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Square Enix: Final Fantasy XV "greatest contributor", fastest-selling FF (6 million)
- Thread starter Koozek
- Start date
Die Squirrel Die
Member
It's all too common for people to operate with a very ego-driven view of the world, hence the 'I don't like it therefore it shouldn't exist' attitude that pervades a lot of discussions (not just about Final Fantasy). People seem lost at the idea that something isn't for them, or even that something that used to be for them has moved in a different direction.
titiklabingapat
Member
This are great results but how sustainable is it? They're not gonna have an AAA of this caliber every year.
AnUnbiasedGamer
Member
Honestly, i am not like this about most things. Its just that 10 years of hype and interviews with Tetsuya Nomura telling you about this cool vision will do that to a person. The thing is, versus xiii was one of the few things in my life where I felt like I would have made that product if I was given the chance. Its like i had the same vision for the game as Nomura so it almost felt like the game of my dreams. So when a game that was supposed to be a spinoff trilogy with lots of cool experimentation gets compressed into one unfinished title that changes everything to match the typical mainstream AAA expectation, you can see why this game felt like a huge blunder to me. Oh well, i guess its one of those accept it and move on type things.
AlexFlame116
Member
This year is Dragon Quest XI right? Unless by some miracle Dissidia comes to the PS4 this year too.
FTFY
In the simplest terms it's like a bad (or worse) Ubisoft game for the first half and then it becomes a terrible Uncharted clone from chapter 9 onwards.
AlexFlame116
Member
Here I'll help you out! Don't you worry mate! I'm here! I'm here to tell you the secret of what you should do in this situation.
Buy mine
Honestly I just really want the statue, the art book, and maybe the in-game contents.
AnUnbiasedGamer
Member
After some of my previous conversations with people in this thread, i am afraid of even quoting you. Oops, too late.
AnUnbiasedGamer
Member
Wow, just saw the prices on ebay. Didn't know they were still selling for as much as they are. I actually have 3 copies of the ultimate edition. One is from the square enix store and two are from scalpers on ebay. I got three just in case one got canceled. They have been sitting in my closet since. Just letting all the people know, since a lot of people here think i had negative impressions of this game when i first started it. I actually really wanted to Love it more than any other game.
GuitarGuruu
Member
I really quite enjoyed the game. Wish it had a bit more of an in depth story but hey what can ya do. The additional content they're working on should alleviate that to a small degree at least.
Randomizer
Member
Certainly wasn't my favourite in the series but I still enjoyed it enough to play it for 100 hours or so. So I'm glad it did well.
AlexFlame116
Member
Wait you have three copies??? Bro! How did you even get the money for all that? I donated plasma just to get mine!
I really hope you didn't spend a crazy amount on the scalpers though. They can be sadistic in charging prices and it ruins it for everyone.
We actually were talking about the XIV Stormblood CE but let me tell you something mate, the XV Ultimate Collector's Edition was the most I spent on a game. NieR Automata's Black Box Edition comes close but I love them both.
But if you ever want to get rid of them in any way, I really want to buy the steelbook but in perfect condition without blemishes that contained the game and soundtrack. Mine came with some damage and it still gnaws at me.
AnUnbiasedGamer
Member
I started my first real professional job in 2016 and i figured if i didn't go all out for something i waited 10 years for and guarantee myself a ultimate collector's edition, then i wasn't living life right. Ill think about that steelbook offer though and if i ever consider getting rid of the other 2, i will definitely check with you.
LordKasual
Banned
Since you actually asked:
- The combat is well designed. When I say well-designed, I mean that the mechanics have enough emergent depth to make winning fights not solely based on your stats and weapons, but on how well you understand the mechanics of the game. There may be flaws in the way the combat system actually plays out, but the design itself is sound.
