about it in the background while I was killing stuff, then have me beat a dude to death with a golf club.
@Lord Shplane: Also, I'd like to see an FPS with the kind of atmosphere that Ueda makes. HURGG GRRR SPACE MARINE and HARRGG RARRR WORLD WAR 2 and GGGRRRRRRRRRRRR MODERN WARFARE is boring.
How about a game where you're a ten year old who has to learn to shoot dudes to protect his family, then gets pressed into military service? Also, it's set in a fantasyverse. And there are dragons. That you shoot with a barret .50 cal (Your arm gets broken because you're ten).
@Lord Shplane: I don't think anyones saying that cutscenes are bad but more that when there's a long drop in action for a cutscene or story scene that being suddenly unable to interact can kill the immersion. I think another good example aside from HL2 for making cutscenes is MGS4. Now I know many of the cutscenes were just straight up cutscenes with no interaction and were really quite long but there's other moments where you're watching a cutscene but also playing at the same time.
While I think cutscenes can be great for telling story and giving the player a bit of a rest in between chapters,etc I do think that games could really benefit and even improve their storytelling capabilities if developers look at ways to innovate within them or from them.
@Lord Shplane: for the most part, i agree with you. i'm not of the persuasion that having the main character not talk is better for making you feel like YOURE the main character. same with not seeing the characters face. i know video games are drastically different things to different people, but i'd much rather watch a good story, whilst playing it, than supposedly BEING in the story.
i'm not sure i've played any games where i literally felt "immersed." which isn't to say it's a bad thing, it's just not why i play games. and seeing my character talk while i put the controller down is no less "pulling me out of immersion" than the phone ringing or a friend/sibling watching who talks.
i was a lot younger at the time, but i remember getting so excited for the CG FFX cutscenes (which i referred to as the cutscenes with "good graphics" because i didn't know the difference between CG and ingame graphics.) most likely because of my age, that was the most enthralling "epic" video game experience up until that point.
how do you think people would respond to movies completely in first person? :p
Aside from the obvious artistic merits of his games, which are tremendous, I think the greatest thing Ueda has accomplished with his games so far is...
He takes an aspect of a particular video game genre, and strips away everything boring or tedious about it. I'm having trouble articulating this but here goes...
If you look at a game like Zelda. It's a dungeon crawler. But Zelda games also have alot of other stuff to do outside the dungeons. I don't think there's any argument that the dungeons, and their puzzles, are the main draw of any Zelda game. So what Ueda has done with Ico is take the dungeon-crawling aspect and made an entire game out of it. The entire game is one huge, incredibly elaborate dungeon.
Now look at a game like God of War. It's an exciting hack-and-slash action game. But that excitement peaks at the game's many climaxes (pun intended!): the boss battles. What Ueda's done with SOTC is take those boss battles and made an entire game out of it.
The fact that he can tell such compelling stories without removing the player from these situations is a testament to this man's skill as a game designer and an artist. "Saving the princess" is a gaming cliche as old as games themselves. But who knew something like ICO would come along and turn it on its head so fantastically. How much more engrossing is it when the princess you are trying to save is right there with you the entire time? No other game has ever made me feel so selfess, so heroic, as ICO or SOTC. Nor has any other game ever made me truly question what it means to be a hero. Is Wander trying to resurrect his dead girlfriend for her sake, or for his own sake? Is his slaughter of those seemingly peaceful colossi justified?
I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than to say: if he can do to FPS games what he has done with the genres he's already tackled, I will be first in line to play it. And I don't really like FPS games.
I'd be really interested in seeing what Team Ico could do with the genre, I can't imagine it'd be your run-of-the-mill FPS and I'd wager it'd have the most beautiful story in an FPS as well.
It also sounds as if QTEs are something he wants to implement and while I can see the advantages to such a mechanic, many hate them.
But I digress, Ueda should get The Last Guardian done and dusted before thinking of what he's going to do next.
@Yossarian: Do your tear droplets start running from the tops of your eyeballs? Well, I could see the screen blurring along with crying/arm wiping the screen to momentarily cease the blur working well to represent crying.
Anyone who doubts him doesn't think he is the developer he is!
It is possible he could do something amazing with the FPS genre. Its always good to get to give it hands of someone new to take a new direction of the genre. No matter how many shooters there are, there is room for a game that would be as unique as his.
