This is the full trailer for the upcoming Dragon Quest IX, set for a March '09 release date in Japan. It looks nice but then it's running off a dev kit (I mean, check the resolution of it out... It's not 256x192 which is what the DS's screens are).It seems weirdly cynical for Square Enix to put this on the DS, under the pretence that it's because it will somehow offer a different gaming experience (for a series that has proudly barely changed its gameplay for decades, contradiction #1) and will claim that "graphics don't matter, it's just gameplay" despite the biggest change made to DQVIII being the wonderful graphical upgrade (contradiction #2) and then they go on to make about 70%+ of the trailer cutscenes rather than in-game footage (contradiction #3).
If they really believed that it was gameplay over graphics, why not (a) make larger changes to the gameplay throughout the series rather than just steadily updating the graphics and (b) make the trailer out of 100% on-DS, in-game footage rather than this souped up PC footage which won't look anywhere near that good on an actual DS. It may sound like I'm attacking the DQ franchise as a whole but I think they've just boxed themselves into a corner when it comes to any sort of graphics vs gameplay debate since the gameplay has changed less between DQ and DQVIII than it did between FFX and FFXI, for example. However, the one thing that has changed most is graphics and now they feed us a trailer made mostly from cutscenes - the sort of thing that people may attack FF for.
Anyway, rant over. I'm still really looking forward to this game, I just find the way they're going about it quite annoying.
Posts
5 comments:
SquareEnix has gotten so arrogant since the merger I'm surprised they aren't trying to spin this as them doing Nintendo a favor rather than them jumping ship once it was clear the DS was outselling all of the consoles combined.
I'm honestly glad they aren't making a big deal out of the gameplay though, since that almost definitely means they wont be changing it much. Good news in my book.
I'm honestly not seeing any problems with DQIX. Cutscenes aren't that big a problem for the DS. A handful of games have fairly good cutscenes (Megaman ZX and ZX Advent, Lunar Knights, Magical StarSign). Sure they're not in prestine quality due to be compressed but they look fine enough.
I don't neccesarily need a great change in gameplay but I like a nice gimmick to make it dynamic like all DQs tend to have (3's job system, 4's chapters, 5's generational story and monster party members, 6's enhanced job system). IX sounds great going back to a job system and with armor that appears on characters. I trust Yuji Hori. He's never really failed at any of the games he's had a hand in even though I thought DQ8 was the weakest gameplay wise the rest of it more than made up for it.
DQIX is on DS simply because it is the largest market in Japan. Every DQ game has gone to the system with the largest market audiance. And I for one am seeing quite a lot of good change in the DQ series, from DQVIII and from what I am seeing in DQIX. Level-5 is infusing a lot of needed change in the series, especially when DQVII was probably the most stagnant game in the series (that was progressing quite well from game to game up till then).
DQIX was going to have real time battling like the Seiken Densetsu games as I'm sure you and many people know, but its the fans that kept it from going that way. And really, this game is showing more improvement towards just first-person, staged fighting. And does DQ have to become like other series to 'prove' itself? No, its the unquestioned leader in JRPGs. Just because its not popular in America (mostly because of horrible localization) doesn't mean it has to emulate itself to be more like Final Fantasy, Suikoden or Tales to become 'more approachable'. Especially since all those series looked to it for inspiration.
"handful of games have fairly good cutscenes (Megaman ZX and ZX Advent, Lunar Knights, Magical StarSign)."
Not to mention Square-Enix's own Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings.
I think DQIX is going to be a great game. Gameplay segments in this trailer all look as fine as ever, and that cutscene battle felt wonderfully dq-ish to me. Anyway, awesome blog! Keep up the great work!
Post a Comment