Indie game devs are all inspired by this game but they fail to capture what made this game great. There's always something off. What is it
Indie game devs are all inspired by this game but they fail to capture what made this game great...
Owen Garcia
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Bentley Clark
Humor is a big one. Undertale is the only one that's ever gotten close and it's still not as good.
Caleb Fisher
Confusing quirkiness for charm. Mother 2 was both, but most of the copycats aren't particularly charming. The Mother franchise also as battle mechanics that are almost never seen outside the series (timing hits to the bga, rolling damage counter which makes mortal blows put you on a timer to act quickly) so they don't even have a leg up over Mother in terms of combat.
Justin Anderson
>459381430
Second game/expansion fucked it up but Lisa got it right. I've also heard Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass pulled it off. With Undertale doing it arguably as well maybe the secret is just letting a lot/all of the control be in the hands of one man. It has to be a passion project out of wanting to be a story they want to tell rather than a Mother 4 "We just want to make Earthbound" desire.
Ian Clark
>Game gives you a bike
>Shortly thereafter, Paula joins your party, making the bike useless
BRAVA EARTHBOUND.
BRAVA
And what the fuck was the point of the condiment system?
>Oh man, waste a slot to carry a packet of salt instead of just having another hamburger!
When I think about it, this game actually kind of does suck. For an RPG, it has no replay value to speak of
>99% linear with no side quests
>No party organization to give certain characters priority over others
>No unique equipment builds that reward smarter thinking, not harder thinking
>No way to truly test your characters skills with the lack of a new game+ feature
Would have been nice to have, but this is give or take:
>Alternate party members
>Alternate endings
>Monster/boss arena
At the end of the day, it's still a VIDEO GAME and not an "interactive experience". You don't cut Gone Home any slack(the hipsters that love Earthbound LOVE Gone Home as well), neither should you with Earthbound.
Caleb Thompson
The fact that you played it as a kid
Elijah Cruz
Art, character, mostly. They're too concerned with transferring their own worldview into it and so can never capture the innocence that the game is founded upon
Grayson Perez
The fact that it was made by Itoi, a big name celebrity who knows more about life and telling stories than some no name shmuck that spent his childhood/teenage years playing games.
Cooper Reyes
A lot of what you're shitting on is flavor that makes earthbound more than the sum of its' parts while the other half of your complaints are shitting on it for not having things that some other RPGs you happen to like have. Essentially you shit on Earthbound because it isn't like every other RPG or at least like your favorite
Kayden Fisher
Earthbound was overrated shit. The best thing it had going for it was its soundtrack. So it's not much of a surprise that indie games inspired by it are also mostly shit.
Cameron Murphy
Earthbound was a really ambiguous game. In the way the story is told, the dialog and the wacky characters so you can draw up a lot of theories of your own. Mother 3 doesn't come close to it in this regard.
Ryder Brown
bingo
Joshua Rivera
The thing is they're trying to replicate Earthbound itself rather than the intentions behind the game. That's why games "inspired by" Earthbound always feel off. Their games should invoke their own feelings rather than the feelings of another game.
Nathan James
I played it in my early 20's so no.
Caleb Jenkins
music
audio conveys emotion more than visuals or even narrative, and earthbound's soundtrack is pure kino
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Colton Allen
Nobody outside of Japan played earthbound as a kid. The game flopped in the US and wasn’t released in Europe. It wasn’t rerelease until 2013 so only pirates that emulate and people that got lucky and got it on the snes played it for the longest time.
Luis Myers
Unironically soul, copycats only try to imitate surface level aspects so their attempts will always come out as soulless and lacking.
Jaxson Walker
Because they only focus on the quirky and weird side, but fails to realize that the story most memorable moments are kids going experiencing and overcoming trauma and the satisfaction of having the characters grow. Well that’s my take on it.
Blake Cox
Writing quality. Also earthbound wasn't that weird, the quirkiness is overdramatized and it shows in the copycats
Mason Scott
They never lived a life beyond their computer screen like Itoi.
Aiden Cook
Humor and world building. The mother games are the only games I've played where I wanted to interact with every NPC and object because it was funny or interesting. Undertale sort of had that too, but most other indie copies don't feel the same.
Kevin Rogers
Pretty much, That’s basically the whole ending of earthbound.
Angel Martin
the fact that they never played the game
Colton Brooks
Compared to other RPGs of the early 90s, it was weird as fuck.
Zachary Hughes
Itoi had a vision and worked from there.
The indie devs are just following a set criteria to make their game as "earthboundy" as possible.
Blake Morales
>kids going experiencing and overcoming trauma and the satisfaction of having the characters grow
Indie devs do something like this but usually instead of a story of kids overcoming trauma and growing, it's just the dev accepting their mental illness.
Jason Carter
I only played a couple of those indies (undertale/lisa) and both of those feel pretty different from Earthbound in their own rights. Im sure the vast majority are souless and uncreative, but that's most indies in general
Juan Roberts
Earthbound is a quirky game yes but it's also a pretty big, pretty open RPG made by Nintendo, many of these games don't recapture it because they're simply just not as big or grand as Earthbound. Earthbound is way more than just writing and coming of age themes, it's got tons of locations, enemies, bosses, etc. Even Mother 3, though kinda more streamlined and overall maybe the better game didn't get that grand scale that Earthbound has
Owen White
Those two games aim for very different vibes and aesthetic from Earthbound, which is why those two are probably the most popular "earthbound inspired" indies.
The reason all the other ones go under the radar and immediately die off is because they are too similar and everyone just takes one look and goes "been there, done that".
Jack Jones
Even if something is intentionally made to be pointless or dumb, it doesn't make it any less pointless/dumb. Things like the bike were not that funny as jokes and would just make most people feel like they wasted time.
Noah Baker
Earthbound wasn't a good game
Hunter Cooper
Boring grinds.