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Someone in Shaun's twitch chat made what I think is a good point about FFXIII that Id never thought of before
(hexbear.net)
Seem, I always defended the game just based on "linear isnt bad", not really thinking about the reasons why its linear.
Ive also always been confused why FFX is well liked despite... also being very linear up until it opens up at the end? But XIII got memed for hallways???
I am sorry but Spoony was right about this one.
Sure all FF games are mostly linear, but they usually hide that fact a lot better. FF13 does a few things that really pull me forcibly out of it's narrative and give me ample time to get annoyed with their nonsensical world building:
They omit item shops and stuff for some sort of online shopping sphere. If there is one thing fugitives on the run really should do, it's shop online for their weapons and gear. Yes there is a resistance movement depicted in the game, but we never get to see how these people survive day to day, they are just there when the plot needs them to be there.
The game taking place in a sci-fi setting makes a lot of the cutscenes completely fall apart. Your opposing army looks highly highly incompetent and stupid when no one thinks to use the gun they all have to shoot the enemies of the state. They show it happening once, but then the characters do worse things and somehow no one does it again even as the main characters shout about being their enemies and after havnig beaten up and killed hundreds of soldiers. This issue doesn't crop up in fantasy settings because you can just give your guard enemies swords and they can't do that. You also get no sense of character growth and progression, or an idea of what it makes sense for the characters to be afraid of. One of the first enemies is a giant buzz-saw scorpion mech that shoots a big laser and most enemies thereafter are less threatening then it, yet much much stronger.
The whole story of the game revolves around the party all being fated against their will to do a bad thing or die trying, but the logistics of that make no sense. If you fail to do the bad thing, you become some sort of ghoul creature. Uh oh! That's bad! That's incentive to do it, right? Yea well, if you manage to do what the bad guy wants, you get turned to crystal instead! Wow, what a reward! Also, you don't get to know what the bad guy wants you to do, because you only get a hazy vision of your goal! That leads to hours (literally) of characters arguing about what it is they are meant to do and the more hours (again, literally) arguing if they should actually follow through on the hypothetical thing they think it wants them to do, or if they should do the opposite. And then at the end the bad guy pope turns into a big mech, tells them that he gave them this magic task and what he wants them to do, in dialogue, rendering every discussion prior into pointless filler.
I hate the auto battling in the game, there is no skill involved with that whole system. There are only a hand full of moments through the whole game where you even have to think about what the correct course of action is and those are mostly counterintuitive contrivances. Otherwise it's 'oh, I am low, better switch people to tank stance while they get healed' and 'seems good again, back to doing damage everyone'.
Whenever the game writes itself into a corner, the characters fall down some sort of hole into the next scene. In one instance they fall down a hole from the ice level into the fire level. This happens over and over again. This is never a problem and they just survive all of it with no injury, yet the one characters mom dies from falling down a thing. They do show how there is anti-gravity stuff in the setting to make such falls survivable and then they never use them again and they always wake up on the floor after such a fall, as if falling off of great heights just stuns you in this world unless you are someone's mother.