Final Fantasy XV

[Bunk Moreland]

It's not Nomura's fault, it's not any specific director's fault. It's this idea of passing FF around to anybody and everybody for each installment of the game. FF was at its most consistent quality when it was being directed mostly by Hironobu Sakaguchi.

You may like other FF games more, but I think it's hard not to look at 1-6 and see a really consistent (and improving) level of quality in all the games. 2 is kind of the outlier here, but compare that to how different every game from 7 on has felt in comparison.

Being malleable like that is a good thing in some respects for the FF series, but this "let everybody have a turn directing FF games" approach makes it easier to like one specific game, but harder to like the franchise since they don't always (in fact, I would say rarely) incorporate ideas from previous FF games that players enjoyed once you get to 7 and on.

[bobbywatson]

Originally Posted by Andrew

Everyone blame Nomura for everything loosely related to FF. But IMO the bigger problem for the FF series has been Motomu Toriyama and his obsession with his waifu.

In my case it's just that I am sick of his character designs, not that he's responsible for the downfall of my once favorite video game series.

[TheSL]

Originally Posted by BeeZee

I just want a mainline FF with the interconnected, open world of XII and the flexible job system of V. Is that too much to ask?

… yeah, probably.

It's called FFXI, but then you've got the baggage of a 11+ year MMO to deal with (even if its incorporated a shitload of quality of life changes in the last year).

[BeeZee]

Originally Posted by WisteriaHysteria

Didn't the International version of FF12 basically implement a Job System by reconfiguring everyone's licence boards into Jobs? Last I saw, modders have made ISOs for that so you can play that version of the game in English.

Zodiac Job System is pretty cool, but it uses something more akin to FFI, where you choose a job for everyone at the start of the game and never again. It's still missing the mix-and-match experimentation that makes V's job system so much fun, though.

Originally Posted by TheSL

It's called FFXI, but then you've got the baggage of a 11+ year MMO to deal with (even if its incorporated a shitload of quality of life changes in the last year).

I'm not very experienced with MMO's, but I tried FFXIV briefly last year. It did a lot of stuff that I'm sure is par for the course in the genre, but weirded me out as a mostly single-player RPG player. My overall impression was that it was making a lot of concessions to make everyone play together -- like, it would let me wander around, but I felt like I had absolutely zero chance of succeeding except in areas where I was "supposed" to go for treadmill purposes, so it felt like a moot point. I've kind of been wanting to give it another shot sometime, but I think it just might not be for me.

[LancerECNM]

On swords vs guns in Final Fantasy, a friend of mine argues that swords are more powerful as they can function as a physical conduit for whatever fuels magic in the setting. Arrows come in direct contact with the user, and so can be similarly influenced, but guns are purely mechanical.

Isn't the whole point of FFXV being a modern world that happens to have crazy magic and monsters and junk? Like if you left the world of FF4 and let it keep developing more and better technology. I mean, I understand that an actual-ass FF1/3/4/5-style crystal is important!

[Sprite]

The swords they use appear to be magic, as they poof in and out of existence with each attack.

[LancerECNM]

I think that might just be Noctis. Looks like he might be able to use different weapons, possibly from his party members. I remember one of the other dudes wielding that great sword he pulled out at one point. Maybe you can swap to other characters' play styles even though you have to play as Noctis?

[O..O~]

I hope I can customize outfits to give him a half shirt deserving of his Benimaru style.

[Rosencrantz]

Seeing all the telephone poles and wires in the FFXV trailer reminds me of FFVIII, in that there was a lore entry that explained how monsters were always destroying wires like that. To avoid this, most wires were ran underground... and monsters still managed to ruin those fairly often, making international communication sparse at best. (Then there's the whole thing about satellite broadcasts not working on account of Adel's Tomb, which was a cool touch.)

[LancerECNM]

I hope you can put people in clothes that aren't all black... One of the best parts of FFXIII was how colorful it was. Really hoping they haven't thrown the baby out with the bathwater here.

[Bongo]

I like the visuals here.

I'm gratified that the sword teleport move has some use for puzzle-looking things. However, despite having lots of gameplay footage, this trailer doesn't seem to show how the game actually plays.

[estragon]

[Positronic Brain]

Originally Posted by fanboymaster

Short Version: This game's long time in the cooker is a lot of people's fault and to act as though it's just because there's something wrong with Nomura's direction is kind of unfair in a way that rankles me.

Eh. Serious talk.

Was it exclusively Nomura's fault the game is late? No.
Was it his responsability? Yes.

That's what I'm criticizing, really. And I do think that the game having a new co-director and suddenly starting meeting milestones is no coincidence. And while it might be unfair, being a director means you are expected to fall on the sword.