- FFXV is a game that respects the player's sense of adventure, and rewards them relatively well for it. Not many games do this, especially not Open World games. What I mean by this is, the game starts off and immediately just lets you roam around the world. But instead of just empty space, the game rewards you for roaming with powerful optional enemies and hidden dungeons. Hidden dungeons in XV provide Royal Arms, which already have a soft-spot in my heart because all of the Royal Arms are unique optional weapons, with uses that go beyond their attack animations. (I'll get to why this is so significant to me later.)
- FFXV is extremely challenge run friendly. By this is mean Lv.1 runs, No Item runs, ect ect. This is because enemies and progression are not balanced around rigid strategies, they let you experiment, and give you many options to replace one avenue with another. This is good RPG design to me. But the big reason this is a good thing is because you aren't required to butcher the game's systems in order to challenge run the game.
Why I love XV's Royal Arms
- Getting this out of the way, most of them are completely useless if we're judging them on their attack animation strings. But this has little to do with why i think they're so great. First and foremost, getting a powerful weapon out of a dungeon is always a great reward. But getting a UNIQUE weapon out of a dungeon is a feeling like no other in gaming to me...and FFXV has 13 of them. Some of them reuse animations in new ways, but many of them are 100% unique weapons, with neat warpstrikes to boot.
- Royal Arms can (mostly) be obtained out of sequence, which means they can be obtained early. This is perfect for challenge runs because Royal Arms provide stats that are varied enough to tailor a playstyle around. Combine these stat upgrades with accessories and you've got alot of leeway for customizing Noctis. Obtaining Royal Arms also boosts Noctis' Armiger and Armiger Chain attack, further rewarding you for finding them.
- Some of the weapons (Blade of the Mystic, Sword of the Father) actually provide short buffs for using certain attacks, giving them use outside of their actual attack animations. Others stack on elemental resistances, provide MP, ect.
- TL;DR they are unique weapons that double as accessories, provide alot of power, and can be found at your own pace, regardless of when or what level you try to obtain them at.
(One of the reasons I know that Square was self-aware of this benefit of royal arms is because they placed the Shield of the Just tomb right there on the open field, with no boss or dungeon required to obtain it. You can just walk up and take it, and IIRC it's the only Royal Arm like this.)
Shield of the Just provides +1000 HP, +200 Vit, +10% bullet resist, and -100 Str....basically a must-have for anyone attempting a Lv.1 or No-Item playthrough. You simply can't find defensive stats like that early in the game, and since it's a Royal Arm it frees up accessories for your teammates. Good RPG design.
Why XV's Open World is so fun
- You don't need to do ANY of the stupid fetch quests in order to enjoy the game's actual optional content.
- I'll say this again: You do not need to do ANY of the stupid fetch quests in order to enjoy the game's actual optional content. That means you can beat every optional boss, complete every optional dungeon, obtain every optional weapon and accessory, all without ever finding one frog, or fixing one car, or buying one ingredient for someone, or taking a picture of a single stupid chocobo. The moment I realized that the game wasn't artificially gating me around these silly quests, i stopped bothering with them. By the time i beat Costlemark Menace, my Quest menu was full of shit i didn't bother with, and I had every great weapon, accessory and royal arm in the game.
- See? It respects your sense of adventure, because that's all you need to ever do. I think the only exception is growing carrots for the Insomnia weapons at Caem? But that's it, and that doesn't even take an hour of playtime.
- It also respects your sense of challenge...namely by allowing you to roam around at night. The enemies are significantly stronger than you, but never strong enough to not actually defeat. And when you can finally beat the Iron Giants...they spawn stronger ones to keep it interesting. It's great.
I mean i could keep going on about specifics, but these are the big (strictly gameplay) reasons why I actually love this game. I can just put it in my Playstation and play it.
AnUnbiasedGamer
Member
I am literally about to scream with joy because you are the first person with a response that i was looking for. I just wanted a simple conversation about what people like about this game because i had a different perspective. I just wanted to understand and instead i got about 5 replies about people completely misinterpreting what i meant. No wonder we will never have world peace. Anyways, thank you so much for this response, it really opens my eyes to what other players see that i may have glossed over. Why can't there be more people like you on this site?
