Existing comment:
PlayStation
Action: Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid provided the template for all stealth games today. Designer Hideo Kojima employed dramatic cutscenes, a powerful orchestral score, and innovative game play to create a compelling narrative and a new perspective on the action genre.
Kojima wanted to show that war and violence should not be used to solve problems. Each situation or challenge in the game presents multiple options, leaving it to the player to decide how much force or stealth to apply.
Unlike other action games of its time, it is possible to complete Metal Gear Solid without killing a single enemy.
Kojima wanted the world and its inhabitants to be as realistic as possible. To achieve this, his team worked first in traditional art materials – sculpting clay models of the characters and painting concepts for the environments. The resulting digital artwork, combined with the dramatic game play and challenging moral choices, made this game one of the few that propelled the PlayStation console to the forefront of the transition era.
Dialogue:
"As usual, this is a one-man infiltration mission."
"Weapons and equipment OSP?"
"Yes. This is a top secret black op. Don't expect any official support."
Target: Einhander
Einhander takes place in a fictional future, during a war between the Earth and the Moon. It was the first 3-dimensional shoot-emup game to appear on the PlayStation. Its vibrant graphics, fast-paced action, and energetic techno soundtrack combined to create an immersive array of color and sound.
3-dimensional graphics were still relatively new at this point, and the designers employed several tricks to maximize the capabilities of the system. They layered 3D characters and environments over simpler, 2D backdrops and restricted player movement to a single plane. This allowed them to focus all of their creative energy on the detailed action at the forefront of each scene.
Adventure: Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII demonstrates the narrative potential of video games. Designer Hinorobu Sakaguchi created an incredibly rich and detailed world in which to tell his story.
The game takes place in a fictional universe, but presents realistic ecological challenges as you battle to prevent an evil megacorporation from draining the world's natural resources.
The design team worked hard to narrow the visual gap between the pre-rendered cutscenes, or in-game movies, and the gameplay itself, which was typically of lower quality. This resulted in smoother transitions between cutscenes and action, creating an immersive experience that, together with the thought-provoking storyline, set this game apart visually and narratively from others of the late 1990s.
Tactics: Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy Tactics combined familiar worlds and characters from the Final Fantasy series with a tactical role-playing game.
The game presented a new perspective on turn-based strategy games by placing the action in an isometric world that could be rotated as needed by the player. The designers intentionally kept the graphics simple, so that players could focus on the precise movements and interactions of the characters.
A vast and complex narrative more than makes up for the rudimentary visuals, however. The action takes place in the magical world of Ivalice, a kingdom in strife after a fifty-year war. Ivalice is a decadent and reckless society of devious nobles and impoverished masses, providing political and social context for every skirmish that a player encounters.
The deep and thought-provoking storyline, together with the isometric gameplay of Final Fantasy Tactics, pushed strategy games to a new level of complexity. |