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Ten Years of FFXIII?
IGN is reporting that the next game in the Final Fantasy series will probably be around for quite a while. If Square/Enix has anything to say about it, we'll be playing the FFXIII family of games for the next ten years. "Although speaking with a Nintendo magazine, Hashimoto brought up Final Fantasy XIII as a comparison for Square Enix's decision to expand upon the FFVII storyline through the Compilation project years after the game's original release. 'Different from something like VII, which we expanded upon afterwards, with Fabula Nova Crystallis FFXIII, we've thought about an expansive world setting from the start. Under the idea of wanting everyone to be sucked into the world for 10 years, we're preparing a number of categories.' He likened this approach to films like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings." Chris Kohler took the time to point out that, in the same interview, the Square folks stated they're still not entirely convinced about this whole Virtual Console thing. "We feel that the Japanese game market still requires [physical] media. Also, FF and Dragon Quest are played by a wide range of users, from children to adults, so there are limitations when you consider the problems that we would have with billing systems."
S-E better damn well hope that XIII at its core, is a good game with an interesting world, and more than just eye candy. Otherwise you have 10 years of crap... if they make it that long.
Whatever happened to their creative credo of making completely new worlds in each game? Did the almighty yen/dollar/gil finally crush that spirit?
I'll probably be crucified for saying so, but I didn't like Final Fantasy VII. I much preferred X. I found VII so irritating that I stopped playing it part way through.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Final fantasy XIII? Ten years of lucky # 13.
The engine keeps getting gutted and turned inside out and remade yet it always remains distinctively Final Fantasy. As far as maintaining a franchise goes, Square's done well to not dilute the ingredients too much. Nothing stands still for too long. But TFA isn't talking about that. It's talking about story.
What I always liked about the Final Fantasy series is that, storywise, it wipes it all clean and starts anew. Some characters keep reappearing on and off in various forms like Cid and Moogles and Dark Mage, but essentially each one is an alternate universe with the same kinds of archetypes. Even though Rydia != Terra != Aeris and so on, they all fit into an archtype of the mysterious female lead. It's always been neat looking through the entire world drawn up and picking out the disillusioned, the rebel, the troublemaker, and so on.
When this nonsense started with FFX-2, it started an age of what amounts to Square being lazy. EACH WORLD depicted was supposed to be large and expansive and deep.
Now instead of being creative for the next ten years they're going to mix things up in the same universe?
Back to the game engine. It gets reworked and Square can get away with it because they trash all the backstory and start anew. How is the coherancy going to work out when you have 10 years (that's, what, 5 games?) in the same universe but 5 different game engines? Maybe they're going to cut that out, too.
What a shame.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Is there an audience for fighting the same beast over and over again, and watching the same cut scene "magic spell" repeatedly for 10 years?
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
The game feels incomplete because in a game that is supposed to be about taking back the reigns of history and put it in the hands of man, you spend your time almost exclusively fighting 10 species of Malboros or cats. In a game that supposed to focus on politics and struggle between men, the main hero's party somehow manages to stay out of it completely and become some kind of pest exterminators instead.
THANK YOU.
That sums it up exactly. I've -tried- to like it. The auto-battle seems even intrigues me, as a programmer. But really you fight from place to place for no apparent reason and get a little cutscene when you get there. Because they were trying to focus on everyone, instead of the main character, the cutscenes are too generic and the few that DO have a main character have a different one each time.
I like having more than 1 main character. FF8 was a great example of this. You'd switch back and forth between their stories and learn each a bit at a time. But move that to 6 characters (I don't even remember how many were in 12 now... How sad) and you end up with such a tiny slice of each that it's pointless.
FF12's biggest failing was immersion. I never felt like I was there with any of the characters and I certainly didn't care about what happened to any of the characters. Even the soccer-dork in FFX was more interesting to me.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM