I just played the English localized demo to a game titled “Star Ocean: The Divine Force.” Produced by a Japanese studio. This is a game set in a science fiction universe. The game starts off with the hero, your character talking to his crew on the bridge of his space ship. The ship is attacked and the hero and crew climb into escape pods and land on a planet.
As soon as he has to fight some monsters, what does he pull out? A sword. WTF! A sword! Not a blaster rifle. Not a phaser pistol. Not a Laser gun. Not even an assault rifle with grenade launcher, or a squad automatic weapon. He uses a freaking sword!
I could understand it if this was a medieval setting. But a futuristic Sc-fi setting? Oh yeah, and its not even a lightsaber. Its a big two hander.
This is something I have noticed even in western fantasy games since many try to copy the Asian studios. And please don’t get me wrong. I grew up playing Japanese games. And enjoyed every minute. But It’s time for the Japanese to start using ranged weapons in futuristic games. And that goes for western games too.
This lead to my realization that even in medieval fantasy games things are unbelievable. The fact that a peasant can go pick up a rusty sword and shield and go fight a dragon is totally ridiculous. Some of you will claim that the sword could be enchanted with magic, that’s how it can kill a dragon. Oh yeah? Remember that scene in “Game of Thrones” Where the lady magic user went down the ranks of mounted horse men making their swords into flaming swords so they could fight the un-dead horde. Remember what happened. The horsemen charged off into the night to kill un-dead. Then silence. They never came back. Now at lease that scene was believable.
Oh yeah, now what about the rest of the monster menagerie. Lets start with this. Realistic scene: villager and the village elders telling a villager to go fight a wizard to save the princess. It would go like this:
Elder. “Ok Bob, here’s a magic sword and a magic shield. Now go rescue the princess from the evil wizard at his mountain fortress, that’s a good lad. On your way now.”
Bob: " Wait a minute. Your talking about me going up against the wizard’s army of dead? And the wizard’s pet; a dragon that is the size of a house has scale armor that would put an Abrams Tank to shame. And belches steams of Fire!"
Bob: “Oh let me think for a minute. Ah no! Here take your sword and shield back. Bye bye.”
Fantasy is one thing but you gotta keep the suspension of disbelief working. If ya gonna send a hero to fight a fire breathing dragon. Give him a mini-nuke launcher.
Even in Wow we have guys running around with guns.