Also i agree with you on a lot of things. The animations with the royal arms are very well done. Even the switching of weapons is very well done.
I also love the openness of the game in the beginning and how quickly the game opens up with no barriers. I easily spent 30 hours before going into chapter 4.
In terms of side quests, I guess i was spoiled by the witcher 3 (and even surprisingly mass effect andromeda) where most of the side quests all tie to the main story but like you said, the dungeons are open from at the endgame so there is no reason to get furious at the sidequests if i don't have to do them. I just wanted quests that flushed out the world more.
The gameplay points you make are all excellent but one thing however is that there was a lack of immersion in the world lore. I mean, i got all the royal arms, but not a single NPC (even noctis's friends) had anything to say about obtaining any of them. I recently played Mass Effect Andromeda and even though the animations and bugs are present, they really had the NPC interactivity down. Lots of NPCs and my squadmates would comment on almost anything of note that i did. I even went back and played Jade Empire which released on the original Xbox and the NPCs also commented on my actions. It just felt weird to do so many things in FFXV and not have anyone talk about it. I felt as though no one cared even though i am pretty sure that SE would have done a lot more for the world building and lore if they had been given the time.
KojiKnight
Member
Oh poor young naive me of yesterday...
Samanosuke Akechi
Member
Oh I didn't know. I didn't see anything about it on the front page. Why was the previous thread locked for? Is it bad Info or something?
AlexFlame116
Member
Oh I see. It's still nice to be able to afford it though. Glad you had enough to buy it especially given how hard it was to get at times.
Score! Thanks! Now to play the wait and see game!
I'm more saying it was the fastest selling, because it was a worldwide launch. Clearly that would not have been the case had the west gotten it 6 months later. We even had a thread about this last year.
The second half of my point is that i'm disappointed they aren't doing a worldwide launch for DQXI. I would like them doing more worldwide launches of their titles, and they seem to be getting much better with that, though not completely there yet. They'd even be able to say that those were the fastest selling entries in their respective franchises too.
demosthenes
Member
Glad for SE, hope that XVI whenever it comes is a whole lot different than XV though.
DarkLordMalik
Member
Since someone asked why I liked Final Fantasy XV.
- The Combat is something that I have never experienced in any action RPG. It combines both air combat with ground combat by using Warp Strikes for combos that means the player never has a moment to rest. I mean technically you can just be on the ground and attack regularly but you can also be a little cooler and use warp strikes to strike the enemy in a combo, combined with the parries, it makes the combat standout from other action RPGs for me. People have said that the camera is an issue but in my case, it was an issue mostly for monsters that were huge, and like really huge. For majority of the game, the camera worked as intended for me.
- The story is considered incomplete by others but I have to wonder why. What makes the story incomplete? Every event that happens in the game is explained. The movie explains the fall of Insomnia. Brotherhood explains some of the background for the main characters. The journey of Noctis from start to end is pretty simple and doesn't have any complicated non-sense. I enjoyed the story because I never felt like it was 'incomplete'. Perhaps the last couple of chapters feel like 'incomplete' to others because they moved too fast, but aside from that, I understood why they intended the game to be from Noctis' POV. What Noctis learns or knows in the game is what is experienced by the player. Any other event that is not experienced by Noctis is left up to the player's imagination.
- The characters and the sense of journey with them is perhaps the best part of Final Fantasy XV. The road trip aspect is perfect here and the way they integrated little side quests or mechanics like photography made the whole experience memorable. By the end, the game pretty much nails the feeling of a journey that is ending soon and knowing that it will end with a tragedy just makes it much more of a emotional gut punch.
- The ending. Yes, I absolutely loved the ending of the game. When I finished the game for the first time, it took me days before I was able to get over it. By the end of the game, I had accepted the fate of Noctis, just like him. I understood what needed to be done in order to save the world. Even a character like Luna clicked with me, because I understood their relationship. I loved Ardyn as a villain and fighting him with all cool shit in the city was a memorable experience as well.
