Quick Look: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

The thing is, this is the same type of crappy storys we had in Final Fantasy 7 I mean let me run down the story of Final Fantasy 7 for you.

An eco terriorst who has amnesia blows up a reactor because its sucking the life force of the planet, and all through this Cloud learns that he is a clone of a clone, who is a clone of an alien. And that alien might be a god? But the game kind of just lingers on that question. But it dosent really matter because you are summoning so many other gods, like Odin, and Behimot it really dosnet matter.

The Story's have stayed the same, the visuals have changed.

In other news, Final Fantasy still brings out strong emotions in people, and everyone has an opinion on the best games in the series and where it went bad.

Damn, I want to play this, because this seems like a genuine "so bad it's good" kind of game. I would love, LOVE, to see an Endurance Run of this with Jeff & Ryan.

Awww... now I made myself sad.

I've got great news for you. The game IS good. Just because he made it look bad doesn't make it so.

Man Final Fantasy haters are the fucking worst.

Spoonybrad!

Hes making ios games.

This is the 2nd time I've seen some footage of this game, and it still looks boring.

The game looks interesting but the Quick Look is quite frustrating... Kind of a bummer that the side quests are mostly fetch quests though. They're the worst.

Seriously right? I just DO Not See Anything appealing here, Nothing. I Love Video games of all types this looks So FUCKING BORING!

Edit: So many people say it looks interesting, WHAT?! "Oh this isn't the best part to show" Than its the best part to show because I bet this is 50% of the fucking game.

Yes, it is!

I am with you on the idea that basically after the SNES era FF games started to go downhill because they got so full of their own self serious pretentious pseudo-philosophical nonsense. I was a huge JRPG fan in the 90s and couldnt get enough of them. Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and FF6 are still some of my fondest teenage memories and I can go back to play them and really enjoy my time. Before I get shot in the street I have to say that I did still really like FF7 which had some amazing moments and even though it was the game that really took the highfalutin craziness to a new level, it still felt fresh and interesting at the time along with Xenogears.

FF8 was the moment where I felt that the FF franchise and many other JRPGs had jumped the shark with the overly serious bullshit and I just found that I couldnt enjoy most JRPGs anymore. Every iteration they seemed to crank up the the nonsense more and more with no self-awareness that the drivel they were spewing out was anything other than some grand epic of a story. I tried FF13 hoping that maybe I could get the JRPG fire lit again, but even after 30+ hours where the game opened up I felt it was just the culmination of every negative trend in the genre. Then they decided to milk one of the worst FF games in the entire FF franchise and the result is such convoluted nonsense that I can only feel a deep sadness for what has become of FF since its fall from grace.

This game is so confusing I don't know what I would do without the Strategy Guide lol

What a somber drag of a game.

The voice actress for Lumina is really fucking good. She is giving better line reads than that script deserves.

I didn't think it was possible for me to hate the the design aesthetic of Final Fantasy 13 games possibly any more than I already did, but as it turns out, I totally do.

@dagbiker:

I have to agree with you. I hope it changes someday. I do wonder, are the big names in Japanese game development considered talented story-tellers in their home market? Does the average Japanese game-player earnestly enjoy these stories or consider them satisfying? I would wonder if there is any significant game narrative criticism in Japan, and if so, are they as frustrated with these nonsensical melodramas as I am?

The rest of this is just me working this out in ranty fashion...

Story-telling can be a tricky thing to critique, far more so than visual design. It's one thing to point at a character design and declare that the eyes or mouth aren't in correct proportion, or that the lighting isn't accurately rendered; we have objective references for many visuals. It's quite another thing to tell an author that his story has no real meaning, the plot doesn't have any consistent logical progression, and that the characters don't behave like real human beings.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it may be matter of non-confrontation. When you criticize an artist's visual work, he can take the criticism in stride as it's all about the image on the screen, and the problems are often technical issues. When you criticize a story, it is a far more personal thing for the writer, since you are essentially critiquing his ideas, not his spelling, vocabulary usage, paragraph spacing or anything technical. Literary criticism almost can't help but be brutal and fundamentally confrontational, and perhaps in an effort to avoid that, everyone just kind of pretends there isn't a problem at all, which may be why when they speak about their stories in interviews, they speak in such broad generalities about concepts like "love", "revenge" as if they're just ingredients you sprinkle into a pot and a good story just happens.

