Support NeoGAF

Castor Krieg · Sep 28, 2012

I'm sorry for starting a new FF thread so soon after the other one, but while I went back to read a bit more on Type-0 I found some pretty good explanation for what is going on. Some of it will be obvious for many, I think Duckroll can add a lot of insight to this thread.

Motomu Toriyama:

Motomu Toriyama is a supporter and advocate of the "Interactive Movie RPG" game design created by Yoshinori Kitase and used in Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII. Toriyama believes his strength is in creating games that are very story-driven. He also believes that it becomes very difficult to tell a compelling story when the player is given a huge amount of freedom to explore. According to him, the most important aspect of a Final Fantasy game is the characters. Toriyama has stated that the aim of the game design used in the first half of Final Fantasy XIII was to feel like watching a film. The reason was so the player could become absorbed with the story and characters and not get distracted or lost.

Yoshinori Kitase:

Yoshinori Kitase defended choices made with Final Fantasy XIII, saying that it was more important for the player to be engaged with the story and characters before allowing them to get involved with elements of gameplay such as the battle system, character customization and world exploration.

Those two were pretty much hold total power over Final Fantasy brand:

In turn, Kitase specifically chose Motomu Toriyama to be his successor as director of main series Final Fantasy games developed by Product Development Division 1 after the positive reception to Final Fantasy X, which was Toriyama's directorial debut.

However if we dig deeper we find some interesting information:

Kitase became a producer when Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series, chose him to be producer of the main series Final Fantasy games developed by Product Development Division 1.

So the father of Final Fantasy picked you personally? It must mean he thinks very highly of you! Not really...

At a Q&A session for The Last Story at the BAFTA headquarters in London on February 16, 2012, Hironobu Sakaguchi was asked during an autograph signing, "Which employee still at Square Enix do you feel can once again make Final Fantasy a leading and respected series in the games industry?" Sakaguchi replied, "Hiroyuki Ito."

What is Ito's design philosophy?

When working as the game designer of a Final Fantasy game, Hiroyuki Ito avoids making it story-driven; he instead balances the story and event scenes with the gameplay.

I wonder if his approach is the right one?

Hiroyuki Ito has directed the most critically acclaimed Final Fantasy games released as of present date, according to Metacritic. The three Final Fantasy games that Hiroyuki Ito has directed have the highest aggregate review scores out of all games in the series.

F***.

What was Ito working on for the last couple of years?

2007 Final Fantasy IV DS
2009 Gyromancer
2011 Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy
2012 Guardian Cross

As for the ending, I think this sums it up nicely:

In November 2011, Yoshinori Kitase confirmed that Hiroyuki Ito was still working at Square Enix.[

Ito lost (or he never tried to fight it), Kitase & Toriyama won. Downwards spiral for FF series continues.

MagiusNecros · Sep 28, 2012

I blame Toriyama and Daisuke actually.

Daisuke's writing was evident for a majority of XIII-2.

Kitase is really in the backseat, not doing much TBH.

TABATA is the only one I trust regarding FF.

hamchan · Sep 28, 2012

I felt that FFX was a great Interactive Movie RPG. Too bad FFXIII took it too far.

Bjoern the Smexy · Sep 28, 2012

The story in each of FF6 to FF9 was (imo) better than all of the stories of FF10 and up combined (except for FF12. Another "imo" though).
I really didn't like any FF after 9 (again: except for FF12). They were just...meh :\

@MUWANdo · Sep 28, 2012

Every single one of those quotations is from a Wikipedia article.

ScOULaris · Sep 28, 2012

Yup. It's pretty fucking depressing.

Pai Pai Master · Sep 28, 2012

If they could continue giving us a good variety of different Final Fantasy games each generation, to appease fans of every different kind of game, it would be nice. Instead we're getting nothing but FFXIII games and those of us who loved XII are shit out of luck.

MagiusNecros · Sep 28, 2012

Always liked this article.

http://www.finalfantasy-fxn.net/boards/showthread.php?12209-This-Game-is-Such-a-Rip-Off

ponpo · Sep 28, 2012

You know, I'd love a JRPG with a great storyline, since FF13 and FF13-2 were the only FFs I can remember caring absolutely nothing about in regards to the story. I literally just skipped every story sequence I could.

They were, however, some of the best games this gen in terms of JRPG mechanics. Tales games are just different and most other Idea Factory, Gust et al. games are terrible in terms of game mechanics. FFXIII-2 has a really great battle system, IMO, so I can appreciate the effort they put towards that.

