[merylsilverburg]

Originally Posted by Harry

As video games become more technologically advanced, these two aspects will merge within single games, and according to the different attitude and culture of a development team, balance between these two aspects will vary. It's difficult to say it for sure right now, as we need to wait to play at least the next two waves of killer apps for this new generation of consoles, but I think Japanese will focus more and more on the second type of freedom, with some elements of the first, while the opposite will happen among Western developers.

For sure, it would really be interesting to see the merging of the two elements...I'm not sure if that would make an incredible or perfect game, but the ability to do such a thing would really be neat to see. People could argue now that certain games of this generation is already doing that (such as GTA: San Andreas, which I think is pretty good, but the quality in storyline is lacking as well as the AI). I also agree that the Japanese might and will continue to stick with the latter elements in their future games, particularly in their worldwide releases. For Japan-only games, I think not so much. But that's just my assumption.

Originally Posted by Harry

Another thing we shouldn't forget is that, even though they may not be using it as thoroughly as Western developers nowadays, non-linearity in action/adventure video games was invented by Japanese developers, including Miyamoto (with Zelda, but even the first Super Mario Bros featured examples of non-linearity, even though it was branchless or unidirectional), Sakamoto, and few others.

Really? I didn't know that. You learn something new everyday.

Originally Posted by Harry

Hmmm ok, going out of topic again. Kupo will kill us.

LOL, yeah. Sorry, I just wanted to add a few comments. Carry on, carry on.