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More Final Fantasy Bits
tenchiken writes: "First the bad news, Square has announced that they are selling off Square Studios. This is the group that was responsible for the FF Movie and also a forthcoming short for The Matrix.
Better News. Final Fantasy X, the first FF for the new PS2, is shipping tommorow (in stores Wed). You can find reviews at GameSpot,Gamers, IGN, etc. The reviews are all positive, and I will be waiting in line on Wed morning to pick up my copy.
Square's new online game for the PS2 FF11 is also coming along nicely. Playonline Has a 'webcam' up feeding 24x7 images. The pictures look great. The above pages are Japanese."
CowboyNeal and I both have our copies of FFX on reserve and are planning on some time
off to watch LotR and play FFX this week.
So sorry, the only thing I wait in line for is the BATHROOM.
how to decide? wait in line, get FF X, or wait in line, go to LOTR? both probably. i guess i should just go ahead and take the day off from work while i'm at it.
-sam
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
Yet another reason not to get an Yecks-Box...
The first, of course, being Metal Gear Solid 2.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
So needless to say I'm really concerned to hear that FFX has a ton of summoning. Has anyone played the import and can speak to this?
-- q
I'm assuming FF (the movie) will make stupid amounts of money (counting video and spin off products). Why sell off the unit that helped make that a reality, given that a sequel would probably make a pile of cash too? What's the logic there? Helloooooooo brain..... It would be disappointing to think that a wonderful character like Dr. Ross, so capably brought to life in the movie, may not make it back to the big screen. Frankly, the FF characters were more interesting than a lot of the drek Hollywood plants in front of us the rest of the time.....
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Man, this just seems like the ultimate geek week. First FFX, then LotR.
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
Anyone know? I can't read japanese.
So this may be a dumb question, but I can't find much information about it anywhere. Did FF7/FF8 tank for the PC so much that they aren't going to do IX or X? I would prefer not to buy a PS2 just so I can play Final Fantasy games. Are there plans to port them that anyone knows of? Thanks muchly. :)
Not being a fan of the games, I didn't expect much of "The Spirits Within", boy was I wrong. The animation was nothing short of breathtaking and I was actually surprised by the unpredictability of the plot. In short, the movie far outshined my expectations and I eagerly awaited a sequel.
Now I have to explain to everyone I told about this movie (who were also equally impressed by it) that there won't be a sequel. This is really a shame - we can wipe Circuit City out of I-Openers, but we couldn't make movies such as Final Fantasy profitable for the studio.
---
Siggy, siggy, siggy, can't you see? Sometimes your puns just irritate me.
I don't know why video game companies think they can go off and make a movie becuase they produced some cut scenes for their last title, in the same way I don't know why Hollywood thinks they can produce video games. These two things, despite sharing characteristics such as motion and sound are completely different.
Why video game companies are willing to risk large sums on a traditionally low yield business (movie making) when their own video game market is already larger than the revenue stream for movies.
The Final Fantasy movie was pretty bad. It had great hair and lighting effects, true, but who gives a rats ass when the story lopes along and the characters are 2 dimensional and sterile. Hollywood is already very good at delivering this type of garbage, I wouldn't recommend trying to compete.
They did come up with the concept of 'zero'.
...you need more that billion dollar special effects and cheesy action to make a good movie.
FF the movie is like britney spears--nice to look at, but there's just no substance where there should be.
I wonder why they want us away from the computers?
So they can sneak in and install Magic Latern, of course!
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
this is the worst parody ever.
you guys keep postin old news, but i guess since this a geeks news site with general information 3D specific information kinda lags behind. Square announced it's sale of Square Soft about 2 months ago (coulda been longer.) It does suck... Does not mean that it might not be used for something else in the future however, like Sony's Full Length CGI movie of Astroboy. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=142 3 I'm glad to see an old favorite anime go into a full length movie, I'm sure this'll do better than FFSWI because it's more geared toward children.
There is no Sp0rk.
I hope this happens to more cgi movies, since studios are forgetting that movies TELL A STORY! The story in FF just plain sucked. Remember how great Star Wars was, even though Chewbacca looked like a Chuck E Cheese reject? And remember how good Jar Jar looked, and yet Phantom Menace paled in comparison to Star Wars. It's all about the story. Actors, effects, style - they're nothing without a solid storyline.
