Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Feiyun

It is true that the "different armor" are not so perfect, but their feats of breaking the times are still inspiring countless newcomers.

Last month, Tango Gameworks's rhythm action game "perfect Sound Wave" sparked a lot of discussion, including a tribute to the Japanese RPG classic game "different Armor" fans were excited-February 11 coincides with the 25th anniversary of the release of "different degree Armor".

In the past 25 years, the discussion about "alien armor" has not been interrupted, and players like to talk about the advantages of its shocking era and are filled with emotion because of some of the regrets in the game. In the ongoing discussion, there are always new players who are interested in going through this old game from many years ago.

In addition to the player's reputation, "different Armor" also affected the later games. Developers draw on some of its creative designs, or express their nostalgia by paying tribute to colored eggs. It can even be said that the "different armor" has an imperceptible influence on developers. In the whole game field, there are few works that can have such a long and profound impact.

25 years suddenly shocked the era from today to look back at the "different Armor", you can still feel the amazing from several breakthroughs in the game.

The first is the complex world outlook and profound plot performance. The most shocking thing about "different Armor" is that on the basis of drawing lessons from the animation "Evangelical Warriors of the New Century", it further carries forward the practice of combining science fiction with the products of many disciplines such as theology and psychology, making the game a masterpiece that absorbs the quintessence of many classic works, from psychology to biology, from denomination to Gnosticism, from Nietzsche and Jung to artificial intelligence and human transformation. And even a variety of science fiction, animation, features in the classic elements, are integrated into it.

There are many characters and conversations in the game, and the plot is very complicated. The story lays numerous foreshadowing, and even after customs clearance, we can only understand part of the huge world view-the original set of data set of "different degree of Armor" is as thick as 304 pages. In fact, director Takahashi Takahashi originally designed six chapters for a series of stories with a time span of 15000 years. As its final "Episode V" (Chapter 5) shows, "different Armor" is only one big 6 in the whole world.

There are five chapters behind such a huge masterpiece, which naturally caused a great sensation at that time. Before this, almost never a Japanese-style RPG can have so many complex and esoteric settings that it is necessary to have some knowledge of certain disciplines in order to really understand the meaning of the game. Similar to the tribute object "New Century Evangelical Warriors", after the release of "different degree Armor", countless players have made in-depth analysis of the game from the perspective of philosophy and psychology, often tens of thousands of words. If the "psychologist" in the current era has become a phenomenon of the times, then these analysts can be called "eccentrics" at that time.

The thought-provoking ending was followed by breakthroughs in picture technology and theatrical performance. "different degree Armor" initially wanted to try a full 3D picture, but because the technology was so difficult, it had to compromise and made it in the form of 3D background and 2D characters. This model is the opposite of final Fantasy 7, which was developed at the same time, with a 2D background and 3D modeling.

The full 3D background was a huge breakthrough in Japanese games at that time, when Japanese RPG rarely dared to adopt this form. The biggest advantage of the full 3D background is that the perspective can be changed freely, which greatly increases the appeal of the performance. For example, when developers want to use movie-like mirror operations in the game, such as overshot, lens zoom, low-angle appearance and so on, a fixed-angle 2D background is often difficult to do, only in full 3D.

In the early days of PlayStation, "Dragon Bourne" was praised for its use of full 3D pictures and cinematic scenes. However, in the contemporary Japanese-style RPG, it is rare to dare to use a full 3D background like "different Armor".

However, the full 3D background is also a double-edged sword, leading screen technology makes the game development process too slow, and finally can only be available in the form of semi-finished products.

The 3D background and the sense of space have brought about the upgrading of the performance effect. Another amazing thing is the music that sounds like nature. "different Armor" is composed by the well-known game composer Yasuki Hiroda, who is responsible for all the music.

Guangtian began to compose music for games in the era of SFC, and his most famous early career works are "key to Space and time" on SFC, "different Armor" on PS and "time travel". There is no doubt that the music of "different Armor" is one of his proudest works. Two songs, "STARS OF TEARS~ Armor" and "Small Two Of Pieces" have become ACG masterpieces that year, moving countless players.

Guangtian is still active in the game music industry, and last year's "Divine Sword 3" also had his creation. My personal favorite song is from the game arrangement collection "BALTO". This is actually the arrangement version of the game's opening prelude, "Haiyanyan". The original song is mysterious and distant, and the arrangement version inherits this sense of atmosphere, but the second half becomes cheerful and lively, and impromptu performance is added. The melody has a high degree of recognition and everlasting sense of meaning. It is the kind of dream melody that will be unforgettable for the rest of my life.

It is worth mentioning that the popularity of "different Armor" is also a period of vigorous development of domestic ACG information magazines, "Animation Times" and other magazines include many classic game tunes through accompanying tapes, so that some domestic players feel the charm of game music in advance when they have not yet come into contact with the game.

Many years after the cover of the 20th anniversary edition of the original soundtrack, Guangda released game-related symphonic arrangement albums and held concerts. The most moving scene was at the concert commemorating the 20th anniversary of "different Armor" held in 2019, when the singer of two songs in the game, Joanne Hogg, traveled thousands of miles from Ireland to Japan to reinterpret the classics on stage. With tears streaming down her face, she thanked Guangtian for writing such excellent music and was proud to be a singer.

