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

The only thing I was ever genuinely interested in when the game was still Versus XIII was Stella, or what little we knew about her. Though I somehow mistook her rapier for a staff, I liked her look and weapon. When I learned the game would only allow you to play as the men, I lost interest as I would've preferred to play as Stella. I didn't wash my hands clean until they put Cidney in something a stripper would wear. Same reason I won't be getting Metal Gear Solid V as they did the same thing with Quiet. If that never happened then this latest news would've killed my interest in the game even further. Not being able to play as Stella is one thing, having her revamped in such a drastic way is quite another.

As for "we have such little information to go on" well, yeah. More news could come out later that turns things around and recapture interest, but people have a tendency to react to what they see when they see it. That's why when DmC was first making the rounds all people could talk about was his bloody hair.

Originally Posted by ToriJ

Not being able to play as Stella is one thing, having her revamped in such a drastic way is quite another.

Why is altering a character who wasn't working a bad thing?

Originally Posted by Psychotic

Originally Posted by ToriJ

Not being able to play as Stella is one thing, having her revamped in such a drastic way is quite another.

Why is altering a character who wasn't working a bad thing?

Why do you say Stella wasn't working? From the sound of it she was working quite well as far as fan reaction went. Meanwhile Luna is mostly getting a great big "Meh."

But to answer your question, it's because before she could have at least been in the background, now she's not there at all.

Originally Posted by ToriJ

Why do you say Stella wasn't working?

That's not me saying that, that's Hajime Tabata saying that. Watch the video in the OP! (37:49, you're welcome)

In the Lord of the Rings, Aragorn was originally going to be a hobbit called Trotter, because that was the sound his wooden feet made. This is absolutely true, you can look that up. Stella is Trotter. Luna is Aragorn.

Originally Posted by Psychotic

Originally Posted by ToriJ

Why do you say Stella wasn't working?

That's not me saying that, that's Hajime Tabata saying that. Watch the video in the OP! (37:49, you're welcome)

That's unfortunate, but I understand better now.

I don't think people have a lot of faith in Squeenix anymore. And understandably so. I know Tabata is a different story than any regular generic Squeenix producer or director, but we haven't seen enough of his work to be sure, and we know he's not the only cook with his fingers in the pot. Producer meddling is not uncommon. And I can safely say that in my opinion Square definitely did drop the ball regarding FFX and XIII. Such horrible storytelling and cliche characters and lots of ridiculous garbage. When they take away something good, it's completely reasonable for people to feel unsure if they'd put something good back in its place

I'm obviously not in the Stella camp, but I can totally understand where they're coming from. Square's track record would lead one to believe this is just a bad idea. It would have been more reassuring to find out they tweaked the story a little to make Stella work, rather than tweaking Stella to make the story work

I have no reason to believe they changed her because wasn't working. They've made bigger decisions based on more ridiculous reasons. It'll be a long time before they come out and tell the full story, so even though Tabata is awesome, I'll take that kind of negative press release information with a grain of salt. Not because I don't trust Tabata. But because I don't trust Square to make rational decisions

Plus I think it's a little silly that they don't try to paint Luna in a better light if they wanted everyone to accept her as a replacement and get over it more quickly. Perhaps they should have done a little more reveal on her when they dropped this bomb. It sounds like they haven't done anything. So we're still left with her meekly sitting at a dinner table looking awkward. Nobody ever got the impression that Stella was going to be meek and awkward

First impressions

Or, impressions in general. The reveals for them gave vastly different impressions. And while Luna's wasn't inherently negative, it's not exactly positive either

So I think they should just reveal some more stuff about her and give us a reason to stand behind her

I haven't washed my hands of anything, because I hadn't really formed an opinion on Stella. But I'm not particularly fond of what I've seen of Luna so far, so given the choice, I would have personally preferred what they were depicting with Stella. But I'm willing to give Luna a chance. They had just better give me a reason to

Originally Posted by Vyk

I don't think people have a lot of faith in Squeenix anymore. And understandably so.

For me it boils down to exactly this. I don't have any faith in them anymore. Already it's taken them SO DAMN LONG to make this game, which is one thing. Then all of a sudden there are no playable females which made me feel a bit 'meh'. Then I saw Cidney. Then was the demo that I didn't like all that much. I feel like it's just not going to be my kind of game in the same way that Type-0 wasn't either. I just didn't fancy it.

