conchobhar
What's Shenmue?
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Final Fantasy XVI
- Thread starter Mogri
- Start date
I mean, you can take exception at the specific phrasing of that, but the sentiment is true. There's been considerable negativity towards this new game merely on assumptions on what it will be like based on scant cinematic scenes (there has been very little talk about the new action-oriented combat, in comparison) that would have likely been positive if the dad of Riskbreakers and noseless tacticians were in charge. And having gone from one side of the fence to the other, myself, I do see a lot of people outright refusing to listen to those who countered that negativity with examples of Yoshida's work and experience.
You're welcome? Oh no, direct responses to passive aggression are out of line, but the passive aggressive shit itself? Aces apparently.
I'm gonna keep posting here though because yeah, I said from seeing the trailer that what little of the the new combat was shown looks great. Poaching a DMC5/Dragon's Dogma combat designer was an amazing get for SE given their continued efforts to move their design direction into more and more action-oriented games. KH2 (and especially Final Mix) was almost a one-hit wonder as most of the hand-held games that built off of that dynamic had a completely different team and the difference was clearly felt, not to mention the absolute mess of XV's combat design taking several steps backward. It wasn't until VII Remake that KH2's combat people made another big splash and helped edge the studio even closer to character action. VIIR didn't quite make it but between Tifa's entire kit, the parry materia especially on Tifa, and the way human enemies LOVE getting juggled some of the DNA is there. With someone who has a lot more experience on some of the best character action game design to date I'm excited to see if FFXVI finally gets SE over that hill they've been struggling to climb.
I apologize for any offense caused by the thread title. It was meant as good-natured ribbing, but it got out of hand. I would appreciate a ceasefire on the discussion of who's being more passive-aggressive than whom.
And now we'll have to wait for actual information on the game before we get another witty subtitle.
And now we'll have to wait for actual information on the game before we get another witty subtitle.
It's just weird though, you know? Like, it makes sense talking about Hideo Kojima overwhelmingly, or even exclusively, with a lot with his games because he's an auteur who has his fingers in every aspect of the game design and goes out of his way to inform the player of such. But YoshiP doesn't involve himself in those ways in, to that extent, with FFXIV. And we'll still discuss how Ikuya Nakamura programmed the rumble feedback in MGS games, or Yoji Shinkawa's character/mecha designs, or Harry Gregson-Williams's music composition. I assume FFXIV mega-fans have similar discussions about that game, but as a neutral bystander it doesn't seem like that's the case. And it hasn't really been the case here.
But again, we know so little of substance about this game it's not like we can talk about much else. It's just a weird situation. This is probably the first time in decades that a mainline Final Fantasy has had its production so tightly guarded and information about it so carefully and reservedly dolled out to us.
He does though. In FFXIV he’s producer and director. With FFXVI we don’t know the full extent of exactly how closely he’s working with the team, but we do know about his management style — which brought the maximum creative potential out of his team for FFXIV by working with them closely and personally.
The FFXIV 1.0 documentary by NoClip goes into signifiant detail on what Yoship did to turn the lowest team morale at S-E into something brilliant.
The people making FFXVI made Heavensward. Hitoshi Takai was the Assistant Director for ARR and HW, and then became the director for FFXVI. We know that he and Yoship worked extremely closely together as director and producer-director.
That’s why looking at their output is informative and why FFXIV fans are over the moon.
The fact SOKEN is doing double duty on FFXIV and FFXVI is crazy. He wrote 1100 songs for the entire Shadowbringers expansion alone.
And now he’s writing for FFXVI and FFXIV has another expansion coming out at the end of November. Plus the poor guy battled (and defeated) cancer in the last year on top of it.
In terms of why we are talking about yoship specifically is because he’s the face of FFXVI right now, much like FFXIV. He’s been the one at events and announcements etc, no doubt to partially take the PR load off the team working.
"Thancred DLC" had me laughing out loud
I don't think it's weird to be stoked that a guy who super-duper-knows how to make a fucking video game is at the helm of Final Fantasy: The Brand, let alone FF XVI. Dude has a proven track record! And XVI looks a lot like XIV, thematically anyway.
Sakaguchi was listed as producer on Final Fantasy 6 thru 10, but no one doubts his involvement in those projects, do they??
