Re: Making This Thread Goes Against My Better Instincts
Nostalgia said:
I wanna mention that I strongly believe many of you (most of you, in fact) will disagree with a couple of my opinions on Nomura among other things relating to the games.
I think there's a much higher chance of people agreeing with you than disagreeing with you when it comes to complaints about Nomura, actually.
Nostalgia said:
The best analogy I could come up (as lame as it is) would be to compare him to an innocent child who accidentally discovered something incredible. He's not the scientist who invented it, or the engineer who built it; he's the innocent kid who stumbled upon it, as it was something created by nature. (Again, sorry for the crappy analogy.)
You're right, that is kind of a bad analogy.
I don't know if you can really say that Nomura is like a kid who just "stumbled" upon KH. I understand what you're trying to say, but looking at the history of the series, instead of an analogy of it, Nomura did a lot more than simply discover something. You said he's not the engineer who built it, but really... he kind of is. For the first year of KH1's development Nomura was the only person in charge of it. He was a one-man team. He was given the bare-bones concept ("Disney meets Final Fantasy") and was in charge of building the entire thing from the ground up. He came up with which worlds to use, the plot, the main characters, etc. Nomura effectively -did- build this "incredible thing". Later on, of course, his team would expand to more than just himself and together they turned this concept he had created into an actual game.
Nostalgia said:
Here's one of the parts that people won't like (hence my request at the beginning.) CoM was a fun game and all, but really, what did it offer? Yes, it was a bridge game, and it built up tension for the mysterious group of individuals who would surely serve as the next group of antagonists. Yeah, it was a packed with a decent story for a little GBA game. But really, what did it offer that was completely necessary?
An emotional story? Set the stage for KHII. Explained why Sora was where he was? I can possibly understand why you thought it offered little in terms of Sora's Story, as his was generally straightforward and didn't change him all that much as a character (well he changed during the game, but, the ending was pretty much set to revert him back to the way he was anyway). But for Riku? Riku's entire redemption arc is more or less contained within CoM. That was something extremely necessary for his character. It was something needed. It was something that could -not- be summed up in a cutscene or two in KHII. Sure you could sum up how it affected the plot in a cutscene (Riku now working with DiZ), but you can't sum up what it meant for his character. I think that's personally one of the problems with the way people assess the games nowadays. They look at the reveals, where the plot ends up, etc., without taking into account what it means for the
characters.
A good example is Coded. Most people think the game was a waste of time because one part of its final reveal (though there was a lot more to it than people seem to realize) was summed up in BBS' Secret Ending. They were focusing on the where the plot led/reveals instead of focusing on the characters. Coded is largely a game -only- about the characters. Sure the mystery of the message in the journal is what started the game, but its journey is largely a character one. Coded is filled with great character moments (especially between Sora and
Riku) But everyone seems to simply overlook this fact because one scene in BBS sums up a single-line in Coded's end. People aren't focusing on the right things anymore, it seems. They complain about games being just plot twists and all of that, and when Nomura gives you a game based more on characters they only complain about -that-. It's a little unbalanced.
What I seem to notice is that the so-called "side-stories" of KH focus more deeply on the characters (CoM, Coded, Days, KH3D no doubt) while the main games focus on the "Epic" parts of the series (KH1, KH2, BBS). I mean, the fact that Coded's entire game is about the torment of various -characters- in the series seems to show that rather bluntly, but people dismiss it all because where it went, plot wise, could be summed up simply. Just an interesting observation anyway.
Story-wise, CoM has affected the stories of KHII, Days, and Coded. Sounds rather necessary to me.
Nostalgia said:
CoM showed the beginning of Nomura's lack of interest in focusing on anything but the main plot. There were no connections or anything else of substance. The game has to take time to beat. Just throw in some Disney worlds, make little stories that emulate the movies, and then have Sora move on to continue the real story.
See, I think I have to disagree. On CoM, anyway. While the worlds were generally repeats, they weren't exactly carbon copies. Each world played with the motif that the entire game had going for it. "Memories". The worlds reflected Sora's own thoughts as he advanced through the castle because each world was based on -his- memories. So, if you really think about it, the worlds were more of introspection for Sora rather than him simply emulating the plots of the movies. CoM's worlds were tied to what was going on, it's more so just a matter of how you interpret them. (for example, there's Smile's theory that several characters in the Disney worlds in CoM are actually representations of Nami as she tries to deal with her own feelings regarding Sora. I can't remember the theory that well, so I can't give specific examples, but, it shows that, if you look, the worlds in CoM were deeper than what they simply appeared to be. Sure they didn't make it so blunt that "Sora learns lesson, this helps him moving forward" or "Sora kills bad guy to reach bigger bad guy", but it was largely a reflection on his character).