Her voice is not as dreamy and beautiful as it was then, but it still moved the audience to tears and applause. This is enough to show that the musical charm of this work has never diminished through time and space.

Joanne Hogg's regret at the 20th Anniversary Concert although today we regard "different Armor" as a masterpiece, but for various reasons, the game itself left a lot of regret, which also led to poor sales of the game, but also affected the follow-up development of the series.

The most criticized part of the game is the combat system, with many people saying it is "not fun". At that time, Takahashi Takahashi, who had just moved to Square from Falcom, had excellent ability to construct a world view and plot description, but lacked experience in understanding combat systems-it was not until years later that he gradually solved this problem in the "Divine Sword" series.

In fact, the combat system in the game has a lot of ideas, for example, in the design concept, in addition to ordinary combat, players can also transform the mecha in the store, but the final practice of this set of ideas is not ideal. In addition, there are a lot of jumping hurdles in the game, coupled with the high encounter rate, the playing process is quite boring, and it is almost inevitable to be criticized.

The biggest regret of the Mecha combat game is the massive deletion of the plot, resulting in the collapse of the narrative rhythm and fragmentation as a whole.

This is mainly due to the large scale of the game concept and the use of new graphics technology, which makes the development procrastinate again and again. Square executives hope that the game will be on the market as soon as possible to avoid long dreams.

In the picture technology that was ahead of the times, this is not the strong point of most Japanese companies, the PS version of "different Armor" has two CDs. In fact, Square originally asked the game to end in one disc, but Takahashi hoped to finish the story, and still finished the contents of the second disc under the pressure of rush to work and limited funds. There are not many things to play in this part, and the plot almost only revolves around the hero Fei and the heroine Ellie, and is shown through their memories. Most of the time, the protagonist Fei sits in a chair, and subtitles pop up on the other half of the screen to tell stories. Therefore, this paragraph is jokingly called "PPT show" by many players, and its appeal is naturally greatly reduced.

Not only the plot, but later, some game enthusiasts studied the "different Armor" Debug Room and found a large number of unused mechs, items, equipment, and even songs, which confirmed that the game had indeed shrunk quite seriously from another point of view.

PPT became a "famous scene" after many years, and it was restored by "perfect sound wave" to "different armor" development for many years, and Square also had high hopes, but many problems led to the game sales failed to exceed one million. Takahashi then left Square to set up a new company, Monolith Soft, with Hiroshi Sugura and Yasuyuki Bungen, and later developed the Legend of different places series with Namco. Later, Monolith Soft became a subsidiary of Nintendo and attracted attention for its production of the "Excalibur Sword" series.

Of course, "Alien Legend" and "Alien Sword" series actually have some cases of speeding up work and cutting the content of the game, but the severity is far less than that of "Alien Armor". So much so that many people think that Alien Armor is one of the most regrettable semi-finished products in game history.

Takahashi still plays an important role in the "different degree" series and has a far-reaching influence on "different degree armor", leaving an indelible mark in the minds of both developers and players.

For example, some works in the "Legend" series (such as "Holy Legend" and so on), and even many Japanese RPG, like to use the constant reincarnation of the hero and heroine spanning thousands of years, many of which are more or less affected by the "alien armor"-the protagonist Fei and Ellie in the "alien armor" have experienced many reincarnations, and the time span of the world in the game is also very long. Some domestic RPG mobile games and female mobile games also often use this setting, it can not be said that this design technique is created by "different armor", but it undoubtedly triggered too much discussion at that time, so that many games were imitated intentionally or unintentionally, so that people forget that the earliest game field is "different armor" to rely on this setting amazing people.

For example, in "different Armor", in addition to the battle between humans, but also added to the battle between the machine armor, and the machine armor combat and shooting and other elements, which is also different from most Japanese-style RPG at that time. Many years later, the setting and battle of riding gods in the "track of Flash" series 4 were obviously also affected by "different armor".

Recently, an European and American independent game called "chain Echo" (Chained Echoes) has highly learned to imitate these two features of "alien armor". For example, the hero and heroine have also experienced reincarnation, and the setting of the heavenly armor in the game is obviously a tribute to "alien armor".

Game producer Matthias Linda, from Germany, is a big fan of Japanese RPG. He has been a fan of Alien Armor and final Fantasy 6 since childhood, so he naturally draws on the classic elements of Alien Armor in the game he has worked hard to make for seven years.

The Heavenly Armor of the chain Echo also appears in the eggs of some games. For example, "perfect Sound Wave", because PPT is one of the favorite game scenes of Director John Johanas. He thinks that whatever the reason, this narrative technique in the second disc of "different Armor" is impressive. In "perfect Sound Wave", he originally intended to use the play process to lead to some of the subsequent scenes of the game, but due to time constraints can not be achieved, so he thought of this scene in "different Armor".

