Final Fantasy Versus XIII Has Had "Many Difficulties"
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
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Because he is made of freaking win and if everyone has to wait for a few more years to get more awesome from him, then SO BE IT!RanD00M said:
I gave up on the FFXIII series roughly around November of last year. Call me when it doesn't constantly disappoint.
I wonder if the is the real next gen FF or another chopped and mashed together Frankenstein like FF13?
Is this still coming out on the PC?
X had a solid character class/skill system but thats all it had, FF12 had the environments but everything else was broken from skills to classes to weapons its a watered down mess. FF13 is just broken usegin a grab bag of characters of the past tossed into a blender seemingly along with game mechanics from random games of the past(FFX,FF12,FF7,Fallout,Lunar)
Is this still coming out on the PC?
X had a solid character class/skill system but thats all it had, FF12 had the environments but everything else was broken from skills to classes to weapons its a watered down mess. FF13 is just broken usegin a grab bag of characters of the past tossed into a blender seemingly along with game mechanics from random games of the past(FFX,FF12,FF7,Fallout,Lunar)
I hope this means that it will be much different than FF13, mainly the combat system. I hope it means that they're not reusing it and doing something else, I just couldn't get behind that system in FF13.
Anybody else notice that this game has had zero screenshots or gameplay footage, and it's been in development for about as long as FF13 so far?
This does not bode well. Versus 13 is pure vaporware right now, and the longer this delays the more fans are going to expect from it. It's going to be like the Japanese equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever if this keeps up, hyped and delayed and hyped and delayed and danced around with no real evidence of its existence apart from the same pre-rendered trailers we had years ago until it's ultimately canned. We're not anywhere close to the 12-year mark yet, but with the way Square ran FF13 into the ground and Nomura's overindulgence I wouldn't be shocked if it were year 6 of development before we saw even the smallest glimpse of actual game footage out of this.
This does not bode well. Versus 13 is pure vaporware right now, and the longer this delays the more fans are going to expect from it. It's going to be like the Japanese equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever if this keeps up, hyped and delayed and hyped and delayed and danced around with no real evidence of its existence apart from the same pre-rendered trailers we had years ago until it's ultimately canned. We're not anywhere close to the 12-year mark yet, but with the way Square ran FF13 into the ground and Nomura's overindulgence I wouldn't be shocked if it were year 6 of development before we saw even the smallest glimpse of actual game footage out of this.
NickCaligo42 said:
Forewarned, big page scan is big. This is from Famitsu this yearSpaceMedarotterX said:Here's some new information including in game screenshots
If this game has real time combat (Kigndom Hearts style), a real FF story and an open world this could be the best RPG on any next gen console (good thing I invested in a ps3.) : D
I think that Square-Enix's problem is making too many games at once. Seriously why can't they make a couple of decent games instead of a bunch of garbage games... which seems to be almost every game since 2004. They should just work on a couple of projects at a time so they don't spread themselves thin. Also how about some damn quality control! Over the last 6 years the majority of game from them are bland and mediocre and just feel half-assed. Look at Infinite Undiscovery, good story but too short and combat was sticky and the game was way too linear for it's own good, Last Reminant was too busy looking good instead of actually being playable, Final Fantasy XII and XIII were both bland and frustrating for fans of the good Final Fantasy's and there's a pretty good chance all their new games are going to be garbage like The 3rd Birthday, Front Mission Evolved, Final Fantasy XIV and Deus Ex to name a few.
Square-Enix just sucks since they lost Hironobu Sakaguchi and it's never going to recover until they go back to the way they were before... the merger.
I hope that the game actually is good considering the development time for it. All they need to do is stick to the model used in Final Fantasy's 1-9 with an epic story and visuals. In some ways I wish Square-Enix would end Final Fantasy and leave it with what little respect it has and just work on HD remakes of the old games.
Square-Enix just sucks since they lost Hironobu Sakaguchi and it's never going to recover until they go back to the way they were before... the merger.
