Set and Setting

[Heath]

Although the previous entries in the Final Fantasy series have had excellent soundtracks and relatively vivid and impressive settings, I think that FFXII was the most absorbing of all the worlds that Square-Enix have created.

It feels very much more of a complete package. Although X had 3-D environments to explore the game itself was really linear and you were hand-lead through one locale to the next. Visually impressive at times (Macalania Forest is utterly beautiful), but it didn't instil me with a sense of adventure I had. People often compare XII to an MMORPG and I think it's a valid comparison even outside the gameplay. The ability to explore the huge world with monsters roaming about, with an impressive soundtrack and the ability to see your characters explore them really allowed me to be immersed in the game.

Some of the locations (Sochen Cave Palace and the Salikawood spring to mind) are not only visually impressive to see, but the music compliments them perfectly. Sochen Cave Palace felt epic, undiscovered and forgotten and the music really conveyed this emotion. The Barheim Passage really gave the impression not only that the place was grimy and underground (in every sense of the word), but that something would appear from round a corner or you'd get blown up by a trap. Which brings me to another feature: the traps. As irritating as they were, I thought it was another element that would sometimes force you to be on your toes and be prepared for the unexpected to happen which I suppose happens in adventuring.

So between the added features (traps, monsters), being able to roam freely around a huge world, a very atmospheric and immersing soundtrack and the general size and scope of Ivalice, I found FFXII to be the most immersing and impressive game in the series so far. What about you? Were you impressed by the changes from the other games in the series? Or did you find them irritating and unnecessary?

[Crossblades]

Personally I liked the fact that you were able to roam freely. You get that sense of adventure when you do so. And some of the locations were very breathtaking to see(Phon Coast and Tchita Uplands are some examples). And I agree the music really fits in with the area. I can never understand why so many people bash its music =/

[Dynast-Kid]

Yeah, the setting and music of FFXII are major factors in why this game is my favorite Final Fantasy. The massive-ness and the depth of each and every locale was just...awe-inspiring.

I especially love the art direction for this game, and the vivid Arabian/Mediterranean elements implemented in FFXII. Very unique and memorable!

I find that Archades, Eruyt Village, Nabreus Deadlands, and Giruvegan are the main locations that really made me "oooh and ahhh"! Simply stunning graphics and locales!

I freaking love this game to bits!

[Big D]

Yeah, the setting and music of FFXII are major factors in why this game is my favorite Final Fantasy. The massive-ness and the depth of each and every locale was just...awe-inspiring.

I especially love the art direction for this game, and the vivid Arabian/Mediterranean elements implemented in FFXII. Very unique and memorable!

I find that Archades, Eruyt Village, Nabreus Deadlands, and Giruvegan are the main locations that really made me "oooh and ahhh"! Simply stunning graphics and locales!

I freaking love this game to bits!Agreed in full:D

[Del Murder]

I didn't find the music to be that epic. The visuals were stunning but a lot of the area musics blended together and sounded very much like something I would hear in an elevator.

[Bolivar]

to not go out and explore ivalice is missing out on half the experience. the detail, the scenery, the music, it worked well for an adventure.

[Wolf Kanno]

Exploration has been a missing factor the series for awhile. X was linear as hell and though Spira was visually stunning, its "one path" dungeon made for a boring gameplay experience. Part of the reason I like RPGs comes from the exploration aspect.

I was most impressed by the huge cities that were filled with people, Ivalcie just felt more alive than other FF worlds. In fact its world design is so excellent, I'm hoping XIII will continue it. I worry that XIII will be like X, visually impressive but horribly linear.

The point of XII is to explore the world. If you only played it for the story you missed half the game...

[LunarWeaver]

I had disappointments with XII, and the music is one of them I'm afraid. It didn't strike me like some other RPGs.

The world is definitely immersing, though. I loved how big and detailed it was. The long development time was well spent on it. I was never a huge fan of the old-school world map. The one where you're huge and everything else is tiny. I much prefer this kind of "world map" where it's from the characters' perspective. If you can call it a world map. I consider it one. And the art direction was really nice. It's a very well crafted universe.

[Heath]

I liked the music in that it the atmospheric style of it, so that it was never terribly overbearing and (in my opinion) complimented the visuals as much as anything else. I don't think there are many naturally 'stand out' pieces of music in XII as there are in the other games, but there are definitely some quality pieces in there.

[Roogle]

I feel that this incarnation of Ivalice was one of the most developed world concepts in the series.

I think that the game itself suffers from a lack of character development and character interaction and that this detracts from the gaming experience. A developed and interactive world may be what this game will be remembered for over its story or characters.