@Xcite79: I think you're getting ahead of yourself a bit. He hasn't proven himself in the FPS field yet. I trust in good devs but just because they're good in one genre doesn't mean they are good in them all. That's why companies tend to specialize in certain genre like Valve mostly making FPS. He may have some good ideas to bring forward to an FPS but that doesn't mean they'll be well implemented per-say. Like I said I do trust good devs but if he could make a masterpiece in any genre he wanted he'd be in the public eye beyond reason. Everyone would be watching him all the time for his next game (I know he has his fans but not like what I'm describing).
@Phi101: I think the reason his work doesn't have that kind of fan base is because the very thing it doesn't do is pander to the lowest common denominator.
uh...i got that he was pointing at half-life's mode of vague storytelling, which he can relate to. and he likes the first-person mode.
...where'd you get that its a shooter from, though? Headline = misleading.
@TheIrishNinja: He doesn't mention shooters explicitly but considering he mention Half-Life over for example, Oblivion or Mirrors Edge is a good indicator that he is talking about FPS.
@cyberrat101: its really not just you. i love this place, but i think the sensationalizing is getting out of hand. its clearly getting the desired effect - we're talking here/giving hits - but im not happy with the method, personally.
@-MasterDex-: see, i disagree because he was talking primarily about cutsenes and methods of storytelling, from what im reading. half-life, as he says, allows motion during its cutscenes, and there's been a fair amount of talk about the more minimal/vague way Valve likes to tell its stories, which i think Ueda rightully points to as having something in common with his style.
his example is a shooter, sure. but he's not referring to FPS gameplay/bullet physics or anything like that. for example, if Suda were to say he digs the level of detail kojima puts into his MGS games, regarding let's say, weapons or military tech in general, id not read that to say "SUDA WANTS TO DO AN MGS GAME /CONFIRMED" , you know? i mean, regardless of how awesome that could be.
@GunFlame: Ueda talking about future ideas/projects can be accomplished and get people talking without being deceptive or sensationalizing the story.
if you're ok with quotes taken out of context, i cant tell you otherwise. but its inexcusable in other forms of media, and being a gamer, i hate seeing it here just to increase website traffic - its much worse, my opinion, when its given a free pass. this site has been better than that in the past.
@TheIrishNinja: I was gonna make this point.
Has the FPS genre become such a mangly beast that you can't say "first person" without people adding the word "shooter" in their head?
Mirrors Edge is first person, and yes there are gunning parts in it, but it's not the main part of the game.
I think he's wanting to talk First Person so you control the camera, you see what you want to see in the cutscene, move about and be more flexible. Not as in shooters.
Portals another First Person game, without shooting being the focus. so "first Person" doesn't need to add the mental "shooter" at the end.
@deanbmmv: technically, portal is a first person shooter, just instead of shooting people with bullets to kill them, you shoot walls with portals to solve puzzles.
@adaorardor: "portal is a first person shooter, just instead of shooting people with bullets to kill them, you shoot walls with portals to solve puzzles."
So you don't shoot stuff... but it IS a shooter you say. hmm
@-MasterDex-: we also have enough of games, we should all go outside and play sport, study and plant more trees instead. help contributing to humanity...
@Heartless141, dood!: Maybe we do. But I think if someone is going to put another spin on the genre, as I and I think many others would agree, that Ueda can do that, then lets see what he can bring.
I'm not a bit FPS fan, to be honest, there my least favorite genre. But if someone can bring something new to the table, im open to see the idea.
The FPS is the strongest genre on the market, guns sell, blood sells, death sells.
I don't think that the inclusion of an Ueda shooter is going to create a greater in flux of FPS's into the FPS market.
@TheIrishNinja: The book had its standard translation quirks, but it was a spectacular read. I had the movie and while the message got across there was just something about the atmosphere of the writing that didn't come across quite the same way.
I don't remember the movie veering away too much from the content of the book though.
I guess I should prepare a few boxes of tissue paper for Ueda's FPS game when it hits because it'll probably be very depressing. Like, trusty horse falls to absolutely certain death in collapsing stone bridge depressing.
Edited by ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness at 10/05/09 2:31 AM
ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness was starred
ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness was unstarred
@ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness: Dude, game's 4 years old, and if you haven't been able to locate it, I must ask...where the hell do you live? Cause I can find the game in every single Wal*Mart, Target, Best Buy, Toys 'R Us, and GameStop in the city I live in.
@PoweredByHentai: You're going to need a box of tissues because of how awesome the game is going to be ;)
Oh, and not cool with the spoilers even though it's fake. Had I not have played Shadow of the Colossus and knew that was Agro's death was just an illusion casted on you by the last boss, I would have raged it at you right now. I wub Agro...