FFXV will remain my top 5 FF experience and I just hope XVI is not another XII for me. I absolutely adored FFX and then played XII which disappointed me in term of story and characters. I think XIII was okay for the most part but I hated how they kept continuing with Lightning saga so we never received another mainline game. I don't really hate XIV however I find it sad that the only way to experience the story in it is to grind and play the expansions. I just can't find the time to do so in an online only game.
- The Combat is something that I have never experienced in any action RPG. It combines both air combat with ground combat by using Warp Strikes for combos that means the player never has a moment to rest. I mean technically you can just be on the ground and attack regularly but you can also be a little cooler and use warp strikes to strike the enemy in a combo, combined with the parries, it makes the combat standout from other action RPGs for me. People have said that the camera is an issue but in my case, it was an issue mostly for monsters that were huge, and like really huge. For majority of the game, the camera worked as intended for me.
- The story is considered incomplete by others but I have to wonder why. What makes the story incomplete? Every event that happens in the game is explained. The movie explains the fall of Insomnia. Brotherhood explains some of the background for the main characters. The journey of Noctis from start to end is pretty simple and doesn't have any complicated non-sense. I enjoyed the story because I never felt like it was 'incomplete'. Perhaps the last couple of chapters feel like 'incomplete' to others because they moved too fast, but aside from that, I understood why they intended the game to be from Noctis' POV. What Noctis learns or knows in the game is what is experienced by the player. Any other event that is not experienced by Noctis is left up to the player's imagination.
- The characters and the sense of journey with them is perhaps the best part of Final Fantasy XV. The road trip aspect is perfect here and the way they integrated little side quests or mechanics like photography made the whole experience memorable. By the end, the game pretty much nails the feeling of a journey that is ending soon and knowing that it will end with a tragedy just makes it much more of a emotional gut punch.
- The ending. Yes, I absolutely loved the ending of the game. When I finished the game for the first time, it took me days before I was able to get over it. By the end of the game, I had accepted the fate of Noctis, just like him. I understood what needed to be done in order to save the world. Even a character like Luna clicked with me, because I understood their relationship. I loved Ardyn as a villain and fighting him with all cool shit in the city was a memorable experience as well.
FFXV will remain my top 5 FF experience and I just hope XVI is not another XII for me. I absolutely adored FFX and then played XII which disappointed me in term of story and characters. I think XIII was okay for the most part but I hated how they kept continuing with Lightning saga so we never received another mainline game. I don't really hate XIV however I find it sad that the only way to experience the story in it is to grind and play the expansions. I just can't find the time to do so in an online only game.
"Versus fans". That may be the most ridiculously held grudge I've ever seen for a non-game that never existed. It reminds me of arguing with Inuhanyou all last summer about how pointless it is to even think about V13.
I'm just glad the few yelling loudly on the Internet have no bearing on the game's actual popularity, especially since if this flopped then Square may have gone full mobile. PC version at 4k on HDR is going to be absolutely gorgeous.
I'm just glad the few yelling loudly on the Internet have no bearing on the game's actual popularity, especially since if this flopped then Square may have gone full mobile. PC version at 4k on HDR is going to be absolutely gorgeous.
I feel similarly to this. FF XV is in my top 3 FF games.
And to add about the story: While I do think that the story in the game is rushed and missing sequences, I think, without a doubt, it has some of the best lore in the entire series. Also, Ardyn is one of the best villains, with some really intriguing history and motivation.
Seriously, once you start following the threads on the whole thing about Ifrit's betrayal, the Pitioss dungeon, and other little things like the clear influence from Greek mythology. It's great stuff; the only problem is that they barely show it in the game -- you have to dig to find this stuff. This is why I'm pretty excited for more story content to flesh out the lore.
Also, to put a neat little list of why I like the game, I will here (IMO of course).
