Final Fantasy XIII-2 Announced

An anonymous reader writes "Square-Enix has announced Final Fantasy XIII-2 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. According to Gamespot, 'The newly christened Final Fantasy XIII-2 continues the adventures of Lightning and her team of RPG vagabonds in a brand new adventure, utilizing the long-in-development engine (and, probably, some of the art assets) that powered the original game. And because Square doesn't have to spend all of that extra time developing the engine, players won’t have to wait nearly as long to get their hands on this newest iteration of the game. According to Square Enix, Final Fantasy XIII-2 (which, in case you haven't guessed, is a game title that is just as terrible to type out as it is to say with your mouth) is on track for release in Japan this year. [The game] should be available in English-speaking territories by "next winter."'"

Comments

I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

...sounds like they're trying to challenge Street Fighter for absurd numbering

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[ThosLives]

In general I'm a fan of FF, but XIII really disappointed me. Perhaps even more than VIII, and that's a pretty amazing feat.

I think the number one thing about XIII that is really awful is it's absurdly linear gameplay; unlike any other FF, there is no "freedom" to do anything other than follow a single path through the zones - you can't even take two routes to the same place.

It's kind of sad, really. I actually haven't even finished the game; the gameplay and really typical storyline don't hold my interest. (FF has often oscillated between good stories and characterization to poor, but XIII is a combination of poor gameplay system (weapon mods are not even really customizable - you just max them all out), poor characterization, and linear play.)

I wonder what happened there - was it a change in artistic team? A side effect of the Enix merger? A side effect of trying to cater to both the PS and 360 crowds?

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[_xeno_]

I think the number one thing about XIII that is really awful is it's absurdly linear gameplay; unlike any other FF, there is no "freedom" to do anything other than follow a single path through the zones - you can't even take two routes to the same place.

At one point, the tutorial mentions that since you only have two party members, you should avoid tougher fights and come back when you're back up to three party members. Of course, being FFXIII, you can't ever backtrack to that point, and you have to fight the tougher monsters to progress anyway.

I'm not really sure what my point is, I guess that I think at one point it was going to be less linear, but they ran out of time or something.

I did actually complete the game, so I'm not really expecting anything amazing out of a sequel to it. If anything it more calls for a prequel to explain what actually happened between Cocoon and Pulse. Throughout the game you get this sense that there's this really amazing world here - that you're completely forbidden from seeing.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Zediker]

That was my take as well. The game was so horrible I actually questioned whether they truley tested the gameplay at all, other than fixing bugs. I spent about 10 hours playing the game before I just gave up from not caring and then tossed the disc away so noone else would have the opportunity to play such utter crap.

This game, and ffxiv have made up my mind to never purchase anything from square-enix based in the FF universe ever again. Its all pretentious(sp) crap, signature of a yes-man company model where noone has balls in their company to say "NO! that is a dumbass idea, we're not doing that!".

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd ask why they always feel the need to make sequels to the shitty ones, but at least they haven't butchered Final Fantasy 4 by tacking a needless tumor of a sequel onto it. Oh wait.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Moryath]

I got about 40 hours in. Set it aside for a month and then tried again to see if it would fare any better (took me a second try to get the hang of, and start enjoying, FF12).

The fact that they are making a sequel to the world's crappiest corridor simulator is just stupid. Someone needs to fly over to Japan, smack Sqeenix's executives upside the head and shout "STOP MAKING CRAP" in their ears.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Pteraspidomorphi]

I wonder what happened there - was it a change in artistic team? A side effect of the Enix merger?

Yes.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Andy Dodd]

The linear gameplay in XIII was AWFUL. I hope XIII-2 is significantly different. (Good news: the last -2 version of an FF game was vastly different from the game it was a sequel to. Bad news: X-2 was a major step down from X. On the other hand, it'll be hard to go downwards from XIII.)

As to change in team - This is definately a factor. The Final Fantasy team is still capable of putting out some great games (like XII), however the percentage of duds is increasing. It's a combination of "milking the franchise" (although mainline games should get the quality focus, it's more acceptable to have spinoffs like the various VII spinoffs be "meh") and the original Final Fantasy team members taking a less active role and more of an advisory role.

Nobuo Uematsu has been reducing his involvement in many of the FF games over the past few releases, but it is obvious from the quality of FFXIII's soundtrack that he had VERY little involvement with that game. One of the things the Final Fantasy series has always been known for is great music (much due to Uematsu being an amazing composer), however FFXIII's music was so bad that one area had elevator music as the background music!

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Andy Dodd]

It could be damage control - some of the characters did have potential, and Square has shown that sequel gameplay can be VASTLY different from the original game. See X-2.

(Note: X-2 was a massive step down from X, but XIII-2 could be a major step up - it would be hard to go down.)

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Aaul]

I had the same situation with FF12.. I bought it and played it for about 3 hours or so and just couldn't get in to it. I don't know if it was because the story took a little while to really take off or what, but I put it aside for half a year or more. One day I got a craving for FF, popped it in and gave it another shot. Something about it gripped me and I played through the entire thing, usually playing for hours in the evening after work. I thoroughly enjoyed it too. I got one of those FAQs from GameFAQs and used it sparingly to find side-mission/quest stuff too. I probably put a good 90+ hours in to the game. The only other console games I've put that much time in to (and enjoyed as much) was Dark Cloud 2 and Final Fantasy 6 (US3). And of all the Final Fantasy games, 12 and 6(US3) are my favorites, far above and beyond the others by a large large margin.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

You hit the nail on the head there, since the merger with Enix, the world of Final Fantasy has been in sharp decline. Greatly increased linearity, bland story telling, stupid mini-games, and more hype than substance have been the hallmarks of the FF series from VIII onwards. Bring me something with the caliber of VI and VII, and I just might be able to get interested in FF again.
 
captcha: degrade

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[chispito]

I wonder what happened there - was it a change in artistic team? A side effect of the Enix merger? A side effect of trying to cater to both the PS and 360 crowds?

I think it's just a subgenre of games that ceased evolving after the mid 1990s.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Daniel Phillips]

The linear gameplay in XIII was AWFUL.

Well. Now everybody agrees about that. But at release time last year the player community seemed to be split with most commentators giving Squeenix a pass (Famitsu: 39 out of 40) and only a small minority flatly blow raspberries.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[genner]

It could be damage control - some of the characters did have potential, and Square has shown that sequel gameplay can be VASTLY different from the original game. See X-2.

(Note: X-2 was a massive step down from X, but XIII-2 could be a major step up - it would be hard to go down.)

...and yet X-2 was still better than XIII.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[ProppaT]

VIII wasn't all that bad, it just had a different pace. I'm actually in the minority that like it better than VII (which was a huge disappointment to me, coming off of VI). To me, XIII and X share the crown for the worst of the series. X-2 is just in its own little special category...that should have never been born.

I'd really love to see Square do another throwback game like they did with IX. IX captured the essence of what make Square's 16 bit games so special. As long as square didn't screw around much with the battle system, I'd actually be EXCITED to see a FF VI remake with current gen graphics...and remakes usually make me cringe.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Achra]

oblig. Penny Arcade:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/4/14/

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

They did this before with Final Fantasy X-2. I referred to that as Final Fantasy X, part 2, and will refer to Final Fantasy XIII-2 in the same manner.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Alok]

In general I'm a fan of FF, but XIII really disappointed me. Perhaps even more than VIII, and that's a pretty amazing feat.

Similar opinions here, I disliked VIII's monster leveling but its nothing compared to XIII. Luckily I bought it only recently when it was available for really cheap, and got enough enjoyment that I don't regret the purchase.

Some suggestions to get you thru the game (and hopefully enjoy it a bit):
1. Think of it as a tech demo for graphics & the battle system: I liked both of these, the actual ingame CG is even more impressive than the cutscenes imho (since it has to be done in realtime)
2. Skip all cutscenes with Vanille for first few chapters (say upto 8 or so), I didn't and regret that :p
3. Later on, Vanille becomes tolerable but Snow & Hope start getting extra preachy, so you might want to skip those scenes.
4. Don't bother with training or leveling up before Chapter 11 (Gran Pulse), just enjoy your tunnel ride with occasional looking around for treasure chests in obvious locations.
5. Consider having savegames before each cutscene so you can watch those again, we don't even get a cutscene menu after game completion :(.

As for 'what happened', I've read that partly it is due to the xbox space limitations - which does make sense, else not including the Japanese voices on PS3 bluray version is quite inane (but I'm sure they didn't want to highlight the space issues by differentiating it from 360 version).

It is actually a good game as a tech demo of the crystal tools engine, with a decent battle system (the paradigms are a good concept, not a big fan of crystarium though). Just don't confuse it with an actual RPG lol, let alone something of the scope of other FF titles.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[ultranova]

As long as square didn't screw around much with the battle system, I'd actually be EXCITED to see a FF VI remake with current gen graphics...and remakes usually make me cringe.

