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Former Square CEO on Twitter "Merger with Enix a failure"

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Fascinating.
I remember bits and pieces, but a lot of this I had forgotten over the years.


Sad.


I really wonder how things would have worked out had:
A. TSW would have been a huge success (lol)
B. Sakaguchi and Suzuki could have learned from the mistake of TSW and been able to move on within the company.
C. The Dark Lord Wada never gains supreme power.

It's pretty depressing to think about how much Square was on fire in the late 90's/early 2000's... and then their legs got kicked out from under them.

Honestly, I feel like the last huge event Final Fantasy was FFX... and a lot of that had to do with PS2 starting to hit its stride.
 

Eusis

Member
I choose to believe that wasn't his fault. I have faith!
Man, the way that died reeked of being given too much free reign, at least with SD4. Corporate control would've probably been "design something that's safe", and so we'd get something along the lines of SD2, 3, or Legend of Mana. Maybe made a bit more modern Zelda-ish, but none of this physics weirdness.
 

Toth

Member
The latter

If your game needs novels to flesh out the story and improve the characters, you have fucked up your video game storytelling on a bedrock level

Not when the game was designed to be a fast moving storyline with no real chance to develop character's backstories beyond what was absolutely needed. It is a honest criticism of the game but my point is that there is so much more to the 13 universe that we as a western community have not been given. Diehard fans like myself can find the info translated on the web but to a casual fan, they lose out on seeing more of what makes characters tick and actually guides their actions, something that was not possible to be fully expressed within the 13 framework.
 

Shamdeo

Member
Fascinating.
I really wonder how things would have worked out had:
A. TSW would have been a huge success (lol)

An excerpt from PlayStation Magazine said:
"It's no secret that the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within has gone massively over-budget--tens of millions of dollars over budget. Square, having financed the film's production (recently vowing that future films would be made entirely with outside backers), is in need of new revenue streams. Fortunately, its assets include one of the best-selling videogame franchises in history. The solution: update several of its classic games and release them on new consoles. We've already reported that DVD remakes of Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX for PS2 are in the works, with hi-res character models and DVD-quality Dolby Digital cinemas. But Square has also confirmed that it's bundling two classic Super NES RPGs for U.S. PlayStation gamers."

Probably just some of their plans.
 
Okay, that's tin-foil hat level of thinking there...

It's a hilarious scenario though.

"After 5 years, we're finally getting close to finishing FFXIV. We really got something special on our hands."
"Hey guys, reception for XIII hasn't been good. What should we do!?"
"Oh no! There's only one thing to do; ruin the next mainline game to distract everyone from how bad it is."
"B-but we poured our heart into this for 5 ye-"
"Go back to your corner, Tanaka."
 

Esura

Banned
I never understood that either. Sometimes finding a price for that stuff can be a hassle for us western folk, with that said I do not regret the $70 I paid for the Type 0 Artbook.

Lord of Vermilion Re:2 Gold should arrive by Xmas. :D

Too bad XIII-2 didn't have a huge artbook.

It got a Ultimania Omega, of which I demanded the GILGAMESH page get translated. And it did.

Stuff like this makes me want to learn Japanese.

Then I realize how incredibly difficult learning any Asian language is and just stick to trying to learn Spanish. :(
 

Aeana

Member
Stuff like this makes me want to learn Japanese.

Then I realize how incredibly difficult learning any Asian language is and just stick to trying to learn Spanish. :(

Don't think like this. I honestly get really upset when I see this sort of thing perpetrated, because it's just not true. I don't really know where it comes from, outside of perhaps intimidation by kanji (which is much less difficult than you think). Learning a language is even easier if you have a real interest in it, too.
 
Don't think like this. I honestly get really upset when I see this sort of thing perpetrated, because it's just not true. I don't really know where it comes from, outside of perhaps intimidation by kanji (which is much less difficult than you think). Learning a language is even easier if you have a real interest in it, too.

