And There's The Bell

Having just completed Final Fantasy XIII and Saint’s Row 2 have a deep-seated urge to discuss the two games’ differing design styles and why each is a paragon for their prospective genres.

In the blue corner we have Final Fantasy XIII, the latest in one of the oldest and certainly the most famous RPG lines. This title has eschewed the world map and free-roaming aspect of it’s predecessors in favor of a much stricter, linear approach. For today’s discussion Final Fantasy XIII will be fighting for the sake of linear, story based games.

And in the Red corner we have Saint’s Row 2, the sequel to Saint’s Row, most prominently regarded as a Grand Theft Auto 3 knock-off that didn’t suck. While Rockstar decided to make Grand Theft Auto 4 more realistic than it’s predecessors, Saint’s Row 2 was designed with the opposite viewpoint. For today’s discussion Saint’s Row 2 will be fighting for the sake of open-world, “sandbox” games.

The World

Saint’s Row 2 takes place in the fictional city of Stillwater, comprised of four islands total, the player is free to travel anywhere they want within Stillwater from the moment they complete the first mission. Stillwater is separated into 45 neighborhoods, distinct enough to tell roughly where you are, but seamless enough that you don’t notice exactly when you switch neighborhoods. The main draw for an open world game is that the player is completely free to travel as they see fit. If you want to steal a helicopter and fly up to that building you saw out of the corner of your eye, you can do so at any time. Saint’s Row 2 exemplifies this by allowing you free access to the entire city from the get-go, while other open-world games (GTA series specifically) deny you access to certain areas until you progress the plot to a certain point.

Final Fantasy XIII meanwhile takes place inside of a “man-made” moon, Cocoon. Every location within Cocoon is visually very distinct and most of them are so memorable I can conjure up the vistas just by closing my eyes. While the player is free to travel back and forth between areas within Cocoon (a feature not seen in other linear games), they are stuck to a specific path that they can take within the area. While this severely limits the players freedom it allows the art team  the ability to create some absolutely amazing vistas as they can control where exactly the player is within the world.

You can clearly see where the two games put their resources in the differences within the game world here. The argument basically comes down to whether you prefer having guaranteed extremely pretty locations, or if you prefer to have the freedom to go to any place you can see. Normally I would give this category to Saint’s Row 2 without fail, but the world the art team created in FFXIII combined with the vistas guaranteed by the limited travel paths help push this to a tie.If someone made an open-world game that was as pretty as FFXIII and with as many jaw-dropping vistas then open-world games would always win this category. As it is, the ability for a linear game to decide where a player is going to be gives them an artistic edge that keeps them competitive in this category.

Story

In Saint’s Row 2 you wake up in prison after being in a coma for 2 years. During that time the city that you took over in the first game has been stolen by a new set of rival gangs and the mega corporation Ultor basically owns everything. The rest of the story consists of your efforts to take back your city. The story in Saint’s Row 2, for all the kookiness and fun is surprisingly dark and enjoyable, perhaps even more so because of the general irreverence the game has. There are two scenes in particular, both dealing with dead allies that were particularly well done and really brought the story of this game up a notch. It feels a bit odd to say this, but Saint’s Row 2 has the best story for an open-world game I’ve ever seen. Yes I am saying that Saint’s Row 2, a game where you can run around naked with a katana, has a better story than Grand Theft Auto 4. Even better, the story in Saint’s Row 2 never diverges from the gameplay. While Niko Bellic in GTA4 may claim to be a guy who just wants to escape a world of violence, the player can have him brutally murder every old lady they see. Whereas In Saint’s Row 2 almost all of the insane minigames have a small story attached as to why you’re doing them, and the last words spoken before the credits role are, “...we do whatever the fuck we want.”

FFXIII is pretty much nothing but story. It’s hard to really say anything without spoiling, but it seems that Square-Enix has finally realized that it pays to hire writers and to have you characters actually animate their feelings rather than say them. Basically this is the first Final Fantasy game to at least begin to understand the phrase “show don’t tell”. In addition, the game absolutely shines up until your party is complete. All of the characters have different motivations and much of the beginning is just learning, through some of the most well-placed flashbacks I’ve ever seen, these motivations and where they came from. Honestly, this is the first game since I was in middle-school where I felt the need to keep playing, not because I wanted to, but because I just had to know what happened next. Sadly, the middle of this game does cut back a bit on the story as it makes the gameplay a little meatier, and while they give a decent effort, the story never gets back onto the same level as the beginning had. Further differentiating it from other, similar games,FFXIII actually explains why your team of people are super-powered badasses and makes it into the defining part of the story.

