Fallout 3, RE 5 in 2008, Final Fantasy 360 Never

In addition to the truly excellent trailer, yesterday Bethesda Softworks let slip the platforms on which Fallout 3 will be playable. CVG reports on an article in the upcoming issue of Game Informer magazine, which describes some of the gameplay and states the title will be on offer for the PC, 360, and PlayStation 3 sometime in Fall of 2008. Meanwhile, Eurogamer is reporting that Capcom won't be letting Resident Evil 5 out of the holding pen until at least April of next year. For now they're relying on the Wii port of the title and other offerings to see them through the year. Finally, if you were hoping to play Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360, you'll be waiting a long time. IGN has word that there are no plans for any FF games on Microsoft's console.

Comments

Fallout 3 Design Documents

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're into Fallout 3, don't miss the original Fallout 3 Van Buren design documents. Cool stuff. Going to be interesting to see if anything survives from there.

Re:Fallout 3 Design Documents

[Anthony Boyd]

I would note that in addition to the original design documents, the original Fallout 3 tech demo has been leaked. That's right, it's the playable game that the original team was working on 4 years ago. It doesn't have anything to do with the new game that Bethesda is trying to build. Bethesda only came into the picture when the original company folded.

Re:Fallout 3 Design Documents

[bckrispi]

If you're into Fallout 3, don't miss the original Fallout 3 Van Buren design documents. Cool stuff. Going to be interesting to see if anything survives from there.

Gaah! Put up an NSFW tag next time!

Fallout 3 Gameplay?

[ShadowsHawk]

I would really appreciate it if someone paste the article text since I'm suck behind a filter.

Re:Fallout 3 Gameplay?

[MonorailCat]

I believe its an article in an upcoming publication, not available online now (ever?)

Re:Fallout 3 Gameplay?

[Zencyde]

June 5, 2007 - Looking for more Final Fantasy following the Xbox 360 port of Final Fantasy XI? Then you're going to have to look to a different next generation system. A Square Enix executive has disclosed to Japan's Nikkei BP that the company currently has no plans for Final Fantasy games on the 360.
Noting that the PS3 is getting Final Fantasy XIII, the website asked Square Enix's Shinji Hashimoto if the Wii or Xbox 360 will also be getting games in the series. "For the Wii, we have FF Crystal Chronicles in production," replied Hashimoto. "As for FF on the Xbox 360, it's currently a completely blank page."
Strong words from Hashimoto, although perhaps if everyone goes out and buys Last Remnant (that includes you!), Square Enix will have a change of heart.

Re:Fallout 3 Gameplay?

[ShadowsHawk]

Ah. Thanks anyways.

Re:Fallout 3 Gameplay?

[GrayCalx]

Shadows

There really wasn't anything in the link. Just references to an upcoming Game Informer issue. I'll paste the article below, but theres really nothing there. :(

Fallout 3 is heading to PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, according to Game Informer magazine which has posted a scan of the cover of a forthcoming issue that features the sequel.

Bethesda's game is described as an open-ended RPG by the GI chaps, and as you'll know if you watched yesterday's teaser trailer it's due out in autumn 2008.

It's no great surprise that the developer is targeting those three platforms, but it's always nice to have it confirmed.

Expect a flood of Fallout 3 information to plaster itself all over the internet soon.

Re:Fallout 3 Gameplay?

[Aladrin]

'Blank page' doesn't mean 'never', it just means 'no current plans'... That's about a minimum of a year, if they decide to do a port, or 3 years if they decide to innovate. Minimum, mind. Not average or mean.

Nintendo had been the sole Final Fantasy Console for years when Sony stepped in and took it. Now Nintendo has FF titles again (weak ones, but still...) so there's nothing stopping them from doing the 360. They are probably fishing for a big check from everyone's favorite monopoly first.

Re:Fallout 3 Gameplay?

[ShadowsHawk]

I appreciate it.

FF Quote Not Entirely True

[Anonymous Coward]

See http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/06 /06/busting-rumors-sonys-ps3-price-drop-and-square s-360-final-fantasy-plans

They explain that Square said the 360 was a "blank page", which isn't the same thing as a flat out "Not gonna happen".

Nathan

Re:FF Quote Not Entirely True

[Anonymous Coward]

It is if you're Japanese.

Remember, this is the culture where "Ahh, well..." in response to a question is a common way of shooting it down. Something even THIS concrete is basically laughing and stomping on the idea.

No FF on Xbox360

[Mortanius]

Does it really surprise anyone though? FF is huge (perhaps as an understatement) in Japan where Microsoft has a pretty tiny share. Releasing exclusively would be suicide, and though there is a large market in the US, I would expect there's enough PS3 owners and enough would-be PS3 owners on the fence that would pick up a PS3 because of FF that it wouldn't necessarily be worth the added effort to port to xbox.

And please God, don't let them contract out to another company to do a half-assed port. :-P

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[Araxen]

I agree, the 360 just doesn't have the foothold in Japan to warrant Square/Enix to develop for the 360. The PS3 has a larger player base in Japan than the 360 and eventually the price will come down enough that the Japanese and Americans will buy the system en mass. You can't say the same for the 360. America yes, but in Japan I doubt it.

But....I wouldn't be totally surprised to see Square/Enix to totally focus on the Nintendo systems. The Wii will have by far the larger player base of the 3 systems and the DS just has an enormous player base. We've seen the start of this focus with the next DragonQuest game coming on the DS and not on a next gen system(Wii/PS3/360). I think we are seeing Nintendo reclaiming the video game king throne.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[DrXym]

Does it really surprise anyone though? FF is huge (perhaps as an understatement) in Japan where Microsoft has a pretty tiny share. Releasing exclusively would be suicide, and though there is a large market in the US, I would expect there's enough PS3 owners and enough would-be PS3 owners on the fence that would pick up a PS3 because of FF that it wouldn't necessarily be worth the added effort to port to xbox.

Not just that, but FF probably wouldn't sit too well on the 360 due to the limited storage capacity. FF games are known for ridiculous amounts of FMV which is exacerbated by needing HD content on the 360. I expect if FF did appear that it would have to span multiple discs.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[skobar]

But worldwide, there is more 360 then ps3 and the games does sell everywhere in the world.

There is also already a Final fantasy on the 360 even if it is a mmorpg.

I don't really care though as I have a ps3.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[Aladrin]

Yeah, because the Wii has -so- much more storage capacity than the 360.

While it's unlikely we'll see a true FF on the 360 (partially for your reason), it's possible we'll see spinoffs like the FFCC and the like, retro titles revamped, or new titles with 'hard core' gameplay without so many movies and more actual action. (I'm hoping for this, personally... Not holding my breath, though.)

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[amuro98]

While the 360 hasn't sold like mad in Japan, it's important to note that the two big J-RPGs for the console - Blue Dragon and Eternal Bell, sold very well - enough to make a small spike in 360 hardware and software sales. This proves that the Japanese are at least willing to buy a 360, if it has games they want.

We also know that Final Fantasy is a very big franchise in Japan.

Square's mentioned FFXIII won't be ready for release (in Japan?) until April 2008. What would happen if the PS3 is still struggling to even keep up with the monthly sales of the Wii and 360 worldwide? It would really be hard to justify releasing a game as expensive as FFXIII on a console that doesn't even have enough customers to guarantee a profit.

And yes, while FFXIII will certainly HELP convince people to buy a PS3, I don't think that it'll be a system seller by itself. Think about it. Would you spend nearly US$700 for just one game? Ok, so say Sony dropped the price of the PS3 to US$500. Would you spend nearly US$600 for just one game?

This is the problem that Square-Enix could be facing.

Their choices would be:
* Release exclusively on the PS3. (Note: they may not have a choice anyways if they already have a contract with Sony for FFXIII so the other options may be moot.)

* Announce a port to the 360. The 360 has the power, and certainly has the popularity overseas. Would FFXIII be enough to swing more Japanese to the 360 in Japan though?

* Announce a port to the Wii. At the rate things are going now, the Wii will be the undisputed leader in Japan by next year. However, the Wii lacks the graphical power of the PS3 and 360, and there could be issues with the controller (not enough buttons/sticks) If such a port was announced, would Square re-work the game to try to take advantage of the Wii's controller, or just force people to use the GameCube attachment? Also, what would this do to Wii sales worldwide? Would FFXIII do for the Wii what FFVII did for the PS1?

Finally, remember that SquareEnix has talked about turning FFXIII into a franchise containing many games on many different platforms. They've talked about future FFXIII spinoffs on the Wii and DS already, I believe. Just because they're saying "no FFXIII for the 360" doesn't mean that other FFXIII-related games may not show up there later, only that perhaps the central game will only be on the PS3.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[Conception]

I think in general people forget something...

"Sony Invests in Square / Square Not Exclusive To Sony

Sony Corp it will invest 14.9 billion yen in capital to Square Co Ltd. The investment will give Sony an 18% stake in Square. Sony does not intend to prevent Square from contributing games to rival game makers such as Nintendo Co Ltd or Microsoft Corp, a SONY spokeswoman said. - Source Reuters.

"We are not exclusive to Sony, because of this deal." said Hisashi Suzuki, Square's president."

Sony owns a large part of Square. Sony needs to be doing -really- badly before Square starts helping out Sony's biggest game competitor.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[badboy_tw2002]

I would. FF has always been about the glitz, and if anyone is going to push the limits of the PS3 and HD/BluRay it will be Square. It would be hard to call any FF a "casual" game, so they've got a solid core of hardcore fans on the PS3 waiting for the next installment. Look for the PS3 version as the lead platform, with a solid port to the Wii. (Using the Wiimote might actually liven up some of the battles, and would be an easy and great way to add something to the game without redesigning it from scratch.)

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[amuro98]

Storage won't be a problem. Blue Dragon is 4 DVDs. Multi-disc (J)RPGs are as old as optical media for consoles. The games are designed such that disc swaps only occur in one direction - IE. you won't be going back to disc1 after you've swapped it for disc2.

