Monday, May 6, 2013

Arty Dragon

I have never played Dragon Fantasy.  Hell I don't even own it.  I have thought about buying it but that will have to wait (need to get through the list some).

So why am I talking about it on here??

It has to do with video games and them being art.

Over the many decades that video games have been around they have progressed from white dots on a black screen, to 16-bit, to the beginnings of the 3D images, to what we have now with almost complete realistic images of people and things.  Because of this the art of games has had to change with its advances to keep up.  This means gameplay/interaction, story/plot, and characters.  Story and characters are the most important change I believe because pong would not be that fun even in full 3D with surround sound.  You have to have something more.  Its plot and characters, the experience itself that drives evolution of the medium.  When there is no evolution of the medium, no betterment of the type of experience you have, then stagnation settles in and that is a killer.

Stagnation in the game industry happens here and there.  Small parts of the whole fail to do any form of progress. This to me usually is seen with game series and/or companies failing after being overly successful (you can see SE as one).  You can create a great product that people have never see before.  Something that makes huge rifts in the water.  Some good examples of this are Assassins Creed I and I, the entire FF series, Call of Duty.  Amazing games (I just tossed CoD in there.  I have never played it, nor do I think I ever will) that made instant classics of themselves and either changed or created the genres that they are in in ways that are still being felt.

However when you come to the most recent CoD games, ACIII, and FFXIII/XIII-2, that newness and revolutionary way of things has died down.  People are starting to doubt the series and the companies that make them.  Is this what they think the art is?  Is this where we want it to go??

NO!

We as gamers want something that is personal and deep.  Something that makes us tear up at the end (I hear Xenogears will do that).  Thus where Dragon Fantasy comes in.

Art is sometimes a memorial to a person.  A tribute to the life they led and how the artist wants to celebrate that life.  Now all of my info is based on what I have read from a Kotaku, a discussion they did on the Official Playstation Blogcast, and things that I have found on the internet.

One of the creators of the game, Adam Rippon, paid homage to his father through the main character of the first chapter of the game, Ogden.  Ogden is a washed-up former hero who had to get back into the game of saving the world.  However his sprite is designed to look like Adam's father, and that to me rocks.

Its a tribute in a game in a ways that I have never heard of before.  They do other tributes to other old school games that people have loved, and they themselves.  But they tied it all together using this representation of his father.  His dad getting back into the game.


Maybe I am blowing this out of proportion, but this is just a cool idea to me.  I love it.  And you can think I am mad.  You can think that I spent more time using this entry to talk about art and not Dragon Fantasy (and that might be true, but when I play it I will change that).  However I love this game.  Maybe I will just go ahead and buy it now.  YOU CAN'T STOP ME!!