Quick Look: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

interesting it's the lightning.

50 minutes of Brad and Jeff poo pooing on the insanity of FF13? SIGN ME THE EFF UP

Before I hit this play button on this Quick Look video, I'm going to make a world-bending assumption: I bet they don't like it.
This isn't an assumption based on my knowing whether the game is good or bad, but instead based on the fact that this game does not seem targeted toward any of the G.Bomb guys.

Well this should be fun to watch.

Edit: Watching this made me sad. I still kind of want to try it out.

@thepaleking: I doubt many people still talk that way about Final Fantasy...

While I very much disagree with @brad on when it all went bad, I certainly agree that it did.

So wait, I didn't finish 13-2 I think it was, that one dealt with a lot of time travel and alternate reality stuff I think? Is that how they're all here? Did they all ascend?

Before I hit the play button on this Quick Look video, I'm going to make a reasonable assumption. This game is bad.

This assumption is based on my knowledge that Final Fantasy jumped the shark in 1997.

Burn.

Man that is one grungy lookin game.

@birthwild:

If you actually want to know why they're here I'll tell you but I'll spoiler it for you and other people. Most of what is in the spoiler is basically just an explanation of 13-2's ending from near the beginning of 13-3.

At the end of XIII-2 with the death of Caius all the Chaos in the world broke through and engulfed a large majority of the world. This also happened to be when Goddess Etro (the goddess of death) disappeared completely. Etro has the ability to more or less forge souls to bodies. Without her there was no new life but also no aging. People could still die but no one could be born. So you have 500 year old 8 year olds.

Hope was a weird one because Bhunzivlde (totally mispelled that but he's the God of Light) turned him back into his kid form because I guess fujoshis over in Japan didn't like his better adult look. They need their shota.

My main issue with this game is how easy it is to miss side quests (NOT canvas quests) and how you need I believe at least 40 of them to get the actual ending to the game. If the game presented them better, kind of like how Dead Rising presents its Survivors stuff, it'd be better to keep track of them. Some things have craaaaaaaazy time limits if you don't want to get screwed over and have to wait another day to do it (Basically 18:00 to the final boss area of Yusnaan was a god damn drag.)

I still don't get why they decided to make Hope one of the central characters in this series.

Final Fantasy is the worst.

@bacchus: You thought Seven is where it got bad, really?

Not that I think it ever got bad, minus the low point of XII. Though Seven seems to be an odd place to declare that.

This looks pretty great I think though. I liked XIII alright, I really really liked XIII-2. I have actually had this sitting on my shelf for a while now, but my backlog is so huge I haven't had time to get to it. This may spur me to do that.

Admittedly, I am not a big fan of time mechanics in my RPGs. On the other hand, the schemata stuff seems great.

@ares42: Hope turned around to not a shitty character in 13 but he became a really neat and cool guy in 13-2. Just annoyed they reverted him back. But! At least the Japanese Voice pack is available. Biggest compliment is the fact that Lightning doesn't sound extremely bored with everything while using it.

The part of this where it's a video game seems like it might be legitimately fun, but I haven't touched anything in the 13 series - so I have no idea if the story would make even the remotest bit of sense to me.

But there is a sexy lady in a chocobo outfit so I guess that's okay?

@spitznock: Is this game really target at anyone at all, I wonder

@doskias: They made a catch-up video for people jumping straight into this one I think, you can find it on GB actually. It's set far enough in the future that some of the characters may be new to you but I think you mostly can get by alright.

1-4 were pretty awful.

Can't wait for this game, it might have your classic rpg grind and fetch quest stuff but I love the dumb crazy story and the combat, good enough for me for a game :D

@addfwyn: Word? Awesome, thanks for the info. I'm gonna check that out.

The entire FF13 trilogy is awful. Just some bad games. It's even more egregious considering it came after FF12 which is arguably the best game in the series. Toriyama shouldn't be allowed to director another FF ever again. Bring back Hiroyuki Ito.

@hollitz: I remember liking 2 and 3 on the Super Nintendo. I don't know if they hold up now since I haven't played them in decades.

I do know that the best JRPG ever made is Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. This is a fact. Also, I played a lot of the Final Fantasy Tactics games. I really liked the one on the GBA.

@moseswalker: Always found it interesting how much tastes within the FF series differ. XII is like the only FF I actively dislike, and I really enjoyed XIII, though not as much as some earlier entries. Nobody can ever come to any agreement really. I guess because they are all such radically different from each other.

"I want to marry Lightning" - the director of this game

I can't wait to be confused by this video.

edit: Holy shit, this is so ridiculous. Can someone explain some things to me?

1. There were 2 worlds in FFXIII: a below one and an above one. Are they still a thing?

Okay, Brad just answered that one.

