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Role Playing (Games)

Ten Years of FFXIII? 146

Posted by Zonk 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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Ten Years of FFXIII? More

Ten Years of FFXIII?

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  • Which kind of games? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EggyToast ( 858951 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @04:39PM (#18861067) Homepage
    So, is this going to be like a "lots of games in Ivalice" kind of thing that they're doing with FF12 and the newer FFTactics games, or a bunch of spinoffs a la FF7 (of dubious quality)?

    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?

    • and the newer FFTactics games

      What newer FFTactics games? Links please!

      • There's one coming out for the PSP (a "remake" of the original, although pretty redone from the videos (search youtube)), and I would honestly be surprised if there isn't one for the DS at some point. FFT:A did brisk sales and Crystal Chronicles DS is coming out this year.

        Unfortunately, that doesn't change what's out *now*, which is just the 2 games.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Xymor ( 943922 )
        FFT: Lion War for psp [gamespot.com]

        FFT: advance 2 for DS [gamespot.com]
        • So is FFTA2 going to be as annoying as the first? I enjoyed FFTA, but ended up putting it down for a while, only to finish it because... well, I bought it and I needed to finish it. I just hated that it took so damn long for the computer to take it's turns. It was so annoyingly slow that I just ended up getting frustrated with it over and over again.

          I'll have to check out the link when I'm not blocked at work.

  • Square is in for a rude surprise. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DragonPup ( 302885 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @04:40PM (#18861079)
    "There is no FF7 but FF7"

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by metamatic ( 202216 )
      I'll probably be crucified for saying so, but I didn't like Final Fantasy VII. I much preferred X. I found VII so irritating that I stopped playing it part way through.
      • Someone that agrees with me.

        FFVII wasn't so great. Sure, it looked pretty, but it just started a huge cliche train. You know, man with spiky hair rebels against his past and battles an old friend.

        My gosh, at least FFXI has something innovative going for it... Kind of.

        Let's just go back to the non-eye-candy days of FFIV... Pleaaase?

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by Glowing Fish ( 155236 )
        Like your signature says, you should be modded -1 Wrong for denigrating the greatness that was FFVII.

        • Re:Square is in for a rude surprise. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Mattintosh ( 758112 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @05:46PM (#18862173)
          FF7 was only "great" to those that didn't play FF3(6). Even the nerfed American version of FF3 was better than FF7 in terms of everything other than the ability to play FMV.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dsanfte ( 443781 )
            FMV, which you seem to dismiss, was a big part of FFVII's ability to evoke emotion in a way that no previous FF ever had. A lot of fans have an emotional attachment to the world created by VII, myself included. FMV made the experience more 'real' (Aeris' death?)

            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.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward
              This emotional aspect is what separates FFVII from FFVI.

              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: (Score:2, Informative)

                by joystickgenie ( 913297 )
                I think you should go back and play it again.

                "What was Cloud's character? He was a characterless ass"

                Cloud was a child who wanted to aspire to greatness and become one of the world's elite warriors (solider) attempting to be like his hero Sephiroth. He made a promise to his closest friend (Tifa) that he would not return until he achieved this goal and was someone the village could be proud of. After leaving his home and everyone he cared about behind, he failed in becoming a solider. Cloud felt shamed by th

            • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

              by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @07:42PM (#18863411)
              Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • Actually I think that is where a lot of the elitist early gen RPGs and the only good RPGs mentality. In the early gen RPGs you have to make up a lot of the imagery yourself like reading a book where it is only really limited by your imagination, with current or recent gen the imagery is giving right to you and what you see is what you get.
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • I can respect that. I too have been playing RPGs since the dawn of Nintendo. Though my opinion differs greatly to yours with VI and IV being my favorites, followed by VII (mostly because I kind of like being locked into one class per char). What I get sick of hearing is the kids who started at VIII saying IX sucked because it wasn't VIII. Or worse, I've heard much badmouthing of pre PSX Final Fantasy's because of "bad graphics and no FMV's". Which is complete BS. And, unfortunately, many of them work
      • I liked VII, but not enough to beat it. Got to the second disc a couple times and said screw it. I've seen it played almost all the way through and have no desire to play it again. X and XII were good, and in my opinion, VI was the best of the lot.
        • I agree on everything except the part about X and XII. I haven't played those. VIII was better than most people give it credit for, though, so I'll use that as a stand-in comment.
          • VIII was a decent game. The only problems with it were (1) it wasn't a Final Fantasy game, and (2) the graphics don't survive up-rezzing in an emulator the way that the graphics of VII or IX do.
      • I'm with ya.

        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
        • D'oh! VIII's text was unreadable, not XIII. Heh.
        • I thought X was the most EMO piece of frustrating tripe that exsisted. Story was based around the relationship of a whiny little shit and a odd asian stoic stereo type (see Rei:Neongenesis). FFVIII was not so good. IX was fun but not great, VII was good but a bit slapshot and VI will always be my favorite.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Remember how Square-Enix announced that FFX was going to be the last single-player Final Fantasy and that all other Final Fantasies after that were going to be multi-player online games?

      How many people here can even name the Final Fantasy MMORPG correctly, let alone ever played it for more than a few months? (Of course, that could always have something to do with the WoW beta starting a few months after it was released in the US, along with Square-Enix following Sony's "fuck Europe" technique, causing it to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Psmylie ( 169236 ) *
        "Remember how Square-Enix announced that FFX was going to be the last single-player Final Fantasy and that all other Final Fantasies after that were going to be multi-player online games?"

        No, I don't. Do you have a source for that? I remember them saying the exact opposite, that FFXI would be online but they would continue making single-player games, though I could be wrong

        "How many people here can even name the Final Fantasy MMORPG correctly, let alone ever played it for more than a few months?"

        You mea

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )
      FFVII wasn't the best in the series, it was just the first one that so many played. It's staying power as an 'icon' is sentimental.

      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.
    • 6 is still legendary but a lot more gamers were exposed to 7. 6 felt more together being the last of a game generation. 7 seemed pretty slapshot because of the various styles of FMV and new 3d elements. I personally would have prefered RPGS to hit it big with 6 and see sequels to 6 instead. but you get what you get.

      • Re:Square is in for a rude surprise. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by EggyToast ( 858951 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @10:01PM (#18864539) Homepage
        I honestly feel that the reason that 6 isn't addressed anymore is due to how the game isn't a set of characters and their melodramatic relationships, but rather more of a "group of adventurers from around the globe who group together to defeat evil." The WoR portion is largely what the "aftermath" of most games are, and there are signs of the world recovering. Kefka is largely absent other than the occasional show of power and prevention of any real order developing. When he is defeated, there are no questionable towns, no weird alliances or government programs that could, potentially, continue. The Esper thing is resolved and the world can essentially get back to normal.

        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.

  • There's no "final" in Final Fantasy (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    S-E better damn well hope that XIII at its core, is a good game with an interesting world, and more than just eye candy. Otherwise you have 10 years of crap... if they make it that long.

    Whatever happened to their creative credo of making completely new worlds in each game? Did the almighty yen/dollar/gil finally crush that spirit?

  • ...and the Gamestop employee explodes (Score:5, Funny)

    by Perseid ( 660451 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @04:43PM (#18861159)
    "Yeah, uh, I want FF XII IV, FF VII VII and FF II XI. Got that?" [ Boom ]
  • Ten years? I'd be surprised if FFXIII was the only title in that span of time.
  • N.F.I.
    As a PC Gamer and Adventure, Adventure/Action genre fan... what's so great about the whole FF series that there are that many sequels?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by oloron ( 1092167 )
      play the original FF on your local NES emulator and you will know
      • This is terrible advice. The original included such frustrations as members of your party not being able to tell when an enemy is defeated, so any queued attacks left on that target will miss.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Mprx ( 82435 )
          The "ineffective" feature is actually the best part of FF1. Adds a bit of tactical depth, rather than the "hit A until you win" battle system of all the other FF games.
    • Great worlds with an interesting history. And characters you get attached to.