FF XV has:
-the best dungeons in the series
-one of the best villains in the series
-a sense of closeness to the main characters in the party that I haven't really felt in a Final Fantasy game since VI and VII (and in some ways, it is even unique from those experiences)
-the character development of Ignis really surprised me. Something that video games don't really touch upon much.
-the best ending in the series
-some of the best lore in the series, if not the best
-music that can stand next to the other great soundtracks in the series
-a beautiful world that I find joyful to look at even after 80 hours of playing
-fun combat that, despite not being fully polished in some places, never stopped being fun
-mutha fuckin chocobos
-"That's it! I've come up with a new recipe."
The game clearly has problems, but these elements are why I love the game and would play it again once more when the story updates drop.
(Disclaimer: Not insinuating anything other than pointing out what's come before)
Virtually every Final Fantasy, except for direct sequels, have reused close to zero assets, even for staple monsters like Behemoths, etc., with the obvious caveat that there's only so many ways you can draw a bunch of pixels in the earlier games, but even then the size of sprites in e.g. the overworld changed as the games went by.
I think it's very much part of the franchise DNA that every mainline entry is built essentially from the ground up, even while they borrow staple concepts from the franchise's history.
Also obviously not talking about deliberate crossovers like Lightning in XIV, etc.
edit: and before someone points it out, yeah Mobius reuses a ton of stuff. Mobius isn't mainline though. :V
Likely because the premise was pretty much almost out of context, in large part due to the framing/title of linked article. Nirolak subsequently went through the entirety of Matsuda's information and made several threads.
I get what the standards and staples of the series have been up to this point, but like I said - we're talking about AAA production in 2017. SE might have to contend with certain realities that their contemporaries gave into years ago. And XV isn't any sort of argument that they're unwilling to cut corners to get something onto shelves.
toastyToast
Member
Good for them. I regret contributing to this total
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
No its a piss poor analogy and removes all affecting variables for pushing a thinly veiled agenda. McDonalds may be unhealthy but at the end of the day people enjoy it at the price its being offered at.
This is baseless. As many have said before, all FF's are built from the ground up. FFXV's post patch content is directly caused by its dev issues, Tabata and co only having 3 years of dev time and hence a lot of cut content that they wish to add.
FFXV's success probably say two things: people still love FF and open world action games are popular.
Son Of Sparda
Member
The thing that makes me love XV is its sense of adventure. You really feel like you are traveling through fantastical environments with your friends. I loved the majority of core cast
and their road trip adventure, that I didn't really care about the overreaching story. I was actually annoyed by how much they tried to say that Luna was important and all of those stuff about her "love story". I would've genuinely removed her and all those crap from the game if I had the option.
Anyway, the gameplay and the sense of adventure in XV are the reasons that I love it.
(fuck Gladio)
Anyway, the gameplay and the sense of adventure in XV are the reasons that I love it.
Auto_aim1
MeisaMcCaffrey
Don't you think chapter 9-14 goes by way too fast as if they didn't have enough time to work on them? It was not satisfying at all. All the events are explained, yes, but they should have done a better job with it.
thepenguin55
Member
Just curious, do we know what the cost of this game was?
Son Of Sparda
Member
If you are wondering whether the game managed to become profitable, IIRC Tabata said that they broke even in the first day (week?) of release when they shipped 5 million units.
We don't know the exact costs, but what we know:
thepenguin55
Member
Well that's cool because it was seeming like Nomura was really digging a deep hole of debt called Versus 13. This game is great and while I don't love a lot of the choices Square makes these days the FF15 dev team deserves all the accolades for making a great game
sadaiyappan
Member
PC release?
Blackleg-sanji1
Banned
If i had to guess(not confirmed) late next yr at best
Spring/Summer '18 or so, I assume. They'll probably wait until every piece of DLC including the multiplayer stuff is out later this year and then release a GOTY edition on consoles and PC a few months later.
