• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

IGN interview with FF15 director

Servbot24

Banned
Xenoblade...

You don't need to be linear (not that being linear is bad, at all), you just need a more linear pacing. FFXII and Xenoblade gave Open-world levels of freedom, but still were relatively linear, so they could tell a story.

Exactly so. Open world format is fine as long as it's a vessel for a linear story.

Open worlds where the designers are just "we'll leave it to the players to make believe it's a good game", that's what I really dislike.
 

wmlk

Member
Other SE games have had co-directors. The announcement of his inclusion was nothing new or unexpected.

It's not just about him being Co-Director. It's a situation where the creator of the game was overtaken eight years later by a guy who joined two years ago, and who became Co-Director just a year prior.

It's not new for SE, but it's certainly unexpected and surprising. It's not something you anticipate, and it being followed up with Nomura's removal a year later doesn't look good.
 

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
It's a situation where the creator of the game was overtaken eight years later by a guy who joined two years ago, and who became Co-Director just a year prior.

It's not new for SE, but it's certainly unexpected and surprising. It's not something you anticipate, and it being followed up with Nomura's removal a year later doesn't look good.

You also said Nomura was a creative director during that time, which is false. He was still the main director.
 
Exactly so. Open world format is fine as long as it's a vessel for a linear story.

Open worlds where the designers are just "we'll leave it to the players to make believe it's a good game", that's what I really dislike.

That's why I love the car. Since it is on the rails it seems like it is your advancement to stay on track for the game and the story, where you can pull over to go do something in an area and stuff. The car will help keep players on track
 

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
Nobody wins if the game sucks. Doing an open-world is fine, the question is can they do it well? They actually haven't made a game like this either. FFXII has somewhat large spaces connected to each other. FFXI and FFXIV are MMOs.

The quotes make it clear Tabata intends for XV to be something akin to its open-world contemporaries like AC and GTA. Square has never made a game like that and I'm worried about how successful they'll be because the studios that have been doing it for a decade still haven't quite got it right.

I think the way they talk about it might give that impression but I'm fairly positive the game will be close to something like Dragon Age with large zones.
 

Geg

Member
And how is that different from previous games? You're always going from point A to point B to continue the story. I cannot mention a single RPG where this is not true. FFXII would take as long to do that as you wanted. Actually walking to places was fast, but there was a bunch of side stuff to do if you wanted along the way, exploration, hunts.

Xenoblade is also like that, and so is pretty much every JRPG.

Because they were really long in XII? No other FF game has gaps between story development as large as XII has. The entire trip from Dalmasca to Archades is about five to six straight hours of walking around and fighting monsters, with a single cutscene in the middle to break it up
 

wmlk

Member
You also said Nomura was a creative director during that time, which is false. He was still the main director.

I'm not undermining his role. He was obviously a big deal, and probably had more power than Tabata at that point when he just joined. Nomura was the Director but he was also responsible for the creative direction of his game, something that a creative director would have control over.

Just because both Tabata and him were directors, it doesn't mean that they were working on the exact same thing. Tabata was clearly working on the gameplay elements since it's completely revamped now.

A creative director is a vital role in all of the arts and entertainment industries. In another sense, they can be seen as another element in any product development process. The creative director may also assume the roles of an art director, copywriter, or lead designer.
 

KTallguy

Banned
Other SE games have had co-directors. The announcement of his inclusion was nothing new or unexpected.

Your pessimism is palpable. :)

I'm still hoping that the demo isn't complete shit.

Even if it's good, I walked away from the FFXIII demo thinking it would be a spectacular game, and it wasn't. It was an OK game, a sup-par "Final Fantasy".

Let's see if a happy accident comes along and makes FFXV everything we really want it to be.
 
Because they were really long in XII? No other FF game has gaps between story development as large as XII has. The entire trip from Dalmasca to Archades is about five to six straight hours of walking around and fighting monsters, with a single cutscene in the middle to break it up

If it took that long to you then that's because you got sidetracked. I don't see that as being any longer than something like the waterways -> palace -> waterways at the beginning of the game. It just has less cutscenes and more freedom because you're not going through a completely linear path.
 