I hope that the game actually is good considering the development time for it. All they need to do is stick to the model used in Final Fantasy's 1-9 with an epic story and visuals. In some ways I wish Square-Enix would end Final Fantasy and leave it with what little respect it has and just work on HD remakes of the old games.
Huh. There we go. That's encouraging! Still not a great environment--it suffers from a pretty typical sense of flatness in the textures, which you see a lot in Japanese games--but that's still a HUMONGOUS step up from FF13 and pretty much every Japanese title I've seen on current-gen consoles, save MGS4. I withdraw my doomsaying. For now.SpaceMedarotterX said:
First off: Deus Ex is not a Square-Enix game, it's an Eidos game, Eidos being an ages-old company currently based in Montreal. Square's relation to Eidos is like EA's relation to Bioware or Maxis; they own the company, they publish the games, they front the capital, but Eidos Montreal are the ones actually making it. That doesn't mean Square can't stick their fingers in the production and screw it up, but that doesn't seem to be the case, and I think they understand it wouldn't be in their best interests as Deus Ex is one of the most widely acclaimed series of the PC and they feel that they desperately need a company to appeal to the western perspective.ultimasupersaiyan said:
Second: Otherwise I mostly agree with you. Square's games from 2005 on just suck, and even they know it. But you can't go tossing around phrases like "the good Final Fantasies," because that's a hugely subjective term. Some people think FF7's great, others cut it off there and dismiss everything from that point on. Some people think FF10's great, others think it's one of the worst of the series. Some people even like FF8 and FF12. 12 definitely had the blandest, most one-note story and characters of the series and some of the most broken mechanics, but its setting was rich and fairly detailed and it was at least playable and complete, whereas FF13 comes off unfinished, unpolished, and hastily hacked together from pieces of what the game was supposed to be.
Third: Sakaguchi has had very little to do with the Final Fantasy games for a very, very long time. He stopped working on them with FF5 and otherwise just ran the company as an exec; his retirement in 2004 could have something to do with their problems, but I kind of doubt it since Lost Odyssey--the game his new company put out--was really not anything special. From FF6 on--those games that you call "the good Final Fantasies"--you're looking at the age of Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase. Now, a lot of OTHER Square staff has left, like Nobuo Uematsu and their scenario writer from 7-10, Kazushige Nojima, which is why 12 and 13 can't measure up in either the music or storytelling department, and that's really just scratching the surface of the huge staff changes that came along with the merger from Square to Square-Enix. Kitase, formerly a director, became a producer, so his expertise haven't been put to use in any games since then. Nomura's gotten more creative control, and like George Lucas he needs someone telling him to pull it back or else he'll get overindulgent and we'll get something like FF8. Again, just scratching the surface here.
Fourth: Yes, they have got their resources spread thin, but not as thin as you seem to be implying. The big trouble is that they've come out with a new IP since 2002--Kingdom Hearts--which has an equally big fanbase and demands a lot of attention from their best staff. For instance, Tetsuya Nomura wasn't involved at all in FF12, not designing a single character for the game, and he sorely needed to be. He was only involved in FF13 insomuch as he designed the lead cast, then went back to working on more Kingdom Hearts games--AND... Versus 13, which he's the project lead on and which he's been pursuing as an entirely separate production from FF13 proper. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen as he can capture more of the 7-10 flavor, but... again, he gets severely overindulgent with his love of Japanese pop culture and sometimes story ideas make more sense inside his own head than in the actual game.
Nomura's not the only one who's been off the main FF projects this past decade, though; the entire FF12 and 13 team is comprised mainly of Square's "B-Team," IE the team responsible for Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics. A lot of them are inexperienced compared with the likes of Kitase, Nojima, and Nomura and the task of a main FF title, let alone pioneering into HD games, was frankly way too much for them. Their director frequently changed his mind throughout the production of 12, with constant shifts in platform and changes to the narrative--including needlessly and hastily shoehorning Vaan and Penelo into the already complete script at the last minute of preproduction--until he finally resigned halfway through the production, leaving the execs of the company to step in and try their best to pick up the pieces.
