I'll quote directly from the article I linked. * Great hand in writing and directing their scenes together, including eventual death of Aeris * Focused on the build up of Aeris' character to maximize impact of the death scene * Had almost total freedom and license to do what they wanted, granted by Kitase the director
And if you read the article, he said the idea of Aeris dying had a great impact on the staff. He says right up front he didn't come up with the idea, and I never said he did. That whole thing was a huge derail by you guys. He focused on executing the scene, and maximizing effective character build up for the scene through scene direction, and through the writing.
The 'great hand' statement was an embellishment by the interviewer. You might also note that Toriyama uses the plural 'we', which would imply that the buildup of Aeris and Cloud's relationship is not a work solely his own.
In that respect, how can you pick Toriyama out as the singular big name of the event planners that worked on 7? Do you know he did the execution, the maximization, came up with the effective scenes? You don't know who else possibly came up with those ideas. Or even if he is the guy who executed them well.
The 'great hand' statement was an embellishment by the interviewer. You might also note that Toriyama uses the plural 'we', which would imply that the buildup of Aeris and Cloud's relationship is not a work solely his own.
In that respect, how can you pick Toriyama out as the singular big name of the event planners that worked on 7? Do you know he did the execution, the maximization, came up with the effective scenes? You don't know who else possibly came up with those ideas. Or even if he is the guy who executed them well.
I didn't pick him out as a singular name. This whole time I've been saying it's teams of people who work on everything.
I said he was a key person involved in that scene, and he absolutely was. I was 100% correct. My source is Toriyama himself in a recent interview.
I never said he came up with the idea.
The case you guys are making is that the author of that article sat down for an interview face to face with Toriyama, about his role in FFVII, and then turned around and made up a bunch of embellishments completely on his own? Why? A news article is not only legitimate with direct quotes for every single line. It's a sourced interview. End of story. You guys are just being way too stubborn. And all your rebuttals don't even have links that back up anything you're contesting.
This is just proving my point. You guys won't accept it when it's right in front of you, in plain English, and sourced.
The author of the article is Dave Cook. You should email him and see if he's a liar and made it up. Maybe he has tape recordings of the interview? You can do voice analysis on it and see if it's really Toriyama.
I'm not even sure what this argument is about anymore. I'm also not sure what it has to do with this thread any further, seeing as how it seems mostly about Toriyama, and he has nothing to do with FFXV whatsoever. Kinda weird...
I'm not even sure what this argument is about anymore. I'm also not sure what it has to do with this thread any further, seeing as how it seems mostly about Toriyama, and he has nothing to do with FFXV whatsoever. Kinda weird...
The author of the article is Dave Cook. You should email him and see if he's a liar and made it up. Maybe he has tape recordings of the interview? You can do voice analysis on it and see if it's really Toriyama.
I should mention that I'm not calling anyone a liar. I can easily see why someone would find it believable that Toriyama had this "great hand" in everything, and such interviews call for a certain degree of narrative. It happens.
I didn't pick him out as a singular name. This whole time I've been saying it's teams of people who work on everything.
I said he was a key person involved in that scene, and he absolutely was. I was 100% correct. My source is Toriyama himself in a recent interview.
I never said he came up with the idea.
The case you guys are making is that the author of that article sat down for an interview face to face with Toriyama, about his role in FFVII, and then turned around and made up a bunch of embellishments completely on his own? Why? A news article is not only legitimate with direct quotes for every single line. It's a sourced interview. End of story. You guys are just being way too stubborn. And all your rebuttals don't even have links that back up anything you're contesting.
This is just proving my point. You guys won't accept it when it's right in front of you, in plain English, and sourced.
The guy isn't some nobody, no matter how much people want to pretend he is, while glossing over every other sub-par thing Nomura and Tabata have done. Toriyama co-directed FFX, and had a large role in the project. He was one of the key people involved in FFVII, like Nomura. He's worked his way up over 15 years.