It's totally doable. That said, it does take work and dedication. You have to really want to learn. I lost interest doing self study on my own and got nowhere for about a decade. Now that I live in Japan and am surrounded by it, I have a much stronger desire to learn, and I can bring myself to study almost every day (actually, should be studying now, not on NeoGAF).
 

Esura

Banned
I'll learn it eventually. Type 0 demands it.

About time I learn it FFXVII will be out.

Don't think like this. I honestly get really upset when I see this sort of thing perpetrated, because it's just not true. I don't really know where it comes from, outside of perhaps intimidation by kanji (which is much less difficult than you think). Learning a language is even easier if you have a real interest in it, too.

Yeah, its the kanji and hiragana and all that stuff. Tried learning it on this Japanese for dummies blog thing and it wasn't going great for me.

But I guess you have a point. I do have an interest in it...primarily for playing games but, yeah an interest in it.
 

Bladenic

Member
Don't think like this. I honestly get really upset when I see this sort of thing perpetrated, because it's just not true. I don't really know where it comes from, outside of perhaps intimidation by kanji (which is much less difficult than you think). Learning a language is even easier if you have a real interest in it, too.

Both Japanese and Chinese are regarded as some of the hardest languages to learn, so obviously everyone "perpetrates" that.
 

Aeana

Member
Both Japanese and Chinese are regarded as some of the hardest languages to learn, so obviously everyone "perpetrates" that.

By whom? Have these people actually tried to learn them? As someone who teaches Japanese, I can assure you that people tend to pick it up quite rapidly. The kanji is a barrier, but once you begin learning it, it quickly becomes much easier to manage. And the grammar is completely straight-forward, sentence structure is fluid, and there's nothing really weird to worry about like genders, which tend to be quite a difficult concept to grasp for native English speakers in general, outside of counters perhaps.
 
kmOkI.jpg

+1
 

Bladenic

Member
By whom? Have these people actually tried to learn them? As someone who teaches Japanese, I can assure you that people tend to pick it up quite rapidly. The kanji is a barrier, but once you begin learning it, it quickly becomes much easier to manage. And the grammar is completely straight-forward, sentence structure is fluid, and there's nothing really weird to worry about like genders, which tend to be quite a difficult concept to grasp for native English speakers in general, outside of counters perhaps.

http://mylanguages.org/difficult_languages.php

Just one source.
 

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
So their reason is kanji. As I said, it can be a barrier, but it isn't as major as it's made out to be. Their claim that there are no mnemonic devices to help is complete bollocks, too. The entire Remembering the Kanji program that's so popular in the Japanese learning thread in off-topic is built on mnemonic devices.

The remembering the ___ books really help out a ton.
 

truly101

I got grudge sucked!
Somebody just needs to go back in time and stop Spirits Within from ever being made. This entire company could be different, most likely better if that piece of shit is just discarded as a bad idea.
 

Esura

Banned
Somebody just needs to go back in time and stop Spirits Within from ever being made. This entire company could be different, most likely better if that piece of shit is just discarded as a bad idea.

But then I wouldn't get FFXIII or XIII-2...
 

DJIzana

Member
I love those games.

Who's to say Sakaguchi's FFXIII would of been the ideal FFXIII? Could be worse. Hell, I probably wouldn't of gotten a sequel out of it either.

No one would ever know what Sakaguchi's game would be. For all we know, it could be the world Xenoblade took place it.

Fair enough though... you've had your turn with XIII. Let the franchise return to its roots. You get THREE games, before we get Versus. That's more than enough.
 

Esura

Banned
No one would ever know what Sakaguchi's game would be. For all we know, it could be the world Xenoblade took place it.

Fair enough though... you've had your turn with XIII. Let the franchise return to its roots. You get THREE games, before we get Versus. That's more than enough.

Wait, wait, wait...you honestly think Versus is sticking to the roots?

I don't exactly mind if they do but from what I've read about Versus XIII, that's about as far from the roots as you can get.
 

DJIzana

Member
Wait, wait, wait...you honestly think Versus is sticking to the roots?

