Just to point out the obvious: Length of time =/= quality of time. One thing to look forward to (hopefully) is the possibility of how tight the story is. 40 hours has always been the standard length of FF games, but what will matter more than anything is how much narrative and development is packed in those 40 hours.
Costs have gone up greatly in games and FF games have had less and less dialogue in order to develop the story. It's obvious that a lot of the dialogue has become so plain and lacking in depth since FF went full voice acting. Cost is definitely why.
A bold suggestion for SE: they should just do away with voice acting, or at the very least character interaction animations (them moving and reacting while they're talking). They could do so much more if they would put in more talking because their characters have been talking less and less over time.
A lot of times FF characters sound like they're narrating the story instead of actually being a character inside the story. I call it the "John Cena" phenomenon. :/
I know people would complain about that, but you'd get so much more character and story development this way. SE isn't rolling in cash so they can't satisfy all ends. If a tradeoff had to be made this would be the necessary one.
Lube Me Up
