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Ten Years of FFXIII?
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Apr 24, 2007 03:34 PM
from the hope-the-protagonist-is-interesting dept.
from the hope-the-protagonist-is-interesting dept.
IGN is reporting that the next game in the Final Fantasy series will probably be around for quite a while. If Square/Enix has anything to say about it, we'll be playing the FFXIII family of games for the next ten years. "Although speaking with a Nintendo magazine, Hashimoto brought up Final Fantasy XIII as a comparison for Square Enix's decision to expand upon the FFVII storyline through the Compilation project years after the game's original release. 'Different from something like VII, which we expanded upon afterwards, with Fabula Nova Crystallis FFXIII, we've thought about an expansive world setting from the start. Under the idea of wanting everyone to be sucked into the world for 10 years, we're preparing a number of categories.' He likened this approach to films like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings." Chris Kohler took the time to point out that, in the same interview, the Square folks stated they're still not entirely convinced about this whole Virtual Console thing. "We feel that the Japanese game market still requires [physical] media. Also, FF and Dragon Quest are played by a wide range of users, from children to adults, so there are limitations when you consider the problems that we would have with billing systems."
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FFXIII Not Due Until Next Year 43 comments
IGN translated an article discussing a financials meeting recently held by Final Fantasy creator Square/Enix. According to company president Yoichi Wada, don't expect FFXIII until next year. At least. "'It will still take a bit more time. At the very least, [a release] this fiscal year is definitely out of the question.' Japanese is known for being a pretty vague language, but Wada's words were pretty clear. No FFXIII in Japan until some time after March 2008. Let's hope Square Enix starts the translation before development finishes up." The implication there, of course, is that if we follow the trend from FFXII the U.S. may not see the game until Winter 08, or even early 09.
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Which kind of games? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've always been a fan of the game worlds that SquareEnix has been able to craft, even if there are some standards and similarities between all of them. Being able to explore more of the "extra stuff" would hopefully lead to a more developed backstory, making it even more entertaining to play through games multiple times (as long as they actually stay consistent, of course). I just really don't have any interest, though, in playing 10 years worth of melodramatic end-of-world tales... in the same world. Get kind of monotonous, ya know?
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Unfortunately, that doesn't change what's out *now*, which is just the 2 games.
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FFT: advance 2 for DS [gamespot.com]
Square is in for a rude surprise. (Score:3, Insightful)
That is, I don't think any of the Final Fantasy games to come will have the staying power that 7 has had. Making a business strategy around a franchise of a sequel that is still a long ways off doesn't seem to be too bright.
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X is my favorite. VII failed to entertain or interest me in any way after the first 30 minutes or so, so I quit. BORING.
XIII's text was, for some reason, nearly unreadable to me, and gave me a headache. WTF?
Thought XII sucked. They fixed the problems (boring-ass random encounters, primarily) with the previous games, but somehow managed to create whole new ones that may actually be worse, and decided that it'd be a great idea to halve the amount of story and character development sprinkled in
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Re:Square is in for a rude surprise. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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It was a lot harder to develop an attachment for the previous games, when all we had were sprites. This emotional aspect is what separates FFVII from FFVI.
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I agree - the characters in FFVI had so much more emotion and backstory and character than in FFVII, that I can still remember all the characters from FFVI but can't really remember any beyond the Big Three (Aeris, Cloud, and Sephiroth) from FFVII. And the only reason anyone remembers the Big Three is because the Sephiweenies never stop talking about them.
What was Cloud's character? He was a characterless ass. Sephiroth never made any sense (first he w
Re:Square is in for a rude surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because, you know, it's was harder to development attachment to characters in books before we made movie version of them, because all we had were words.</sarcasm>
Parent
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They've had some successes with sequels recently, all this is is SE stating that they intend to make some real sequels from the start.
