Final Fantasy XIII-2 Will "Exceed" Final Fantasy XIII

[Ganthrinor]

Meaningless quibble, but my god Lightning's "Armor" embodies everything I fucking HATE about fantasy gaming's take on personal protection. Why bother to wear it if you're going to leave major fucking vital areas COMPLETELY UNPROTECTED!?!


OT: Meh. I still haven't finished FF XIII. Didn't care for it much, so it can't be that hard to improve upon, can it? Off to a bad start though, what with my armor quibble and Square-Enix's over-developed sense of quasi-moralistic preaching. I defy my fate because I can, and don't beleive in fate. Happy? Can we skip that part of the game now? *mutters profanities*

 

[icame]

Lets look at the history shall we?

FFX sucked
and its sequal, FFX-2, was even worse

Seeing as FF13 is what I consider to be the worst game ever made (Or atleast worst major release.), FF13-2 should be absolute shit. Not like I expect anymore from Final Fantasy now anways.

 

[jumjalalabash]

Oh god and I thought Lightning's footsteps couldn't get worse... Listen to that crap 45 seconds in.

 

[hooksashands]

The most linear RPG I've ever played. The music was pretty though.

 

[dagens24]

Square-Enix Boss: Already, let's take one of most unsuccessful Final Fantasy games and make a sequel to it!

Random Square-Enix Employee: Why not make a sequel to something like Final Fantasy VII, a game which is celebrated as one of the best JRPGs of all time and have a loyal following of millions of fans who would gladly jump at the chance to play a sequel.

Square-Enix Boss:... Get your things, you're fired.

 

[Kwatsu]

Hmmm. After hearing that "it gets good after 10 hours--no, 20! no, wait, 30 hours!"... maybe the *sequel* is when FFXIII actually gets good?

 

[Vivace-Vivian]

Well I'm excited. I loved XIII

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I liked both FFX-2 and FFXIII so all I'm doing is crossing my fingers and hoping it turns out ok.

Same here.

OT:

I just want more Sazh.

 

[Jaebird]

I'm having a hard time imagining how XIII-2 can "exceed" XIII, when that game was such a disappointment.

(I'm not trying to say it was a terrible game, nor am I apologizing for it. It's just the story and characters pissed me off to no end.)

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Hmmm. After hearing that "it gets good after 10 hours--no, 20! no, wait, 30 hours!"... maybe the *sequel* is when FFXIII actually gets good?

That's all poppy cock.

If you don't like it after 2 hours, when you unlock paradigms, you ain't gonna like it. No need to sit and wait for 20 hours.

 

[FredTheUndead]

On the plus side, Gilgamesh confirmed for Dissidia 2 and the Versus 13 gameplay looks alright.

?? Where did you get this info!!?

Versus 13:
http://jin115.com/archives/51746533.html

Gilgamesh:
http://www.siliconera.com/2011/01/18/gilgamesh-joins-the-chaos-side-in-dissidia-012duodecim-final-fantasy/

 

[Therumancer]

Because FFX-2 was such a good idea...

This. Seems Square Enix hasn't learned from past mistakes, but then again what company does?

Well, actually it wasn't a bad idea. What actually killed X-2 was the entire "let's screw the US" bit which was badly played. Simply put Final Fantasy X is a trilogy, and before X-2 made it to the US market we were hearing that "Final Fantasy X- Final Mission" was being released in Japan and was going to be a Japan-only release. The last part of the trilogy answering all the questions left hanging after the first two games.

What this means is that a lot of people turned on X-2 when it was new, because who wants to keep playing a triology when they are never going to see the end of the story?

Incidently this is also when I was involved in reading some Japanese periodicals that were being translated into english and put up online, mostly related to gaming and anime. A big part of the reason why they did this was that to a lot of Japanese gamers it was seen as "selling out" when games were released in the US, cheapening the entire thing. To put it bluntly they wanted the US to want games, but also wanted to deny them to us. At the time I was also reading about how a US release could hurt domestic Japanese sales, as well as put a lot of pressure on the companies themselves and the developers who lived in Japan and would be harassed as "sell outs".

This also incidently answering the question as to why english translations of things like Anime and Video Games would take a year or two to be done. Companies wanting to milk the Japanese audience, and hope that by the time there was a US release there would be less objections. This worked for quite a while largely because Japan was ahead of the curve, especially when it came to video games. Today with much better Western development, and the entire globe seeing game companies appearing, that has changed, and Japan can't get away with releasing 2-3 year old games with them being better than the competition.

