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Final Fantasy VII Remake shifts to internal dev under Mobius project leader

ZeoVGM

Banned
I actually think this is a good thing. And that KH3 will be out by next April.

So, you know, that's my thinking.

(I certainly won't be placing any bets though.)
 

Kanann

Member
Game release in 2019 and you all will feel ashamed of your words & deeds.


Anyway, it's gonna be shit in the hands of Toriyama.
 
Kitase is imo the best Director Square/SE has ever had but he's an awful Producer.
He WAS one of the best Directors of the company and knew how to handle large teams and large projects. As a Producer, he is pretty hands-off and either lets them go wild with stupidity (Toriyama) or get tossed to the wolves and let them fend for themselves (Nomura).
 

Ydelnae

Member
CyberConnect2 literally turned in another Naruto game at the progress meeting.

Why did I imagine all of the CC2 workers leaving the office running with their hands in the air like the Naruto characters the moment they were told they were no longer needed in an AAA JRPG production?
 
All three of those games will see releases. TLG still became many people's 2016 GotY and there is still a lot of excitement for Shenmue 3 & VII:R, despite this news. VII:R is and will continue to be a huge deal. Shen3 is something that many fans had just given up on & I imagine the thrill of getting it in almost any capacity sans mobile-only is cause for some shred of happiness.
Anytime I see a "LOL how stupid do people that got hyped at E3 '15 feel now?" type posts it just makes me think of salty MS or Nintendo console warriors that didn't allow themselves to find enjoyment in that moment.

I don't understand it. Not just hype culture in general, but specifically the Square Enix fanbase's susceptibility to it. We just came out of a grueling ten year cycle for FFXV/Versus XIII, and people are willing to throw themselves into the next ones? 5 more years of "Believe!" intermixed with frustration turned to cynicism? Not trying to judge anyone here - just, as I said, struggling to understand it.
 

shark sandwich

tenuously links anime, pedophile and incels
FUUUUUUUUUCK. First major sign of Square Enix characteristic development problems.

Final Fantasy XII onward have ALL been huge clusterfucks. Guess I was naive to think they finally got their bullshit sorted out.
I don't understand it. Not just hype culture in general, but specifically the Square Enix fanbase's susceptibility to it. We just came out of a grueling ten year cycle for FFXV/Versus XIII, and people are willing to throw themselves into the next ones? 5 more years of "Believe!" intermixed with frustration turned to cynicism? Not trying to judge anyone here - just, as I said, struggling to understand it.
There was a time when Square was cranking out a new mainline Final Fantasy title every 1-2 years, with several other top quality JRPGs in between. Some of us are still idiotically hoping for a return to the glory days :(
 

Arkeband

Banned
Why did I imagine all of the CC2 workers leaving the office running with their hands in the air like the Naruto characters the moment they were told they were no longer needed in an AAA JRPG production?

"You guys are spending too much time on combat logic and physics - we need you to go out and photograph some rocks and food."
 
Wait, where does it say Toriyama is leading this? Huh?
Toriyama has worked on Mobius as game director and he also works under Kitase in Business Division 1.

This news confirms BD1 is now heading majority of the game's development so people are just putting two and two together.
 
What if CC2's work was actually good and on schedule but Nomura was the one who dismissed them because he didn't like their style for whatever reason?
 

Elios83

Member
Too early to tell if this is a positive or negative thing.
It's obviously easy to distrust Square Enix and think negatively but who knows...it also seems like Nomura as a director can't really deliver anything on a reasonable schedule.
The reason behind the episodic nature of FFVII should have been to let us play something soon instead...
But I'm looking forward to see if the game will be at E3 during the Sony conference and its state of development.
 
What if CC2's work was actually good and on schedule but Nomura was the one who dismissed them because he didn't like their style for whatever reason?
The short cinematic presentation that was released at PSX 2015 didn't look good aside from the combat. The cinematics and the art style just didn't sit well with me.

My issue is that they took their sweet time in taking the rest of the production in-house and there is no way to interpret this news except as a potential delay to whatever they originally planned as release date for Episode 1.
 

Slater

Banned
It really must be nice to be Nomura, having stans out the the ass ready to defend you as some amazing Auter while simultaneously removing almost all of his accountability as director.

Becoming the worshiped "Face" of a massive franchise you haven't actually ever directed a mainline game for.

Getting praised for amazing trailers when CGI non indicative trailers are usually criticized as being lies, in his case his fans will just attack other people for not being able to make his pretty lie an actual game setpiece.