That may be why there's so much melodrama in these games; the idea is that if the characters act out intense emotions, then the audience should be convinced that the story produced those emotions. It's a pantomime of human behavior rather than a portrayal of it.

Good stories have come out of Japan. I refuse to just accept the cliche "that's so Japanese" excuse, as it is simply a form of benevolent racism (I hate to even use that term, but I don't know what else to call it). And yes, there are plenty of lousy stories in Western video games, I know, but the stories in question aren't even what I'd call incompetent: they are not poorly executed ideas, they are poorly conceived ideas. You can tell a simple story well or poorly, but even in a poorly told story you can usually see the backbone of a what-might-have-been-good story under different circumstances. A staggering percentage of Japanese games these days, and nearly all the high-profile games, are complete story-invertebrates.

Watching Brad become bewildered and belligerent about this is odd. He talked to someone who reviewed it and "beat it" 3x at gamespot, why didn't that person tell him that he should explore?

Dead Rising is an apt comparison, except you keep all of your stuff when you run out of time / beat the game and start a new game +.

So far I am really enjoying it. Play the PS3 version. Also, pro-tip for getting through the quest that stumped Brad. Open your map.

@hashbrowns:

Yah, I agree, earlier while I was playing Lightning returns, i was thinking, I really like the banter and dialog when in the world, the quest dialog is great, and cheeky, and not bad at all.

But when it trys to go into the cinematic it loses me. Maybe it is a cultural thing. I was thinking earlier that it was the translators having to translate to the prerendered FMV's.

Yah, this is more then 50% this is like 90% flailing away until you find a goal. Then waiting, or doing something else until you can do that goal.

Then maybe you Majoras Mask it to be begaining again.

And do it all again.

I like it though. But Im a sucker for Time Travel

Lightnings voice acting isn't bad, but why does she sound so disappointed in everything. And this still has me thoroughly turned off jrpg's

Man, Final Fantasy games have become so incredibly unappealing to me.

It's like every game tries to outdo the last in ridiculously convoluted and drawn-out melodrama. Their story lines lately make Metal Gear games look like Little Golden Books.

Oddly enough, one thing I do like about this is the slightly more realistic look.

I mean, I guess. Literally every one of the numbers of that quest's exact locations is listed on the map, along with someone waiting at each location to tell you where the next number is "hidden", but sure ... flailing.

Hey, Lightning, maybe don't inhale sharply at the end of every sentence.

But then again, I'm guessing the VO director was shooting for amusingly overwrought. You nailed it, bud.

R.I.P Final Fantasy

@pilzi said:

Definitely. I think it's designed to take a while to find all the numbers. It's supposed to make you run all around the city talking to people and getting sidequests and all that. And even if Brad had found them all really fast, you can't do anything with them until after midnight in the game.

@north6: I was not making an excuse for Brad, I am giving my own impressions of the game for playing it for 10+ hours.

And what is wrong with that?

@zelyre: I agree, Persona 4, for one. A great story. For me its not even if the story is cleche, its about the characturs. If I have an emotional bond with the protagonist then it dosnet matter if he is a frog prince, trying to be human, and thats the most clehe thing ever. I still feel for him. But when I have no emotion for a person, its kind of hard to put your self in their shoes.

Its why I Cryed at the end of gladiator. I knew what was going to happen. But I was there.

I think thats my main problem with final fantasy. Is that somewhere it went from you going out to the village to find your home was burned down to you being told that your home was burned down. And being told something has so much less effect then seeing it. And living it.

Please stop, Final Fantasy. Please?