FF13 suffered from many of the same problems of not having Square's best really focusing on it, if you can say they've been focusing on anything lately, but it also had to overcome the HD hurdle, which Japanese companies just plain suck at. Square's production pipeline hasn't changed since the PS2 era, where they could get away with having one artist just make up an environment as they went along; that's what Nomura's talking about here in this article, in fact, and why FF13's environments suffered so badly.
As for the other games--Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant...
Infinite Undiscovery is not a Square-Enix game; it's a Tri-Ace game. Square's just the publisher. Again, this is like how EA owns Maxis. They don't make the game, they just front the money, put it in a box, and ship it to stores. Blame Tri-Ace for that one sucking.
The Last Remnant is legitimately a Square-Enix game--produced by a nobody team, specifically the SaGa series's team. Specifically they made it when they realized FF13 was taking too long and that the engine they were working with--Crystal Tools, which is actually just their in-house animation suite hacked to be a game engine--was a piece of crap and couldn't support the workflow of an HD game. Last Remnant was made so that they could experiment with third-party software, specifically the Unreal Engine. Case in point: FF13 was announced in 2006 and released in 2010, Last Remnant was announced in 2007 and released in 2008. It was a cheap production with a cheap team, more like an experiment that they decided to put in a box and ship.
The whole story of why Square's been bombing like it has been is a lot more complex than you know. They still have the potential to be making good games, but it's going to hinge a lot on their ability to adapt to the growing technical demands of their games, which they've done very poorly at, and their ability to pull it together, form a decent creative team, and--actually--quit trying to appease its fans so hard and just focus on making stuff they think is interesting. Dirge of Cerberus? That was Kitase's idea of "Half-Life as an RPG." See how far that apple fell from the tree? Now they're talking about trying to bring more western game design ideas into the fold of the FF series, and I'd really hate to see what would happen if they tried to imitate Bioware.
Change is good, it's necessary for them to adapt and innovate and build on their products, but they've been coming up with changes for all the wrong reasons, using it as a device for pandering--to western audiences, to Japanese audiences, to story-lovers, et cetera, and it's that kind of unnatural, forced attitude towards game development that could sink them. I don't think for a SECOND, though, that you're right about "just re-making the old games," and I'm generally a bit of a game re-make apologist. Sparingly they can be useful for understanding how new tech applies to old ideas, what the difference from one workflow to the other is; they can be a way to deliver an old game to a new audience; what they absolutely CAN NOT DO is help maintain any sense that a company is a relevant, contributing member of the game development world. If Square or any other company falls back on re-makes, rest assured the gaming press, followed by the world at large, will ignore them.
There's tensions in the company itself to. Nomura and Kitase DESPISE Depise the current head of the company, Yoichi Wada. Or as I like to call him, Japanese Kotick. I'm serious Kitase is quoted in an interview about The Last Guy that he in essence wished there was a map in the game of the Square Offices where you could let Wada die. And once he and Nomura leave who the fuck does Square have from it's old guard? Toriyama? The man makes TERRIBLE games. And you don't think the teams under those two guys aren't going to see a sinking ship and go "Fuck this were jumping with them" then all it takes is them forming there own studio or joining Mistwalker with Sakaguchi. But I'm getting ahead of myself.NickCaligo42 said:
You forgot to mention Numero Uno reason why the finished FFXII felt like two different games (The earlier beginnings seemed to be trying to work Vaan in as a character and worked pretty well, and then in the next half right after a touching scene with Ashe where he shows character depth, he's relegated to comic relief) is the fact that after the first Director quit, he was replaced with 2 guys. Not one after the other, at the same flipping time! This has never been a good idea in the history of ANY media.
The big difference about the Square of Old and the Square of Now, if when the old Square innovated, it was more of a feeling out period to find what worked.
FF4 was "Okay Turn Based has served us well, how can we up the Ante" and thus ATB
FF5 was "Okay so the class system in FF3 was good, but how can we make it more accessable and cool"
FF6 was "Okay in FF2 and 4 we experimented with the party having more than 4 members, how can we make that better, Also: Skills and Stats leveling up?"
