Lost Odyssey will require patience, reading glasses

by Jason Dobson { Oct 2nd 2007 at 11:27AM }

The Xbox 360 exclusive Lost Odyssey may be a beacon of hope for the console's anemic Japanese user base, but that success will come at a price -- your eyes. According to Lost Odyssey architect Hironobu Sakaguchi, the upcoming plot-heavy RPG will feature several "1000 Year Dream" sequences, 34 to be precise, each designed to flesh out the narrative penned by Japanese author Kiyoshi Shigematsu; and each told not through cut scenes, but rather with pop-up text, taking upwards of 5 to 10 minutes to read.

Sakaguchi admits that he once entertained the idea of using voice overs for the sequences, but opted instead to make the player experience Shigematsu's work in its 'purest form', namely written word. You mean, we have to read?! The idea of spending 4 or more hours scrolling through text on the screen is not our idea of fun, and we immediately feel sympathy for those players without bionic vision, or just those playing on smaller than average sets.

We'd like to think that there's a method to Sakaguchi's madness, though his admission that Lost Odyssey will clock in at 40 hours, with 20 of these devoted to non-interactive story sequences, seems to stretch the boundaries of what can be considered a game, rather than just an interactive storybook. Nevertheless, Japanese Xbox 360 owners can pick up Lost Odyssey on December 6, while those in North America and Europe will have to wait until February to go blind.

Tags: eyes, Hironobu Sakaguchi, HironobuSakaguchi, Kiyoshi Shigematsu, KiyoshiShigematsu, Lost Odyssey, LostOdyssey, mistwalker

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

plyx @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:32AM

While I'm sure it will suck, it still sounds better than Blue Dragon.

Mr. P @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:55AM

Suck? That's an understatement. The more I see of this game, the less I want it. LO was initially one of the biggest reasons I bought a 360, too. But after seeing the outdated gameplay, the average graphics, and learning that one of the most interesting parts of the game (the flashbacks) won't be fully fleshed out... Well, my only hope now is that Cry On won't suck.

Bloo @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:12PM

Blue Dragon is good

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring) @ Oct 2nd 2007 1:12PM

lol i have a copycat now?

Bloo @ Oct 2nd 2007 4:16PM

@blooh

No. I've been commenting here for years already. This is my thrid account that happened to be started 3 days after you made yours. I've been using Bloo since Diablo II came out

Matt B @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:32AM

Reading is so last gen.

Jtenma @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:28PM

BOOM!

You heard that?!!??

Teh first gunshot!!!!

Foxwind @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:33AM

Thank goodness I sprung for those bionic eyes.

Kael @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:37AM

It looks like this game won't have any replay value. If you can't skip those 20 hours, who would play through the game twice? Whoa, wait; TWENTY HOURS of non-interactive sequences? I don't know how to react to that. I'm so ambivalent right now.

rivaldi22 @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:37AM

I just hope to all hell that they use a real font, and not one of those stock, awkward fonts that you get when you type Roman letters in a Japanese font.

blooh (CDF - Ass Ring) @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:39AM

sounds like xenogears again, lol

as long as the story's good, then i'll read it

n_guye_n @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:55AM

I still remember going WTF where's the game play the first time I got the Xenogears disc 2. Then the second time I played it I was like.. "man this stuff is so deep they should make a book out of it!"

Mischa @ Oct 2nd 2007 7:46PM

The voice acting in Xenogears sounded like some horrible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rip off. In that scenario, I'd rather read my dialog. I'm hoping that this just means they couldn't find any decent English talent.

At least I hope.

Mike @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:39AM

So that's what all of those discs are for. Here I was thinking it was to store all of the voice-over goodness.

jsn @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:42AM

if the story is good, it doesn't matter. If the story is boring, it will ruin the game.

Crono (NDF - French Taunting from Holy Grail Ring) @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:45AM

"interactive storybook"

Look up Squaresofts "Radical Dreamers" on SNES for an interactive storybook.

You're probably more familiar with its PS1 remake: Chrono Cross.

There's nothing wrong with an interactive storybook.

Darkiewonder @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:45AM

I LOVE reading!

Swagman @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:47AM

Only 4 hours of text?

Is that all?

Does anyone actually remember playing through Oblivion?

Remember the tons of text found in Oblivion? You know, found in damned near everything in the game - like all the books that are littered everywhere throughout Tamriel?

