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YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Did they even show enough to demonstrate it's anything other than a concept at this point yet? It's not that it looked rough, it's just that it didn't convincingly look like a combat engine. It could be and maybe it is, but it could also be a few seconds of attack animations spread out to show the feeling they're going for.
Pretty much every fight it showed in that trailer was scratching my "character action game" brain. It showed combos, both in the air and on the ground, juggling of enemies with a finisher shot of a Fire projectile (even being able to do that in the first place is a pretty big deal to me. It's possible that was just a canned combo string, but if not, the alternative would mean juggles in the same vein as a DMC game), plus it seemed to show multiple kinds of dodges and also special attacks related to the character utilizing his Titan powers (or whatever the hell is happening with Summons in this one).
 
What I'm saying is, we don't know if those things exist as a combat engine or just as a concept animation created for a trailer.

If it's the latter, it could definitely still be several years out.
 

Destil

DestilG
(he/him)
Staff member
I have a prediction about how the story is gonna go: everything they showed is part of a Prologue of sorts and the actual meat of the story is gonna happen after a time skip where the main character is possibly that kid.

Wild speculation/hopes, the game!

Rashomon story where this is just one of several main perspectives we see. The person of Shiva they mention is the second and they have wildly different views on the world and even facts. We play as the kid last and see how both were right and wrong.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
What I'm saying is, we don't know if those things exist as a combat engine or just as a concept animation created for a trailer.
I mean... I guess, but how does this speculations differ from any other kind of trailer for a game that isn't out yet? Even if they showed an in-game HUD or menus or something, all of that could be mocked up for a trailer too. So... what does it take to convince the viewer that it isn't just mocked up animations? (Also the combat footage also showed enemies reacting to being hit and stuff, which seems like it'd be a lot of extra work if they were just faking it).
 
I mean... I guess, but how does this speculations differ from any other kind of trailer for a game that isn't out yet?

It doesn't!

That's why it's impossible to make a judgement about whether or not it's a couple of years out or not, based on the very limited information presented by this trailer.

If next week they show a deep dive gameplay trailer where someone is playing those battles in real time, we would know that a combat engine actually exists and we could make some sort of informed judgement about it. Right now, that information doesn't exist, and so we can't conclude that it's a "refined combat engine."
 
The trailer to me definitely looks like it's just put together in the FF14 engine. It obviously lacks the polish of what you'd expect your top tier FF games to look like, but those kinds of things take time and it didn't look bad either. There's a lot of promise here, and that's all I really look for in an early trailer like this. It's also a trailer that looks a lot better in 4K, IMO.
That combat engine looked more refined to me than a game "several years out" would look.
It really depends. I'd rather they iron out the combat system first and then build the game environments out afterward and design them around the combat system. To me, that makes more sense than what FF games have done in the past, which is build everything independently in parallel, hope it all fits together at the last second, then delay the game massively when these divisions who don't talk to each other can't integrate their parts of the project cleanly.
That's what I can't get over. This trailer is so rough, and obviously rushed, they might as well have done a brief cinematic thing to get people excited, and instead they did this and it's ... meh.
Hard disagree. I watched half a decade of cinematic-only teaser trailers for FFvsXIII and none of that ended up reflecting the game we got whatsoever. I'd rather see stuff like this that's got rough edges and shows some sausage getting made, because at least that tells me there's real progress being made on the game instead of existing in perpetual limbo.
Since the last decade has killed any expectation I had that we would ever see a turn based game again, I'm on board.
I feel for you guys who want turn-based FF games back, but I'm super over most traditional RPG combat systems. I just don't have the patience anymore. If I'm being honest, I didn't back then either, but as a dumb kid you kinda just take what you can get. Action games are the easiest way to ramp up player engagement and to keep me from being too bored. There are probably ways to make turn-based games just as enthralling, but it's a way more difficult task in the RPG genre, when most of the time it devolves into the player just spamming the basic "attack" for all their characters ad nauseum through 85% of the game's battles. A Parasite Eve/Vagrant Story style combat system would be a great middle ground IMO, but the world forgets those games exist and the modern compromises work pretty well for me.
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
THAT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PHOENIX I'VE SEEN

AND IT HAS PLOT SIGNIFICANCE

HOLY SHIT PHOENIX VS IFRIT THEY HAVE BEEN READING MY FANFIC

HOOOOOLY SHIT PHOENIX IS ON THE LOGO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

