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15 Things I want to see in Final Fantasy XV
Okay, so XV may still be seeing a release in some distant tomorrow but that doesn't mean we can't sit around and talk about what we want to see! So here I am providing a list of 15 things I want to see in Final Fantasy XV.
15. More Viable Achievements and Trophies
I understand that it can sometimes be challenging to come up with ideas for these simply gamer awards but now that the series is taking an Action-RPG route I feel this opens up a wealth of options. Basically I feel it would be great to move past the "killed your 10,000th enemy" or "collected 1 million gil" let's liven this up and add exploration trophies, finishing bosses off with certain moves that might in-game alter their death animation. You know, actually have trophies that don't reward you for not turning off the game and getting to a certain point, or ones that require you to dedicate hundreds of hours of grinding but stuff that actually requires a bit of skill and rewards the player for going above what is called for them.14. Strong sidequests.
No I am not talking about tracking down 100 palette swap monsters with absurd stats, nor do I mean collecting arbitrary number of arbitrary items to give to some face less dude. I'm talking about optional dungeons with cool items at the end like the Cultist Tower, the Deep Research Center or finding optional towns with their own little quests like the Feymarch in IV or Wutai in VII. Side quests that have a strong narrative or strong gameplay function that doesn't rely on the battle system to do all the heavy lifting. Make them not feel like side quests, but instead, a natural part of the world that doesn't feel like a simple MMO gimmick.
13. A Playable Airship
Players haven't had a playable airship in a numbered FF in fourteen years when IX was released on the PS1. That's a whole generation of gamers who have never gotten to experience a modern FF that opened up the world for the player by giving them access to a means of transportation that made the world feel bigger and give the story greater scale, once a hallmark of the franchise with many imitators, FF has reduced the airship to an off-screen hub to instantly transport players to the location they want. With XV, I feel it would be mind blowing to once again experience flying around a well designed HD world and see an old series tradition make a triumphant return for a whole new generation.
12. Limit Breaks!
It's been a mixed bag with the last four entries but it just seems to me like FF has been trying to branch out with Limit Breaks with mixed results. I hope that XV will take a chapter out of Kingdom Hearts:Birth by Sleep and make the limit breaks work similar to the high tier Command Styles. For those who haven't played BbS, when a character uses certain skills they charge up a meter that changes the characters fighting style based on the attacks, these can then be pushed into a high tier command style that is like a super mode specific to the character with one of them getting a teleport spam ability, another getting wings of light that can be used to fight and another channeling powerful darkness. Since it was mentioned a while back that each character plays differently, this system would work well as a Limit Break alternative for the action heavy game and allow the player to have both a functional gameplay mode that rewards good play-style while also giving the player the eye candy the series has been known for.
11. Difficulty Modes
Since it's an Action-RPG it will most likely happen but in general FF should start incorporating difficulty modes in their numbered entries and not just in their side titles. Obviously this game will be a nice intro for a new generation of gamers but others have grown up on games like Tales or Kingdom Hearts so to find a nice balance, Square-Enix should make sure to create a set of difficulty modes to accommodate both new and veteran players. It just makes sense.
10. Co-op
Something not seen since Final Fantasy IX and a mainstay for the SNES entries, but it would be amazing to finally have a non-MMO FF game feature two-player or even three or four player co-op modes for friends to play through the game. In an era of heavy reliance on online play and multiplayer and with the new entry being the series trying out a new genre that is perfect for it, I would love to see this feature return so players could experience the newest FF together. It may be difficult since characters are said to play almost different genres in the case of the gun user but I would still love to see SE try to make this work. While many people have mixed feelings about Crystal Chronicles or 358/2 nothing beat getting a full group of friends together to try and tackle the games in the fun co-op modes.
9. A large cast of summons!
XII might have been the last game to have a large set of summons but most of them were references to Ivalice's fantastic world, XIII only had six summons, XI and XIV were MMOs, and even X only had eight playable summons. Remember back in the day when you were tripping over them? I mean it isn't helped that Bahamut and Shiva are mainstays while the rest get rotated but usually include Ifrit, Alexander, and Odin meaning if there are only eight summons then there is a good chance six are accounted for. I would love to see Ramuh, Fenrir, Titan, Siren, Leviathan, Carbuncle, Diabolos, Phoenix and Madeen make a playable comeback.
I would also love to see a game bring back the summons in a big way. Not only give us a large set of them but make them playable like they were in FFX which I feel would work well with the new gameplay. Imagine ripping through an army of soldiers as Bahamut and air-combing the group of them with a finisher of Mega Flare? If not, perhaps Summons could return to their cinematic roots and simply go back to being all powerful cinematic eye-candy attacks that will clear a field for you. It worked in Crisis Core. ;)
8. A meaningful Musical score...
Not that the music has been bad but it just seems with the advent of voice acting that music has taken a backseat to dialogue, I would love to see a more emotionally charged soundtrack with dialogue lacking scenes to show it off. Where's my Aerith's death scene or the sacking of Lindblum or Sqaull rescuing Rinoa from Esthar, all those scenes have strong emotional ties thanks to the strong bond between music and visual and while dialogue adds context and clarity, it just gets in the way of feeling sometimes. It would be intriguing to see a score that really competed with the dialogue for controlling the players feelings.