[Nifleheim7]

I think we will see more and more "open ended" worlds in RPGs as the hardware power increases.I don't think developers of previous FF's opted to go for linear environments because they wanted to,but because of the hardware limitations.FFX and FFXII may share the same console but bear in mind that FFX was one of the first games developed for PS2 and it's developers didn't have the technical knowledge that was available near the end of the system's "lifetime".I'm pretty sure that both FFXIII's will feel "open ended" but it's too early to speculate on that.

I also loved the environments and locations of Ivalice,there were times that i felt really immersed in that world.The music,although at first i didn't like it,really grow on me and now FFXII's ost is one of my favourite FF soundtracks.When i played Revenant Wings i really enjoyed hearing some of the FFXII's themes...In general i think the world of Ivalice was one of the most vivid RPG worlds to play on a console and it really felt "alive".Also,most of the NPC's had some really interesting stories to tell and they really complemented their surroundings (the Old and New Archades is the first that comes to mind).
Unfortunately,as Roogle said,these will be my only main reasons to replay the game (including gameplay/excluding level grinding) and not it's characters or story.

[hhr1dluv]

As a side note, concerning XII's soundtrack...
At first I didn't like it much...but I LOVE the pieces that play while you're in the Ozmone Plains and while you're in the Sandsea. I also enjoy the Rabanastre themes, and the prison theme. All those definitely rank high on my favorite FF themes list.

Oh, and I agree with the idea that XII will be best remembered for its open ended world.

[Markus. D]

I love all the Esper themes.

I'd feel each time I'd hear them it was like I was abusing something I was not meant to touch.

especially the small sequence after unsummonering an Esper... the sound effects of pure chaos confinement... very pretty :3

[Quindiana Jones]

I loved it. Except for the fact that in exploring and doing everything else, you often forgot what was happening in the main storyline, which often ruined later events because I would be thinking "Holy crap! When did I get that sword??" :laughing:

[Roogle]

I love all the Esper themes.

I'd feel each time I'd hear them it was like I was abusing something I was not meant to touch.

especially the small sequence after unsummonering an Esper... the sound effects of pure chaos confinement... very pretty :3

I agree. I think that the Espers would have been more frightening and involving if they were a type of recurring villain rather than a recurring gameplay element. I enjoyed the fights with the Espers much more than fighting alongside the Espers.

[Heath]

I must admit myself that while I very much enjoyed the impressive handling of the Esper battles themselves, I very rarely bothered to actually summon them myself. I thought it was a cool idea to be able to fight side-by-side with the Espers, but they were simply rather useless in battle by and large. Nice idea but badly executed in my opinion.

[Roogle]

I agree, Heath. I thought that the Espers were poorly implemented in gameplay, but greatly enhanced the presentation of the game.

[Dr. Acula]

I love the environments in this game (particulary Tchita Uplands, Giruvegan, and Salikawood) and the music that goes with them. The music just seems to fit.

I don't remember the Esper themes, as I never summon them. I always found them pretty useless, actually.

[Sword]

There aren't esper THEMES, it's just one theme. It's pretty good actualy. But not as good as when you battle against them. The best pieces of music worth mentioning are "Esper Battle", "Clash on the Big Bridge", "White Room", "The Sochen Cave Palace", Neighbourhood of Water", "The Feywood" and "Symphonic Poem:Hope ~ Final Fantasy XII PV ver.~".

White room being my fav.

[Roogle]

I think that Tsukasa was referring to the literary themes of the Espers rather than the musical theme of the Espers, Sword.

[Sword]

I think that Tsukasa was referring to the literary themes of the Espers rather than the musical theme of the Espers, Sword.
Oh. My mistake :choc:

[Loony BoB]

For all the lush environments etc, I still prefer to have a complete world. It annoys me to no end every time I look at the maps of FFX and FFXII as there are clearly parts of the world that you simply can't go to. I detest that. If there was one thing I loved to no end about FFVII and FFVIII, it was discovering every rocky corner of the world, finding things that you aren't in any way notable on a map but are very much notable when you discover them (eg. Cactuar Island) for whatever reason.

So while I enjoyed the particular environments, I did not enjoy for one bit the way that the world is restricted to a much greater extend than the older worlds. Yes, you go into more detail and it's more realistic size-wise, but if I wanted realism I'd take a walk around the block.

The same happened with Oblivion, and without a complete world to roam I just feel like I'm trapped. I look forward to the next FF game which allows you to walk through every forest, see every mountain, fly across every part of the ocean and so on.

[BG-57]

While it is a bit restrictive within a single game it has huge advantages when tying several games together set on the same world. The Suikoden series discovered a long time ago that if in each game you reveal a new piece of the world adjacent to previously established you can have new installments with continuity and a timeline.

