Genkaku's story as a game?

[bluemask]

I always thought and believed that Genkaku's history as a hero was quite amazing. I always thought that a hack-and-slash game type of game would fit very well with his story (I think a portable-console game is fine). A hack and slash game wherein he can either attack as a bare human or mounting a horse. Well, if there's a dragon knight in his past, maybe it could have a dragon-mounted combat to make it more interactive.

Well, since they pretty much limit Suikoden into a turn-based type game, I think this would be new into the genre. What do you guys think?

[Pyriel]

I think I prefer certain aspects of the story remain a little underdeveloped. Most of the time I find writers wreck back-stories by trying to flesh them out as a form of entertainment. Genkaku's story would go from a tale of a noble warrior, who laid down his life rather than kill a friend, and then retired to a quiet life rather than reveal the betrayal he'd suffered and risk more war, to the tale of a wise-cracking, farm boy who finds a Rune during a contest with his rival, and rises swiftly through the military ranks for no discernible reason.

My favorite example of this phenomenon is X-Men: First Class. During the first X-Men movie, Xavier alludes to his long friendship with Magneto, during which he helped build Cerebro, etc., etc., and during the third (abortion of a) movie, you see them collaborating on something maybe as early as ten years prior, with Magneto's more supremacist ideals still being a subject of polite debate. Then First Class comes along, and turns an apparently long and touching tale into "we hung out one summer in the 60s".

[bluemask]

Well, as long as they execute it with great confidence and doesn't make it too cheesy, I think it's fine. I believe some games having done this "phenomenon" has done it almost without fail: Final Fantasy Crisis Core? They made a whole plot out of a verbal backtracking in Final Fantasy VII (well I just hope it didn't rooted from the fact that FFVII is very overrated lol).

Well in terms of movies, I'm not really quite familiar with how these stuff are done. I think sequel movies are alot worse than prequels. I think from your X-men example, I think they lacked the "feel" for a prequel and the movie looked forced on any way. I think they should have based alot of details from the comics instead of writing from scratch.

[Pyriel]

Well, Zack had no real story to speak of. He was kind of a prop in Final Fantasy VII, so they could safely develop him without much risk. The only fans who had any real ideas about Zack were probably people who had spent way too much time thinking about the plot of the original game. All Sephiroth had to do is be a bad-ass loner, and Square could do their usual plot development, which is usually a bit impenetrable until you've gone through the story twice anyway. Aerith was "sweet" and that was pretty much it. Her somewhat nebulous importance in VII was kind of a MacGuffin, and I seem to recall it was largely ignored in Crisis Core.

Genkaku's story, on the other hand, sets up Riou's story, and is a pretty important component of the game. Maybe comparing him to Darth Vader in episodes 4 through 6 of Star Wars would be better. Lucas let his own deficient imagination play with that, and Anakin Skywalker became an irritating, idiot of a kid, then an insufferable, love-sick young man, and finally he stalked his own wife in a fit of insanity after taking too many female hormones, and decided the best way to get over his guilt was to grind the entire galaxy under the melted remains of his heel. Meanwhile his insipid wife dies of, I guess, a broken heart during childbirth, miraculously confounding the best medical technology of a society that's been exploring the far reaches of space for something like 30,000 years.

I suppose it's not that hashing out a familiar story that precedes another can't be good, it's just that I think it needed to be well-developed in the first place, rather than left hanging for years and years. Unless the guy who wrote 1-3 left fairly complete notes behind, anybody else touching it will just retcon a bunch of horrible, "awesome" crap into it to make a product with appeal to the broadest market.

If you want to assume they'll do the story perfectly and everything else perfectly, then it can be whatever kind of game. Genkaku wouldn't have to collect the 108 stars (I don't think), so you could have a hack-and-slash adventure along the lines of Zelda. Pretty much anything other than a visual novel, or FPS would be fine.

[sticky-runes]

I would love it if they came up with more spin-offs that gave us different gameplay styles, but were set in the original suikoden world and allowed us to take parts in some of the "unseen" events from suikoden's history.

I particularly like how the first few chapters of suikoden tactics allowed us to meet Brandeau when he was a good guy and fighting alongside Edgar (who was an unseen character in suikoden 4) and even showed us how Brandeau came to bearing the Rune of Punishment (and even his little sidekick becoming disfigured by the rune cannon!)

Another backstory I would love to see is the early days of Georg Prime and Ferid. Georg would certainly be an ideal protagonist for a hack and slash game, since he does a lot of wandering by himself, and these stand alone missions of his would be pretty boring for turn-based combat, but running around slashing enemies as Georg in real time would be sweet!

[Xelinis]

They did such a great job of painting Genkaku's story that I don't want anything to ruin it. I certainly wouldn't mind a tactical spinoff in that period with Genkaku as a brief cameo, but nothing more.