The Shrine

Only somewhat on topic, I tend to believe the overt greed in the industry right now (microtransaction, DLC on disc, expansions vs patches, DRM, used game debate, EULA/ToS, etc) is alienating gamers. I think the lackluster launch of the Wii U, increasing piracy and popularity of things like Kickstarter are indicative of this. Gamers have a LOT of options for free/cheap outlets for their time (legal and illegal). As the industry continues to annoy and burn out their base, more and more people move on...and the industry tries to monetize even harder in response. I don't believe this will end well for the mainstream industry...but I believe it'll be a good thing if they implode.

Of course, I accept the possibility that I am just an older, jaded gamer/consumer and everything right now is just awesome... but I doubt it.

I liked the Final Fantasy games alot more before they started going increasingly asian/anime.

I don't think I minded it in Final Fantasy VII, but then I started to notice it in Final Fantasy VIII, douchebag emo lead character, then in Final Fantasy, Super Saiyan Zidane, then when they finally added voice acting in Final Fantasy X, the annoying shy female asian girl who's very polite and reserved, and cute, and don't get me started on FFX-2, you can just watch the intro video to see how anime the series had gotten.

I think the thing that killed Final Fantasy XIII for me was playing it and watching the characters in English try to pull off those little moans and grunts and gasps that you typically see in Japanese anime. It made me long for the days when there was no voice acting and just text, I think I liked the characters a lot better back then.

I remember someone said the only reason people didn't complain about FF6's characters look like guys on crack (which they are, if you look at the actual illustrations) was because the sprite is too limited to see that.

I think FF characters tend to reflect what's mainstream and it helps that in the SNES era the 'emo' main character wasn't that popular, and even if it were you can't portray that as well with just a sprite.

The industry right now seems to be just a whaling approach. They don't really care about the normal guy because paying $50 for a lousy game just doens't cut it anymore. They want the guys who spend $1000 a month on a game on some DLC that took 5 minutes to make. This is why you see a lot of games flop hard because there just aren't that many whales out there. I mean I keep on hear about gaming budget is out of control, and that's probably true when you need to try to scam people to your way of making $100 million a year. Right now it feels the most profitable games are just the ones that are running the best scams as opposed to actually having the best game. And no this isn't even like a 'well this game I like is awesome but no one bought it'. That kind of game doesn't really exist anymore. Your favorite game that no one has heard of is likely just as bad but it's less successful at scamming people for their money compared to the market leader if it came out in the last 5 years. To be fair 'bad' is a bit too critical. The games themselves are probably still okay but it's hard to take them seriously when you take say Civ 5 which is an okay strategy game except that nobody ever tested any balance with air units, and all they do is push out DLCs that random Internet warriors can do with copy & paste. I've seen 1000 civilization packs from random message boards to download for free and the only difference between that and the official stuff is that you won't have a unique music theme or a guy narrating the opening (at least not a well-done one).

The Final Fantasy VI cast was certainly likable, they did some amusing and likable stuff with the sprites and somehow it just worked to get the point across. The tiny finger waving, the blinking, sometimes going into their "I just got hit" mode or the mouth/eyes wide open bits.

Final Fantasy IV with Cecil & Kain if it were remade today would probably bug the shit out of me, because those 2 had some emo moments, hell the game had it's anime moments, but because it was confined to Sprites, I actually found it cute/endearing lol.

I think Advent Children showed me what a Final Fantasy VII remake would look like...and that kind of gives me pause.

If you look at the CGs for FF6 in the PSX remakes half of the cast looks like they're on crack because thats' just the style they're drawn by Amano. I mean that doesn't make them less likeable but they'd definitely feel more emo if they looked like how they are supposed to look like.

kali o. wrote:Only somewhat on topic, I tend to believe the overt greed in the industry right now (microtransaction, DLC on disc, expansions vs patches, DRM, used game debate, EULA/ToS, etc) is alienating gamers. I think the lackluster launch of the Wii U, increasing piracy and popularity of things like Kickstarter are indicative of this. Gamers have a LOT of options for free/cheap outlets for their time (legal and illegal). As the industry continues to annoy and burn out their base, more and more people move on...and the industry tries to monetize even harder in response. I don't believe this will end well for the mainstream industry...but I believe it'll be a good thing if they implode.

Of course, I accept the possibility that I am just an older, jaded gamer/consumer and everything right now is just awesome... but I doubt it.

Supporting evidence: Aliens:CM and SimCity.

I blame Nomura, and Square Enix as a developer that is out of touch with its fans and seems to have given Nomura unlimited freedom to do whatever he wants (like squander massive resources on whatever the hell FF13 Versus is). Like other Japanese companies, I think they're run by old dudes who either run things in an old fashion or unsuccessfully guess at what consumers want (what up, RE6?). The company's saving grace right now is that they acquired Eidos.

