It could be worse. I waited 12 YEARS for Duke Nukem Forever to come out. Even after all the bad reviews I bought the game anyway. After over a decade of waiting, I had to get game no matter what.




Here is the walkthrough if you are curious.

Ditto Daytripper, plus: why this game?  I think I used to feel a pretty strong brand loyalty to Final Fantasy.  During the period between FF6 and FF10, it was pretty much a given that I'd buy and play whatever had the magic words on the box.  It was a brand I had faith in.  Square, or later Square-Enix, told good stories set to the tune of good music.  But that was a long time ago.  In the interim, not only has Final Fantasy's quality declined, but I've become aware that there are a lot of other RPGs in the world.  There is not much, besides the words on the box, that marks a game as a Final Fantasy game.  Last Dream, for example, is a reasonably cool indie RPG in the aesthetic of an old-school Final Fantasy or Lufia game.  Square-Enix could acquire it, retitle it "Final Fantasy: Last Dream," insert a character named Cid, change nothing else about the game, and release it as a throwback title, and everyone would snap it up like piranhas.  The brand is everything and the brand is nothing.

So why Final Fantasy 15?  Why is this game worth getting intemperate over?  Is there anything besides the words "Final Fantasy" that you can't get from other games, other developers?

I did not mean to get off topic which was basically about the long development cycle of FFXV. I really should have read all of your post. I am a big fan of online RPG's. I played Guild Wars religiously once upon a time. I think FFVX will be a great game when it does come out. I am sure that it will not be like the Duke Nukem fiasco. Here is a video video relative to the topic.




For everyone like myself that has to "catch up" on the Final Fantasy franchise. Here is a short video history:

It doesn't have to be a story about the "crystals." It just has to be a story that makes some sense, that's all. FFVII was probably the last game whose story made sense. Well, XII also made sense, but it was a really bland Star Wars ripoff story. But I think FFVII did well primarily because they stole plot points and imagery from Akira, Berserk, Evangelion, and Nausicaa. There really hasn't been anything of their level of quality since then.

Utena can be weird and allegorical because it's very clear what it's about throughout all the episodes, and it only becomes more clear as the symbolism becomes more bizarre. FFXIII has you kill the guys who created the floating city and crash into the ground because... they manipulated you into killing them and destroying the floating city? Like WTF

My, it's certainly very pretty!  My first reaction to the character designs, seeing those four in the car, was: these are perfect designs, provided they are in a rock band together. 

Rosesareawesome101 wrote:

The New TGS trailer is probably the most key one yet as it showcase gameplay in area's outside of major cities, the main thing that worries me is that it might suffer from the pacing issues XIII had like the game had a lot of padding up until chaptor 9 with no definitive goal until Barthandelus told in that the main cast has to destroy Cocoon which brings question of the fact that theirs a Fal'cie that can talk and knows the intentions of a Pulse fal'cie but that not the point, the best way Final Fantasy XV can paced itself is like how Rockstar does it so after a setpiece battle or story event, the game should give the player the freedom to explore the area around then if the player wants to do the main quest, he'll head to car which is the main form of transportation in game and start heading to the next story relevant event, then if the player gets access to an airship, he can backtrack to these areas like in the older final fantasies mainly Final Fantasy VI and how that game opens up after the Floating Continent which is probably the best way they pace XV gameplay wise then again this is Square Enix a company that barely competent when it comes to game designed.

There's a fine balance to be struck, though.  You and I agree that Final Fantasy XIII's first several hours were boringly linear -- not motivated enough, giving the player too little freedom.  But I think we disagree about the pacing of Final Fantasy VI's World of Ruin, which I thought was the weakest part of an otherwise fantastic game.  You get the airship very early in the World of Ruin and immediately have access to anyplace you want to go.  That sounds great because it gives the player maximal freedom.  But I don't actually want maximal freedom.  If you tell me that I can go anywhere, I tend to feel lost and put the game down.  I was going to say that play becomes unmotivated, but that's not true.  In the World of Ruin, our motivation is clear: put the gang back together and go take down the big bad.  Maybe it would be better to say that play becomes opaque.  I can go anywhere, but I don't know where I should go.