Except, Toriyama is not a key person in FF7's development. The line you keep drawing from the VG247 article is an embellishment by the writer. Toriyama himself uses the plural 'we' with regards to his involvement in building up Aeris. The so-called 'great hand' is unclear. You were the one giving him additional credit that he may or may not deserve, so the onus was on you to prove it, and you attempt to prove it using an article in which Toriyama himself does not delineate exactly what he did other than devoting his efforts to developing the Cloud-Aeris relationship, but he also indicates that other members did the same as well.
By 'embellishment', I want you to understand that I do not mean the author intended to make a false statement, but rather an exaggerated statement about Toriyama's role, to make the interview feel more dramatic.
No, you are not 100% correct. You don't have better evidence for Toriyama specifically being a 'key person' in FF7, especially since he didn't come up with the Aeris death, he probably didn't come up with some of the Aeris scenes, and god knows who combed over what in the writing involved.
I think your chief mistake was to bring his credit on FF7 in as a legitimate plus for the man, but you overreached by calling him important. He worked on FF7. But he wasn't important. It would be better if you supported him through works in which he is the helm of, because at that position he bears the responsibility of the whole project. Admittedly even then who did what can be vague.
If they put FF15 on PC, I expect a glorious gallery of screenshots on DeadEndThrills.
By 'embellishment', I want you to understand that I do not mean the author intended to make a false statement, but rather an exaggerated statement about Toriyama's role, to make the interview feel more dramatic.
I don't think he embellished at all. The article is literally called "Final Fantasy anniversary interview: Toriyama speaks."
I emailed Dave Cook to see if he's interested in clarifying what he wrote so I'll let you guys know if he responds.
This is the subtitle of the article, literally.
"Final Fantasy turns 25 in December. VG247′s Dave Cook spoke with director Motomu Toriyama about its appeal, plus his involvement in ‘that’ death."
I'm probably lobbing gasoline into a wildfire, but for me the primary reason will forever be The Third Birthday's story. I feel there has to be some way to wreck a train and murder a franchise that doesn't involve attempting to kill the player, too.
Toryiama has one of the best eyes for gameplay out of all SE Directors.
X-2, XIII, and XIII-2 as well as Third Birthday show he can really pick out amazing gameplay systems. Square shouldn't get rid of him by any means, just keep him away from the Directors chair and have him working on the gameplay side of things could produce some truly amazing titles.
Toriyama is a simply put, a joke. He has no idea what a FF is and should have been the last person in the company Kitase/execs turned to when it came to directing the next big numbered installment.
He's not a story teller, he's not a good director, he actually fucks everything he touches (farewell Front Mission), and thank god he doesn't seem to be involved in any way with XV.
After Sakaguchi quit, Kitase pretty much became the de-facto main FF producer/guy to go to. So the real question is, what did Kitase see in Toriyama in the first place? Were the other potential guys busy with other project? Is Kitase secretly an horrible-to-work-with egomaniac type of dude everyone in the company wanted to avoid working with? Are Kitase-Toriyama secret lovers?
Or is Kitase just an incompetent producer who bet on the wrong guy without Sakaguchi around to oversee things..?
There's a lot of misinformation about what people are doing within the company. I'm not claiming to be the expert on it, but if Toriyama wrote 3rd Birthday, then Watanabe wrote XIII and XIII-2. He can't be blamed for all if it. You either blame him for the XIII games and blame Tabata for 3rd, or you blame Toriyama for 3rd and Watanabe for XIII.
Also, a lot of what people hate about 3rd's story is that it doesn't perfectly follow the terminology and mitochondria focus of the others. But they literally lost the rights to Parasite Eve, which was a book before SQEX made the first game. Toriyama did not have the option of following in that storyline perfectly and had to make something new. Some elements of the story are pretty great, like the
twist of playing as Eve, the use of time travel elements, and the ending in particular
. Some parts are a little confusing. It's not really clear if Toriyama wrote out the story concept only, or if he wrote out dialogue. And we don't really know what the story looked like on paper. They have event scene directors that take that and then interpret it, then a game director above that. Toriyama gets blamed for the English translation of "moms are tough" even though he probably didn't even write the dialogue in Japanese even. I kind of doubt he did more than the story concept in 3rd Birthday.
