BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
He was damning it with faint praise.
That was code for "I'm NOT doing it like Final Fantasy X" but he has to phrase it in a reverent way.
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IGN interview with FF15 director
- Thread starter Lifejumper
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That was code for "I'm NOT doing it like Final Fantasy X" but he has to phrase it in a reverent way.
cj_iwakura
Member
Why are you always so cynical about Square's output? I enjoyed XIII, but you seem like you want to demean their efforts at every turn.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I remember Kagari's idealism before XIII and I think that game broke her forever.
Because their console efforts last generation were a mess. They did a good thing with FF14 ARR but they still have a lot to prove - especially with a game 9 years in development.
cj_iwakura
Member
Well you seem as excited for it as anyone, so why not be optimistic?
Hibiki Kurosawa
Member
Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn't.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
You're absolutely right in that there are chronic issues that hit the company around the year 2000, when the level of technology made their previous workflow unfeasible.
I think it's only a matter of time before they right the ship, though.... And maybe Nomura getting replaced by Tabata was that moment?
It's clear as day to me. His sentence reads like "FFX was 'interesting', but we're not doing it like that, and we're not doing it like XIII either".
threelights
Member
Hasegawa is in since the Versus days. Tabata did say the story and concept were unchanged, so Nojima is probably involved in some capacity. And Wan has been there since the Versus days as well (except he's not from the KH team).
Worth noting that some of the people from Type-0's team are also veterans from the franchise (such as Naora himself).
Going in with tempered expectations was one of the things that really made me appreciate FFXIV after actually getting in there and playing it. I've found it's better to not expect "the best game ever!!!" with anything anymore and just take it at face value when I can actually play it.
badcrumble
Member
I think we can blame the troubled/delayed development of FFXII, FFXIII, FFXIV, and FXV on Wada and management in general, but in some ways it remains to be seen how much the basic quality issues of the FFXIII games can be blamed on Toriyama/Kitase/etc (the creatives) and how much of it can be blamed on Squeenix executive management (which will help us know how much of that might get passed on to FFXV).
It seems fairly likely to me that a lot of the salvaging of XIII's long development time and the creation of XIII-2 and LR:XIII had not only to do with the basic asset-recycling we'd already seen happen with FFX-2, but also with the emergency repurposing of design docs intended for other games into FFXIII sequels (especially the theory that LR's design may have started off as Valkyrie Profile 3).
I'm curious to see whether and to what extent we see that happen with FFXV's unannounced-but-surely-happening sequels. Hopefully they do more planning for that stuff ahead of time if it's definitely going to happen; an established and fully streaming world map to use will help, IMO, but might also feel stale in a sequel if they're not careful.
It seems fairly likely to me that a lot of the salvaging of XIII's long development time and the creation of XIII-2 and LR:XIII had not only to do with the basic asset-recycling we'd already seen happen with FFX-2, but also with the emergency repurposing of design docs intended for other games into FFXIII sequels (especially the theory that LR's design may have started off as Valkyrie Profile 3).
I'm curious to see whether and to what extent we see that happen with FFXV's unannounced-but-surely-happening sequels. Hopefully they do more planning for that stuff ahead of time if it's definitely going to happen; an established and fully streaming world map to use will help, IMO, but might also feel stale in a sequel if they're not careful.
MultiJhonny
Banned
They seem to be more the technical staff honestly. Most of the creative aspects came from Nomura who seemed to be more of a creative director for the first 2 years before he was off the project, also Nojima is the best writer SE has, Nozue is amazing at movie directing, Naora is the best art director SE has and his team behind him is great as well, and I am holding out hope that Akiyama is still the event planning director since his work is awesome!
So there are a good amount of holdovers but there is a good amount that has left. We really don't know exactly who on the more technical side, they have been pretty vague in that regard. I think they will do a fine job with the hardware of this gen.
Well we can blame a good amount on Toriyama and Kitase for XIII since they didn't even really have a good direction of what they wanted to do until about a year before release.