i need a ps5
phoenix is my favorite thing ever don't judge me
 
Wild speculation/hopes, the game!
The trailer made it a big point to show two angry dudes in juxtaposition against each other, both similar, but different at the same time. We also see tattoo-face helping to kill a good looking (re: opposite of evil looking) dragoon, and cryptic talk about not letting the crystals determine people's fates anymore. We all know Crystals in FF are always forces for good. I'm guessing one or both of the angry-dudes are actually antagonists, or at the very least, misguided anti-heroes that will do a face-turn later in the plot. That's my wild speculation at least. It'll be fun to see more about this setting and what's going on, but I'm not expecting any new information until next year at the earliest.
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
The trailer to me definitely looks like it's just put together in the FF14 engine. It obviously lacks the polish of what you'd expect your top tier FF games to look like, but those kinds of things take time and it didn't look bad either. There's a lot of promise here, and that's all I really look for in an early trailer like this. It's also a trailer that looks a lot better in 4K, IMO.
It really depends. I'd rather they iron out the combat system first and then build the game environments out afterward and design them around the combat system. To me, that makes more sense than what FF games have done in the past, which is build everything independently in parallel, hope it all fits together at the last second, then delay the game massively when these divisions who don't talk to each other can't integrate their parts of the project cleanly.
Hard disagree. I watched half a decade of cinematic-only teaser trailers for FFvsXIII and none of that ended up reflecting the game we got whatsoever. I'd rather see stuff like this that's got rough edges and shows some sausage getting made, because at least that tells me there's real progress being made on the game instead of existing in perpetual limbo.
I feel for you guys who want turn-based FF games back, but I'm super over most traditional RPG combat systems. I just don't have the patience anymore. If I'm being honest, I didn't back then either, but as a dumb kid you kinda just take what you can get. Action games are the easiest way to ramp up player engagement and to keep me from being too bored. There are probably ways to make turn-based games just as enthralling, but it's a way more difficult task in the RPG genre, when most of the time it devolves into the player just spamming the basic "attack" for all their characters ad nauseum through 85% of the game's battles. A Parasite Eve/Vagrant Story style combat system would be a great middle ground IMO, but the world forgets those games exist and the modern compromises work pretty well for me.
I get where you're coming from, but my feeling is that there has never been a dearth of games where you press X to attack, and great menu-based RPGs have always been uncommon outside of the 16- and 32-bit eras.
 

4-So

Spicy
I will play this because of course I will. But as I've mentioned before, Dragon Quest has replaced FF as the premier JRPG for me. If I want something with traditional JRPG gameplay, I'm not looking toward new Final Fantasy for that.

I'm fairly stoked that FF16 seems to be a return to form re: swords and sorcery aesthetics. While I've enjoyed them, the sci-fi-heavy FF games are always lesser experiences for me.
 

Sprite

(He/Him/His)
I think it looks awesome. Like Crystal Chronicles with a big frowny face. Or like if Game of Thrones had Pokemon, but the Pokemon collected people instead of the other way around. I love that it looks and sounds like Final Fantasy while still feeling different from the games that came before, which is the coolest part of Final Fantasy.

Fingers crossed they have at least one playable lady.

In any case, I'm chuffed. Totally on board.
 

Destil

DestilG
(he/him)
Staff member
We all know Crystals in FF are always forces for good.

Are they, though? I feel like Dr. Cid in XII wasn't wrong, he was just going about freeing humanity from the bonds of fate in a way that was going to have some very bad side effects, and this is hitting all the same buttons. Likewise XIII is all about getting past the need for gods, though good luck figuring out if any of them are really "good" or "evil" in that morass.

I for one am here for the idea the supernatural killing foolish humans who through it could be controlled or abused for power, which is very much what this feels like. There's certainly some GoT in there, but a good amount of The Witcher, too.
 

Destil

DestilG
(he/him)
Staff member
Also everyone who talks about "A Return to Swords and Sorcery" is to turn in a 1 page essay on the existence of office chairs in Tiamat's fortress in FF1.

Have it on my desk by the end of the week.
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
While I love FFXV, it never sat well with me how the Astrals (that is, the Summons, elevated to divine status) were the ones running the show and the little people lived or died by whichever side of the bed Bahamut got up that morning, and how the single Crystal was their tool to see which human they liked best. I like that they're relegated to servants of the (multiple) Crystals again, but with a steep price for humans, and that the morality of the Crystals themselves is called into question. It's very likely that the Angry Mandude ranting at them is a villain, or at least speaking from negative experience. I also get the feeling there's going to be a conflict of haves and have-nots given the brief story scenes shown, so it might even be a full War of the Lions situation.

What impressed me most is that the player character can integrate with the Summons, calling up Ramuh's lightning, Phoenix's wings, or Titan's fists to augment his melee attacks. That opens up huge storytelling and gameplay opportunities and I can't wait to see how the narrative justifies it and how the game puts it to use.
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
Also everyone who talks about "A Return to Swords and Sorcery" is to turn in a 1 page essay on the existence of office chairs in Tiamat's fortress in FF1.

Have it on my desk by the end of the week.
Okay, but FF2 was totally swords and sorcery.
 
Instantly more excited for this than XV, and it's definitely got a lot to do with the lesson about XV's pretty bad combat appearing to have stuck. I love what VIIR does with its turn-based ATB stuff that the action directly supplements, but I would also love an even more action-based approach along the lines of XV so long as this controls as well as it looks. I am not averse to some character action in my Final Fantasy.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Instantly more excited for this than XV, and it's definitely got a lot to do with the lesson about XV's pretty bad combat appearing to have stuck. I love what VIIR does with its turn-based ATB stuff that the action directly supplements, but I would also love an even more action-based approach along the lines of XV so long as this controls as well as it looks. I am not averse to some character action in my Final Fantasy.
This is exactly what I'm sayin'!
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
Also everyone who talks about "A Return to Swords and Sorcery" is to turn in a 1 page essay on the existence of office chairs in Tiamat's fortress in FF1.