The thing is, current-generation graphics take an absurd amount of work to make. I suspect that this is the real reason behind non-linearity: if you have two routes through a forest, you can't just draw tree-sprites according to a simple bitmap, as you could with 2D games. And voice acting does this for dialogue, too.

If a book writer wants a scene with 16 exploding universes, he just writes it, but if a filmmaker wants one, he needs a budget. Games have been steadily evolved from text-based ones to symbolic graphic to ever more movie-like graphics, and now we're seeing the darker side of that.

Since it's unlikely that people will be satisfied with a return to SNES-era graphics, I think that this problem will only be helped once AI advances to the point where it can procedurally generate much of the contents of scenes and levels. We are nowhere near that point, however, so we'll be seeing a lot of linear games in the near future.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[AndrewGOO9]

Agreed, it seems Square Enix has run out of variables to plug into the Final Fantasy equation.

Re:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition

[Moryath]

For me, the key was getting far enough into the story where I was actually exploring the game without having to "level grind." In my first playthrough, I made some (in retrospect poor) decisions about how to set up my characters when I had only a tiny number of gambits to work with that made it so I was constantly "managing" the characters even in levels that hardly gave any experience.

On my second playthrough, I tried an alternate way of arranging the gambits, held my way most of the time on one character to dole out healing, and all of a sudden I was handling the level-appropriate areas enough that I didn't have to go constantly replaying or "grinding" unless I was just smacking stuff down on the way to a legendary-monster hunt.

Now that's not saying that FF12 was perfect. God no, the lack of a Game+ function and the fact that so many items were the "Ok set all three characters to steal, and if you don't steal the rare item run away and try again on the boss till you manage the 1% steal chance" type royally pissed me off. But I still got through FF12 and enjoyed the storyline, and was having fun after about 6 hours in on my second playthrough, as opposed to being in 40 hours deep on FF13 and wanting to snap the fucking disc in half.

OMG I hope it's as good as X-2!

[RabbitWho]

I can't wait to see all the characters in a range of different outfits!

Re:OMG I hope it's as good as X-2!

[loufoque]

You joke, but X-2 was actually pretty good.
It's one of the greatest games of all time according to the Japanese rankings. Now however, it wasn't so popular in the western world.

Re:OMG I hope it's as good as X-2!

[halivar]

It was certainly more of an FF game than XIII was.

Re:OMG I hope it's as good as X-2!

[Sockatume]

You're referring to Famitsu's "all-time top 100" reader poll, presumably. Such polls tend to exaggerate the popularity of recent titles. Both the PS2 and GameCube versions of Resident Evil 4 got into the top 100 as seperate entries, for example, and it ranked FFX as the greatest game ever made. Not that those aren't good titles, but I suspect they wouldn't rank as well if the poll were repeated today.

Re:OMG I hope it's as good as X-2!

[JarinArenos]

It's saddening that after 15 hours of XIII, I found myself missing X-2. Then I went back and played XII and reminded myself what real characters and storyline-depth were. Pity about that faux-victorian speech impediment they all seemed to have.

Re:OMG I hope it's as good as X-2!

[Captain Fallout]

See here's the thing about X-2...It was pretty dammed good as far as gameplay and customization go. Also it had a linear path throughout the game, but you weren't forced on that path at any time. You had the option of visiting almost every one of the different areas of Spira whenever you wanted. And believe it or not, I actually liked the story going on there: A group of true believers who would not give up their fallen religion facing off against a group of younger people who wanted to enjoy technology and not be ruled by that religion. Unfortunately once you get past that, the characters and the music suck so badly that it totally brings the game's overall playability down.

X-2 had a lot of potential, but they really screwed the pooch with all of the J-Pop and making what should have been a serious game into a light-hearted, fluffy disappointment.

Re:OMG I hope it's as good as X-2!

[VickiM]

I enjoyed X-2 a lot myself. Well, I hated the first two to three hours, but the rest of the game was quite enjoyable. I remember it fondly as the last Final Fantasy game I played. I was a bit disgruntled that they went MMORPG with the next game, and by the time XII came out, it had been nearly four years since I last considered purchasing a FF game and my interest had waned considerably. And the demo I played before release didn't help.

Re:OMG I hope it's as good as X-2!

[loufoque]

If it helps, I found XII the most refreshing episode of the franchise, because it has what I still consider today to be one of the best fighting systems ever.

yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for my life to get really, really boring so that finishing XIII is actually the most interesting thing I have to do.

Re:yawn

[BlitzTech]

On the 4th circle of Hell, they make you play FFXIII. I can't think of a valid reason to willingly play this game.

Re:yawn

[jgtg32a]

Meh, I kinda enjoy it, I play it when I don't want to play video games and want to watch TV but there is nothing on TV that I want to watch.

sigh

[Nocturnal Deviant]

seems to me like after FFX final fantasy has just become a complete sellout....i use to get excited when a new final fantasy was coming out....not in a long time...

Re:sigh

[Cerium]

So, roughly right after they merged with Enix, who stopped caring about creating good games after the SNES? I agree, sir.

What's annoying is that we still can't get the remake that everyone, fanboy or not, wants. Bastards.

Re:sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, the newer Dragon Quest games are still pretty good, if not particularly imaginative. Also, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon for the Wii is awesome if you're into that sort of thing.

Re:sigh

[Jaysyn]

Same here, but Final Fantasy VIII is where they jumped the shark in my opinion. I do like the spin-offs like Tactics, Crisis Core & Dissidia, but I don't think I can be bothered to play a FF RPG ever again.

Re:sigh

[Khyber]

VIII makes sense if you accept that Squall is 100% DEAD after being impaled at the end of disc 1 and that everything afterwards is nothing more than a little brain zone-out before finally fading away.

Re:sigh

[Jaysyn]

I didn't even get that far with it.

Let's wait and see

[RogueyWon]

There are two possible interpretations for this. The first, and kindest explanation, is that they have realised that they created some interesting fiction for FF13, but that they badly mishandled the game in general. They now want another stab at telling a story in the game-world they created, but with the game done better this time and with a proper ending to the story.

I could live with that. FF13 actually has a very decent plot for most of its duration (certainly the darkest of the FF-series plots, darker even than 6). The problem is that the gameplay is terrible and that they write themselves into a corner with the story at the end, such that they can only resolve it through a massive deus ex machina which doesn't fit with any of the narrative they'd built to that point. If they want to take another stab at the game world and do it right this time, then I'm ok with that.

If, on the other hand, they're just panicking about Square-Enix's currently precarious financial position and looking for a quick and easy cash-cow that they can pull together with unused assets from the original game (remember, they apparently created enough artwork to make a game twice as long as what they eventually released), then I'm a bit more skeptical. I am not playing another game which amounts to running down a corridor for 25 hours doing identical trash fights, breaking out into a small square room for a couple of hours, and then going back to the corridor for a final 5 hour slog.

Square-Enix have lost the plot badly during this console generation. They were masterful with the PS2 (I still think Kingdom Hearts 2 was the best game ever released for that platform), but these days, they seem to make a bunch of shovelware low-budget titles and to completely mishandle their big-budget ones. They said for FF13 that it just wasn't practical to do towns and sidequests on the current hardware generation, due to development costs. I hate to break it to them, but Mistwalker had already done it with Blue Dragon and (in particular) Lost Odyssey, the latter of which leaves FF13 in the dust.

Somebody really needs to go around S-E's offices with a hammer and smash all of their DS, PSP and Wii devkits. The company was at its best in previous cycles when its focus was on developing games for the upper-end hardware. They need to rebuild their focus on the 360, PS3 (and PC) and actually show us that they're still capable of that.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two possible interpretations for this. The first, and kindest explanation, is that they have realised that they created some interesting fiction for FF13, but that they badly mishandled the game in general. They now want another stab at telling a story in the game-world they created

No, it's Lightning in plate armor fighting Emo-Bully. If that does not spell "fan-pandering" I don't know what would do.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Tukz]

No mod points, so just saying I agree with parent.
I've been a fan of FF, but FFXIII killed it for me. X-2 I could forgive and forget quickly, but not FFXIII.

I'll give em a chance with FFXIII-2, but I won't have high hopes.

Re:Let's wait and see

[loufoque]

Or maybe they realised creating a new engine and a whole new set of art assets wasn't strictly necessary to create a new game, which is exactly right.
Redoing everything everytime is just a waste of money, time and resources.
It's better, both for them and for the players, if they can make a new game reusing that technology.

I could live with that. FF13 actually has a very decent plot for most of its duration (certainly the darkest of the FF-series plots, darker even than 6).

Not quite. Nothing beats the evilness of Kefka.

Square-Enix have lost the plot badly during this console generation. They were masterful with the PS2 (I still think Kingdom Hearts 2 was the best game ever released for that platform), but these days, they seem to make a bunch of shovelware low-budget titles and to completely mishandle their big-budget ones. They said for FF13 that it just wasn't practical to do towns and sidequests on the current hardware generation, due to development costs. I hate to break it to them, but Mistwalker had already done it with Blue Dragon and (in particular) Lost Odyssey, the latter of which leaves FF13 in the dust.

