The North American and European launch of Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII is now less than couple of weeks away. Perhaps you never played FINAL FANTASY XIII or XIII-2, or you just never finished them? Well just incase you were wondering what the story so far was, or even if you'd just like to see both games re-imagined as 16-bit classics, Square Enix have decided to indulge you. Nearly 8 minutes of sprite artwork and MIDI-fied music await you!
In fact, I am one of their masters. SE is a slave to our money.
But we're all too happy to give them our money for various releases. Perhaps we are slaves to their will. I know I am. SE tells me to jump, I bend over and take it from them before jumping.
I think there is something to say about the ease of injecting whimsy into the 16 bit titles veruses modern games. When you see a sprite jumping around or an amusing text bubble it is fun and enjoyable. That's not as easy to do with 3D models and voice acting. Hard, but not impossible, because Kingdom Hearts was able to do it. That was one of the main gripes I had with the XIII games. They took themselves way too seriously. Even with all the time travel nonsense and Mog in XIII-2, Caius was such a brood and Yuel was a smurfing downer.
Music is 8bit, sound effects and graphics are 16bit. Maybe it's just me but that makes it lose all credibility
I don't think it makes them lose all credibility, but it definitely makes them lose at least a little bit. I think they might have just ripped the tracks from their chiptune albums. It's just a fun little video, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't want to spend the effort remaking the songs on the SNES soundchip.
Besides, I'm sure a lot of people probably didn't even notice.
I think there is something to say about the ease of injecting whimsy into the 16 bit titles veruses modern games. When you see a sprite jumping around or an amusing text bubble it is fun and enjoyable. That's not as easy to do with 3D models and voice acting. Hard, but not impossible, because Kingdom Hearts was able to do it. That was one of the main gripes I had with the XIII games. They took themselves way too seriously. Even with all the time travel nonsense and Mog in XIII-2, Caius was such a brood and Yuel was a smurfing downer.
The style of visuals is more behind it than the visual fidelity itself.
You noted Kingdom Hearts. This is one example. Wind Waker is another. As is Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. Or Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (in fact, Nintendo is great at this). The chibi-fied "LEGO" character models in Final Fantasy VII are yet another example.
None of these games had any problems with whimsy, because none of these games went for realistic graphics. You can have incredibly detailed graphics and still have a whimsical game. I don't think you can do the same with photorealistic graphics though. I mean, let's step away from games and look at TV shows. How many live action shows have managed to portray a fun and whimsical atmosphere well? Not many (and there have plenty that have tried it). I think it's an Uncanny Valley type disconnect. When the appearance gets to close to reality, you have to either ground the subject in reality, or have it come across as weird and creepy.
I would love to see Square take a more stylized approach to their aesthetics. We know they still can. They're making Kingdom Hearts, and they released Bravely Default. They just need to actually do so.
As far as FFXV, I'm hoping for at least Crisis Core levels of whimsy (nothing comically animated, but still lighthearted enough that not everything is done straight).
Anyway, this video was kinda cool, but seeing the plot of both games condensed has done nothing to improve my opinion on either of them. I laughed out loud when Lightning just fell into Valhalla.
Still, you could tell there was some great effort put into this, and I appreciate the though, Square.
I thought this was fanmade (I just jumped right into the video!) until I read the thread. That's damn cool of Square to do that using FFVI assets. Really enjoyed it.
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