Could someone post the IGN review. I have an account, but now they want me to pay money to read the content (I'm not willing to do so for that site at this point).
CmdrTaco's life consists of playing video games, watching movies (mostly Anime), and criss-crossing the country going to all the conventions/shows. Does he even have a real job anymore?
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
When I'm sitting in front of my monitor, with the notebook sitting on the MIDI keyboard for irc, while watching a DivX of LotR and playing FFX via a TV card on my PS2, and waiting for email about the latest kernel release, how will I be away from my computer? ;-)
(Oh yeah, and just kidding about the DivX thing. Honest! ;-))
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Someone posted a new FFXII (FF12) Picture here. FFXII is being developed by a "dream team". Sakaguchi and Yasumi Matsuno, Hiroyuki Ito are all working on the game and Yasunori Mitsuda will be taking over music direction (a move I applaud after the excellent Chrono Cross soundtrack). The picture is here:
FFXII First Pic .
Malda has a girlfriend. If I remember correctly she's even kind of cute.
Why do you persist in inflicting your homophobia on the Slashdot community?
THE SPIRITS WITHIN
h tm
As of 8/9/01
Gross-to-Date: $31,711,932
Production Budget: $115 million
Source:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/data/finalfantasy.
You guys ARE NOT monitoring slashdot 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!!
I want my money back!!!
think about taking that time off early. Babbage's will be getting FFx ON THE SHIP DATE!!! This goes for the west michigan region, i am not sure about any other babbages, but we will only have enough to cover reserves. Rob, Cowboy, whoever the hell else i sold a reserve to that reads this, get in on tuesday to pick up yer copy!
dang tags...
Does he even have a real job anymore?
Sounds like Homer during the last 5-6 seasons of The Simpsons:
Bart: Do you even have a job anymore?
Homer: I think it's pretty obvious that I don't!
You mean he's a real person and not just a poll option? I've been reading this site for 2 years and I think that's the first time I've seen his name mentioned in an article.
with the movie Final Fantasy. I saw the documentary where they reveal that a lot of the animation was done through motion capture. This explains why a lot of the quick movements of the characters was extremely realistic but whenever the characters were standing still, they always start floating like the animators were not content to just have characters that just stood still.
Aki's hair was still interesting to watch though...
After I saw FFXI running on a development XBox, I had high hopes. But then Sony had to buy up stock in Square :(
Oh well, I guess I'll have to make do with a PS2 version of FFX and FFXI, unless Sony decides to try and prove they have a better system and allow the game to come out on the XBox(as it was about 40-50% complete already).
I won't be in line for it, but I'll probably pick it up after the holidays.
Wasn't this iteration of FF supposed to require the hard drive addon? Or was that FFXI? Anyone know?
she'd have the substance she needed, but isn't she supposed to be something else? like a performer or something? i dunno. i never could get past the whole little school girl/pornstar marketing image.
so what exactly is she?
and hasn't been the best RPG series for a long time.
Have the storylines in any FF since 7 interested anybody? Most casual RPG players are at least partially familiar with the stories of Cecil, Tina/Terra, and Cloud; can the same be said about any FF character since then? Square's just been milking the series by coming up with lame themes ("love" for FF8) and creating graphics and cutscenes that suit those themes, then scripting stories around the conceptual graphics/scenes. I swear, the one thing I heard over and over before the release of FF8 was "ooh, gunblade!" Same thing with wass'isface in FFX and his water sword thing. The pinnacle of their apathy towards storylines was Spirits Within...was that really part of the Final Fantasy franchise?
Console RPG fanboys are living in denial. I think it's time that people woke up and started to demand a return to involving multi-character storylines, like from the good old SFC and Japanese Saturn days (Saturn -- Shining Force III). A MMORPG approach like FFXI does not bode well for improving matters on this front; ask Diablo and PSO players about how clever and engaging the "story" is.
It goes without saying that the release of both Lord of the Rings *and* Final Fantasy 10 during most college final weeks is a plot to undermine the youth of america. Oh well, I was destined to fail the finals anyways.