Dark_castle

Junior Member
People being snide about Tabata wanting people to say FF15 is their favorite, I mean duh. Which creator would say "Yeah it's alright" describing their product?
 

benjammin

Member
People used to say the same about XIII, just saying.

I said that about 13. My mistake for going on a media blackout. This game looks really good, and it seems to be much closet to the series roots. Having a real world map and air ships alone make me cautiously optimistic
 
People being snide about Tabata wanting people to say FF15 is their favorite, I mean duh. Which creator would say "Yeah it's alright" describing their product?

Yeah I know. Its ridiculous, I like that he has this confidence about him. He isn't cocky just super confident in him and the team and I really like that about him.
 
I don't think KH is suddenly going to have party switching lol.

Eh, I could see it happening in KH3. A lot of the framework is there in preexisting games, and it might be preferable to having multiple different campaigns. Wouldn't be that different from the way that KH2's drive forms or BBS's d-links are functionally like playing a totally different person on a temporary basis. But the idea of that working is kinda predicated on everyone engaging in fundamentally similar melee combat (everyone in KH wields the same weapon basically).

The original FF Versus XIII idea of every character having a fundamentally different gameplay paradigm, all in one game, was never going to work well. Especially shooting at enemy weak points and shit (plus Noctis having *different* gun gameplay somehow).
 

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
I'm not undermining his role. He was obviously a big deal, and probably had more power than Tabata at that point when he just joined. Nomura was the Director but he was also responsible for the creative direction of his game, something that a creative director would have control over.

Just because both Tabata and him were directors, it doesn't mean that they were working on the exact same thing. Tabata was clearly working on the gameplay elements since it's completely revamped now.

Right but he was not the Creative Director at that time, which is the way you made it sound. He was in charge of the entire game. Nomura is Creative Director in games like Theatrhythm, Crisis Core, etc.
 
People being snide about Tabata wanting people to say FF15 is their favorite, I mean duh. Which creator would say "Yeah it's alright" describing their product?

He doesn't have to say anything. A simple "I hope people enjoy it" or something instead of adding even more hype to something that already has enough hype to dent a blast door. I don't think he's committed a sin or anything and it's nice to see optimism, but at the same time it's... dangerous.
 

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
If they made a modern FF that doesn't come with the relative flaws of FFX (sort of linear, sometimes dopey characters/story), FFXII (open and wonderful but totally unfinished) or FFXIII (all the things)... Then I could see it being a favorite FF game.

I don't need a perfect game... But just an FF in the modern era (post-FFX) that is open and more or less feature complete will be a revelation.
 
No, I see what you're saying. The map they showed there was definitely what I expected even. The visual quality they're aiming for wouldn't work too well if they weren't doing zones.

I didn't realize I was linking dualshockers so I just went away with the image link.

But yeah especially if it is supposed to be 10x bigger at least and on a 1:1 scale. I am curious, if airships are in, how would they work.
 

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
I didn't realize I was linking dualshockers so I just went away with the image link.

But yeah especially if it is supposed to be 10x bigger at least and on a 1:1 scale. I am curious, if airships are in, how would they work.

Tabata basically already said they would have to make a separate map that would function as an overworld type thing. But it sounded like they didn't plan for it so it may not be in. I wouldn't mind if they just did something similar to XII and had it be a fast travel thing.
 
Xenoblade...

You don't need to be linear (not that being linear is bad, at all), you just need a more linear pacing. FFXII and Xenoblade gave Open-world levels of freedom, but still were relatively linear, so they could tell a story.



He's saying you can't jump in Type-0...
Yep, the perfect counterpoints. These two did story telling mixed with "open" world exactly right.
 

Go_Ly_Dow

Member
Yeah the game will have large zones with clever loading/map design to hide that as much as possible.

It may be next-gen but I don't think any developer could create a completely seamless/open world with this level of visual fidelity, art style and scale.
 
Their comments on the open-world never sound convincing. They try to spin that as being a way to throwback to the older games, but in truth it's there because it's popular. Other AAA teams are doing it and a mainstream audience expects it.

Versus XIII in 2006 had a huge, classic world map.
Versus XIII in 2007 and 2008 was slated to have seamless environments.
Versus XIII in 2010 was slated to be near seamless and open-field with minimal loading.

It looks like, to me at least, FFXV is just following along that same line of progression. Maybe the popularity of open-world titles this decade emboldened them but I think Versus/XV would've traveled down that path regardless.

