Patchinko

"

Nice blog but i have to disagree on one thing.

FFX12 sold more than 5.2 million. So,it was really not such a bad sells result.

"

" @Zenaxzd said:

" @Valkyr: Like I think Ryanwho mentioned somewhere, the reason experimental shit gets called FF is because it increases the chances of it selling, big times. Not everyone of the 5 million+ people that buy the main series franchise are die hard video game fans and probably don't even know who SE is. Higher chance of them buying something with FF slapped onto the title. As for the rest of your post, whoaaaaa opinions. "

I know, but that's the kind of wild marketing that is devaluating SE as a dev, take the Mass Effect hype for example, the first game was a new IP and it delivered some great quality, now the ME2 hype is even bigger than XIII's which is a 20 year IP, so what happened?, we started trusting more Bioware because the AAA backlog is amazing, SE made a joke of itself with all the milking of their IP's "

" @Patchinko said:

" Or don't. The game gives you the freedom not to EZ-mode it if you choose not to.   

 QFT. You can easily break the battle system later on in the game, for example, but why would you?  "

The game gives you the freedom not to EZ-mode it if you choose not to. Not that setting up a preemptive strike is actually hard in most cases anyway even without using them. There are quite a few places that are clearly set up to give the player the opportunity to get preemptive strikes without bothering to use smoke.

Versus is going to be like Kingdom Hearts. Not excited in the least here.  And I certainly never wanted a Final Fantasy game to be like Kingdom Hearts.

" Nice write-up!
 
I think a big problem for Square is trying to keep things fresh in a new Final Fantasy game while simultaneously garnering newcomers to the franchise all without alienating die-hard fans. 
 
To be honest, it's not because of the negative feedback that i've heard of, but I'm not that excited for FFXIII. Sure, I'm anticipating it, but I'm not "excited" about it. It's more like I'm anticipating it just because it's another entry into a franchise I've already liked, or because it's such a big game that if I miss out on it when it releases, then there's no use playing it afterward, at least that's the kind of mentality most people seem to have for a big release like this. I'm not sure what to think of Versus yet, think I'll wait for a price drop on that one if I'm really interested. "

" @Patchinko: You know, another random question I hadn't thought about. As for this linear hallway stuff is it really just holding forward on the analog stick with some battles along the way or is it more like FFX where there was the temples along the way with puzzle solving and all that. I guess what I am trying to say really is are there puzzles and dungeon-like areas or is it all about running and killing down a straight path. "

Stumbling into Nabudis early in FFXII was certainly an experience. And that was after defeating King Bomb early with a fight that took me about 40 minutes of hectic battle. :)
 
It's funny the way people look back rosily on the old FF games, often asking "what happened to the team that created that one?" 
 
For example, CharleyTony, you mentioned FF6 and Chrono Trigger. The team that created FF6 is basically responsible for FFXIII... and it's the same as about half the team that made Chrono Trigger. ;)
 
Anyway, as for the "corridor straight" complaints. It's true that the first half of the game allows very little freedom. However, the environments do shift significantly. Do not think that calling it a "corridor" means it's all in some bland, gray hallway. The locales are gorgeous and they do shift. There just isn't choice in regards of what order they come in or which characters you use in them. In that sense, it feels more confining, even though it's not really that much more confining than previous FF games.
 
While each zone is more or less a straight line, and the game gives you an arrow that points you in the direction, I don't know that it's as bad a thing as people make it out to be. The alternative would be that each zone is more wide open, still with a specific exit one needs to reach, but with no direction so it takes longer. I don't find that more appealing. In this game, actually, there is a fair bit of strategy to utilizing the environment of the zone to avoid mobs or set oneself up for a Preemptive Strike (which are, by the way, quite powerful in this game). For example, zones where waiting for mobs to patrol away so you can slip behind them and into a tunnel that will avoid another pack, and zones where one can control the weather in order to cause different mob packs to spawn in various places in the zone.  So it's not as stale as it may sound from the description of the zones as "straight corridors".

Alternatively, put it down and go play Dragon Age until Mass Effect 2 comes out. 
 
(But that's just me!)

They don't address the resolution of the screens they were playing on, but I think the maximum resolution of the 360 is 1080i/720p, right? 
 
So if they were playing at 1080p on the PS3 and 1080i/720p on the Xbox, there would be noticeably less crispness, particularly if they were standing close to the screens.
 
I'd say if you had the choice of platform for this particular game, PS3 is the way to go, particularly if you have a very good AV setup. 
 
A significant portion of what makes it so impressive is the visuals.

  @vidiot said:

" You're right on a lot of issues here, particular over the different teams within Square and what projects they work with. While Kitase is a great scenario writer, when it comes to dealing with the press, he's no Sakaguchi. The last time I saw him in an interview, he tried to convince me that there was nothing cut from the PS3 version when they went multi-platform. He then practically said in the same sentence, that they weren't going to have a Japanese vocal track, because they wanted both versions (360 / PS3) to be the same. I'm not ranting over how the project went multi-platform, I'm just pointing out the obvious.
 