      I'd still prefer to have a completely new Final Fantasy every few years though. 'Cause otherwise if you don't like it, you are screwed. I didn't like FF8 at all. But then I just had to wait a while, and out came FF 9 and 10 which I loved. I didn't like 10-2, but then came 12 which, is ok (I haven't given it a fair chance yet). So what if you don't like 13. You are just screwed for 10 years. At least if you play Final Fant

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )
      ### what's so great about the whole FF series that there are that many sequels?

      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

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The FF's are a little different than your normal series. They are all (until now, apparently) entirely different games with entirely different settings. Each game is a brand new experience, nd are driven by their plot and battle system.

      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
  • So if they are putting all their effort into this, how long do I have to wait for Bahamut Lagoon II?
    • I'm still waiting for an official English release of Bahamut Lagoon 1. Square should realize the virtual console would be the perfect place to publish localized versions of titles never previously released, as long as they can keep the translation costs below the revenue of the number of copies they expect it could sell (and Nintendo lets them release stuff into other regions than the original region). I bet Seiken Densetsu 3 (equivalent to Secret of Mana 2) could easily sell 50,000 - 100,000 downloads

  • Lucky Them (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Applekid ( 993327 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @04:58PM (#18861401)
    Final fantasy XIII? Ten years of lucky # 13.

    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.
    • Lydia, [Lenna,] Tina, Aerith... At least they fixed Lenna in the GBA rerelease - it was Reina in that awful PSX version.
    • I also have a bad feeling about this. They could pull it off and turn the FF series on its head, turning it into something interesting and fresh, but given their recent history I'm somewhat worried.

      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,
      • If they had released advent children instead of the spirits within they problably would not have lost their shirt. Advent children in (japanese with subs) is a pretty good anime flick. With decent action sequences and CG but it will never be as good in yoru mind as what you want from FF7 just as I will never get a game that hit me like FFVI or FFIV. IT's called nostalgia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brkello ( 642429 )
      I guess I don't understand your complaint. If you create a world that is compelling enough, then it is easy to have many different, uniquie, deep stories in that universe. The benefit is, after the first one, you now have a frame of reference to draw upon. Use Star Wars as an easy example. Can you think of a story for the Star Wars universe? What elements will it have? Light sabres, lasers, space ships, the Force, the Rebels, and the Empire. Can there not be many compelling stories in the same univer
      • The problem with creating a world "compelling enough" to contain all the different kinds of things Final Fantasy contains would be impossible almost by definition. How many different ways can an evil antagonist seize the power of the gods within any particular universe of discourse? Final Fantasy, unlike Star Wars, has elements of grandure and urgency (one could even call it a negative point in the Final Fantasy series: it's ALWAYS the destruction of EVERYTHING). How can you be the universe's only hope if,

  • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pojut ( 1027544 )

      Just look at the colossal failure that was The Spirits Within
      While I understand that The Spirits Within was not NEARLY what it could have been...am I really the only person that liked that movie? I thought for what it was it was great.
      • No, I enjoyed it also. It wasn't a bad movie, the problem was that it was over-hyped, and the differing level of detail between the different characters (Principles, Secondary, Background) was sometimes a bit jarring.

        Thanks for reminding me about it. I'm going to have to pull out the DVD and watch it at home. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Endo13 ( 1000782 )
        I did enjoy it, but I wouldn't call it "great". Even for what it was.
      • I also enjoyed The Spirits Within. really where it failed for me was only in the title. They shouldnt have put final fantasy on it at all because realy it was nothing like the series of games and that lead to a lot of disapointment for the people who were hoping for a final fantasy movie.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Roogna ( 9643 )

        I enjoyed it too. One mistake I think -Sony- made with the film was having pushed it in the trailers as an CGI action film. Since the trailers didn't portray the film properly to American audiences, I think it left a lot of early goers to the film uninterested. It just wasn't what they came expecting.