The other advantage is you can have cameos from characters in previous installments with no torturous logic involved (remember how they got Cloud into FFT?) FF-X showed how not to tie two worlds together. FFXII handled it well.

I liked the atmosphere and setting. I much prefer visible monsters to random encounters. The music was decent and fit the setting but lacked a truly epic feel. Not for lack of trying, though.

[Loony BoB]

While it is a bit restrictive within a single game it has huge advantages when tying several games together set on the same world. The Suikoden series discovered a long time ago that if in each game you reveal a new piece of the world adjacent to previously established you can have new installments with continuity and a timeline.
I don't care about sequels so long as the original is good. And there is a very easy way to create sequels if you really want to - just add in new towns and locations, enhance the visuals, have a 'reformed' planet like they did quite easily in single early FF's... take your pick.

The other advantage is you can have cameos from characters in previous installments with no torturous logic involved (remember how they got Cloud into FFT?) FF-X showed how not to tie two worlds together. FFXII handled it well.
This is all assuming that you care bucketloads about logic. If people want a rational game, then they should probably avoid the Final Fantasy series.

I liked the atmosphere and setting. I much prefer visible monsters to random encounters. The music was decent and fit the setting but lacked a truly epic feel. Not for lack of trying, though.
It should also be noted that it's entirely possible to have visible enemies on a world map where you can go everywhere. You could even set it so that there is a magic which makes them scared of you, so you can roam freely without having to touch them. There are loads of ways you could work this.

Also, if they insist on keeping it live-action, restricted and scaled like they have, I do hope they add in a jump function. But that's off-topic. :p

[Nifleheim7]

For all the lush environments etc, I still prefer to have a complete world. It annoys me to no end every time I look at the maps of FFX and FFXII as there are clearly parts of the world that you simply can't go to. I detest that. If there was one thing I loved to no end about FFVII and FFVIII, it was discovering every rocky corner of the world, finding things that you aren't in any way notable on a map but are very much notable when you discover them (eg. Cactuar Island) for whatever reason.

So while I enjoyed the particular environments, I did not enjoy for one bit the way that the world is restricted to a much greater extend than the older worlds. Yes, you go into more detail and it's more realistic size-wise, but if I wanted realism I'd take a walk around the block.

The same happened with Oblivion, and without a complete world to roam I just feel like I'm trapped. I look forward to the next FF game which allows you to walk through every forest, see every mountain, fly across every part of the ocean and so on.

Agreed.
Although i loved the environment and architecture designs unfortunately FFXII had to many invisible walls.I know of course that it was beyond PS2 capabilities to cram up a completely free roaming world AND keeping the same amount of graphical detail but i have a feeling that SE is focusing more on graphics than content.Thats the case with most developers,not only SE,they just don't want to sacrifice graphical detail.

[Wolf Kanno]

I don't remember too many invisible walls in this game actually... Usually, something was in place to block you like a wall or a mountain or water, its not like X which had tall grass or Xenosaga... which had cutscenes... I felt the world design was near perfect considering its a console game on a system people thrash for being the technologically weakest of its generation.

I only miss classic world maps due to nostalgia but looking back on the late PS1 era it was becoming apparent that developers didn't want to deal with it anymore. Both VIII and IX seriously under utilized their world maps IMHO. Outside of a mini-game and a few extra draw points, both worlds were pretty barren and served as just another reason why you should not bother exploring and just move the plot along.

XII is the first RPG in years to bring back a strong level of exploration. To me, wandering around and discovering new places was half the game. I actually found it fun to wander into an area I wasn't prepared for and bust my ass trying to retreat out of their before I saw the Game Over screen again. Its heavy exploration may have hindered the story a bit but people need to learn to retain information for more than five minutes. :rolleyes2

[Loony BoB]

I don't remember too many invisible walls in this game actually... Usually, something was in place to block you like a wall or a mountain or water, its not like X which had tall grass or Xenosaga... which had cutscenes... I felt the world design was near perfect considering its a console game on a system people thrash for being the technologically weakest of its generation.

I only miss classic world maps due to nostalgia but looking back on the late PS1 era it was becoming apparent that developers didn't want to deal with it anymore. Both VIII and IX seriously under utilized their world maps IMHO. Outside of a mini-game and a few extra draw points, both worlds were pretty barren and served as just another reason why you should not bother exploring and just move the plot along.

