Would you have giveup 50 borgs for a decent story?

[herpanda]

Blah, my subject didn't fit:

Would you have given up 50 borgs for a decent story and voice acting?

Just curious to see what you guys think about this. Here's my writeup, warning: it's long.





With time and resources being a factor, the dev team probably had to choose the perfect amount of characters that they could design and fully animate along with how in depth the story would be. It seems they chose to not spend too much time and manpower on the story, and focused on what they have now, over 200 borgs, many of them unique with their own movesets and animations too boot.

Would you have given up 50 characters for a decent story with more cutscenes? 50 characters for deeper human characterization? 50 characters for decent voice acting a la G Red on all of the borgs, or even just a hub zone to walk around in? With manpower and budget taken into consideration, do you think the dev team made the right choice?

I don't know if that was the trade off, but for sake of argument lets say it was. Personally, if I made the decision today, I would say no, let me keep my 50 borgs. Story doesn't matter in this kind of game, the voice acting doesn't harm the gameplay. I like the short menu like world without any walking around, and the simplicity really helps push this game along. I don't know what 50 borgs I just saved, but even if they were all death borgs they were fun to play as and to collect (those little boogers took forever! especially that death eye). 50, that's a quarter of the roster, man!

But, if I was to make that choice without having played this game, HECK YES I would have given 50 borgs up. There were only a 150 pokemon to begin with, and if it means a more polished game I could live without 50 characters. In fact, if they did decide to make a polished game (with a better cover), Gotcha Force would probably be on its 5th sequel by now!

Knowing what I know now though, I'd keep my 50. I don't care what it could have been. It's kind of like cutting characters from super smash brothers; there's always someone that will be missed. That's how I'm feeling about it right now, and with that in mind I'm glad this game's story, voice acting, or human characterization weren't polished.

sorry, that was long, so,
tl;dr - Topic title. What are your thoughts on this?

[Death Eye]

I'd estimate about 50 of them are Hatchet Knight/Axe Knight style clones of each other. Remove the clones, put the waves and stuff that differentiate between the clones as level 10 bonuses, essentially keep all of the Borgs and get a more interesting story and decent voice acting. Theoretical win-win.
But no, keep them all in; it wouldn't quite be the same without the clones in it.

[njayhuang]

HerPanda, you've pretty much said everything I wanted to say. ;D

Looking back at the game now, I would keep the game with all its borgs to forgo the other benefits. The game as it is now is about the battling and collecting of the borgs, to the point where the voice acting doesn't really faze me and I'm content with the story and stage select. The voice acting is one of those things that you can laugh at as you play, the story actually has a lot of stuff going on if you infer some information from the battles, and I enjoy being able to go from battle to battle without taking a minute to walk through a giant overworld.

Had I never played the game, I would probably choose a deeper story, character development, better voice acting, etc. instead of just a few extra dudes to use. If this version of the game happened, I'd scoff at the idea of Victory King being broken down into Victory Tank, Victory Jet, Victory Machine, Victory Duke, Victory Baron, Victory King, and Proto King. The stance I would take is that the overall game experience is better, and I wouldn't take some extra characters in exchange for a worse game; 150 is more than enough to choose from.

Ultimately, I think a lot of it comes down to what I'm used to. Even with it's flaws, it's hard for me to imagine enjoying a Gotcha Force that's so different from the Gotcha Force I know and love.

[Metal]

Deah eye pretty well said what i was going to. But then again. It is fun to pwn several "higher tier" borgs with the borg they were cloned from.

[Treadshot A1]

I'll put in my 2 cents here, since i actually work on designing characters and toys.

If you were to get rid of 50 borgs, you'd be more likely to knock out 50 unique borgs than 50 clones, because clones take no time to make and animate, compared to unique borgs. Now, obviously, the halfway point would be to knock out 25 borgs and their 25 clones, but since it's far more convenient to knock out unique borgs, i think the end result would be more like a loss of 32 borgs and 18 clones.

Ultimately, i don't mind the story (or lack thereof), so i would prefer to keep the 32 borgs.

[thadudette]

It's an interesting thought. At first thought, I would say well obviously yes, because it was the Commanders, not the borgs, that really drew me into the game (Which I realize makes me a lame "hardcore" gamer but oh well ). Gotcha doesn't really take the top spot for collect-and-battle games for me; I've been playing Pokemon for too long for anything to replace it. :3 (But don't get me wrong; if I had time I'd still be playing Challenge mode for hours, and FINALLY nabbing all those Commander special borgs )

BUT if Gotcha had had an amazing storyline and characterization and voice acting, I don't think that would've produced the same effect it had on me either. As Gotcha's story stands now, it has so many loose ends that it lets the gamer's imagination run wild. Being able to tie up the loose ends in my mind was a lot of what fascinated me. And in turn, in the process of playing Gotcha, I realized how addicting the gameplay was too

So no, I wouldn't give up those 50 borgs either, as they enhance the better part that Gotcha is known for.

[herpanda]

I'm glad you guys share my sentiments on this. It's too bad game reviewers and the like don't take things like this into consideration when weighing how much a good story and VA is worth and such, because the game really does make up for its flaws tenfold with tons of great gameplay.