If there was a playable female I might have been a bit more swayed towards picking it up, but I'm just not at all. And I really think this game is going to be troute - just from what I've seen and heard of it. It's not my kind of Final Fantasy.

A lot has been said since my last post that I haven't had much of a chance to read. I just want to say that I'm sorry if my post came across as too judgmental or anything. I honestly don't care much if people are turned off by this game and don't want to play it. There are lots of factors we've seen so far that could lead to people feeling that way. I think that the knee jerk reaction to the Stella stuff just comes from already having so many negative reactions to the game with Cidney, all male cast, etc that it's easy to just immediately see this as a negative thing. All I'm saying is that we literally have nothing but a couple of seconds to go on for Luna, and I don't understand how people have such strong opinions about her as a character. She may be trout. She might not be. Who knows. I don't fault someone for not wanting this game due to other things that go against their tastes though. I don't fault people for being sad that we are missing out on some of the scenes that were there from the beginning. Really, it all comes down to the fact that Square should never have shown us ANYTHING about Versus XIII until Tabata took over considering work likely wasn't getting done on it throughout the time Nomura was "directing" it.

I have to agree with Wolf Kanno that most of the stuff we saw involving characters in the original concept trailers and such probably didn't exist much more outside of those trailers. It's likely Stella was just this cool concept that was never fleshed out past what we saw, and it just didn't completely mesh with the direction Tabata is going. I hope Luna can end up being an improvement over Stella when it comes to the world and story being created, but we'll have to wait to see. I'd love to see if more was actually worked on for this game during the Nomura years though if we ever get a translation for the likely Ultimania that will appear for this game.

On the topic of Cindy - didn't Tabata say they'd tone her down, since he never intended her to be so fetishy?

Lawr: Marach and Rapha were definitely black I think there were also black characters in Vagrant Story. Matsuno seems to care, at least a bit.

I also think all these announcements just have terrible timing concerning certain... events in gaming that really brought gender issues to the front.

"I didn't realize that having one of the few females in the game as a greased-up mechanic with her top unzipped would be considered so fetishizing!" sounds very convincing. Does he intend to tone her down by zipping up her jumpsuit?

Originally Posted by Shorty

"I didn't realize that having one of the few females in the game as a greased-up mechanic with her top unzipped would be considered so fetishizing!" sounds very convincing. Does he intend to tone her down by zipping up her jumpsuit?

Maybe he'll put her in actual mechanic clothes?

I don't know. You know, he didn't design her Apparently, one of the things that will be done is the camera no longer focusing on her boobs and ass.

I guess I'll lead back the the Stella thing with saying this: axing her proves to me that the game creators do not care about developing strong female characters. They took away the chance to do it with Stella, who had already been built up as the most prominent female. The rest we have are the objectification of Cindy, knowing nothing about Luna, and the promise of a forthcoming dragoon lady.

So far, we a strikeout with no female leads, a strikeout with Cindy, a strikeout with Stella, and null and null on the two latter accounts. It's not the comparison of Strider and Trotter, it's George Lucas talking about the Star Wars sequels and then the Star Wars sequels happening.

And I know the game is all still in smurfing development, and that we don't know about what's to come, but it's not good enough. It's just not good enough, not this far in development. What we have to work with are two unknown and undeveloped characters. If they cared about their female characters, they wouldn't be half-assing this trout with them and tossing together half-formed plans with them and chucking out their main gal (who isn't even a main gal because there are no main gals) while the rest of it looks so solid and laid out. Out of everything, it really appears that the lady cast is the bottom of the barrel of concern. That is what is off-putting to me about this game, and that is why I struggle to procure enthusiasm for it.

I can and have on many occasions enjoyed playing as male leads and have no opposition to playing as someone who is not of my gender, but with this particular game just not upholding the standard of making any sort of outreach to female gamers in any capacity whatsoever (50% of the industry, folks) and having it continue to blow chances with our representation, I just have to sortof say what the smurf.

Why are people saying all we've seen of Luna shows her as meek? Did nobody pay attention to Duscae? Here is some smurfing incredible artwork from the end of it:

Attachment 64611

There is a voiceover of a news broadcaster explaining how the city has just been absolutely hammered and Luna is dead. Well, wrong. Look at her. She's not some dainty meek woman, she is a god damn survivor. Soldiers in the background? Luna gives no smurfs. She has just walked away from the apocalypse, ragged, desperate, but alive and what's more has tricked them into thinking she's dead. No dashing hero has saved the damsel in distress, she's saved herself.