      • It was enjoyable, but only as a tech demo, frankly. And it basically killed the company--they put a fortune into opening a studio to produce it, and then failed to recoup most of that money. From what I understand, it's what directly led to the Enix buyout.

  • FF XIII is being ported to the Wii and xBox360 right now, so that's an extra year.

    Then they port it to the handhelds for the next gen of handhelds.

    Then they have it as a free download on the next gen after that.

    I can see 10 years.

  • FFXIII part 10 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hansamurai ( 907719 ) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @05:40PM (#18862067) Homepage Journal
    Hmmm... I say go for it. If Square-Enix is going to spend millions of dollars with some of the best talent creating the universe for FFXIII, why not exploit it? We see this all the time in science fiction and fantasy, why can't it work for video games? It doesn't mean that every FFXIII game will be good, but how many times have we finished a game and thought, "wow, I really liked those characters/cities/culture/history/bad guys/etc. I would love to play another game in that universe." I would love to play another Chrono game, or another game in the world of Final Fantasy 6. Square gave us a taste of this with FFX-2, and even though the game wasn't your typical Square RPG, it sold gobs because it was a direct sequel to a much loved game.

    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.
    • I'm just afraid we'll get more Xeno-sequel quality games. Xenogears? Amazing. Xenosage Ep 1? Crap. Ep 2? Worse... Is there a 3 out yet? I don't know because I lost interest during ep2. The game was over hyped, and over FMVed... Kinda like FFX. But much worse. I may be able to handle multiple games in the same universe, but I've had quite enough of Ivalice.
      • Yes, there was a Xenosaga episode 3. And I was only able to make it through half of the first Xenosaga game, it wasn't the cutscenes as much as I was bored by the game and the battles. I believe I must actually like cutscenes as the Metal Gear Solid series is one of my favorites.

        And I've had enough of Ivalice too, but maybe if the FF13 world is built from the groundup with multiple games in mind, it will be more intriguing... or less.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Gogo0 ( 877020 )
          Xenogears was so text-heavy because it didnt have FMV, but people who enjoyed the game were people who were interested in the story being told. I think its the same thing with MGS. Yes, youre not playing it, but its furthering the plot in ways that wouldnt be possible or as effective if you were playing through the same situation. FMV is good when it isnt just filler or a place to show off something neat looking. I see most of the FF FMVs as technical showcases with little substance (much like the FF movie)

  • wow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheGeneration ( 228855 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @05:42PM (#18862113) Journal
    Is there an audience for fighting the same beast over and over again, and watching the same cut scene "magic spell" repeatedly for 10 years?
  • We have FF7 going for a long time not because Square planned on it. Like it or not it is the most visible and well known FF that ever existed so eventually they figured out you could make a game that mentions Sephiroth might be in it and sell a respectable amount. I have heard of people who went out and got Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix because they added another scene with Sephiroth in it. Nothing wrong with taking advantage of a mega-popular game that somehow kept people coming back.

    But it is foolish to as

  • Well, it worked for GTA III... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 7Prime ( 871679 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @05:56PM (#18862315) Homepage Journal
    Seriously, GTA III came out in, what, 2000? It's 2007 and We're just now getting the next installment after: GTA3, GTA3: Vice City, GTA3: San Andreas, GTA3: Liberty City Stories, GTA3: Vice City Stories...