@Koda89: Congratulations. I too wish that my country was one of the largest empires on the Planet Earth.
I am hoping for the Blu-Ray port for a reason.
@dowingba: Oh yeah? People talk about what an emotional moment it is when the horse dies.
Great emotional moment it's gonna be when I'll know from the get-go.
It's gonna be just like with Aeris.
Edited by ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness at 10/05/09 3:02 AM
ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness was starred
ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness was unstarred
@Th3w-san: Still, game is 4 years old. No one needs to put spoiler warnings on a game that damn old.
Hell even putting spoiler warnings on a game that is 2 years old is pushing it. We live in an era where one has to go to extreme lengths to avoid spoilers for anything new, so who cares about the old?
@ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness: If this discussion continues, the "big emotional moment" of SOTC will be spoiled for you; but just to be clear: no comment in this thread has yet accurately spoiled it.
Trust me, when Wander wakes up and it turns out it was all a dream, and then he hugs his stuffed animal horse, you will be pleasantly surprised.
@ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness: Man, that part where The Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket falls to absolutely certain death in a collapsing stone bridge really got to me. I had to watch Old Yeller to cheer myself back up.
@ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness: I'd second that. If I played every new game I wanted to as it came out... I'd get about 1 hr into each game I owned and then throw it aside to try the next one.
@ShadowOdin of dubious snowiness: I would gladly swallow a bottle of travel sickness pills before every session if it meant I got to play another Fumito Ueda game.
@GunFlame: It'd be fantasy. Ueda's philosophy is that you use the imaginary to create a situation that feels real and can avoid that uncanny valley effect that realism skirts.
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Also - journalists: please stop asking japanese game-makers about when they're going to make an fps. It just makes you look stupid, even if you edit out your own question from the exchange. No one else but you admire the "mature story telling" done by Bungie or Infinity Ward.
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(and I gotta say on a "mature storytelling" point that ODST has probably handled the theme's from Dante's book than EA's Dante's Inferno game looks like it's even gonna get close to. Ugh, unbaptized baby spider-monsters, seriously?)
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So.. one crazy strawman with a personal attack. And there's the "all is equal argument" as well, along with a silent approval for the suddenly decided truth that Ueda probably should make an fps.. Wow. How sophisticated we are here at Kotaku..
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Again, I'm not saying I agree with all these arguements. Before someone goes off and flames me for insulting Ueda, I enjoy his work and would not personally be one to make the previously described arguement myself, but I'm using this arguement that has been made by others as a counterpoint to the arguement that his studio is somehow on a so much higher plane than Bungie or Infinity Ward who often become easy targets of people who like to insult what has mainstream popularity because they think it makes them sound more intelligent somehow, when really, making the previous arguement about Ueda's games is just as unfair and ridiculous as saying, "No one else but you admire the "mature story telling" done by Bungie or Infinity Ward."
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Um... you know I can't tell if you're being ironic? So you have to spoil me before I understand it, with "/sarcasm" tags at the end. Or else I'm not going to understand, and throw an embarassing and revealing hissy-fit or something.
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Case in point: Bioshock. Story would have been a lot more interesting if, y'know, they'd done more than have people babble about it in the background while I was killing stuff, then have me beat a dude to death with a golf club.
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How about a game where you're a ten year old who has to learn to shoot dudes to protect his family, then gets pressed into military service? Also, it's set in a fantasyverse. And there are dragons. That you shoot with a barret .50 cal (Your arm gets broken because you're ten).
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While I think cutscenes can be great for telling story and giving the player a bit of a rest in between chapters,etc I do think that games could really benefit and even improve their storytelling capabilities if developers look at ways to innovate within them or from them.
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i'm not sure i've played any games where i literally felt "immersed." which isn't to say it's a bad thing, it's just not why i play games. and seeing my character talk while i put the controller down is no less "pulling me out of immersion" than the phone ringing or a friend/sibling watching who talks.
i was a lot younger at the time, but i remember getting so excited for the CG FFX cutscenes (which i referred to as the cutscenes with "good graphics" because i didn't know the difference between CG and ingame graphics.) most likely because of my age, that was the most enthralling "epic" video game experience up until that point.
how do you think people would respond to movies completely in first person? :p
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He takes an aspect of a particular video game genre, and strips away everything boring or tedious about it. I'm having trouble articulating this but here goes...
If you look at a game like Zelda. It's a dungeon crawler. But Zelda games also have alot of other stuff to do outside the dungeons. I don't think there's any argument that the dungeons, and their puzzles, are the main draw of any Zelda game. So what Ueda has done with Ico is take the dungeon-crawling aspect and made an entire game out of it. The entire game is one huge, incredibly elaborate dungeon.