There is easily over 10 hours of text found in Oblivion (not including any of the DLC or expansions) and no one complained about any of that. So Sakaguchi-san wants us to read 4 hours worth of text penned by an actual good author. It's hardly the end of the world and like Oblivion, if handled correctly, will not detract from the overall game experience - only add to it.

Ignatius @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:53AM

You forget this is 'mandatory' if you want to play through the game. In Oblivion, if you didn't want to read the books, well, by god, drop them!

Ludwig Kietzmann @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:57AM

Oblivion? How about, "Does anyone remember playing an RPG on an older or handheld system?" All that voice acting has turned us into illiterate sloths!

Which, I suppose, are just ordinary sloths.

MooseMuffin @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:48AM

Going to predict right now that Mass Effect's one disk will have a better story than Lost Odyssey's non-interactive four.

Xavier @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:51AM

its a bit misleading tho because you dont HAVE to read the short story sequences, its like the audio diaries in BioShock, they are interesting and offer insight into Raptures past. in Lost Odyssey, these stories are just stories and not essential to the games plot.

Not to mention they can all be skipped, and read from the games start screen, or you can purchase the book that they are bringing out. as for the games length, He includes every sequence into his 20 hours, that means the short story sequences wich make up about 3 to 6 hours of those 20, so its really just above average for any big long, Final Fantasy style RPG wich have on average 5-10 hours of cutscenes. The Cutcnes are mostly done in real-time, there is about 1 hour of CG ones. The games will include both english and japanese vocal tracks.

Kael @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:57AM

Oh, that doesn't sound so bad.

Sean @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:51AM

I never learned how to read.

Dave Chandler @ Oct 2nd 2007 11:59AM

Ummm Doesn't anybody remember Final Fantasy 6 (3 when it came out here in the states?) Or any of the old classic RPGs... reading is what you DID. It's how it worked. Xenogears is another perfect example. Chronotrigger anybody? There's nothing wrong with this.

Princess Skittles @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:04PM

Complaining about reading? That really paints the picture about Joystiq's writers.

Dio @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:01PM

...
That's the most retarded thing I've heard all week. Why the hell would you sacrifice gameplay and cutscenes just to read? If we wanted to get full experience, WE WOULD HAVE READ THE BOOK. Furthermore, it might have been better to INCLUDE the book.

Some games are based on books, sure, but that doesn't mean you have to cop out and just use text. If Pokemon was a novel game, it wouldn't be successful. And I know this because it started out as a novel.

Oh sure, let's have EA Games turn the Harry Potter games into text to get it into "purest form" to experience JK Rowling's written work. Uh huh, I'm sure THAT would roll over well. /sarcasm

Crono (NDF - French Taunting from Holy Grail Ring) @ Oct 2nd 2007 1:01PM

That would probably make a better harry potter game than the loads of trash that has come out lately.

But that is largely irrelevant, as the harry potter games are based on the movies, not the books.

ForcedSterilizationsForAll @ Oct 2nd 2007 4:12PM

I hate voice acting. It very rarely adds to the game, especially in an RPG. Then again, I come from the C64, NES days of games where you had to read what was said and could use your own voices that didn't make you want to jam Q-tips in your ears to rupture your ear drums.

Then again, you little 12 year olds aren't smart enough to read and have to have everything be MTV-esque.

Dio @ Oct 2nd 2007 5:00PM

ForcedSterilizationsForAll, your comment regarding age is highly inappropriate. I'll have you know that I was four years old when SNES first came out =/ These days in gaming are very different from way back then, and I don't mind reading text on the older consoles as long as they come in "chunks" of four to six lines each. Games should read like a script, not a Greek drama.

Voice acting in video games has been out for almost ten years, so why should we regress now? It's not that anyone is too lazy(or they could be, who knows) to read, it's that long walls of text is very inconvenient when it would be easier, faster and more entertaining to see and hear characters interacting with each other. Most people don't even like to read that much ANYWAY when they're expecting to use a controller to play through environments and watch cutscenes. If people have to stare at the screen for hours just to take in the game, they'll probably quit playing. Games are for entertainment and the attention-span of a gamer is probably shorter during these times. When a book is turned into a game, you don't leave walls of text instead of animating characters and recording voices =/ I would laugh if a class-action lawsuit was filed against Lost Odyssey for loss of or impaired vision.