It won't even affect the manufacturing costs much either since DVD is so much cheaper than a single BD.

Even if FFXIII contains 2 hours of HD FMV (which is highly unlikely), that would only put the total game's size at about 4 DVDs - 5 at the most.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[DrXym]

Yeah, because the Wii has -so- much more storage capacity than the 360.

The Wii has the luxury of being standard definition. Which means FMV is likely to consume 1/3 the space on disk that it would need for 720p on the 360. The same goes for textures, models etc. which invariably would have to be far more detailed on the 360 to suit its higher resolution and more capable graphics & CPU. The situation would be even worse if the 360 dared hope to support 1080. Assuming any FF title could be crammed onto a single disk for Wii then it's likely that it would require 3 or 4 disks to take advantage of the 360.

I have no idea if this was one of the reasons that FF is not going to the 360 but it's clear that that multiple disks are the ONLY way FF XIII or later could happen on the 360.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[steveo777]

Think about it. Would you spend nearly US$700 for just one game?

It seems a few people are. I'm not sure how many PS3s are in the hands of consumers at this point, either in the US, Japan, or worldwide, but I'm willing to bet it's enough for Squeenix to bet FF on it. At least this time. It'll drive some more sales for a lot of the die-hards, but the game only needs to sell a million or so to turn a nice profit, and make enough money for the next. They're banking that the PS3 will sell steady for some years to come.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[DrEldarion]

Would you spend nearly US$700 for just one game? Ok, so say Sony dropped the price of the PS3 to US$500. Would you spend nearly US$600 for just one game? For a FF game? Probably. Maybe I'm a hopeless Square whore, but I know I'm not alone.

You also have to remember that, in Japan, there is only one game series with more selling power than FF (Dragon Quest), and from what I recall, it's a pretty close race. Final Fantasy is HUGE - it has its own drink in stores. A (current) exclusive on the main Final Fantasy XIII game will sell a boatload of systems. I'd be honestly surprised if we didn't see an extra million PS3s sold in Japan right after the FF release, just like I'd be honestly surprised if we didn't see a huge spike in 360 sales in America when Halo 3 gets released.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[king-manic]

Does it really surprise anyone though? FF is huge (perhaps as an understatement) in Japan where Microsoft has a pretty tiny share.

There is no doubt that FF is a juggaurnaut on both sides of the ocean. However it's more successful her ein NA then in JApan. In JApan Dragon Quest is the huge franchise and FF is #2/#3 in RPG's. Here in NA FF is the #1 and Dragon quest is down the line.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

And yes, while FFXIII will certainly HELP convince people to buy a PS3, I don't think that it'll be a system seller by itself. Think about it. Would you spend nearly US$700 for just one game? Ok, so say Sony dropped the price of the PS3 to US$500. Would you spend nearly US$600 for just one game?

I've been considering getting a PS3, but there aren't enough games I think I would like to justify $600. The games that are out now are pieces of straw on the back of that $600 camel ... when the new Final Fantasy comes out, that's a whole bale full of straw, and it might very well shatter the back of the price camel.

Witness the case of a friend of mine. I've been trying to convince him to get a Nintendo DS for a while, trying to tempt him by telling him about some of the good games the system has available (Final Fantasy 3, which we both looked forward to; the Castlevania games; a few other titles.) Some of his other friends have been trying to convince him to buy one as well. He's always chosen not to buy, saying that while he's tempted, he probably wouldn't use it that much.

Two days after I sent him a link to the (warning: link may be hazardous to your free time) Puzzle Quest demo and told him it was only for PSP and DS, he bought a DS Lite and a couple of games after spending a couple of hours driving around looking for Puzzle Quest and a good price on a DS Lite.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, Eternal Sonata (I assume that's what you're talking about) hasn't even shipped yet, and Blue Dragon "sold well" for a console that still hasn't sold half a million units yet in Japan.

The budget for a typical FF requires at least a million copies sold to break even, and while it does sell worldwide they typically sell the greatest number of copies in Japan.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[AvitarX]

And yes, while FFXIII will certainly HELP convince people to buy a PS3, I don't think that it'll be a system seller by itself. Think about it. Would you spend nearly US$700 for just one game? Ok, so say Sony dropped the price of the PS3 to US$500. Would you spend nearly US$600 for just one game?

Wouldn't you be spending $200.00 (price difference from 360 to PS3? The PS3 is going to have a lot of great cross platform games. And lets not forget God of War.

Note, I currently only own a Wii, but will be getting a PS2 soon. No plans on PS3 or 360 at all.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[StikyPad]

The Wiimote sucks. The motion sensing is too vague to allow precise control, and the controller is too small to work well sideways, at least with my non-child/non-asian hands. Don't even get me started on pointing.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[Cerium]

Which is ridiculous at this point of next-gen games.

Sure, I've owned my share of multi-cd games back in the psx days and I've gone through the installation of just as many multi-disc PC games, but it's still irritating. If we're already seeing 4-5, what's that going to mean near the end of the systems cycle? 6-9 disc game packages? Ugh, no thanks.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[amuro98]

I'm not quite I understand your comment...

If someone wants to play PS2 games, BUY A PS2. It's cheaper than a PS3 without having to worry about any incompatibility issues.

In fact, if anyone out there is considering a PS3 and doesn't have a PS2 - GO BUY A PS2. By the time you've played through the good games for the PS2 (whatever you call good) the PS3 will be cheaper and hopefully have a library worth giving a darn about. The PS3's upscaling ability for PS2 games isn't worth $600. Besides which, most HDTVs already upscale, so this seems like a totally useless feature to me...

So far, reviews for cross platform games for the PS3 and 360 say they look and play almost identically, so these titles shouldn't be used to determine which console to buy. However, if all you are interested in are titles that are cross platform (eg. Madden) then you'll want to go with the 360, because it's cheaper.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[amuro98]

Considering your typical RPG is about 30-50 hours, swapping a disc out every 5-10 hours shouldn't be a problem. It's still better than dealing with a TV series on DVD spanning an equivelant span of time.

That said, I agree that PC games are rather ridiculous, many still use CD after all these years.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[7Prime]

Actually, I made a post about this earlier. The 360 is tied down to HD resolution, which sucks up storage. The Wii can't do HD (well... technically, it can, just as the GameCube and PS2 could, but didn't), so it actually can put a lot more cut scenes on a DVD, because it's not required to be in HD (yes, microsoft requires HD).

However, that's not a very strong arguement. Over the course of a 120 hour game (liek FF12), switching a disc once every 20 hours isn't exactly much to ask... I mean, FF7 and FF8 were utter marketplace DISASTERS because they had multipul discs, right?

The thing is, Final Fantasy's graphical prowess has never come from technical wizerdry, but from cleanliness and attention to detail. In actuality, the games have usually been run on the lower end systems of its time (since FF7, anyway), but Square just has such a great design sense, that they can make low powered output look amazing. If anything, the Final Fantasy series is a testiment to how a good grasp of stylistic principals can overcome technical inferiority.

The only game that was graphically, "the pinnical of its time" was FF8. FF1-5 were extremely behind, FF6 was about average, FF7 was either average or behind, depending upon who you talk to, FF9 was pretty much the same level of graphics as FF8, just with a completely different style, FFX was about average, and FF12 was extremely behind the times.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[7Prime]

Firstly, the average jRPG is nearing the 100 hour mark. FF12 was about 120 hours, Dragon Quest VIII was upwards 140 hours, Tales of the Abyss was about 90 hours... hell even Zelda was around 75 hours! Last generation, FF7 was around 35 hours, Tales of Symphonia was about 60 hours, and Zelda: OoT was approximately in the 30hour range (although TP was the first to actually include an hour counter). Don't get me started on the Suikoden games, of which should probably be nearing 200 hours by the end of the decade.

Secondly, PC game disc switching has always been very different. Most multi-disc PC games switch in both directions. Probably the most eggrigious being Riven, in which every island was on a different disc, and some only took 2 minutes to cross (blech).

How it's done on console RPGs is that the entire game (dialog, game-engine cut-scenes, music, etc), which takes up very little data, is put onto every disc, and then the rest of the disc consists of pre-rendered FMVs. It's a very easy process to do.

The bottom line is, Square's going to ask themselves, "would putting the game on multipul discs detter anyone from buying it?" and the answer is going to be a very definite "no". In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the jRPG community has come to look forward to multi-disc games, because it makes for good benchmarks and helps you to mentally keep track of long-form epics.

Having to reach over and switch out a disc every 20 hours isn't asking for much. It's not even a question of "in the current generation, it shouldn't happen", it's sort of expected, and sometimes even liked.

I sorta miss the 4-disc aspect of FF8 and FF9, I can look back and think about how each disc was structured, as a four-act work. When I try to think about the structure of FF12, I just can't keep it all straight.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[7Prime]

Final Fantasy used to be my most looked-forward-to jRPG series, but that's over now. Not that FF12 wasn't an incredible game (it was), but there were better, this year, and I find myself looking forward to others more than FF13. I find myself actually more interested in the next FF:CC game for the Wii, as it looks to be a sort of hybrid between Zelda and Skies of Arcadia, two of my favorite games. Also Trusty Bell/Eternal Sonata just interests me a lot more, and in many ways, the Tales series has supplanted itself, in my mind, as the next BIG really well-done jRPG series to follow, so I'll be interested to see what Namco has instore for us next time.

I'm sure FF13 will be amazing, it will have a polish and cleanliness that my inner-graphic-designer will weep at. But, seeing as though Squares best game in a while, FF12, got a distant fourth on my list of RPGs this year (after Twilight Princess, Okami, and Tales of the Abyss), I dunno if I'm going to be all that sad if I miss out on FF13.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[7Prime]

Actually it very much surprises me that Square will not port it to the Wii. People say that the Wii doesn't have the graphical power... but why does that matter?

Do you think anyone who owns a Wii is specifically NOT going to buy a game because it looks better on another system? No, that's just crazy talk. If you're a marketing person, you're going to look at what system is going to move the most amount of product. Wii owners aren't going to boycott the FF series just because the PS3 counterpart looks better.