At the same time, I'm not 12 years old anymore, I'm not into animu, Kingdom Hearts is a dumb-looking franchise, and I don't have nearly as much free time as I did as a child to delve into something like FF13's ridiculously obtuse crafting system.

FF is a series I no longer look forward to. From FF11 being online-only to FF12, while enjoyable, I only played once and din't enjoy the story at all, to FF13 which... yeah.

4, 5, 6, 9... the only ones I'll play again.

I like all the Final Fantasy games; excluding 11 and sequels, the only ones I really got bored of on my recent pass through the series were Final Fantasy 9 and 12. This is largely due to finding large portions of those games relatively long and uninteresting. FF9 in particular, when you finally open up the world, you find that there's really nothing else interesting in it, the first few cities are really the only interesting ones. Both FF9 and 12 share the common problem of large portions of the game with no compelling content.

If FF9 was condensed into a 7-10 hour game instead of a 40 hour one, it would be way better; there was a huge amount of fluff in the game, including that 20 hour wild goose hunt for Kuja where you meet Eiko, go through the Lifa tree twice, visit the dwarfs and outer world. FF12 is the biggest FF game in terms of length, something like 55-60 hours, but it's more the gigantic size of the world and traveling the vast fields of battles that cause this length. Xenoblade had an even bigger world, but there was WAY more stuff to do in it. FF12's world just needed more stuff in it, and it could have been the best FF game with some more work, but it was ruined.

FF13, has some problems similar to FF12, but also the feeling of being pushed through the game, rather than wandering through at your own pace like in all previous FF games. The game is still definitely still much easier on the patience in a playthrough than FF9 or 12 though.

I also share Eric's fear about the art style of Advent Children and am glad he's no longer defending it =P
I actually liked the Turks in that movie, but all the other characters seem kind of ruined.

I think after the midpoint of the game in FF12 you probably spend 1/3 of the game just redoing buffs (haste/protect/shell/bravery/etc) because it's pretty much suicide to try to fight stuff without them, even against regular enemies. I know they're trying to have a streamlined experience but all I'm doing is curing the 15 different status effects that they thought it's a good idea for enemy regular enemy to possess and constantly redoing buffs and recharging MP when you get low.

So where does FF go from here? It used to be seen as an innovator, but has since been trying to modernize in a direction that no one really cares for. Pushing for huge budgets and terrible art direction with mechanics that try to make the battles seem more action oriented while trying to mask the complexity of the series.

Looking forward, what elements should be salvaged from the husk of this bloated, parasitic corpse of a franchise? What makes a final fantasy game a final fantasy game? Should 15 be a beautiful culmination of what made the series great? Or is it time to DmC/Tomb Raider the series and just reboot it and only cherry pick the most essential elements to make it similar enough to the source material?

bovine wrote:Or is it time to DmC/Tomb Raider the series and just reboot it and only cherry pick the most essential elements to make it similar enough to the source material?

"The Final Fantasy: Redemption; Revenge of Golbez"

I'm not sure if going back to 'old school' is a necessarily better but the last couple of FF incarnation where the game sort of plays itself while you input some high level command just doesn't seem to work.

Well, for starters, they could bring back the world map.
Second option is they could look at what their old employees have done with Last Story and Xenoblade. Those two games are just FAR richer experiences than Final Fantasy 13, but have used a somewhat "big-world" type approach. Xenoblade essentially solved this issue by putting little things to do all over the place; and those would contribute towards the goals of people livin in nearby settlements/towns/cities, or even people living away in distant ones, or within your own city - and as a result that would help build/expand and increase the society. Last Story you can essentially use all sorts of things in your environment to help you in battle, it makes a large number of battles unique and interesting. Of course, Last Story also didn't bloat the experience, it's actually about the length of an SNES Final Fantasy.

As far as the art direction, FF13 was a stunning game, incredibly detailed, one of the most beautiful games I have ever played. Graphically the best looking game of the entire PS3 library. Although it could be that the art budget is severely limiting the game design and content. FF13 has flaws, but art direction and graphics are certainly not among them, unless you look at it from a resource management position.

Games in general are becoming less inventive due to the high costs associated with the HD graphics and new gen. That's why most of the innovation we see is in downloadable games which don't cost on average $10-20M to make. It's also why we don't see $40 releases

Final Fantasy needs to realize its heritage and start giving us some good remakes. No one complained about FF4 on the DS. Imagine if we saw HD remakes of 4-9? Even if they're just downloadable I'd be happy.