Anyway, I probably shouldn't have checked Joystiq before leaving for classes XD

Crono (NDF - French Taunting from Holy Grail Ring) @ Oct 2nd 2007 6:03PM

Yeah, but in 10 years of Game voice acting, there's maybe 3 examples where the voice acting doesn't suck ass.

I'd much rather read a script than listen to some underpaid voice actor butcher it.

CaptainAmericaX @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:13PM

As a 360 owner this title has definitely lost its luster...I was all pumped for it but then I saw a video of the gameplay and it doesn't look like my style.

Plus reading this has just decreased its chances of getting my money. I love Reading but in videogames not so much...

Xion @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:14PM

stop complaining over reading that is unecesarry, if the games story was told through reading then you can be dissapointed, but the game is not, its just extra short stories, does anyone remember a little game called Oblivion, then was TRONS MORE reading in that game, and no one complained. why? because it was NOT NECESASSRY! it was just extra detail, that is what this is in lost odyssey, extra detail to flesh out the world but done differently, dont want to read, SKIP, easy as that.

jduke @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:15PM

Seriously, has anyone played an RPG that came out before 2001?

borland502 (SDF - Macross Ring) @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:20PM

Yo.

borland502 (SDF - Macross Ring) @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:21PM

PS Get off my lawn hippy!

Jtenma @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:34PM

Thats the thing jduke, those games were bada$$ BACK THEN...

Now the standards have been raised. Gamers (I suppose) expect top notch voice acting for their favorite games, excluding Nintendo's mascots.

Although I really dont mind unless it starts asking trick questions like how many letters were in the sentence before this one.

LOL..that is all.

Crono (NDF - French Taunting from Holy Grail Ring) @ Oct 2nd 2007 1:03PM

About 2 years ago, I introduced my cousin to FF3US for the first time. He sat and played it hours on end because these games with all the readings in them are STILL GOOD.

Reading doesn't make anything bad.

g.Park @ Oct 2nd 2007 3:30PM

I remember when we needed dice to play RPG's.

n00b.

Paul Cosgrove @ Oct 3rd 2007 4:36PM

I hope there's intentional irony in a blog complaining about having to read words off a screen in 5-10 minute bursts.

Stubby Boardman @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:37PM

does this mean it will also require an hdtv?

baby sea tuna @ Oct 2nd 2007 1:40PM

You mean, you don't have one already? Talk about last-gen!

Booxatron @ Oct 2nd 2007 3:48PM

My TV has rumble, thats how last-gen it is.

maylon @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:46PM

What happened to that awesome 'cg transitioning into real time' style of gameplay? This looks like a totally different game. Not gonna buy.

bm @ Oct 2nd 2007 12:46PM

Dammit, and I was looking forward to this as a proper PS1 FF style oldschool RPG with current-gen presentation. :(

Xion @ Oct 2nd 2007 1:06PM

once again people are misled...the game will be a traditional style RPG for the Xbox 360, the game will have a world map with vehicles and submarines, the game will have Voice acting for all of the cutscenes and most of the dialogue.

i dont understand why people are suddenly coming up with this stuff..didnt everyone that knew even the least bit about this game know that it was going to have a series of short stories written by an award winning novelist? what has changed? NOTHING!

"Now the standards have been raised. Gamers (I suppose) expect top notch voice acting for their favorite games"

who said the game doesnt have voice acting? there are countless hours of voice acting in this game, you are misinterpretting the article, the short stories are like the books scattered in the world of oblivion, a seperate entity from the main game, except they happen at certain points in the game, or can be found as diaries i supposed. they can be skipped.

"does this mean it will also require an hdtv"

if youre worried the text will be too small to read, dont be, it will be presented in the form of large scrolling text.

"Dammit, and I was looking forward to this as a proper PS1 FF style oldschool RPG with current-gen presentation. :("

That is EXACTLY what this game is.

"What happened to that awesome 'cg transitioning into real time' style of gameplay? This looks like a totally different game. Not gonna buy."

nothing has changed, those moments are still in the game as seen previously. How can say this looks totally different? this an article, do you see a gameplay video in this article?

this article is misleading to the readers, im not bashing the person who posted it, but i wish he would have presented it in a way that wouldn't lead people to such conclusions.