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Re:Square is in for a rude surprise. (Score:4, Insightful)
Even worse for spin-offs, there's little to really address before the story occurs, and many people in the story have no story-based history. Celes has a minor amount of history in the main story, but everyone else is sort of convinced of the problem and realizes that action needs to be taken.
Compare that to 7, where a band of individuals is fighting a government power. The real enemy, though, is a crazy guy with a mom-complex. When he's defeated, the government programs and all of the technology associated with it don't just disappear. Likewise, there's a huge history of the conspiracies built up in the game. A lot of it is terribly cliche, but it's ripe for expansion in spin-off games.
To me, though, that's also why I really like 6 a lot more. It felt like a full game, and you play the story from beginning to end. You start basically right where the real action begins and where the empire starts to make its moves, and it ends after a hell of a lot happens -- after the climax, after the denoument, at the real "end." FF4 is similar, although it peppers the world with more "mysterious old things from an advanced civilization" which are really just holdover themes from FF1-3. 7 felt like a snapshot, like the story was picked up in the middle and here are the characters. They're introduced and typecast as soon as you meet them, and nothing really changes. There are some twists in the story but the events don't really change the world. In fact, the prevention of any major change is pretty much the underlying element. Compared to 6, where you ride huge changes all the way through (from the discovery of magic, to the use of magic, to the destruction of the world and how it changes past locations, up to people coming to grips with the change and growing past it).
Sadly, it means that it's not a good market for sequels, but I think that's simply testament to how good of a story it was.
Parent
...and the Gamestop employee explodes (Score:5, Funny)
Still waiting for Bahamut Lagoon II (Score:2)
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Lucky Them (Score:3, Interesting)
The engine keeps getting gutted and turned inside out and remade yet it always remains distinctively Final Fantasy. As far as maintaining a franchise goes, Square's done well to not dilute the ingredients too much. Nothing stands still for too long. But TFA isn't talking about that. It's talking about story.
What I always liked about the Final Fantasy series is that, storywise, it wipes it all clean and starts anew. Some characters keep reappearing on and off in various forms like Cid and Moogles and Dark Mage, but essentially each one is an alternate universe with the same kinds of archetypes. Even though Rydia != Terra != Aeris and so on, they all fit into an archtype of the mysterious female lead. It's always been neat looking through the entire world drawn up and picking out the disillusioned, the rebel, the troublemaker, and so on.
When this nonsense started with FFX-2, it started an age of what amounts to Square being lazy. EACH WORLD depicted was supposed to be large and expansive and deep.
Now instead of being creative for the next ten years they're going to mix things up in the same universe?
Back to the game engine. It gets reworked and Square can get away with it because they trash all the backstory and start anew. How is the coherancy going to work out when you have 10 years (that's, what, 5 games?) in the same universe but 5 different game engines? Maybe they're going to cut that out, too.
What a shame.
And they keep mistranslating the female leads too (Score:2)
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Square's troubles began in 2001 with the awful FF: Spirits Within. It was supposed to be the greatest thing ever, but instead ended up costing Square so much money they had to resort to that tried and tested way of making money in the video games industry: recycle old content.
FF X-2 came along, and it was awful,
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Ho-hum (Score:2)
Square makes an announcement like this at least once for every Final Fantasy title they release. Just recently, we heard that we'll be playing FF7 games for the next fifteen years and FF12 games for the next five.
The FF series has been fantastic for a long time, but Square is notorious for having eyes much bigger than its stomach, so to speak. Just look at the colossal failure that was The Spirits Within, or the canceled PS2 ports of FF7, FF8 and FF9. Or the floundering PlayOnline service, which is only
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Thanks for reminding me about it. I'm going to have to pull out the DVD and watch it at home.
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FFXIII part 10 (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that new ideas and such are grand, but sometimes I just like the old stuff. If I fall in love with the FFXIII world (and can afford a PS3), then I would love more games in that world.
wow (Score:3, Interesting)
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Foolish assumption (Score:2)
But it is foolish to as
Well, it worked for GTA III... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody has any complaints about that. GTAIV probably won't be any more different from GTAIII than GTAIII was from San Andreas.
