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7/14/2025, 6:29:24 PM
>>715450651
> does any NPC in any RPG ever have anything interesting to say?
That's one of the problems with JRPG design, sometimes they really do have important things to say. But how could you know? Who has important juicy info or lore, and who is just scratching their ass to troll you? This town/NPC/progress flag design can easily help build out the illusion of a large world for sure, but they also leave some players with a hole that is missing from their experience. If you don't go around talking to all those NPC's, well then you didn't read the important secrets hidden in there! And then you don't really even know what the story is about, because you never had that optional conversation with that guy that one time! This is a real thing in some games. FFVIII comes to mind with how much cryptic shit is in it just to sell strategy guides and boost discussion
FFXIII does away with it. It streams all important information to your journal autonomously the moment that you need to know about it. You don't need to ask someone's grandpa for lore. Right after an important scene if the game wants you to read about something for context, you are served that literature directly to the Datalog. It doesn't gate progress around a bunch of flags. You don't have to skip through text boxes to get info. The exact moment that you need to know some details, those details arrive in your journal. It's a very sleek and futuristic way to design a journal system, but it really has some serious problems. The notification is the exact same, whether it's really important information or just some throwaway tutorial. Because it pops up so often from the very beginning, and the player is likely not willing to check it early, players will go the entire game without checking it more than once or twice. You don't have to check it sure, but because they never check it they miss out on black and white details, and their confusions around the story are compounded by their lack of clarity.
> does any NPC in any RPG ever have anything interesting to say?
That's one of the problems with JRPG design, sometimes they really do have important things to say. But how could you know? Who has important juicy info or lore, and who is just scratching their ass to troll you? This town/NPC/progress flag design can easily help build out the illusion of a large world for sure, but they also leave some players with a hole that is missing from their experience. If you don't go around talking to all those NPC's, well then you didn't read the important secrets hidden in there! And then you don't really even know what the story is about, because you never had that optional conversation with that guy that one time! This is a real thing in some games. FFVIII comes to mind with how much cryptic shit is in it just to sell strategy guides and boost discussion
FFXIII does away with it. It streams all important information to your journal autonomously the moment that you need to know about it. You don't need to ask someone's grandpa for lore. Right after an important scene if the game wants you to read about something for context, you are served that literature directly to the Datalog. It doesn't gate progress around a bunch of flags. You don't have to skip through text boxes to get info. The exact moment that you need to know some details, those details arrive in your journal. It's a very sleek and futuristic way to design a journal system, but it really has some serious problems. The notification is the exact same, whether it's really important information or just some throwaway tutorial. Because it pops up so often from the very beginning, and the player is likely not willing to check it early, players will go the entire game without checking it more than once or twice. You don't have to check it sure, but because they never check it they miss out on black and white details, and their confusions around the story are compounded by their lack of clarity.
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