I don't exactly mind if they do but from what I've read about Versus XIII, that's about as far from the roots as you can get.

I dont' expect the overworld map as that's obviously outdated. I DO expect things like airships... a good, dark story, good characters and that's what I've seen so far. On top of that... we even get Magitek stuff and then some.

Noctis, Ignis, Prompto, Gladiolus... Stella, King Caelum, the opposing faction, the hooded dude... dragoon lady, all of which sound pretty darn awesome to me.

Supposedly it also won't be full of corridors. (Thank GOD if true.)
 
The Sazh "novel," at the very least, should have been in the game. Handled something like the lengthy exposition events of the PS1 Final Fantasies. The only problem is, the game already gets plenty of hate for being an "interactive movie" for the short, but frequent movies that it does have. I have to wonder, even if Square was able to go back to some halfway decent writing ... would it be appreciated? It's probably going to need longer cutscenes or at the very least textbox conversations to supplement the kind of short scenes FFXIII had.
 

Esura

Banned
I dont' expect the overworld map as that's obviously outdated. I DO expect things like airships... a good, dark story, good characters and that's what I've seen so far. On top of that... we even get Magitek stuff and then some.

Noctis, Ignis, Prompto, Gladiolus... Stella, King Caelum, the opposing faction, the hooded dude... dragoon lady, all of which sound pretty darn awesome to me.

Supposedly it also won't be full of corridors. (Thank GOD if true.)

Versus still isn't sticking to the "roots" though. I figured people were hyped for it because of how ambitious it is and different it is from typical FFs. You can jack enemy vehicles and all that stuff and the battle system is supposed to be all KH-ey.

I can't really muster up any more enthusiasm for Versus until I get a release date and/or more photos of Stella personally.
 

DJIzana

Member
Versus still isn't sticking to the "roots" though. I figured people were hyped for it because of how ambitious it is and different it is from typical FFs. You can jack enemy vehicles and all that stuff and the battle system is supposed to be all KH-ey.

I can't really muster up any more enthusiasm for Versus until I get a release date and/or more photos of Stella personally.

Aye... it's missing turn based combat and the world map (guessing because they feel it's too dated to go back to something like that) but it's as close as going back to their roots as we'll ever get on a console.
 

DSix

Banned
LevelNth dropping truth bombs up in here but still going mostly ignored.



What more is there to know?

Sony put a lot of coin behind The Spirits Within and further subsidized it's losses by buying a small non-voting stake in Square following it's failures to steady them financially.

Before then and beyond Square and EA had a strong cross-publishing partnership where Square made VERY nice profit margins on EA published games in the west while also seeing healthy growth in the sales rates of EA's titles they distributed in Japan. It was a very lucrative deal for both sides.

The deal with EA was dropped because Wada wanted to turn Square into a EA/Activision sized international publishing powerhouse. That is why he began making moves to join with Enix, who was at the time a less productive version of what Atlus is today. Instead of having a healthy stable of in-house teams along with some smartly chosen subs like Atlus they had almost no in house development staff and relied entirely on subs. Both are heavily tied to the success of their cornerstone JRPG franchise, Dragon Quest and MegaTen/Persona respectively. Atlus has done what Enix has failed at for decades on two counts by making MegaTen/Persona a successful brand globally and by splitting MegaTen into a multi-pronged IP with titles like Nocturne under the MegaTen name directly, the Persona franchise, and other spin offs that have had solid market success (Digital Devil Saga) and strong legs on re-releases (Devil Summoner, Devil Survivor). The notion behind this being that by consolidating the two major players in the then very popular JRPG genre they would have all the muscle needed to gobble up market share and other smaller publishers.

This is also why they have picked up Quest, Taito, and now Eidos. It is all part of Wada's plan to make Square into a dominant 3rd party.