Japan's business model is changing here, I'm not sure about the attitudes however (it could just be the companies ignoring them more than they used to). Simply put I did not much care for Final Fantasy XIII, however it has a decent fan bae, a sequel is going to do well, really the "mistake" they don't want to emulate is to release a final chapter before it fully hits the market and then claim the US isn't getting it. That and of course not deliberatly slapping the US market in the face, anothr "fun" thing about Final Fantasy X was how they released an "International" version of the original with extended content, with "International" meaning pretty much everywhere except the US.

 

[Wakefield]

Yay I'm excited, I hope my favorite characters return though...

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Because FFX-2 was such a good idea...

Note that X-2 was Motomu Toriyama's first project as lead... yeeeeah.

On one hand, this shouldn't be a problem. XIII had everything going against it, with a ludicrous amount of resources dedicated to an overly bloated project that had unclear goals. They literally had no idea what they were doing with either the story or the gameplay until they released the demo alongside Advent Children Complete in 2009; that's three whole years of twiddling thumbs and not knowing what the project's goals were. It's hard to do worse than that.

On the other hand those are mistakes that student game design teams make, not major development houses, and it doesn't bode well that they'd make them in the first place with so many resources behind them and so many experienced people to consult. This is still a team that's proven grossly inept at coming up with either a focused narrative or a focused set of game mechanics; even if they do better, it's still liable to be a really lackluster product as "unimaginative and stagnant" would be an improvement for them. What I fear is that they're going to lift the mechanics and storytelling formulae straight from FFXIII instead of re-building from the ground-up like they really should, just piling gobs and gobs crap on top of a hugely flawed foundation.

Personally I'm hopeful. I liked the aesthetic of XIII, and I'd like to have a good Final Fantasy to play for a change--but from this team? With Square not having made a decent game in the last ten years? I'm not gonna get my hopes up that much...

Actually it's entirely possible that their design team at that point WAS mostly straight-out-of-university staff, since a whole lot of the experienced staff jumped ship to Mistwalker when Sakaguchi Hironobu left Squeenix. It was pretty much the precursor to the whole Activision/Infinity Ward split.

That being said I'm far less vitriolic about XIII than I was about X-2. I actually finished XIII and, while there are a list of problems longer than Andy Murray's face when he loses, there is a somewhat useable base product for them to meltdown and re-cast. I'd say XIII was closer to X-2 in terms of gameplay/story than to X, so if they go in reverse they could end up with something of X's quality in the sequel, which would be better. Of course if they don't invert their design strategy then we'll end up with something that's about as uniteresting as FFXII, which would be tragic as I didn't finish that one either.

P.S. Ooh ooh ooh, I'd rather like Sazh's piloting skills to be, y'know, NOT an informed ability this time around. Also, Squeenix, don't try to resurrect Vanille and Fang, you tried that with X-2 and it sucked. I know, I know, unlike Tidus people actually liked Fang and some kinda liked Vanille, but JUST NO!

 

[Enagan]

On the plus side, Gilgamesh confirmed for Dissidia 2 and the Versus 13 gameplay looks alright.

?? Where did you get this info!!?

Versus 13:
http://jin115.com/archives/51746533.html

Gilgamesh:
http://www.siliconera.com/2011/01/18/gilgamesh-joins-the-chaos-side-in-dissidia-012duodecim-final-fantasy/

Awesome, thanks for the links!

 

[ShadowsofHope]

..Oh god. Lightning, in a.. suit of fucking armor?!

Lost props on that one, SE. Her other outfit was the good one, damnit!

*Ahem*

However, I am.. intrigued. We'll see how it turns out in the coming months [sub]please don't fucking suck, I liked FFXIII![/sub].

 

[Exort]

first thing that came to mind is "that should be easy"

 

[Darksqueee]

In reality, all of this bickering about "WHY THEY DO DIS, IT AM BAD GAEM" is irrelevant. It is a Final Fantasy title, therefore it is guaranteed to sell well and make a return profit simply from the name alone.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It will "Exceed" it in every way, huh?
Well, I suppose it will; the bar is set so damn low XIII-2 can practically trip over it and still be better.

 

[Josdeb]

Grah, I still haven't finished FF13 yet!
My save file (Where I was on the last chapter) died and I've had to restart the game, and because I've rushed my re-do, I'm underleveled and now I have to grind. Grah....

When I saw the announcment for XIII-2, I actually went and played 13 for an hour or two out of guilt.