Actually, it's not all that unrealistic. The GameCube was a good head & shoulders above the PS2 graphically, due to its builtin anti-aliasing and superior lighting effects. The Wiis hardware is about twice the power of the GC, and it has a lot more graphical goodies (bump mapping, a few more shaders, more lighting effects). So think about it. The last FF game released was FF12, which, at the very least, looked about the quality of an early GC game, but with more jaggies (no anti-aliasing). The next FF game on the Wii is going to look like A LOT better than FF12, much larger than the graphical difference between any of the other recent FF games (FF9 -> FFX for instance). It would actually be right about in line with the graphical progression of the rest of the series.

Secondly, while a lot of the recent Final Fantasy games have had graphical flash... that has NEVER stemmed from horsepower, but from the design teams having great design sense. For the past 2 generations, the FF games have been on the lower powered systems of their time, and still they never fail to amaze. This has nothing to do with horsepower, but with just making great stylistic decisions.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[Cerium]

With RPGs, you're right -- the disc switching is more an annoyance than anything else, especially if done correctly (immediately following the death of a much loved female character, for instance).

The problem I see with it, however, is it becoming a standard and/or accepted "issue" with games. With the linear nature of RPGs, it tends not to pose much of an problem as the disc change is only once and you rarely (if ever) have to use a previous disc in the same play-through. If we start introducing this into other genres though, it may also impose this same progression limitations on them; and that's something I have a problem with.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[DrXym]

However, that's not a very strong arguement. Over the course of a 120 hour game (liek FF12), switching a disc once every 20 hours isn't exactly much to ask... I mean, FF7 and FF8 were utter marketplace DISASTERS because they had multipul discs, right?

That depends on how many disks you're talking about and the structure of the game being able to accommodate swapping disks. For example multiple disks would be a pain in the arse for open sandbox games where you can literally go anywhere. Since FF XIII doesn't exist outside of Square it's hard for me to say what the story / level structure would be like. But if their world is even moderately open that in itself could push up the disk count simply because if you can revisit certain areas then they're going to have to be duplicated on every disk unless the game is going make the player juggle disks while playing.

BTW I don't claim that multiple disks is necessarily a hindrance, but the point is that there are certain kinds of games that simple do not fit on a DVD-9. Some games might be able to overcome this, but some will not.

Re:No FF on Xbox360

[7Prime]

Gameworld size or linearity is fairly irrelivant. The thing that takes up space are FMVs. And FMVs, in the RPG realm, are almost always in a linear fashion. Even if they aren't completely linear, they're going to be fairly linear. jRPGs like FF13 have strictly linear plots, that's one of their main appeals (at least for me, anyway), so I don't think that we're going to see Fallout style FF games anytime soon (I hope not, anyway).

In sandbox type games, however, you are correct, that could be a big problem. I don't play/like sandbox games, however, so for me, I could really care less. But obviously, my opinion is kind of irrelivant to this topic. So yes, the 360 is going to face issues... especially since it's basically the second home (second to PC) to the sandbox genre.

Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

After the last two Final Fantasy games, it's obvious that at the very least Square-Enix doesn't care about Final Fantasy any more. (The "last two" by my definition being XI, an uninspired EverQuest clone with moogles, and XII, an offline version of an uninspired EverQuest clone with moogles and bunny-women.)

Seriously, after playing XII and discovering that the game really does play itself to the point where you're only there to guide the characters through the map, I really don't see any reason to get any more Final Fantasy games. Ever.

Add in that the wonderful "storytelling" in FFXII sees a story wherein every character they've introduced through the start of the *tutorial* dies by the end of the tutorial, randomly jumping to some characters you've never met and really don't care about, and you've got a game with no gameplay and one of the worst stories I've ever read.

Yeah, I know, there are some twists concerning that last statement in the story, but the concept of the first several minutes of a story is to hook the audience. Introducing a whole slew of characters and then *killing every last one of them* (even if it later turns out they miraculously survived) does not create a compelling story. Especially when the main character they randomly dump on you turns out to be, hands down, the most annoying Final Fantasy character I can recall.

So let the PS3 keep their Final Fantasy. It won't help sales. Final Fantasy is dead, Square-Enix has decided to kill it.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[dhakbar]

Damn straight.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[dannycim]

Matter of opinion. Sure, FFXII's story was a bit light, but the combat system was the best ever seen of any jRPG. You could do everything manually or litterally program the AI of the party members with the gambit system.

I for one loved it, and most reviewers did too. SE's not about to "kill" FF any time soon, as you may think. It's their franchise, it's their cash-cow.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[brkello]

After the last two Final Fantasy games, it's obvious that at the very least Square-Enix doesn't care about Final Fantasy any more.

After your first sentence I could tell you have no clue what you are talking about.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[blendo75.5]

I enjoyed FF XII but I'm not going to spend what will likely be $660 to play XIII, especially since there will be versions released on every other console ever made (except the 360, apparently). I think Square lost sight of what makes FF a good game, for me it was never about the graphics. Final Fantasy XII will no doubt have beautiful graphics but the chances of it being a good FF experience are slim to none, probably due to too much energy being put into the graphics.

In the PS1 era I think people were shocked by how far graphics had come and Squaresoft used this intelligently at the time. Good graphics just arent that much of a shock anymore. I saw someone playing 360 the other day, a basketball game, and at first I thought he was WATCHING basketball on TV. Wow!! Then a minute later I saw the pixels, the seams, it wasnt as impressive as it had been at first glance. I got over the jump in graphics from the original xbox in less than 5 minutes. The improvement is there, definitely, but it's just not as big a deal as it used to be.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Sciros]

Yeah I'm sure not nearly enough people here have read FFXII bashing every time the series is brought up. The game has sold a LOT of copies, so to say that FFXIII wouldn't help sales is absurd. Some consider FFXII to be the best of the series.

It sounds like you only played the game for about thirty minutes. The tutorial is a prologue; you're not playing with main characters there. And "jumping to some characters you've never met"???? HAHAHAH it's the beginning of the game! Where did you expect to meet them beforehand?

As for the combat system, it's like KOTOR (which a lot of people enjoyed) but with optional AI routines you can set for your party members to speed along the flow of battle. If you don't want the game to "play for you" then turn those routines off, simple as that.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[badasscat]

Sure, FFXII's story was a bit light, but the combat system was the best ever seen of any jRPG. You could do everything manually or litterally program the AI of the party members with the gambit system.

I for one loved it, and most reviewers did too.

When was the last time any big game got bad reviews? Game reviewers get caught up in hype just like everybody else, and maybe more importantly, they're often afraid to criticize games that they know have a lot of evangelists. They may not personally like a game, but they take the attitude of "well, if you like Japanese RPG's, then you'll love this game." In fact, you see statements just like that in game reviews all the time. It really is basically bullshit. A game's either fun or it isn't; there's no "if you like this kind of game, then you'll like the game." If that were a valid way of looking at things, then every game should get a perfect score.

So the fact that reviewers liked FFXII is meaningless. The fact that you liked it probably has more relevance; at least you're not trying to please your readers.

But I did not like FFXII, and I'm a pretty hardcore FF fan. I didn't think it was awful, but it never grabbed me - I never felt any emotional connection to it, and I never really felt like I wanted to play it. I'd come home at night and think "oh god, I'd better play some FFXII... I guess." Because of that, it ended up one of only two FF's since VII that I never finished. The story was probably the main problem, but I'm sorry, I did not like the battle system at all - it was like Grandia Lite. It had no real strategy; it was all action. It was clearly a case of "be careful what you wish for", because it was exactly the kind of battle system some FF fans have been clamoring for for a long time, but it was the perfect example of why real-time battle systems don't really work. It *felt* like a hack and slash.

FF's battle system has always been about strategy, and for that reason the battles themselves have always been somewhat abstracted. FFXII got rid of the abstraction and made the battles feel more "realistic", which as is often the case just ends up being more boring.

I don't agree with the parent poster that S-E needs to "kill" the series, but I do agree with him that the last two FF's have been subpar, especially after the gorgeous FFX, probably my second favorite FF ever. I'd even go further and say the last three numbered FF's have been subpar - FFXI, FFX-2 and FFXII.

Still, the series is still a system-seller in both the US and Japan, and it will help PS3 sales in a big way when FFXIII is released. Especially if, as has been S-E's modus operandi lately, the first numbered FF on a new system ends up really setting the standard. FFVII and FFX were both great, while the FF's in between were mediocre at best; hopefully FFXIII will continue the tradition of VII and X.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[OmegaBlac]

Sure, FFXII's story was a bit light, but the combat system was the best ever seen of any jRPG.

Best ever? The combat system in FFXII was good and has alot of potential--hopefully Square-Enix can improve this in future titles--but IMO, it was not deep enough. For example, how can I get a character to continue to steal until they get certain item and then stop and switch to attacking? Or to steal only once from a certain monster for the whole battle, even if that monster has less then 100% health. The previous example was real annoying problem for me. For most of the game in order to have a character just steal once usually you would have a gambit like steal as long as monster health is 100%. What happens if another character or monster attacks the target first? Now you have to manually steal or move on to something else.

Vagrant Story's battle system was deep. IMO, that was probably the best combat system in a JRPG ever. One annoying problem with FFXII and the gambits was one would have to wait until 2/3rds through the game to get some the really fine-grained gambits that would have been beneficial earlier in the game. By the time you can acquire these late gambits, you most likely are already strong enough to not really need them or use a combination of other gambits to perform the same thing. The automatic nature of the gambits was a welcome change in JRPGs, but it felt limited to me.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[SparkyFlooner]

Final Fantasy XII was great. Especially when compared to X-2 (the only one I've never finished. When I saw the dance number in the intro I knew I was in trouble. And dancing to cast spel...I should stop there...) Anyway, I play Final Fantasy now because that's what I do. A Final Fantasy comes out, I play it. It's like the sun comes up and it goes down. It's a force of nature. The only way I WOULDN'T play a Final Fantasy is if, say, they made all the lead characters the guys from N'Sync or somthing. .....almost like X-2, where all the girls were from girl bands or something.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Wicko]

Yes, I'm sure that a blockbuster series like Final Fantasy, wouldn't get a boost from a console who's players have literally been begging for a Final Fantasy game for years. There are no loads of fanboys dreaming about a High Definition Final Fantasy on a console thats pretty much in the lead for next gen consoles. Square Enix, yeah, they really fucked up, topping the Japanese sales charts. It doesn't have to set any records to be a good game. Winning all those awards probably doesn't help either. I couldn't find any North American sales figures but I'm sure they are just as shitty.