The Sky Warriors were actually characters from Office Space. They'd rather turn themselves to bats than have to use the printer all the way in the other room any longer.

Lufenian isn't some weird ancient language, it's just marketing jargon.
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
And a fully industrialized dreadnought so massive it was its own dungeon.
Sure, but that comes with the territory: your Giant of Zot, Sol Cannon, or what have you. Never mind the medieval trappings; I'm sure there'll be some semi-futuristic doodad in this game, too.
 

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
Something about the trailer hit me in the nostalgias, so I remain cautiously optimistic and don't have to worry about it for a few years anyway. However,
They also apparently hired the guy behind Devil May Cry's combat systems to do XVI's, fwiw.
that actually shifts my enthusiasm downward a great deal.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
That's why it's impossible to make a judgement about whether or not it's a couple of years out or not, based on the very limited information presented by this trailer.

Here's a blog post where the producer states the trailer was running in real-time.

The exclusive footage, comprised of both battles and cutscenes running in real-time, represents but a fraction of what our team has accomplished since the start of development on this
 

Super Megaman X

dead eyes
(He/Him)
Also everyone who talks about "A Return to Swords and Sorcery" is to turn in a 1 page essay on the existence of office chairs in Tiamat's fortress in FF1.

Have it on my desk by the end of the week.
At first I was like "....what??? I don't remember any office chairs!" and looked it up. Turns out this is one of those cases where a 16-bit remaster actually hurt the aesthetics: I've never played the actual original, just the ports, (Origins & Dawn of Souls) and they removed the chairs and the servers from those versions. Actually pretty sad if you ask me, just now learning those exist give the dungeon a bit of flair (see what I did there?) and dimension that it never had before. 🙁
 

ThricebornPhoenix

target for faraway laughter
(he/him)
Just the other day I was trying to imagine what might convince me to play a new Final Fantasy game - when I quit something, I tend to stay quit. The only thing that I could think of was another Ivalice game with some degree of involvement from Matsuno. But...
THAT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PHOENIX I'VE SEEN

AND IT HAS PLOT SIGNIFICANCE
This, this is... attention-grabbing. Guess I have to keep my eye on this one for a while.
 

MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
I'm still curious to see where the game could go from here but I'm still not enthusiastic about the latest Final Fantasy looking like every other dang AAA medieval game.

I mean, I was not thrilled with my main party in Final Fantasy XV being four dudes in black, but the FF8-esque realistic world combined with fantastical elements was far more effective at winning me over than some angry medieval man with magic powers in the usual crapsack-looking medieval setting.

You wanna sell me on FF16, show me more of the world and less angry people being mad and bloodsplosions all over children.
 

Fyonn

did their best!
I'm really conflicted here, because like, the combat looks really solid. And, of course, the trailer looks absolutely incredible visually. But grimdark medieval fantasy where you play as The Strong Soldier Guy is the last thing I'd look for in Final Fantasy. I mean, if I want that, there are two whole Witcher games I haven't played, like six billion-hour-long RPGs descended from Gothic 1 and 2, and I never finished Dragon's Dogma. Also, where are characters other than Strong Soldier Guy? Do you have a party, or is this a straight-up character action game? That choice would make hella sense for a modern Vagrant Story, but not so much for the next Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy XIV is already the most Final Fantasy a video game has ever been, so I guess it wouldn't make sense to also do that for one of the singleplayer installments when XIV is right there, and they have made a series of the modern and future stories in a row.

Either way, I'll probably end up playing this at some point, but not, like, at launch for whatever ridiculous price new video games go for these days.
 
Here's a blog post where the producer states the trailer was running in real-time.

So was the FFVII Midgar demo for PS3. There's a big gap between running in real time and having a working real time combat engine, let alone a refined combine engine.

This trailer and brief statement don't enable us to make any judgement about whether or not a combat engine exists yet. We just don't know if it's anything more than a slick animation that represents how they want combat to feel.

That's not a criticism of the game or anything. I have no idea if they're holding something back and could show off a refined combat engine today if they wanted to, or if these few seconds of footage are close to showing everything they have. It's just a reality of how early game trailers work. Maybe we'll see more information soon, maybe it will be a while.
 
I choose to believe this is much farther along than even the early PS4 gameplay trailers of VII Remake, which was definitely before they'd made the menu time slow effect, and seemed unclear as to whether it would play like XV or be a refined iteration of it, there wasn't even any sign of ATB. Even if the combat being shown isn't fully developed (obviously we didn't get to see any UI or HUD), it looks and acts like other fully finished systems of similar design if not in practice, then intent (namely DMC5).

To be honest it looks more finished than XV's combat does now that development on it has fully stopped.
 
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