IIRC, Tabata lifted those classic FF feel comments wholesale from ancient Nomura interviews too.
 
Tabata basically already said they would have to make a separate map that would function as an overworld type thing. But it sounded like they didn't plan for it so it may not be in. I wouldn't mind if they just did something similar to XII and had it be a fast travel thing.

Yeah that could work, he did say that he would address airships after the demo is out so I think they are in, one way or another, because if they were cut I think he would just say it.

If they made a modern FF that doesn't come with the relative flaws of FFX (sort of linear, sometimes dopey characters/story), FFXII (open and wonderful but totally unfinished) or FFXIII (all the things)... Then I could see it being a favorite FF game.

I don't need a perfect game... But just an FF in the modern era (post-FFX) that is open and more or less feature complete will be a revelation.

I think it will be a huge step for FF, honestly (as long as its good) it could be the next VII in terms of importance, since this will be a good amount of firsts for FF, and with the battle system it will bring in a lot more fans especially from the west, since I see a lot of people on various places over the web and in real life, wanting to try FF but they never wanted to because they find turn base boring. So I could see it ushering in a great amount of new fans. But it will inevitably end up alienating some FF fans no matter what happens.
 

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
They should not include the airship if it was never in their original design plans.

Well... technically Nomura always talked about it but we'll never know if it was working in any of those PS3 builds. Once they switched to a FF12-style map back in 2010 that idea was likely out the window.
 
I think they could get away with an airship with some clever LoD/scaling work, given that the world already streams pretty well. We'll see. I don't really expect to see a full planet globe-style world map in the vein of the classic FFs ever again.
 

Philippo

Member
Versus XIII in 2006 had a huge, classic world map.
Versus XIII in 2007 and 2008 was slated to have seamless environments.
Versus XIII in 2010 was slated to be near seamless and open-field with minimal loading.

It looks like, to me at least, FFXV is just following along that same line of progression. Maybe the popularity of open-world titles this decade emboldened them but I think Versus/XV would've traveled down that path regardless.

IIRC, Tabata lifted those classic FF feel comments wholesale from ancient Nomura interviews too.

In the first iterations the world map was huge yes, but it was also top-down like PS1-era FFs.
 

Cyrano

Member
Tabata basically already said they would have to make a separate map that would function as an overworld type thing. But it sounded like they didn't plan for it so it may not be in. I wouldn't mind if they just did something similar to XII and had it be a fast travel thing.
Something less tacky than shiny blue dots to denote these would be nice though... maybe road signs. Would fit nicely into the road trip mentality.
 

Squire

Banned
I think the way they talk about it might give that impression but I'm fairly positive the game will be close to something like Dragon Age with large zones.

That's actually what I've always thought. MGS is doug the same and I think it's the best progression for the genre.

Even still though, they'll have to use that space well of ots a waste.
 

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
That's actually what I've always thought. MGS is doug the same and I think it's the best progression for the genre.

Even still though, they'll have to use that space well of ots a waste.

Right, they need to prove that they're putting actual things to do in these big zones otherwise what's the point? Tales of Zesitiria also went the "open world" route but its zones are pretty dull despite being so huge.

SE's done big zone stuff in their MMOs but I'm interested to see how they plan on applying that to a single player game where fans expect quests and things of that nature to be more than just go here and gather X item, etc.
 

Squire

Banned
Right, they need to prove that they're putting actual things to do in these big zones otherwise what's the point? Tales of Zesitiria also went the "open world" route but its zones are pretty dull despite being so huge.

SE's done big zone stuff in their MMOs but I'm interested to see how they plan on applying that to a single player game where fans expect quests and things of that nature to be more than just go here and gather X item, etc.

Exactly. I said this in another thread, but there are bound to be "collectathon" quests because that's just the nature of the beast. And there's an audience for that stuff. Not sure what about the past few years has people thinking that type of design is restricted to MMOs; completion it's will eat that up.