The funny thing is that The Last Remnant was a better Final Fantasy than Final Fantasy XIII was.

Somebody really needs to go around S-E's offices with a hammer and smash all of their DS, PSP and Wii devkits. The company was at its best in previous cycles when its focus was on developing games for the upper-end hardware. They need to rebuild their focus on the 360, PS3 (and PC) and actually show us that they're still capable of that.

Maybe if players weren't always asking for new graphics engines and better graphics -- even though those things are of little relevance to the quality of a game --, they could.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Sockatume]

Probably this was planned long before Squeenix's finances became a cause for concern. Frankly given the cost of blockbuster game development these days, any company that's not looking to reuse the assets and the engine in DLC or a sequel is making a bad decision.

Re:Let's wait and see

[__aaqvdr516]

If you truly believe that developing for low end hardware is what's killing the FF series I can't help you. FF has deviated from its original intent into a cashcow. It's no wonder the quality has been lacking.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Heian-794]

I'd love to see them reuse the assets -- it would be great to actually get to wander freely in all those amazing places in Cocoon that you were froced to sprint through without ever smelling the roses.

It shouldn't be hard to create something interesting between groups of people: Cocoonians (Cocooners?) who go down to Pulse to explore what they once thought of as hell, Cocoonians who resolve to stay behind and make their home a paradise by human hands, and of course (this should have been in the original) humans already living on Pulse, whom we never met in the original game.

(Some of the "side" material from the producers indicates that in the game's ending, one-third of Cocoon is destroyed, so presumably they can make sure that the more interesting areas are part of the two-thirds that remained intact, or just retcon it and let it all stay intact. While the linearity was no fun, very little of what we saw of Cocoon is worth throwing away.)

There's so much good background material in this game thtat it's a shame how the actual experience didn'T live up to it for the player. Let's see them try to make something a little better now that the pressure is off.

Re:Let's wait and see

[RogueyWon]

Ever since FF7, I have bought new FF games as soon as they are released, without even bothering to look at review scores. I'm including at least one of the re-releases or remakes of 1-6 in that assessment. There are very few franchises or developers I accord that treatment to. The Gran Turismo games and Bioware titles are probably the only other examples.

Following 2010, which saw both FF13 and FF14 released, the series will not get this treatment from me in future. The games get to go through normal pre-purchase scrutiny and if I don't like the look of what I see, I'll have no hesitations whatsoever about leaving them on the store shelf.

Re:Let's wait and see

[RogueyWon]

My concern about building something quick on the unused assets from FF13 was that we would, once again, end up with a game designed by artists rather than by games developers. If you read the post-release interviews with Square-Enix about FF13, it's clear that they had guys in a room creating artwork for years, with no idea of how it was going to come together as a game. The storyline, battle system and character development was all a last minute thing. If Square-Enix are sat there now saying "wow, we have a lot of unused art, let's cobble something together again", then there's no guarantee it will work out better than FF13 did. They don't need to do a new engine or anything; FF13 probably looks about as pretty as things are going to get on the current console hardware generation. What they do need to do is sit down and design a game, and then work out from that what artwork and other assets they need.

Actually, on FF6 vs other FF games, I tend to find Kefka slightly over-rated. One of the things I liked about FF13 is that there isn't a central "human" villain. Pretty much the whole world is out to get the protagonists.

Re:Let's wait and see

[RogueyWon]

The high end titles have suffered (13 and 14) because there has clearly been a lack of development focus on them. It's clear that Squenix's emphasis has been on bad-to-middling handheld titles, like the (entirely pointless) Dissidia games, the Kingdom Hearts handheld titles and rubbish like Crystal Chronicles on the Wii. The company was doing just fine right through to FF12 (which was difficult to get into, but pretty awesome when you did). It really only is with the advent of the current hardware generation that their output has gone to hell.

It's symptomatic of wider Japanese gaming, I think. Outside of a few exceptions, Japanese developers have never really got to grips with the PS3, 360 and the modern PC in a way that the West has. As a result, I think Japanese console games now lag behind their Western counterparts to roughly the same extent that they led them by in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Cwix]

Or maybe they realised creating a new engine and a whole new set of art assets wasn't strictly necessary to create a new game, which is exactly right.
Redoing everything everytime is just a waste of money, time and resources.

I understand your point of view here, but there are exceptions. If you were a follower of Oblivion/Fallout games you would have noticed how dated the engine is in New Vegas. The bugs and issues in the engine keep getting compounded every time they release a new one. Hell, I consider myself lucky if New Vegas doesnt crash my PS3 every 30 min.

I agree, if its not broke dont fix it, but for the love of gamers everywhere, please please please do fix it if it is broken.

Re:Let's wait and see

[loufoque]

If you were a follower of Oblivion/Fallout games you would have noticed how dated the engine is in New Vegas.

I have played all three, and didn't see what the fuss was all about.

Hell, I consider myself lucky if New Vegas doesnt crash my PS3 every 30 min.

Well, maybe it's the console version that's crappy; it's originally a PC engine.

Re:Let's wait and see

[commodore64_love]

>>>They were masterful with the PS2 (I still think Kingdom Hearts 2 was the best game ever released for that platform), but these days, they seem to make a bunch of shovelware low-budget titles and to completely mishandle their big-budget ones. T

I've seen this sentence before..... about 5-6 years ago:
"They were masterful with the PS1 (I still think FF7 was the best game ever released for that platform), but these days, they seem to make a bunch of shovelware low-budget titles and to completely mishandle their big-budget ones." People are always looking to the past and thinking it's better than the present, while forgetting some of the crap Square created (Parasite Eve 1/2, FF8 or 9, FF Battles, FF Racing or whatever the heck it was called).

FF10 was pretty hated too for its lack of sidequests, and I remember FF10-2 was called a cheap cash-in cow. FF11 was almost universally hated. Part 12 is probably the only one that didn't get vitriole.

Re:Let's wait and see

[commodore64_love]

>>>FF has deviated from its original intent into a cashcow.

Um.

Wrong. The original intent of Final Fantasy was to create some quick cash for a company that was almost bankrupt. Squaresoft just got lucky that FF-1 was so popular and saved their bacon, else they would have disappeared circa 1988.

Re:Let's wait and see

[gman003]

A game designed by artists rather than by games developers

And that, right there, is the reason Square Enix is having problems. For years, they've been putting a "character designer" in the role of game designer. Which is about analogous to having a graphic designer code your database - you end up with a giant mess.

Nobody in Square Enix, at least in the FF departments, seems to treat "game design" as a proper science, which means that, at best, you'll get gameplay that's decent but unoriginal. At worst, you'll get a mess of dozens of needless mechanics and clutter (Dissidia) or the removal of even more gameplay in order to add more story (FFXIII).

Re:Let's wait and see

[gman003]

Nope. Bethesda's good at many things, but coding isn't one of them. It took almost a year to get enough patches out for Oblivion that it was remotely stable, and even then, fans using the mod tool were able to fix several thousand bugs on their own. Hell, someone even had to make their own patch to the binary itself to make it crash less. Not "doesn't crash", just "crash less". And from what I've heard, New Vegas is even worse, coding-wise.

I'm a PC player, by the way.

Re:Let's wait and see

[ookaze]

The high end titles have suffered (13 and 14) because there has clearly been a lack of development focus on them. It's clear that Squenix's emphasis has been on bad-to-middling handheld titles, like the (entirely pointless) Dissidia games, the Kingdom Hearts handheld titles and rubbish like Crystal Chronicles on the Wii. The company was doing just fine right through to FF12 (which was difficult to get into, but pretty awesome when you did).

Then you must have an agenda, because the problems of FFXIII have absolutely nothing to do with technic. They have to do with game direction, which is completely independant of which console you develop for or if you master every bit of the console or not.
Basically, you're coming into this thread talking about problems that aren't there (at least for FFXIII).
The lack of town in FFXIII has nothing to do with SE having Wii, DS or PSP devkits, or with the games they made for these platforms.
And the Enix part of the company is doing just fine on DS, with Dragonquest IX being (for now) the best 3rd party sales ever on a game platform in Japan (more than 4 millions sales in Japan alone).
Contrast that with the fact that FFXIII is the main numbered FF (which is not a MMO, aka traditional FF) with the least sales in Japan (less than 2 millions sold in the last Famitsu top 100 released recently).

If SE followed your advice, they would be dead by now. FFXIII was in development for a loooooong time and cost a LOT of money.

It really only is with the advent of the current hardware generation that their output has gone to hell.

It's symptomatic of wider Japanese gaming, I think. Outside of a few exceptions, Japanese developers have never really got to grips with the PS3, 360 and the modern PC in a way that the West has. As a result, I think Japanese console games now lag behind their Western counterparts to roughly the same extent that they led them by in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation.