XII is the first RPG in years to bring back a strong level of exploration. To me, wandering around and discovering new places was half the game. I actually found it fun to wander into an area I wasn't prepared for and bust my ass trying to retreat out of their before I saw the Game Over screen again. Its heavy exploration may have hindered the story a bit but people need to learn to retain information for more than five minutes. :rolleyes2
The world maps hindered exploration? No, the "wall or a mountain or river" which was there "in place to block you" is what hinders exploration. There should never be a place that is physically blocked off when you have chocobos, flying machines, you'd hope the ability to walk across a stream, etc. The ability to climb! All these kind of things would have done wonders. The worlds didn't hinder exploration at all. There might not have been as many physical locations to visit but that's more than easily solved by just making the world larger. Imagine the FFVIII world. Now imagine something roughly ten times the size. Now that's what I'm talking about. I'd be happy with the FFVIII size world personally, but with today's technological advances there is no reason an entire world can't be walked upon. More caves, more underwater adventures, more towns, more hidden areas such as that ancient forgotten hidden forest type thing or the UFO area etc, all that stuff. If you had ten times the amount of space to search and ten to twenty times the amount of visitable areas, it would take ages for you to find everything, but you'd still not be blocked off by some stupid uncrossable river that, apparently, even your flying device can't figure out a way to get to the other side of.

And all that talk about allowing for sequels... when are we going to get the XII sequel again? How many are they hoping for? Is there any reason we shouldn't be able to see the entire world in the sequel? Or, wait, is there just not going to be one?

[Nifleheim7]

I don't remember too many invisible walls in this game actually... Usually, something was in place to block you like a wall or a mountain or water, its not like X which had tall grass

Funny you mention the tall grass invisible walls from FFX because FFXII had a lot of that...Especially in places such as Giza Plains or Ozmone Plains (these are the first to come in mind).;)

[BG-57]

I certainly found the moment where you get the airship in the early FF series fun and exciting. But I didn't miss it in this game. Maybe my long exprience with Tactics and Suikoden innoculated me against this style of world contruction.

As for sequels FFXII is a prequel of sorts to Tactics. It's precisely because FFT was in a partial world that allowed them to be integrated. Now I found FFXII stands well alone, but the more games set in Ivalice I played, the more it enhanced the exprience of FFXII.

And wasn't RW a sequel to FFXII? Anyways, there's no limit to how many Ivalice-set games they can make. Whether they choose to make any more I don't know.

[Wolf Kanno]

Part of that is technology limitations, X was one large road but XII had more breathing room to wander around. Also, you can't yell at airships in XII; everyone knows you don't really have one ;) But lets try to stay on topic...

I guess we should define what "invisible walls" means to us. I found the obstacles blocking you were far more realistic, deep rivers, steep mountain walls, deep cliffs. (Giza didn't just have tall grass, past the grass is a swamp.) Its not like CC or X where you are walking on a field and suddenly you hit an invisible wall. Visually, you should still be able to walk forever in the distance but this "invisible wall" blocks you.

Listen, XII did the best it could considering its technology limitations, and to be honest, XII has major pacing issues as it is. Adding the ability to to climb and swim over obstacles to get to pointless areas would easily cause more issues with the pain the ass casual market as it is. I agree that I want more optional towns and dungeons, but XII actually has them more so than any FF since VII.

VIII was a game I never felt had a good world map to begin with so you lost me with your explanation. I never bothered exploring VIII's world after the first playthrough cause to me it was mostly empty. Especially in comparison to previous installments. What little it had offered was hardly worth it in my opinion except for a few GF acquisitions.

I would certainly love a world that is fully explorable but fact is, technology is just not able to keep up with the idea just yet. Perhaps if SE decided to go with a less constraining visually style (less photorealism more cel shaded) it would be possible. I doubt SE will though. Considering how piss poor world design has been in the genre for the last 8 years, I felt XII is the first step in the right direction. I still have nightmares of XIII being on rails like X was...

[Roogle]

Imagine the FFVIII world. Now imagine something roughly ten times the size. Now that's what I'm talking about. I'd be happy with the FFVIII size world personally, but with today's technological advances there is no reason an entire world can't be walked upon. More caves, more underwater adventures, more towns, more hidden areas such as that ancient forgotten hidden forest type thing or the UFO area etc, all that stuff. If you had ten times the amount of space to search and ten to twenty times the amount of visitable areas, it would take ages for you to find everything, but you'd still not be blocked off by some stupid uncrossable river that, apparently, even your flying device can't figure out a way to get to the other side of.

This sounds like what Final Fantasy XII could have been if the entire world was featured in the single game. I think that worlds should be developed and expanded, too, but there are still technological limitations in place that force developers to choose between expansiveness or attractiveness, as the prettier the graphics, the more resources the graphics take —