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Finish FFXII first (Score:2)
I'd much rather see FFXII fleshed out first. Maybe it's just me, but I felt like they cut out a huge chunk of story toward the end. It's like they got halfway through the plot they'd originally worked out, realized they were running way behind schedule, and just jumped ahead to the last couple chapters after coming up with a tiny amount of connecting material to lessen the severity of the sudden jolt in the story.
It's sad, too -- up until the sudden skip to the ending, FFXII's storyline was shaping up as a
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That sums it up exactly. I've -tried- to like it. The auto-battle seems even intrigues me, as a programmer. But really you fight from place to place for no apparent reason and get a little cutscene when you get there. Because they were trying to focus on everyone, instead of the main character, the cutscenes are too generic and the few that DO have a main character have a different one each time.
I like having more than 1 main character. FF8 was a great example of this. You'd switch back and
My FF want list (Score:2)
Just once, I'd like a FF game where you were
the 'final fantasy' model is broken. (Score:3, Insightful)
These sort of RPGs give video games a bad name. An RPG can be done well. Ultima Online is perhaps the finest example in my book. Combat had dynamics even if it was horribly unbalanced (only a handful of viable skill/stat combinations) and the economies were real in a way that nobody who has followed has been able to replicate (which was what I thought made the game a faithful rpg).
World of Warcraft, despite its massive shortcomings, is also light years ahead of this style of game. Player versus player and raid combat introduce dynamics that something like Final Fantasy can never hope to replicate. Now I disagree with the premises that raiding and pvp were designed with in warcraft but they are good ideas and do have a future. Namely - more isn't harder, and that goes both with respect to personnel requirements and time investment.
Final fantasy is simply the spiritual successor to Dragon Quest, and we all know how 'great' of a 'game' that is.
To point, though, it isn't surprising that they're going to continue to milk their greatest success. They're taking a page out of a novelist's book. The wheel of time is a shining example of this mentality.
On the other end of the spectrum there is Oblivion, which in my book is just as big of a piece of shit as Final fantasy is.
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What if the FFXIII universe sucks? (Score:2)
So, my worry is that perhaps the FFXIII universe won't be interesting either. If that's the case, then regular fans of the series may be put off, and we'll have to wait a decade before we see something different. Obviously this can work the opposit
Bullshit (Score:2)
OK, we've seen the original Final Fantasy re-released on the WonderSwan Color, the PlayStation, the Game Boy Advance, mobile phones, and soon the PSP. Dragon Quest has had almost as many re-releases (SFC, GBC, mobile). The only "limitations" I'm seeing here is that Square-Enix would be limited in their ability to continue p
When will pride goeth? (Score:2)
This is from the company that six years ago was boasting about doing everything online (viz, FF XI, the strategy guide for FF IX, etc.) and plastering the PlayOnline.com [playonline.com] moniker everywhere it would fit. They don't seem to be talking about that grand plan much anymore.
Seriously, guys, all of your sequels have sucked (FFX-2, Dirge of Cerberus, etc.), and the you totally overlook the good work you've done on side-projects (e.g., all the Tactics and Kingdom Hearts games). We'll be happy if you just make a go
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FF games are not sequels to each other, for most part they are totally independed games and in their own universes, so the reason why you got so many, is simply that Square has sticking FF names on half of the RPGs they ever created over the years.
Aside from that, FF games provide shiny graphics, better then average stories (however at times very cliché), a rather annoying fighting and random encounters, the last two made me
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The main difference in all of the games is usually how you learn your techniques. For instance:
FF1 has set jobs
FF4 has jobs that you can change
FF7 has Materia that you equip to use abilities
FF8 has a finite supply of spells that you collect from certain spots on the map.
FF9 h
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