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[Go_Ly_Dow]

Overall, I was very very disappointed with how things turned out with this game. Whilst I was aware of the changes to the narrative, I was not prepared for just how much they stripped away from what they had been showing us for all these years. Leading up to the games launch, many speculated they weren't showing more CGI or cutscenes as they wished to keep surprises, but now that its out, it comes across as a lack of transparency and mismarketing.

E3 2013. Director: Nomura.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbwm-mzm5QA

Scenes/moments/Features not in the game. Noctis and Stella, Noctis in Insomnia, Ravus and Glauca, various Altissia CGI, Child Noctis and Regis, Altissia setpiece, Verstael scene, Signing treaty, Noctis and Cor CGI, Character switching, additional combat warp attacks.

TGS, September 2014. Director: Tabata. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3dyanB3pk

Missing scenes/moments/features: Adamantoise cinematic, offroad driving, Altissia CGI, red world of ruin settings, stronger narrative focus in the open world.

Jump Festa, December 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HvgPzpbLhM

Missing scenes/moments/features: Insomnia invasion scenes, various cutscenes (normal and CGI), world of ruin tease.

Gamescom Dawn Trailer, August 2015.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXMJTGna_xA

Missing scenes....pretty much all of it.

Dawn 2.0 trailer, September 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g1CwNw2i88

Again, 99% of it is missing in the game.

Uncovered Environments trailer, March 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTRVyyJ-yp8

Insomnia and Tenebrae teases. All through development they have teased concept art showing explorable parts of Insomnia, however the dream died when the game released.

Omen Trailer, November 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZymd6r4wGg

Having completed the game, I feel this trailer hinted towards a much more deeper fate for Noctis/Luna. What we got in the final game was just undercooked and this trailer just feels a bit pointless to me.

What does everyone think? Is this another round of NMS?

I hope they learn and announce FFXVI no sooner than a year before they intend to release it... and move on from this project asap.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

I don't think this is even remotely similar to the NMS situation.

Changes in story (which is exactly what almost everything here is) are completely different from showing/suggesting gameplay that literally doesn't exist.

That said, I'd be totally on board for not hearing about the next FF (or any game, really) until it's 6 months out, has all its features locked in, and can be shown for the first time in close to its final form.

 

[DarkLordMalik]

Tenebrae was never considered as explorable if we go by the latest leak. Same for Insomnia. My disappointment is Altissia didn't really end up much of a city.

The other missed potential was World of Ruin extended version.

As for the Omen trailer, it has already been confirmed to be a purely conceptual trailer with no ties to FFXV.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

I don't think this is even remotely similar to the NMS situation.

Changes in story (which is exactly what almost everything here is) are completely different from showing/suggesting gameplay that literally doesn't exist.

That said, I'd be totally on board for not hearing about the next FF (or any game, really) until it's 6 months out, has all its features locked in, and can be shown for the first time in close to its final form.

Not going to argue with you there. I really wish more publishers would use the Fallout 4 strategy. Square Enix is really really really really really bad about this.

 

[theofficefan99]

It is misleading marketing and if anyone defends this I'll be shocked. The only, truly, non-misleading trailers this game has are the TGS 2016 and Judgment trailers. These trailers feature what's in the actual final product, everything shown is actually part of the game. The other trailers, even Uncovered, feature heavily misleading visuals (aka scenes that look far worse in the final product) along with scenes and locations cut from the game. And that's from this year.

And you're also being a tad nice. For example, with the Dawn trailers you said "pretty much" all of it isn't in the game.

For both trailers, none of what is shown is in the game at all. Only exception is the scene with Luna shoving a gun away, and it looks far better there than in the final product.

And yes, every game gets things changed and cut. But you don't show it, and if you do, it has never been to this extent. Out of all the trailers there's a whopping two that aren't misleading, and they were shown within 2 months of release.

 

[Nightengale]

I feel like this is a messy reality of games marketing/devs creating seemingly final target render trailers/scenes for scenes they thought were going to be in the game 2-3 years out of the game's readiness to release, back when those scenes were just words in a script and storyboards on a panel that could very easily be rewritten/changed amidst a difficult 2-3 year dev cycle.

 

[DarkLordMalik]

E3 trailer was all pre-rendered concept and never going to be in the game. As for Insomnia invasion, we got it all in Kingsglaive.

It is misleading marketing and if anyone defends this I'll be shocked. The only, truly, non-misleading trailers this game has are the TGS 2016 and Judgment trailers. These trailers feature what's in the actual final product, everything shown is actually part of the game. The other trailers, even Uncovered, feature heavily misleading visuals (aka scenes that look far worse in the final product) along with scenes and locations cut from the game. And that's from this year.