Eidos to date has paid off for them pretty well, but the production of Square's internal studios has been bad by the already low standards of Japanese 3rd parties this generation,. The benefits of merging with Enix have never arrived as they were unable to leverage the Square name or FF brand to build the Dragon Quest brand in the U.S., the only successful spinoff (Dragon Quest Monsters) has also failed to make any real headway outside Japan.

The only substantial gains shown by their purchase of Quest was the release of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together on the PSP.

Their purchase of Taito basically amounts to a half billion dollar investment that has done nothing to strengthen the company.

As a result of all this the Final Fantasy brand has suffered irreparable damage due to poor quality, inconsistent release dates, and in general blatant milking of the IP. Kingdom Hearts, which not long ago was poised to become a major IP, has failed to fully develop due to muddled direction and platform ambiguity. Dragon Quest is still a Japan-centric IP that is profitable but capped out as a single player IP. Both major franchises (FF and DQ) are now being leveraged in the MMO market, which is an expensive and very fickle mistress. Well known Square IPs (namely Chrono and Mana) have languished and lost a ton of marketing clout.

In short other than Eidos they're entirely reliant on two IPs, one of which is in full on decline and the other beginning to stagnate due to an inability to cross markets. The only time they break outside this box is within the relatively low risk handheld segment that also happens to be shrinking at an alarming rate globally. Their clout with Sony has all but evaporated and are now more or less doggedly dependent on Nintendo's handheld consumers for any legitimate brand recognition, when not so long ago the Squaresoft logo alone could move significant units.

Wada aimed for global domination without knowing how to get there and has ran headlong into every "growth" opportunity he's had available to him. They got DAMN lucky the Eidos buyout happened when it did, as if Eidos had held on just a few more months their releases (most notably Batman: Arkham Asylum) would have given them renewed life.

There is no reason to assume that the company will change direction any time soon. They have lost the pulse of consumers and rely on the smattering of talent still in house to carry them to any kind of success, which is inconsistent and unreliable. The golden age that Sakaguchi presided over came to an end when the failure of Spirits Within allowed Wada to seize power.

I expect that much like Sony it won't be too long before Square Enix is back in real financial trouble. All it will take is a drop in production by Eidos, who has never been able to maintain success and has already been cut out of their most successful recent title, since Batman: Arkham City was a Warner Bros/Rocksteady deal sans-Eidos. All it will take is Wada pushing a $50M budget Call of Duty rival onto their books in his pursuit of global appeal to start sending them down the same failed path as the parent company Square Enix.



Thanks Drek, and this will be my last attempt to shed light on this whole subject, hopefully I'm not as ignored as before. I do not know much about games anymore, but I was OBSESSED with Square back in the day, and I followed nothing more closely a decade ago than this merger.

First off: THE MERGER DID NOT SAVE SQUARE, NOR WAS IT REQUIRED TO. Everyone in this thread thinking/saying this, stop it. You are wrong. You are not right. Stop it.

Enix had a problem. They were essentially a tiny, completely unproductive publisher except for one mega-ultimate franchise. The problem? They controlled absolutely zero part of it. DQ is Horri's, and Enix could never control how and when he made them. Thus, the expansion potential of Enix was completely limited. But they were the definition of stable.

So in 2000, off the heels of the megaton explosion of awesome that Square experienced in the previous 3 years, Enix approached them to merge. But Square was hesitant, because it would require a larger share to Enix on the backs of just their one franchise, a franchise they felt they could eclipse in the coming years.

So they bickered and went back and forth as mergers do for over a year. But then the FF film released. And it tanked. It was the product of Sakaguchi, who called the shots on nearly every facet of concept development at Square, and Suzuki, the old-school business man who ran the money and left all the smaller crap to his second-in-command, a man named Yoichi Wada.

Suzuki and Sakaguchi were the brains behind Square of the 90's. Sakaguchi thought a change to Nomura's art style suited a new generation of consoles, Suzuki envisioned the necessity of the CD, they both created the concept of having two concurrent teams making FF games at the same time, etc. And they both envisioned a massive CG development studio in Hawaii that would revolutionize games and simultaneously be able to create films as well...