So the last sentence was your hidden agenda.
Your last sentence is wrong BTW. Nintendo alone proves you wrong on all counts.
Japanese console games are far beyond their western counterpart just by counting Nintendo alone.
The main problem of this generation is money, greed and graphics.
This generation, western console games look like they're more advanced (I didn't say better) because it's more occidental to put lots of money on the table to do grandiose games. Japanese are far more conservatives. The problem is that there's no market to sustain these games (except on Wii and DS), and the consequence is that dev studios are dying left and right, and those that are not dead yet are posting losses after losses every quarter. Lots of big publishers died or are dying this gen.
The only reason why japanese console games seem to lag behind is because they at least saw a little better the obvious outcome : their death if their game doesn't work.
And it's symptomatic of most publishers (both western and eastern) this gen : not supporting the market leader with grandiose products. The writing was on the wall since 2007 really.

For Square Enix and Final Fantasy, I guessed the outcome in 2007, seeing how they were handling FF and DQ, with FF getting all the push by SE, leaving DQ behind, but I was sure Dragonquest was the one that would come to the front and survive, if only just because Yuji Hoori was doing the right choices (like putting his next DQ on the leading platform as always, which was the DS). While the Square part of the company was doing nonsense like putting FF on the loser consoles just for "the graphics". This showed right away that FF was going in the wrong direction. The MMO FFXIV only confirmed this fiasco in a spectacular way.

It's sad really, when Xenoblade is a better FF than FFXIII, but it doesn't have the brand name to sell as much, not even a tenth of what FFXIII sold. FFXIII is still a financial success I think, though not as good as SE hoped I think, as they're already in trouble, despite FFXIII and DQ IX last year.

Re:Let's wait and see

[CronoCloud]

I think many Japanese developers lost their way with this generation, and to a certain extent with the generation before. So focused on making games for the conformist-wants-to-play-the-exact-game-in-the-exact-same-way-everyone-else-does fanbase, that they ignored changes in their fanbase outside of Japan. It may be why the Japanese RPG developers are doing PSP games, it's pretty much like doing a game for the PS1 or PS2, the expectations are different and they don't have to learn how to do more open-ended gameplay.

It's why I like FF12, sure it's linear, but you can go off the beaten-track if you want, take time away from the main quest to do hunts. It's like a single player MMORPG in that way, which makes sense, considering it's using a modified FF11 engine.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody really needs to go around S-E's offices with a hammer and smash all of their DS, PSP and Wii devkits. The company was at its best in previous cycles when its focus was on developing games for the upper-end hardware. They need to rebuild their focus on the 360, PS3 (and PC) and actually show us that they're still capable of that.

And this is where you lost me. "Yeah S-E, you should just stop working on the consoles where you've made good games and focus on the ones where you have made crappy games. That will magically make them better!". Are you kidding me?

Re:Let's wait and see

[CronoCloud]

I wish it was just a console problem...but the console versions of Oblivion and Fallout 3 are actually less buggy than the PC versions. Bethesda just isn't very good about bug killing.

Re:Let's wait and see

[CronoCloud]

I think Japanese console games now lag behind their Western counterparts to roughly the same extent that they led them by in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation.

The problem started showing up in the PSone days. Normally PC centric US/UK developers began making inroads in the console market PSone days, by the PS2, they were good and ready to show what they coud do, and they did.

Think about the games that defined the PS2, aside from MGS and Gran Turismo were they japanese developed games? No. Bout the only area where the Japanese developers were able to dominate was RPG's! And even then most of the best action RPG's were by non-Japanese developers.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Anonymous Coward]

Parasite Eve 1 was awesome.

2 and The Third Birthday, not so much.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Qzukk]

I think they learned their lesson from the reactions to FF13. Instead of taking place in a long hallway, FF13-2 will take place entirely within one single room.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>They were masterful with the PS2 (I still think Kingdom Hearts 2 was the best game ever released for that platform), but these days, they seem to make a bunch of shovelware low-budget titles and to completely mishandle their big-budget ones. T

I've seen this sentence before..... about 5-6 years ago:
"They were masterful with the PS1 (I still think FF7 was the best game ever released for that platform), but these days, they seem to make a bunch of shovelware low-budget titles and to completely mishandle their big-budget ones." People are always looking to the past and thinking it's better than the present, while forgetting some of the crap Square created (Parasite Eve 1/2, FF8 or 9, FF Battles, FF Racing or whatever the heck it was called).

FF10 was pretty hated too for its lack of sidequests, and I remember FF10-2 was called a cheap cash-in cow. FF11 was almost universally hated. Part 12 is probably the only one that didn't get vitriole.

I agree with the whole idea you posted, but I don't agree with the games you said were crap: Parasite Eve (I liked it; it wasn't great, but I thought it was good), Parasite Eve 2 (It was more like an RE game than a PE game (a change I didn't like, even if I love old-style RE), but it wasn't bad), FFVIII (the game is definitely the worse of the PS FF games, but it was still better than FFX), FFIX (really? the return to the old style FF is crappy? this FF got a lot of things right (and a couple wrong), and I wish those ideas would have survived on the following games, but they didn't (at least on FFX, which was the last one I played)).

Re:Let's wait and see

[RogueyWon]

I think that's right to some extent. Thinking back, there were certainly Western developers who took an interest in the PS1 in a way that we hadn't seen on the SNES or Genesis. I know there was a sort of intervening console generation between those two, but my memory is highly hazy - certainly neither I nor any of my friends owned anything from then. The words "Sega Saturn" do stir up some inexplicable feelings of disappointment and regret, however.

I think you've correctly identified two of the three big franchises of the last console generation; the third is, of course, Final Fantasy. The West did start to make a strong challenge during the last cycle; Bioware's push onto the Xbox was probably the biggest case in point. But I often got a feeling last cycle that developers like Bioware and Bungie were taking games that had PC (or Mac!) roots and pushing them onto console hardware. Just as we saw the PC getting "nasty console ports", the consoles of the last generation had no shortage of games that felt like "nasty PC ports".

This generation, the Western developers have just felt more... comfortable... with the console platforms. Ok, they've not made inroads on the Wii, really, but the Wii is of declining importance as this cycle goes on and its hardware falls too far behind the curve to be of interest to a lot of developers. Games like the Gears of War series on the 360 and the Ratchet & Clank games on the PS3 have felt like bona fide console games and have defined this generation in a way that the West never quite managed last time around.

Re:Let's wait and see

[commodore64_love]

Yes *I* liked Parasite Eve also, but I know a lot of gamers did not, because it was a completely linear RPG with no sidequests. At the time not having sidequests was considered a bad RPG design. That's why PE2 changed direction.

Re:Let's wait and see

[RogueyWon]

You're misreading what I said.

Like it or not, FF13 was starved of resource by Square-Enix. But as any project manager will tell you, there is more than one kind of resource. FF13 had plenty of budget. It had no shortage of artistic talent. But it was deprived of the company's core games development talent and of any sensible kind of project management. Go read the interviews that followed FF13's launch, when Square-Enix realised it had a turkey on its hands and began the blame game (which we've seen even more pronounced on FF14). The game had a huge number of artists working for many years to produce assets for the game - artists who just aren't needed for the low-budget graphically primative handheld and Wii games. What it didn't have was anybody putting work into developing game mechanics or even a storyline to hold the game together. This is why we got a game that was graphically beautiful (on the PS3, at least), but which just did not work as a game.

Meanwhile, the people who knew how to design games were off doing stuff like 356/2 Days on the DS. Now sure, those games have some pretty neat gameplay elements, but they are always going to be constrained by the limitations of the hardware. It's not just graphics; a lack of RAM in these systems constrains the size of the play areas you can use and so on (hence the mission-based structure that a lot of these games tend to take).

The results of Square-Enix's strategy have been plain in the performance of their games lately and their financial results for the last year or so (for which see google). The handheld and Wii games get ok-ish reviews and do not exactly set the charts on fire in terms of sales (they tend to do ok-ish in Japan and underwhelmingly in the West); they don't cost much to develop, but they're not exactly setting the world on fire. At the same time, the big-budget main-series FF games take forever to develop (remember, no effective project management) and get panned on release. If I remember, FF13 had pretty decent initial sales, but these fell off a cliff as word of mouth basically torpedoed the game below the waterline.

In short, Square-Enix does need to put its resource focus back onto its big-budget AAA titles; but by resource, I mean development talent, not money.

As for Japanese gaming falling behind the West; wake up and smell the coffee. It's clear you're a Nintendo fanboy - and one of the minority who hasn't been through the disillusionment process yet. Don't worry, it's not necessarily a permanent condition; I was a Square-Enix fanboy until the last couple of years cured me.

As a games developer, Nintendo have fallen comprehensively behind the West (and have now realised this and are trying to catch up; witness Metroid: Other M, though I wouldn't categorise that game as a success). They've fallen into another common Japanese gaming trap; failing to identify which elements of their old titles to preserve and which to discard. Hence we still get the antiquated lives system in Mario Galaxy 2, and hence we still get the same damned plot over and over in Zelda. You may like it, but the rest of the world is moving on. Nintendo's market these days are nostalgic 40 year old neckbeards who don't really like games, and new-entrants to gaming. I suspect they're not getting much in the way of repeat custom. Still, as I say, Other M (which does try to adapt elements from Western gaming in a fairly major way) is a first sign that they have, belatedly recognised this and are trying to adapt. Sure, Other M isn't great in itself, but it's a sign that there's hope for them.