People also blame Toriyama for stuff like Aya's costume, or Aya's voice acting, or Aya's battle cries, or Aya's clothing battle damage even though he has nothing to do with that. Is Tabata obsessed with Aya and wants her to be his girlfriend like everyone always says about Toriyama and Lightning?
No one else seems to give Toriyama a pass when he had the most difficult FF directing job ever probably. He was the first to work on a huge project with the Cell programming architecture, and with the Crystal Tools engine, both things completely out of his control. He was the first to make an HD FF game, something that balloons staff and art demands. At the time that XIII came out, tons of other series made the exact same calculation that he did. They saw the demands of HD development and made more linear games, like Uncharted, Gears of War, Mass Effect, and on and on.
After XIII was released and people criticized several elements of it, Toriyama was able to make several substantial adjustments with limited development resources and limited development time. More open environments, more mini-games, battle system adjustments, much less linearity, backtracking through environments, side quests, dialogue choice options, multiple endings. That was all within 1.5 years. And with Lightning Returns, it looks like he's done it again, possibly with even less development resources - only now there are 100 color-customizable costumes, a new battle system, more open environments, side quests, real time day night cycles, and a majora's mask style gameplay system.
If we ever saw Toriyama on a new project, it would be the first time we got to see him try again since 2008, without having to make a project using existing assets, less budget, and less development time. Nobody knows what his next real game ideas would be, and they would probably be pretty different.
The guy isn't some nobody, no matter how much people want to pretend he is, while glossing over every other sub-par thing Nomura and Tabata have done. Toriyama co-directed FFX, and had a large role in the project. He was one of the key people involved in FFVII, like Nomura. He's worked his way up over 15 years.
I just think that we don't really have a clear idea of what his job actually even is. There is a battle system designer for Type-0, and it's not Tabata I'm sure. There is a battle system designer for Lightning Returns, and it's not Toriyama. There is a writer for Lightning Returns, and it's not Toriyama. He doesn't do the character designs either. These are huge projects. The game director is the one that tries to get these people all working together efficiently so their work can be combined into a real project. And while XIII had issues with that, he was probably in the most challenging director spot in FF history, given the Cell and Crystal Tools issues. The guy still managed to get the game out, and then 2 sequels in record time for the series. Those skills aren't easy for SQEX to come by, and personally, I think it's naive and misinformed to think he's going to vanish within the company.
I'm not saying he'll do a mainline FF game, because he's already done 5 of them now in a directorial capacity. Personally, I'm always fine seeing new people. But he'll still do something I'm sure. I doubt it will be XVI. I'm sure that's already being worked on right now.
Very well said. Its also through Toriyama's trials and tribulations in the lightning saga that they learned about HD development and production efficiency for FF games. He admitted mistakes were done throughout the production of FFXIII and the second two games were sincere attempts to correct that.
He has considerably more experience regarding HD developments now and SE WILL employ him over the next big project.Even if 16 gets directed by Itou ,Toriyama maybe needed to step in and co direct.
Obviously , SE doesn't consider him a failure of a director as much some fans would like to think. He will still be given relatively big responsibilities in the future and ,hopefully, will show his abilities.He has gathered enough experience.
No, what I hate of 3rd Birthday is that it dosn't make any fucking sense. The dialogue is atrocious and the whole time travel could hurt people brains.
I don't know how the twist or the ending can be considered great.
Toryiama has one of the best eyes for gameplay out of all SE Directors.
X-2, XIII, and XIII-2 as well as Third Birthday show he can really pick out amazing gameplay systems. Square shouldn't get rid of him by any means, just keep him away from the Directors chair and have him working on the gameplay side of things could produce some truly amazing titles.
This. If there's one redeeming quality about Toriyama is that he creates fun battle systems. X-2 and XIII-2 were among the better battle systems I've played in a FF game and it looks like LR is on track too. However, the story and character development in those games... I agree just keep him on for gameplay and don't let him touch anything else.
