Done With Final Fantasy

[Scoobes]

IFireflyl said:

Scoobes said:
What I'm getting from this is a lot of Final Fantasy fans want things to be the same... but different.

What I think it really boils down to is people want to recapture the magic of the first Final Fantasy games they played, but I don't think that can be put down to just a "turn-based battle system", or "open world" or "characters that aren't whinny little shit, Hope" (actually, might be onto something with that last one).

Final Fantasy games (and jRPGs in general) are about story, world building and the overall fantasy experience. I never truly cared too much about the battle system as long as it was playable and had logical progression. The story, the world and the experience of entering those fantastical worlds is why I play. Funnily enough I always wanted the games to go real-time, and when they finally did in XII, I was disappointed by the overall storytelling!

The FF series has had to evolve, innovate and modernise its gameplay to bring new players in. There are plenty of turn-based games for people who enjoy them (I'd recommend the Tales games personally).

OP: I can understand why you might be a bit apprehensive about XV. FF XIII seemed to have no soul and stripped the Final Fantasy experience to its bare-bones. From what little I've seen of XV though, it may be able to re-kindle some of the magic of Final Fantasy whilst still being a modernised jRPG.

Bolded point one: This is where Final Fantasy has been (to me) lacking. The story in Final Fantasy XIII, for example, is convoluted/complex, and I didn't much care for it. Also, there was no "world". There was a giant hallway until Gran Pulse, and that was just a glorified Calm Lands (Final Fantasy X). There was no exploration. Final Fantasy X also had limited exploration, but at least you could go back wherever you wanted, and it had a lot of mechanics that still made the game (again, to me) great. Final Fantasy XIII, in my opinion failed on both of your points.

Bolded point two: Final Fantasy did evolve and innovate gameplay with each new title. The gameplay was "modernized" in a sense when they went to ATB, but you still had full control over all of your character's actions, and it was still a variation of turn-based. Also, Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, and X all sold more copies than Final Fantasy XIII. Sure, you can argue that they were out longer... but look at Final Fantasy XII. The only one of those games that Final Fantasy XII sold more than was Final Fantasy IX. Final Fantasy XII isn't stll on the shelves being sold (at least, not in any way that would make a dent on VGChartz sales). Just because it's new doesn't mean it's better. Final Fantasy X is the second-highest selling Final Fantasy game (without including the HD remake), and that came out about a decade ago. It sold almost a million more copies than Final Fantasy XIII, over 5 million more copies than Final Fantasy XIII-2, and almost 7 million more copies than Lightning Returns. Also, keep in mind that all three of those games had the advantage of being released on two consoles, and I added those console totals together. Even though Final Fantasy X was on a single console, it still sold better than every Final Fantasy game after it, some of which were released on multiple consoles to give them a better chance of selling. SquareEnix didn't need to change anything. They were doing just fine, and they lost fans when they changed what they wanted (my opinion).

Bolded point three: Perhaps. I suppose we will see.

1. I agree with this as well and is the basis of why I think most fans of FF feel let down by the new games. I see evidence that they've learnt a bit from their mistakes, although I guess we'll see.

2. I think we're actually agreeing on this. My point is that we shouldn't complain about SE modernising the gameplay, but rather that the overall experience (story, world, lore etc.) has been sub-par for the series. The gameplay itself had to change to bring in new players, but they seem to have missed on the basics.

It's quite interesting to read up on the development problems of XII and XIII as they seem to explain some of their issues:

XII had a change of director mid-way through development and by some accounts, two of the characters were forcefully added by upper management for marketing reasons rather than artistic merit (I'll let you guess which ones). The story actually has a lot of potential and depth but it was told rather poorly and the two additiomnal characters really ruined my enjoyment of the game, especially later on where they have no relevance to anything.

XIII on the other hand was in development hell. Too many people on the team working on different aspects of the game but with no direction (nearly half of the assets made for the game were unused). There was an interview on Gamasutra a while back where they basically admitted that the final game and story only really took shape when they had to make the Japanese demo with the FFVII: Advent Children Blu-Ray. That was about 12 months before release; they basically shoved Final Fantasy XIII together in about a year. It definitely explains why there is such a lack of meaningful content and lore in-game.

3. OK, so everything I wrote above doesn't actually paint a very good picture for XV... but I'm still staying positive for it! I actually think FFXV has had a better direction from back when it was called XIII Versus. The past trailers seem more story focused, although obviously this may have changed.