And you're also being a tad nice. For example, with the Dawn trailers you said "pretty much" all of it isn't in the game.

For both trailers, none of what is shown is in the game at all. Only exception is the scene with Luna shoving a gun away, and it looks far better there than in the final product.

I am curious. What happened with Uncovered trailer?

 

[bomblord1]

Wasn't most of this in the supplementary stuff like the movie and demos?

 

[raven777]

I can understand stuff during Nomura's era not being in the final game due to changes in stuff, but lots of stuff post-Tabata not being in the game did feel weird.

 

[Nightengale]

I can understand stuff during Nomura's era not being in the final game due to changes in stuff, but lots of stuff post-Tabata not being in the game did feel weird.

SE Marketing: Hey, we need trailers for these events.
Biz Div 1: Huh, but asset wise they're not ready. Hey, Visual Works, here's some scripts, storyboard and existing game assets, polish up something.
VW: Here's a trailer.
*6 months later*
Biz Div 1: Shit, that scene in the script ended up having no real place in the game. Let's delete that. And that. And that.

 

[theofficefan99]

E3 trailer was all pre-rendered concept and never going to be in the game. As for Insomnia invasion, we got it all in Kingsglaive.


I am curious. What happened with Uncovered trailer?

-Daytime Iron Giant fight in Insomnia not in game
-Scene of Regis hugging child Noctis not in game
-Scene with Noctis in Leide putting on ring not in game (though that's being nitpicky, doesn't really matter)
-Daytime Tenebrae is shown. In the actual game you visit the station, at night, after it has already been burnt. You never get to see it anywhere close to this state, let alone explore it
-Train ride through snowy area.... all you really get to see is the equivalent of a "room" aka Shiva's head for a battle, and that's it.
-Titan's summoning sequence looks far worse in the actual game
-The scene with Luna getting up from her chair looks far worse in the actual game
-In general the entire Uncovered trailer features visuals that far exceed what is in the actual game

Also, the only "conceptual" part of E3 2013 was the "gameplay" stuff, but obviously they were working on making it a reality. And the CG cutscenes, well, obviously they were supposed to be used. I'm not seeing your point there other than you implying none of this was ever expected to be in the game or be remotely similar which is false. Only arguable thing is the Leviathan setpiece.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

-Daytime Iron Giant fight in Insomnia not in game
-Scene of Regis hugging child Noctis not in game
-Scene with Noctis in Leide putting on ring not in game (though that's being nitpicky, doesn't really matter)
-Daytime Tenebrae is shown. In the actual game you visit the station, at night, after it has already been burnt. You never get to see it anywhere close to this state, let alone explore it
-Train ride through snowy area.... all you really get to see is the equivalent of a "room" aka Shiva's head for a battle, and that's it.
-Titan's summoning sequence looks far worse in the actual game
-The scene with Luna getting up from her chair looks far worse in the actual game
-In general the entire Uncovered trailer features visuals that far exceed what is in the actual game

Also, the only "conceptual" part of E3 2013 was the "gameplay" stuff, but obviously they were working on making it a reality. And the CG cutscenes, well, obviously they were supposed to be used. I'm not seeing your point there other than you implying none of this was ever expected to be in the game or be remotely similar which is false. Only arguable thing is the Leviathan setpiece.

I just rewatched the Uncovered trailer, and I think you're *way* off in suggesting the trailer looks better than the released game, much less "far exceeds" in visuals. There's a few minor changes at best, otherwise the Uncovered trailer is entirely representative of the final game.

 

[Godan]

I understand games will not always look like their trailer but when so much from the trailers are not in the game is just a massive slap in the face to gamers.

Seems to be the norm now showing tons of things in trailers to get all them pre orders in only to have it cut from the final game because they want it out to make the moniez and not really care about how the final product is.

 

[formasymphonic]

E3 trailer was all pre-rendered concept and never going to be in the game. As for Insomnia invasion, we got it all in Kingsglaive.


I am curious. What happened with Uncovered trailer?

See this is one thing that gets me. We've never given other studios/devs a pass for this - why are we starting now?

If you show it so people expect it in your game and it's not there, then it's not there.

If Bungie or EA or Activision or anyone else showed target render footage for their games without the clear "footage pre-rendered / not representative of gameplay" type disclaimers, GAF and other places would be shredding them. I'm not saying you specifically, but why do we dismiss this criticism now for XV?

 

[MegaSackman]

I don't feel betrayed as in No Man's Sky (A game I still enjoyed), but I do think that the story is a disaster beyond my understanding. No one would deliver a script as incoherent as FFXV so I asume a lot of things happened during development.