Now look at a game like God of War. It's an exciting hack-and-slash action game. But that excitement peaks at the game's many climaxes (pun intended!): the boss battles. What Ueda's done with SOTC is take those boss battles and made an entire game out of it.
The fact that he can tell such compelling stories without removing the player from these situations is a testament to this man's skill as a game designer and an artist. "Saving the princess" is a gaming cliche as old as games themselves. But who knew something like ICO would come along and turn it on its head so fantastically. How much more engrossing is it when the princess you are trying to save is right there with you the entire time? No other game has ever made me feel so selfess, so heroic, as ICO or SOTC. Nor has any other game ever made me truly question what it means to be a hero. Is Wander trying to resurrect his dead girlfriend for her sake, or for his own sake? Is his slaughter of those seemingly peaceful colossi justified?
I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than to say: if he can do to FPS games what he has done with the genres he's already tackled, I will be first in line to play it. And I don't really like FPS games.
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It also sounds as if QTEs are something he wants to implement and while I can see the advantages to such a mechanic, many hate them.
But I digress, Ueda should get The Last Guardian done and dusted before thinking of what he's going to do next.
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It is possible he could do something amazing with the FPS genre. Its always good to get to give it hands of someone new to take a new direction of the genre. No matter how many shooters there are, there is room for a game that would be as unique as his.
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...where'd you get that its a shooter from, though? Headline = misleading.
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his example is a shooter, sure. but he's not referring to FPS gameplay/bullet physics or anything like that. for example, if Suda were to say he digs the level of detail kojima puts into his MGS games, regarding let's say, weapons or military tech in general, id not read that to say "SUDA WANTS TO DO AN MGS GAME /CONFIRMED" , you know? i mean, regardless of how awesome that could be.
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So what if Ueda comment has been taken out of context, the discussion being had is not harmful, on the contrary, its quite interesting.
If we can talk about our favorite developers, companies or games, in a positive light, whats the problem.
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if you're ok with quotes taken out of context, i cant tell you otherwise. but its inexcusable in other forms of media, and being a gamer, i hate seeing it here just to increase website traffic - its much worse, my opinion, when its given a free pass. this site has been better than that in the past.
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Has the FPS genre become such a mangly beast that you can't say "first person" without people adding the word "shooter" in their head?
Mirrors Edge is first person, and yes there are gunning parts in it, but it's not the main part of the game.
I think he's wanting to talk First Person so you control the camera, you see what you want to see in the cutscene, move about and be more flexible. Not as in shooters.
Portals another First Person game, without shooting being the focus. so "first Person" doesn't need to add the mental "shooter" at the end.
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So you don't shoot stuff... but it IS a shooter you say. hmm
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i mean, seriously...
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I'm not a bit FPS fan, to be honest, there my least favorite genre. But if someone can bring something new to the table, im open to see the idea.
The FPS is the strongest genre on the market, guns sell, blood sells, death sells.
I don't think that the inclusion of an Ueda shooter is going to create a greater in flux of FPS's into the FPS market.
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I don't remember the movie veering away too much from the content of the book though.
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I thank you and everyone else for telling me that happens in the end of the game I want but haven't been able to locate.
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Oh, and not cool with the spoilers even though it's fake. Had I not have played Shadow of the Colossus and knew that was Agro's death was just an illusion casted on you by the last boss, I would have raged it at you right now. I wub Agro...
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I am hoping for the Blu-Ray port for a reason.
@dowingba: Oh yeah? People talk about what an emotional moment it is when the horse dies.
Great emotional moment it's gonna be when I'll know from the get-go.
It's gonna be just like with Aeris.
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...
Damnit, can't unapprove
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Hell even putting spoiler warnings on a game that is 2 years old is pushing it. We live in an era where one has to go to extreme lengths to avoid spoilers for anything new, so who cares about the old?
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Not spoiling something is being considerate.
Hell, I am even reluctant to go around and spew the ending of FFX
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Trust me, when Wander wakes up and it turns out it was all a dream, and then he hugs his stuffed animal horse, you will be pleasantly surprised.
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It's not really hard not to spoil something.
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His games so far have shown fantasy worlds of the teams own design. Which have always added greatly to the game.
But, if there was a First Person game set in a pure fantasy environment, that would be pretty good.
Yes, there are FPS games set in different fantasy type worlds. But the world itself usually plasy very little part.
This would be interesting to say the least.
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