To this end, John Johanas contacted Square Enix carefully and got the license for the egg. Because he believes that the tone of the two games is obviously different, without authorization, this tribute may be seen as a mockery of "different armor". As a fan, John Johanas does not want to have this kind of misunderstanding, so it can only discuss with the copyright owner first. Fortunately, Square Enix also said generously, no problem.

John Johanas also mentioned that many people on the "perfect Sound Wave" development team are fans of "different Armor".

Takahashi Takahashi's homage to "different armor" Takahashi himself is also obsessed with "different armor". Last year, in his "Excalibur Sword 3", there were many places that paid homage to "Alien Armor". It can be said that he paid homage to himself-the design prototype of Noah, the protagonist of "Alien Sword 3" is actually the protagonist Fei of "Alien Armor". There are six urban founders in Heidu Divine Sword 3, and one of the founders has a hairstyle and styling that looks like flying. There are many similar salutes in the game.

Looking back, the related works of the "alien sword" series are in fact inextricably linked with "alien armor", only because of copyright issues, these works can only imply their relationship with "alien armor" through obscure colored eggs.

The latest work in the "different degree" series, "different degree Divine Sword 3" and "different degree Armor", also has a great impact on players. At home, this influence comes from the unremitting efforts of the folk Sinicization team.

After the game was released in 1998, most domestic players learned about it through the game media, but in the era of PS consoles, there were very few games with official support in Chinese, and the text volume of "different Armor" was extremely large, with more than 700,000 words in Japanese text. In addition, many nouns in the game were involved in multi-disciplinary fields, so it was extremely difficult to translate, so "different Armor" was once considered to be one of the most difficult games to be translated into Chinese. Some people even think that Sinicization will take more than ten years to complete.

But surprisingly, with the help of a group of like-minded partners, chenke, the founder of the China Alien Alliance website and the leader of folk Sinicization, completed the project. From the beginning of Sinicization in 2002 to the launch of the Sinicization patch in 2004, it took only 16 months, which caused a great deal of heated discussion at that time, and many players thought it was a miracle.

The Sinicized participants are all enthusiasts of "different degree armor". They have even added noun explanation and yearbook history, which is a Chinese patch that has been improved on the game itself, mostly aiming at the settings where players have great opinions. For example, the enemy encounter rate of the original game is too high, and the Sinicization group has added the function that players can adjust the encounter rate on their own.

In fact, there are a large number of Japanese-style RPG on the PS mainframe, and even the classic PS masterpieces such as "final Fantasy 7" were released a few years later than "different Armor". Chenke and his partners made great efforts to complete this Sinicization, laying the foundation for the influence of "different Armor" in China. To this day, Square Enix does not have any plans to reproduce its "different armor", let alone the official Chinese version. Without the efforts of enthusiasts, domestic players would not know it as much as they do today.

Is it still possible to reproduce? "Divine work" controversy "different Armor" has also triggered a big debate in the domestic player circle, which can be called an important event in the golden age of domestic game forums.

The cause of the matter is that a forum gathered by hardcore players who are famous for "game Brahmin" in China has debated for more than a decade whether "alien armor" is a masterpiece, and at its heaviest, both sides of the debate have posted tens of thousands of buildings, which is a grand occasion that is hard to see today.

As for why there is such a debate, from the background of the times, "different degree Armor" launched the Chinese patch in 2004 is precisely the time of rapid popularity of domestic broadband, many players who have played the Chinese version of the game are impressed by the grand setting of the game itself and countless mysteries, thinking that it is an extraordinary masterpiece, the product of the development of Japanese ACG culture to the pinnacle of the game, and frequently post in the forum to express their feelings of worship.

Other players do not agree with this view, because the game itself is lack of playability, and a masterpiece cannot be supported by world outlook, plot and music alone. They believe that playability is the fundamental factor that determines the level of a game.

Neither of the two sides could convince the other, so citing the classics, they debated from the perspectives of game design, cultural depth, past resumes of production members, and so on.

Although this debate died down several years ago, the more than a decade-long debate has made the name of the masterpiece "alien armor" more and more widely, so that many people will think of "alien armor" as soon as they see the word "divine work". What is more interesting is that in this forum, until now, the younger generation of players have heard the name of the masterpiece and cleared the game. after that, they posted posts asking old players because they did not know where the "god" of the game was. We can also see the influence of that debate that year.

It is understandable that the new generation of players do not understand the magic of "different Armor". After all, the picture of the game now looks so backward that it is difficult for them to feel the huge impact of the technological advances in the picture at that time. The novel and unique settings in "different Armor" were later imitated by many games, and the plot of reincarnation was even rampant. Coupled with the unsatisfactory problems such as encounters with enemies, players in the new era could not tolerate it. After the baptism of time to play "different degree of armor", of course, can not feel the fresh meaning.

However, we should not deny the great value of "different armor" because of these, just as we should not criticize the academic achievements of 100 years ago from today's point of view.

This is a question of looking at old games from today's point of view. We should realize that the reason why excellent games continue to emerge is not to pop out of the stone all of a sudden, but to be inspired by many forerunners and trailblazers like "different armor" on the basis of their predecessors. It is true that the "different armor" are not so perfect, but their feats of breaking the times are still inspiring countless newcomers.

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