    Nobody has any complaints about that. GTAIV probably won't be any more different from GTAIII than GTAIII was from San Andreas.
    • Don't forget GTA: Emerald City (aka Seattle)
    • Your comparison is not very fair as all the GTA games you listed are all basically the same game engine with a different world on top of it. What Square is likely to do is the opposite, build many different game engines with the same world. Look at what they're doing with FF7, they're experimenting with different genres but keeping it in the same universe. I can understand the point you're trying to make, but the point of the GTA games is that they're different stories in different settings (at least dif

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rayonic ( 462789 )
      The problem is that the GTA series has been pretty solid, but most of the Final Fantasy side-sequels have been subpar. Final Fantasy X-2 is easily the best of them, and that's sad.

  • 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

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Astarica ( 986098 )
      The game feels incomplete because in a game that is supposed to be about taking back the reigns of history and put it in the hands of man, you spend your time almost exclusively fighting 10 species of Malboros or cats. In a game that supposed to focus on politics and struggle between men, the main hero's party somehow manages to stay out of it completely and become some kind of pest exterminators instead.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Aladrin ( 926209 )
        THANK YOU.

        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
  • Drop the Roman Numbers already! I actually would like "sequels" and such for FF. What would I really like? No more end of the word/got to save the entire world quests. This is something that the FF series sucks at. Each of them starts with a small group that should just be happy to survive on their own adventures. And theses small groups level up and take down empires. And all tech cultures are evil because they pollute and trees and mana are automatically good.

    Just once, I'd like a FF game where you were

  • the 'final fantasy' model is broken. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Superfarstucker ( 621775 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @06:44PM (#18862871)
    The final fantasy RPG model is an evolutionary dead end. The problem isn't so much what these type of RPGs are, but rather what they aren't: a game. I like the idea of playing a game that has a deep story line but it has to present some kind of challenge as well. 'Combat' is merely rote memorization and the 'secrets' are just a ploy to get you to shell out an extra 20 bucks for the strategy guide.

    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.
    • And by dragon's quest I mean dragon's Lair.
    • Noy everyone enjoys multi-player long term grinds. I prefer my RPGS epic and finishable in less thena month. For this DQ8 and FFXII and oblivion fills my needs. If I need online play I frefer War 3, where my skills are more important then how long I spend grinding out quests, honor, epics, and guild mates.
  • Square really needs to learn to use subtitles instead of numbers for Final Fantasy. The games aren't connected in anyway (they're not even set in the same universes!) and are thus not sequels. When an actual sequel does come along however, you get some idiotic sounding name like Final Fantasy X-2. I mean, really now, what the hell.
    • I was all ready to mod you because I thought you meant -real- subtitles. Because my wishlist is getting the Japanese voice track for the games to be made available with subs. FFX Jap in Japanese is, for the most part, so much better than the US version. US Voice actors, for the most part, just aren't very good.
      • Do you understand spoken japanese? I know a fair number of anime fans who prefer japanese subtitles simply because they don't understand what they're saying, and therefore don't realize that they're just as bad or cheaply done as US ones.

        • A bit, but the main reason is that the Japanese voice actors are so much better than american. In Japan, it's a legitimate profession. In America, it's what you do when you can't find better work, for the most part. Also, American voice directors do stupid things, like telling the actors to match their vocal cadence to the lip flapping of the animated character. (Note that the Japanese don't do this, either). Which is why, in FFX, Yuna..talks kind...of like...an under.stated... Captain Kirk. And why A

  • I don't know about you guys, but while I enjoyed the new gameplay mechanics in FFXII, I was not a fan of its universe, its story, nor of its characters and such. It was much too bland for my tastes, albeit more realistic than some of the earlier games (FFX, etc.).

    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
  • "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"

    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

  • 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

  • and not enough on making good games.

    Most of their games are cookie cutter crap, and they only draw a profit because occasionally they'll bother to put together an interesting story and throw a good game in the grab bag that is square's product line up. People buy their games, each time figuring they have about a 10% chance of it being another chrono trigger, but 9 times out of 10 the come back with some pretty forgettable games.

    These secondary installments are just another way of milking money out of the fe

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