Remember when Final Fantasy was about discovering you're supposed to have the Black Belt/Master fight barehanded after level 14 or so, and he'd eventually turn into your glass cannon that could one shot the final boss Chaos?

Man Lightning is the most anemic character Squenix has come up with. I struggle so hard caring about her.

So I've been thinking about the story for previous FF games compared to the FF13 trilogy. At first I figured they've been pretty wild right from the start with FF1's crazy 2000 year time loop. So I wondered why is it that I found 13's craziness to be suffocating whereas I could kind of get on board with the other ones. I think there's basically 2 factors.

The first is the trend towards extended dialogue and cutscenes. When that stuff is made more prevalent, the game becomes more about that crazy plot and less about making the health bars go down. Of course, these are only made worse when localizers have to work around all the extra syllables in the cutscenes, resulting in some pretty ham-fisted dialogue. If the characters were more believable/relatable, they'd do a better job of helping us join in the craziness of the plot.

The second is that, with 13 specifically, it kind of turns the crazy up to 11 almost right off the bat. You have no time to get familiar with the characters, no way to relate to what is going on. Without that initial grounding, it's hard to follow when it takes off into unfamiliar territory.

Is there a reason why this and the realMyst videos aren't showing on Youtube?

Possibly, @rorie and thanks!

I love that trippy loadscreen, wonder where i could get it as screensaver.

I couldn't stop thinking about Majora's Mask while watching this.

Damn, I've lost all interest in current Final Fantasy games...

it's really kind of a bummer that they couldn't find anyone even remotely interested in this game to do that QL. I like Jeff and Brad, they're typically funny and insightful, but there's a clear impression- intentional or not- that neither one of 'em wanted to have anything to do with this game.

Good start... now find some indie haters to QL all the hipster dreck that gets featured in every other news story, liveshow, and editor review.

Oh wait, that wouldn't be fair at all! I have no personal interest in this game and only a passing interest in FF in general, but when you get people this jaded and seemingly biased you have to question why even bother anymore.

I say this out of honesty, not some kind of loyalty to the series. It's clearly out there for someone.

@zombieslayingin3d: I'm not really sure the distinction you are trying to draw. JRPGs, which as the name suggests, are generally made by Japanese people, tend to skew almost exclusively to turn-based combat or weird variants of it. It has nothing to do with their nationality or race as far as I can tell. Clearly Japanese people like action games too, so I can't see any logical reason for them to not combine the two.

Then again, I also don't understand JRPGs tendency to infuse Norse and/or Germanic mythology into everything. Are Japanese people really that into these things or is that just what they assume appeals to westerners? Things like this baffle me about JRPGs.

I've not played the game, but I saw multiple pulsing arrow things in the edges of the mini-map that they never bothered to go to. I'm assuming that would have gotten them where they needed. Not sure how 3 people didn't notice that.

this game is quite possibly one of the most difficult and complex games I have ever played.

I think my problem with new FF games is that's is all based on melodrama, stuck up your own ass, no one ever talks like this in real life bullshit. Is it really so hard to just have a simple story? I dont need time travel paradoxes and God cities and talking stuffed animals that transform into weapons.

The art design is stellar, but everytime anyone opens their mouth, I want to hurt them.

I really wish FF15 isn't shitty like 13, but it probably will be....

Heh, when I was running around in circles in that city looking for those numbers and thinking about how bullshit that quest was, I was hoping to myself that's not the part they show in the quicklook.

@enigma777: The funny thing about what you said is that this game is arguably the one with the simplest story in the XIII trilogy.

Could you blame them? This game achieves all new levels of being stuck up your own ass.

I still haven't played the 2nd game yet (I got it on sale almost a year ago but it's been collecting dust), but this one actually looks interesting enough to motivate me to at least give the other one a shot and then get this one when it's on sale.

But man, this was a rough Quick Look. Have they ever done a QL Redo, because this game might need one after Brad and Jeff did a piss poor job of it.