That being said, they'll need some actual small narrative quests of substance to make each zone with running around. At least to the point people actually see a good portion of the area. Dragon Age did well with that.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Re: airship: people also keep bringing up the airship without remembering that despite being transportation all over the world map, it didn't bring you everywhere. Everything from mountain ranges restricting movement (FFIII) to not being able to land on forests/sand (and having an entire continent covered with forests e.g.) still helped define what you could or couldn't do with an airship. In many ways the world maps of final fantasy were very restricted and opened up in an almost metroidvania way (lol) depending on which world map vehicles you had access to.

However if Tabata is saying "we're still considering it" it's either likely that that kind on utility-esque metroidvania gating isn't written into the story, or they have a Plan B should airship navigation not pan out due to technical limitations.

Probably I shouldn't say any more on the subject though. Internet and mis-quoting and jumping to conclusions and all that.
 

Insolitus

Banned
Quests are nice but I really want to see what the caves, dungeons and secret areas are like. I feel like how much I end up enjoying the demo will depend on that.
 
Re: airship: people also keep bringing up the airship without remembering that despite being transportation all over the world map, it didn't bring you everywhere. Everything from mountain ranges restricting movement (FFIII) to not being able to land on forests/sand (and having an entire continent covered with forests e.g.) still helped define what you could or couldn't do with an airship. In many ways the world maps of final fantasy were very restricted and opened up in an almost metroidvania way (lol) depending on which world map vehicles you had access to.

However if Tabata is saying "we're still considering it" it's either likely that that kind on utility-esque metroidvania gating isn't written into the story, or they have a Plan B should airship navigation not pan out due to technical limitations.

Probably I shouldn't say any more on the subject though. Internet and mis-quoting and jumping to conclusions and all that.

fair enough..i mean N4G might say "insider Falk says this! bla bla"
 
Quests are nice but I really want to see what the caves, dungeons and secret areas are like. I feel like how much I end up enjoying the demo will depend on that.

Dungeons, hunts and minigames are the make or break imo.

The story will be good because the Nomura/Nojima duo is awesome, and the gameplay I already came to terms that will be bad because Tabata doesn't know what to do there.

fair enough..i mean N4G might say "insider Falk says this! bla bla"

You mean, LR's composer?
 

Philippo

Member
Re: airship: people also keep bringing up the airship without remembering that despite being transportation all over the world map, it didn't bring you everywhere. Everything from mountain ranges restricting movement (FFIII) to not being able to land on forests/sand (and having an entire continent covered with forests e.g.) still helped define what you could or couldn't do with an airship. In many ways the world maps of final fantasy were very restricted and opened up in an almost metroidvania way (lol) depending on which world map vehicles you had access to.

However if Tabata is saying "we're still considering it" it's either likely that that kind on utility-esque metroidvania gating isn't written into the story, or they have a Plan B should airship navigation not pan out due to technical limitations.

Probably I shouldn't say any more on the subject though. Internet and mis-quoting and jumping to conclusions and all that.

FFXV Composer confirms airships are deleted
 

Go_Ly_Dow

Member
Re: airship: people also keep bringing up the airship without remembering that despite being transportation all over the world map, it didn't bring you everywhere. Everything from mountain ranges restricting movement (FFIII) to not being able to land on forests/sand (and having an entire continent covered with forests e.g.) still helped define what you could or couldn't do with an airship. In many ways the world maps of final fantasy were very restricted and opened up in an almost metroidvania way (lol) depending on which world map vehicles you had access to.

However if Tabata is saying "we're still considering it" it's either likely that that kind on utility-esque metroidvania gating isn't written into the story, or they have a Plan B should airship navigation not pan out due to technical limitations.

Probably I shouldn't say any more on the subject though. Internet and mis-quoting and jumping to conclusions and all that.

wow. straight from the art directors mouth of FFVII-G Bike. taking this to my gaming blog.

"FFXV downgraded: Airships cut due to technical limitations of XboxOne"
 

wmlk

Member
To be fair, Nomura was also infatuated with the "seamless" buzzword the exact same way Tabata is. It's just how the game was conceived and how it should be in their eyes.

And I'm pretty sure Nomura said he had an airship working after they reworked the world map. I dunno how to take any word as absolute for the game at this point though, lol.
 
FF15 is suddenly getting a ton of coverage it feels like. It's nice to know it's finally far enough into development that they can show off a lot of different gameplay segments and areas.
It's getting a ton of coverage because the developers are now willing to share what they're working on.
 
Top Bottom