Jim Sterling said:
Two Rules For Square Enix
Square Enix has an addiction, and it won't admit it has a problem. Time for an intervention from the man who knows how to fix everything that has ever gone wrong, with his incredible two-step program.
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Nice video, Jim, although I believe that two-tiered list could be expanded upon a bit; I would add two more rules to it myself.
A third rule, which several others who have posted before me have touched on in different ways: Stop making spin-off games for an established franchise if they don't have a substantial amount of information or story to add to the canon.
Crisis Core for Final Fantasy VII was a good example of how to do this right. It filled in the story of Zach, Cloud and Sephiroth that took place before VII, thus being a prequel to it. On the other side of the fence, Chain of Memories, recoded, and Birth by Sleep for Kingdom Hearts were all games that while they did add to the series canon in each game, it was not substantial enough to warrant that many titles on so many platforms.
And then, my personal rule #4: If you are making a role-playing game, do not force it to become linear, and allow players to actually role-play at times. The jarring transition from Final Fantasy XII to XIII is my reason for saying this, and while it's been said before it bears repeating.
In XII, while you COULD set it up to play itself with the Gambit system, that took some strategic thinking and you were never forced to set it up one way. If your selected PC died, you switched to someone else, or could do so without someone dying. You also had plenty of choice over how your PCs grew, and if you wanted them to all use the same stuff, that was your call. The maps were non-linear when exploring, so you could go anywhere, and if you got involved in a fight you couldn't win, just hold down a button and run for it.
In XIII, other characters are played FOR you at all times, leaving you to control only one character, whom if that person dies, it's Game Over. The system to build your characters doesn't allow as much individual building and growth as XII did, much less as 7, 8, 9, or even 10 did. The maps, if you've looked at the strategy guide for the game, are almost 85% straight lines all the way, only opening up once you reach the near end-game of the title. By then, it's come down to the people who got tired of playing, and those who kept going, which is not a good way to build a game at all.
Anyway, keep up the good work, Jim.