Riku's experiences were a bit more hollow though since there wasn't much room left. But, even they played with the motif the game was focusing on. The upper floors of Castle Oblivion represented the "lightness" of memories, while the bottom floor represented the "darkness" of memories. I would almost say that CoM's worlds were probably more affected than a lot of other worlds in the series simply because each of them was tied to what the game was trying to represent.
KH2's story, on the other hand, went the complete other direction. Instead of having worlds that tied together, if not by plot reason than at least through theme/motif, you have a bunch of worlds that were simply selected because they thought they would be cool to go to. These worlds are the ones that didn't matter. They added little to anything--not the plot, not the characters, not the theme. They were just -there-. These are the worlds that simply emulate the movie plots. THESE are the worlds that are an issue when it comes to the series.
Nostalgia said:
This takes me back to my original point. I think Nomura discovered something amazing, but he's a little kid who doesn't know what to do with it. Kids have wild imaginations, and similarly, this man, though impressively creative, seems to bite off more than he can chew. He's always thinking about the future; he rushes into new projects to have the plot expand with twists and turns. But, he doesn't seem to focus on the current situations.
I think a big part of the issue is that people don't realize Nomura isn't the only one working on this series. I'll get to that in my next point though
KH Days was another CoM but to the extreme. It had a good story, but you go around, completing pointless missions in hopes of finishing them quickly to get on with the real story
Here. You mention Days, which is good. I think this highlights the fact that people don't realize he isn't the only one writing these games, and Days is a particular example. You say the story is good. Now, in Days, the main story is what Nomura wrote. In all the games, actually, he writes the base story, the main plot, the twists, who is who. He leaves the Disney Worlds, however, to the scenario writers. In Days in particular, he outwardly told Kanemaki (the scenario writer) that he DIDN'T want Roxas to simply go on missions and learn nothing. He wanted the missions to stir something in Roxas, to make him leave with something to think about ( a good example of this in the game is when Roxas learns about "love"). Thing is, if anyone is to blame for how the Disney worlds turned out in Days it was more so Kanemaki than it was Nomura, because she was the one who was in charge of the Disney worlds. Sure, you could say that, as the Director, he is also to blame, but the point is, he is not the only one writing these games.
Except for key plot moments, the Disney worlds are usually always written by the scenario writer for the game and not Nomura. This is why games written by Watanabe (BBS, CoM, KH1, last episode of Coded) are particularly favoured by the fanbase because he finds ways to tie the worlds into the story in relevant ways (whether it is through actual plot, or motif/theme). The issue isn't so much with Nomura as it is with the scenario writers.
Nothing about Days, however, was needed at all. I still fail to see any plot holes that it patched up.
-What were the events leading to Roxas leaving the Organization?
-What was Roxas' time in the Organization like?
-What happened in that time between CoM and KH2?
-Why did it take so long for Nami to fix Sora's memories?
-Brought some additional context to what was happening in CoM
You could say that these aren't particularly necessary, and that people probably could have pieced together the answers on their own, and perhaps that's true, but as Nomura has said, sometimes there is significance in depicting it. And I tend to agree with that assesment. Learning what happened during that year was a good thing. It was a large gap in the story that had gone untold. I just don't think they handled it particularly well.
As an example, a well-liked fanfiction in the Xion-hate community has someone rewriting all 358 days of Roxas' time in the org without Xion in it, and it shows a lot of promise. It shows what Days -could- have been like. The issue isn't that Nomura and Co. chose to fill that gap, it's how they went about doing it.
Nostalgia said:
Xion? Maybe she will be involved later on, in some warped way, no doubt.
BBS and Coded seem to imply this, in some form anyway.
Nostalgia said:
Now, we have KH3DS, another midquel supposedly. If they hadn't mentioned it, would you think that we need more info about what went on around the time of the 2 main games? I didn't.
Well, not much is known about the game, so, I don't think there's much point in discussing it right now. But, there is a lot of ways it could go, and it does have new worlds, and Nomura has hinted that its "more official" than a side story. So, I suppose time will tell. I could elaborate on what the plot -could- contain, but, since you don't seem to have played BBS or read up on Coded I won't.
Nostalgia said:
I still think Nomura either has to invest in the idea of linearity with his story-telling
I kind of think the only reasons these titles aren't being done in a linear fashion is because they can't. He can't make KH3 until Versus XIII is finished, so he is working to fill gaps in the story, as well as connecting them all to KHIII. Once Versus is out of the way and Nomura can focus on the new saga of KHIII, I kind of expect things to release in a more straightforward manner, personally.
I wouldn't ever call Nomura a "brilliant" writer, but I don't think the series is in nearly as bad a shape as people like to say it is. =/