FF7 was "Okay Espers were a cool idea, but lets make them more streamlines and easier to use. Also earlier on so people aren't dicking around for half the day"
FF8 was "Okay lets try to change how you use stats all together and change how equipment works"
FF9 was "Let's throw back to all the previous FF's while experimenting with equipment giving abilities and multiple points of view in the story"
(By the way I'm noticing that usually the even numbers worked on the party and combat system, while the odds worked on the supporting system (Classes, character development) Makes ya think.)
Now keep in mind, not ALL of these ideas turn out for the good, FF8's was terrible, I maintain that FFXII even with all it's wasted potential COULD have been the next standard setter, if it's combat system had been much more polished. I.E. don't let gambits work while you control the character (like Dragon Age does) But it was the same, Grounding itself in a familiar setting and then expanding SOMETHING to see how you can make it better.
FFXIII's main failing? there was nothing Final Fantasy about it when you got down to it. There were no familiar elements, it felt like an entirely new (and unfinished) game and that wasn't a good thing! Like you said, change in moderation is good, it's the life blood of the industry. But Camelot didn't make a cult hit with Golden Sun by saying "Okay for TLA, how about if nothing is familiar" no they went "Okay lets improve some things and fix others"
Now FFVersusXIII already feels like a 'Square' game even with the new locale (I call it the Megaten design, a mix of the real world and the fantasy world, but not too intermixed) because from the sounds of it (and I hope from the plays of it too) it feels like Kingdom Hearts, and it also feels like Final Fantasy
Level Designer: Sir are these environments okay?
Director: More linear I say! Moar linear!
Writer: Sir I was thinking we could create more emotional depth in the main character by removing this section of dialogue.
Director: What?! Don't be preposterous. Make him do a fist pump! Moar fist pump!
Gameplay test: I think there aren't enough enemies in this section.
Director: That's alright, we'll just turn this entire section into a highly rendered cut scene.
Director: More linear I say! Moar linear!
Writer: Sir I was thinking we could create more emotional depth in the main character by removing this section of dialogue.
Director: What?! Don't be preposterous. Make him do a fist pump! Moar fist pump!
Gameplay test: I think there aren't enough enemies in this section.
Director: That's alright, we'll just turn this entire section into a highly rendered cut scene.
Oh dear. XD That's atrocious. I knew about FF12 getting two directors, I had a good inkling that their current CEO was a stupid, but I had no idea it was that bad in the corporate climate. I heard a rumor that Nomura was incredibly pissed over FFXIII going cross-platform midstream and would leave the company if the execs forced Versus to do the same, but I wasn't sure that was true until now. Yeesh, no wonder every game they make these days is such a bloody mess.SpaceMedarotterX said:
Honestly we could debate the validity of change all day. There have been times when a big change, well thought-out and well-executed, has been very welcome, like with Resident Evil 4. There have been times when change has been necessary to facilitate a dimensional shift, like when Mario became Mario 64. But I don't think there's anything to debate in FF13. It's an unfinished game, plain and simple. I look at it and I see the same thing that I see in Sonic the Hedgehog 2006: a completely hopeless corpse of a project that the devs tried desperately to salvage into something they could sell. They had cutscenes and content produced for the beginning of the game, but they cut the first half out so that the story could stand alone and have a resolution, so they had to cram the story of the second half into the locations of the first half. They had the story written out, but they couldn't produce the assets to show it, so they disseminated it though flashbacks. They had an innovative combat system in mind, with the lofty goal of making an action-packed Advent Children-style fight possible while also grounding it in the familiar FF interface, but couldn't overcome the technical and design hurdles to make it work and, as inexperienced and unreliable game designers tend to, let compromises pile up until all the stuff that would have made it appealing was just no longer present. It's not that they were trying to change the formula, it's not that they were trying to pull a big paradigm shift (ha ha, funny!) on consumers, it's not that they were trying to do something unfamiliar; it was just a shitty, incompetently made game that had the unusual and dubious distinction of having so much money behind it that they couldn't afford to let the glitches slide through.