The people who are the most critical of something are usually the ones who care the most and want it to succeed.
Also this.
Actually, what makes me most bitter about SE lately is the North American side's lack of community focus compared to what they've been doing in Europe. Huge missed opportunities all around.
Icyflamez96
Member
I'm not worried about FFXV personaly. I've never been, even with the FFXIII stuff. I already know they are changing what I BY FAR hated the most about FFXIII (linearity, no towns) so I don't have much of a reason to be too worried about me liking this game. I also liked FFXIII despite the flaws too.
What? The guy was directing every aspect of the game, not just broad story concepts, before he was axed. And it was 8 years, not 2.
Being the best writer at SE isn't an accomplishment. They're all shit. And I wouldn't say he's the best when FFXII exists.
Naora? I seem to recall that name credited to FFXIII as well. Really, FFXIII also had a lot of very senior FF staff. Tons of people from FFX, which is highly revered. And it had Kitase who directed FFVII.
On paper, you could have easily argued FFXIII would turn out a great game. Yet it didn't. No reason to expect otherwise with FFXV. Actually I would be even more weary here because of the game's history. FFXIII only took half as long to make and it didn't have most of its development staff replaced in the middle of the project. Both of those things are very, very bad signs.
NoctisVsStar
Member
I feel the same way actually I'm at peace with this game, I know I will like it. Despite not having the party switching maybe Nomura brings it out for KH3. Although, personally I think it's a nightmare trying to balance it out. I think they did good just having Noctis playable plus can't wait when they finally talk about gambits.
threelights
Member
Naora is an art director (FFXIII's art director was Kamikokuryo).
And if you think that art is a problem in FFXIII, then I really feel sorry for you.
Tidus_Great
Banned
FFX was a good balance. it was linear so it could tell a good story and opened up near the end to get more out of the game. The truth is the best story games are fairly linear. If your world is too open you end up with Skyrim aka a collection of boring quests.
I don't think KH is suddenly going to have party switching lol.
Um what?
U can't jump in this?
NoctisVsStar
Member
Wishful thinking XD
threelights
Member
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...
MultiJhonny
Banned
About the 2 years. I was talking about from the restart of development bud, maybe should have made that clearer. Nojima is known to be an amazing writer who didn't even work on XII anyways. Unless you mean XIII which he came up with the idea for the overall concept of FNC.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=989636&highlight=
O_O So he agrees!? I'm liking this guy more and more every day lol. Let's see if he can deliver a product that's good. If its a good game, then the wait should technically be considered a success
Ah okay
phew
(From IGN intervew)
(From Siliconera interview)
Weren't these things in before he was even involved in the project? I feel weird reading stuff like this, he goes out of his way to avoid mentioning Nomura.
LouisaFerre
Member
One of my issues with FFXV is that it seems like they're trying to do this halfway between traditional FF and action combat by making the 'action' more passive than it'd usually be in a real time system, through the combo and guard systems. I mean, I'm fine with a more slow strategic battle system but I don't see myself getting that out of FFXV. If I want strategy I would say most FF games or traditional JRPGs don't fully provide that. It'd have to get the full SRPG treatment to really satisfy me in that way. That's part of why I wanted this to go full ARPG, because this kind of in-between system isn't really going to satisfy either one of my desires.
Honestly even if it's my favorite FF it might still fail to satisfy me just because of what I originally thought it was going to be, but that probably says more about me than SE.
Honestly even if it's my favorite FF it might still fail to satisfy me just because of what I originally thought it was going to be, but that probably says more about me than SE.
Yeah they were. If you've paid attention SE has pretty much avoided the Nomura subject following TGS.
1) The game has essentially been rebooted since July 2012, when Tabata took over. Nomura was the creative director for two years before he got the boot.
2) Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion man. I see plenty of people point to FF as a paragon for story in video games. I don't think it's great, but it surely is to most people, especially for the non-FFXIII games.
3) Naora is one of the best people that SE has. He only oversaw FFXIII. Heck, two of the few characters he designed for the sequels were Caius and Noel, and those two were fan favourite designs.