Very well said. Its also through Toriyama's trials and tribulations in the lightning saga that they learned about HD development and production efficiency for FF games. He admitted mistakes were done throughout the production of FFXIII and the second two games were sincere attempts to correct that.
He has considerably more experience regarding HD developments now and SE WILL employ him over the next big project.Even if 16 gets directed by Itou ,Toriyama maybe needed to step in and co direct.
Obviously , SE doesn't consider him a failure of a director as much some fans would like to think. He will still be given relatively big responsibilities in the future and ,hopefully, will show his abilities.He has gathered enough experience.
Toryiama has one of the best eyes for gameplay out of all SE Directors.
X-2, XIII, and XIII-2 as well as Third Birthday show he can really pick out amazing gameplay systems. Square shouldn't get rid of him by any means, just keep him away from the Directors chair and have him working on the gameplay side of things could produce some truly amazing titles.
Except he's a story guy, his roots are in event planning. Gameplay and battle design are directed by other people. It's entirely possible that maybe he's a genius at gameplay, but for 10-2 that distinction falls to Takatsugu Nakazawa, for 13 and 13-2 the guy who pulled it together is Yuji Abe (Nakazawa is also support on 13), and for 3rd bday the man to credit is Hajime Tabata.
Except he's a story guy, his roots are in event planning. Gameplay and battle design are directed by other people. It's entirely possible that maybe he's a genius at gameplay, but for 10-2 that distinction falls to Takatsugu Nakazawa, for 13 and 13-2 the guy who pulled it together is Yuji Abe (Nakazawa is also support on 13), and for 3rd bday the man to credit is Hajime Tabata.
While all true, it is still the director's job who has final say and it's because Toriyama saw the postives of these systems that they made it into the games.
It shouldn't be overlooked that if he wanted different systems in place they would've been, however he didn't and he can see and push a great system in his games. This is why I said he has an eye for it, maybe the best out of all the directors.
This. If there's one redeeming quality about Toriyama is that he creates fun battle systems. X-2 and XIII-2 were among the better battle systems I've played in a FF game and it looks like LR is on track too. However, the story and character development in those games... I agree just keep him on for gameplay and don't let him touch anything else.
When massaging his sack talking about Sakaguchi, people seem to forget about that 94 million dollar mistake called Spirits Within that nearly killed Square at the time.
You can't believe he "quit" because he wanted to of his own volition.
I think Toriyama can actually be great in a slightly reduced role that doesn't directly involve writing. For example, I think the FFX team structure worked remarkably well, with Toriyama as Event Director, Nojima as Scenario Writer, and Kitase as Producer.
When massaging his sack talking about Sakaguchi, people seem to forget about that 94 million dollar mistake called Spirits Within that nearly killed Square at the time.
You can't believe he "quit" because he wanted to of his own volition.
His role? Well he single-handedly lead a team that caused the brand to fall out of favor in a single generation. I'd say that's some sort of achievement.
His role? Well he single-handedly lead a team that caused the brand to fall out of favor in a single generation. I'd say that's some sort of achievement.
And Nomura has been good in single-handedly killing "Kingdom Hearts" too! Right?
There are alot of reasons why FF shrinked, but the main chapter still sold bombastic and XV will probably sell as much. That alone will show that XIII didn't damage anything.
Sequels should not count when talking about this series. Square Enix has an history in regards to these where every sequel or spin off always sold way less than their main chapter. Differently from Mass Effect 2 or Assassin's Creed 2 or Uncharted 2, Square Enix can't keep fans buying the same stuff twice. Yes, it's strange as it sounds.
And Nomura has been good in single-handedly killing "Kingdom Hearts" too! Right?
There are alot of reasons why FF shrinked, but the main chapter still sold bombastic and XV will probably sell as much. That alone will show that XIII didn't damage anything.