So naturally they both caught shit for that. Now while the Suzuki/Sakaguchi plan was for the huge dev studio to recoup costs over time, even they overestimated, to their fault. The board of Square began to panic at the notion of recouping the entirety of the costs immediately, and it was perpetuated by the constantly reported losses of the film. Upon the film failure, the board naturally told Suzuki to shape up, increased Wada's role, and essentially lost all faith in Sakaguchi. This was the beginning of the end of Square, and it's name was Yoichi.

Wada thus moved in and took on a much larger role, relegating Suzuki to having to go along with his vision of a massive developer/publisher that relies on its tentpole franchises. Development costs were streamlined (read: cut), projects were cancelled. Suzuki, and more so, Sakaguchi, hated this idea, and hated the development reforms Wada implemented to make it happen. But when Enix started getting gun shy about the merger, it was all Wada needed to convince the board that Suzuki's model was a disaster, and his was the future. Suzuki's last true contribution to Square was finalizing the Sony stock purchase, a testament to the relationship Suzuki built with Sony over the years.

Wada also hated Sakaguchi, and feared he would make a decision that would screw him over like he perceived the FF film did to Suzuki. So he essentially boxed him out, relegated his role in FFXII to almost nothing, and continued with his plan to cancel a bunch of non mainline franchise projects. It left Sakaguchi with no choice but to leave as he was essentially no longer a part of the company. So he did.

Square and Enix merged, and Wada's vision was now super strengthened with DQ on board. What else do we need?! The idiot. Suzuki was relegated further to 'special director' after the merger, then fully resigned two years later. SE was Wada's now, and the rest is history behind the workings of who I believe to be the most incompetent, unprepared and short-sighted company head this industry has ever seen.

Thanks guys for the insight.
 

Esura

Banned
Aye... it's missing turn based combat and the world map (guessing because they feel it's too dated to go back to something like that) but it's as close as going back to their roots as we'll ever get on a console.

True.

Although I don't get why they feel that world maps are dated when the more popular RPGs in the 'pan like Tales of and DQ got world maps.
 
Somebody just needs to go back in time and stop Spirits Within from ever being made. This entire company could be different, most likely better if that piece of shit is just discarded as a bad idea.

Can't see how the company would have been able to escape the refusal of the JRPG genre in growing up, or how they would have been able to avoid the decline in Japanese developers.
 

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
What LevelNth has posted was interesting but is it entirely true to blame Wada for everything? Isn't there a board in SE that make the decisions?
 

Aeana

Member
What LevelNth has posted was interesting but is it entirely true to blame Wada for everything? Isn't there a board in SE that make the decisions?

There is definitely a bit of a slant to the information that's been posted in this thread. You'll also note how Enix has been painted as some sort of desperately needy party when that certainly was not the case.
 

randomkid

Member
Don't think like this. I honestly get really upset when I see this sort of thing perpetrated, because it's just not true. I don't really know where it comes from, outside of perhaps intimidation by kanji (which is much less difficult than you think). Learning a language is even easier if you have a real interest in it, too.

Honestly surprised you don't know where the idea that Japanese is a difficult language to learn comes from, it's those old Foreign Service Institute rankings.

http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty

Always been in the top category along with Arabic and Mandarin. No idea the criteria they use, but that's probably why the idea is widespread.


This source seems off to me though cuz Arabic script is not the reason that language is tough to learn. You can learn the letters with flashcards in less than a week.
 

BasilZero

Member
-Spirits Within
-3 MMORPGs
-Too many ports and remakes


Yeah...:(

p.s. r.i.p. mana series, Chrono series, star ocean series, valkyrie profile series and anything else I missed/forgot.
 

Man God

Non-Canon Member
There is definitely a bit of a slant to the information that's been posted in this thread. You'll also note how Enix has been painted as some sort of desperately needy party when that certainly was not the case.

Enix was basically Japanese Take-Two with better finances and easily the stronger party in the merger.
 

fritolay

Member
They should never have spent money on a movie. They tried to become bigger then they could get at a time the JRPG's were becoming less relevant.
 