I also found the lack of story pretty okay becuase, like some of you said, it really leaves it up to the player, and that can add a bunch of replay value. It's like playing with action figures, you make up the story and the fun will be as epic as you yourself make it. Maybe one day I'll do a Sigma solo run, or a Drill Robot solo, simply because it's easy to craft my own little story for them in my mind. I've done half a Metal Hero run, and that was pretty good but it got too hard so I popped a Cyber Ninja in xD

This game is a sandbox, and the borgs are my toys. lol.

[Metal]

I think the designers may have left it that way on purpose, the game had virtually
No marketing so it wasnt a publicity thing that caused them to rush production. As herpanda said "the world is a sandbox and the borgs are my toys." i think on the package it says that the battle of the toys has just started or something. Idr. Anyway, giving up borgs for more story would be well wrong, even the clones are loveable and it adds more to the collect and "raise" them aspect. Too much of a story can bog down a game, and with gotcha force i think that would have happened.

[njayhuang]

In a sort of weird twist, what if the situation was reversed?
I.e. what if the game we have now already had 50 borgs cut from the game in order to work on the story, voice acting etc. Would you give it up for more borgs?

[herpanda]

Hmm. I guess it mattered how good the story was. If it was about Custom Robo/Zelda level, I'd take the 50 characters. If it was at least at...I dunno, Symphonia level I guess I'd keep the story. The commander characterization is what would make it or break it for me though.

50 characters DO sound like A LOT though lol. I think...I'd take the characters.......................

[Death Eye]

Mar 23, 2012 0:58:02 GMT njayhuang said:

In a sort of weird twist, what if the situation was reversed?
I.e. what if the game we have now already had 50 borgs cut from the game in order to work on the story, voice acting etc. Would you give it up for more borgs?

By that do you mean that the version of the game we have now is the result of them dropping the Borg count from 256 to 206 and improving to what it has now in terms of story and whatnot from what I can only imagine as 2600 ET or that we have a hypothetical version of the game with fewer Borgs and better story?
In the first case, I'd take the Borgs; the story as it is now is essentially irrelevant anyway and I play with the TV muted 90% of the time.
In the latter case I'd probably keep the story; if the story was relevant and interesting I'd not want to have the relevant and interesting story removed.

[Admin]

I like the story as it is.
It's so open to fans' own interpretation and I like that.
I also quite honestly don't have anything against the voice-acting even though I'm normally a notorious against-English-voices-in-videogames person.
I mean, it's not like the characters have long philosophical dialogs, but rather brief exclamations so it's OK.

Of course, adding more to the story and voices wouldn't be such a bad thing, but no, I would not sacrifice anything from this game.

[Frozazen]

i´m going to reiterate all of our views right here.

i think we feel the way we do because as people we like to be familiar with what we know, and hate the coming of change. once we get used to something, we start to find things we like about it, and if we don´t like something we get accustomed to it and take pride in it.

gotcha´s lack of a plot can only be described as a part of gotcha itself in my eyes. along with its terrible voice acting and lack of character development, a lack of a story line just adds to Gotcha´s uniqueness. since i´ve played through the game over and over i´ve become quite attached to the characters and the gameplay, and the lack of a good story only lets me turn my attention to loking the characters even more for who they are, and not the purpose that they have in the plot. furthermore i like the fact that the plotline is so open that I can use my imagination to have my own personal interpretation of the story.

also we have experienced all of the borgs, and we have all attempted at least once to complete the gotchadex, and many of us have already completed it. that sense of completion and our pride in our hard work makes it hard sometimes to give up any of them, no matter how lame the borgs may be.

on the other hand, having a greater game experience in itself could easily trump the loss of a few borgs. the fact is that we know nearly nothing about our GF commanders, and the relationship they have with each other. we don´t know anything about the relationship between the commanders and their borgs, and we don´t even know what happened to Sho´s father. the potential here is just too great to leave the gamer hanging, and sometimes i think i would be more than glad to give up some of the death borgs and stuff like eagle jet and the proto robots in order to understand the lives of the characters i have hung out with most in my life. heck, i would probably give 50 borgs for a gotcha force anime, if it answered my questions and left me with that warm, nostalgic feeling of watching cartoons on saturday mornings back in the day (you know that feeling).

all in all Gotcha Force is just a great game in general, and i think that we each love these guys in our own way. the important thing is that we keep this love alive so that they make Gotcha Force 2. forget changing gotcha force. just come out with a sequel that´ll have better story and voice acting to solve our plot problem. c´mon Capcom i know you can hear us.

[Death Eye]

^Sounds about right.
It also just made me realize something.

Apr 10, 2012 5:58:37 GMT Frozazen said:

we don´t even know what happened to Sho´s father.

I read that he got killed by Gotcha Borgs.
But for that explanation to exist, it must have a source.
And there's a pretty good chance that source is the Japanese version of the game.
Therefore, this hypothetical Gotcha Force with better story might actually just be the Japanese version.

...I need to learn Japanese or something.

[Metal]

Or just have a japanese person there to translate while you play. The menus and controls should be the same. Lol

[herpanda]

What if in Japan this game's story was actually really deep with dozens of twists, but they dumbed it down for EU and NA releases?

I mean, listen to Sho's voice in the Japanese VA. If his voice was that deep, the story had to be that deep too!...........right?