Topic: FF15

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Well, someone had to do it.

Hey everyone I bought a sweet Cadillac and I'm going to drive around the countryside and fight giant monsters! Anyone want to come with? You gotta supply your own black trenchcoat and hair dye

I'm actually pretty excited for this. I can see tons of ways it might go wrong (especially if the action doesn't feel right, since from the trailers it looks very weighty) but still, the allure of the road trip is too great

Actually, bias set aside, I do not like this game's style. I don't like the character designs and the car.

I actually like that the combat seems weighty, but yeah, it's gonna take a lot to make it work.

Frankly when Nomura and the KH team were developping the game (as FF Versus XIII) it was my most anticipated JRPG. But now that Tabata and the Type-0 team got on board and Nomura left to work on KH3, I really don't like what I'm seeing. The "one button" action Tabata talks about in his recent interviews is not reassuring at all...

One button action?
ugh....
I guess I'll stick with Xenoblade Chronicles X
Because mechs totally make more sense than cars.

I find it a bit of an odd curiosity how much people are freaking out over the new Tabata interview (around the web, not necessarily on NL).

What were people really expecting? A return to the Final Fantasy of yesterday? Bold new trails being blazed? There will never be another Final Fantasy game like those that came out in the 90s because all of the people who made Square what it was (for better or worse) have either founded their own studios or gone freelance. They've been replaced with people who don't share the same vision (again, for better or worse) and get paid to make a different product.

The only significant person left from those days is Yoshinori Kitase, but his priorities have always been a cinematic experience over a gameplay experience. He just never had the hardware to do it on the SNES/PS1. Looking back at it, Chrono Trigger was a very story-driven game. As the technology got better though, his games moved away from being story-based through scrolling text and player input and more about CG cutscenes. For better or worse. Nomura is still around too of course, but he wasn't really significant in the 90s. He was doing character designs and monster sprites back then.

Then there's those losing it about how Final Fantasy is going casual because of one action button input. Well... for one, your special hardcore game series is about as casual and mainstream as JRPGs get. Millions of people play and buy these games. They're not "yours." For another, where have you been for the last 10 years? The last four Final Fantasy games played themselves. FF12 didn't even require button input if you were feeling really lazy. You just had to move the analog stick.

Way I see it is if you had no interest in any of the Fabula Nova Crystallis games, you probably have nothing to be excited about for FFXV either. It's a product by the same people conceived in the same universe for the same audience. If you did like FFXIII and its sequels/spin-offs though, then you'll probably have a great time with FFXV too.

After Square's comment on Bravely Default's unexpected popularity, yes.

I would expect that for their 3DS games, not for their huge budget console games that they've spent 10 years developing and are "50-60% done."

I mean, Bravely Default and Bravely Second are budget games by comparison and their development is being handled by Silicon Studio. They have a SE producer on the project, but Tomoya Asano is pretty low profile, his previous producer credits in full being Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light, all for DS. The creative staff of Final Fantasy Explorers is a bunch of low profile people too. SE was surprised and delighted by the success of Bravely Default, but they've shown no sign of shifting towards that sort of business model.

Except they essentially said that the success of Bravely Default (and the failure of the first version of FFXIV) have made them reconsider their entire development of JRPGs. Granted, I don't blame you for being skeptical.

and to be fair, VS-13 was probably in the same development hell that Pikmin 3 was, by that I mean I assume they mostly started over for the sake of next gen.

Well then you thought wrong as this game has been in production long before Bravery Default came along.

Kingdom Hearts and Secret of Mana both used very simple systems with most actions mapped to one or two buttons that changed based on context and how you used it. It's possible that FFXV could keep things interesting without using a bazillion buttons.

Zelda too. One context-specific action button is all 3D Zelda has ever needed. In fact, I would say that simplicity in control scheme is a great design to work towards. A complicated, elaborate control scheme is a form of artificial difficulty, and that style of design needs to die.

Well all I can say is that I've never really noticed. Maybe it's because I tend to be a completionist with Final Fantasy games so the latter stages of the story tend to be heavily diluted by interruption.
I do agree with the other side of the argument though, I liked FF9 specifically because it has a more cheerful and optimistic tone. The Final Fantasy series on the whole is a bit too negative. If you played through FF6,7 and 8 consecutively, you might fall into a depression.

When it's gonna have taken 10 years in development by the time it releases, isn't pretty much everything a budget game by comparison? I assume 10 years will make it the longest developed game in history?

Pretty much. I'm morbidly curious as to what the budget for FFXV currently stands at. I'm expecting it to sell better than the last two FF games easily, but by now, I'm wondering if it can even turn a profit.

It probably won't turn a profit. Then again this is Square Enix we're talking about...it DEFINITELY won't turn a profit

Surely FF13 turned a profit? It did sell over 7 million. If that doesn't make a profit, it's the worst business plan ever.

I'm thinking if it reviews well, 15 could sell quite well. A lot of people are saying that it could make or break the series, in some sense. I doubt the series will ever officially be discarded but this could certainly decide if it maintains its AAA status. Given that Japan is slowly abandoning consoles, and given that Japan has traditionally accounted for a large portion of the sales in the Final Fantasy series, it seems unlikely that they'll be able to maintain the budgets needed for AAA games unless this game, in some sense, reignites the series.

Considering how 4 million is a disappointment with something like Lara Croft, I have no high hopes for Squeenix unless they get their act together. I'm not holding my breath though

Well surely they'll have learnt their lesson from that!

And it was a good game, best Tomb Raider in my opinion.