Man God

Non-Canon Member
They should never have spent money on a movie. They tried to become bigger then they could get at a time the JRPG's were becoming less relevant.

Err no, they started it basically at the height of their power.

The idea besides the movie actually made a ton of sense; if you became the premiere CGI company that Hollywood and other game studios would come to for that sort of work sounded like a winning idea back then, and hell it could have been if handled right.

Spirits Within lead to FF:Crystal Chronicles, FFTA and its sequel, and eventually the GBA port of FF V...so I'm overall happy with how it played out!
 

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Yeah Star Ocean was a great franchise, pre Squaremerge....

You do know that Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is the best selling Star Ocean game, and the was post-Merger. :p
 

Man God

Non-Canon Member
You know you think the movement of ultra pervy Japanese stuff in the past ten years or so that Wonder Project would have made a big comeback, but nope, not so far.
 

Lady Bird

Matsuno's Goebbels
Not when the game was designed to be a fast moving storyline with no real chance to develop character's backstories beyond what was absolutely needed. It is a honest criticism of the game but my point is that there is so much more to the 13 universe that we as a western community have not been given. Diehard fans like myself can find the info translated on the web but to a casual fan, they lose out on seeing more of what makes characters tick and actually guides their actions, something that was not possible to be fully expressed within the 13 framework.
I don't understand this. FFXIII was designed to be character-driven. Toriyama himself didn't shut up about it, and has stated how proud he is of the character drama he has written for his game. Not only that, but FFXIII's story was full of filler, repetitive dialogue (Serah? Serah? Serah!) and artificially-extended character archs (Hope's development is similar to Vaan's, but with twice the cutscenes for twice the whining). In fact, it can even be argued that characters like Hope were almost completely pointless in the main plot outside of how he has influenced Vanille in one or two cutscenes, and characters like Snow and Lightning could also have been left to a secondary role. FFX managed to tell a lot more story with about the same gameplay structure and, I suppose, a similar number of cutscenes. With no datalog.

With a proper story editor, half of FFXIII's script could be cut away, and be rewritten to focus on the truly essencial/ needed things (and giving emotional weight to them), instead of wasting time on "character drama" subplots, repetitive behaviour and repetitive motivational speeches, and an unfocused plot that went nowhere most of the time, until it suddenly decided to throw up all the important stuff under the form of huge, monotonous villain's wall-of-text monologues.

Toriyama simply didn't know how to write this story.
 

Dunan

Member
So their reason is kanji. As I said, it can be a barrier, but it isn't as major as it's made out to be. Their claim that there are no mnemonic devices to help is complete bollocks, too. The entire Remembering the Kanji program that's so popular in the Japanese learning thread in off-topic is built on mnemonic devices.

Do people actually get good at Japanese using those? I think that if you truly wish to master kanji at a deep level -- a level which will serve you very well indeed if you want to take on Mandarin, Wu Chinese languages, and Cantonese as well -- you should avoid Heisig's artificial mnemonics and learn the real semantic and phonetic radicals from which the vast majority of these characters are constructed..

(Yes, I'm a maniac who has Bernhard Karlgren's 1923 book on Chinese characters with their pronunciation in Middle Chinese, and once you know that, most of the irregularities in the phonetic parts of kanji become clear. I love learning this stuff.)
 

Aeana

Member
You do know that Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is the best selling Star Ocean game, and the was post-Merger. :p
The original release of Star Ocean 3 has a big ol' Enix logo on the box. Just sayin'.

Do people actually get good at Japanese using those? I think that if you truly wish to master kanji at a deep level -- a level which will serve you very well indeed if you want to take on Mandarin, Wu Chinese languages, and Cantonese as well -- you should avoid Heisig's artificial mnemonics and learn the real semantic and phonetic radicals from which the vast majority of these characters are constructed..