Incidentally, Noctis and his gang were meant to be fighting their way out of the city too but if you watch the video, that's the other big change. They're simply not going to be there when it goes down. Luna sure as hell is.

I also think it's important to note that the last three FF games released have had a female lead character. Well developed and strong female lead characters at that. In addition to that, Type-0 didn't really have a lead character but I don't think it's unreasonable to say the most major and developed member of Class Zero was Rem. So I'm left confused when people say they don't trust Square to do females justice based on recent history when in recent history they've done a much better job with creating strong female characters than strong male characters.

You're all insane, why don't you just wait for the game to come out, wait for people to play it or, better yet, play it for yourself and then decide whether you want to get in a huff about it?

Everyone in here is trying to pretend like they know anything about these characters (Luna and Stella that is) from literally minutes of footage, when the fact of the matter is you can't possibly know a single thing because the game isn't friggin finished. All you've done is taken a character that is no longer around and assigned all your ideal traits to her knowing that no one can prove you wrong because we'll never know what her actual character was like. That's awfully convenient but the fact of the matter is that when people say that Stella was God's gift to characterisation they're as of yet no more right than a person who says Luna could be an interesting character. If you're not part of the dev team then you just can't go around pretending like anything you're saying holds merit because you don't know anything more than a snippet of Stella's personality.

Just wait for the damn game to come out before you decide to rate it a zero at least.

Its still all about impressions and speculation. And though I have played Duscae, I didn't beat it. The game mechanics didn't translate well to my hands, just like Type-0, and when one battle lasted over 12 in-game hours and only ended when daylight cropped up, I completely lost interest in finishing the damn thing. I'd had a headache from listening to a straight half hour of battle music. And it seems only a small handful of people ever saw it. Only those who bought Type-0, on release, and managed to play through it, as I know I'm not the only person who gave up. It's a very small percentage

Seems like Square could have showed her to everyone better, as my only experience with her, is her sitting awkwardly at a dining table and looking around blankly and meekly. That's the only impression I've experienced with her

And it honestly wouldn't surprise me if she still had a meek personality if she has this untapped power that kept her alive, it has nothing to do with her personality. I've seen it happen in Japanese media before. I'm looking for things that showcase her personality. Not her ability

I mean, Yuna had arguably an awesome amount of power, and look how meek she always acted. So I honestly don't know if that would have convinced me she had a strong survivalist personality. But I'll have to watch it, or struggle through the demo again. Maybe I'll wait for the patch to see if its any more playable for me

Though no offense, but I call BS saying the last 3 Final Fantasy games had strong female leads. For one, I don't count a "saga of" side stories to be mainline games, so it's just Final Fantasy 13 games had female leads. But even outside of that nitpick, I don't think Lightning represents what women want to see in games. She was physically strong, sure. But also deadpan, slightly brain damaged, and way too much of a mary sue half the time. In fact, a lot of characters in that game had things just miraculously work out for them, rather than them actually achieving things through skill and planning. Though admittedly, I've heard the second and third games were treated better, and I have less experience with them. The women (and even men) were far from admirable in XIII from my experience. I would not use them as examples of well crafted characters

So no. I like what I see of the XV cast more already than I ever did the XIII cast, but I don't have any faith that they'll unsexy Cindy, or that they'll make Luna in any regard competent until they actually show it happening. And I do plan on purchasing this game, to find out. Since they've already convinced me it will be a better game than XIII. But that's still not saying much lol

Originally Posted by Vyk

Though no offense, but I call BS saying the last 3 Final Fantasy games had strong female leads. For one, I don't count a "saga of" side stories to be mainline games, so it's just Final Fantasy 13 games had female leads. But even outside of that nitpick, I don't think Lightning represents what women want to see in games. She was physically strong, sure. But also deadpan, slightly brain damaged, and way too much of a mary sue half the time. In fact, a lot of characters in that game had things just miraculously work out for them, rather than them actually achieving things through skill and planning. Though admittedly, I've heard the second and third games were treated better, and I have less experience with them. The women (and even men) were far from admirable in XIII from my experience. I would not use them as examples of well crafted characters

No offence taken, and likewise please take none when I call BS on you discounting games either because they don't prove your point or because you haven't played them. The title of the games or continuity of the games is not relevant. Square put time, resources and money into developing and releasing these games under the Final Fantasy name. They are the only single player Final Fantasy titles to be released during that console generation and could've just as easily had a male character be the lead in them but they chose not to do so.