Sequels should not count when talking about this series. Square Enix has an history in regards to these where every sequel or spin off always sold way less than their main chapter. Differently from Mass Effect 2 or Assassin's Creed 2 or Uncharted 2, Square Enix can't keep fans buying the same stuff twice. Yes, it's strange as it sounds.
It's funny you mention these three games specifically. They're all very notable releases of the generation and for each the biggest reason is that they were massive improvements of their predecessors. They represented the franchises growing and coming into their own and setting the standard for the games that followed them.
Square Enix' sequels haven't been successful because they aren't like that. If anything they're the polar opposite.
FFX-2 undermines a sad yet meaningful, satisfying conclusion to FFX. Revenant Wings stars the characters from FFXII that everyone thinks of last, if at all. FFXIII-2 wears it's focus testing on it's sleeve and it lazily "fixes" old problems while creating new ones.
So it isn't SE's fate to release sequels that don't live up to their predecessors; it's an incredibly stupid thing they just keep allowing to happen for who knows why.
It's funny you mention these three games specifically. They're all very notable releases of the generation and for each the biggest reason is that they were massive improvements of their predecessors. They represented the franchises growing and coming into their own and setting the standard for the games that followed them.
Square Enix' sequels haven't been successful because they aren't like that. If anything they're the polar opposite.
FFX-2 undermines a sad yet meaningful, satisfying conclusion to FFX. Revenant Wings stars the characters from FFXII that everyone thinks of last, if at all. FFXIII-2 wears it's focus testing on it's sleeve and it lazily "fixes" old problems while creating new ones.
So it isn't SE's fate to release sequels that don't live up to their predecessors; it's an incredibly stupid thing they just keep allowing to happen for who knows why.
That's also true. I get the feeling with XV they're working on changing that. As a sequel is expected, I think they also want that one to surpass its predecessor. They seem already confident with expanding that universe so... I guess we will see if they can change the trend.
That's also true. I get the feeling with XV they're working on changing that. As a sequel is expected, I think they also want that one to surpass its predecessor. They seem already confident with expanding that universe so... I guess we will see if they can change the trend.
I stopped following the game director drama after FF12, and wanted to smash my controller while playing FFXIII ("Ok we get to explore now, right, right ??").
Can someone explain to me why toriyama is hated on so much ?
Toriyama accepted the job knowing full well that he was being given the chance to succeed due to his ideas, or fail and become ridiculed for his incompetence. Ultimately he is the one who is responsible for the final product that FF fans received.
And before anyone posts the sales of FFXIII. Like Diablo III, the previous entries into the franchise and ITSINHDOMGWOW! was the primary factor in selling the new title to consumers.
As dubious as a director Toriyama is (just because the team was "getting adjusted to HD" doesn't automatically make him immune to fault or criticism in their failings), 3rd Birthday and Front Mission Evolved cements the fact that he's just not a good writer.
Duckroll already covered his position in 3rd Birthday (hell, in some of the translated interviews where Toriyama showed up, he was the one person who would show up to talk about the story; it's pretty clear that he had a senior position in regards to the story).
What is not debatable is his role in Front Mission Evolved (his position was senior scriptwriter, I think, even above Watanabe), which is also a completely awful story and script even in terms of conventional mecha tropes, let alone the Front Mission series.
Okay, I'm going to claim to be an "expert" on it and clarify some points. My "expertise" here is that I have played most of these games in Japanese, I understand them, and I've also read a bunch of interviews with the creators for these games, and so this is what I gather from it. I think there are some good points in the rest of your post, but at the same time I also feel you have certain things confused which clouds the issue.
- First and foremost, Toriyama is a story director kind of guy. Before he started directing entire game projects in S-E, he was mostly a scenario writer and general story designer on many projects. Tabata on the other hand is a game designer who was previously at Tecmo. When he joined S-E, he was part of the mobile division, and has been leading projects all along, starting with smaller mobile ones, and then being moved to Crisis Core and so on.
- For The 3rd Birthday, Toriyama was the Scenario Director. Less of a script writer (there were a bunch of writers on the project) and more of a team lead for the writing staff. He is responsible for the general story, the outline, and most of the stupid plot twists. When The 3rd Birthday was originally a mobile game, they were planning it like a TV series, with episodes, and Toriyama was like the showrunner for the story side.