 

[Kamitechi]

-Daytime Iron Giant fight in Insomnia not in game
-Scene of Regis hugging child Noctis not in game
-Scene with Noctis in Leide putting on ring not in game (though that's being nitpicky, doesn't really matter)
-Daytime Tenebrae is shown. In the actual game you visit the station, at night, after it has already been burnt. You never get to see it anywhere close to this state, let alone explore it
-Train ride through snowy area.... all you really get to see is the equivalent of a "room" aka Shiva's head for a battle, and that's it.
-Titan's summoning sequence looks far worse in the actual game
-The scene with Luna getting up from her chair looks far worse in the actual game
-In general the entire Uncovered trailer features visuals that far exceed what is in the actual game

Also, the only "conceptual" part of E3 2013 was the "gameplay" stuff, but obviously they were working on making it a reality. And the CG cutscenes, well, obviously they were supposed to be used. I'm not seeing your point there other than you implying none of this was ever expected to be in the game or be remotely similar which is false. Only arguable thing is the Leviathan setpiece.

Nothing that you have said is "Misleading" aside from king regis scene and that's a maybe, scrapping happens and you had multiple trailers after that as well, as you said, TGS and judgement.
- Iron giants are in the game, want a hint? fight one at night wait for the morning, hey you can fight it in the daytime, but not in insomnia, does it matter?
- Daytime Tenebrea was on the world of wonder tech trailer, yes a TECH TRAILER.
- Train ride - what's wrong here? you had the train going in the snow area, actually it's the same scene as in the trailer.
- Titan summoning and the scene with luna - optimization, they always happen near the end, new to gaming?

You guys are mixing tech trailers with gameplay trailers like it's the same thing.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

I understand games will not always look like their trailer but when so much from the trailers are not in the game is just a massive slap in the face to gamers.

Seems to be the norm now showing tons of things in trailers to get all them pre orders in only to have it cut from the final game because they want it out to make the moniez and not really care about how the final product is.

A 2016 ship date was agreed between Tabata and the head honchos. The failings of this game do rest with them. More time should have been granted if they wanted the best possible game.

 

[Dark_castle]

It boggles my mind some people could just straight up defends this shitty practice that Square Enix have made.

 

[120v]

kind of reminds me of Bioshock Infinite. yeah, it wasn't 1:1 with what we got, but "close enough"

not really enough for me to be upset over even though i'm not particularly enjoying the game. in defense of SE they were very open about the game's "finished" content in the homestretch leading up to release

 

[Arex]

imo showing Insomnia city and especially Tenebrae in their trailers (even though it's a tech trailer) while only having them as background in the game IS misleading.

Felt like they're trying to build expectation that the game world was bigger than it ended up.
I'm still most disappointed with the lack of explorable areas in Altissia though.

And those CG cutscenes.. I wish they found a way to include them in the game :\

 

[Cloud Strife]

I get the frustration, and I too am dissapointed. Honestly I'm just happy to have played the game at all after waiting 1/3 of my life for it. As for the trailers, kinda shitty and reveals the ambitious plans for the game...but I'm not sure what else can be done at this point.

I'm fine to just move on, forget about it and live my own life.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Nothing that you have said is "Misleading" aside from king regis scene and that's a maybe, scrapping happens and you had multiple trailers after that as well, as you said, TGS and judgement.
- Iron giants are in the game, want a hint? fight one at night wait for the morning, hey you can fight it in the daytime, but not in insomnia, does it matter?
- Daytime Tenebrea was on the world of wonder tech trailer, yes a TECH TRAILER.
- Train ride - what's wrong here? you had the train going in the snow area, actually it's the same scene as in the trailer.
- Titan summoning and the scene with luna - optimization, they always happen near the end, new to gaming?

You guys are mixing tech trailers with gameplay trailers like it's the same thing.

-If they scrapped the scenes, then why not scrap the trailers?
-It doesn't say tech trailer, it clearly states "Environments trailer". Here's the official description that S-E provided.

Check out some of the beautiful towns, gigantic cities and scenic backdrops which make up the world of Final Fantasy XV.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

See this is one thing that gets me. We've never given other studios/devs a pass for this - why are we starting now?

If you show it so people expect it in your game and it's not there, then it's not there.

If Bungie or EA or Activision or anyone else showed target render footage for their games without the clear "footage pre-rendered / not representative of gameplay" type disclaimers GAF and othe rp,aces would be shredding them. I'm not saying you specifically, but why do we dismiss this criticism now for XV?

El witcheroo tres, game of the forever, did this.