[McClain]

When the game was announce, just how many games was Nomura working on, anyhow? I think he clearly stretched himself too thin, so taking if off one MASSIVE project to let he focus on another isn't unreasonable or really shitting on him.

[fanboymaster]

I'm not sure how it's someone's responsibility to meet target release dates when they're working with technology that's unfinished, a team that's being pilloried to work on other projects and which literally didn't exist for years at a time. Companies do it, but we usually call it bullshit when they do. I could get out the dumbass wikipedia list of everything he's done since the project's announcement which includes a robust gathering of things with the amusingly ambiguous title "creative producer" which could mean anything alongside a slew of other credits that seem to have fairly logical meanings. Suffice to say that in the time its taken FFXV to become reality he's directed something like 5 Kingdom Hearts spinoffs which all had pretty danged smooth dev cycles insofar as they were announced and came out in fairly quick succession. I feel like I'm misunderstanding because it sounds like you're saying his responsibility is to be a scapegoat for when people assumed the game would be out regardless of the fact that he didn't have a team to work on it for years. Tabata seems like a talented director (they worked together in some capacity on Type-0 if "creative producer" means anything) but the transition out of the FFXV directorial role is actually something he hinted at in interviews when Tabata was first brought in (specifically interviews at the time have him mentioning that Square is trying to find ways to move other projects along, and seeing as he at the same time admitted that they likely announced KH3 too early and that series has always had him as director the idea that he needed to give that more of his attention seeing as it was a project much earlier in production seems logical).

[Positronic Brain]

Whoa, there. Calm down. I'm not asking for Nomura's head - even if I do think he should be drawn and quartered for, directly or indirectly, putting zippers on Behemots.

I'm not sure how it's someone's responsibility to meet target release dates when they're reasons

Welcome to Corporate World!

Companies do it, but we usually call it bullshit when they do.

Yuuuup. That doesn't mean your project leader didn't meet his goals. That doesn't mean he will never work again. And obviously the studio recognizes his good faith, as he's still a director instead of being promoted away.

Suffice to say that in the time its taken FFXV to become reality he's directed something like 5 Kingdom Hearts spinoffs which all had pretty danged smooth dev cycles insofar as they were announced and came out in fairly quick succession.

And you've hit the nail in the head right there. As McClain said, he likely was stretching himself too thin. And part of the tasks of a project leader is to know when he has bitten more than he can chew and recuse himself of projects he can't lead.

I feel like I'm misunderstanding because it sounds like you're saying his responsibility is to be a scapegoat for when people assumed the game would be out regardless of the fact that he didn't have a team to work on it for years.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Please also note I didn't say it was fair.

Tabata seems like a talented director (they worked together in some capacity on Type-0 if "creative producer" means anything) but the transition out of the FFXV directorial role is actually something he hinted at in interviews when Tabata was first brought in

Saying "hey guys, I'm being replaced by somebody else" doesn't excuse you from your mistakes - although if it was his decision, it would surely make amends for it.

Listen, I'm not saying Nomura is a dickhead or what not. What I'm saying is that under his leadership the project - which was originally a spin-off announced, what, 8 years ago? - didn't go anywhere. And now they have a new director and suddenly the project has focus and we have gameplay footage and promises of a playable demo. How much Nomura is to blame is something we will likely never know, but as a director he failed to deliver a product. That's it, no more judgement is coming from my part.

Nomura wouldn't be the first director that got overwhelmed by leading a studio's flagship project - remember Matsuno? And the fact that they have brought a new director to finish the game to recopu sunken costs doesn't mean the game will be better - again, remember Matsuno. But as a company, it looks like Square has brought his foot down and decided Versus XIII must ship now, and removing Nomura was something that had to be done because the project had stalled under his leadership.

We will never get the game Nomura had envisioned, but we will get a game. Nobody knows if it will be a better or worse game than we would have gotten if Nomura had finished its development, but that's not what Square cares about now.

[fanboymaster]

I am perfectly calm, and I fundamentally disagree with you in a number of places (the idea that someone should fall on their sword because management fucked up seems like the sort of thing one wouldn't usually encourage) but this also isn't something that's really that relevant so I don't actually care to hash it out further

[Bongo]

The story of Square Enix's production difficulties and mismanagement of talent goes back to the time of the merger, and is a result of being unable to shed their 90s-era development practices deeply embedded in their culture. They've got more problems than just being unable to get a flagship product out the door, if you can believe that. A Realm Reborn managed to fix their cash flow problems, which I suppose is rightly their first priority, but it did so at the cost of significantly disrupting their operations throughout the company, by siphoning young talent that they need to be nurturing with smaller projects instead.

However, the only individual who can conceivably be blamed for all this is Yoichi Wada, who already has been.