Now just put it towards characters / a story I can care about.

Aru · Sep 28, 2012

Well, I pretty much agree with that. Story-driven FF are my favorites.

PowderedToast · Sep 28, 2012

no they aren't. these are also old quotes, toriyama isn't as opposed to non-linearity as he used to be, as shown by FFXIII-2

AuthenticM · Sep 28, 2012

This is very sad indeed. I can't help but believe that their japanese corporate culture is hurting them. If Final Fantasy XIII had been made in the west, the backlash to the game would have forced the company's hand in changing the key people behind the game to make the next big one.

entremet · Sep 28, 2012

Did anyone care for Lightning, tho? Snow? Vanille? I did enjoy Sazh storyline, but it was pretty threadbare. And then the villians were boring as heck. The pope guy and the cute general with the glasses, barely developed.

MagiusNecros · Sep 28, 2012

entrement said:
Did anyone care for Lightning, tho? Snow? Vanille? I did enjoy Sazh storyline, but it was pretty threadbare.

Tory does.

GregLombardi · Sep 28, 2012

Absolutely awful. Talk about not understanding why the series became popular in the first place.

donkey show · Sep 28, 2012

entrement said:
Did anyone care for Lightning, tho?

Enough to get FFXIII-3!

PBMax · Sep 28, 2012

FFXIII series is one of most misunderstood, and under appreciated in history.

Eusis · Sep 28, 2012

Eh, I'd like to see if FFXV really is more Toriyama or if it turns out someone like, like Ito, takes control. Even Toriyama spent time with other games amidst those FFXIII titles, like that Wii FMA game and MindJack.

Even if it's not Ito though I do hope they juggle, part of the appeal of FF, particularly in the last decade and a half, was seeing different teams do their own take on it, rather than leaving it with only one team.

LiK · Sep 28, 2012

Linear design could be forgiven if the characters weren't written like morons like in FFXIII.

MagiusNecros · Sep 28, 2012

FF has ALWAYS been about a group of people who bond with each other through friendship to overcome difficult obstacles on a grand adventure.

Not so anymore with Tory at the Helm.

Castor Krieg · Sep 28, 2012

@MUWANdo said:
Every single one of those quotations is from a Wikipedia article.

There you will find separate sources for each quotation. I took them out when I edited the sentences for quotation.

Canis lupus · Sep 28, 2012

Too bad both the characters and story of XIII weren't memorable at all. Why do they keep forcing Lightning on us.

Mechanized · Sep 28, 2012

I think Lightning is a good character. The only good thing about that game. I hated her at first, but she grew on me.

lunchwithyuzo · Sep 28, 2012

Kawazu 4 XV!

snitsky · Sep 28, 2012

I actually liked XIII, but the story was pretty awful to begin with, even worse when that's all you really get for the first 10 hours. I didn't have an issue with the characters at all, just the story and the world. The lack of a decent villain didn't help either.

orioto · Sep 28, 2012

Bjoern the Smexy said:
The story in each of FF6 to FF9 was (imo) better than all of the stories of FF10 and up combined (except for FF12. Another "imo" though).
I really didn't like any FF after 9 (again: except for FF12). They were just...meh :\

Yes that's fucking ironic how the "non story-driven" strategy gives way better story than the Kitase one...
But it may be more complicated... From Wiki

"Hironobu Sakaguchi was originally the director of the game but couldn't put all his time and effort into it due to him becoming very busy at the time after becoming vice-president of the company and having a lot of other projects going on.[32] The story was also by Sakaguchi.[2] The event scenes and scenario of Final Fantasy VI were done by a group of four or five people, among them Yoshinori Kitase, and Sakaguchi was the director and story writer and had control over these aspects as well.[32] Like in Final Fantasy V, Kitase worked on the event scenes for the game for which Sakaguchi had complete control over.[32] However, Kitase went on to have more control of the event scenes after Sakaguchi stepped down as director of the project due to being too busy with other commitments.[32] Hiroyuki Ito was the game designer and responsible for all the gameplay aspects such as the battle system and character growth system.[1] He was also responsible for the pacing and flow of the entire game and tried to strike a balance between the gameplay and event scenes so the game didn't feel too story-driven.[1] He would again take on this role while directing Final Fantasy IX.[1][33] Tetsuya Takahashi, one of the game's graphic directors, designed the imperial Magitek Armors.[34][35] In the full motion videos produced for the game's PlayStation re-release, the character designs featured are based on Amano's designs.[36] While character sprites in the earlier installments were less detailed on the map than they were in battle, Final Fantasy VI's sprites had an equally high resolution regardless of the screen. This enabled the use of animations depicting a variety of movements and facial expressions.[37] Though it was not the first game to utilize the Super Nintendo's Mode 7 graphics, Final Fantasy VI made more extensive use of them than its predecessors. For instance, unlike both Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy V, the world map is rendered in Mode 7, which lends a somewhat three-dimensional perspective to an otherwise two-dimensional game.[38]"

Who, why... something like a good FF is a complicated mystery i guess... In the end i don't know if there is only a problem of how the story and gameplay are connected. FFVI just has ten times more interesting and mature plot and characters as recent FF...

