Active Time Report 6.0, Episode Duscae 2.0 release date, Story updates

Saw this on Facebook. Fortunately I didn't form any weird attachments to any previous characters or situations. But it's still a little bit of a bummer. I don't think it will dissuade me from the game. Ironically enough the demo may have, but we'll see how demo 2.0 goes and if I end up having to fight an onslaught of 400 enemies over the course of the night who keep respawning faster than I can kill

Originally Posted by DMKA

There's already a thread about this at the top of the forum.

And yeah, if you're so sexist that you can't stand to play as a party of gendered characters different from your own then you should probably find something more fitting to your taste.

Whoops, mods feel free to merge!

Calling me sexist because I don't want to play a game that doesn't feature any female lead characters isn't accurate. I'd prefer more diversity in my games and more featuring of women. So yeah, it clearly doesn't seem to be for me.

Originally Posted by DMKA

And yeah, if you're so sexist that you can't stand to play as a party of gendered characters different from your own then you should probably find something more fitting to your taste.

Excuse me? It's sexist for not wanting to play a game that has very few female characters? I think you need to choose your words a little better, it's not sexist at all. Get your knickers out of a twist. So effing rude.

Originally Posted by Night Fury

Originally Posted by DMKA

And yeah, if you're so sexist that you can't stand to play as a party of gendered characters different from your own then you should probably find something more fitting to your taste.

Excuse me? It's sexist for not wanting to play a game that has very few female characters? I think you need to choose your words a little better, it's not sexist at all. Get your knickers out of a twist. So effing rude.

God forbid a woman want to play a game where there's representation of her gender and a character that she can identify with. How sexist!

I think that it's okay for me, as a woman, to feel let down by Final Fantasy for this move. Final Fantasy is always a series that I feel has represented women pretty well. Now they've just cut out playable females in this game? troute. And don't give me the "YEAH BUT FFX-2" NO. There was a TONNE of dude characters in that game, and in the HD remake you can even get the dudes in your party.

In 15 we have Luna and Sexualised-Cidney. I think it's totally fine if I don't want to play this game, it doesn't make me sexist in the least.

Definitely!

I think it's pretty normal for players to have an "avatar" in Final Fantasy, even if they don't directly get to choose what that character does or looks like. I mean, any media, really. That's not to say that a female can't identify with a male character more (or vice versa), but I think generally people identify most with characters of their gender. So it's disappointing. When I first heard that FFXV would have no playable female characters, I decided I would not be purchasing the game. I've heard a lot of "Well, it probably works better for the story!" and that might be true, but it's probably not going to be a story I enjoy.

And yeah, bringing up FFX-2 is dumb if only for the imbalance of amount of male vs. female characters in this series. The 3-Female Rule.

I'm sure there have been characters cut from nearly every FF game from the start that we just don't know of.

They probably have a very good reason as to why Versus was cancelled, so I wouldn't even worry about that. It's not like XIII (or any of the others) needed yet a 4th sequel anyway. It'd be interesting if they let us know the whole story as to why it was scrapped, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Originally Posted by DMKA

This pretty much confirms what I've been trying to tell people for the last year though; Final Fantasy XV is not Final Fantasy Versus XIII by a different name; Final Fantasy Versus XIII was cancelled, XV is an entirely different game.

I'm still excited for FFXV but it really makes me sad because when I go back and watch those Versus XIII trailers (particularly the 2011 trailer) I see a game that looked so awesomely promising, and like something I really wanted to play, that I shall never get to.

Yeah basically that. IT just shows that it really is a different game. And that says something that there wasn't even that much that was even done in the like decade long development that a new crew could come in and change a whole bunch of stuff.

Yeah. As a dude. I prefer inclusion. I am the privileged gender in this regard, so it hasn't completely turned me off (or rather, turned me away, as it is doing with women), but it is definitely a mark against it. Being pro-inclusion is about as far from sexism as you can get, though

If people were choosing not to play it because it wasn't a cast full of females instead. Then that might be a little sexist. But all anyone is asking for is one competent female character represented in the main cast. Preferably as a playable character. But I think some would even concede if it's just a super prominent role. But there's no room for women here. Kinda sad, but hopefully XVI will fix it

Edit: As an aside, I'm guessing DMKA was being facetious or sarcastic or something. I may be wrong though. But I'm not ready to mob just yet

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Hajime Tabata discussed in an Active Time Report stream that the 2.0 patch for the Episode Duscae demo of Final Fantasy XV would be released on June 9th, 2015. The patch would add improvements to the demo, as well as new features.

