About the writing... (Fun discussion)

[vaderskywalker]

I was inspired by this "Terra get's way too much hate, even from Aqua, the person who has known Terra the longest, but suddenly turns on him, when a complete evil stranger who she has only known for a few minutes at most, says "Terra did it", that's messed up when you think about it, just for the sake of how stupid this was let's compare it to when Obi-wan told Padme that Anakin fell to the darkside, it was done better there, because she has known Obi wan just as long (give or take a few things) as Anakin, and it works better because of it.", conversation to make this thread,(It's my quote from a conversation I was having in Shower Thoughts, I tried to quote it, but there are no quoting options when you're starting a thread), and it got me thinking, are the games well written? cause this scenario was clearly not well written, what are your thoughts? P.S And no I'm not just talking about the Terra thing, but any other scenes like this.

 

[Mog]

In hindsight I don't think the beginning of BBS is super well written, Aqua and Terra's conflict drives the plot for 3/4 of the game until Eraqus decides to deal with Ven. It gets a lot better after that point. That's not to say Nomura can't write conflict, he definitely can. The rivalry between Sora/Riku in KH1, and the subsequent heart to heart at the end of KH2 was fantastic.

Definitely think the writing has taken a big hit as the world expanded. Nobody can tell me KH3 was well written, it failed to live up to the hype, and the pacing was atrocious the way the important plot elements were saved for the final few hours. Let's hope now that the scope has shrunk to focus on Sora for KH4 that things improve a little.

 

[vaderskywalker]

In hindsight I don't think the beginning of BBS is super well written, Aqua and Terra's conflict drives the plot for 3/4 of the game until Eraqus decides to deal with Ven. It gets a lot better after that point. That's not to say Nomura can't write conflict, he definitely can. The rivalry between Sora/Riku in KH1, and the subsequent heart to heart at the end of KH2 was fantastic.

Definitely think the writing has taken a big hit as the world expanded. Nobody can tell me KH3 was well written, it failed to live up to the hype, and the pacing was atrocious the way the important plot elements were saved for the final few hours. Let's hope now that the scope has shrunk to focus on Sora for KH4 that things improve a little.

I agree that the writing could have been better in some areas, (a couple of scenes come to mind), but that it failed to live up to the hype? yeah, no, I don't think so, to me, it lived up to the hype almost perfectly, I just think it could have gone that little extra mile to make it truly perfect, but yeah, I think the conflict between Terra and Aqua could have been written better.

 

[Ðari]

As a general critique of the writing itself, you got that chief.

Sadly in whichever lense you wish to view that scene, it's a lot more commonplace than you think it is. Naivete in young adults is pretty common, due to some fault of character, comprehension, common sense etc, an instance of believing an enemy over a friend has likened to turning on others for far less. If Terra was disenfranchised by Maleficent and Aqua feeds into it, its their naivete as characters and it's pretty par for the course if you're targeting a younger audience, playing this out as an adult that kind of criticism itself "ages" as you aged.

Just my thoughts on that.

 

[Mog]

I agree that the writing could have been better in some areas, (a couple of scenes come to mind), but that it failed to live up to the hype? yeah, no, I don't think so, to me, it lived up to the hype almost perfectly, I just think it could have gone that little extra mile to make it truly perfect, but yeah, I think the conflict between Terra and Aqua could have been written better.

It failed in my opinion because the series built up saving all of the lost characters as the climax of the entire series and it didn't deliver. Hardly anyone in KH3 drives the plot besides Sora and with such a large cast, that's a problem. The other lights basically all fail in everything they tried to do and were bailed out by Sora. Established characters were made to look incompetent - Lea, Riku, Aqua, Kairi, Mickey, Ven etc. More characters needed to make decisions that drive the plot or even just give us neat character development and we didn't get it. Just my two cents.

 

[vaderskywalker]

It failed in my opinion because the series built up saving all of the lost characters as the climax of the entire series and it didn't deliver. Hardly anyone in KH3 drives the plot besides Sora and with such a large cast, that's a problem. The other lights basically all fail in everything they tried to do and were bailed out by Sora. Established characters were made to look incompetent - Lea, Riku, Aqua, Kairi, Mickey, Ven etc. More characters needed to make decisions that drive the plot or even just give us neat character development and we didn't get it. Just my two cents.

I agree with the characters making dumb decisions, I can't and won't defend those actions, but, to me it payed off on the saving everyone part, I was especially satisfied when I finally saw Terra get rescued.

As a general critique of the writing itself, you got that chief.

Sadly in whichever lense you wish to view that scene, it's a lot more commonplace than you think it is. Naivete in young adults is pretty common, due to some fault of character, comprehension, common sense etc, an instance of believing an enemy over a friend has likened to turning on others for far less. If Terra was disenfranchised by Maleficent and Aqua feeds into it, its their naivete as characters and it's pretty par for the course if you're targeting a younger audience, playing this out as an adult that kind of criticism itself "ages" as you aged.