Anyway, while I find it a little odd that you're speaking for women and what they want, the truth is actually rather different. The official Final Fantasy forums in Japan did polls on who the best male and female characters are. Lightning is ridiculously well-liked, and Serah, who I prefer as a character, also makes the top ten. I would also disagree with your view on the characters. Final Fantasy XIII has a hell of a lot of sins as a game, but if you think character development was one of them I don't really know what to say to you. It has much better development than the majority of Final Fantasy games and I don't like saying that because I'm not an XIII fan.

But, look, if you've never played XIII-2 or Lightning Returns I don't think you're really in a position to start making such sweeping statements about either the games or the characters anyway. Not only that, if you want games with female leads, start supporting them, otherwise your complaints about XV having male leads don't really hold much weight. They're both good games, really!

Yeah. It was actually really early in the morning for me (woken up prematurely) and I was in a mood. You're honestly completely right. Though I have experienced the original XIII, and was completely unimpressed in all regards. But then again, I've also heard people who hated FFX were still able to love X-2

Though honestly, I think Japan is a lot (A LOT) more forgiving regarding the lack of progressive characters in entertainment. They seem to truly enjoy cliche stereotypes that have little-to-no development, or are even hard to relate to. They don't seem to need an avatar in their games, nor do they seem to require any advancement in storytelling. They're never eager for something refreshing it seems

Though it wouldn't honestly surprise me if Lightning is actually more well liked by a silent majority in the west than I realize, so that point is probably moot

I'm just ... picky about my entertainment these days. Though it is certainly a waste of energy to expect every developer to cater to that. Especially eastern developers, who mostly care about eastern standards and preferences. It's a whole different beast in the west, and they are having trouble understanding and keeping up

I just had a long discussion with Skyblade on Nintendo's growing pains, and I guess it goes without saying most of the eastern developers are going through growing pains as they struggle to find this balance between giving Japan their cliches, and giving the West their refreshing more developed characters

And I was at least this worked up over Nintendo on a much smaller issue

And just like with Sky, I will accept the insight of someone more experienced in the issue. . I haven't played the other games, and I'm grumpy, and not being as objective as I could be

Originally Posted by DMKA

Wait, her name is Lunafreya? o__O

Ew wtf. They need to get more creative with their names or actually LESS creative.

I'm not really sure why people are complaining about this game as Square has put out FFX-2, and the Lightning series with strong playable female leads. They are not the enemy company we should be looking at. I'd say companies like Ubi Soft are more notorious for being sexist than Square. With that said, I have no interest in this game because Square hasn't put out a good game since FFX in my opinion. I tried to give their more recent games a shot, but I have been left disappointed. Now if we're here to talk about how racist Square is, then you'd be on the money. As much as I love characters like Barret and chocobo fro head guy are racial stereotypes and Barret's was a negative one. There has yet to be a good black female lead in the majority of video gaming and that's disappointing.

I feel like this has been posted before in a different thread, but I was looking up the trailers they released since Versus XIII was first announced just to kind of remember all of the original things we saw for the game. It's interesting to watch and see how the concepts looked back then compared to now.



Also, here's a translation of the party scene with Noctis and Stella. I'd never seen it translated before I just realized, so it was interesting to go look and see the Etro mythology stuff being present there and getting kind of a look into how their powers might work.



I can see why people would be upset by Stella's departure moreso now than just based on my faulty memory of the older trailers. Her character seems a bit intimidating and badass. I never saw her and still don't see looking back the possibility of her in your party as they seem to be more adversarial roles. Them having been acquaintances turned into enemies mixed with the mythology built in their conversation in the last trailer actually seems like an interesting dynamic. I'm really curious how the role is changing with Luna. Hopefully we get more info on that soon (ie, hopefully the game comes out soonish).

Really the concept still looks super interesting to me now looking at those old trailers and what the gameplay looked like back then. I'm not convinced much work was done on them back then still, but I feel more comfortable with the more Kingdom Hearts looking menu compared to what I played in the demo. I'm not too bothered by the inability to switch characters, but I do see cool possibilities that could be present with that ability, especially with setting up traps or ambushes maybe like what was seen in the demo with the Behemoth. The concept for the battles, world, characters, etc all look interesting, and I think a lot of that will still be present, but what we actually got to play in the demo certainly has a different feel and tone compared to all of the stuff we saw in the old trailers.