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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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

[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.

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

[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

[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]

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

[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)

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

[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

[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.

Final Fantasy VII-2 please

[amanaplanacanalpanam]

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

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.