Still, it's unfair to harp on Nintendo. Other Japanese studios have been just as guilty of failing to adapt to the current generation; even those who had some early successes. Look at Sega; they put out the sublimely good Valkyria Chronicles, which was one of the absolute stand-out games of the current console hardware generation, which married artistry and technical prowess perfectly and which managed (almost uniquely for this console generation)

Re:Let's wait and see

[Andy Dodd]

For me, the FF series has actually driven console purchases for me. I didn't buy a PS2 until FFXII came out (Worth it IMO! I did not buy many other PS2 games but still don't regret the PS2 purchase), I didn't buy a PS3 until FFXIII came out - NOT worth it! (At least not for FFXIII alone - I still have a great Blu-Ray player/UPnP frontend, and I have picked up a few other PS3 games.)

I'm going to be a lot more careful with future FF releases though.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Raenex]

I didn't buy a PS2 until FFXII came out

Do you mean Final Fantasy X? That was the first one on the PS2. That and GTA3 sold me on the platform. Pretty amazing stuff for 2001.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Jaysyn]

Parasite Eve wasn't so much an RPG as it was an interactive movie.

Re:Let's wait and see

[_xeno_]

Meanwhile, the people who knew how to design games were off doing stuff like 356/2 Days on the DS.

358/2 Days was only published by Square-Enix, the actual development was fobbed off to some third party developer. Same with DragonQuest IX, I think. (Wikipedia says it was developed by Level 5.)

While I'm looking that up, I might as well pull up the developers for 0.00207175926 hertz. Uh, thanks, Google. 358/2 Days was developed by h.a.n.d and, again, only published by Square-Enix.

Pretty much if you try and name a good Square-Enix game in the last year, you'll find that it was only published by Square-Enix but actually developed by someone else. And I say that as a bit of a Square-Enix fanboy.

Re:Let's wait and see

[RogueyWon]

Yeah, that's right, and it highlights what is possibly Square-Enix's biggest problem (and I say this as a former fanboy) - they suck at retaining talent. Those external shops who are doing the development on the better games that Square-Enix publishes - half of them are Square-Enix (or often Squaresoft) veterans, who worked for the company back when it was still making good games (and I count FF12 as the last really good game that they put out).

Look at Mistwalker, who put out the best Final Fantasy game of this console generation (even though it happened to be called Lost Odyssey). The credits for their games reads like a "Who's Who" of the glory days of Squaresoft (though even Mistwalker seem to be losing the plot a bit now). Square-Enix need to work hard to attract people like that back.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a valid point, but you're ignoring the fact that the handheld market is huge in Japan and Asia. Square can't abandon that market, even if they wanted to. I do agree with a lot of what you're saying, I just think you're taking it a step too far due to system bias. They need more developers and game designers, and most importantly they need to accept the idea of dissenting opinions. Many Japanese companies are name-driven, ie. catering to one man's vision that's delegated instead of producing it as team from conception to shipping. Nothing wrong with having one guy steer the ship, but most big-budget games now are too big and complex for one guy to have the right answers for everything.

Re:Let's wait and see

[RogueyWon]

The handheld market is huge in Japan. Rather less so in wider Asia, I think, particularly in Korea which remains very PC-centric. To be honest, I partly suspect that the handheld market is so big in Japan because Japanese gamers tend, going off sales statistics, to be a little... shall we say... insular in their tastes, meaning they tend to stick to games from their domestic developers. And what their own developers give them are handheld games. I think the reaction to the announcement that Valkyria Chronicles 3 would be a PSP game shows that a lot of Japanese gamers have no particular deep-rooted affection for the handhelds - they just go where "their" games are.

You are absolutely 100% correct though about the "big name developer" issue. There really seems to be a culture in Japanese games development of venerating the "big men" of the industry and never, ever deviating from what they do or trying to evolve it over time. This is driving Nintendo into the ground and I think it's becoming a serious issue for other developers; Polyphony Digital particularly sticks in my mind, as Gran Turismo 5 has some deeply dated design elements that seem indicative of a similar culture.

I'm not sure whether this is a cultural phenomenon or rather a reflection of the fact that every time some individual Western developer starts to build up their own personal hype in a similar way, fate and hubris usually conspire to land them flat on their backside. I mean, John Romero was getting that kind of following; then Daikatana happened. Warren Spectre came out of Ion Storm smelling of roses thanks to Deus Ex, but has had enough mishaps since then that he's never really become an object of industry veneration. CliffyB... well... he has a string of successes to his name, but he also seems to delight in taking a persona that wins him at least as many enemies as friends. Meanwhile, if you look at the really successful Western developers of recent years; I'm not sure how many people could even name the founders of Bioware or Bethesda without jumping to wikipedia.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Daniel Phillips]

I still think Kingdom Hearts 2 was the best game ever released for that platform

Close to it, but Shadow of the Collossus was better, with a far smaller team too.

The most amazing aspect of Kingdom Hearts 2 in my opinion was the rather full featured 3D constructive geometry editor for the gummi ships. Imagine a 3 year old doing constructive geometry. I saw this with my own eyes.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Daniel Phillips]

If you were a follower of Oblivion/Fallout games you would have noticed how dated the engine is in New Vegas. The bugs and issues in the engine keep getting compounded every time they release a new one.

Gamebryo paid the death penalty for that. Though they were reportedly making money off the engine, it wasn't enough to offset wastage on their other adventures.

Gamebryo looks to me like a project that started strong but lacked regular housecleaning so eventually the code base became a fragile, unmaintainable mess and they lost the ability to rapidly incorporate new developments in engine technology. It worked well for Oblivion with its effective terrain geometry hacks, and the shadow mapping and parallax mapping really worked well. It had rather extreme architectural geometry popping but you could almost ignore that. The separate models for inside and outside geometry were less easy to ignore. Opaque windows anyone? But in general, extremely effective for the purpose at hand. Much of the world is actually beautiful. Example: sunset looking out over the lighthouse at Anvil.

For all its failings, Gamebryo did manage to grow Bethesda big enough to buy id. Funny that.

Re:Let's wait and see

[ookaze]

You're misreading what I said.

Like it or not, FF13 was starved of resource by Square-Enix. But as any project manager will tell you, there is more than one kind of resource. FF13 had plenty of budget. It had no shortage of artistic talent. But it was deprived of the company's core games development talent and of any sensible kind of project management. Go read the interviews that followed FF13's launch, when Square-Enix realised it had a turkey on its hands and began the blame game (which we've seen even more pronounced on FF14). The game had a huge number of artists working for many years to produce assets for the game - artists who just aren't needed for the low-budget graphically primative handheld and Wii games. What it didn't have was anybody putting work into developing game mechanics or even a storyline to hold the game together. This is why we got a game that was graphically beautiful (on the PS3, at least), but which just did not work as a game.

I agree with that, but still it has nothing to do with DS games depriving HD games of resources.
This is nonsense and just plain false, as the HD engine for FFXIII and other SE games was being developed at the same time. DS game developers at Square-Enix didn't deprive HD game developers, this doesn't make sense, and sure didn't deprive DQ IX of resources.

Meanwhile, the people who knew how to design games were off doing stuff like 356/2 Days on the DS. Now sure, those games have some pretty neat gameplay elements, but they are always going to be constrained by the limitations of the hardware. It's not just graphics; a lack of RAM in these systems constrains the size of the play areas you can use and so on (hence the mission-based structure that a lot of these games tend to take).

So this can't be games that deprived FFXIII of game developers.

The results of Square-Enix's strategy have been plain in the performance of their games lately and their financial results for the last year or so (for which see google). The handheld and Wii games get ok-ish reviews and do not exactly set the charts on fire in terms of sales (they tend to do ok-ish in Japan and underwhelmingly in the West); they don't cost much to develop, but they're not exactly setting the world on fire.

I agree with that, except for DQ IX, they are crap games. This is the same for PSP games. Actually, you could say the same for most SE games released this generation, HD games included, except for DQ IX on DS, so I don't see the point here.
And no, no SE Wii game received OK-ish reviews.

At the same time, the big-budget main-series FF games take forever to develop (remember, no effective project management) and get panned on release. If I remember, FF13 had pretty decent initial sales, but these fell off a cliff as word of mouth basically torpedoed the game below the waterline.

Receiving 39/40 review from Famitsu is being panned on release? What nonsense is that?
FF13 was just far more frontloaded than any other FF main numbered release in Japan, that's all. It's first week amounted like 85+% of its LTD sales which is just insane.

In short, Square-Enix does need to put its resource focus back onto its big-budget AAA titles; but by resource, I mean development talent, not money.