. . .look forward to new features from Square Studios from whatever studio buys them. And I'm sure they will be bought.
I view "The Spirits Within" more as another stepping-stone than the culmination of CG. I start to drool when I think of what an innovative, risk-taking studio like Miramax could do with the tools provided by Square Studios.
Now that a lot of the development is done and the tools have been created, directors can finally tell their stories exactly as they imagined them.
This is exciting.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
CowboyNeal and I both have our copies of FFX on reserve and are planning on some time
off to watch LotR and play FFX this week.
Looks like somebody's got a little too much vacation time on their hands... Or else no better reason to use it! Wish I was so lucky. Anybody else taken off time recently for video games or movies??
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
I'm going to end up buying a PS2 to play FFX, and after the 50 hours or so, it'll sit until FF XI comes along... or so I thought. Now, I gotta reconsider. Should I just give up on FF?
Why do I want to play Final Fantasy as a MMORPG? I can already do that in any number of ways, and a number of them are already eating up my time and money. Why throw FF into that fray?
In MMORPGS, the other people are just like me. Yeah, sure a few might have some interesting stories. Sure you encounter some great RPGers, but mostly they're just as unimaginative as I am.
I buy FF because I want my fantasies scripted for me with characters I'd never dream up myself. I want a storyline that I can play a part of, but isn't necessarily about me (such as the Ultima series). I still go back now and then to play Lufia on the SNES since that was such a great story.
The movie was ok. When you think of FF characters in the past, how could they do such a poor job on the dialog and characters? I went to see it just to support their efforts, but I'm not sure if I'd buy it. If they sell the studio, then I won't waste my money.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Final Fantasy 10? I'm happy an emulator came out that is fast enough to run FF8 on my Power Mac! I'll be damned if im going to buy a ps2 just to play ff10! ok ok...im going to go and invade one of my ps2 owning friends life for a few days and play the game through there. I just hope the promises that it is as "revolutionary" as ff7 are true and it is really a great game. ff7 is still my all-time favorite final fantasy.
I very thoroughly enjoyed it, and bought the DVD (my first DVD, at that). The animation was superb, and the story was decent too. Certainly better that the majority of SF movies. Sure the characters were cut from card stock, but again, they were at least as good as the characters in the majority of movies SF, animated, or otherwise.
Did people not like the movie because of the theological/spiritual concepts involved? That's what a couple of people have told me.
Maybe people just aren't ready for animation that approaches (but not yet reaches) photographic quality. Seeing such life-like images but knowing that were not actual people may have made a lot of people uncomfortable. I know that I've at least seen a few invectives against "digital actors".
For the record I have never played any FF games, but I am an animation fan, and I am also a pagan, so the whole "Gaia" concept was quite familiar and comfortable for me.
... it came from here.
r acter=8
http://www.3dshop.com/cgi-bin/Gallery/gallery?Cha
- sigs are for wimps.
You're not an engineering major are you? My guess is you have never been on a college campus. You're just some white trash hill billy (no offense to color-challenged races) who doesn't know that a good amount of the muslim community is extremely intellegent and a more than 1/2 of the engineering stundents i meet are of middle-eastern decent.
One of the funniest posts I've seen in a while, if only for the fact that it accentuates just how incompetent the programmers behind this really are. I love it when a "geek site" throws a "lameness filter" up at someone who tries to post arable code. It's a touch of elegance.
I grew up on AstroBoy. Glad to see it's coming back on the big screen, should be a good movie! :-)
...this is getting out of hand
The reason is bombed was people were expecting a final fantasy themed movie.
What they got was a preachy/theological movie that really wasn't all that exciting. I mean they were really grasping for straws when they gave the chick "another" 8th spirit. Just soo lame. It could have been a cool "Aliens" type movie, but it ended up being lame.
They should have used the original title that they intended to use..."Gaia"
Oh fiwer, your post is so laced with interpersonal irony, it's sad.
before the movie was even released SS annouced they has DRASTICALLY underestimated the work involved and WOULD NOT be making another movie. While the animation was awesome the movie was just ok im my opinion.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
OH FIWER, I LOVE YOU!
Hello all.
