Bigger is Worse

There is this pervasive thought, especially in USA, that bigger is better, but I think bigger is worse. This is a response to Nadia Oxford on USGamer about how Xenoblade Chronicles 2 puts fans back where they belong: on the shoulders of giants.

I always found the premise of being on a giant to be gimmicky and uninspired. Running out of ideas? Let's just make everything bigger. World of Warcraft suffers from this as well. Everything in that game is too big, from the mobs, dungeons, and even to the NPCs. It irks me when NPCs of the same race are twice my size.

This is a problem in most games, especially RPGs. In Final Fantasy VI, for example, the sprites of your playable characters are stout and cute in comparison to the enemies you fight. Even an enemy that was a human and had a sprite that was the same size as your own, magically transforms and doubles in size in battle. I love games that respect proportion and don't use size as a gimmick to inspire awe.

Remember when in the first Lord of the Rings movie, they were sailing on the river and saw those two gigantic statues with their arms outstretched? That was impressive, but when it's done over and over again, it loses its magic.

Let us abstain from mindlessly increasing the size of everything in games. Things that are smaller may inspire the same or even greater sense of amazement.

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