What I can't accept is that I think you're saying that they put talent in their DS or Wii games, which I hope and believe, is completely false. If it were to be true, given how bad their games on these platforms are (except for Yuji Hoori Dragonquest of course), then Square Enix won't be able to pull out of the rut they're in nowadays.

As for Japanese gaming falling behind the West; wake up and smell the coffee. It's clear you're a Nintendo fanboy - and one of the minority who hasn't been through the disillusionment process yet. Don't worry, it's not necessarily a permanent condition; I was a Square-En

Re:Let's wait and see

[Daniel Phillips]

Really funny. Wish I hadn't already commented.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Killjoy_NL]

I went out and bought a PS2 the day Metal Gear Solid 2 was released :)

Metal Gear Solid 4 was the first game I bought when I got my PS3 :D

and Final Fantasy X is good, X-2 annoyed me too much.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded Fallout New Vegas a couple of weeks ago for the PC. I played for a time. I got to the part where you have go off with that woman at the beginning to shoot some animals. Then I got another quest and wandered into a cemetery on a hill where giant bees and scorpions proceeded to kill me. I tried it twice, and was so fed up with the game play, controls, and very poor performance of the graphics engine that I uninstalled that garbage.

I had never played a Fallout game before, but I had heard they are just the greatest games.

The inventory, map, etc. system was such a fucking kludge. The controls were shit, and they couldn't even get accurate aiming with the mouse right. Apparently I was supposed to press a button that paused everything, zoomed into the enemy, and allowed me to click portions of the body with percentages of likelihood to hit, and then it would play a redundant animation of my guy shooting the enemy. Enemy would continue to come at me for another go. I saw right away how old this was going to get. Forget about being able to aim and hit them accurately without this over-engineered gameplay mechanic. I think I figured this system out, but there was never any sort of in-game explanation on how to use it.

I like to pick things up and collect them in a game like this. Call me stupid. I never know what i'm going to need, and I sell what I I don't for the in-game currency. Normally, there are a limited number of things you can pick up and they are all useful (health, ammo, things meant only for selling). I started doing this in the cabin with the doctor at the beginning and quickly realized I could pick almost everything up. I had hundreds of items by the time I left that area, most of which were probably useless. No explanation whatsoever on what most of the items were useful for. I found that you could store them in various places. Apparently, this storage system worked nothing like the trunks in the old Resident Evil games, so they were pretty useless too. There was no point in storing inventory in random boxes and foot lockers if the contents didn't sync between all of them. It was just information overload and the paradox of choice was kicking in. Apparently there is a limit to how much you can carry, but it's unrealistically high to the point it's basically not enforced. If they imposed a tighter limit, then I would have some reference point to base my decision to pick something up on. It was like pick everything up and it might be useful. Do I need this ashtray? What about this door stop? If I can't use it, can I sell it?

The graphics look like shit, and ran like shit. I can play Resident Evil 5 on this PC right before this game att 1920x1080 with everything turned all the way up. It looks beautiful and maintains 60 FPS. With v-sync off, the built-in benchmarks would average around 70 FPS. What the fuck did the New Vegas people do so wrong to mess this engine up so bad?

The game played like a bad indie game. I never experienced any crashes. Probably because I didn't play it long enough.

Thank fuck I didn't pay for this game. This is why I don't buy your fucking games. Most are shit. How much were they charging for this thing? $60 bucks? Fuck that! Do they develop these games in a bubble? Do they ever play someone else's game and does it occur to them that they may be producing shit in comparison?

Re:Let's wait and see

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

I feel the need to defend Mario Galaxy here. I really enjoyed the game, and not (just) because of nostalgia. The game was a showcase of level design and creativity. I've got a PS3 and a ton of games, but haven't found any that were quite as fun as Mario Galaxy.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Anonymous Coward]

Bethesda has done it with their (horrifyingly non-linear) games.

Re:Let's wait and see

[ultranova]

FF has deviated from its original intent into a cashcow.

FF's original intent was to be a cashcow. It's called Final Fantasy because, had it not sold, the company would had gone belly-up.

Re:Let's wait and see

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Personally, I think Square started its decline after Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was such a bomb at the box office that Hironobu Sakaguchi was made the fall guy and forced out of the company.

Re:Let's wait and see

[antifoidulus]

The other thing that motivates particularly Japanese developers to push a lot of portable games is the price system the Japanese are used to. For the most part the big name portable games get prices that are really close, if not the same as, the big console releases. The idea of portable games being significantly cheaper than console games doesn't seem to exist in Japan. As a result, as long as they can get sales publishers are rewarded more for portable titles than they are console titles.

This has WTF all over it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say the name together:

Final Fantasy 13 2.

What's next? Half-Life 2: Episode 2 2? Metal Gear Solid 4 2?

They shoulda just called it "Final Fantasy 14: We did better."

Re:This has WTF all over it.

[_xeno_]

Wouldn't be the first time: they've already released FFX 2.

Apparently it was better than FFX, but I never got around to playing it. Somehow learning that they focused the game on the two most annoying characters killed it for me. The idea of having to listen to more Yuna is just... not appealing.

They shoulda just called it "Final Fantasy 14: We did better."

FFXIV already exists. Actually, never mind that. Given that I played it on launch, I'd rather forget that it exists. In fact, let's all just pretend there is no FFXIV, and that they've already done their "giant UI overhaul" and it changed nothing.

I mean, there is no FFXIV. Deep breaths, deep breaths...

Re:This has WTF all over it.

[commodore64_love]

>>>The idea of having to listen to more Yuna is just... not appealing.

But Rikku... in a bikini. Good enough reason to lay-down $5 (used) to get the game. And the volleyball beachbum named Tidus(?), thankfully, is not seen much. And the various missions are random, so there's lots of freedom for the player to explore and enjoy..... kinda like the old 8 and 16 bit RPGs of the past.

Somebody else said:
>>>Many people said 'X 2' instead of '10 2' because it was awkward.

I always say "10 dash 2". No more awkward than saying "Mac OS 10 dot 6"

Re:This has WTF all over it.

[genner]

Wouldn't be the first time: they've already released FFX 2.

Apparently it was better than FFX

Please tell me your trolling...

Re:This has WTF all over it.

[_xeno_]

Not trolling, but I may have been trolled: I've never actually played it past the opening.

Re:This has WTF all over it.

[mister_playboy]

But Rikku... in a bikini.

Lulu was the one I wanted to see in a bikini... but she's not even in that game. ;_;

Re:This has WTF all over it.

[genner]

Not trolling, but I may have been trolled: I've never actually played it past the opening.

You dodged a bullet there.

wait

[Anonymous Coward]

You think it's hard to say "thirteen-two"?

Re:wait

[Aladrin]

Well it is very awkward for English speakers considering we just don't string numbers together like that. Many people said 'X 2' instead of '10 2' because it was awkward. They don't have that choice this time.

The original Japanese has it written out as 'ten two' and 'thirteen two', borrowed from English, so there's no doubt how they expect people to say it.

Re:wait

[tepples]

Many people said 'X 2' instead of '10 2' because it was awkward.

That, and the last time there was an "X2" it was a Capcom game starring a rebuilt Mega Man, pronounced ekkusu two.

Re:wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people said 'X 2' instead of '10 2' because it was awkward.

But now it's a Cribbage reference! Just wait for more sequels! Thirteen-two, Thirteen-four, and on and on...

I don't get it

[shish]

Why do they keep putting time and effort into making sequels of shit games, yet they refuse to do the minimal-effort massive-profit thing of re-releasing FF7 with high-def graphics? :-|

Re:I don't get it

[TheSpoom]

Or for that matter, anything at all to do with Chrono Trigger.

Re:I don't get it

[davek]

Why do they keep putting time and effort into making sequels of shit games, yet they refuse to do the minimal-effort massive-profit thing of re-releasing FF7 with high-def graphics? :-|

That is such an awesome idea I might actually consider buying a game console just so I could play that game.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

After the abortion that was Chrono Cross and then the half-hearted DS Chrono Trigger port (with its retcon new ending), I'm honestly ok with Square Enix staying as far away from the Chrono series as possible. There's nothing wrong with a good game standing alone.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do they keep putting time and effort into making sequels of shit games, yet they refuse to do the minimal-effort massive-profit thing of re-releasing FF7 with high-def graphics? :-|

That is such an awesome idea I might actually consider buying a game console just so I could play that game.

Way back in 2005 Square did a PS3 tech demo of the FF7 intro CGI rendered in real-time. A lot of people thought that meant an inevitable remake of FF7 on PS3 and, like you, a lot of people were ready to snap up a PS3 if it were to be announced. But it never came. :(

Re:I don't get it

[shish]

Or for that matter, anything at all to do with Chrono Trigger.

They have done something with it. They used it as a legal weapon to kick their fans in the balls when the fans tried to make their own high-def rerelease.

Re:I don't get it

[jgtg32a]

Get over it, Chrono Cross was a great game and it did have better music than Chrono Trigger; so what if it wasn't as good as one of the if not the greatest RPGs ever made.