7. Relevant Towns and NPCs
I would love to see the series move away from a few large hubs and return to trying to create a world full of different locations and colorful people inhabiting it. Games like Xenoblade and Persona have shown that making the NPCs feel like people helps immensely in immersing the player into the world by giving it a real face. I want this because I feel it helps to create scale with the world and if we're thinking of putting airships back into this game it would be nice to see a game try to up the scale in world building by creating large swaths of distinct locations and people who inhabit them. Let's also keep towns a focus for shopping and getting information to do those cool side quests I mentioned earlier. ;)
6. Puzzles
When was the last time you played an FF that seriously incorporated puzzles into the dungeon design? X-2? Yeah, we're overdue... Puzzles are always great because they not only break up the monotony of fighting and exploring dungeons but they can also be used as a tool to expand the world and story. Creative RPGs have always found ways to weave in a bit of narrative into the puzzle elements from Zozo's Clock puzzle that made you talk to its lying citizens, the Shin-Ra Building with Mayor Domino's password puzzle, finding the different items in the Shumi Village in VIII, all of them said something about the place, or expanded the world or gave you insight to new story elements. So please XV, let's have some great puzzles incorporated into the game like maybe you can play as child Noctis and explore the family library looking for something his father hid in one of the books and by reading each book as you explore you learn new stuff about the world and his family. Just think of the possibilities.
5. Meaningful customization
Customizing characters has always been a cornerstone of the genre, but lately with many games, it simply feels like its there simply to be an arbitrary handicap to keep you from blasting through the game as opposed to a means of survival. While no one wants to rage quit a game cause they built there character wrong by specializing in the wrong stats or abilities, it would still be nice to have customization incorporate more than just moving a few spaces up on some bars. With the shift in genre, it can be possible to build playstyles by using certain skills unlocked by specializing in certain skills, you were trying to do this in Kingdom Hearts 2 and even Chain of Memories but with the strides made in the KH franchise I feel the game can finally pull it off as intended. Imagine the replay value of a game that allowed the player to specialize in brute strength, or a magic build, or even an agility or defensive build. Birth by Sleep shows it can work, hell take some notes from Devil May Cry 3, you can build a customization system that could really change how each play through feels, go for it SE, you have proven you can do it, just reach out and grab it!
4. A large consistent world to explore.
It's time, we won't discuss the past SE but it's time to take note what others have pulled off and finally create a breathing world that players can explore. Not because we want some player defined open world game like Eldar Scrolls but because it was the logical next step, you tried with FFX and certainly came closer with FFXII but both games were hindered by an underpowered system for the grand world you dreamed up for them. We've skipped the PS3 but now with the new console generation, now is the time to go big or go home. Let's build a world that has places to explore large defined cities to get lost in, dungeons with twists and turns with every new step showing a wonderful and well thought out setting of grandeur. Players should talk about your locations like they were real places, their journey to these places should sound like actual travel adventures as if the very sense of exploring the world and fighting enemies brought such surprises and wonderful moments of discovery that someone who hasn't played it would almost think you scripted it.The world should feel like a real world with every place and every location, and every path making sense with the design of the worlds history and politics your writers have dreamed up. It should all be memorable, not just the sights or the people but the journey itself. That is the new direction people are wanting SE. Not an open world but a real world.
3. A strong distinct cast of playable characters
Some fans may argue on this one, not that they don't want it but simply argue that FF games have always had strong characters, but lately I feel you have been phoning some of them in, for every Balthier and Sahz, there is a dopey Vaan or kooky Vanielle that just doesn't add anything new to the story or feels like a rehash of your greatest hits. So far, the cast looks very intriguing from the trailers but honestly I want to be surprised, like Sahz surprised me with his father angle, or Lady Ashe for being a strong female lead and not just the main characters love interest. I want to see a cast that feels fresh, no genki girls, no badass loners with murky pasts, no young boys yearning for adventure, no easy going muscles heads, and no dowey eyed reserved females with "inner strength" let's bring something fresh to the whole cast, I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt that Noctis isn't going to be a knockoff of Advent Children Cloud Strife.
2. A Great Villain
You know what's been missing since the PS1 era? A strong main antagonist. Sin and Seymour fought for screen time in X and both ultimately got overshadowed by the very impersonal Yevon, Vayne was interesting but his actions dealt more with petty internal politics and again his henchmen were far more intriguing, Barthandelus was too obvious and lacked any real depth as a character. What FFXV needs is a screen stealing villain who is both likable and despicable in one fell swoop. A villain who can drive the plot and not get overshadowed by the other antagonists or the story. Someone like Golbez or Kuja whom could drive a story forward or be as memorable as Kefka and Sephiroth. Great stories are defined not by its characters but by the villains who move the story along.
1. A Solid Story
Say what you will, the last couple of FF shave largely been hit-or-miss with people and now with an overly anticipated game to serve as an opener for a whole new generation of gamers. I know SE loves to go over the top but since the story is said to be "a fantasy based on reality", I am hoping for a story that will try not to overreach with its plot and twists. A strong cast and a good villain don't need to rely on overly complicated story about metaphysical possibilities of the heroes existence, nor a change when a third party villain pops up to take over the plot during the last dungeon, or anything that can be traced back to the Silver Age of comic books. That's not to say it can't be fantastical or complex but sometimes writers try too hard and that's how we end up with 4D World in Star Ocean 3, Tidus stepping on landmines shaped like blitzballs, and whatever it was you were trying to do in the Compilation of FFVII. XV doesn't have to impress us with bizarre twists that seem to come out of nowhere, if the characters and setting are good then the rest will follow. You don't need to try to recreate the same feeling as the classic FFs.
These are my fifteen elements I would like to see, what are yours?
