Empty Worlds?

[WhinyAcademic]

While I can survive without NPC's for a bit, you'd think that they would avoid scenes like Zack directing Terra's attention to the Olympus "crowd", even though NOONE is present...

Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 were the best when it came to NPC's. We had Moogles and generics roaming Traverse Town, Twilight Town and Radiant Garden; the lionesses and hyenas, Imperial soldiers, Barbossa's crew, etc, even in cutscenes.

While I knew that The Hunchback of Notre Dame was going to be watered down from all the heavy themes and what not, Esmeralda nearly burning at the stake and Quasimodo's rescue of her lost SO much impact, since no townspeople were there to protest and riot against Frollo's injustice. Who was Quasimodo screaming "Sanctuary" to? Who cared that he was taking a stand? Who cared if Frollo died? And who was Frollo persecuting anyway, besides Esmeralda? And the Dream Eaters felt like cheats to have generics in the game, so no extra Disney characters would have to show up. Frollo's Gargoyle was his army, and he got to walk Esmerelda back to Notre Dame himself. Cite des Cloches is the biggest issue I've had with the series when it comes to no NPC's. Corey Burton's very respectful imitation of Tony Jay was perhaps my favorite part of that world. Well, really, all the actors' imitations of Tom Hulce, Demi Moore, etc.

Let's hope they don't do Dinosaur, like I so naively suggested three years ago. I can imagine - "The herd left us behind!"... the herd being Neera and Kron.

 

[Arpack]

yea that is true..ive a;ways noticed that but i always thought that was the case cause they were to lazy to put an audience in but hey what do i know...

 

[saphexteni]

That's something I've noticed since Birth By Sleep- I was really really hoping 3D would be different, but I was disappointed to see that they didn't change it up with the NPCs at all... it was even worst, regarding the fact that you can't even TALK to ANY characters at all. There were the TWO times when you could go up to Esmeralda and Geppeto, but they disappeared afterward anyway, and yeah...

So far, they've done a great job with NPCs in Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II- the worlds felt so much more real. Days and CoM is understandable for the lack of NPCs (not supposed to be seen in Days, and CoM weren't supposed to be real anyway), but BBS and 3D needed serious work on this. It's one of the main things that disappointed me about them, despite them still being among my favorites. xD

 

[Hillboy]

I'm hoping SE learns from Final fantasy XIII-2's handling of NPCs and uses that for the next KH game. Because that NPC system is nice, there's plenty of people walking around you can talk to them, and then whenever enemies appear they either run off or start attacking the enemies, too. But yeah, I loved how the worlds were designed in 3D, but it would have been perfected had there been actual people living in those worlds.

That was my first thought when I had been playing FF 13-2, I loved the NPCs in that game and thought they would be perfect for KH

 

[Narveid]

Well, let's hope they add SOMETHING in KH3 .. I mean .. Its on a PS3 and all most likely, shouldn't be too difficult to add some random npc's walking around for some atmosphere, yeah? All the games do feel sort of lonely atm.