I know right? I miss his old avatar with that golden Noctis hair lol.
NoctisVsStar
Member
We just sleeping until KH3 next month..and the wait for 7r we always around.
For everyone saying that SE is learning the wrong lessons from this game.....you realize that they just learned the exact opposite from their previous game right? FF14 1.0 flopped famously, and they realized that they had to push out a somewhat competent package to get fans to play. Yet, somehow with this title they intentionally released it half-assed knowing that they would get sales anyway? The assumptions don't line up with reality at all. It's obvious that the story has some issues and the team is actually trying to go back and fix it. This is something that is nothing but a positive yet people shit on the decision for no real reason other than to satisfy the need to talk down about Tabata/Square/15. Imagine if Xenogears fans had the option to get Disc 2 fixed, or Mass Effect 3 fans could get a much more fleshed out ending. How anyone can trash a team trying their damndest to make right things that slipped due to development troubles is beyond me. That says a lot about humans in general I think.
As for a PC version, I'm putting my bets on it not even being announced until after the DLC is all out, then tack on a year or 2 after that. It would be nice if it's sooner, but at this point I would put money on them trying to score as many as possible for the double dip(a Rockstar classic). Also they'll likely want the whole package with story additions and all available on the PC day 1 to go with a console re-release.
As for a PC version, I'm putting my bets on it not even being announced until after the DLC is all out, then tack on a year or 2 after that. It would be nice if it's sooner, but at this point I would put money on them trying to score as many as possible for the double dip(a Rockstar classic). Also they'll likely want the whole package with story additions and all available on the PC day 1 to go with a console re-release.
Orniletter
Banned
Regardless of just how bad XV truly was, I'm glad big scale FF are here to stay.
LordKasual
Banned
I really don't think Nomura deserves the credit for Versus ending up the way it did. He seems to continously get stuck in limbo when it comes to Square's tech.
- FFXIII Versus was being designed after XIII, but the engine that XIII was built on (Crystal Tools) was shit. I'm sure Square had no intention of using CT more than they had to, and so pushed to get Luminous working. So now Nomura is stuck making a game without a solid engine.
- They announce that Versus XIII was being switched to Luminous. They turn Versus XIII into FFXV. Luminous still isn't a tangible thing at this point, but they're now actually developing the engine and the game. Square announces KH3 and FF7R. They pull Nomura off XV, hand it to Tabata.
- Now, again, Nomura is suck on a project without an engine. He can't use Luminous because it still isn't finished, and now he's not even on the team developing it anymore. So they make the call to switch Nomura's projects to Unreal Engine 4 so they can, you know, actually start working on it.
If people actually paid attention to the development blogs from the XV team...there's a reason they were going out to locations, taking pictures of rocks, shining light on objects, physically going into caves, ect ect. They were teaching themselves how to develop PBR assets on a modern engine, going through the motions. Nomura was present (im sure) for that same kind of experimentation back when Luminous was first being developed. But whether or not his current team is up to date on that is not clear.
And this is probably why you hear Square trying to hire new talent to work on HD engines. Nomura's team hasn't really been in full production on a modern engine yet, i think. It's also why the experience they got on XV is valuable for future mainline titles.
This is just spectulation of course, i have no clue how this was managed
Same here. Well, except the bad part. I don't agree with that at all lol. I would like to see what Square can do with a big budget game without engine troubles. It's crazy to think that 15 has potential to be the 2nd or 3rd best selling game in the series with the PC release.
The movie analogy is in there too, buddy. So what's your point? People wouldn't eat cheap fast food if it was expensive? I mean... okay?
People generally understand video games go for $60USD (or your country's equivilsnt) at retail and digitally. That doesn't stop millions from buying very bad ones. FFXV is a very very bad one.
And "agenda". LOL. Yes, my agenda is to not signal to Squsre I'm A-OK with them making dudebro garbage. You got me.
This got me thinking..
Nomura and his team should now visit Disney/Pixar and start taking notes for KH3.