- Toriyama is also the story lead for the FFXIII games he directs. Watanabe is the main script writer, but the story direction comes from Toriyama. Unlike The 3rd Birthday and the Dissidia games, where Toriyama is the Scenario Director/Supervisor, FFXIII games have no such credit. So there's no one other than Toriyama doing the overall planning. Watanabe writes the actual dialogue (and he can take a fair share of blame for long-winded and boring conversations which lack the snappiness of Nojima's dialogue) but the structure of the plot and what happens to the characters comes from Toriyama's direction. He has said this himself.
- This is the main difference between how FFXIII is made and how The 3rd Birthday was made. It is why Toriyama does deserve "blame" if someone doesn't like the story in either game, regardless of who was the main director. In the end, it's about who was responsible for the majority of the ideas.
- But having said that, I'm sure that Tabata is as much of a "pervert" as Toriyama is. Both The 3rd Birthday and FF Type-0 have strange pervy stuff which involve fanservice, creepshots, and female characters in various states of undress in scenes which serve only to titillate the presumably male audience who are used to this sort of thing in anime and manga. No point trying to twist a reality where Tabata is some pure noble dude, and Toriyama is secretly sneaking dirty stuff into his games. Toriyama had nothing to do with Type-0.
And Nomura has been good in single-handedly killing "Kingdom Hearts" too! Right?
There are alot of reasons why FF shrinked, but the main chapter still sold bombastic and XV will probably sell as much. That alone will show that XIII didn't damage anything.
Sequels should not count when talking about this series. Square Enix has an history in regards to these where every sequel or spin off always sold way less than their main chapter. Differently from Mass Effect 2 or Assassin's Creed 2 or Uncharted 2, Square Enix can't keep fans buying the same stuff twice. Yes, it's strange as it sounds.
Yeah, exactly. All generation long people have been talking about the death of Kingdom Hearts. Not even a single console or mainline entry this whole generation until this year, and it's just an HD remaster. Look at the sales of Kingdom Hearts 2 and compare them to the sales of Kingdom Hearts 3DS. You nailed it. Kingdom Hearts is usually only referenced now as a running joke of a series with a story so complicated no one can understand it. Not the best brand image.
His role? Well he single-handedly lead a team that caused the brand to fall out of favor in a single generation. I'd say that's some sort of achievement.
No lol. Like I said, there are a lot of other factors involved that impacted development. While he was the team lead, his whole project was constantly at odds with the Crystal Tools engine which it wasn't his responsibility to develop. The PS3 cell architecture hobbled tons of developers this gen. Valve didn't even want to learn how to program for PS3 until years later. It was unusually challenging and complicated for everyone.
And if we're talking about brand issues, he hardly did anything single-handedly. XIV was this gen and was by far SQEX's biggest problem. FF Type-0 was never localized, and that has nothing to do with Toriyama. FF Versus XIII has been MIA for 7 years and I'm sure that didn't help things (also Nomura, in addition to the sharp decline in Kingdom Hearts sales. Nomura was also so hobbled by the PS3 that he had to move to next gen and so hobbled by Crystal Tools he had to incorporate Luminous and middleware.). SQEX also tried some bad mobile entries out like All the Bravest, had nothing to do with Toriyama. FFXIII was also the first FF title to release when internet commenting was prominent, so that people could just spend 4 years trying to destroy the FF brand every day of the week, like you see on this website. That's new. It was also the first to have to deal with tabloid style blogs that favor WRPGs which were largely new to console gamers this gen and report on most anything related to FF in an east vs west narrative. That's new.
The list goes on and on. If you really believe one guy caused FF brand damage, then you're grossly oversimplifying things, like I said in my earlier posts. And when FFXV hits, it will sell pretty damn well, so the idea of there being any lasting brand damage is really up for debate. It'll be interesting to see if XIV: ARR can recover too.
