Jimquisition: Batman Is Everything Wrong With Square Enix

[Elyxard]

As somewhat of a designer/artist, I agree tenfold. There is a place for those over-designed, overcomplicated costumes, and it's on a runway fashion show, not in a story-driven videogame. A lot of recent Final Fantasy costume designs betray the characters that are wearing them or the universe they exist in (why on earth would someone with Vanille's personality be walking around in that).

It's very frustrating to see, because Nomura's FF7 character designs are a million times more memorable than his newer ones, all because he showed a modicum of restraint (or another case of limitations of the hardware being beneficial).

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

While I agree that Squeenix is pretty lost stylistically now. I'd say that the ornate barroqueness has always been a style for them. Which isn't necessarily bad, it IS their identity. And although I'm not a big fan of some of the characterization, I think that even today, Squeenix characters tend to be quite interesting. In many ways, when you see an overly elaborate character, it does feel Squeenix.

Lets be honest, Master Chief is not a well defined interesting character. HE had no personality for a number of games other than being an interstellar marine power ranger bad-ass. Most of the ICONIC characters JIM lists are actually just flat, they don't really have a personality either, they are abstact concepts. And that is great but it only allows for so much depth without breaking the icon.

SO yeah, Square Enix is absolutely raving mad, but their character memorability is not the issue. While Lightning falls a bit flat, Yuna, Sora, Rikku, Squall, Cloud, Tifa, Sephiroth and Aeris are all very characteristic. FF13 is not a good game, it's not terrible, but not great.
FF12, was pretty strong, and FF10 was rather excellent.

Now lets be clear. I hate Square Enix, they have terrible customer service, they are completely tone deaf and they are straight up greedy. But that is something different, your rant had nothing to do with it.. Too many fallacies Jim.. too many to count.

 

[Catrixa]

As someone who likes to add ever-increasing amounts of detail to pictures of stuff, I can say I sympathize with squeenix's art direction. I mean, no one looks at my art (thank god), so I can't say I understand why they keep doing it, but I can confirm it's pretty fun to do.

That said, if your story requires I learn a complete made-up language to gain even the slightest understanding of it, you have written a bad story. Seriously. I could not get into FFXIII from multiple angles--if the gameplay was fun, it could have made up for the story, and if the gameplay was bad, the story could have made up for it. I enjoyed neither the gameplay (speed reading comprehension tests are not fun gameplay for me, same goes for memorizing the locations of items in lists) nor the story (an aside: I had a friend who wanted to play the game, but who had a 360 attached to an old CRT TV at the time. Since it was SD, they couldn't make out the definitions of the made-up words in the little glossary section, so they had no ability to comprehend the story at all. If your game requires more equipment than the device it was designed for, at least put it on the box or something. "Story only available on HD devices." Or just stop making people research the plot for your game). Sure, it supposedly got "better" 20 hours in, but it seems pretty reasonable to just play 20 hours of something that starts off entertaining instead...

 

[Kyogissun]

Hey, I'm enjoying FFXIV and as far as I know, it's the one of extremely few (or only thing) that SE isn't sticking their fingers in.

Also, I'm mildly interested in FFXV so... I mean, I agree that it does feel like they unnecessarily overcomplicate things but I guess I don't really give a shit.

And Nomura's designs aren't for you Jim. I'm not saying they're all good, I definitely agree that most of the FFXIII is unmemorable but for the reason being not directly tied to character design and more them just being uninteresting in general.

I think you had a good idea with the video, but didn't hit all the best points. Definitely were spot on with the commentary about them saying Hitman, Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs undersold was kind of... Baffling, but there are much better criticisms to go after. Mostly though, I do think that maybe the video could have closed more strongly had there been a small focus or mention of how it doesn't need to go big like it does and say, you know, try more shit like Bravely Default and Curtain Call and making sure the FFXIV dev team gets all the resources it needs. You kinda dabbled in that with the mentioning of how you remember FFIV more accurately than anything recent, but it was rather brief compared to the rest of the video.

 

[J Tyran]

Good form this week, absolutely hilarious.

 

[Mazimadu]

You saw this batsuit and thought "hmm. it needs more details."
Its like giving spider man more arms just to look more spider-like.

I think you are referring to this thing:

Or do you mean this?

 

[NoX 9]

I'd go straight for you Jim <3. Never a dull moment in these videos.

 

[shadowstriker86]

I must say: the designers & plot writers at Square Enix Japan should be on medication. I have not played any of their titles, but glancing at them they seem more & more about style over substance. Base design is great, they make things memorable. Namco happened to find this back in the PSX era by trying to get a new mascot Klonoa to be the new face of the company. Least I hear that game is actually good, convoluted but good.

actually i think they may have the same problem Miyazaki pointed out about the anime industry; it's full of otaku shut-in's that don't know how to communicate with actual people

 

[KazeAizen]

I was fond of the XIII series, but everything you said was more or less right on the money, Jim. Squenix definitely needs to take it down a notch.

I like XIII series as well. Hell XIII-2 was one of my favorite games last generation. Still Jim does have a point. If they took it down just a notch and focused on the writing and stuff we'd probably get another Sephiroth or Kefka in terms of actual iconic villains.