Re:I don't get it

[Tharsman]

I see where you are comming from but you are wrong about minimal effort.

This game will reuse art and all the code from the previous game.

A remake of FF7 would require to rewrite the entire engine for the PS3 or XBox (or both) and then to redo all the art. From a development standpoint, a FF7 remake is as hard to pull off as making a brand new game from scratch, with the only difference being you have the design documents already done (and that's the easy part.)

Re:I don't get it

[shish]

A remake of FF7 would require to rewrite the entire engine for the PS3 or XBox (or both)

A non-high-def release is out on the playstation network already, I presume that means the code still works. Although because that's already sold well (fastest seller on the PSN, and still near the top), that's probably filled half the market, so demand for an updated version is less :-(

and then to redo all the art.

IIRC the backgrounds were a mix of 3D renders and hand-drawn scenes (This is why I particularly want FF7-9 and not FF6 or chrono trigger -- for pixelly games, big pixels still work; for hand-drawn backgrounds, they look beautiful (better than 3D) at their native res, but scale up horribly) -- I would hope they still have the originals somewhere that could be re-rendered / re-scanned at a higher res.

The 3D character models would need redoing, but the characters have appeared in enough other modern squeenix games that they should have most of them updated already...

Re:I don't get it

[Tharsman]

A remake of FF7 would require to rewrite the entire engine for the PS3 or XBox (or both)

A non-high-def release is out on the playstation network already, I presume that means the code still works. Although because that's already sold well (fastest seller on the PSN, and still near the top), that's probably filled half the market, so demand for an updated version is less :-(

Most classic games released this way are wrapped around emulators.

and then to redo all the art.

IIRC the backgrounds were a mix of 3D renders and hand-drawn scenes (This is why I particularly want FF7-9 and not FF6 or chrono trigger -- for pixelly games, big pixels still work; for hand-drawn backgrounds, they look beautiful (better than 3D) at their native res, but scale up horribly) -- I would hope they still have the originals somewhere that could be re-rendered / re-scanned at a higher res.

The 3D character models would need redoing, but the characters have appeared in enough other modern squeenix games that they should have most of them updated already...

When FF7 got released for PC back in the day, they were not able to update the pre-rendered backgrounds. This lead to weaker reviews. Apparently, Square never had the foresight of rendering at high res and then scaling down the results while retaining the original renders.

I think thats irrelevant, though, because a proper remake would no longer use pre-rendered background and be entirely real time.

Re:I don't get it

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

so what if it wasn't as good as one of the if not the greatest RPGs ever made.

That's exactly the problem....well, ok - the problem is that it didn't even hit the top 20. It ended up being like Godfather 3. It's got its warts, and in places it shines. But it's so far below its predecessor that I just can't take it seriously.

Re:I don't get it

[JarinArenos]

Did you play the DS re-release of Chrono Trigger? They added some new sidequests to it. Compare the production quality side-by-side, of the old content to the new in the same game, and it's shocking to see how low-quality and slipshod the modern content is. Square-Enix has simply lost the ability to make quality game content.

Re:I don't get it

[Yosho]

"Get over it"? I am over it. The Chrono series is done. It had a great first game, then a mediocre sequel and a weak port. I just wish that Chrono fanboys wouldn't continually rave about how they think Square needs to make another game.

Chrono Cross is a perfectly typical example of Square's slide into mediocrity. The music and sound are great, sure, but the plot is filled with convoluted nonsense.

There's a huge cast of characters and only a couple of them receive any development at all. Hell, look at all the joke characters they crammed into the game -- the big pink dog? The talking plant? The cyborg? The Mexican wrestler? Those are just a few of them. I can forgive a game that has one joke character, but CC went want overboard. And all of them have generic dialog with their personal tic of choice inserted into it, just to make sure any of them can be present in any scene.

Then you have the matter of the writers disrespecting the original's cast of characters. Many of them are killed off-screen before CC even begins, without even any parting dialog, and to top it off, they were killed due to the actions of a joke villain from the original game. Then there's the issue of Magus, one of the most important figures of the original game, who was supposed to be in CC but they decided they didn't have time to fit him in, so the character model that was made for him got turned into a similar-but-unrelated PC who joins you and then gets just as much development as everybody else (none). And then in the CT DS port, they retconned that by saying that he actually is the same character, he just lost his memory.

Then there's all of the areas in which the gameplay was lacking. Despite multiple different worlds being one of the selling points of the game, it turned out that there were only two different worlds which were very similar to each other, and actions in one didn't affect the other very much at all. It's a sharp contrast from the multiple time periods and potential ramifications from the original. Oh, and I should mention the battle system, too -- the ability to always run from anything (even bosses), only leveling up from bosses, and the potential to abuse elemental fields meant that the game was laughably easy. To be fair, I suppose CT was pretty easy, too.

I won't say CC is a bad game. It has its enjoyable aspects, and I can see how some people would enjoy it more than others. But it falls far short of the quality of any of the SNES's big RPG hits and most of the PSX's.

Re:I don't get it

[TheSpoom]

Yeah, I have (all the way through) and I do have to agree with you there. They just don't seem interested in the same sort of quality as their SNES-era productions. Sad.

Where can I sign the petition

[ThatsNotPudding]

that forbids Square Enix from continuing to use the word 'Final'?

Re:Where can I sign the petition

[HardSide]

They should have stopped releasing "Final Fantasy" games after they changed there name to SquareEnix.

Re:Where can I sign the petition

[h00manist]

that forbids Square Enix from continuing to use the word 'Final'?

Somehow it sounds like
"don't say you're mortal, you don't know if it's your final lifetime."
I believe that debate has been going on for a while...

Re:Where can I sign the petition

[Abstrackt]

Back when Square released the original Final Fantasy on the NES the tile was appropriate because it was their last chance to release a good game before bankruptcy. I think once you hit the fifth or sixth incarnation the "Final" part of the title loses its impact but I can see why they aren't rushing to change the name after having established such a big brand.

You can start a petition if you want, maybe even try boycotting the series, that seems to work... right?

I can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Playing as hermaphrodites is so much fun.

Re:I can't wait

[CronoCloud]

The word is "intersexed" damn it.

So much for three games per console/generation

[commodore64_love]

NES - Final Fantasies 1/2/3
Super Nintendo - FF 4/5/6
Playstation - FF 7/8/9
PS2 - FF10/11/12 (10 was a two parter)
PS3 - FF13/14. Maybe they'll have time for a FF15 but it's doubtful.

>>>the number one thingabout XIII that is really awful is it's absurdly linear gameplay

FF10 was very linear too. It had to be because it was basically a movie that you played, and they steered you along that specific plotline. Anyway that linearity didn't bother me because the story more than made-up for it. (And the later sequel which had tons of free movement.)

Re:So much for three games per console/generation

[gman003]

Well, the current console "generation" seems to be a two-parter: MS and Sony are effectively treating Kinect/Move as a new console generation, and Nintendo, at best, will make a Wii HD type of console. So, quite likely, they'll still have time for FFXV. Maybe even a FFXVI, if they rush it.

Whether or not that's a good thing is up for debate. Personally, I think FF peaked around VI and VII - every game before was a general improvement on its predecessor, every game after was a general letdown, with VI and VII being about tied, IMO. At this point, they need a serious overhaul of not just the engine, not even the game design, but they seriously need to make massive changes to their entire development process. For one, stop putting character designers in the role of game designer.

Re:So much for three games per console/generation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the current console "generation" seems to be a two-parter: MS and Sony are effectively treating Kinect/Move as a new console generation, and Nintendo, at best, will make a Wii HD type of console. So, quite likely, they'll still have time for FFXV. Maybe even a FFXVI, if they rush it.

Considering how long it took to develop FFXIII, and the fact that they are developing FFXIII Versus and we haven't even seen a single gameplay video about it, I think is going to be hard to release FFXV on current consoles, let alone FFXVI.

Re:So much for three games per console/generation

[raving griff]

Of course, if they didn't release ~20 Final Fantasy spinoffs a year, things might be different...

Oh, goodie

[Tridus]

A sequel to 2010's #1 Corridor Simulator? Can't wait!

What's next from Square? FF XIV-2, now with 97% more lag and still featuring the worst UI in modern MMO gaming?

This is one company I was glad to see suffer financial issues last year. They lost their way a long time ago and have just been putting out garbage and re-releases. It's long past time something wakes them up and reminds them that gameplay actually matters.

Re:Oh, goodie

[Yosho]

They lost their way a long time ago and have just been putting out garbage and re-releases. It's long past time something wakes them up and reminds them that gameplay actually matters.

You should check out some of their other games. Over on the DS, Dragon Quest IX, The 4 Heroes of Light, and The World Ends with You are all among the best RPGs on the system (and there are a lot of good RPGs on the DS). Despite the weird Wii Crystal Chronicles games, the two DS CC games are great multiplayer dungeon crawlers. Even though they're remakes, Dragon Quest IV & V and Final Fantasy IV were also great. Over on the PSP, even though it's a bit of a silly concept, Dissidia was a lot of fun, and the Star Ocean remake was well-done and the first time the game has been released in the US.