Just because you aren't a fan of the series, doesn't make it a dead series. Personally, I haven't played through 12 yet, but I've heard from close friends its a huge improvement over X and X-2. IMHO, X wasn't that bad, although I prefer the older FFs. Remember, these games are mostly slated to the Japanese culture, do you live in Japan? So stick to playing your WoW and whatever other american RPG's, clearly japanese RPGs aren't your style.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Canthros]

From personal experience, the FF combat system has often been less about strategy and more about power-leveling. It's been this way since FF1, and it's been true in the vast majority of the FF games. FF2, not to be confused with FF4, is probably the worst this way, but they've pretty much all been like this. Sure, strategy *helps*, but, when in doubt, you wander around and kill things to gain levels. As such, the combat's almost always been boring, and FFXII had a nice approach to alleviating that by not necessitating that you pay full attention to the combat to win a battle.

As to the story, I actually thought it was a breath of fresh air in the otherwise stale series, even if the setting (Ivalice) is actually recycled from earlier games. Personally, I really intend to skip FFXIII, since it promises to be more of the same that we got from the bulk of series.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[BecomingLumberg]

In my mind, X-2 will forever sit in the same realm as Mystic Quest... as a blasphemy to all that is FF. It should have been named "Yuna's Hot Pants Adventure!!!!" anyway.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[skobar]

I do, and a lot of other peeps do. You must be in the minority because almost everyone I talk to still loves the final fantasy series and it will probably make them buy a ps3 just because of it.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

The tutorial is a prologue; you're not playing with main characters there. And "jumping to some characters you've never met"???? HAHAHAH it's the beginning of the game! Where did you expect to meet them beforehand?

This should probably be a car analogy, but... I'm going to go with a Star Wars analogy instead. Specifically, the Ep. 1: the Phantom Menace.

Let's say that instead of following Obiwan and Qui-gon, the movie instead suddenly killed both of them after they made it to the bridge of the Trade Federation ship. Suddenly we jump to Naboo and Jar-Jar, and the rest of the movie follows Jar-Jar's exploits. Eventually Obiwan and the rest of the group are reintroduced, but the start would still seem a just a bit disjointed.

The start of a story is supposed to grab the audience. It's supposed to make them interested in the rest of the story. It's supposed to introduce characters and create some form of attachment with the characters so that the audience wants to see what happens to them.

It's not supposed to introduce a group of characters, show how each of them dies, and then jump to an annoying character and suddenly start their story. A start like that makes the entire introduction of the previous characters completely pointless, since we're told that they're dead. Their story is over in under 10 minutes. We're not given enough to care about them.

FFXII should have started immediately with Vaan. Everything that happened during the actual opening should have been introduced after introducing us to Vaan and his friends, to allow us to learn of the connection with Vaan's story, since that's the story they ultimately have the game tell at the start. Otherwise the opening essentially means nothing until you're already a good, I dunno, let's say 5 hours into the game. Up until they start connecting the opening with the characters you're playing, the opening is pointless. It could have been summed up as "two years ago, the Empire invaded Dalmasca" and then you gain control of Vaan.

If you don't want the game to "play for you" then turn those routines off, simple as that.

As much as I enjoy excessively pounding the X button, going through the excessively nested menus and giving commands to characters besides the leader is just so unwieldy that it simply is not practical to turn off the AI.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Canthros]

The FF series has always have usually pushed the graphics pretty hard, actually. I agree that I don't think it's as big a selling point as it used to be, but it's always been a big deal for the series.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Wicko]

LOL

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Psmylie]

By "Everquest Clone", do you just mean MMORPGs in general? Because, you know, certain similarities are unavoidable. I don't know, I think FFXI stands pretty well on its own. Hundreds of thousands of players would agree with me.

You didn't like FFXII? Fine and dandy. Sell your copy, if you haven't already. You're not required to like it, and FF fans in general (like myself, obviously) won't miss you. But saying that the franchise is dead? Millions of copies sold would seem to indicate that you are wrong.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[_xeno_]

Sure, strategy *helps*, but, when in doubt, you wander around and kill things to gain levels.

I'd argue that that's the "right" way to do it. By using smart strategies, you can defeat enemies more easily than by simply spamming "Attack." However, if you can't find a working strategy, you can always get through challenges by leveling to the point where the challenge becomes something you can handle.

It's kind of an automatic difficulty setting - if a challenge is too hard, you can make it easier by leveling. So the better you are at the game, the harder it is because the less leveling needs to be done.

That's not to say that Final Fantasy does that completely right. The turn-based Final Fantasy games (that's FF1-FF3, prior to the introduction of ATB in FF4) make strategy essentially impossible since you can't really determine the turn order and luck plays an overly large roll in deciding whether or not a given battle is successful. The best you can do is choose equipment and skills that the opponent is weak against.

Even post-FF4, dumb luck plays too large a roll in many of the Final Fantasy games. Either the opponent spams its "I Win" ability, or it randomly decides to ineffectively attack the character with the most defense/HP. So even with a good strategy, winning frequently comes down to whether or not the computer randomly chooses smart moves or randomly chooses dumb moves.

Allowing complicated strategies while still allowing simple power-leveling is a good thing. Requiring either one and preventing the other is a bad thing. Power-leveling allows players with more time than skill to complete the game.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is precisely why I'll stick to 360, and buy Mistwalker's jRPGs. They have the FF creator, Nobou doing soundtracks, and members of TEAM CHRONO TRIGGER. Also it looks like their games won't play themselves like FF12 did.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Sciros]

In my view the prologue was fine as a tutorial, because it put you into the action straight away. It also was tied into the story rather well altogether. The Star Wars analogy you described... depending on how it were told it might even be fine. Many films take such a storytelling approach. The "disjointed" feeling would come if the approach was poorly executed, but I suppose that's far from an objective thing anyway.

The battle system... well, it's fine for some folks and not for others. It's a lot more elegant than many RPG (particulary JRPG) systems I've dealt with as of late so I was actually impressed. I found it better than KOTOR, better than NWN, far better than the Xenosagas. But I enjoy almost every sort of combat type that exists in gaming. For a good "middleground" setup in FFXII, you can always try turning Gambits ON for every besides the party leader. But, I personally just had them on for everyone all the time and switched leaders on occasion, as that's quickly done with the control pad.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[DrEldarion]

... and MMORPGs are just MUDs with graphics, and MUDs are just RPGs that are text-only and online, and then we're back to the single-player RPG again. It's all a big loop, and everything is derivative of everything else. Saying a game sucks because it's too similar to other games is like saying a story sucks because it's similar to stories that have been written hundreds of years ago. Sure, you may not LIKE it, but you can't judge something solely on originality, because there really is very little of it in anything.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[king-manic]

Yeah, I know, there are some twists concerning that last statement in the story, but the concept of the first several minutes of a story is to hook the audience. Introducing a whole slew of characters and then *killing every last one of them* (even if it later turns out they miraculously survived) does not create a compelling story. Especially when the main character they randomly dump on you turns out to be, hands down, the most annoying Final Fantasy character I can recall.

Did you happen to skip FFX? Because Tidus and Wicca are the two most annoying characters in the entire series. Vaan can be accused of being bland but he's not outright whiny and over emoting like Tidus or as outright stupid as Wicca.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[king-manic]

I enjoyed FF XII but I'm not going to spend what will likely be $660 to play XIII, especially since there will be versions released on every other console ever made (except the 360, apparently). I think Square lost sight of what makes FF a good game, for me it was never about the graphics. Final Fantasy XII will no doubt have beautiful graphics but the chances of it being a good FF experience are slim to none, probably due to too much energy being put into the graphics.

In the PS1 era I think people were shocked by how far graphics had come and Squaresoft used this intelligently at the time. Good graphics just arent that much of a shock anymore. I saw someone playing 360 the other day, a basketball game, and at first I thought he was WATCHING basketball on TV. Wow!! Then a minute later I saw the pixels, the seams, it wasnt as impressive as it had been at first glance. I got over the jump in graphics from the original xbox in less than 5 minutes. The improvement is there, definitely, but it's just not as big a deal as it used to be.


I think thats nostalgia since I thought the PS1 era was a bit sloppy in FFVII and tight but with a stupdi story in FFVIII and just utterly bland in FFIX. FFX was a little sloppy and focused on design philosophy of "how can we frustrate the player". I felt FFVI and FFIV were all much tighter in story pacing and action. But that could be nostalgia too. I felt FFXII was tighly made and oozed quality although the story wasn't as epic as I would have liked I had more fun playign it then X IX VIII. It's int he top 3 for me.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the hype behind the Gamecube version of Tales of Symphonia. Everyone reviewed it as excellent RPG. I purchased it based on such. But, it was nothing more than a generic turd of an RPG, a waste of money if you will.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[BoberFett]

Xbot? Are you 12 years old or do you just act that way?

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[skobar]

You call people pathetic fucks? You should read yourself seriously.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[shimpei]

For example, how can I get a character to continue to steal until they get certain item and then stop and switch to attacking? Or to steal only once from a certain monster for the whole battle, even if that monster has less then 100% health.

I can't dig up the source right now, but I remember the developers saying in a Japanese interview that this omission is deliberate. It'd have been trivial for them to add "Monster holding treasure" as a gambit target, but they chose not to make the game not too easy. Yes, you can program your characters to beat monsters in your sleep; no, you can't sleep your way through the game if you also want to optimize treasure collection. It's mean-spirited, yes, but don't assume they haven't thought through it.