MagiusNecros · Sep 28, 2012

snitsky said:
I actually liked XIII, but the story was pretty awful to begin with, even worse when that's all you really get for the first 10 hours. I didn't have an issue with the characters at all, just the story and the world. The lack of a decent villain didn't help either.

Shame the English VA for Barthy would go on to voice the greatest Nintendo Villain ever.

Did you know the first Dissidia's story and character bastardization was written by Toriyama?

The more you know.

Waldo Lydecker · Sep 28, 2012

I am still waiting at the Zodiac edition of FFXII. Please port it to Vita please together with FFX HD (if it still exists anyway) and FF Type-0 and then release Versus and nobody talks about the decline of FF anymore.

MagiusNecros · Sep 28, 2012

Waldo Lydecker said:
I am still waiting at the Zodiac edition of FFXII. Please port it to Vita please together with FFX HD (if it still exists anyway) and FF Type-0 and then release Versus and nobody talks about the decline of FF anymore.

Square has an Ultima box for FF 25th Anniversary and they dictated to include FFVII Int. but exclude the Int. version of FFX and XII.

Yep.

Ezalc · Sep 28, 2012

This depresses me greatly. How I wish for something like IX again, at least Bravely Default looks good too bad it hasn't been announced for NA.

Castor Krieg · Sep 28, 2012

Waldo Lydecker said:
I am still waiting at the Zodiac edition of FFXII. Please port it to Vita please together with FFX HD (if it still exists anyway) and FF Type-0 and then release Versus and nobody talks about the decline of FF anymore.

Bolded ones have no Toriyama writing the plot, don't know about FFX HD, probably not as well. The guys seems to be busy running the main series into the ground and doesn't have time for distractions.

I wonder if people at S-E feel if Versus is turning out to be vastly superior than what Kitase/Toriyama created with FFXIII, and as a result people are actively trying to stall its development? Crazy theory, but given what I wrote in the OP it might make sense.

Syril · Sep 28, 2012

entrement said:
Did anyone care for Lightning, tho? Snow? Vanille? I did enjoy Sazh storyline, but it was pretty threadbare. And then the villians were boring as heck. The pope guy and the cute general with the glasses, barely developed.

I actually liked the main party for about half the game. Then all semblance of character development suddenly ceased, and every line out of them became inane and generic, almost as if the second half of the game was written by someone else entirely (which is what apparently happened).

Loona · Sep 28, 2012

Seeing Sakaguchi recommend the guy behind Dissidia made perfect sense, that's love for series' history right there, and if his other stuff's good, all the better.

Riposte · Sep 28, 2012

I can't express disappointment when the main appeal of Final Fantasy has always been (or at least for the extent is has been considered a successful series in the US) something akin to an interactive movie: VISUALS, MUSIC, PLOT (in a time where plot was rare on consoles), and... dull, unbalanced mechanics alongside a linear story progression (which is fine) and a bunch of filler disguised as exploration.

PBMax said:
FFXIII series is one of most misunderstood, and under appreciated in history.

Maybe in the history of that one series. That is to say Final Fantasy isn't a very good series and XIII served me better than most of the games, my childhood aside.

Yoshinori Kitase defended choices made with Final Fantasy XIII, saying that it was more important for the player to be engaged with the story and characters before allowing them to get involved with elements of gameplay such as the battle system, character customization and world exploration.

That's pretty funny. They don't recognize that their design choices might have been good for the "gameplay" so to speak, which betrays they have no idea how to improve on those choices (FFXIII-2 strongly cemented that idea). What people liked most about FFXIII was the battle system and certainly not the story or characters (though it would be dishonest to say you couldn't see them putting more effort in character development than previous games in the series).

MagiusNecros · Sep 28, 2012

Castor Krieg said:
Bolded ones have no Toriyama writing the plot, don't know about FFX HD, probably not as well. The guys seems to be busy running the main series into the ground and doesn't have time for distractions.