Also, why is Tanaka gone and not Toriyama? Provide a logical answer and I'll be interested. If it was all one man as you say, why is he still employed when others aren't?
Yeah, exactly. All generation long people have been talking about the death of Kingdom Hearts. Not even a single console or mainline entry this whole generation until this year, and it's just an HD remaster. Look at the sales of Kingdom Hearts 2 and compare them to the sales of Kingdom Hearts 3DS. You nailed it. Kingdom Hearts is usually only referenced now as a running joke of a series with a story so complicated no one can understand it. Not the best brand image.
No lol. Like I said, there are a lot of other factors involved that impacted development. While he was the team lead, his whole project was constantly at odds with the Crystal Tools engine which it wasn't his responsibility to develop. The PS3 cell architecture hobbled tons of developers this gen. Valve didn't even want to learn how to program for PS3 until years later. It was unusually challenging and complicated for everyone.
And if we're talking about brand issues, he hardly did anything single-handedly. XIV was this gen and was by far SQEX's biggest problem. FF Type-0 was never localized, and that has nothing to do with Toriyama. FF Versus XIII has been MIA for 7 years and I'm sure that didn't help things (also Nomura, in addition to the sharp decline in Kingdom Hearts sales. Nomura was also so hobbled by the PS3 that he had to move to next gen and so hobbled by Crystal Tools he had to incorporate Luminous and middleware.). SQEX also tried some bad mobile entries out like All the Bravest, had nothing to do with Toriyama. FFXIII was also the first FF title to release when internet commenting was prominent, so that people could just spend 4 years trying to destroy the FF brand every day of the week, like you see on this website. That's new. It was also the first to have to deal with tabloid style blogs that favor WRPGs which were largely new to console gamers this gen and report on most anything related to FF in an east vs west narrative. That's new.
The list goes on and on. If you really believe one guy caused FF brand damage, then you're grossly oversimplifying things, like I said in my earlier posts. And when FFXV hits, it will sell pretty damn well, so the idea of there being any lasting brand damage is really up for debate. It'll be interesting to see if XIV: ARR can recover too.
Also, why is Tanaka gone and not Toriyama? Provide a logical answer and I'll be interested. If it was all one man as you say, why is he still employed when others aren't?
Yeah, exactly. All generation long people have been talking about the death of Kingdom Hearts. Not even a single console or mainline entry this whole generation until this year, and it's just an HD remaster. Look at the sales of Kingdom Hearts 2 and compare them to the sales of Kingdom Hearts 3DS. You nailed it. Kingdom Hearts is usually only referenced now as a running joke of a series with a story so complicated no one can understand it. Not the best brand image.
Nomura is also the one that created Kingdom Hearts in the first place. KH 1-2, BBS, and even 3D were all solid games. The biggest mistake there was not releasing a mainline title on a console, and spreading the franchise out among all these different handhelds. Certainly, KH as a franchise should have been treated better, but I'd say the situation with Toriyama is rather different. Whereas I have faith KH3 is going to be great, it's very hard to give anything Toriyama is attached to the same faith, as literally everything Toriyama has touched over recent years has represented an absolute low of whatever franchise its associated with. That's why, personally, I find the situations difficult to compare.
No lol. Like I said, there are a lot of other factors involved that impacted development. While he was the team lead, his whole project was constantly at odds with the Crystal Tools engine which it wasn't his responsibility to develop. The PS3 cell architecture hobbled tons of developers this gen. Valve didn't even want to learn how to program for PS3 until years later. It was unusually challenging and complicated for everyone.
And if we're talking about brand issues, he hardly did anything single-handedly.
The list goes on and on. If you really believe one guy caused FF brand damage, then you're grossly oversimplifying things, like I said in my earlier posts.