[narcodis]

Yeah, I don't think you can really put the blame of tardiness on solely one person, even if it is the director. Frankly, it seems like Square has been in somewhat of a state of disarray the past several years. For instance, remember the release of FFXIV?

[Bongo]

You'd want to blame the producer more than the director, traditionally.

Hironobu Sakaguchi was skilled at both direction and production, and his departure left a big void that they've struggled to fill. Nearly all of their major (internal) productions since Final Fantasy X have been troubled, because they've still been following the art-first development strategy that they pioneered in the 90s. They basically make an enormous amount of high-quality assets, far more than they'd ever need, and assemble the finished game out of them. This resulted in some of the best-looking games in the world back in the SNES and PS1 days, as well as a whole lot of expensive stuff left on the cutting room floor. (Incidentally, this same approach is part of why The Spirits Within was such a boondoggle, proving even Sakaguchi wasn't above this kind of profligacy.)

With the shift to 3D, which is far more expensive, they needed more and more people creating assets. Disorganized small teams can capture a certain creative vitality that their earlier works noticeably benefited from. Disorganized large teams just bloat and drift. What's more, apart from needing more people, these 3D projects also needed more time, making the finished design even more of a moving target. This is the sort of approach that made FFXIII-2 necessary, cobbling it together out of surplus assets from FFXIII-1. With FFXII, they settled into the unhealthy pattern of an ambitious director losing control of the production, then switching in a more disciplined replacement to salvage the overdue, over-budget mess that resulted. With FFXIV, this was repeated on a grand scale, where the game was fixed after launch, and the process was an all-hands-on-deck emergency that resulted in disruptions and delays of nearly all their other projects. FFXV in particular slipped an entire console generation, which meant all the assets they had started with became obsolete and had to be redrawn (witness the difference in fidelity between the earlier trailers and the later ones).

They're depending on Eidos in the wrong way. The financial buoyancy that acquisition provided kept them from going bankrupt in the wake of FFXIV 1.0, but what they really need is to import their methods.

[Umbaglo]

Originally Posted by Bongo Bill

They're depending on Eidos in the wrong way. The financial buoyancy that acquisition provided kept them from going bankrupt in the wake of FFXIV 1.0, but what they really need is to import their methods.

One thing I remember being discussed by either the FF11 or FF14 staff not that long ago was them talking a bit about one of the things they learned a lot from the Eidos staff was the art of user playtesting and feedback.

It took them until buying out an American developer AFTER having run an MMO for a few years to realize that listening to player testing might actually be useful.

[Bongo]

Bravely Default was made by an outside studio, but I seem to remember that series is going to be a model for their development practices going forward, and they used a fairly radical (for a game on a closed platform) user feedback cycle in its development.

[Droewyn]

Originally Posted by Zef

Please, please, please have deities with names less silly than Lindsay.

[narcodis]

Originally Posted by estragon

boyband

I was thinking they looked more like Lost Prophets, circa 2004 or whatever.


hopefully less pedophilia

[McClain]

Michelle's reaction: "looks pretty. I wish there were girls.'

[upupdowndown]

Originally Posted by McClain

Michelle's reaction: "looks pretty. I wish there were girls.'

The sausage party is a bit disappointing to me too, although after the lady-centric FFXIII trilogy I'm more okay with it.

[ThornGhost]

The whole video just looks so stilted and joyless. It's like no one at Square has ever met another human being before.

[R.R. Bigman]

Originally Posted by ThornGhost

The whole video just looks so stilted and joyless. It's like no one at Square has ever met another human being before.

I don't know if it's the writing or that we aren't shown anything about these characters, but the trailer left me kind of cold. Already we're running into weird jargon like "Astral Shards", and the combat shown seems to point to a large majority of the game being random fights with wildlife, and I was hoping JRPG's would get away from that at this point.

The idea of driving around the world in a car as your main mode of transport in a JRPG is wonderful, though. Hopefully, instead of getting an airship replacement halfway through the game the car just gets a new engine made of crystals of moogle wings and it starts to fly.

[Kishi]

It's a bunch of bros in suits and hair gel tooling around in a classic car and fighting monsters with teleporting grapple-swords. That's like the opposite of joyless.

Originally Posted by R.R. Bigman

The idea of driving around the world in a car as your main mode of transport in a JRPG is wonderful, though. Hopefully, instead of getting an airship replacement halfway through the game the car just gets a new engine made of crystals of moogle wings and it starts to fly.

Now I'm picturing these guys high-fiving and broing out as their car gets surrounded by magic sparkles and takes off into the night sky like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Fingers crossed.

[upupdowndown]

Originally Posted by Kishi

Now I'm picturing these guys high-fiving and broing out as their car gets surrounded by magic sparkles and takes off into the night sky like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Fingers crossed.

there's some real cross-marketing magic potential here. I sure hope someone at S-E has Elon Musk's number!