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Ljink96 on 08 April 2018
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fatslob-:O said:
Ljink96 said:

Hate to butt in, but maybe the Square part of the company has high standards that are almost unrivaled but the company behind Dragon Quest, Enix and when it comes down to it Armor Project has a history of outsourcing for graphics engines and animations etc. It wasn't until DQX that development was exclusively in house and even with XI, Armor Project had to hire the art director from I believe it was...ORCA Inc for help with UE4. And of course, you have to start somewhere and learn the engine somehow. But even with Dragon Quest VI and VII the art side was handheld by Arte Piazza and VIII and IX were handheld by Level 5. I'm nowhere near as talented as the staff on Armor Project but it's no secret that they aren't the most forward thinking in the graphics department with XI being their first game to use the PBR pipeline, 8 years after the Square part of the company started using it. 

So, in short while Square Enix as a whole has had high standards before now, Armor Project was new to these high standards and that can translate to issues with porting and overall development. Personally I think Level 5 and Nintendo's Monolith Soft are just as competent as Square.

Just because Armor Project outsources some of their work doesn't mean that they don't have internal standards to adhere ...

We are talking about a studio who has an exclusive contract to work for Square Enix which are practically in-house developers so them asking for outside help such as Orca/Toylogic is NOT to be taken as a sign of weakness when they get challenged with 4 years of work to make two very different versions of the same title ... 

Are you really sure you want to argue that Armor Project were a bunch of strangers to high end game development when they were developing DQVIII for the PS2 ? (Level-5 was a far smaller studio back then) 

Nearly none of their projects were solely in-house including DQX of which previously Orca supported in the development thereof ... 

And that helps your case...how? lol It's not a sign of weakness, it's a sign that they are inexperienced with current gen pipelines, which would affect development time. Armor project has never been ahead of the curve or even on the curve in terms of the art side of game development, coding is coding, they could code in assembley and it'd be a good Dragon Quest mechanically. So yes, they were strangers to it because they never used a PBR engine before XI. They only did the back end of Dragon Quest VIII, and Level 5 did the front end, which is why it looked the way it did. They contracted Level 5 rather than their internal team because they wanted a specific style for DQVIII and possibly learn from Level 5. 

And I didn't say because they outsource they don't have standards, they haven't in the past been as adequate as Square in that department. And we're not bringing up the 3DS version because it's not even being released in the west...it's not being delayed. Why even bring that up? They were well staffed on both versions, and it's a SD game, something they're familiar with. People don't understand the difficulty of working with HD games, hell even Nintendo underestimated it, and for Armor Project it wouldn't have been any different. Nobody is calling anyone weak, just inexperienced and it happens. DQVIII looks the way it does because of Level 5, not Armor Project whom didn't really get 3D all that well until VIII. They're an old fashioned company still, to this day. Really simplistic and they move at their own pace. Nothing wrong with that, but there are repercussions to that.