I wonder if people at S-E feel if Versus is turning out to be vastly superior than what Kitase/Toriyama created with FFXIII, and as a result people are actively trying to stall its development? Crazy theory, but given what I wrote in the OP it might make sense.

Well I'm sure The 3rd Birthday and Front Mission: Evolved help Toriyama's case here.

Nirolak · Sep 28, 2012

I probably wouldn't hold my breath for an Ito FF given that he seems to have been moved to the company's social games division.

base shagohod · Sep 28, 2012

I don't necessarily disagree that FF should be focused mainly on the characters.. But when he says shit like that and the story turns out convoluted as fuck and all the characters (except for one) are terrible, how does that make any sense?

BadWolf · Sep 28, 2012

Only FF I haven't finished since starting to play the series with FF7 is FF9 (just doesn't click for some reason), other than that I love pretty much all of them and have trouble picking faves.

FFX and FFXIII were fantastic imo.

The great thing about the series though is that even if you don't like one then you don't have to worry because they change things up quite a bit with each new main instalment. Look at how different FFXII and FFXIII are in pretty much every aspect, for example.

Ooccoo · Sep 28, 2012

Final Fantasy used to be an event. Now you barely notice new games in the series.

TheSeks · Sep 28, 2012

Mechanized said:
I think Lightning is a good character. The only good thing about that game. I hated her at first, but she grew on me.

She's just... there. Like the majority of 13's cast.

I absolutely LOATHED Serah though. No point other than being a main plot device.

BadWolf · Sep 28, 2012

Ooccoo said:
Final Fantasy used to be an event. Now you barely notice new games in the series.

Its still an event for me tbh, I just stick to the main series and ignore everything else they do with the IP though.

genjiZERO · Sep 28, 2012

Does Kitase even have any creative control over the games or is he just managing schedules?

One problem with Final Fantasy is that it's too expensive and would take too much time on modern consoles to flesh out a world as grand as in the previous installments. Also, there's a major talent drought at Square right now.

Additionally, the games have become overly baroque. What they need to do is pare down the stories and let the players' imaginations take over. Even back when the stories were good they were still more simplistic than the stories nowadays. They need to world build not story build. Demon's/Dark Souls had some of the best stories for JRPGs this generation, and actual storytelling was practically nonexistent. The same was true for Ico and SotC last generation. They're Japanese - they should embrace what the Japanese do best - Minimalism and telling the story off-screen. Their whole staff could use a screening of Tokyo Story for inspiration.

shira · Sep 28, 2012

Bjoern the Smexy said:
The story in each of FF6 to FF9 was (imo) better than all of the stories of FF10 and up combined

The magic has truly been lost.

Eusis · Sep 28, 2012

Nirolak said:
I probably wouldn't hold my breath for an Ito FF given that he seems to have been moved to the company's social games division.

It really is disappointing how much of the industry's talent that movement seems to be eating up. I'd probably be less frustrated if more reliably stuff I seriously enjoyed (or cared about anyway) was produced as a result. My best hope is probably just going to be that stuff like that IS filler between bigger projects.

Kyoufu · Sep 28, 2012

Only Lord Nomura can save us.

batbeg · Sep 28, 2012

The present tense used in the title baffles me. Kitase and Toriyamas utter grip on the franchise baffles me.

TheSeks · Sep 28, 2012

MagiusNecros said:
Well I'm sure The 3rd Birthday and Front Mission: Evolved help Toriyama's case here.

Oh god. Armored Core: Evolved can't be as bad as We Shit on Aya Fans' Brithday, right?

Seda · Sep 28, 2012

I really really liked FFX, but couldn't stand FFXIII. Both are linear, and largely story driven. There's more to it than that.

YAWN · Sep 28, 2012

Just make Dissidia 3 and FF IX-2 with Ito as director and Yoshida as lead artist.

Stark · Sep 28, 2012

I pretty much agree with them. I've preferred and liked the story-driven FF's more- Including FFXIII.

So not really destroying it for me at all.

Support NeoGAF

Kitase & Toriyama are destroying Final Fantasy

Banned

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance

Member

Member

Banned

Member

Banned

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance

( ââ¿â)

Member

Junior Member

Member

Member

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance

Banned

Member

Member

Banned

Member

Good Art

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance

Member

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance

Member

Banned

Member

Member

Member

Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance

Mrgrgr

Member

Member

Member

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Member

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.

Member

Ask me which Shakespeare novel is best

Banned

Similar threads

( ââ¿â)

Good Art