That's a typo. That has to be a typo. Right? The fact that I'm not even fucking sure scares me lol
Not a typo.
Do you know... La Hee?
My real hope, (though I don’t want to assume anything), is Koji Fox being in charge of the localisation.
I know he has his hands full on the Endwalker script, as well as the previous Shadowbringers patches. Each major patch is around 200k words.
But I still am hoping he will get tapped for it. It would the the best, and TT would appreciate the puns I hate so much.
I know he has his hands full on the Endwalker script, as well as the previous Shadowbringers patches. Each major patch is around 200k words.
But I still am hoping he will get tapped for it. It would the the best, and TT would appreciate the puns I hate so much.
I made a mistake, it’s for FFXIV overall not just Shadowbringers.
On the Death Unto Dawn liner notes SOKEN said:
But yeah. He the Guinness World Record for the most songs written for a videogame.
Look for FFXIV OSTs in Spotify - they're half of the full FF Playlist, and they're not complete. It's freaking overwhelming and it has broken me out of my OCD habit that you have to listen to an OST until you can name every song from memory. Thanks, Soken!
(BTW, those are good songs, so it's not just quantity. A few of those are remixes of old tunes, but they are good remixes! And it's not his fault I've spent so many hours at The Waking Sands I want to defenestrate myself when the theme comes up)
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I actually am insulted and hurt over the reductive claim that my thoughts and criticisms over the little XVI has shown of itself are somehow invalidated because of some innate pro-Matsuno bias, when the aspects that I'm wary of are shared with the misgivings I often have about his works and how they'll be interpreted and perpetuated by enthusiastic fans like XVI's developers are. I wouldn't take it personally or directed at me, but when phrasing like "literally every single person" is used in a small community like this, it's hard not to feel confronted about it and like your voice isn't wanted or is being framed as disingenuous.
The antagonism over discussing the game has felt stifling to me from the beginning, to be honest, because the division in audiences leaves all so primed to buckle down defensively in nearly all interactions when you perceive yourself as constantly wary of the other "side" in managing those potential hostilities. The unwavering faith earned and displayed by XIV players is a little intimidating--not in context of XIV and its continued development, but how that goodwill so directly translates to a kind of hype culture for XVI before no one's even seen much of it at all, just because of the people involved and the sheer belief that they can pull it off; the naysaying skepticism fueled by MMO stigma that bleeds over into assessments of this game in response is its own can of worms (which I think XIV as the most relevant and popular game of its genre can more than weather). In effect the talk about XVI in this window where there's little to talk about doesn't really address much about the game but rather the promise that it represents to those who want to believe in it. I ran out of things to say when the developers stayed their hands, because I don't think XIV and its merits have much to do with whatever is going to come out of this project; it will soar or plummet in its own time and I can only comment on what exists of it in the now. Ultimately I'll be excited when they give me reason to be, in context of this game.
The antagonism over discussing the game has felt stifling to me from the beginning, to be honest, because the division in audiences leaves all so primed to buckle down defensively in nearly all interactions when you perceive yourself as constantly wary of the other "side" in managing those potential hostilities. The unwavering faith earned and displayed by XIV players is a little intimidating--not in context of XIV and its continued development, but how that goodwill so directly translates to a kind of hype culture for XVI before no one's even seen much of it at all, just because of the people involved and the sheer belief that they can pull it off; the naysaying skepticism fueled by MMO stigma that bleeds over into assessments of this game in response is its own can of worms (which I think XIV as the most relevant and popular game of its genre can more than weather). In effect the talk about XVI in this window where there's little to talk about doesn't really address much about the game but rather the promise that it represents to those who want to believe in it. I ran out of things to say when the developers stayed their hands, because I don't think XIV and its merits have much to do with whatever is going to come out of this project; it will soar or plummet in its own time and I can only comment on what exists of it in the now. Ultimately I'll be excited when they give me reason to be, in context of this game.
It seems to reason that if a team happened to make one good game in a genre, they would manage to make another of similar quality.
That is why I am excited for FFXVI. Because FFXIV is a JRPG. It is four JRPGs in a trench-coat, soon to be five in November.
But to be specific, the team making FFXVI made Heavensward, which was the best JRPG I had played that year, any years to come, by far.
FFXIV is a JRPG that happens to have online play.