All this I can more or less agree with, though. The development troubles FFXIII went through weren't all his fault. It wasn't his fault that Versus XIII took so long to take shape, that FXIV was an absolute disaster, that Square has used the FF brand for blatant cash grabs like ATB, or that all these solid handheld titles haven't been localized. There has been far too much wrong at Square to give him such a singular role in diminishing the FF brand. (On a side-note, this applies to Nomura and the KH brand, as well: isn't it understandable that while he's been tasked with releasing the next mainline FF game, he hasn't worked on KH3? Isn't the team doing KH3 now one that was sort of built up during KH handheld game development, or do I have that completely wrong?)
Still, the one thing I take issue with is that you seem to be downplaying Toriyama's responsibility for FFXIII. He was still the director. He wanted it to be a tight, story driven experience, where the player could fully experience the story without distraction, only to poorly execute that story and have a mediocre cast with terrible characterization from beginning to end. He's the one who decided it'd be great to go in a Call of Duty inspired direction. So yes, he was working in a tough environment, but that doesn't fully excuse what he came up with.
Toriyama told Kotaku that the design of Final Fantasy XIII doesn't follow the JRPG "template" intentionally, a choice that has received mixed response.
"The basic RPG functions are to go into towns, prepare for battle by going to shops, then go out in the field," Toriyama explained. "In that sense, Final Fantasy XIII doesn't have towns or shops—it's more that players are thrown into a story, presented with different situations as they move forward in the field and keep progressing that way."
Here's how that relates to Call of Duty, in Toriyama's mind.
"In that sense it's more similar to an FPS genre, like Call of Duty," he said. "That's not to say it's an action shooting game at all, so Final Fantasy XIII takes some different aspects of different genres, transcending different types of games."
His role? Well he single-handedly lead a team that caused the brand to fall out of favor in a single generation. I'd say that's some sort of achievement.
Still, the one thing I take issue with is that you seem to be downplaying Toriyama's responsibility for FFXIII. He was still the director. He wanted it to be a tight, story driven experience, where the player could fully experience the story without distraction, only to poorly execute that story and have a mediocre cast with terrible characterization from beginning to end. He's the one who decided it'd be great to go in a Call of Duty inspired direction. So yes, he was working in a tough environment, but that doesn't fully excuse what he came up with.
"In that sense it's more similar to an FPS genre, like Call of Duty," he said. "That's not to say it's an action shooting game at all, so Final Fantasy XIII takes some different aspects of different genres, transcending different types of games."
Still, the one thing I take issue with is that you seem to be downplaying Toriyama's responsibility for FFXIII. He was still the director. He wanted it to be a tight, story driven experience, where the player could fully experience the story without distraction, only to poorly execute that story and have a mediocre cast with terrible characterization from beginning to end. He's the one who decided it'd be great to go in a Call of Duty inspired direction. So yes, he was working in a tough environment, but that doesn't fully excuse what he came up with.
I'm not really trying to downplay it completely, just partially. I agree, he's the director and to a large extent, the buck stops there. That's part of the job. I'm just saying, so many people heap the entirety of the company's troubles on his shoulders that I think some downplaying is necessary to even it out and come to a rational picture of how things played out.
I agree, he has some responsibility for his games, clearly. I'm not saying otherwise. I just don't think he's Satan incarnate.
"In that sense it's more similar to an FPS genre, like Call of Duty," he said. "That's not to say it's an action shooting game at all, so Final Fantasy XIII takes some different aspects of different genres, transcending different types of games."
Obviously XIII didn't do him any favors. He was relatively unproven to take the mantle over from Kitase who directed some of the most successful games in the franchise. I think a lot of the opinions on Toriyama come down to what you think of X. I personally hate it so Toriyama was a no talent hack long before XIII.
No, not talking about first person or third person views.
I meant him trying to adopt a FPS game's traditionally paper-thin narrative? And COD at that?
So that's why XIII was like: 'Hey, this is a world totally different from yours. But we're not going to show you much of it. You can just look at it while you walk along this looong, straight path. Don't ever step outside of it though!'
Me: 'Wow graphics! Ok, corridor.... corridor... corridor.... Finally, we're leaving this place! Wow, a field! Maybe we'll meet some people here and find out what's going on............. Huh? We're going back up there?..... Oh hello Final Boss. WAT?'