By the way, if other characters are attacking monsters before your thief can target them, your gambit isn't precise enough. I'll leave the solution as an exercise for the reader.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[bigstrat2003]

Did you happen to skip FFX? Because Tidus and Wicca are the two most annoying characters in the entire series. Vaan can be accused of being bland but he's not outright whiny and over emoting like Tidus or as outright stupid as Wicca. a) It's Wakka.

b) That, like any other statement you can make about FF games, is a matter of sheer opinion. I like Tidus, I think he starts off rather whiny but shapes up by the end of the game. I think Steiner, in FFIX, and Brother, in FFX/X-2, are by far the most annoying FF chars ever. *shudder*

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[Psmylie]

X-2... There's an example of a game that might have been really, really good if it weren't for the tremendous amount of cheese we were expected to swallow. SE demonstrated how NOT to make a sequel. And trying to link FFX and FFVII... argh, that was like a punch to the gut.

FFX-2: Charlie's Angels in Spira.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[heptapod]

litterally program the AI of the party members with the gambit system.

So you agree with the OP's sentiment of:

Seriously, after playing XII and discovering that the game really does play itself to the point where you're only there to guide the characters through the map, I really don't see any reason to get any more Final Fantasy games. Ever.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[7Prime]

FF12 didn't emotionally grab me, either... but ya know what? In the grand scheme of things, I think that was probably a good thing, and an actually fairly gutsy thing for Square to do.

As of late the FF games have been becoming more and more mellodramatic, with cheesy un-explainable romances (FFX), and unrealistic dialog, bathed in an overall psuedo-realistic format. I think it was wise for Square to step back a little bit, and concentrate on other aspects of the game. The dialog that was there was actually pretty damn good, a huge step up from FFX, anyway. During no part of the game did I want to put cotton balls in my ears from terrible writing... sure, I never shed a tear over anything either, the entire experience was a lot more flatline, but it was also a lot more believable.

No, it wasn't the quality of FF6 through FF9 (what I consider the pinnicals of the series) but I think it was a good experience for Square to have had, and I think they'll make a better game next time, than if they had once again gone all out with the mellodrama.

FFX disgusted me, btw. I don't mind flawed and even obnoxious characters, if done well. But FFXs dialog was so incredibly unrealistic and all-over-the-place, that I just wanted to pummel the writers. I think they were trying to handle story situations which were WAY over their heads, and probably were not very good character developing scenarios, which lead to bad dialog. FFXII was a lot more mello in its overall portrayal, and allowed for some actually very good quality writing to come through, even if it wasn't so high-tension or gripping.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore?

[7Prime]

Honestly... when was an RPG ever about tactics and strategy until a boss fight, though? Well, a few more recent ones: Grandia series, and Valkyrie Profile 2. But for the most part, the more complex subtleties of RPG battle systems are usually obsolete until the boss. And ya know what? That's okay. I actually don't care for small-fry battles very much, they're tedious, and obnoxious. Even if they do require strategy, like VP2, they become tedious.

Here's what I'd like to see:
An RPG that plays like an action adventure during the bulk of the dungeons and world map (sorry, I love my world map, don't take it away from me), but then switches to some sort of turn based system during the boss battles. Zelda's a great game, and it doesn't have all the battle tediousness that traditional turnbased games have. However, turn based battles are GREAT for longer battles, like bosses. Why not combine the two?

This can even be explained through the story: one character scouts along ahead, and clears the way of the small fry, so the others can get through. Eventually, when you come to a boss, the rest of the characters all run in to fight. This could make for some great dungeon puzzles and character switching, too.

Genre?

[aadvancedGIR]

I really wish they just won't make a STALKER with hookers but rather a RPG with rich content. Seeing NextGens in the platform list is not IMHO good omen.

Console Fallout 3 == Bad UI?

[dontthink]

I hope they don't mangle the PC Fallout 3 UI to match what would look good on a console (like they did in Oblivion) - or at least make the UI moddable. Inventory/spell management was a giant pain in vanilla Oblivion (huge icons/font). Off topic, but I have the same worries about how Bioshock will feel on a PC as well...

Hoping they don't make Fallout into Oblivion

[bulled]

Not that I didn't like Oblivion, just that it wasn't so much an RPG with such a linear story. Fallout was great because there were so many different ways to complete the game, or even many of the quests. Oblivion was more FPS than RPG because the decisions you make have little to no impact on the outcome of the game. So please Bethesda, don't ruin such a great game franchise!

Re:Hoping they don't make Fallout into Oblivion

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Not that I didn't like Oblivion, just that it wasn't so much an RPG with such a linear story. Since when did sandbox == linear?

Re:Hoping they don't make Fallout into Oblivion

[bulled]

When there is exactly one way through the story, one way to complete any given quest, and one way to finish the game. Outside of the story line the environment was fairly open, but the main story as well as all of the side quest stories were completely linear. Try playing Fallout 1 and 2 if you want to see something much more open.

truly excellent?

[brkello]

How in the world was the Fallout trailer excellent? It was a camera panning out to show a devestated city. It could have been a trailer for any generic post-apocalyptic game. Really, I understand being a huge fan of a game but that probably ranks as one of the most boring trailers ever created.

Re:truly excellent?

[eddy]

It was excellent if you were worried that they wouldn't understand the franchise AT ALL The trailer was basically a homage to the series.

p Now, it remains to be seen that they can actually implement it. I'm afraid they know very well that the game won't live up to the ideals, and they just wanted something out there to placate the masses (how ironic!). That it's being targeted at consoles isn't encouraging at all. Remember, this is a game where you expect to be able to -- if you so please -- murder children and fuck {wo}men. If it ain't gritty, it ain't fallout. It remains to be seen how you can get the grit in there for platforms which are basically aimed at children.

Re:truly excellent?

[Nephilium]

Don't forget, you could also become a porn star, get married, and sell your spouse into slavery...

Something tells me if this goes to consoles, we'll have a brand new franchise for people to say how horrible it is, and how it corrupts 'teh children!'...

Nephilium

Re:truly excellent?

[Bigboote66]

The trailer's exciting to Fallout fans because it is in line with the intro movies from the first two Fallout games ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=WkBNKa2KXZE , http://youtube.com/watch?v=e3PXiV95kwA ). There's a lot of fear in the fan community that Bethesda will "ruin" the franchise; this trailer is Bethesda's way of saying that they're on the same page as the fans. Whether or not they follow through on the promise is another matter.

Also, the trailer is just plain good from a production/drama standpoint. It's a teaser trailer, which, pretty much by definition, is not meant to show you an MTV-style montage of game footage (those trailers are the most boring to me), but just let you know, "The game exists, we're working on it, here's something to let you know how excited we are about the movie." Compare this to teaser trailers from movies like "Strange Days" that featured nothing but an extreme closeup of Ralph Fiennes talking for 2 minutes.

-BbT

Re:truly excellent?

[westlake]

It was a camera panning out to show a devestated city. It could have been a trailer for any generic post-apocalyptic game.

The teaser echoes the unforgettable intro to Fallout One.

It is precisely what every fan of the original has been praying for.

Fallout is one of a handful of RPGs that exist outside the fantasy framework of D&D and Star Wars. There are no generic post-apocalyptic games.

Re:truly excellent?

[DrEldarion]

You honestly think that the PS3 and 360 are aimed at children? Considering that the best sellers on both these consoles' predecessors weren't exactly child-friendly (like GTA (killing random passerbys for the hell of it, having sex with prostitutes) and Halo) and the current hits (like Resistance and Gears of War (where you can chainsaw your opponent while he's on the ground and have blood splatter all over the screen)) are also quite gory, I wouldn't say so.

So they'll give it an "M" rating and be done with it. Just because it's on a console doesn't mean they'll tone it down.

Re:truly excellent?

[Eideewt]

As a Fallout fan, I found it more worrying than exciting. The constant thing in the intro movies for Fallout, Fallout 2 and even Fallout Tactics was the human element, and this trailer here was the total opposite. The Fallout intro had the soldiers shooting the guy and laughing, followed by a soldier in front of the flag, commercials (buy war bonds!) and an account of the war. Fallout 2 had a film about leaving the vault, with short-sighted advice ("line up in an orderly fashion", "wear dark glasses") and, of course, vault dwellers going out to meet the rest of humanity and getting gunned down as they wave. Fallout Tactics had some BoS guys zooming across the desert in their truck, listening to music and stopping for a magazine. You saw this view of human nature throughout the games as well (Fallout Tactics less than the other two, but it was a different kind of game).

The Fallout 3 trailer was completely missing that human element. It had the old-timey music and the bombed out city, followed by scary music and a robotic guy in armor. Without the "this is what we are, and we'll be the same no matter what world we live in" attitude, I am not at all reassured that Fallout 3 will live up to its predecessors. I don't expect a game intro level of quality from a teaser trailer, but I did expect to see the above. If the armor suited guy had been doing something human (polishing his helmet or pissing, perhaps), and they had delayed the scary music and view of the city until after he had shown up, I would feel a lot better.

Re:truly excellent?

[Eideewt]

Not at all it doesn't. Look at the armored guys in the Fallout intro, then look at the guy in this teaser again. I'm afraid they've got all the incidentals right, but totally missed the soul.

Re:truly excellent?

[Tofystedeth]

That is the best reason I've ever heard for not liking the teaser. No one I've ever seen has been so articulate or so damn reasonable. Congratulations.

Re:truly excellent?

[soccerisgod]

I'm a big Fallout fan and I'm decidedly unexcited. This trailer shows no gameplay and doesn't lay to rest any of my fears concerning dialog, meaningful choices with consequences, good story, good game mechanics etc etc etc. Yeah, the setting and feel is important, but it's only a part of it. If they only get that right and none of the rest, basically it wouldn't be more than a STALKER clone.

Re:truly excellent?

