It was already a rough start but the claim that people didn’t say things like “the graphics look incredible” was so ridiculous I had to pause it, especially while simultaneously showing clips from around the 7th gen. We absolutely praised games for their graphics back then (and much earlier), not just in terms of technological advancement over other titles but as things that were visually pleasing even outside of being a game. 7th Gen is actually notable for how aggressive the marketing around graphics became.
We did not, in fact, talk mostly about the stories of games. For a long time video game writing was widely considered unimportant. There were exceptions of course, though this thinking was so wide spread that I think younger gamers might be surprised to find that even RPG stories were often secondary - at best - to the game play for a long time. Story became a much larger feature once voice acting came to prominence in the mid-00s, but it would take awhile to catch on.
The author then states that Assassin’s Creed 2 and Black Flag had memorable stories. What? I played both at the time, and had enjoyed both, but their stories were entirely forgettable. The writing of the series was even kind of a punch line at the time. You know the thing people really talked about with Assassin’s Creed 2? How cool it was to parkour through such a beautiful recreation of renaissance Italy.
The stuff about how there were no microtransactions back then is nonsense as well. The period he keeps going back to for old games was the rise of this bullshit. Oblivion’s horse armor was already years earlier.
The vibe of this video is just an awkward teenager lamenting he wasn’t born in his imagined version of an earlier time.
The disappointing thing is, I do actually prefer older games. I think there is a wealth of interesting discussion about the things that were done differently. This video just isn’t it.
Reviews for the OG Doom called the graphics amazingly realistic. It’s easy to forget that when they came out, each generation defining game was the cutting edge of consumer technology, doing things that seemed impossible even a year previously.
Horse Armor was 2006. The year Todd ruined everything. I will forever remember that notorious day.
The time he’s taking about was during a time when people were lamenting DLC and other things. The 7th gen (which is a part of the modern era of games as far as I’m concerned) was the beginning of all the things wrong with modern games. The monitsation, the “grizzled white dude” BS, and the push towards US military propaganda. Fuck the 7th gen.
(which is a part of the modern era of games as far as I’m concerned)
Yeah I was ready to shake my fist at the the idea these were “old” games, but in fairness we’re talking about 15 years ago. It’s entirely possible the creator of the video wasn’t even born yet when Oblivion was released. It’s way longer than we used to give games before we considered them old, though I think that’s a result of how rapid obvious progress was - which has slowed down drastically.
Him fawning over the Witcher 3 as an old game from another era cracked me up though.
I disagree about the stories in RPGs bit. Maybe true of western RPGs, but jRPGs were routinely praised for storytelling. Indeed, 95-2005ish was their golden age
It’s easy to look back on JRPG classics today, but 95-05 was also the dark ages of localization. So many titles got mangled that the mainstream perception of JRPGs was very similar to bad cult movies, especially during the trend chasing rush after Final Fantasy VII’s success.
Even those that avoided translation butchery were still highly divisive outside of it’s niche fanbase. The “western” RPG and JRPG divide was largely defined by people arguing over them in the 00s after western RPGs made their shift towards being narrative focused. The primary need for distinction, for the “western” RPG set at least, was that JRPG writing was seen as pretty poor. Ironic given some of the absolute slop “western” RPGs had put out that was being conveniently ignored in this argument, but I digress.
But that aside, yeah my anecdote was made with western RPGs in mind. There was a heavy emphasis on dungeon crawling and questing as a barebones narrative excuse to adventure. Kill monsters, get treasure. It’s very much like the history of D&D in that way (not by accident). It’s not until the late 90s, with games like Fallout and Baldur’s Gate, that a shift occurred.
Even then, that shift was hardly over night. What defined something as an RPG was a big debate among that crowd. The systems crowd argued it was the mechanical structures brought over from TTRPGs, while the new wave of fans argued it was the narrative elements that made it unique. This hit it’s peak as the genre hybridized with ‘action’ games and started to shed many of the TTRPG structures.
But that’s all kind of irrelevant history. The video, and my response, is talking about broad popular trends and conceptions at the time. There were always exceptions, but the era the video mostly fawns over still hadn’t even settled the “can games be art?” debate. The medium was still seen as very low-brow as a whole.
The primary need for distinction, for the “western” RPG set at least, was that JRPG writing was seen as pretty poor. Ironic given some of the absolute slop “western” RPG slop that was being conveniently ignored in this argument, but I digress.
I think many WRPG fans just had a negative kneejerk reaction to the aesthetics of JRPGs. They saw colourful anime characters with wacky hair and cute creatures and just instantly rejected them
Assassin’s Creed 2 is specifically a terrible example for story since it started with a great past/present premise and turned it into incomprehensible bullshit with alien/gods that can see through time speaking directly to the main character through his ancestor from the past or something? Just a complete train wreck
Not going to lie, this video is pretty shit.