(Yes, I'm a maniac who has Bernhard Karlgren's 1923 book on Chinese characters with their pronunciation in Middle Chinese, and once you know that, most of the irregularities in the phonetic parts of kanji become clear. I love learning this stuff.)

I have no personal experience with Heisig's method, but I can say that I know someone who used it and who is better than me and the majority of native Japanese people he meets at remembering how to write kanji. I've read Heisig's introduction about his method, though, and it seems to me that his goal is indeed for people to master the kanji on a deep level by having them create their own mnemonics using his framework for remembering primitive elements of kanji so that they can be re-assembled easily. Part of me is skeptical about it, but the other part actually thinks this makes sense. Consider that when Chinese people tackle Japanese, they have a much easier time with learning to read than with someone who has only ever used the Latin script. It certainly isn't because the characters are pronounced the same way or even that the characters are the same - they aren't. It's more likely because they're familiar with methods of easily remembering these types of characters that work for them. I definitely feel like the reverse is the case for me, as I have journeyed to learn Mandarin over the last couple of years.

Either way, I don't feel that I can construct an argument for or against the method without being more familiar with it. I just know that it certainly does work for some people, since I've seen evidence of it myself, and as a teacher, I've come to understand how incredibly different each person is at learning information, so new methods that work for certain people are always welcome to me.
 

Dali

Member
Ah a square nostalgia thread. I think square's really done some great things in the Portable space since the merger. The world ends wth you, 3rd birthday, type zero and most of all dissidia are some of the most interesting titles they've released in years. That's not to say they are all great games, just that they are quality games that aren't whoring a franchise (except dissidia, but its such a different game its nothing like the uual ff whoring). Dissidia is such a great idea it could easily survive the jump to hd consoles, imo. They have such a wonderful wealth of characters they could expand the idea to be square all stars or something. Just imagine a Naruto type fighter with models and backdrops of the same level as XIII.

I guess my point is, if they're strapped for cash and don't know how HD works then maybe focusing on handhelds is a good way to build confidence, take risks, show their creativity and test the waters so they won't be so skittish to release something other than a final fantasy game on home consoles.
 
There is definitely a bit of a slant to the information that's been posted in this thread. You'll also note how Enix has been painted as some sort of desperately needy party when that certainly was not the case.
Yeah, the Enix disinformation is pretty much off the charts in here. Drek and Nth are completely mischaracterizing their situation, record and output, they were easily as prolific and diverse as Square in the 80s and 90s. The accounts above are really seething with bias.


Wonder Project would make a wonderful 3DS game if Square Enix ever remembers it existed.
SoulBlazer/Actraiser/Valkyrie Profile/Mischief Makers would make a wonderful ANYTHING release if Square Enix ever remembered it existed.
 
I don't understand this. FFXIII was designed to be character-driven. Toriyama himself didn't shut up about it, and has stated how proud he is of the character drama he has written for his game. Not only that, but FFXIII's story was full of filler, repetitive dialogue (Serah? Serah? Serah!) and artificially-extended character archs (Hope's development is similar to Vaan's, but with twice the cutscenes for twice the whining). In fact, it can even be argued that characters like Hope were almost completely pointless in the main plot outside of how he has influenced Vanille in one or two cutscenes, and characters like Snow and Lightning could also have been left to a secondary role. FFX managed to tell a lot more story with about the same gameplay structure and, I suppose, a similar number of cutscenes. With no datalog.

With a proper story editor, half of FFXIII's script could be cut away, and be rewritten to focus on the truly essencial/ needed things (and giving emotional weight to them), instead of wasting time on "character drama" subplots, repetitive behaviour and repetitive motivational speeches, and an unfocused plot that went nowhere most of the time, until it suddenly decided to throw up all the important stuff under the form of huge, monotonous villain's wall-of-text monologues.

Toriyama simply didn't know how to write this story.

I'm guessing a good deal of FFX's success, story-wise, was likely due to Nojima's involvement?
Toriyama just seems like Nojima-Lite, without any of Nojima's pacing abilities.
 
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