Saint’s Row 2 really surprised me with its story. I didn’t expect anything more than some fun and a few laughs, and while that was certainly there, I also got some heavier emotions that I wasn’t expecting. There was a whole point in the game where I would turn off the radio in the car because I didn’t feel it was appropriate. Unfortunately it’s up against FFXIII which is a powerhouse of a story. What it comes to in this case is I would rather be allowed to re-watch the first hour of FFXIII’s story then be allowed to see all of Saint’s Row 2’s. Still, the fact that I even cared about Saint’s Row 2’s story is a huge accomplishment for an open-world game. For reference I beat all of Grand Theft Auto 4 despite actively disliking the story, whereas I stopped playing Final Fantasy XII because I was merely disinterested in it’s story (open-world and story-based games respectively).

Gameplay

Saint’s Row 2 had good gameplay, no two shakes about it. Running over people who have ragdoll physics is inherently fun (seriously it really is funner than you think it is) and Saint’s Row 2 just provides you with a whole slew of ways to ragdoll people. The fact that you unlock extremely nice rewards (things that would be cheats in other games) by completing mini-games helps synergize the gameplay so that the more you do, and the more different things you do, the more things you can do. It’s like being given ice cream for eating your ice cream. My only real complaint is that the driving is less enjoyable than in Grand Theft Auto 3 (in all it’s variants). Of course, that’s not to say that it’’s unenjoyable, just slightly less enjoyable than it could be. What it comes down to is that in most sandbox games I’m going to want to be a whirlwind of destruction, and Saint’s Row 2 certainly provides that (though we’ll see how it compares to Red Faction: Guerilla when I get around to it). Saint’s Row 2 adds two amazing additions to it’s gameplay that is lacking from similar games. One is a plethora of checkpoints within missions so that a bad turn doesn’t force you to start the whole mission over again, and the other is that you are free to replay any mission you’ve completed at any time, something that doesn’t exist in any other open-world game I’ve ever seen.

FFXIII’s gameplay is streamlined to the core. The only mini-games you’ll see in FFXIII take place within the main plot and are so tied in that you barely even notice that you’re playing a mini-game. Really though, the vast bulk of FFXIII is combat. FFXIII utilizes any active battle system extremely similar to the one used in the miscriticized FFX-2. Basically everyone takes turns simultaneously, and after you have performed an action you have to wait a period of time before you can act again. FFXIII differs wildly from it’s predecessors by stripping away the mana bar that limited the use of special attacks and moves, adding the ability to change character functions (healer, buffer, tank, etc...) midway through the fight, and most notably, restricted player commands to a single of the three characters fighting for you. A lot of die-hard fans moaned and groaned about these changes, but honestly, they’re all for the better. What it comes down to, is that combat is faster, more challenging, and even looks nicer, all with essentially zero downtime. Finally the cherry on top is that you can retry any battle at anytime (within the battle that is). No longer do you have to reset if you just fucked up horribly, and even better, the retry option is available even if you get a game over. This is especially wonderful thanks to the fact that individual enemies can easily kill you like a boss could if you don’t pay attention. Now for my complaints. The side-quests in the game all take place during the middle of the game, and while you can come back and complete them anytime (even after the game is over), it’s incredibly frustrating to have them placed all so close together.

Basically they took all of the grind out of Final Fantasy XIII, except they stuck it all in the side-quests, which, despite having little to no story relevance, are pretty boring (outside of the challenge the special monsters gives you). In the end, gameplay-wise, FFXIII is one my favorite RPG’s to date, and is the best FF game hands down.

This, this is an impossible comparison. The fact is that the gameplay between these two genres is too divergent to reconcile for any kind of meaningful comparison. Saint’s Row 2 is fun, certainly moreso than GTAIV, (but that’s another discussion entirely) and FFXIII is fun. In the end it all comes down to what kind of fun you want to have at the time, and for me the kind of fun FFXIII has is the type that really tickles my fancy. Regardless, it’s another tie.

At the moment open-world games and story-based games are simply too different to declare one a better genre than the other. Ideally open-world games would have all of the positives of a story-based game and none of the negatives, but we live in the real world and have real-world limits. For now it’s safe to say that Saint’s Row 2 and Final Fantasy XIII are both good games, for different, and even contradictory reasons.

To be honest I didn’t really get to what I really wanted to say with this article, but this is my third time re-writing it, and after four hours of work I’ve decided to just put it up as it is and move on. Regardless, if anyone is confused or wants to talk, or even yell at me, feel free to leave a comment or ask for my e-mail/steam-id.