As someone who has played through and beaten multiples times (for different endings, and to get items and secrets I missed the first time around, or to play with different characters) all of the Final Fantasy games starting with the original NES one up to FFVII on the PS (at which point I stopped), I have a few words. My comments will probably be unpopular and modded down, but be that as it may, what I have to say needs to be said.
In short, these games are not intellectually stimulating or satisfying, and most-certainly not for intelligent people. Regular enemies are too easy to defeat and when you do unfortunately sometimes suffer heavy damages, it is all too easy to heal. Beating any boss usually only involves casting your most powerful attack and heal spells over and over again, and using a magic-replenishing item when you've run out. Every now and then you get a boss or enemy that maybe only a certain kind of magic works well on, or you can only attack a certain part of the enemy, but you can discover this information very quickly and easily and then go back to the usual spell-casting and healing routine until it dies.
The stories are also pretty weak, compared to something like Lord of the Rings! I feel I need not even defend my position on this issue!
After buying and beating tons of these games, I finally came to the realization that they are a complete waste of time and money. Well, unless you actual are dumb enough to find these games challenging. (Well, Final Fantasy 1 on the NES was pretty challenging if you didn't spend lots of time with mindless level-upping but instead only fought enemies you met naturally in achieving your objectives. But newer Final Fantasy's balance things much better so that your levels progress at a decent rate in the natural course of play.]
Read real fantasy fiction if you want a great story, like Lord of the Rings! If you want combat with real tactics, I can at least say that StarCraft against an intelligent human involves a great deal of intelligence and tactical thinking to win, not just mindless level-building, spell-casting, and healing. (The regular campaigns are pretty weak and easy, however, and the story is also really lame. So again, read books if you want a real story.
Everything I have read so far has led me to believe that this will just be another god damn summonfest like FF8, that was the best thing about FF9 was it wasn't summon oriented like FF8. Once you got the right gaurdian forces there was no point in really playing the game anymore, it was just "IFRIN I CHOOSE YOU!", I think I'll sit FFX out and play some more final fantasy tactics and chrono trigger. The greats never die :)
that's why they're called video games and not "intellectual stimulation for the masses"
'Nuff said. Most movies nowadays suck because they forget that one essential truth. Just say yes to excellence in cinema!
PEOPLE! The Final Fantasy series is not, and has never been, a role playing game. You have no control over what role you play or whether you are good or evil, there is one predestined path that you are forced to follow, and the battle system has no tactical or strategic value whatsoever. Final Fantasy isn't really even a fucking VIDEO GAME! It is an INTERACTIVE ANIME, and a very bad interactive anime at that (and considering how much anime sucks that's saying a hell of a lot).
You want to play a REAL RPG, an actual *ROLE PLAYING* *GAME*, check out the Ultima, Bard's Tale, Fallout and early AD&D series, the SSI games, Planescape: Tourment, Wasteland, World of Xeen, Betrayal at Krondor etc. etc. Games that actually have you make decisions and THINK during battles. THESE are role playing games, NOT bubblegum pop shit like Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star.
--
Metal Maniac
I was just watching Babylon5 and Sheridan just was mentioning how "in the past in wars on my planet, many forces would leave certain areas undamaged so as to maximize the terror when they hit them" He then goes on to list several 'examples' (full of the typical 80% historical and 20% fantastical/futuristic). Among them were Nagasaki and Hiroshima... so I begin to wonder (regardless of what people have been told what to think) if the premise is true that if you lie to yourself long enough, eventualy you will believe it yourself. I wonder if there will ever be a time when the FACTS of history will be cherished above rhetoric and hate, when the victim will not be demonized and enlightenment will be a true journey, not just a self label for the weak minded to try and use to make themselves feel better about themselves.
SHUT UP FIWER!
What's with this 'we' shit, pilgram?
We, as in, the Navy Seals, Green Berets, etc. that mommy and daddy pay taxes to support?
Or, we, as in, I am getting of my fat-ass, marching down to the local recruiting office, and joinging the Marines?
This is the best comment in this entire "news" article.
I wonder anyone would read this by now, well, who care. :)
:) but think about it, this movie can well be feature by 'real' actors/resses, I don't see FF movie has taken any advantage of the fantasy atmosphere created by orignal FF games.
