What if Panzer Dragoon wasn’t so under the radar?
What if it did all the stupid cliches that the more popular RPGs do?
What if the movie sequences were 20 minutes long?
What if the characters had spiky hair or the females wore skimpy clothes?
What if the voice acting was really bad and in English?
Or worse yet, the text in Engrish?
What if the religious side was more heavy handed?
What if the world blew up at the end?
What if the bad guys were more blatantly evil and didn’t speak in philosophical tones?
What if drones were replaced with droids?
What if it had mini games?
What if Team Andromeda was Square-Enix?
What if the main character didn’t need his dragon because he could cause 7,000 points of damage and dodge a great big fireball?
What if Panzer Dragoon went MMO? o_O
Would we be happy because Panzer Dragoon, provided it was still being made in RPG formats, now have the formula to be more popular and successful? Or would we be sad because we wouldn’t be here and it would now su. . . I mean because it wouldn’t be the same?
Okay sorry if this was a useless post. I was just musing.
Actually, this is a very likely scenario. Panzer Dragoon has always been a very dark and depressing story, and I would be very disappointed if we’re all given a happy ending.
But, a non-standard non-happy ending doesn’t necessarily mean that the world has to blow up at the end.
The problem with dark endings is that it has to be fulfilling enough for the player feel that the 20-30 hours or whatever they spent playing the game was well worth it. If the player just dies in the end and everything was in vain, it makes them feel like they wasted their time.
Which is where I think the ending of Saga was fantastic. You still saved the day, but at a very, very high cost.
The ending of Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne was the most depressing ending I have ever seen (poor Arthas), but it still served to conclude one chapter in a much longer story. That ending was supposed to provide players with a sense of closure… even if it did feel rather empty to me (Starcraft: Brood War was the same). It set the stage for the next game. When World of Warcraft is released I shall return to Lordaeron and cleanse the land of the undead scourge with my giant two-handed hammer. “It’s hammer time!”
With games like Panzer Dragoon when a sequel is uncertain or determined solely on the strength of sales, they need endings that reward the player somehow.
If the Panzer series survives to see a future, it will be injected with “mainstream appeal”. I can only wonder what form[s] that will take on its winding path towards reflecting the fickle whims of mainstream gamers.
Urrrgh. Speaking of endings. The ending of Beyond Good and Evil was seriously aggravating. Heck of a good game. Ending made no sense. Didn’t clear up anything and set the stage for a sequel we’ll most likely never see.
I completely agree. Something powerful and yet sad is something that can make a story really stay with you, long after the tale has ended.
I seriously hope that those features that dragoon lover brought up are never implanted though! That would be terrible… well some of them at least. I’d have no problems with mini games or longer movie sequences, but any overkill would just ruin the series in my opinion. I think Amusement Vision is wise enough not to turn the series into that though.
One thing I don’t like about some endings of stories (although admitably there are many good stories that use this technique) is when all the problems are solved in the end. Everything is perfect, the prince marries the princess, and they all live happily ever after, etc, etc. This technique may work in a fairy tale, but real life isn’t usually as simple as this, and I think a good story will reflect this.
Oh yeah. I know what you mean. Hence why my favorite animated movie is The Fox and the Hound and not, say, Beauty and the Beast. But on the other hand, a “loose” ending is often just as bad, sad or not.