Still........it doesn't stop me from wanting that Batman figure......

 

[Toilet]

Final Fantasy Type 0 is probably the best Final Fantasy out since 12, it's a good representation of what Final Fantasy 15 will be like game play wise. The story is also pretty good and simple. It consists of: There is a war, the city has a crystal that gives people magic, fight the bad guys who are using the bad machine weapons.

 

[LysanderNemoinis]

Jim's right about Square Enix and needing to calm the hell down, of the most part. Though I do enjoy the weirdness and overcomplication of Final Fantasy. And I know I may be the only one to say it, but...I might actually give two shits about Batman if Square Enix had a total go at him, because that toy looks awesome.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Style over substance - this has been the reigning idea for SE games for the last ten years. Arguably, FFXII tried to have a plot that was rife with political strife and looks at what was going on behind the scenes, yet none of it made any sense and the characters were all extremely boring. FFXIII's characters started out somewhat interesting, but quickly became boring as the plot started throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, as Jim pointed out. I feel like a lot of this nonsense started around the time of FFVII: Advent Children, which no one could tell what the hell was going on, but fans let it go because it was pretty and it had Sephiroth.

Hilariously enough, the plot for FFXIV is actually a lot more enjoyable. It's pretty simple - you're a warrior of light, there are bad guys with clear motivations, go get 'em. I still think that Bravely Default was far better than FFXIII, but Square Enix kept ramming it down our throats. Hell, even FFXV is a failed FFXIII spin-off. These days the Final Fantasy franchise in particular just feels like sensory overload. I can only imagine how insane Kingdom Hearts 3 is going to look.

 

[LostPause]

Lets be honest, Master Chief is not a well defined interesting character. HE had no personality for a number of games other than being an interstellar marine power ranger bad-ass. Most of the ICONIC characters JIM lists are actually just flat, they don't really have a personality either, they are abstact concepts. And that is great but it only allows for so much depth without breaking the icon.

Most 'iconic' game characters become so on the back of the quality or innovativeness of their games. Pac Man, Mario, Link, Master Chief, Samus, Solid Snake, Gordon Freeman, Cloud etc. are icons largely because their respective games are so popular and more often than not rather ground-breaking for their time. I'm not saying that characterisation doesn't play a part but can anyone suggest an icon of gaming that didn't come from a definitively great game?

 

[DirgeNovak]

Ranty Jim is the best Jim.

This. So much this.

However, Jim, I'm surprised that you didn't talk about Final Fantasy XIV. At this year's GDC, FFXIV director Yoshi-P gave a good talk about exactly this problem, and why it crashed FFXIv 1.0 (the game that launched to technical, critical, and financial failure). The dev team working on 1.0 were so graphics crazy, objects had as much detail as a single player character and because this caused such a burden on both servers and local machines, they had to limit the onscreen player count to twenty.

In a fucking MMO.

Yoshi-P is a miracle worker. It wasn't enough to turn the horrid turd FFXIV 1.0 was into the best MMO on the market, he actually managed to convince Square Enix to lower the graphical fidelity of a game. That's probably even more impressive.

 

[RedmistSM]

It's pretty clear they're aware of their problems, Jim(except they don't want to throw their lead artist under the bus, I assume). Didn't you read that huge interview in USgamer a while ago? It was all about how they made things too complicated and hard on themselves, because the new hardware took too much time/effort to learn to use in the way they were used to, as I recall. http://www.usgamer.net/articles/where-final-fantasy-went-wrong-and-how-square-enix-is-righting-it

 

[direkiller]

can anyone suggest an icon of gaming that didn't come from a definitively great game?

Zero Wing: Lord Cats.
He is more a icon of memes but dammit i am counting it.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah the odds of me buying another FF game are somewhere in the realm of slim to none. Although using the S03 engine and combat system would be a good start. A comprehensible plot would also go a long way.

Yeah, I'll be more likely to buy a game if it's got good story or good gameplay. Final Fantasy has not had either of late, from what I can tell.

I wouldn't mind a big budget RPG now and again, but SE seems to have gone off the rails. Also, my definition of "big budget" might be different than SE, as they can't seem to keep it in their wallets.

 

[EndlessSporadic]

I am actually quite thankful Square is pushing the hair graphics. The way most hair is done is just so pathetic. AMD is trying to simulate real hair with TressFX but it just isn't cutting it. I am a person who will always yell from the rooftops "function over form", but I would be genuinely upset if their hair techniques disappeared.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

...Damn, that Batman figurine is the 90's in a nutshell.

Now I like JRPG outfits, but mainly when they don't go overboard.

("I wish I had more zippers so I could tell you to zip it!" - Neku Sakuraba, The World Ends With You")

But yeah... Square-Enix seems to prefer to go style over substance, don't they?

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

I'm guessing that if you went on a friends picnic with Square Enix, the sandwiches would be overdesigned...

HA! Truly.

They'd have 8 slices of bread, 14 mustards, and zippers on the cold cuts.

And probably licorice whips. God, do I hate licorice.