chionos
speaks Beaver
word

Another big change is that they've slowly begun to open up to their fanbase.

Only took them close to 30 years.

Yeah, I think it's more of a management thing. I remember reading somewhere that most of the upper management are Enix guys, so cue the "They destroyed Square from the inside!" jokes and what not. Because if it was just one or two people causing the problem all you have to do is fire those people and that's the end of your problem. A company's vision isn't likely to change until they stop making money.

Who knows what happened there. Maybe they were in the process of training their younger talent and "The Spirit Within" happened. All I know is after that movie didn't make back what it owe they cut Sakaguchi, fired a bunch of guys who worked on FFX, merged with Enix and then made X-2 to try to get some of that money back and the downward spiral went from there. Nomura went from being the "concept artist" guy to managing both Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, Yoshida or Kasuga (I think it was Kasuga because I remember his name starting with a H) started making smart decisions with A Realm Reborn, and of course Tabata is doing a lot of things I hope Square is taking notes on, but that's just three people out of how many? I think Nomura gets more crap than he gets praise, too, but I don't know enough about him to know if the criticism is valid or not.

Jesus Christ, I could write a book on the subject.

A MMO that had to be rebuilt from the ground up and a game they only published. At least they're recent. RE4 is a decade old now.

That is true, and considering most of the talent left to form Mistwalker and Monolith Soft, and there were no one left to pick up the slack, I'm not surprised by that, really.

I compare my relationship to Square with my relationship to the Chiefs. You want them to go to the Super Bowl one more time, but you know deep down it's never going to happen and it makes you so mad people wonder how you're a fan in the first place.

I have the same relationship with Capcom, but at least Capcom actually had a financial and critical success in Resident Evil 4 despite my dislike for the game. When was the last time Square could say that?

It's not just Square. Capcom has done the same thing with its Mega Man and Resident Evil IPs, and Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid games aren't what they used to be, and he's the best developer Japan has to offer.

Then in the West you have companies like Ubisoft just pissing off everybody.

I know I do, unless I say Snow is trout, or start criticizing Square Enix as a whole; then people line up to list off all the good games Square made in the past ten years and remind me that it's a different culture and that somehow defends them from criticism.

That's pretty srs.

The FFXIII fans lynch you yet?

How srs do you take it?

It's just a thing! I try not to compare or else I just drive myself crazy.