2. Was Lightning a deity in that game?

3. How did she become a deity?

4. Why is she being talked to like she's completely incompetent by this "Hope" dude?

5. Why?

Yep, Hope ruined another Final Fantasy game.

Yeah, FF13 is a sad game, I loved the series until FF12. I really hope they get back on track with the next one, but, by the amount of spinoffs it created, it seems this is the new lucrative norm.

It gets this confusing because the divergence comes down to the story and characters, which can be very subjective. You rarely see people arguing that they like this FF or that FF solely because of a system or gameplay aspect.

This actually looks...kind of cool. Who doesn't like fashion and dress up?

Too bad I don't have a console atm.

It's odd that people consider JRPGs a stale genre when they are really consistently out there taking huge risks in terms of story and mechanics.

This QL begins maybe 20 minutes before where I stopped playing and haven't gone back.

i'll probably play more today but hey i'm sure Brad will be able to give me some tips on what to do next!

and the Ark isn't heaven, JEEZ Brad didn't you play 13-2? it was explained so clearly there.

Edit: Only Brad can make me yell at my screen so passionately. Never change Shoemaker <3

@spitznock: The games is bad, regardless.

So brown...

Whenever you hear the word "weird," you drink.

Interested in the combat/job systems and the wild turns they continue to take with the structure of these games, but dear lord is the story nonsense. The first one was kind of JRPG nonsense, but it was at least self-contained nonsense with consistent character arcs and a plot that made some internal sense. Then they threw all that out the window in 13-2 with time travel and this goddess mythos that was nowhere to be found in the first game. Now they're further throwing it into a wood chipper with this game.

I suppose they wanted to re-use assets and characters as much as possible to get a return on the enormous costs they must have put in making the first game. But maybe plan a trilogy out from the beginning if you want the story to make any sense.

I haven't played this game, and am not really interested in playing it, but Brad ALWAYS does this where he just makes assumptions about something in a game and then is completely unable to make progress because of those false assumptions. And watching this video, he barely explored even half the map, dismissing other areas as "we've already been there" when he clearly hadn't within the context of the Quick Look, which means he hadn't been there "since 6 AM".

Also, the aliasing is REALLY bad when Lightning is in Heaven or whatever.

What is the Pac-Man Championship Edition of Final Fantasy?

Sucks because this is so divorced from anything that made any FF game good. 1(even a glorified Dragon Quest clone, its utterly basic nature is charming),4,5,6,7(though a glorified re-imagining of 6),9,12 were all so good.

Because DEEP SYMBOLIC NAME

You're the first person I've heard describe anything related to Final Fantasy 13 as "explained clearly".

Maybe the next FF game will be more appealing to me. I don't want to say I'm done with the series, but 13 brought me pretty close to feeling that way. Extra too bad for me considering they stayed with it for so long. I kinda just wish there were more realistic (i.e. ugly) looking human characters in FF games in general.

Yeah I give them credit for making a series that can be pretty different. I mean now we almost always see this sci-fi turn to it but it's been straight fantasy. There's been materia, job systems, sphere grid, the card system from 8. It's to the point where I think it's an issue, putting an MMO in the main series. But FF isn't too much for me anymore.

Been super excited for Versus though, still am as a main entry game.

I think Brad had some fun with both 13 games, but he had reservations.

Played FF-13. Did not like it. It took FF in a strange direction - J-pop influenced character design (even more so than in FFX), and J-drama influenced script.

Actually, X-2 was when FF left me behind and went to a different place. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, but every FF game since X-2 has been really weird to me, trying to reflect Japanese Pop-Culture to an extent that I simply can't relate to it anymore.

I wouldn't complain if Lightning never ever talked

So, it's Majora's Mask? Except Final Fantasy and the story is not good? Man, I hope square gets Final Fantasy back on track with their next one, and gives up on this fucking 13 sub-series.

Nope.

*Arguably

Dawg I think you explained it all yourself. X was leaning that way and then 13 picked up the X torch, especially with X-2.

Luckily, I think formerly Versus, now 15, isn't following that lead. I also have no interest in this dress up, religoius symbolism, j-pop mash up.

I'm surprised by the lack of CoDBlOps references when it came to the numbers.

Yeah, this quick look was exactly what I expected it to.

I think this game looks pretty fun. And visually it looks great.

I honestly think Square should've ditched the Final Fantasy branding altogether for these newer games, maybe class it as a spin-off series. The FFXIII games probably would have been more well received without it. It would allow people to play these new games for what they are instead of trying to compare it to what they remember Final Fantasy to be. Brad complaining about realistic Chocobos at the end seems like proof of that.

I think it would be a decent exercise if they tried to stop saying the word 'weird' in a dismissive way without taking a moment to explain what they actually think is worthy of dismissal.