What a sweet gig
 
It really must be nice to be Nomura, having stans out the the ass ready to defend you as some amazing Auter while simultaneously removing almost all of his accountability as director.

Becoming the worshiped "Face" of a massive franchise you haven't actually ever directed a mainline game for.

Getting praised for amazing trailers when CGI non indicative trailers are usually criticized as being lies, in his case his fans will just attack other people for not being able to make his pretty lie an actual game setpiece.

What a sweet gig
Damn...
 

shark sandwich

tenuously links anime, pedophile and incels
What if CC2's work was actually good and on schedule but Nomura was the one who dismissed them because he didn't like their style for whatever reason?
I could totally see this happen if Cloud weren't angsty or depressed enough to please Nomura.
 

Yu Furealdo

Member
Wow... now I don't even expect this to come out on current gen hardware. Might take until 2030 to get the final game in the 'trilogy' remake.
 

HeeHo

Member
They've already announced a shift toward service games, so how do you feel about Destiny and The Division?

This is exactly what I was fearing when S-E made that announcement recently.

I don't want need to be online all the time to get the most out of the game. Granted, I'm online most of the time but that's not the point.

At the very least, I'd want some option for offline content like Hitman. Even then though, I'd be settling. Perhaps it'd be better than I think though. My friend only plays Runescape (for the past 10 years) and whenever I tell him about a new FF (he has played 7 and some others) he is always assuming there are online features and that I can compare my character to other people and also see them.

Maybe that's what the public really wants.
 

wtd2009

Member
Too early to tell if this is a positive or negative thing.
It's obviously easy to distrust Square Enix and think negatively but who knows...it also seems like Nomura as a director can't really deliver anything on a reasonable schedule.
The reason behind the episodic nature of FFVII should have been to let us play something soon instead...
But I'm looking forward to see if the game will be at E3 during the Sony conference and its state of development.
my problem with this is that it is what I wanted to believe, some kind of logical conclusion I came to for myself.

but, honestly, they are the pretty terrible communicators with regards to their process, never setting any kind of framework or expectations for timing to their customers, and that undermines their strategy of "we'll announce this cool thing, go into hiding, and then surprise them years later with a reveal and a plan", and i think this is why fans get so bitter and negative. and, to me, that's understandable.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I would hazard a guess that this has a lot to do with how Japanese developers view the promise they made to fans through PR. The behind the scenes video for Metal Gear Rising also talks about some of this. Why is it that when a project completely fails and is handed over to another team to salvage, they would want to keep as much of what has been shown as possible as long as they can make it work, even if it is easier to just literally start from scratch? In Rising they kept the elements of "cut anything" and "zandatsu" because they were the gameplay mechanics promised to gamers in the early videos. In the same way I think Versus transiting to XV had this problem. S-E didn't want to announce that they cancelled it completely and that the things fans had seen were all trashed. But at the same time the game they wanted to make with that concept wasn't working. So another team picks up the slack but has to follow through on at least the base promises to make the game.

That sure doesn't seem like a good way to make a game, but it is what it is. It's also why FFXIV wasn't completely scrapped, but the team that followed up literally made a sequel to the original trash, in the same world using as much of the existing mythology and characters as possible. I guess it is what it is.
I was just thinking about this the other day.

Even in the rare instance where a Western game is handed to another developer instead of the entire series being thrown out, they almost always let the new developer do whatever they want, a la Prey.

If having to hand off a major project to a new team becomes a staple of Square Enix development, they should really consider changing their approach on that front.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
What if CC2's work was actually good and on schedule but Nomura was the one who dismissed them because he didn't like their style for whatever reason?

"CC2 is putting our internal studios to shame with their fast and dedicated work! Fire them!"
 

benzy

Member
This is exactly what I was fearing when S-E made that announcement recently.

I don't want need to be online all the time to get the most out of the game. Granted, I'm online most of the time but that's not the point.

At the very least, I'd want some option for offline content like Hitman. Even then though, I'd be settling. Perhaps it'd be better than I think though. My friend only plays Runescape (for the past 10 years) and whenever I tell him about a new FF (he has played 7 and some others) he is always assuming there are online features and that I can compare my character to other people and also see them.

Maybe that's what the public really wants.