As for the full game itself, much more has been brought to light. Stella, one of the female characters featured in an early demo of the game, is in fact Luna, who was introduced more recently. There has been great speculation on whether Luna and Stella were sisters, the same women with different identities, or if Stella got scrapped. It turns out, the later is in fact correct.

Other changes to the game involve major sequences. Tabata admitted that the final version of Final Fantasy XV will be a completely different game than it's original incarnation, Versus.

The video of Active Time Report is below. You can also join in the discussion already happening in our forum by clicking here.

I can't wait to see the Ultimania for this game, as I bet it will have a section with Nomura where he explains what Versus XIII was going to be like. It will be titled, "This is how awesome this game would have been if I wasn't lazy and actually made the game when I lied to you that I was actually working on it not just doodling on napkins while snuffing blow."

Despite all that, none of this bothers me. Stella looked interesting but I'm willing to give her new witness protection variant "Luna" a chance. Not surprised that this game has shifted so much that it's basically a new concept, guess Kotaku was right when they spread that rumor that Versus XIII was cancelled a few years ago.

People are also forgetting about the dragoon girl! (Don't think shes got a name yet) Tabata explained she's still in the game. Even tho the sequence of her in the city has been cut.

I know she probably won't be playable......still a strong female character tho!

I think it is good that he is making it his own rather than try to fit to what was supposed to be Versus. But I still wish we had gotten the original Versus and then use all these new concepts for a completely new FFXV.

I don't get this "I'm not playing this now because there's no female characters!" when there's exactly the same amount of female characters as there's always been, just different ones.

I don't get it anyway, actually. I'm going to bring FFX-2 into it whether people like that or not, but not as a "it balances it out and therefore that makes it okay" but from personal perspective. I loved FFX-2 even though there was no male avatar for me. It wasn't even an issue, I didn't think twice about it, and you know what? I had a blast.

Don't get me wrong, diversity is always a positive and it's good to have someone similar to yourself to relate to, but having it as a dealbreaker is just strange to me. I mean if you desperately need a protagonist of the same gender that's your prerogative, I just think that must be a miserable way to live life. "Can't be reading Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit!" or "Portal? Nah, no dudes, sorry, I'm out". That's just outright weird to me.

I would probably understand it more if it wasn't for Square's pretty good history with gender equality and the fact that of the NPCs we've seen, it's been a pretty even mix. While we've only seen two notable NPCs that are female, we haven't seen a huge amount of notable male NPCs, either. Cut the main party out (the reasons for them being all male have been given), you're left with the following named & notable NPCs confirmed in the game...

Males: Regis, Cor, Idola
Females: Lunafreya, Cindy

I like having female characters in my games, but I'm not feeling this is some great injustice at this point.

I still plan to play the game I just personally prefer female characters so I was hoping they'd added one instead of just replacing one

Originally Posted by Del Murder

I think it is good that he is making it his own rather than try to fit to what was supposed to be Versus. But I still wish we had gotten the original Versus and then use all these new concepts for a completely new FFXV.

It would have been nice to see how FFXV would have turned out in 2032.

My main concern is that Luna seems pretty boring from what we've seen of her so far.

Stella we saw her sassing Noctis at the (now scrapped) party in Insomnia, and subsequently also saw the two of them at odds about to engage in a sword duel.

Luna, well we've seen a painting of her walking out of the ruins of Insomnia. The only other thing we've seen of her is her sitting at a table and the quote "Luna has something for you."

I really hope that they haven't changed Stella, from what appeared to be a fairly strong female character, to Luna - who seems to be bordering on a damsel in distress that we'll have to save. It'd kinda be another step backwards for the series after Cindy.

Maybe the black haired woman and the Dragoon lady will make up for a rather lackluster female showing so far in this title.

On a personal note, I much preferred the name Stella over Lunafreya. Lunafreya sounds like an online screen name or some Mary Sue fanfic character ><

Will see how I feel having played the game, if it's ever released.

Kinda agree. Stella was said to have the same power as Boctis and that was one of the bigger sources of conflict, from what I gathered. I would have been fine with a simple name change, but them saying they needed to get rid if Stella and replace her with Luna makes me worried that they stripped the character of that pro-active role.