[Anonymous Coward]

You honestly think that the PS3 and 360 are aimed at children? Considering that the best sellers on both these consoles' predecessors weren't exactly child-friendly (like GTA (killing random passerbys for the hell of it, having sex with prostitutes) and Halo) and the current hits (like Resistance and Gears of War (where you can chainsaw your opponent while he's on the ground and have blood splatter all over the screen)) are also quite gory, I wouldn't say so.

Allow me to differ, mortal kombat was the hottest thing in the schoolyard inmy days,
hell a few years ago, gta was surely the hottest fad of schools....
I presented 2 games to a few small children, they hated yoshi story and loved goldeneye
>.>
'M'ature does not mean mature.
despite popular feelings, kids are cruel and like gory things (heck one could argue that the whole NES/SNES era was an unending era of games depicting cruel behavior where only killing the foe was the goal)

Summary, get over the whold Mature bit, 360 and ps3 ARE for kids (dspite price points)

Sony owns 8.5% of Square Enix Duh.

[kabocox]

Follow this link http://www.square-enix.com/jp/ir/e/stock/stockhold er/ and look at entry number four. Sony owns 8.5% of Square Enix. I thought Nintendo had owned a part of Square at one point in time, but I don't recongize any of the others as being either Nintendo or MS related. If MS or Nintendo want to tell/force Square Enix to develop for their consoles, then they might want to buy a large share of that company.

Re:Sony owns 8.5% of Square Enix Duh.

[Chris_Jefferson]

But they do make games for nintendo consoles. Perhaps the simpler answer is:

A) Square-enix sell most of their games in Japan
B) In Japan, all Microsoft consoles flop horribly.

No secret plot, just business sense.

Damn Final Fantasy Hypocrites!

[Prien715]

I agree.

What I don't understand is the GP's hypocrisy in saying "Square never innovates" and saying "I didn't like FFXII because it was too different" at the same time. Either you really do want another clone or you want originality. If you don't like something that's original (like the ability system in FF8), at least have respect for the developers for thinking out of the box rather than simply playing it safe. Whenever you innovate, you're going to come out with some things some people really like and some people really don't. I much prefer this to a game everyone thinks is mediocre.

Re:Damn Final Fantasy Hypocrites!

[Yusaku Godai]

Well, I wouldn't exactly call it innovation. FFXII isn't the first RPG to have a battle system like FFXII's. Square is kinda like Blizzard--they take the niftiest things that everyone else is doing and refine the heck out of them. The Gambit system is definitely the smoothest implementation I've seen of that sort of combat system.

Re:Damn Final Fantasy Hypocrites!

[Chainsaw Karate]

What pissed me off was the fact that 90% of Final Fantasy XII takes place in a bunch of totally generic tombs, caves, mines, sewers, and tunnels. Seriously, every indoor environment is some stupid corridor dungeon with a whole bunch of rectangular hallways, all identically textured, strewn together with no rhyme or reason. Either the rooms are totally empty, or they have one treasure chest sitting in the corner.

I found myself yelling at the game "who the FUCK would build a fucking 80 floor tower with hundreds of rooms and then put nothing in it, except a treasure chest here and there with one potion or a knot of rust inside??" Also, you gotta love the randomized treasure chests. Not only do you get something useless 95% of the time, but you have no idea whether you're missing something good and should come back when it respawns. (After looking at the guide, I can tell you that you VERY RARELY find anything better than what you can get in shops.)

I miss the 32-bit FF games with pre-rendered dungeons. At least they made it feel like you were exploring a real place that served some purpose; that people would actually build and use. Unfortunately, from what I've seen of FF XIII, it looks like more crappy corridor dungeons. (see all the pics of those shiny futuristic hallways)

Re:Damn Final Fantasy Hypocrites!

[Chainsaw Karate]

I have nothing wrong with innovation, but Square-Enix, of all developers, should be able to recognize when the gameplay is fundamentally broken. For example:
* The license grid gives you absolutely no reason to specialize. Every character will eventually become some jack-of-all-trades battle mage.
* Offensive magic is basically useless, since MP-restoring items are hard to come by, it takes too long to cast, and you can do more damage with physical attacks in the same amount of time.
* Summons are also basically useless.
* Why the hell do they limit which gambits you have access to, and make you buy them all? It severely limits your tactical options until way later in the game for no good reason.

It's not like it takes some super genius to see how these "innovations" hurt the gameplay, and it certainly doesn't take a genius to conceive of ways to modify them so they work much more effectively.

Re:Damn Final Fantasy Hypocrites!

[Prien715]

The license grid gives you absolutely no reason to specialize.

I beg to differ. While you could make everyone the same, it definitely paid to specialize. There were several "physical attack damage increased" grids near at far ends of the license board. For my fighters, I made it a priority to go after those, while for my mages, I cared more about getting the "magic damage+" and "mana cost reduction" gambits, which were also near one another. I had two offensive mages, one of whom specialized in status ailments and wielded a bow while the other was a straight attack mage. With headhunter, channeling, and putting her on last priority to case healing magic, she was able to do large amounts of damage and maintain most of her MP. Later in the game, I gave her shades of black, which allowed her to cast spells for no mp (but allowed her to regain mp via headhunter). Also, the item bonuses stack so it pays to create on character who uses items. With all the "ether++" and "remedy++" spaces on the board, I'd put my "item user" in the party whenever someone needed mp or had 10 status ailments.

If you decided (as you did), just to get all the low-level stuff with everyone, you really miss out on some of the higher level (farther away from the center) gambits which are insanely useful.

As a caveat, at the end of the game I ended up having a few hundred LP left over with everyone and could probably just learn the whole board with everyone. Square should have made a few 1000 LP squares to provide for even further specialization and more end-game content.

I agree that the game didn't make as good use of summons as it could've.

Why the hell do they limit which gambits you have access to, and make you buy them all?

So you can't cast Fire3 on the first boss? So you don't make everyone a mage since it's cheaper? Not the greatest decision, granted, but there's reasons.

Re:Damn Final Fantasy Hypocrites!

[Tyger]

You're mixing up gambits and licenses. Gambits = simple AI for your allies. Licenses = purchased skills.

Mistwalker is the real Final Fantasy

[grapeape]

The heart and soul of Final Fantasy Hironobu Sakaguchi (The Co-Founder of square as well as the creator and executive producer of Final Fantasy 1-12) and Kensuke Tanaka (developer of Squares's online service and producer on many FF titles) are both gone and are with Mistwalker developing games exclusively for the 360. So dont worry 360 fans will get all the RPG goodness they can stand. Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey are all on the way, it will be interesting to see if Final Fantasy is more Sakaguchi or more Square-Enix. IMHO Final Fantasy without Sakaguchi is like Guitar Hero without Harmonix.

Re:Mistwalker is the real Final Fantasy

[skobar]

What if guitar hero 3 turns out to be great or even better than guitar hero 2?

Re:Mistwalker is the real Final Fantasy

[grapeape]

Then we find that a developer has been able to trump Harmonix at its own game, who knows we find the same with FFXIII. On the other hand if Rock Band is better than GHIII then we know just how insrumental (no pun intended) Harmonix was to the GH franchise.

RE5 on Wii?

[rnmartinez]

Did I read the summary wrong, or is there actually going to be RE 5 on Wii? I really hope so! Especially since Konami decided that even though it was technically possible, it didn't make sense to put Silent Hill 5 on Wii (booo Konami!)

Re:RE5 on Wii?

[BlackSnake112]

I saw RE 5 on Wii and read it as: RHEL 5 on Wii and was like?? They are porting RHEL 5 to the Wii with the cordless controllers?

that is it I am going home now.

Re:RE5 on Wii?

[mharms1]

I think that the summary is a bit misleading. It looks like they're porting Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Resident Evil 4 to Wii. Umbrella Chronicles looks like a fun, House of the Dead style lightgun shooter, set in the Resident Evil universe.

Re:RE5 on Wii?

[amuro98]

Light gun? Awww. I wanna be able to swing my Wiimote around like a maniac and club those zombies into submission! And be able to do it with my friends. Yes, 4 people swinging like mad, in a small room. I don't know who'd be worse off - the zombies, or the human players.

Looks great but

[sckeener]

Fallout came out in 1997 and Fallout 2 came out in 1998. Looks like fallout 3 is coming out for the 10th anniversary of Fallout 2. Who is the target market? 20 somethings that still have time to do solo gaming?

Looks great and I would love to play it.

I just do not have the time for solo games any more. The only time I have for myself is reading in the bathroom or on the bus. Maybe I could play it if it was on a handheld like a psp. Also, bonding with other would also help me justify the time, so co-op or multiplayer would be good too. My fiance and I love playing shades of gray type games...what better than Fallout!

Re:Looks great but

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a different job. I'm 27 and my Xbox Live gamerscore is over 11000

Re:Looks great but

[sckeener]

Get a different job. I'm 27 and my Xbox Live gamerscore is over 11000

and I am 35 with 2 kids and a fiance.

When I was 25 and Fallout 1 was out, I had time. I could have had a good xbox live score.

Now I have to juggle family and work.....so for me the 10th anniversary issue of Fallout should have a multi-player option or work on a handheld.

that word doesn't mean what you think it means

[nomadic]

What I don't understand is the GP's hypocrisy in saying "Square never innovates" and saying "I didn't like FFXII because it was too different" at the same time.

I have read the GPs post several times, and nowhere can I find him claiming that "Square never innovates". Or am I reading the wrong post?

Breaking news : Jack Thompson sues Bethesda;

[BlackCobra43]

claims they are producing a "Post-aocalyptic murderous rampage simulator" that is teaching our our children how to brutally slaughter innocent supermutants, hideous aliens and horrible genetically enginereed kiling machines.

Cue Bethesda's respons : "Yeah, what of it?"