PDSaga had minigames, and they aren’t a bad thing just cos final fantasy has them, good RPGs have them as well like PDS and Xenogears (omg a Squaresoft game called good? I must be a traitor :P) and can add a lot of fun to a game, imagine for example if PDS2 allows you after completion to play through the whole game in Shooter mode, not turn based PDS like battles, would there be much wrong with that? Or imagine if you could open a box game mini game and have a coolia ranch and be able and breed coolias, roam the world to find food for them etc and raise mutant coolias and grow different types of dragons etc for use in the previous mini game… Basically an expansion of Dermot’s Ranch in PDS, what would be so wrong with that? Don’t bash the mini games they are not what makes the game but they are not what breaks it either, I love them
And I’m sure that had PDS been handled in a “mainstream way” in it’s marketing it would sell by the truckload even if it didn’t have all the things Final Fantasy has… It had everything really, exciting battles, an epic storyline, great visuals, cool characters and monsters and beautiful environments…
It’s all in the marketing, for example Geoff loves the Silent Hill series, that’s a popular series, and Geoff is an intelligent person so that means that series is good for him to love it… So for it to be popular it must mean atleast a % of the fans is quite intelligent too like Geoffrey, so that means those ppl that make Silent Hill popular could also buy and enjoy PDS too just like Geoff does… If only they knew about it that is… Marketing! Marketing! Marketing!
I hope you understood my point, I didn’t express it very well at all…
I guess mini games are okay too. But Panzer Dragoon is just such a serious and atmospheric universe, and the story in Panzer Dragoon Saga moved along at such speed, that the hero just had no time to get sidetracked and play minigames like the hero in Final Fantasy 7 did.
Although I must admit the submarine minigame was pretty cool.
MMO wouldn’t be so bad aside from the fact that it wouldn’t make ANY SENSE AT ALL!!
so yeah, if AV pulled any crap like that, i’d have to break 'em chicago style.
it’d still be interesting if it were an MMO to be flying way out over the waters of uru, then see something flapping on the horizon. you get closer and closer until you see it is another dragon and rider, but it’s dragon is so much more advanced than yours…
and if you got really high level and strengthened the bond between you and your dragon, you could stand on it like a badass drone mofo rather than ride it like a dopey human noob.
but it still wouldn’t make ANY SENSE!! so i hate the idea
Why do you assume in a mmorpg everyone would have to have dragons? The PD world has lot more interesting things than just dragons and dragoons.
I wouldn’t mind a MMO at all…
Be imperial or meccanian or a seeker
Be a trader or a soldier or a warrior or a hunter or a healer or a thief or a breeder or…
Use nature or use technology or use ancient excavated technology or…
Travel on the whole world and visit and explore areas from all the games but long after the events we saw in PD,PDZ,PDZ, towers in ruins, other ancient facilities, villages, cities, empires, warzones or just “plain” beautiful landscapes as we are used to seeing in the PD world.
Have ridable animals, coolias and others, have imperial vehicles…(No dragons, MAYBE dragonmares, but I’m not fond of that idea either)
Have the world so in depth that you could even learn panzereze just by paying attention to the signs and how the character reads them (and u see the english subtitles below)
Take part in the conflicts between The Empire, Meccania, and The Seekers…
In fact a mmorpg that allowed this and much more would be the only one I’d consider playing…
yes i agree it is a great setting with infinite potential, but what is a panzer dragoon game without a dragon? i think it is mandatory for a PD game to feature a dragon.
i considered that maybe you don’t start with a dragon, you begin as a seeker/hunter, drone, or imperial and you must work your way up to a good flying unit. like if you were imperial, you’d have to go through the academy and begin on a basic float engine fighter and as you advance you move up through more and more sophisticated models until you’re flying some very large, very weird creations, and the ultimate flying unit you could get would be the dragonmare.
or if you were a seeker/hunter you would begin with coolia, and move up through more and more developed and dangerous mutant type creatures like being a wormrider and such, then eventually you would come upon a real heresy dragon and that would be the ultimate.
and if you were a drone you only get one dragon, but it is your dragon, and it will develop and grow into new forms. the final form would be like atolm or something.
the problem with that is that in a month you’d see dragonmares and heresy dragons swarming the skies. they could get around this by setting it up like PSO where you only play with a small team of people. having 4-6 various dragon equivalents wouldn’t be that ridiculous.
I think mini games would be a good thing for a prospective PDS2, afterall no matter how serious the world of PD is, the inhabitants have to do something for fun! If handled correctly minigames can add to immersion in the game rather than detract from it. A card game system(not very innovative i know) might work well for PD, it was handled quite well in KOTOR. Maybe a shooting competition or something similar could be good too. However I would only like these features if AV made sure they werent gimmicks. Unfortunately I think mainstream designers like putting in features as gimmicks, sometimes a game can be too serious for gamers(not that I mind it but I can see how a game could be too immersive).
I agree that having a stupidly powerful main character would be a bad idea too, if the monsters could easily be defeated without a dragon I think it would detract from the “world ravaged by biomonsters” feel
Anyway on a completely unrelated note, what was it that you found sad about the ending to Warcraft 3 TFT Geoff?
WARCRAFT 3 TFT SPOILERS(why do so many of my posts contain spoilers?)
I really liked how powerful Arthas became at the end, maybe we dont know how much of him is really himself any more but in the ending he has become one of the most powerful people on the planet. I felt more sorry for Illidan than Arthas, he was my 2nd favorite character. Maybe Arthas paid a huge price to gain his power, but that doesnt seem to bother him so I dont mind Also him becoming evil was kind of old hat by TFT.
I just found the ending of TFT to be really powerful, maybe not moving but still one of the best game endings ive seen in a while.
The dragon is a very small part of the history of PD even if that’s the only part we have really seen, I stand by my previous opinion than a mmorpg without dragons would be just great. How many SW games have been done without Jedis and still be great? That racing game, all the rebel assault games, all the rogue squadron type games, the new Star Wars Battlefront game…
Anyway if you REALLY want a dragon in the mmorpg here you go: adds a statue of Lagi and Edge in the center of a Seeker base
Dragons could be in the form of an NPC character, MMORPGs usually have a very general story that every once in a while is updated with some kinda event, the dragon could appear in those events… Someone as mysterious as the Sky Rider of PD1 preferably that pops in, does his deed and pops out…
I’m sure most people here would agree a game set in the pd world needs no dragon to be good… If you had been here longer you’d have caught the PD Game Ideas tjreads where ppl were suggesting things like Real Time or Turn Based Strategy games, Adventure games and a ton of other things and atleast half of them had no dragon requirement and some of them required a dragon to not be present even…
yeah i can see all of that but i still think, at least at this time, that taking PD off it’s course is not something i would feel good about. if there were a plethora of PD games out and coming out, i would be fine with a spin off. but for now i wouldn’t want to see any deviation from the themes of PD else it could spawn a whole new series that is hugely successful and then the devs forget about the real game (see: PSO).
anyone here will say that they’d love to see more of the PD world, getting down at “ground level” in some of the ruins, forests, cities, deserts, etc, etc, etc, etc. there’s just so much there to explore and we only get to see a little of it as we fly by on lagi, but i still feel that without a dragon… it just isn’t as meaningful. the dragon was the ticket to see all of these things and without it, i don’t think it would be right to see them.
another thing to remember is that nothing is comparable to the power of the dragons. so in an MMO without dragons, you really couldn’t survive in many of the areas. going against a horde of pure types on a baldor would be suicide (despite me beating PDO using one…). so that would kind of restrict it to a scenario built around the seekers, caravaners, and the empire… which would be ok i guess; another iva toned story could be interesting, but you wouldn’t really be able to get into the rest of the world. no messing with sandworms, no investigating towers for fear of the guardians, there would still be a lot of cool stuff but it wouldn’t be the true essence of PD, would it?
Well, in the Warcraft 3 expansion I never expected to play not one, but two elf campaigns. I wanted to play as another human hero and reclaim Lordaeron or help towards that end.
Arthas didn’t become one of the most powerful evil characters in the world of Warcraft: he became the new host for the Lich King. He ceased to be Arthas the moment he put on the Lich King’s crown. The ending would’ve been all the more fitting if Arthas had killed Nerzul, but now he’s damned for all eternity.
Illidan played the part of the misunderstood hero perfectly though. He died fighting for the right cause for all the wrong reasons.
they are not what makes the game but they are not what breaks it either, I love them