Let's Discuss Yoshihisa Hashimoto and the Luminous Engine *Possible Spoilers*

I was discussing the following topic with a friend of mine and it intrigued me highly. It's to do with Yoshihisa Hashimoto, the man responsible for the Luminous Engine. Now I think it's pretty clear Final Fantasy XV had a lot of content cut to meet deadlines and on top of that many fans had their expectations let down. This isn't the case with everyone since many seem to enjoy the game but it's obvious that the final product is very different from what we saw in the trailers pre-release and a lot of content was scrapped. This explains the lack of the Nifelheim Invasion in the game and many other things missing from the game. Anyway, let's get onto what the main meat and potatoes are.

Yoshihisa Hashimoto is the creator of the infamous Luminous Engine. It's a game engine that is associated with its impressive visuals and lighting. Agni's Philosophy debuted and showed off its impressive feats. Square decided to use the Engine for Final Fantasy XV. However, this decision led into our future forays...

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Mr. Hashimoto is the one responsible for programming, designing, and overall developing the engines for the 3D games in the Sonic series, and yes that also includes the well-known (infamous) Sonic 2006 game. So basically all the crappy 3D Sonic games... well this man was responsible for making their game engines. And you ask what this has to do with Final Fantasy XV? Well, you're about to find out.

The most popular, most ambitious trailer, and seen by many as the best trailer for Final Fantasy XV was the E3 2013 re-reveal trailer of Final Fantasy Versus XIII as Final Fantasy XV. This was this trailer that was basically on a godly level of epicness and it showed that Versus XIII was back with an amazing punch. This game was, for many fans, a signal of hope that Final Fantasy XV will be an amazing game. However...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcUSXub_ypU

What happened to that... well it was turned into this...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpA_rwzy7XM

The truth is that all of that in the E3 2013 trailer was running on a completely different engine known as "Ebony" and it was in this period that they were trying to take everything in that build the E3 2013 trailer was running off of and transfer it over to the Luminous Engine. This would obviously lead to complications in Final Fantasy XV's development. However, look at the similarities in that fight to the following from Sonic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4WyKnWdq30

They're very similar, aren't they? Heck, the battles look very identical. And they both have the same engine designer... Yoshihisa Hashimoto. (Now, don't compare Noctis' hair to Sonic...)

TL;DR Final Fantasy XV's Engine Designer was also responsible for the Engines of the horrible 3D Sonic games. Never would I see the day that Sonic would have anything to with Final Fantasy.... LMAO.

XV's design issues are just that; design issues. Now, it's true that technical problems (which certainly have a habit of cropping up more often when you're moving things onto a new game engine) have an impact on all areas of development, but we've seen throughout the past couple of years that they could never quite decide what they wanted XV to be. This game has been playable to a commercially acceptable degree in Luminous since Episode Duscae; more than good enough for a capable team to work with.

From E3 2013 to Episode Duscae (two versions) to the Platinum Demo to the final release, they've been consistently making big, fundamental changes to the core game mechanics. Responding to player feedback isn't a bad thing, but it still slows everything down. Take the technique system for example - in Episode Duscae techniques like Tempest were things that Noctis had based on the weapon he had equipped. By the final game these had been removed and were instead given to the AI companions. So they had to re-balance the combat system to account for that. They had to re-balance the economy, they had to change the way the weapon upgrade and skill tree worked. Redesign the AI to take the change into account, new user interface and so on and so on.

FFXV is a game full to the brim of 'great ideas' but it's also clear that it never really had a cohesive design until the late stages. Even the systems they have now are horrendously unbalanced in places (magic, items, summons) and that's just an inevitable consequence of not having long enough to playtest a completed system. Engine troubles... yeah, it was probably a factor somewhere along the line. But I don't think anything would have been substantially different regardless of what tech they used under the hood.

Do you think they'd fix these issues later? I know they're patching it already but that's just the story content and only Chapter 13. I mean fixing the entire game like with Final Fantasy XIV 1.0. You know? I'd probably re-purchase it again(I already sold my UCE for $900 in disappointment) but I think it's very unlikely. 5 million units shipped worldwide and most of the people who bought it seem to have positive thoughts about it.

Nope. From their point of view, what's to fix? The game was a critical and commercial success, and it has made a lot of fans either very happy or at least happy enough to not complain.

While there are a lot of people like you and me as well, there's no chance its a large enough percentage to justify the kind of investment you're talking about here. There will be some minor adjustments in patches and DLC - both story improvements and gameplay improvements (game improvements will be primarily balance issues), but it's never going to be 'like that 2013 trailer'. The best we can hope for is for XVI to be better, assuming they ever make one.

*sigh*

I really wanted Nomura's concept to shine. The vibes I get from the old Versus XIII trailers.... it's something I really enjoyed... It seems like VII Remake will take those concepts but who knows... And there is a petition to reboot Versus XIII in Japan but that most likely won't go anywhere and if Square even considers it it'll be such a strange move.

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Originally Posted by Fox

Nope. From their point of view, what's to fix? The game was a critical and commercial success, and it has made a lot of fans either very happy or at least happy enough to not complain.

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Actually so far it looks to be performing worse than XIII both critically and commercially. Whether that's still a success or not...I wouldn't say so.

That's only if you don't take into account the reputation damage XIII, its sequels, and the initial release of FFXIV has caused. Before them, FF could do no wrong. But as many people became disappointed with how things turned out, later games needed to do much more to impress the gaming community. Hence why XIV now and XV are considered successes despite scoring lower than XIII initially.

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Originally Posted by Fynn

That's only if you don't take into account the reputation damage XIII, its sequels, and the initial release of FFXIV has caused. Before them, FF could do no wrong. But as many people became disappointed with how things turned out, later games needed to do much more to impress the gaming community. Hence why XIV now and XV are considered successes despite scoring lower than XIII initially.

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The comments 10 and 15 years ago about X-2 and XII tell me fans think different than you.

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Originally Posted by Fynn

That's only if you don't take into account the reputation damage XIII, its sequels, and the initial release of FFXIV has caused. Before them, FF could do no wrong. But as many people became disappointed with how things turned out, later games needed to do much more to impress the gaming community. Hence why XIV now and XV are considered successes despite scoring lower than XIII initially.

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Well as Sephiroth said, X-2 and XII caused quite a bit of division in the FF fanbase. I remember everyone really hated Vaan as a protagonist and didn't like the new battle system for XII. XI also caused some division as it was the first MMO in the series.

And XV is scoring lower than XIII. Not initially. The reviews have settled and XIII is rated higher, albeit by only one point.

So at least in terms of reception, XV isn't the "return to form" that a bunch of people seemed to think the series needed.

To some it is, to some it isn't. It's completely subjective.

I definitely think they had some engine trouble during development (especially given that KH3 has been switched from Luminous to Unreal Engine 4) but I peg most of FFXV's problems on trying to reel-in the scope creep that had happened since 2006, probably coupled with management pressure to get the game out the door, causing the mish-mashed underbaked feeling many of us have with the game.

(Also Sonic Adventure was far from a horrible game when it was first released on the Dreamcast. Admittedly it's aged horribly and the subsequent ports to 360 etc were terrible.)

FWIW, you can find a large amount of division regarding FFX's release, too. I don't recall IX as I didn't play it around time of release... but FFX definitely had a lot of critics at release. Honestly, any new FF is going to pick up a large number of critics just because of FF's perseverance with trying something new each time, and because of the variety of fans they have picked up all wanting the next game to be more like their personal favourite FF.