I just got a comment on the overview I made of elements Lunar borrowed from Ys that reflects an odd bit of discourse I've noted elsewhere around the article, so I'm going to address it in its own post.
I'm going to restrict this conversation to this one reply because I had a parent die following an amputation literally a few days ago and have limited capacity right now for conversations where folks explain to me things I already know, like the identity of Studio Alex.
I'm well aware of comments elsewhere fixating on the use in the post of the word "steal"—which actually isn't used that often; twice in the article, as much as the above commenter's suggested replacement of "influence," which they seemed to think wholly absent, is used. This oversight kind of reveals that the problem here is an emotional overreaction—a gut-level, offended recoiling from any perceived slight to Lunar, followed by a conviction that hair-splitting about terminology will wipe away what's, well, staring us in the face.
Dude, look at the original article. Look at it. In many cases, it's not a vague "influence"; it's willful 1-for-1 copying, particularly with the shot compositions. I'm not saying that I hate Lunar or that Lunar is without merit or originality by noting this. I'm saying that Lunar's creators took a number of its ideas from elsewhere—namely, this one series whose early incarnations were in the West trapped on less-popular consoles and imperfect ports and are therefore largely unfamiliar to Western gamers. I'm quite comfortable with my word choices in the post and feel I was more than fair in assessing the extent of what Lunar took from Ys.
(Re: the poster's specific objections: I don't see how Tomi's Falcom connection negates the argument—if anything, it makes it stronger—or how claiming "hey, other games copy!" proves it didn't happen in this case.)
If the post bothers you, consider it from this angle: Great artists, as it is said, steal because they make others' ideas their own—they bring the ideas to life in ways the originators didn't. As I state right at the top of the article, I think Lunar did far better with the ideas—I don't have pages and pages of posts dedicated to Ys on my blog or social media, after all. (The people freaking about the article conveniently overlook, say, the part where I compare Dark Fact and Ghaleon to a 2600 and ray tracing.)
But, folks, they stole. Let's not be willfully blind here.
