Okay, This Final Fantasy XIII Story Recap Is Pretty Cute

Square really have put the work in, I hope this game is a success. I like Lightning as a lead character game looks great!

OMG YES!

I still don't know what the fuck is going on.

@tryptophan: They did do all those FFIV games, but they were all cellphone games in Japan and WiiWare games T_T

And yeah like the FF13 characters are pretty and all, good job on their models, but even the pretty dumb story of the FF13 series was pretty rad in this 16-bit style.

I loved that. I'm stoked for new ff! Haters gonna hate I guess...

This Video makes me think someone at Square still gets it, but this story still makes no sense. I still love the final fantasy 6 engine still looks so good.

You've misinterpreting what I'm saying, sorry, but I'll clarify.

I was not saying that this teaser/trailer/story recap thing was ineffective at the purpose of being a story recap - it's effective, cool, and like Alex said, a cute thing at that very purpose. I still have little idea what's going on, but regardless of that, I'm not heavily invested in the current series so I just don't care that much.

What I was actually trying to say, is that this story recap is framed as a huge hot garbage pile of nostalgic bullshit, because it's completely unrepresentative of what modern-day Final Fantasy is. I'm sure it's representative of the story elements that it is trying to recap, but the fact remains that the modern Final Fantasy game it is attempting to describe is absolutely nothing like the golden-era of nostalgic presence that it is trying to evoke with its pre-FF7 2D sprites and design.

Am I saying I just want Final Fantasy games to be 2D sprites again? No, not at all. I'm not a game designer, what do I know? But there is a very certain charm that this "story recap" trailer/teaser evokes that is very reminiscent of the Final Fantasy games of the past - a charm that is completely missing and devoid of the modern-day Final Fantasy game.

This video does a bad job showing it, but FFXIII-2 is basically Quantum Leap meets Final Fantasy. Bad guy gets angsty and wants to destroy the world, attempts to do so by causing time paradoxes that make our heroes travel to various points on the timeline to try and rewrite history in such a way that lets them finally catch/defeat the bad dude.

It's super dumb and super anime-bullshit, but I can't help but love it.

Square Enix have heard your prayers - they canned FFXV and the planned FFVII remake and are now putting all their resources into Final Fantasy XIII-0 instead!

@fisk0: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I don't know man, mixing SNES era graphics with a soundchip that isn't SNES.

And just like in the games, the story doesn't make sense.

It makes me really wonder why FFXIII-2 needed to be tied to the FFXIII universe at all; I might have actually been interested otherwise. I know, "asset reuse", but I'm honestly not seeing a whole lot of that actually applying to these sequels for how much they've seemed to have redrawn and created for them.

These sequels could have easily been "FFXIV" and "FFXV" (ignoring the actual games with those names right now) with a fresh cast of characters in the same game engine, just like the PSX trilogy.

@heatdrive88: The charm you are looking for is pure nostalgia.

@believer258: ....You would rather play a sprite based, 2D game? Embrace the future, man. FFVI only works for FFVI.

Vagina Time Portal go!

That was pretty fucking rad.

the part where it was 16 bit was cool, but oh my god, it just serves to highlight how bad the writing in these games has become. that was complete nonsense.

I would totally play this game.

@jonny_anonymous: I saw him too!!

This inadvertently made me want to play Psi-Ops again with all the caps lock PSICOM talk. And Legacy of Kain, because history abhors a paradox.

Also, this was neat.

The Sprite version of "Noel" looks about 10 times less Terrible than the 3D model version.

Anyone else get the Back to the Future jitters at the end of this?

Holy shit. Odin gives no fucks.

What the fuck is this story?!?!?

Fire whatever writing director they were using and make this the style.

That was some charming nonsense.

I love FFXIII so much that I would totally play a 2D version as well.

So... you're saying FF13-2 is a bootleg Chrono Trigger?

Well anyways I did watch a FF13 playthrough a few years back. It was alright. The story felt bland, battles and going around felt conventional and pretty repetitive. But then again I went into it not really expecting much either, and sort of held it at arms length.

Watching this trailer kind of makes me want to buy a copy of FF13 and play it, but actually delve into it with an open mind, enjoy the scenes, characters, the world, gameplay and stuff. But I don't have that time right now :P, and I'm saving my money for the FFX/X-2 Collection so there xD. But this ALMOST makes me want to buy FF13 and 13-2. I'm sure that was part of their plan xD.

Damn it, now I just want an old school Square RPG rather than FFXIII-whatever.

This video is giving me the nostalgia tinglies for FF6, still don't really wanna play 13.

The part about 13-2 seems much more clear than the game itself was.

Also it's amazing that Noel responds to Serah's death with "oh no!?"

This game has had enough overproduced, hevay on the effects added in post/abstractions that I'm sure the marketing will be leagues better than the game. That and going by the japanese version the story is a big old toriyama trainwreck.

Loved this trailer, and I really liked the thirteen series even though it's popular to hate FF right now. I'm looking forward to Lightning Returns.

I really wish the glacier pace of Final Fantasy XIII didn't beat me into submission back when it came out. I liked this quite a bit.

I played, maybe, the first hour or two of Final Fantasy XIII(enough to see the Shiva bike) before I figured out that it was a game that was clearly meant for a younger generation of gamers. So stuff like this kind of confuses me because it seems like Square is trying to appeal to the generation that grew up with Final Fantasy on the NES and SNES. It seems like the same thing they did with that Final Fantasy All The Bravest where they got you interested in the nostalgia factor before hitting you with microtransactions. I sort of feel compelled to play these games, but after the introduction I got to the series I'm wary of stepping back into it.

@duncecap said:

I do as well. She doesn't have the expected tropes of women in video games. Lightning just gets stranded into a game that no one really wanted out of a Final Fantasy game.

You think this bullshit makes no sense just wait till you play the demo. It's notches it up to 11

YES!!!!

Yup, I was entirely in the right to stop playing FFXIII-2 after a handful of hours, cuz the story only looks to have gotten even more pointless from when I stopped.

Yeah, XIII had issues, but for the most part it had a story and world lore that was damned good (you know, if you ignore Hope and anything involving him), and I'm hoping they go ahead and remember that for Lightning Returns instead of adding more bullsh*t money-grubbing time-travel non-sense.

This reminded me that, despite all that I read on the internet, I rather enjoyed these games. I've put in at least 1000 hours (jesus christ) on the Final Fantasy series. I'll be damned if I'm going to stop now.

This video did a better job of storytelling than the 80-ish hours I put into XIII.....and I didn't even finish the game.

This video is my favorite thing that Square has done in years.

i'm so sick of this lazy pixel art style.

Meanwhile the mobile FF6 port is a complete mess. Also, I would probably play later Final Fantasies re-done in the style as FF6 but in a nostalgic "haha this reminds me of playing Final Fantasy 6 way back when" kind of deal.

@hunter5024: Yeah me too, I'm in too deep into this damned series, it's too late to give up now.

This almost makes me look back with some modicum of fondness on Final Fantasy XIII and makes me want to bother trying XIII-2...

...(almost).

If they had made FFXIII like this I might have actually been interested in picking it up. Square are clearly aware of what the fans want, why don't they just give it to us?