To my taste, the World of Balance got it exactly right.  (Just like its name suggests!)  You don't get the airship for real until you've already explored most of the world.  Until then, gameplay is broadly linear, and with a couple exceptions you will hit the same plot points in the same order in every playthrough, but at any given moment you have room to explore.  You know where you're supposed to be going, and you have the freedom to improvise around that.  So I think you're on the right track to suggest that "after a setpiece battle or story event, the game should give the player the freedom to explore the area around," but I don't think the World of Ruin is a very good example of what that should look like.

Rosesareawesome101 wrote:

I think the biggest problem right now is the character designs, they are probably the least appealing character designs to come out of a final fantasy game, while it might be appealing to the japanese but the anime hair and fashion design does't appeal that well to the west and no don't bring up the fact that people have different taste, the point here is that this kind of character won't appeal well to a majority of people outside of japan since it's not considered to be the norm when it comes to character design, I know that limits creative freedom but if you are releasing a game in a series that been successful both in and out of it's home country, having character like this diminishes any international appeal the game might have.

My issue with the character designs is that they're all too familiar. They come off as generic. Like the blond dude, his hair reminds me of Cloud's original hair style from Final Fantasy 7. The girl who appears has a hairstyle very similar to Riku's from Final Fantasy 10, only less expressive. I swear I've seen the main character's hairstyle somewhere else before. It seems Genesis-y.

Tech Demo presented by Hajime Tabata himself

This video along with a leak Famitsu interview has brought up some concern regarding the battle, Tabata said in the leak that the game has move away from a Kingdom Hearts-esque battle system to something more in line with the series, one of the thing he mention is the auto dodge when holding the specific button instead of a timed dodge like in other action game and a auto attack, this along with the already controversial redesigns of character is implying that the game is going in a completely different direction then what Nomura intended overall, this game is Nomura's Magnum opus, he been developing it since it's announcement in 2006 so to change aspects of it like the story, the action based battle system and the character design makes the game seam watered down compared to Nomura vision of it in fact it was recently revealed that Nomura drop out as the direction and Hajime Tabata took over which reminds me of the situation Final fantasy XII was going through during it's own development hell, as soon as Hiroyuki Ito replaced Yasumi Matsuno as director, Final Fantasy XII went in a completely different direction.

I like to refer this as Disney Syndrome, when a ambitious project like when the Hunchback of Notredame for example had to get toned down to suit the kid friendly standard of the Disney and that lead to it's tonal inconsistencies, in this case, Tabata had to tone done Final Fantasy XV because it was too ambitious as a mainline Final Fantasy while removing the stuff that made the game vaguely interesting.

Personally if they allow you to turn off the auto-attack and auto defend like in the Last Story then I would't worry that much but since Square Enix has'nt really talked about the combat in detail, we have to rely on what information that is currently available to us which means we probably have to wait until this year's Jump Festa to get new information.

zevrem wrote:

this along with the already controversial redesigns of character

What were the characters like before and after the redesigns? I don't know enough about the project to be able to tell the difference.

Well for one thing, the outfits were originally designed by Nomura himself, back in 2010, Dengeki Playstation reviled the outfits will be done by fashion company "Roen" instead of Nomura himself, Nomura was still responsible for hair and faciel design but Roen is responsible for the outfits, for comparison:

to
[img]
Please not that redesigns in the button are not since Prompto for example had a redesign in the facial and hair department as seen in the Tgs 2014 live demo, he looks more like someone of Caucasian heritage then a Japan heritage, I'll link to the TGS demo again for further comparison:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zj5Fu09izY[/yoututbe][/img]

The thing that really rustles jimmies is stella's redesign, her original renders looked far less generic and anime-ish, she really complemented Nomura's intention of a more realistic and less anime-ish setting spiky haircuts aside, her older renders look far more mature then the recent one:

Note that her recent render looks a lot more doe-eyed then her older renders, it a stark contrast as subtle as it may be.

One last thing is that this/nest week's Famitsu is going to have some details regarding the game if anyone is interested.