4) You do realize that FF games are stuck in prototyping a long time before they're revealed, right? They didn't just announce FFXIII and start developing the game then. The game was a PS2 game as far back as 2004. We haven't even gotten confirmation of when VSXIII started development. That game has a messed up timeline but it wasn't even in active development for an exceedingly longer time compared to FFXIII.
I tend to go in with extremely low expectations whenever there's a lot of money thrown at something. I like being pleasantly surprised but that's a rare occurrence.
Big game industry is depressing right now.
Tabata did not take over in 2012. He was just added to the team then. Not sure where you are getting that.
For one, Tabata and the staff are being really open about the actual development of the game now. I'm pretty sure we didn't get these kind of updates on XIII considering we didn't know about its troubled development until after it was released. Things are more transparent and right now it doesn't look like XV is suffering from the problems XIII had
I haven't played Xenoblade but I really don't think the open world worked well in XII's favor considering the massive stretches of time where no story development happened because you were just spending hours going form point A to B. Plus after a while the story just became a loop of "Go to dungeon -> find important item -> find out something happened behind the scenes, usually something Vayne did, and that means you need to go to a new dungeon and get a new important item" though I'm not sure if that was because of the world design or because of Matsuno leaving
cj_iwakura
Member
Crisis Core was fantastic up until it started screwing with VII canon, then it just downgraded to good. Funny how I was looking forward to the Nibelheim part, then, blech.
MultiJhonny
Banned
I think he just meant him being co-director.
Yes, this is all par for the course for FF development. Heck, even game development. It's not like we got FF7-10 in the span of four years or anything. I even bet those games were in pre-development stretching back to the early 90s and late 80s.
Yeah, he was announced as co-director a year later but signs were pointing to him overtaking Nomura's position. That was just a general comment on what transpired. I should have been more clear.
Right, so saying "half" is being disingenuous. We saw similar prototyping scans of FFVSXIII in 2008, and by then FFXIII was well on its way.
FFXIII was a mess on its own. Kitase was actually saying that working on the PS2 made FFXIII have a much better development workflow.
As soon as an older fan favorite role-playing game is mentioned as inspiration, everyone goes crazy.
That's all you need to sell a game.
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.
Stereogatari
Banned
I honestly believe FFXV will be the best FF and a landmark game on the level of Uncharted 2.
threelights
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.
Playing Crisis Core on hard difficulty first time play through was highly enjoyable; completely changed the battle system for me.
Plus that ending was amazing.
Honestly, I was worried about 13 the moment I started seeing concrete stuff for it. I dunno what it was exactly, but something was setting off alarm bells for me. For 15, well, I'm feeling far more optimistic about that then I did for 13. I somehow doubt it'll be the best FF evers, but it feels like it'll be a big step up from 13, and that's all I really want out of the franchise at this point.
Plus, I'm really digging the setting and world design so far. It reminds me of a fantasy version of the western united states. Parts of it looks like it could be one of the scenic roads that lead to Yellowstone, only, you know, with monsters and all that.
Huh? What signs? Now you're just pulling things out of your ass.
NoctisVsStar
Member
it may be the FF version of uncharted, but the FF fanbase is the most divided community i have ever seen. I still believe this game will be something special, I'm not saying it's going to be greatest game of all time but its going to be good.
(not in terms of conflict but in terms of general agreement between games)
What, you don't think a guy added to a game announced six years prior, and then becoming director in just a year is fishy?
Not to mention Nomura was removed by SE management a year after that. Heck, we weren't even told when Nomura left the team. We were just told he was gone when the demo announcement happened.
I'm not pulling anything. It's clear that Tabata came up the ranks pretty fast and SE management favoured him.
Other SE games have had co-directors. The announcement of his inclusion was nothing new or unexpected.
Seven Force
Banned
That's a pretty fair concern. Rockstar is pretty much the only dev I can think of that manages to have open world design with stuff worth doing in it.