Final Fantasy XIII-2 Announced 152
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."'"
yawn (Score:2, Insightful)
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:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Let's wait and see (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Not quite. Nothing beats the evilness of Kefka.
The funny thing is that The Last Remnant was a better Final Fantasy than Final Fantasy XIII was.
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:I'll wait for the Turbo Edition (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Let's wait and see (Score:5, Insightful)
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)