Just my thoughts on that.

I was a teenager when I played BBS for the first time, and I thought it was dumb then.

 

[kirabook]

For BbS, I think the biggest hit to the game was being compressed onto the PSP. I feel like the game was originally much bigger than what we got and some important context was left on the cutting room floor.

I feel like the plot required Aqua to distrust Aqua to push Terra further into Xehanort's side, but whatever was written before to make this conflict happen didn't translate well to what was released.

In an ideal story, Aqua would've witnessed Terra doing something shady af with her own two eyes before that argument in Radiant Garden. Like maybe originally, Aqua say Terra seemingly steal Aurora's heart from the window in the distance and was shocked and in disbelief. Then she gets conflicting information from the fairies/the Prince being like "No it wasn't him, it was Maleficent". But then Maleficent is like "It wasn't me, it was Terra and I know you saw it too."

Then when she gets to Radiant Garden and sees him still being a little shady, she confronts him, unsure who to believe at this point, accuses him to being too loosey goosey with the darkness.

It's little stuff like that that I feel is missing here. It's so obviously missing that I can't help but feel like something similar to this used to exist but was cut out, making the resulting argument seem out of left field.

 

[vaderskywalker]

For BbS, I think the biggest hit to the game was being compressed onto the PSP. I feel like the game was originally much bigger than what we got and some important context was left on the cutting room floor.

I feel like the plot required Aqua to distrust Aqua to push Terra further into Xehanort's side, but whatever was written before to make this conflict happen didn't translate well to what was released.

In an ideal story, Aqua would've witnessed Terra doing something shady af with her own two eyes before that argument in Radiant Garden. Like maybe originally, Aqua say Terra seemingly steal Aurora's heart from the window in the distance and was shocked and in disbelief. Then she gets conflicting information from the fairies/the Prince being like "No it wasn't him, it was Maleficent". But then Maleficent is like "It wasn't me, it was Terra and I know you saw it too."

Then when she gets to Radiant Garden and sees him still being a little shady, she confronts him, unsure who to believe at this point, accuses him to being too loosey goosey with the darkness.

It's little stuff like that that I feel is missing here. It's so obviously missing that I can't help but feel like something similar to this used to exist but was cut out, making the resulting argument seem out of left field.

I thought it was always meant to be a PSP, but I suppose it makes sense if the contents of the story we're cut, but if that's the case, why didn't they just put it on the PS3?

 

[Luminary]

I thought it was always meant to be a PSP, but I suppose it makes sense if the contents of the story we're cut, but if that's the case, why didn't they just put it on the PS3?

It was always intended for the PSP. The whole point of Days, BBS, and Coded were to take advantage of the emerging handheld consoles. In the case of BBS specifically, it was also to give Osaka team something to cut their teeth on before developing a full scale console game. At the time those were greenlit, I suspect they thought the KH2 dev team would finish Versus XIII within a few years and then get back to KH3 for the PS3. But obviously that didn’t happen and Osaka ultimately took over completely.

 

[vaderskywalker]

It was always intended for the PSP. The whole point of Days, BBS, and Coded were to take advantage of the emerging handheld consoles. In the case of BBS specifically, it was also to give Osaka team something to cut their teeth on before developing a full scale console game. At the time those were greenlit, I suspect they thought the KH2 dev team would finish Versus XIII within a few years and then get back to KH3 for the PS3. But obviously that didn’t happen and Osaka ultimately took over completely.

Oh.

 

[Mog]

It was always intended for the PSP. The whole point of Days, BBS, and Coded were to take advantage of the emerging handheld consoles. In the case of BBS specifically, it was also to give Osaka team something to cut their teeth on before developing a full scale console game. At the time those were greenlit, I suspect they thought the KH2 dev team would finish Versus XIII within a few years and then get back to KH3 for the PS3. But obviously that didn’t happen and Osaka ultimately took over completely.

It was originally intended for the PS2 as a sequel to KH2 interestingly enough. The very early Jump Festa trailers even show Hollow Bastion 1000 Heartless Area.

 

[Luminary]

It was originally intended for the PS2 as a sequel to KH2 interestingly enough. The very early Jump Festa trailers even show Hollow Bastion 1000 Heartless Area.

Learned something new today! By the time it was announced, it had moved to the PSP which was what my memory was working from. I do remember the KH2 areas in the first trailers though!

 

[Smithee]

Established characters were made to look incompetent - Lea, Riku, Aqua, Kairi, Mickey, Ven etc.

Tended to happen to anyone who went up against Nomura's favorite (Xehanort), really.

 

[magic713]

Tended to happen to anyone who went up against Nomura's favorite (Xehanort), really.

And which Xehanort would that be?

 

[vaderskywalker]

And which Xehanort would that be?

All of them.