Adding that Last Dimension

by Gabriel Putnam

Today I figure I’ll talk about a subject which is fairly controversial among the various ages of gamers. The debate of which I speak is of course the old 2D vs 3D question. Being a fairly old gamer myself, I find the whole issue quite interesting, as I was able to see the development from the NES/Master System era, through the dominance of the Super NES, cross the bridge into 3D, and eventually settle where we’re at today. However, up until the cross over into 3D gaming, there hadn’t been any controversy among RPGs, or gaming in general for that matter, which sparked off the level of debate we saw in the later 90’s. Sure, there were the classics, such as whether Phantasy Star or Dragon Quest was the foundation series, or the time honored console wars among Sega and Nintendo fans. But none of these produced the quantities of discussion we saw when the PlayStation and good ol’ Final Fantasy VII came onto the scene. Partially, this is simply because the channels for it didn’t exist until the advent of the internet. With the creation of boards and chats, flame wars could be set off with a misplaced comment, whereas the best expression a gamer could hope for before this was to write into a magazine and be published. However, even barring these limitations, the dimensional debate is one which hits at the heart of gamers and tugs at strings they may not have even known they had. So today, I’ll try to take a look at what those strings might be, examine why some of us cling to our love of games gone by, and hopefully not start a flame war with the mention of the topic.

In general, I think one of the easiest ways to break this topic up is to simply look at it in terms of a reviewer’s criteria. Using a mishmash of various categories, I’ll cover the graphics, sound, story, originality, and overall fun of the games. And to start us off, lets discuss the obvious choice of graphics. Are 3D games inherently superior to their 2D counterparts in terms of the potential for display of graphics? Yes should be the obvious answer. However, even at this first question it already becomes somewhat less cut and dry. In a purely theoretical sense, 3D engines have the ability to produce scenes which are the rival of real life. You can get close to this level of graphics in a 2D product with still-lifes, static structures, and careful tricks of mapping and paths, however, you will never have the freedom to explore such a scene from every angle or focus on those aspects which you the gamer find interesting. Unfortunately though, this ability to replicate life has also come at quite a cost. To fully populate a 3D world takes an enormous expenditure of effort. With numerous angles to take into account, the potential for gamers to wander into any nook or cranny, and an inherently more complex base of code; the number of developers, the cost, and the time of game creation have all skyrocketed. In addition, with the ability to represent a real world has also come an almost strict desire to do so among game companies. In past eras, many graphical setups existed almost solely for the story. They pointed you in the right direction for plot and left only a controlled span of room to wander or get lost. This isn’t to say that modern games haven’t done this as well. In fact, Final Fantasy VII was quite good on this point and it was one of the initial ventures. However, as a trend, you could almost say that games are losing a bit of focus. The graphics of games have taken on a life of their own and its not uncommon to find games that have focused so much on the display that its difficult to ascertain your goals. Moving on, lets discuss a fairly easy topic, sound. This is one of the few areas of gaming which I can simply say has improved. Sure, there were a number of outstanding and quite memorable tunes produced during the 2D eras, however, the potential for far greater expression in music is upon us, and it only suffers from the problems which affect graphics to a much smaller degree. During the early days of gaming, we had the equivalent of midi music to keep us company while we played. Admittedly, after a point it was damn good midi music, and they pushed the medium to its very extents. However, no matter its quality of composition, midi tunes will simply never compare with the power of full spectrum sound. Orchestrated symphonic arrangements, something which gamers could only dream about back in the early days, have suddenly become a reality. Vocal tracks from popular stars or hot new acts can also make an appearance, and if you really want to use them, midi style tunes are still available, and freely mixable with newer stuff, to give a game that old school atmosphere it craves. Quite simply, gaming music has just gotten better. Greater variety and increased complexity have all become ours without losing the potential for simple or increasing the cost to astronomically.

After such a nice and clear cut topic, it seems almost a shame to move on to what is probably one of the more controversial points between 2D and 3D eras, the stories of role playing games. Probably the core of this issue is simply that the stories developers want to tell, or what they perceive their audiences want to hear, have changed. Most of the initial games in the RPG genre could pretty easily be classified into one of two categories: the high fantasy adventure, with castles and dragons and all that jazz; or the sci-fi epic, with starships and aliens and all that synthetic jazz. In addition, the heroes which were used to adventure through these scenarios were figures which fit the themes of classic epic fiction: the great and mighty Edrick; the black knight Cecil, who found the light and his brother; or the little boy Link, who raised his sword of power in defense of the kingdom against Ganon. Each of these characters and more were reflections of heroic archetypes which had existed in myth for centuries. And like the heroes of old, they weren’t perfect either. However, their imperfections were only played a background role in fleshing out their history, rather than as a forefront to the titles. In more modern gaming, this idea has undergone something of a change. Partially as a play to the audience that holds most of the disposable income and also in an effort to diversify their stories, games are beginning to focus more on the personal aspects of the heroes, and their struggles with life, and less on the grand vision of the world or story. In addition, they are also showing a decided drift towards more teen audiences. For example, one of the best models of this trend is Final Fantasy VIII, which basically polarized the RPG and Square fanbase with either love or disgust over the path games were taking. On the one hand, we had those who cared greatly for the plight of our hero Squall, his sweetheart Rinoa, and their attending cast of extras. Many sympathized with his anger at the world, and deeply enjoyed the multiple views we had inside his head and troubled past. However, there was also an equally large camp of folks who couldn’t give less of a thought about the twit, about his troubled past, or about the game’s premise in general. They didn’t want to sit through limitless explanations of how sad, mad, or bad he was and wished that there was a coherent or guiding plot to go along with the wandering which exemplified this game. And in making a fairly large generalization, these were often folks who hadn’t minded the switch to 3D and who enjoyed the more introspective stories which weren’t tied to it by any means, but which seem to have come along for the ride. Simply put, many who explored modern games after experiencing the games of the past, had a concept in mind of what made an RPG fun. They found certain forms fun, which they had been taught to enjoy over ten years of gaming, and the marked change in modern titles was unwelcome by many.

For the final section, lets discuss the one area where older gaming has a true edge on modern attempts, originality. By their very timeframes and natures, older games helped to introduce a number of concepts which have been taken for granted in the RPG industry ever since. For example, the epic quest to save the world with a lone hero or party is probably the single most well known concept, yet, for those who played the first generation when they were young, this was a fairly new idea to them. Each game which used it was treading new ground that hadn’t yet become cliché, and so, many folks will forever have fond memories of the first time they defeated Kefka or Zeromus. Plot hooks like secret brothers and final dungeons were still in their infancy, so each new experience was exactly that, new. This meant that by the time 3D games came around, many of the core ideas they put forth, barring the story elements I covered above and a few others, was an old concept repolished. They added twists and embellishments, expanded systems or play mechanics to the extreme, but the problem is that no matter how they change, this particular hero is just going to seem like a refurbished Terra, and that villain is just Dark Force redone; even if its only a perception in our minds rather than the truth of the game.

Overall, it can’t really be said that 3D or 2D games are more fun than one another. Fortunately, fun is such a broad concept that only those titles which are exceptionally grand or miserably bad stand out from the crowd. With all others, the interpretation of quality is left to the whims of the user which have been affected by history, experience, and expectations. By this very mechanic, we can generate a world where some view 2D titles like Symphony of the Night as Igarashi’s gift to man, and others hold FF VIII as the pinnacle of gaming excellence. A quandary, and one which definitely isn’t going to be sorted out by an editorial, but in the long run, its really not going to matter, as 3D is the medium of the future, and lovers of the past will have to adapt or quit, since little they would play is being produced any longer.