That is why I am excited for FFXVI. Because FFXIV is a JRPG. It is four JRPGs in a trench-coat, soon to be five in November.
But to be specific, the team making FFXVI made Heavensward, which was the best JRPG I had played that year, any years to come, by far.
FFXIV is a JRPG that happens to have online play.
Your JRPG Dad wants you to grow by overcoming adversity.
That's the thing though, FF6 through 10 there are a lot of big name talents involved in those games who all left their stamps on them, and to focus only on Sakaguchi at the expense of everyone that had a big hand in the creative direction of those games is weird.
I totally get that's gonna be a lot of people's perspectives here, and I think that's a pretty natural and normal set of expectations for FFXIV fans. At the same time, that's one data point. (Being generous, a small handful if you count the expansions as their own things) - and just from a dispassionate neutral party, it's illogical to claim a trend with a small sample size.
I don't agree with this characterization. It's not just expansions they work on, there's a good number of patches in-between each expansion as well, and all of those have new content. This is more like a consistent team producing content and features on a deadline over a period of ... *checks Wikipedia* eight years.
It's all in service to one game though. You've proven you can refine that one game very well. You haven't yet proven you can do other things quiet yet. I suspect they'll do a good job, but that's based on feelings and not anything you can remotely prove.
Production, rather than direction, seems to be the most reliable predictor of quality at Square Enix. FFXIII, FFXIV 1.0, and FFXV all have weaknesses that can be directly linked to their protracted dev cycles. Kingdom Hearts 3, Dragon Quest XI, Octopath Traveler, and FF7R all had proven project leads and their flaws are more linked to creative direction than logistical compromise.
I mean like...is it bad to WANT a new video game to be good? And to be like "hey I liked this dude's last game, this one looks cool so far, I think it's gonna be really cool"?
I dunno, seems pretty...reasonable????? To me????????
Like no shit, we all KNOW that we haven't played it yet. We all know that we cannot, in a court of internet law, prove that the game is good, because it's not friggin' done. But like...it's okay to be excited about things? I think?!
I dunno, seems pretty...reasonable????? To me????????
Like no shit, we all KNOW that we haven't played it yet. We all know that we cannot, in a court of internet law, prove that the game is good, because it's not friggin' done. But like...it's okay to be excited about things? I think?!
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I honestly don't get this perspective. Yes, it's "one game" on the box, but every new expansion (and each of those expansion's discrete patches) has more content than most entire installments of the rest of the series. Let's ignore that ARR was a complete revamp of everything that existed before, from the battle engine to the flowerpots, and take just the three current major expansions: there was far, far more content created for 3.0~3.5, than there was for, say, FF8. Characters, music, environments, enemies, sidequests, visual effects, written story, character dialogue.
And all that before getting into the "refining that one game very welll." From FF4 through 9, the battle engine was mostly unchanged, just refined very well. Those games were basically the same car, just running with new upholstery, new radio, and maybe the engine runs a little smoother, or has a button to inject nitro every now and then. Nobody held that against them or claimed that they were just "refinements" (even though they were) as opposed to brand new games.
Although I got in at basically the latest updates, looking back on the history of XIV's gameplay I see much of the same--constant refinements, constant improvements, both large-scale and QoL; rebalancing of enemy mechanics; adding or removing skills and traits that refresh the whole concepts of Jobs, and so on. So, no, that's an unfair comparison. Creative Business Unit III --the other "big name talents" you want to hear about-- has been creating the equivalent of an entire new FF game every couple of years. Just because they run on mostly similar engines from installment to installment doesn't diminish their accomplishment, especially compared to individual numbered games in the series.
Incidentally--SOKEN, Akihiko Yoshida, Natsuko Ishikawa, Koji Fox, Banri Oda, Kazutoyo Maehiro, and, yeah, Hiroshi Takai (did you read the link yet). While all XIV fans credit Yoship with the production and direction of most of the content, most also know who stands with him and whose expertise he reached out to. Nobdoy is crediting just one person with the entire measure of quality of the finished products.
If you mean story-wise, your character has a party of NPC buddies in FFXIV, who are well characterised and grow with you and the storyline.
If you mean gameplay, I feel like that ship has sailed as much as I desire 4 person parties with a turn-based systems. I anticipate a similar setup to FFXIII, FFXV, or FFVII Remake in that you only really control one character at a time and the rest are AI.