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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Final Fantasy XIII Rant

alekth on 05 May 2010

I came off SO International (definitely not such a great game to me) to FFXIII and at first it seemed fairly boring. Around chapter 7 I was liking it a lot though, the linearity and lack of towns didn't bother me, story and characters were good (though playing it in Japanese maybe it helps that I didn't have to go through what I gather to be a moaning Vanille and funny accents).

The battle system was fast paced so controlling only one character frankly didn't bother me. At times I would have appreciated switching between characters (especially when buffs and debuffs order is concerned). Regarding auto-battle, since one can opt out and slow down the pace of combat, I don't see how it's a big problem. The AI picks actions very well, but then again I find it hard moaning about them being too good, in Persona 3/FES their auto-handling only bothered me because they'd do stupid stuff a lot more often, and in most action RPGs I only switch characters for something very specific or because, again, they are doing stupid stuff.

That being said, I found it a very beautiful and great to get through game, but now that I'm finished with the story (and only having completed about 20 optional missions), I'm taking a break and don't feel compelled to go finish the rest of the missions and dedicate 1/3 of the total gameplay to farming turtles. Apart from running around and checking everywhere for treasures, as well as those mentioned 20ish missions, I didn't grind at all and barely somewhat upgraded a few weapons, and the final three boss fights were a joke (got that 5-star trophy for the last fight on the first playthrough as well), so that was a disappointment as well.



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Scoobes on 05 May 2010
radha said:
theRepublic said:
The Fury said:

And why is it that even though they are better hardware and more disc space then ever before, they have fewer enemy character models then ever before? 

To make the graphics look so good, they have to spend a lot of time on them.  That goes for character models, enemy models, textures, environments, animations, etc.  That means they have less time for other things, so stuff starts getting left out.

But, look at GTA, RAGE, Borderlands, fallout oblivion, mass effect, etc, they all look great and are open. FF13 has flat textures and almost no lighting effects, they only this they excel at are charecter textures and FPS.

Look at the diversity in the textures and artwork of those games and compare to FFXIII. It takes a lot of time to generate the sheer number of diverse textures that FFXIII uses. Look at Oblivion for instance, a large number of textures have been repeated to recreate areas, same with Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. In FFXIII, very few areas look the same and textures are very diverse throughout the whole game.

A lot of the work went into creating the artwork itself, not just the effects and game engine. Personally I think they should have spent more time on filling the areas with more (towns, people, more reachable and open environments etc.)




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theRepublic on 05 May 2010
The Fury said:
theRepublic said:
radha said:
theRepublic said:
The Fury said:

And why is it that even though they are better hardware and more disc space then ever before, they have fewer enemy character models then ever before? 

To make the graphics look so good, they have to spend a lot of time on them.  That goes for character models, enemy models, textures, environments, animations, etc.  That means they have less time for other things, so stuff starts getting left out.

But, look at GTA, RAGE, Borderlands, fallout oblivion, mass effect, etc, they all look great and are open. FF13 has flat textures and almost no lighting effects, they only this they excel at are charecter textures and FPS.

What about cut scenes?  I would guess that SE had to spend a lot of time and money on those.

I thought Square had their own department dedicated to making the FMV cut scenes in what was Square Pictures, they could produce sequences that rival anything now 5 years ago. That is besides the point though, back when we had 7, 8 and 9, they were pushing for great graphics from the technology and hardware they had to use yet we still go lots of different enemies, each unique to the location. Same thing happened in 12 (and 10 as well thinking about it).

Guess it's easier to create things from a model you already have then create a new one again. Just make you feel like you've not moved on in the game.

Even though they may be doing everything in house, it doesn't come for free.  They still have to pay the people making the cut scenes.

Those games were all in SD.  HD assets take roughly 3 to 4 times the amount of work to create.  So you are either talking the same amount of people with a much longer development time, or a lot more people with the same development time.  Either way, you are going to be spending a lot more money.



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radha on 05 May 2010
Scoobes said:
radha said:
theRepublic said:
The Fury said:

And why is it that even though they are better hardware and more disc space then ever before, they have fewer enemy character models then ever before? 

To make the graphics look so good, they have to spend a lot of time on them.  That goes for character models, enemy models, textures, environments, animations, etc.  That means they have less time for other things, so stuff starts getting left out.

But, look at GTA, RAGE, Borderlands, fallout oblivion, mass effect, etc, they all look great and are open. FF13 has flat textures and almost no lighting effects, they only this they excel at are charecter textures and FPS.

Look at the diversity in the textures and artwork of those games and compare to FFXIII. It takes a lot of time to generate the sheer number of diverse textures that FFXIII uses. Look at Oblivion for instance, a large number of textures have been repeated to recreate areas, same with Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. In FFXIII, very few areas look the same and textures are very diverse throughout the whole game.

A lot of the work went into creating the artwork itself, not just the effects and game engine. Personally I think they should have spent more time on filling the areas with more (towns, people, more reachable and open environments etc.)

thats why the made the game linear and thats why the areas where huge, they needed to make an artificialy long game without putting lots of content. Most areas are looong but is the same assets they just changed the structure.



dd if = /dev/brain | tail -f | grep games | nc -lnvvp 80

Hey Listen!

https://archive.org/details/kohina_radio_music_collection

radha on 05 May 2010
theRepublic said:
radha said:
theRepublic said:
The Fury said:

And why is it that even though they are better hardware and more disc space then ever before, they have fewer enemy character models then ever before? 

To make the graphics look so good, they have to spend a lot of time on them.  That goes for character models, enemy models, textures, environments, animations, etc.  That means they have less time for other things, so stuff starts getting left out.

But, look at GTA, RAGE, Borderlands, fallout oblivion, mass effect, etc, they all look great and are open. FF13 has flat textures and almost no lighting effects, they only this they excel at are charecter textures and FPS.

What about cut scenes?  I would guess that SE had to spend a lot of time and money on those.

sorry blizzard has spoiled me for many years, nothing in FF13 blow me away like any one of starcraft2, wow expantiong CGI out there.



dd if = /dev/brain | tail -f | grep games | nc -lnvvp 80

Hey Listen!

https://archive.org/details/kohina_radio_music_collection

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d21lewis on 05 May 2010

The OP is awesome! And now, I must read the thread!



chris1_16 on 05 May 2010

I disagree with the first one. Some battles are a pain in the ass. I have no problem with controlling one character. Imagine controlling all of the characters during the fight with the final boss in chapter 9.........dear god......



 

Favorite films. Foreign films forever!

 

leo-j on 05 May 2010

XIII is too linear.. and by linear I don't mean UNCHARTED linear, Uncharted feels like an open world game compared to XIII.. honestly it is BY FAR the most linear game I have ever played.. It feels as if the game is on rails. Why?! Why is it so linear? Wtf is wrong with square enix making it so linear? How the hell did it take then 5 years to make this game



 

mM
leo-j on 05 May 2010
theRepublic said:
The Fury said:

And why is it that even though they are better hardware and more disc space then ever before, they have fewer enemy character models then ever before? 

To make the graphics look so good, they have to spend a lot of time on them.  That goes for character models, enemy models, textures, environments, animations, etc.  That means they have less time for other things, so stuff starts getting left out.

they had 5 plus years to work on there engine..



 

mM
FaRmLaNd on 05 May 2010

Too many poorly written and poorly voice acted grunting fmvs for my taste. Too linear as well. Couldn't even finish it.

Couldn't stand several of the characters and hated hearing my accent decimated by some horrible voice actor.

The gameplay was fun enough but the games attempt to be a film was utterly fail.