No FFXIII on 360 Is A Sales Disaster

[ddelella]

Someone for Square Enix is definately going to be fired over this mistake of not releasing FFXIII for the 360. XBOX 360 is the current next gen console who has sold the most and continues to gain speed. Don't believe it...check out the lovely sales statistics from Austrailia (1 million games sold in 14 months, a new record for any console). Sure FF has been mostly PS exclusivebut with FFXI and the new FF on 360 plus many releases for other portable consoles recently it makes it only the next best move to add it to the last untapped platform. And why not follow the other games and their reasoning, like Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Ace Combat, etc. All have made convincing cases for reasons to expand to XBOX 360. There are also conflicting reports from Square Enix President and the developers of FFXIII who claim that they would choose the 360 platform of Sony because of the ease of development and cost.

So when they release FFXIII and its numbers suck they can only blame themselves. I know that the millions of 360 user would love to enjoy FFXIII...and perhaps a re-release of FFI on the XBOX Live Arcade...hint hint!

Re:No FFXIII on 360 Is A Sales Disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they should keep the next few FFs on the PS2. The PS2 still outsells the PS3 and the XBOX360 and there is already a enormous amount of consoles outthere.
If not PS2 then of course the Wii because it just sells like fucking hotcakes and will most likely be the best selling "next-gen" console by the end of the year.
The PS3 doesn't sell anywhere and the XBOX360 has no market outside the US (especially not in JP) so either of those platforms would a bad choice.

Re:No FFXIII on 360 Is A Sales Disaster

[k_187]

two things

1. the PS3 is beating the pants off the 360 in Japan. 2. There are a large number of people who will buy a PS3 for a new final fantasy.

Re:No FFXIII on 360 Is A Sales Disaster

[DrEldarion]

Just like they should have kept FF on the PSx rather than bringing it to the PS2? You have to make the transition sometime.

A huge part of FF games is the visuals, so that rules out the Wii. The 360 has no Japanese market, so that rules it out. What's left? PS3.

Re:No FFXIII on 360 Is A Sales Disaster

[Yosho]

Here's some statistics for you: http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm

This year alone, the Wii has sold over three times as many units as the PS3 in Japan. It's sold over fifteen times as many units as the Xbox 360. Why would Square-Enix, a Japanese company, want to release the next entry in their largest franchise for the weakest system? You should keep in mind that the rest of the world is a secondary concern for them.

Re:No FFXIII on 360 Is A Sales Disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation

I bought a XBOX, I want FF, I want it now, but they are not going to do it so I am mad.

In a few years you will be able to get a ps3 for a 100 bucks. Just wait it out.

I like the 360 hw and the ps3 hw. The wii is a GC+1 so I will snag one when I can find one. But I want to see a game that really flexes the PS3 muscle. On paper (and from some of the tech stuff I am seeing) it *looks* like a hell of a system. The 360 is also a fairly decent system but it is about 1 year behind tech wise with the ps3. I own both.

Re:No FFXIII on 360 Is A Sales Disaster

[PixelScuba]

Because Japan, for all intents and purposes, is still just a fraction of the larger video game market. The 360 will likely be a major shareholder in the home console market in much of the market outside of Japan. If you like money, and what company doesn't, you need to get your product out to that huge user-base. Not producing a 360 version would alienate a large market of potential sales. Also, don't forget, Final Fantasy isn't even the most popular jrpg in Japan, Dragon Quest is. In North America, Final Fantasy is the popular franchise... precisely where the 360 is the most dominant... ridiculously more so than the PS3.

Re:No FFXIII on 360 Is A Sales Disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha..

Re:No FFXIII on 360 Is A Sales Disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, y'know, the comment above quotes Australia and that's obviously a huge market.

Japan ranks alongside Europe & America for size of market. Sony and Nintendo release there first - and it's not just because it's their home market. Japan is the second largest economy in the world, and all that implies about wealth and spending patterns, so saying that it only accounts for a fraction of the market is like saying America only accounts for a fraction of the world's oil consumption.

Oh please

[Moraelin]

Oh please. Noone said "square never innovates" or complained about innovation as such. So get off that high horse already.

You're basically committing the classic fallacy of creating a false dichotomy: either you like FF8's uninspired ideas, or you're against innovation as a whole. Which is bogus even as bogus sophistry and fanboyism go.

Not only there's a lot of middle ground between the two, it deliberately ignores that innovation isn't even the only variable there. A game (or everything else) is judged on a whole more dimmensions than just innovation. Something can be highly innovative, yet be crap in a million other aspects: crap story, crap plot, crap delivery, crap mechanics, etc.

Or to turn that bogus dichotomy right back at you: hey, I'm building this house out of bundles of old newspapers, and painting it with human shit. It's so innovative, right? Hey, noone made one like that before. Do you want to live in it? No? Then you're against innovation, you horrible person.

_That_ is the whole point: just being original is _not_ mutually exclussive with being crap in every single other aspect.

The same applies to games. It's ok to innovate, but a game still has to have other qualities too to be worth playing. A crap system or a crap story still make a crap game, even if it's innovative. Crap is still crap even if it's brand-new original crap.

A bad story is a bad story even if it's new. Or do you want to tell me you'd find a story about a booger which fell in the toilet and got flushed the apex of entertainment just because it's new?

So, again: noone criticizes innovation. And noone says simply "I don't like FF XII because it's different." I realize that it makes your fanboy rant easier to over-simplify it like that, but it also makes it so disconnected from reality it's not even funny.

Re:Oh please

[Guuge]

Something can be highly innovative, yet be crap in a million other aspects: crap story, crap plot, crap delivery, crap mechanics, etc.

We're not talking about story, plot, delivery, or mechanics. We're talking about FF XII being an "uninspired EverQuest clone". How can a game be simultaneously innovative, uninspired, and a clone?

hey, I'm building this house out of bundles of old newspapers, and painting it with human shit. It's so innovative, right? Hey, noone made one like that before.

Would you call your house an uninspired clone? If not, then you must be a fanboy. Right?

Re:Oh please

[Moraelin]

We're not talking about story, plot, delivery, or mechanics. We're talking about FF XII being an "uninspired EverQuest clone". How can a game be simultaneously innovative, uninspired, and a clone?

1. False dichotomy all over again. The world isn't neatly divided into 100% clones and 100% innovative stuff. The devil is often in the details. One can innovate in detail X (and in a crap way at that), yet be a clone of something else in every other aspect. I.e., just because FF XII tried some new (and thoroughly crap) plot delivery, doesn't mean that the rest of the game can't feel like an Everquest clone.

Really, join an OCPD support group already, if your world is that devoid of shades and nuances.

2. That simultaneous stuff you rant against, are your own straw men. You created a straw man contradiction where none actually existed. Have a hard time addressing the real points without twisting the meaning into something that wasn't actually said?

The original poster never said that the game is simultaneously innovative and a clone. You seem to have inferred the "innovative" part yourself, presumably from its being different from the previous FF games. Because the original poster sure didn't say "it's innovative." And it's a bullshit inferrence in its own right. Something can differ from the previous model jolly well by copying something else.

E.g., if I were to start wearing a suit and tie tomorrow, it would be simultaneously (A) different from my previous attire, yet (B) a clone of someone else's suit.

That is all that was actually said: FF XI and FF XII differ from the previous games, by (A) copying Everquest mechanics (especially in FF XI), and (B) by some very uninspired plot delivery (in FF XII). In more words, but that's the summary of it. Exactly what's the contradiction there? 'Cause I don't see any.

At any rate, if such contradictions annoy you that much, then, you know, don't make them up. There, problem solved. And it sure beats watching you argue against your own bogus arguments.

Would you call your house an uninspired clone? If not, then you must be a fanboy. Right?

It looks like the whole point went right over your head, but I guess that wasn't entirely unexpected.

First of all, that house was just an example for a very specific sub-set of the problem: that just being different doesn't make it good. The point was _not_ about also being an uninspired clone at that point.

Basically, just more fallacious sophistry. Why am I not surprised?

Second, yes, even in that example, that house _could_ be uninspired (it's not exactly the best idea for a house), and it can be a clone (if it copies enough from another existing house.)

But, on the whole, you're just tiresome. Fallacies and bullshit sophistry are idiot loser tactics in their own right, but it's kinda expected that they at least be convincing or easy to swallow. Building a _second_ rant on nothing more than pretending to be unable to understand even simple English or follow even _elementary_ logic is... tiresome.

But then maybe I should just apply Hanlon's Razor: "never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Maybe you _are_ too stupid to follow elementary logic, and no malice is involved.

Re:Oh please

[ravenshrike]

Having played both the original evercrack as well as currently playing evercrack 2 I think I can say that FFXII really wasn't all that much of a clone, other than they are both pretty much LRPGs. In which case you're pretty much going to see some similarity that's demanded by the nature of such a game.

Re:Oh please

[Moraelin]

Well, that's actually a valid point of view, and mostly true too. I think the "Everquest clone" applies to FFXI mostly.

Just to clarify my position in this thread: I'm just railing against the, basically, "if you don't like it, you're against innovation" and "but if it's different from the predecessors, then it's innovative, so it can't be a clone" fanboyisms. I've really had it up to here with that kind of thing. There are ways to be either pro- or anti-FF without resorting to the standard fallacies. But as long as you don't commit either, heck, I'm not going to tell you to like it or dislike it.

The GG[..]GP thought it's an Everquest clone. I don't necessarily think that's true on the whole (although there are some borrowed elements, intentionally or not), but I also don't think beating him upside the head with blatant fallacies and accusations of hypocrisy is the way to go about disproving those points. There are ways to say "well, at least they're trying something different" without inventing contradictions and hypocrisy accusations based on straw-men and twisting meanings.

That's, in a nutshell, the whole thing I was concerned with.

BOC

[eddy]

I'll postulate that the game can't be a good Fallout and NOT draw his vexatious attention.

Duh...(FFXIII)

[Anonymous Coward]

Playstation 3 is Japan's most popular system (or alongside the Wii...I don't know) but it's CERTAINLY more popular than the Xbox 360. For Square-Enix to put a franchise where about 90-95% of it's profits come from on the least played console in that region of the world is suicide for SE.