They've had some pretty spotty releases on the PS3 and 360, although there was also Nier, which everybody seems to forget about when complaining that SE doesn't do anything original any more.

Re:Oh, goodie

[Tridus]

I'm not worried about originality, I'm worried about how much stuff they do that just isn't very good. Like Nier. That was alright, but aside from the excellent music it was pretty forgettable. Still beats FF XIV by a country mile, but that's not saying a lot.

Re:Oh, goodie

[glwtta]

What's next from Square? FF XIV-2, now with 97% more lag and still featuring the worst UI in modern MMO gaming?

That's a ridiculous name! Obviously the next title will be: Final Fantasy XIII-2 3D.

Re:Oh, goodie

[Angel of Woe]

This is late, I know. None of those games you mentioned were developed by Square Enix proper, they were developed out of house and published by Square. (save the games that were remakes...although the porting work was all done out of house as well).

I'll wait for the Linux Edition

[h00manist]

I'll try it out when it runs on Linux.

Re:I'll wait for the Linux Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

Just off the top of my head, aren't there NES, SNES, & Playstation emulators on Linux to try the previous FF series?

Is it a game this time?

[ifrag]

The first thing they need to do is convince potential customers that they are actually releasing a game and not a movie this time. Going to be a hard sell trying to get anyone to believe it. Probably a waste of money for localizing it to English. We already have somewhat higher expectations due to high quality CRPG experiences.

Clothes!

[choko]

I hope this is another sequel where I can take a team of girls all over the planet in search of new and exciting outfits!

*sigh*

SqEnix - Just get to the FFVII remake already...

Final Fight VII? Final Fight XIII-2?

[tepples]

that forbids Square Enix from continuing to use the word 'Final'?

It's probably next to the petition that forbids Capcom from using "Final" in future Mike Haggar games.

Minority

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm clearly in the minority here. I honestly quite liked FFX-2 (it was actually the first FF game I ever played) and I enjoyed FFXIII more than most others did as well. For me, FFXIII-2 would be worth a shot.

so,

[Javajunk]

Square hasn't learned its lesson from X-2?
They need to focus on that Ps3 FFVII remake that makes fanboys wet even now, years after the teaser.

Square makes me sad ):

[NuKe_MoNgOoSe]

Man.. I remember when I was much younger playing Final Fantasy, the original and walking for hours around the castle fighting goddamn unicorns grinding the shit out of it to get the levels to make the game less frustrating and difficult... guess what... IT DIDNT HAPPEN lol.. Then came Final Fantasy III(VI) and this game endeared me to the franchise it was both challenging, had engaging characters and a sweet plot and then came Final Fantasy Tactics (for me) and I played the shit out of that for like 200 hours, and the difficulty curve on that went from challenging to getting T.G Cid (Orlandu) and Agrias (Holy Knight)and blowing through everything.. then Final Fantasy VII again, challenging but not nearly as retarded as the original. Anything after VII though just seemed to drop in challenge, increase in beautiful design and increase in completely unneeded complexity. I hated XII but XIII I genuinely enjoyed the combat system was quick and adaptive and was the first combat system I really enjoyed since VII.. As with most genres nowadays.. they cant seem to get the challenge, visuals, mechanics, plot formulae down. I agree with a previous post though a HD version of VII would sell millions especially with additional content and a graphics engine overhaul.

A free software clone - KQ

[Anonymous Coward]

http://kqlives.sourceforge.net/

Pretty cool if you ask me.

Final Fantasy VII-2 please

[amanaplanacanalpanam]

And I mean a game-- Advent Children doesn't count.

Re:Final Fantasy VII-2 please

[Jaysyn]

Does Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus count? I doubt you will see anything else out of the FF7 franchise anytime soon.

FF XIII related injury

[kellyb9]

I think I might sit this one out. My thumbs haven't quite recovered from all the ridiculous button mashing fighting in the first one. All I did was press X over and over and over again.

I have only one request

[Carnivore24]

Please no Treasure Hunter trophy.

Kingdom Hearts?

[supersloshy]

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (which, in case you haven't guessed, is a game title that is just as terrible to type out as it is to say with your mouth)

Not nearly as terrible as Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, which was announced the same day. The title just reeks of "quick, we need to come up with something '3D' can stand for!" I do admit that the game looks pretty neat, as does XIII-2... I just hope that they don't screw it up.

The end

[Anonymous Coward]

I never liked the name of these games. If there are sequels, it's hardly a "final" fantasy.

So it's Final Fantasy XI then?

[Anonymous Coward]

13 - 2 == 11

more tunnel fighting!

[Ryunosuke]

I guess "Tunnel monster fighting simulator" was taken

Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the gameplay of XIII; it had a well executed battle system. The problem was that the game was stripped of all other gameplay elements besides battle. I don't mind a linear plot, necessarily; but I want a variety of things to do that are interesting while I'm following along with that plot.

I still like XIII better than XII though, which I thought was the worst game of the series. I really like X-2, though; it's greatly underrated. It makes sense that they would capitalize on all their investment in X and produce another game, and I'm ok with that. The second might very well be better, because it's probably done with a smaller team, and a little more 'under the radar'.

No thanks

[Daniel Phillips]

I got the message with FF XIII. Squeenix thinks that painful linear grinding is something gamers must subjugate themselves to in order to earn a steady drip feed of treacly cutscenes. No thanks. If I want to watch prerenders I will watch a movie. If I ever hear the term "battle system" again I will just say no. I put FF XIII on the shelf to gather dust forever about 12 boring hours in. I couldn't stand it any more.

English Dubbing

[katsuo11]

I hope this time they put the japanese voices on PAL & NTSC-US game's discs. English dubs are degrading the intended experience.

Linear gameplay? If so, I'll pass...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a huge final fantasy fan from the beginning; I've gone back and played FF1 several times again even though the graphics are far, far surpassed with any modern game. FF13 had the best graphics of any prior game, and I hated it more then any other FF game, by far. I can't emphasize enough how much it diverged from past games. In prior games, there was an expansive universe where you could choose where to go next, backtrack around if you wished, fly back to a previous town to pick up that item you missed, etc, you always had that option.

Instead, with FF13 they completely turned that concept on its head. No joke -- 95% of the game is walking down a corridor with one entrance and one exit and no branches to take. Near the end of the game, they open up some rediculous portal system to jump around to previous areas. The only catch? -- you have to walk back through the entire game "unlocking" each portal point, and then you can warp between other points you have unlocked. Certain areas can never be revisited once you go past a certain point as well.

I spent hours and hours and hours in a row playing some of the previous games. In FF13, I've owned it since release day, and I still haven't beat it. Every time I went to play, I felt like I had to work myself up to be ready to play. Eventually I got up to the last boss, died after trying to nip away at his HP for an hour or so, and haven't turned the game back on since. It's just not a fun game. They spend the first 20 hours or so of the game "teaching" you how to play. Really, I think its so that people don't realize how monotonous and boring the game is until they are so invested in it that they need to keep going.

Awful, awful awful game. Even FF8, with its "you need to steal a charge for every single spell you're every going to cast" system was more interesting to me then FF13, and that's REALLY saying something. At least I could choose where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do once in a while...

Re:Linear gameplay? If so, I'll pass...

[Alok]

You do know that the last boss doesn't lose HP unless it is staggered right? Just use Rav/Rav/Rav to get him into stagger mode, before you try to chip away at any HP :)

Retarded.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is retarded.

FFXIV Negative reaction and Squares response

[Orga]

I've long been a Final Fantasy fan since FFI, FXIII was a pretty major dissapointment for me but I held out hope for XIV, I enjoyed XI... what a bomb.. the only thing that gives me hope is Squares repsonse to the XIV failure. They've dropped the subscription fee and said they won't charge until they're satisfied with how the game is, they dumped the old team and brought in new, from development to management. I think Square has invested into a story that theyr'e happy with and are dissapointed once again with how XIII came out. Hopefully they're putting a new team together, as they are with XIV to make things right for the fans.

Use the artists elsewhere

[phorm]

So how about they take the art talent to where it's useful. Remakes of older games isn't a terrible market.
How many people have said they're buy FF7 or FF 6 (FF3 US) again if it were given a facelift? How many people haven't had a chance to experience them yet?

Take all those extra artists and a bit of budget, remake those games. Keep the story the same, the mechnics etc the same, and give them a new-gen facelift. I'd buy them.

donotwant?

[Cloud K]

Come on, the worst part of FFXIII was the extraordinarily messy final battle and ending (or in fact anything from when they left Pulse) where it seemed like the developers just gave up and decided to wrap up the game. And it was pretty abrupt too really. If any FF game is ripe for a sequel, this one is.

Besides, I'm waiting to see Sazh use the Lady Luck dress sphere.

Wait 5 years

[Anonymous Coward]

And then utter disappointment....again.