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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.
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.
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Siggy, siggy, siggy, can't you see? Sometimes your puns just irritate me.
If you've ever played a Final Fantasy game (and liked it: plenty of people don't, it's purely a matter of taste), I'm sure you've thought "wouldn't it be cool to see a movie?" From FF4 and on, the epic storylines and character developments just beg for something like a movie. They scream "think of what a movie with all this stuff would be like!"
Unfortunately for Square, they seemed to work on the movie like they did their games: going for technological masterpiece as well as brilliant storytelling. The problem seems to be that since there aren't any real technological bounds but time on a movie (unlike a console, where you're pushing the limits of hardware, but you still have limits), limitless time went into this area. Now, I liked the story, and the characters, and the plot, and the setting, and the themes. I tend to like anime, though, and am very forgiving of problems when there is at least some merit to a film.
Personally I thought the graphics were great, but I would have been very satisfied if they'd done a live-action film of greater length, and brought out their storyline more. One of the real problems with doing a Final Fantasy movie is that while you've got 80 hours of game to develop characters, setting, and plot, even a 3-hour movie doesn't do justice. It's not that Square is bad at these things, they're just not too experienced yet at writing short stories.
This is really what I wanted to address. Not everything is done solely for money, and it's a sad state of affairs that these things should be determined on how much money it will bring in. Square has shown repeatedly in the past that it is willing to take a risk: just look at Vagrant Story or Legend of Mana. They don't like to lose, of course; sadly the teams that don't produce high-yield titles don't usually do well. But at least they're willing to take the risk.
I disagree. I think the movie was actually pretty good all things considered. I've seen (and enjoyed) much worse anime and other movies, both TV and big-screen. The movie was too short to go into fleshing out the characters, but it is quite easy to imagine how things would be if this were, say, a trilogy or better. Instead of starting in a nearly-dead world, we could have seen a pre-apocalyptic world, and then have it ravaged. Instead of merely telling about the first six spirits, we could have seen Aki finding them, watch her sadness as the little girl died, etc.
The story wasn't bad, the movie was just a bit too short. Instead of dismissing it as not being perfect the first time, we need to acknowledge its potential. Who would have thought that there could be a decent movie when watching the first cheesy silent movie? Or a truly emotional animated story after seeing the first corny cartoon? Just give it time. Someone has to be the pioneer. In this case, it's Square.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
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 :)