Besides, the PS3's hardware is far superior, this gives the developers much more creativity in development without having to compensate for hardware.

Horror of minigames

[ichigo 2.0]

Another thing I'm worried about is minigames. The lockpicking minigame in Oblivion was pure torture on the PC, and even finding the mouse pointer so that you could click auto attempt was annoying! The persuasion minigame didn't at least penalize mouse users, but it was pretty pointless and broke immersion. So hopefully Bethesda learned their lesson, and does not have any minigames in FO3.

Re:Horror of minigames

[bigstrat2003]

Why do you say the lockpicking minigame was torture? I loved it.

Re:Horror of minigames

[ichigo 2.0]

It was designed to work well with the xbox360 controller, with a mouse you ended up with a poor UI where you had to shove the mouse forward for an arbitrary, seemingly random distance to trigger the lockpicks upward movement, and because you never could be sure that the lockpick would actually react to the movement of the mouse, you usually ended up reacting too late which meant that you missed the window of opportunity for locking the pin and broke a lockpick (which is why I personally always used the skeleton key+auto-attempt). Then you had to move the mouse sideways to move on to the next pin, which usually entailed the lockpick jumping around. Even auto-attempting sucked, because the mouse pointer was invisible when lockpicking, so you had to thrash the mouse around before reaching the auto-attempt area which made the pointer visible. All in all, poor design, it would have worked much better with the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Wha...

[Ayanami Rei]

Dude, you must be remembering some other 16-bit 2d RPGs. The pre-rendered dungeons in FF III and onward (up to VI) are just as aribtrary and devoid of stuff; big, empty tiled floors, a treasure chest at the end of a hidden hallway or whatever, walls that are all the same, save a few spot sprites.

Main reason battle areas were so sparse is to allow maximum manuverability when fighting enemies, and to keep the polycount down. 6 enemies, 3 party members, and two spell effects were at the limit of the PS2.

Outside areas had smaller draw distances and areas so they had more detail.
Contrast to non-fighting areas. Towns, the inside of shops, etc. These were heavily detailed and full of stuff.

It's all about what the PS2 can crank out.

Really?

[Ayanami Rei]

I don't know about that. Since FF IV power leveling has been just one of many strategies, the least elegant of them anyway. In these games (with exception of XI) you'd notice:

* Many enemies or bosses had clever ways to defeat quickly which were fun to discover and talk about with other players.
* You can beat the 'interesting' enemies or bosses even at the lowest levels.
* Some foes which you really couldn't beat unless you leveled significantly and discovered key items or skills. These foes were generally not "counted" for anything and were just fun to take on.

From IV and on you can find tons of guides and tips on how to complete low level, timed, or bestiary-complete games. It's less about the strategy required to beat the game (usually very simple), more about strategy to complete sidequests or achieve some goal not having anything to do with the story. And the games are even designed to accomodate such players.

I mean, why do you think they have the "Firefly" accessory in FFXII? Or why Quickenings ignore enemy stats and your current level?

I thought that too...

[Ayanami Rei]

...then I realized that most of the gambits I thought I needed you didn't really need anyway.

Ally: KO? Useless.
Ally: status? Mostly useless

Doing an Ally: name or Ally: Any with buffing/healing actions does it on demand anyway.

Those precise actions become useful later when you want to do things like auto-berserk a single character and then buff them or lure+reverse them later for particular nasty optional boss fights.

Don't knock X-2.

[Ayanami Rei]

I was waiting and waiting and waiting for a return to the hat-switching job system from FF V and Tactics. Never happened. And while I thought the esper, materia, and junction systems of VI-VIII were interesting, you were still locked into character-specific abilities. Which was cool in ways for the story-detailed games with parties that you could mix/match. But I still missed it...

Then X-2 came out. Dress spheres. Meh, at least they remembered to make them _look good_ in the different outfits; that alone could make up for an unbalanced job. That was half of the fun.

FF V realized that over 10 years ago. Once you got all the jobs, it was three girls and a guy. And the girls had particular detailed outfits for tiny 16x16 sprites.

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore? Not I.

[YossarianSnowden]

The vast majority of jRPGs seem to be like that, but are you including in your set only the aforementioned jRPGs, turn based RPGs, or all sorts?

There is an RPG model that is very much more fun than "kill the goblin, kill the goblin, kill the goblin, puzzle, boss, kill the goblin, kill the goblin, kill the RED goblin, puzzle, boss." Games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout... I'm even tempted to include Deus Ex and System Shock, even though they're not strictly RPGs by the colloquial meaning of the term. The general philosophy seems to be that no fight should be so boring as to be trivial. Now, this isn't totally true, such as in Baldur's Gate II when you can mow down hordes of goblins or kobolds just by clicking attack near them and letting your mages and priests hit them with rocks or sticks, but usually there's some substance to a battle where just hitting them will either get you killed or drain your resources so much that further battles would force you to quit (attrition I suppose).

Baldur's Gate II especially. Sometimes you could get killed in 15 seconds, sometimes you could haul ass and pwn everyone in the same amount of time, but it depends on preparation, build, and how you approach the conflict. There's a difficulty, really, with pure turn-based split screen battles, in really making those epi-stat parameters stand out: where you are in a room, how far away you are, how many people are around you, area effect, etc: Having those parameters really lets a designer play with his world and provide a very entertaining fight experience.

Those games also all share the "big man on campus" philosophy, as I like to think of it, where there are characters which, should you choose to engage them, would always either kill you outright or at least provide a MAJOR challenge. Sometimes it's a naturalistic thing, where you don't feel like your characters are all Gods just because they're the only ones who seem to be able to pick up a weapon in the entire gameverse. Other times, though, it provides an offset to the usual stomping that your party tends to do: if you're bored with that, you have bigger fish to fry. And when there's a spatial element to the gameplay, designers can also include encounters that are flat out impossible, so you know when and how to run away. It really fleshes out the game, gives more fulfilling goals for your characters to achieve, and is sometimes really tactic and strategy-heavy. In general, the "Run" button in jRPGs is only for last minute ditches when you know you couldn't handle it, even though you should've been able to. It's really boring to "run" from a really strong enemy like that anyway.

People into Fallout are also likely to be into System Shock, etc: so I figured I'd point out that in the upcoming game Bioshock there is probably going to be a large "big man on campus" effect with the Big Daddys roaming around.

I abhor the usual jRPG system to the point where I will really never play one. I'm never impressed with the story, the environment gives me a sense of deja vu even if it is apparently "new", and the battle system blows. Now, I haven't touched a jRPG in many years. For all I know all the FFs after 8 have a spatial dimension to combat, or other nuances to combat, that invalidate my anti-jRPG claims. But the FFs stopped impressing me after FFV/Tactics (Tactics is sort of an aside).

I'm kind of surprised that you would say that about RPGs in a Fallout thread. In my experience Fallout was all about keeping on your toes; you never know what you would get.

Oh, and it's the 21st century. Let me kill a @$%^ing civilian. jRPGs also seem to love pigeonholing the characters, so that allowing you to do interesting things would invalidate the storyline's treatment of your party. Though I also think it's just lazy. It's also why towns in jRPGs are little dots on the map with a few shops and a few other houses (almost all of which will be employed in the main quest or a side quest). There's nothing to do there. For games billed as being atmospheric and imagi

There are no plans for any FF games...

[Chris Mattern]

...on Microsoft's console.

Except, y'know, for the one that already exists.

Chris Mattern

Fallout Trailers

[ginbot462]

I guess a note to people that haven't seen the other Fallout trailers, they are worth checking out. They were poignant and re-watchable, and at the time of Fallout 1, nothing to compare it against. Also, the Fallout 2 made me appreciate Louie Armstrong's "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" in a way I hadn't before.

War never changes ...

Re:Who cares about Final Fantasy anymore? Not I.

[7Prime]

Great, glad there's a style for you. Myself, however, I abhore games without pre-composed structure and storylines. As an artist and creative person, I'm much more comfortable with a distinct creator/audience separation. If there's a particular conceptual reason to break down that barrier, I'm all for it, but to me, PC/American RPGs are not "works" so much as they are toys, and I have no interest in toys, anymore. I play games as an alternative to literature and cinema.

The bottom line is that we play games for fundimentally different reasons. We also see the role of games as being fundimentally different.

The way I see it, PC/American RPGs are a way of playing out fantasies, "what-if" scenarios, if you will, and have an emphasis on super-imposing yourself as the main character. It makes sense. It's part of the developmental process; children do it all the time as a way of defining identity, they try out different characters, and in their own worlds, can do things that they normally couldn't or shouldn't do. Many times, these fantasies can persist into adulthood. It's probably healthy, in fact, the popularity of "sandbox" style games, may show that there's a distinct lack of outlets for adults to play out such fantasies, since our society has become so obsessed with growing up.

I've heard comments like yours a lot, before. Friends who wouldn't touch a Zelda game because, "You can't kill the NPCs". I think it goes to show that there is a strong desire to play out fantasies like this.

I, on the other hand, for one reason or another, have little interest in fantasies. I'd rather analyze and be engaged in a good epic piece of music, film, or video game. The way I see it, I play games for the same reason I watch movies, but games allow me to play "videographer" (which is funny, since it's also my profession), and chose my own pacing. I want to experience someone elses work of narrative, for my own entertainment, AND because I love the analytical inspiration it sometimes provides. Granted, games are in their infancy in terms of storytelling level, but that is changine rapidly, and probably the most interesting thing to watch is the fairly quick maturation that games are taking, it's very exciting.

I'm guessing that a lot of what I'm saying will sound very dull and unrewarding to yourself, and that's okay. Ballders Gate and Deus Ex seem incredibly dull and uninteresting to me. Now, Fallout is starting to intrigue me, because of it's very unique style, so I might have to go try it out.

But basically, yes, we play games for very different reasons. The fact that they're both called "RPGs" is very misleading and wrong (jRPGs aren't even RPG... I wish we would call them something different, but I can't seem to find a term without defaulting to "interactive movie" which is incredibly demeaning and wrong).