JJSBlog

Steven Moffat's time as showrunner of Doctor Who is nearly up, and many seem totally jazzed about it. But his work really clicks with me. In the earlier series of the show his was the first name I began to associate with standout episodes, so when he was announced as the successor to Russell T. Davies it was like a wish being granted. His tenure hasn't been perfect, but I'd boil down the major reasons I dig his version of the show to these points.

1. I like Time Travel

With two capital Ts. I appreciate stories that really take advantage of it, moreso than just using it to set the story in an arbitrary time and place. He was pretty good at stretching what could be done in a single episode with his episodes in the Davies days like Blink and Girl in the Fireplace, but as showrunner he was both able to make this happen on many of the biggest episodes (premieres, finales) as well as having nonlinear elements that spread across a whole series or even multiple. The Doctor from the end of series 5 popping into an earlier series 5 episode. The events of the end of series 7 being a cause for events at the end of series 5. I eat this shit up.

2. I like Moffat monsters

For better and worse we're probably never going to get away from Daleks and Cybermen, but it's great to see new types of foes with new twists. Statues that can only move when not being looked at. Creatures you forget you ever saw when they leave your sight. Making fear of the dark legitimate with living shadows that can eat your flesh. Something that can hide so well... the episode can't even come to a conclusion about whether it exists.

3. I like that he goes Big

Some of this is chance. Him being around for the 50th anniversary gave him an excuse to write something Major, in this case a story that revealed an unknown Doctor and in small part brought all the past ones back. Thanks to that unknown Doctor, he put himself in the position of being the one to write around that mysterious regeneration limit. Beyond that we see him doing things like letting the Doctor get stuck on a planet for hundreds of years in a single episode (without reversing it), or get stuck in a loop that takes billions of years to work through. Destroying and recreating the friggin' universe! He's also more willing to play with the various regenerations than any showrunner I'm familiar with, like having a phone call from Eleven in Twelve's first episode. That he's pulling back the First Doctor for his last Christmas special just seems par for the course.

ALL THAT SAID, he's had six full series and then some to make his mark on the franchise and some of his hallmarks have become pretty repetitive, so it probably is time for some fresh blood. It just probably won't be blood that tickles all of my specific fancies so well.

Recently Takashi Tokita teased working on some Switch project. As he is known for among other things working on various versions of Final Fantasy IV, it caused some guesspeculation that maybe some version of FF IV could be coming to Switch. That's a bit of a specific extrapolation, but just thinking about the possibility reminded me of of some issues with portable versions of the game in the past, and in general upgrading sprite-based games for the modern age.

Original SNES FF IV was designed around a screen resolution of 256x224. The first portable ports used essentially the same graphics files, but on screens with lower resolution. End result: while walking around you see less of the world as it's been cut off.

SNES: 256x224. 100% width, 100% height, 100% overall area. Duh.
WonderSwan Color: 224x144. 88% width, 64% height, 56% overall area.
Game Boy Advance: 240x160. 94% width, 71% height, 67% overall area.

Later a 2D remake was made for the PSP. That system has a significantly higher resolution, 480x272. So it could've shown all the area from the original and then some. However, instead of rerereusing the old SNES sprites, they created new high quality ones at double the width and height of the original. The result is that when considering how much of the world is able to be viewed, you'd need to compare it to a double size version of the SNES view (512x448).

PSP (compare to 512x448): 480x272. 94% width, 61% height, 57% overall area.

So in the end the PSP version actually showed less of of the world than the GBA version, though slightly more than the WSC version.

This image tries to sum up things with black being the original SNES view, green being GBA, red being WSC, and blue being PSP. Near-white in the midle is the area they all share.

So what would be the realistic options for something on Switch's 1280x720 screen, assuming integer multiples?

x1 (compare to 256x224): 500% width, 321% height, 1607% overall area.
x2 (compare to 512x448): 250% width, 161% height, 402% overal area.
x3 (compare to 768x672): 167% width, 107% height, 179% overall area.
x4 (compare to 1024x896): 125% width, 80% height, 100% overall area. (To be more precise 100.45%)

Either x3 or x4 would be pretty valid options viewed this way. x3 would essentially maintain the height and add more width, which is traditionally what people think of when things "go widescreen". However x4 would still show the same amount of world as the original, just trading off some height for width--and even the lost height isn't as much as any of the previous portable versions.

This image sums it up. This is just a comparison between how much of the world (compared to SNES original in green) is shown; in the real world the blue (x3) and red (x4) options are the same physical size.

Of coooooourse the other way out of all this sort of mess is to go full on polygonal like the remakes of FF III and IV on DS (later ported to mobile devices and PC). Then scale really has no meaning, and can be changed on the fly.