Shrug.

 

[PtM]

Fucking game development, how does it work?

 

[Ploid 3.0]

That car was a huge disappointment for me. I remember that offroad scene in trailers, but that could have just been a cut scene situation.

 

[Trago]

I think the big lesson here is not to show off your game until you're pretty close to release ala Fallout 4.

The game felt undercooked, and it's clear that a lot of content was cut. It's a shining example of how shit Square's management of big projects can be.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Fucking game development, how does it work?

A lot more smoothly than FFXV.

Spoiler

wahey!

 

[James Scott]

The weirdest thing about the reveal trailer is that it got a ton of people excited about the game and PS4/X1...but it's all fake.
It's a CG trailer that is made to look like gameplay footage. I understand that it would get visually downgraded, but I'm pretty sure there are no uncharted like sections which was the whole focus of the trailer.
Even the director was switched from that point onwards so none of the visuals, story, or gameplay were indicative of the game we were going to end up getting

 

[hohoXD123]

imo showing Insomnia city and especially Tenebrae in their trailers (even though it's a tech trailer) while only having them as background in the game IS misleading.

Felt like they're trying to build expectation that the game world was bigger than it ended up.
I'm still most disappointed with the lack of explorable areas in Altissia though.

And those CG cutscenes.. I wish they found a way to include them in the game :\

Yeah, out of everything this burned me the most. The city looks downright insane from the CGI trailer, the relatively tiny portion of the city you can actually explore not so much.

I'm curious though since I haven't unlocked the Type-F, how much of Altissia can you actually view from above?

 

[Android18a]

I was most disappointed by the large areas of map which weren't open world and explorable, notably Insomnia and the other countries. But I understand why it is this way in the final release we got.

Would I have accepted another full year or more delay for a bigger world and more in-depth story? Absolutely.

 

[gconsole]

It is just messy all around. We expect a game with everything included, but end up with part CG only use for promotion material, part removed/cancelled content, part used/included only in other media such as movie. So I'm not surprised if some ( or even majority ) of the audience were mis-leaded by all these trailers.

 

[Alienous]

Not clearing up that elements shown in earlier trailers are no longer in the game is always shitty. There's a fine line between unwittingly misleading buyers and deciding the game will sell better if the removal of shown content is left ambiguous.

I casually followed news of the game and was interested based on exploring some environments shown in trailers, but now are unexplorable in the actual game, so it is disappointing.

 

[Maintenance]

It boggles my mind some people could just straight up defends this shitty practice that Square Enix have made.

You'll get a lot more of that here unfortunately.

See this is one thing that gets me. We've never given other studios/devs a pass for this - why are we starting now?

If you show it so people expect it in your game and it's not there, then it's not there.

If Bungie or EA or Activision or anyone else showed target render footage for their games without the clear "footage pre-rendered / not representative of gameplay" type disclaimers GAF and othe rp,aces would be shredding them. I'm not saying you specifically, but why do we dismiss this criticism now for XV?

I remember Bungie's "you can go there" Destiny moment, EA's Madden trailer.

 

[Kamitechi]

-If they scrapped the scenes, then why not scrap the trailers?
-It doesn't say tech trailer, it clearly states "Environments trailer". Here's the official description that S-E provided.

Well, I'm not sure on that, like I said, that was only the misleading part.

Also Environment trailer, is part of the world of wonder trailer, which they said multiple times on ATR that they are tech trailers.

look im not defending SE for the obvious mistakes they did with this game, but calling this misleading is stretching it at best.

 

[entremet]

Is that mismarketing? Those are trailers at game show events.

 

[KupoNut]

Pretty sure there were more half-finished locations cut which we just haven't seen yet

Spoiler

(like the supposedly world of ruin Lestallum area)

I hope they go as far as adding those with free updates, and not just additional cutscenes.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Well, I'm not sure on that, like I said, that was only the misleading part.

Also Environment trailer, is part of the world of wonder trailer, which they said multiple times on ATR that they are tech trailers.

look im not defending SE for the obvious mistakes they did with this game, but calling this misleading is stretching it at best.

...but you are defending S-E for what many would deem as obviously misleading game trailers.

Is that mismarketing? Those are trailers at game show events.

Trailers are created for marketing purposes. These game show events exist for marketing purposes. You decide!

 

[Kamitechi]

...but you are defending S-E for what many would deem as obviously misleading game trailers.

I don't see it as misleading per se, at least the environment one

I tend to use my brain when they straight out telling me in an ATR that X is a tech trailer and Y is still under development.