I think a little bit of why people's opinions of Final Fantasy are so warped is because they don't know the entire history of the series. It's not their fault, this is a series that has drastically reinterpreted it's main mechanics with each entry. Western gamers also didn't have half the series initially, if you think these basic concepts have not messed up peoples interpretations I would urge you to reconsider. Whether this is more reflective of sales can be argued, but looking back on the series as a whole (I've played and beaten every main entry) the design decisions that are in place in this game (XIII) don't surprise me in the least. There is an evolution over-time with the series, but defining it as something "better" over the another entry is difficult. 
Half of Final Fantasy VI was non-linear, Final Fantasy I, III, V all focused on intricate job/class systems, and Final Fantasy II had a character progression system akin to Oblivion for crying-out loud. The list goes on.
 

@Patchinko

said:

" and the poor performance of Final Fantasy IX, which was his baby and which was overshadowed by FFVIII in both quality and sales. "

Sales yes, but quality? :/  I loved both games, but I would be hard-pressed to say VIII was leaps over IX in quality.  Regardless, good write up. "

@Sparky_Buzzsaw

" This is a great blog and a fantastic look at some details in the series that I wasn't aware of.  I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind me asking:  1)  How do the characters hold up to previous entries in the games?  I'm not looking for specifics here, just generalities.  I'm trying to remain as spoiler free on this game as humanly possible.  2)  If the game isn't open-world, does it still encourage late-game (or even earlier) exploration and back-tracking, similar to some of the fun stuff in prior games? 3)  Similarly, are there a lot of side-quests or extra stuff to do? "

I've seen a few vocal people discussing Final Fantasy XIII and how it's gone in a "bad direction". I've even seen one person blaming the merger with Enix for the direction FFXIII went in. I couldn't disagree more. It seems to me, given the history of Final Fantasy, that FFXIII is the result of sales trends, which is also, of course, the simplest explanation for why it is the way it is.
 
Basically, I propose that sales trends in the series are what has driven FF in this direction.
 
Hironobu Sakaguchi, the original creator of FF, left Square to create Mistwalker after the bomb that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and the poor performance of Final Fantasy IX, which was his baby and which was overshadowed by FFVIII in both reviews and sales. FF:TSW was an utter bomb and remains one of the biggest cinematic financial losses of all times while FFIX remains on the bottom half of most "top FF games" lists and remains as one of the poorest selling FFs of the post-16bit era (actually, I believe it had the worst sales of the post-16bit era).
  
Here's how things went with Final Fantasy:
 
After FFVII was a success, Square decided to break the FF team into two groups that would simultaneously work on the next two games in the series. This was well before the Enix merger. 
 
The team that created XIII is the team that brought you VI, VII, VIII, and X led by Yoshinori Kitase, and I think it's pretty obvious that XIII is the spiritual successor of these games. Look at the character archetypes and the style (both graphically and gameplay-wise)... the characters are almost uniformly taken from FFVIII, and the battle system is clearly inspired by these past games with a blend of VIII and X's systems. The Crystarium is just a new version of the Sphere Grid from X.
 
In The Gooch's (read: Sakaguchi's) absence, Yasumi Matsuno of FFT and Vagrant Story fame took over FF12 only to relinquish production to Kawazu of the even less well known SaGa series when he fell ill. Despite all these problems, the game turned out pretty well and was critically acclaimed, but the sales fell pretty far short compared to VII, VIII, and X. That said, even though Team 2 headed up production of FF12, it was inspired by the original desires Team 1 (again, led by Kitase) had for FFX in regards to an open-world approach.
 
Now take a look at sales historically and you get an image of why FF has gone this way. For reference, sales peaked with VII and were nearly as high for VIII and X, and X-2, a  game that cost almost nothing and had a very short development cycle, did fairly well also . Meanwhile IX and XII had significantly lower sales.
 
Is it any wonder, then, that FFXIII is basically a natural evolution from these particular games? Of course not. It's not surprising at all that the open-world nature of XII, for example, was abandoned after the game had low sales despite high critical praise. In its place is a world that's at least as constricted as that in FFX, which had just as high critical praise but significantly higher sales, with battles and characters more akin to that of FFVIII's, which had even higher sales along with high critical praise. 
 
I'm not reviewing the game yet because I haven't finished it. I can already say it's not my favorite in the series. But I predict sales of FFXIII will be quite high despite the complaints from many of the Hardcore Jaded Old-School Lamers (HJOSLs) out there that it's a bad game. After all, if nothing else, everyone basically agrees that the visuals are some of the best in a videogame ever, that the music is good, and the gameplay is at least tolerable. Plus, it's the first FF of this generation--you know it's going to be a big seller just because of that.
 
I think the real interesting caveat to FFXIII is the decision to co-create FFvXIII simultaneously, and to see how well FFvXIII sells once the dust settles from FFXIII. This is the major change made in FFXIII over the past games. FFX-2 was SE's first foray into this kind of development cycle, and it actually worked quite well for them, so we'll see how it pans out with this game.