It was already a rough start but the claim that people didn’t say things like “the graphics look incredible” was so ridiculous I had to pause it, especially while simultaneously showing clips from around the 7th gen. We absolutely praised games for their graphics back then (and much earlier), not just in terms of technological advancement over other titles but as things that were visually pleasing even outside of being a game. 7th Gen is actually notable for how aggressive the marketing around graphics became.
We did not, in fact, talk mostly about the stories of games. For a long time video game writing was widely considered unimportant. There were exceptions of course, though this thinking was so wide spread that I think younger gamers might be surprised to find that even RPG stories were often secondary - at best - to the game play for a long time. Story became a much larger feature once voice acting came to prominence in the mid-00s, but it would take awhile to catch on.
The author then states that Assassin’s Creed 2 and Black Flag had memorable stories. What? I played both at the time, and had enjoyed both, but their stories were entirely forgettable. The writing of the series was even kind of a punch line at the time. You know the thing people really talked about with Assassin’s Creed 2? How cool it was to parkour through such a beautiful recreation of renaissance Italy.
The stuff about how there were no microtransactions back then is nonsense as well. The period he keeps going back to for old games was the rise of this bullshit. Oblivion’s horse armor was already years earlier.
The vibe of this video is just an awkward teenager lamenting he wasn’t born in his imagined version of an earlier time.
The disappointing thing is, I do actually prefer older games. I think there is a wealth of interesting discussion about the things that were done differently. This video just isn’t it.
Reviews for the OG Doom called the graphics amazingly realistic. It’s easy to forget that when they came out, each generation defining game was the cutting edge of consumer technology, doing things that seemed impossible even a year previously.
Horse Armor was 2006. The year Todd ruined everything. I will forever remember that notorious day.
The time he’s taking about was during a time when people were lamenting DLC and other things. The 7th gen (which is a part of the modern era of games as far as I’m concerned) was the beginning of all the things wrong with modern games. The monitsation, the “grizzled white dude” BS, and the push towards US military propaganda. Fuck the 7th gen.
Yeah I was ready to shake my fist at the the idea these were “old” games, but in fairness we’re talking about 15 years ago. It’s entirely possible the creator of the video wasn’t even born yet when Oblivion was released. It’s way longer than we used to give games before we considered them old, though I think that’s a result of how rapid obvious progress was - which has slowed down drastically.
Him fawning over the Witcher 3 as an old game from another era cracked me up though.
Oblivion is about to turn 18 lol
I disagree about the stories in RPGs bit. Maybe true of western RPGs, but jRPGs were routinely praised for storytelling. Indeed, 95-2005ish was their golden age
It’s easy to look back on JRPG classics today, but 95-05 was also the dark ages of localization. So many titles got mangled that the mainstream perception of JRPGs was very similar to bad cult movies, especially during the trend chasing rush after Final Fantasy VII’s success.
Even those that avoided translation butchery were still highly divisive outside of it’s niche fanbase. The “western” RPG and JRPG divide was largely defined by people arguing over them in the 00s after western RPGs made their shift towards being narrative focused. The primary need for distinction, for the “western” RPG set at least, was that JRPG writing was seen as pretty poor. Ironic given some of the absolute slop “western” RPGs had put out that was being conveniently ignored in this argument, but I digress.
But that aside, yeah my anecdote was made with western RPGs in mind. There was a heavy emphasis on dungeon crawling and questing as a barebones narrative excuse to adventure. Kill monsters, get treasure. It’s very much like the history of D&D in that way (not by accident). It’s not until the late 90s, with games like Fallout and Baldur’s Gate, that a shift occurred.
Even then, that shift was hardly over night. What defined something as an RPG was a big debate among that crowd. The systems crowd argued it was the mechanical structures brought over from TTRPGs, while the new wave of fans argued it was the narrative elements that made it unique. This hit it’s peak as the genre hybridized with ‘action’ games and started to shed many of the TTRPG structures.
But that’s all kind of irrelevant history. The video, and my response, is talking about broad popular trends and conceptions at the time. There were always exceptions, but the era the video mostly fawns over still hadn’t even settled the “can games be art?” debate. The medium was still seen as very low-brow as a whole.
I think many WRPG fans just had a negative kneejerk reaction to the aesthetics of JRPGs. They saw colourful anime characters with wacky hair and cute creatures and just instantly rejected them
Assassin’s Creed 2 is specifically a terrible example for story since it started with a great past/present premise and turned it into incomprehensible bullshit with alien/gods that can see through time speaking directly to the main character through his ancestor from the past or something? Just a complete train wreck