 

[Koozek]

It's been a "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for SE, honestly. If they hadn't shown these concept and WIP trailers people here would've declared the game dead again. And what were they supposed to show in '13 at the re-reveal when the game hasn't even started full next-gen development after the reboot yet and when, as we know from dev comments, the game was under constant rewrites still in the first year of Tabata taking over and trying to condense the original trilogy into one game? In the second and third year many of the assets weren't polished and finalized yet either because game development doesn't always work in a linear way. They had to whip up something they knew might not be in the final game. FFXV just has had a very unfortunate history, so they felt like they had to show the game is in actual development for real this time.

They seemingly did learn with KH3 and FFVIIR which we still haven't seen much of and whose marketing campaign will probably be closer to the typical Western AAA style of only starting the real media blowout 6 months before release.

 

[Chaserjoey]

- Iron giants are in the game, want a hint? fight one at night wait for the morning, hey you can fight it in the daytime, but not in insomnia, does it matter?

Just wanted to say that Iron Giants "die" when it reaches like 4am. Sure there's light out but I wouldn't class it as the same as day time.

 

[UrbanRats]

The world is still not ready to produce a ff world that looks as axpansive as it should, while being seamless.
Hopefully it's a lesson learned for them.

The world in xv feels tiny, and that detracts from the sense of "JOURNEY" youre supposed to have.

At the same time its insane to try and recreate an expansive one with that level of detail.
I say this while not being a huge fan of the ffviii approach either, let alone the ffx one of no world map at all.

 

[Y2Kev]

The E3 2013 trailer is actually not all prerendered and people should stop saying that. There are bits at the end within the Citadel that are clearly realtime (you can tell because of poor image quality and horrific framerate). And, guess what...those got cut too!

It's not "mismarketing" or whatever, clearly the game went through extensive (extensive) rewrites and the structure of the narrative suffered for it. As late as two years ago they were showing significant pieces of the invasion of Insomnia in the game itself. That did not happen in the final game. Clearly something bad happened during development with that.

As for the characters, it seems obvious to me that Verstael and Cor were meant to have much more significant parts in the story. And...they got cut!

 

[WordsintheWater]

If the game actually had a cohesive story that was told well, people wouldn't care about what the trailers showed, but when you get an absolute mess it makes missing scenes hold more weight. And providing some of these scenes for context would have benefitted the game. Saying it's in Kingsglaive or any other supplemental media doesn't work because these things should have been in the main game.

Not only did they not frame the story correctly in the main game they reference things that if you did not watch other media for you wouldn't have the proper idea of what they were going for. All of you diving deep are finding things that are great about the story, but when you can't even do the simple things correct it's a problem.

 

[Kamitechi]

Just wanted to say that Iron Giants "die" when it reaches like 4am. Sure there's light out but I wouldn't class it as the same as day time.

That might be the case, never really kept them after 4 am, but you get the point of my claim

 

[Mister Wolf]

Game was a big disappointment for me. I would score it a 7.5 at best.

 

[entremet]

...but you are defending S-E for what many would deem as obviously misleading game trailers.



Trailers are created for marketing purposes. These game show events exist for marketing purposes. You decide!

But the game changed directors and had a troubled development.

How many people follow those trailers? Those are for crazy diehards.

I'm a big FF fan and still haven't seen a trailer of the game since it was announced as Versus.

Joe Gamer probably can't tell the difference.

 

[ScientificPizza]

This game was in development for so long and changed directions so many times that it seems silly to hold them to images in trailers. It's not like they promised a game that they didn't deliver on, just some locations and sequences were omitted or changed. That's not as big a deal as you're making it out to be tbh.

 

[CrispyBoar]

I agree; What a shitty waste of 10 years. It's no wonder almost everyone is turning towards Horizon: Zero Dawn as the next big RPG now.

 

[Geg]

It's pretty obvious that a lot of those scenes you point out were things that were originally planned but scrapped for one reason or another. Hell, almost the entirety of the E3 2013 trailer is missing from the game because it's clearly based on Nomura's original story before the director change and rewrite. I'm not sure what you expect SE to do about this

 

[Clear]

That might be the case, never really kept them after 4 am, but you get the point of my claim

The whole engine uses a material-based system so it can correctly support various lighting conditions; so day-time or night-time is always a creative not technical distinction.

Its also pretty ludicrous to complain about misleading marketing when they've released several playable demos over the past couple of years, so people could see where the project was visually at those points in time.

And I'm sorry, complaining about cut-scenes showing up in trailers and not in the game is precisely analogous to bemoaning scenes in movie trailers not being present/represented by alternate takes, in the released version. i.e. something that happens all the freakin' time and noone bats an eyelid about, because that's how the creative process works.