:)
FF movie costs ~10M, only boxed ~5M - defintely not a glory history. The production firm shall take consequence of failure...
IMHO the failure of this movie is that it strays away from the major theme of FF too much. FF game series is sucessfully in bringing people to a whole new world of fantasy.
FF movie is too realistic - it's like "Alien" movies series with 3D render. No I didn't mean I see aliens in real life.
Well, my point so obvious to all FF fans. To layman like my girlfriend, she simply wonder why they don't use real people in the movie. 'nugh say.
"CowboyNeal and I both have our copies of FFX on reserve and are planning on some time off to watch LotR and play FFX this week."
I think someone needs a girlfriend.
At the toy'r'us they had it on the ps/2. I noticed that everyone had gathered around it and were ignoring the Xbox and nintendo. They had FF demo playing. The cinematics were unbelivable, best I've seen on a PS/2. The gameplay looked pretty sweet as well. Of course it was on one of those flat screen displays which didn't hurt the sharpness.....
hey CmdrTaco, I'm an arab but I'm christian (part of the small population in the middle east), so don't think that way about all arabs. My whole family can't stand the mus**** either.
Fiwer, you're not so bad when you're not on SA.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
As people said, it was not very FF-ish.
It wasn't even really a decent sci-fi movie.
They failed to explain a lot of things except
the whole crazy philosophy of it all.
Really, I feel this game was _most_ similar to FF7 with the whole nonsense about how people's spirits are really part of the planet, and that they must return to the planet's main spirit for the planet to survive and grow. The concept was, IMO, executed
rather poorly in the movie.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Who knows that the title will become a surprise hit, that it will spin off ten sequels that don't do justice to its name anymore, that Square's bankruptcy will never come?
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
YES YES FUCKING YES! If you really want to support quality in the video game industry go out and buy a REAL RPG like Ultima VII, Fallout or Planescape: Tourment. Buying a Final Fantasy game is like buying a Creed album; do you REALLY want to support mass-market, substanceless drivel?
..._
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..|_| Metal Maniac
--
|_..._|
You're pretty much alone in that opinion. It wasn't SF, it was cornball fantasy dressed up as SF.
Maybe people just aren't ready for animation that approaches (but not yet reaches) photographic quality.
I disagree. Me and most of my friends liked the work on FF, even though the characters were wooden (or rather, plastic). But it wasn't enough to carry the movie. IMHO shrek was the best CGI movie I've seen yet (Yes I have seen mosters Inc.)
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
In the game you have all these really wacky characters that get together and save the world. In the movie you have a bunch of scientists and stuff.
I love the scenery in the game: the quaint villages, the jungles, and the towns. But the movie was mostly indoors in a big city.
It's almost as if they tried to make the movie appeal to a more adult audience but missed the target.
The vilian in the movie was not evil enough but merely misguided.
But mostly I wanted to see more colors. More old fashioned clothing mixed with futuristic clothing. More kids running around causing havoc. More jokes.
3 3 3 Fiwer
My favorite underused word. You can find it on Merriam-Webster's site, if you're really bored.
Maybe they've finally made it interesting since the last time I tried final fantasy, but the ridiculous completion times get me. 30 hours is my absolute max, and even then the game has to be consistently good and extremely well paced to displace so much time (didn't one FF take like 80 hours?). I'd rather spend that immense amount of time completing other games (I like this thing called variety). Plus the turn based combat got old ages ago, they've tweaked with it in each game but they've never tried anything new (like, say, the one turn based combat system I like, no, love - Panzer Dragoon Saga's). I'll probably buy it anyway, I'm a whore like that, but for the two reasons above I really doubt it's going to grab me, though I hold out hope.
Soooo, I guess that would meand that Mario Brothers is a RPG. Well, anyway, I am all for variety, to each their own and all that. However, it is rather pathetic when someone instists it be called a RPG. These labels are for reasons, and those reasons are to let the users know quickly what the game 'should' be like. If we start mixing up the genres whenever it is convenient then why not start calling isometric action games RPG's when they have a fantasy theme? Oh wait, I forgot about Diablo.