I am glad Mr. Kitase is saying that.

I do like Final Fantasy games and would like to play them more often.

The dude at the picture looks like he got some pretty bad news on that headset..

Square Enix : " Final Fantasy XIII is on Xbox!"
Dude : "Shit my face is downgraded"

he actually look like sephiroth with short hair if you notice.

well no shit, crystal bearers only took what? 2 years? since they already knew how to make cube games? still though, if there is still no grass sticking out from the ground on grassland when 13 comes out, I swear to fucking god.....

If you want a 100+ hour RPG play an MMORPG. I've clocked an entire year+ (yes 8544+ hours) playing EverQuest. Non MMO FF games can do fine with a solid 40-60 hours, of course there will always be min/maxers who spend 120+ hours on a single walk-through but they are nuts.

I am actually ok with waiting half a decade for their Flagship FF. As long as they also put out RPGs (or even FF spinoffs, though FFCC sucks) every 2-3 years. And yes, every 2 to 3 FFs they need to upgrade the engine.

Despite having to wait so long for FFXIII, we will play it and love it and thank SE for giving it to us.

pffft only 8544 hours? on a side note, I quit MMORPG as a whole for a reason, but now The Old Republic is tempting me again, damn those Bioware SoBs.

Only 2 FF games took me over 35 hours, FF9 and FF12; I think 90% of people, however, find their favourites in FF6, FF7, and FF8, and most of the other 10% in 4 and 10.

Anyway, personally, I find the 15-25 hour mark to be about right for RPGs, otherwise I feel they have too much filler and fluff. Even the most popular FF game, FF7, could have been a superior game with shedding half of the stuff in it; seriously, how many people gave a crap about the Sephiroth world tour? The whole Midgar avalanche vs. Shinra thing was absolutely awesome; the Sephiroth/Cloud clone story that both interrupted that awesome story and took up the majority of the game, kinda blew.

Anyway, developers should save their engines and bring out a new RPG every year; it has beeen working VERY well with the DS Dragon Ques/Final Fantasy series; and helped strongly convert me to a Nintendo system fan. Sure PS3 has FF13 coming out for it, and Versus; but that's not going to trump all the joy the DS has given me over the years in terms of RPGs.

Actually, to be quite honest, only two RPGs have taken me over 65 hours; Xenogears on PSX, and that was mostly because I read every singgle line of text in that game out, using my own voice acting, for the entertainment of my wife. I am talking even the towns peoplee; I loved that game SO much. Then there is a Wii game called Rune Factory Frontier which I found to be surprisingly satisfying to play, and at over 70 hours now, I am still playing it, and it is my longest played game ever.

One game that came really close is Skies of Arcadia on Dreamcast. Anyway, some long games are good, but not if they feel like a bunch of fluff was put in to boost them up to some quota. It's ridiculous that a lot of developers do that. If a great story can be told in a 7-10 hour RPG, then do that instead of a 100 hour game with 7-10 hours of good stuff. I'd rather play a game in a 2 week period and be happy with it, and play it again in a few months, then have a game that I played for 3 months and got bored of and felt totally unfufilled with.

We could expect to happen the same with FFXV what happened with FFXII, be released when the next-gen is already out and be the last high-profile and blockbuster of this gen. Exactly what FFXII meant to ps2.

"shouldn’t" is not the same as "will not"

Ah, Final Fantasy. The memories I have of it are nice, but then 7 came along, making it one of the outside points on a lot of things. The fact that it set many of the standards back in the day does not mean that its extreme points of today should be the norm. Rather, I personally found that when they did that, I had a much easier time looking past the series, and found more (and better) gems outside of S-E.

Regarding the bullet points, yes, the first and third are exclusive to Final Fantasy. No, I don't want forced mini-games in my RPGs, and no, I don't need high-end graphics to be in my RPGs; rather, servicable graphics is what I ask for there. Less focus on graphics means I can have more game! And this leads me to the second bullet...

I'll say it outright. I want, and like, my RPGs to exceed 100 hours when all is said and done. To date, only 3 games have managed this: Dragon Quest 7, Dragon Quest 8, and Persona 3. (FES time not included... yet. And P4 fell just short, at 96 hours.) The graphics rush of the PS1 is what led to people accepting shorter (and easier) RPGs; part of this is related to those who had no prior reference point. RPGs taking 40-50 hours on the SNES was the norm, then it went to as short as 10 hours in some games. This is not what I want in an RPG. I want a game that feels like it's given me my monies worth. These days, I have to be more selective than I was in the 16-bit era. Will it be a game that eats my soul? Or will I wait for it to be $15 used? The newer FF games are definitely the latter. And I continue my quest for those that I must have on day 1.