I predict a huge backlash if they go always-online for a mainline non-MMO FF. I don't think they'll do that and turn it into Division though. Nirolak mentioned it before, I think it'll probably be more like a separate GTAV online support while still keeping a single player focus main game. They're basically already doing this with the XV multiplayer expansion.
 

Ray Down

Banned
I was just thinking about this the other day.

Even in the rare instance where a Western game is handed to another developer instead of the entire series being thrown out, they almost always left the new developer do whatever they want, a la Prey.

If having to hand off a major project to a new team becomes a staple of Square Enix development, they should really consider changing their approach on that front.

They really should at this point.
 
I imagine there's intense pressure from above for episode 1 of the game to be released by at least next year. CC2's games, although having cool presentation, haven't even been as demanding as a game like this.

Agreed, I bet it's a combination of this and S-E being full of itself wanting to handle the second part of development in house thinking that their internal development is so much better than trying to continue to manage it as a collaboration even though from the footage it looks like S-E + CC2 is doing a good job and they probably shouldn't mess with it. As it is, Japanese studios seem to have a hard time doing this style of development except for bits and pieces of games like outsourcing some anime cutscenes etc.

Still wouldn't surprise me if all of this comes down to Japanese studios still being so much slower at HD development than western ones with their thousand man teams and multi-studio outsourcing which keeps leading S-E upper management to lose their minds and pile on pressure, like how FFXII chased Matsuno out by burning him out.

What if CC2's work was actually good and on schedule but Nomura was the one who dismissed them because he didn't like their style for whatever reason?

Looking at the footage that seems highly unlikely since both him and the original writer both praised how the characters and world looked at animated. They even commented on how perfectly Cloud had been realized with the appropriately thin-ish arms.

It really must be nice to be Nomura, having stans out the the ass ready to defend you as some amazing Auter while simultaneously removing almost all of his accountability as director.

Becoming the worshiped "Face" of a massive franchise you haven't actually ever directed a mainline game for.

Getting praised for amazing trailers when CGI non indicative trailers are usually criticized as being lies, in his case his fans will just attack other people for not being able to make his pretty lie an actual game setpiece.

What a sweet gig

That sure is a lot of pent up hate...

Nevermind the fact that he's had a strong hand in the games that many have loved for decades, I like how half of your complaints revolve just around Versus when the man has a ton of games under his belt, a time when the fucking entirety of S-E was a shit show snowballing into each other.
 
my problem with this is that it is what I wanted to believe, some kind of logical conclusion I came to for myself.

but, honestly, they are the pretty terrible communicators with regards to their process, never setting any kind of framework or expectations for timing to their customers, and that undermines their strategy of "we'll announce this cool thing, go into hiding, and then surprise them years later with a reveal and a plan", and i think this is why fans get so bitter and negative. and, to me, that's understandable.

Considering that part of the game was already being developed internally, I don't even understand why the fuck they would even announce this publicly.

They also never seem to know what to say, even a drip feed of real info is better than being vague or silent.
 

Slater

Banned
That sure is a lot of pent up hate...

Nevermind the fact that he's had a strong hand in the games that many have loved for decades, I like how half of your complaints revolve just around Versus when the man has a ton of games under his belt, a time when the fucking entirety of S-E was a shit show snowballing into each other.

Nah, the man has made 5 trailers that included "gameplay" that really wasn't, 2 for Versus, 2 for KH3 and 1 for Remake.

Funny you should mention decades, sense it's actually been a full decade sense he made a beloved AAA game. Dude just costs off his rep, KH portable games I am always told Tai had more to do with actually getting MADE and nostalgia.
 

benzy

Member
Looking at the footage that seems highly unlikely since both him and the original writer both praised how the characters and world looked at animated. They even commented on how perfectly Cloud had been realized with the appropriately thin-ish arms.

3D visual art are only a part of the picture. Nomura didn't even like CC2's style of how they initially cut the remake trailer.
 
Nah, the man has made 5 trailers that included "gameplay" that really wasn't, 2 for Versus, 2 for KH3 and 1 for Remake.

Funny you should mention decades, sense it's actually been a full decade sense he made a beloved AAA game. Dude just costs off his rep, KH portable games I am always told Tai had more to do with actually getting MADE and nostalgia.
Tai gets no credit and it's a damn shame
 
3D visual art are only a part of the picture. Nomura didn't even like CC2's style of how they initially cut the remake trailer.

Agreed, but I don't think that's surprising nor a comment on the game itself since he clearly likes his own editing style for trailers and cutscenes.
 
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