Kitase talks about Action RPGs, is this FFXV's future?

[Wolf Kanno]

So Kitase had a short but provocative interview in Edge magazine recently and spoke about action RPGs like Dragon's Age are really popular and how one would be silly not to notice this trend. So of course, the gaming media has taken this as a possible hint that FFXV might be turned into an Action RPG. Despite Kitase not saying anything of the like.

Final Fantasy XV could be an action-RPG - Edge Magazine

Square Enix Remains Hell-Bent On Ruining Final Fantasy - PS3 News

So any thoughts? Do you think it might be a good direction? or do you think FF has finally "jumped the shark"? I'm not sure how I feel, I guess SE has been trying to make the series so fast and fluid that it might be nice to finally quit this foreplay with Action game elements and finally just take the plunge into the genre for FF. Its not like the series isn't about reinventing itself. On the other hand, I don't really care for Action RPGs as a genre, and they tend to have serious balancing issues.

[Del Murder]

I like the idea of a SE action RPG, but why make it FFXV? SE has had other intellectual properties besides FF in the past, some of them action RPGs. I wonder if Kingdom Hearts would qualify for a Final Fantasy title under SE's current business model.

I would prefer SE do its action RPG thing under a new name and make Final Fantasy XV a bit more traditional.

[Bolivar]

^ There's... really not much else to say other than that.

Ah, Kitase. One of my favorite game directors and most loathed producers. I'll have to read the full interview tomorrow (it's late) but hopefully his response is more in line with what Del suggested, that it's a trend the company can look into, NOT a reason to take Final Fantasy even further away from what it was for a solid 14-18 years. YES the series always reinvents itself, but there are many unwritten rules which players expected, and I would prefer they honor that. There's not a very good excuse not to, it just takes a little bit of elbow grease.

[chionos]

I like the idea of a SE action RPG, but why make it FFXV? SE has had other intellectual properties besides FF in the past, some of them action RPGs. I wonder if Kingdom Hearts would qualify for a Final Fantasy title under SE's current business model.

I would prefer SE do its action RPG thing under a new name and make Final Fantasy XV a bit more traditional.

Precisely. While Sakaguchi always said that it was better to have new characters and a new story and a new world for each new FF, I don't think he meant that FF should become what SE is trying to make it now, a brand with no core identity.

[ShinGundam]

To be fair, he doesn't seem to hint at anything at all, where did he said FFXV is action RPG ?

IMO, FF fans should worry less about the type of combat, more about structure of the world and narrative.

Precisely. While Sakaguchi always said that it was better to have new characters and a new story and a new world for each new FF, I don't think he meant that FF should become what SE is trying to make it now, a brand with no core identity.

Wrong, The thought of "let's keep using our outdated game design" won't save core identity.

[Slothy]

To be fair, he doesn't seem to hint at anything at all, where did he said FFXV is action RPG ?

He didn't come right out and say the next FF would be an action RPG, though in fairness it's pretty hard to argue that he didn't hint they could move in that direction.

I mean, you can't really say that when someone makes statements about how players in the global market are moving away from turn based games, followed by the statement "That's a trend, and you ignore things like that at your peril," that they aren't at least looking very closely at going that way.

Given the clustersmurf that was FFXIII's battle system, I can't really say it'd be a big leap for them to go that way.

Personally I'm iffy about the whole thing. Games like FFXII proved to me that turn based systems still have plenty of new things to offer, and I don't want to see an entire gameplay mechanic, particularly one which has been at the forefront in one form or another of a lot of games which are lauded as some of the best ever, simply die off because people are looking more towards action games.

In reality though, I'm sure it wouldn't die even if big franchises like FF move away from it. There are always smaller developers and indie developers. It's kind of the plight of chasing this big budget AAA ideal that leads to a more homogenous mix of top games. If you're going to spend multiple tens of millions of dollars making these things, then you have to either lok at where the market is going and ape what's popular or get ahead of the curve and define what will become popular. You can guess which is easier, and which the people investing those millions into a project are quicker to fund.

[VeloZer0]

It would be a lot more reassuring if SE hadn't demonstrated a complete inability to create good new IPs.

Wrong, The thought of "let's keep using our outdated game design" won't save core identity.

Turn based isn't outdated, it just isn't the only show in town anymore. The bar just has to be raised, not thrown in the garbage.

[ShinGundam]

OK, I am out of touch with majority of opinions at this point but i am more disheartened by the whole " Why not making it a new IP/SE new RPG" as if Squaresoft/enix hasn't produced different kinds of action RPGs before or an FF game is nothing more than turn-based/ATB as if the market wasn't filled with turn-based RPGs or the fact that people here ignoring the newer formula such as 2 numbered MMO games (FF11/FF14), one offline MMO (FF12) and 2 movies (FF10/FF13).

So i want a good reason, why an action RPG FF would be anymore offensive when FF experience ranged from a single player to a co-op multiplayer based to an MMO, from a game where positioning affects gameplay to no movement whatsoever, from completely active battles to an order based, and i can go on and on and on.

Turn based isn't outdated, it just isn't the only show in town anymore. The bar just has to be raised, not thrown in the garbage.

My personal view is the concepts of turn-based, world map, random encounters, etc aren't outdated but the execution of the game in terms of map design and structure of the world and narrative is really getting there.

[Wolf Kanno]

^ To be honest, the jump to an MMO experience has greatly divided the fanbase, to the point most of them don't even bother recognize either game as an actual entry. While said fans are not angry at the prospect of FF having an MMO title, a good chunk of the fanbase feels it was a stupid move to make it a numbered title. I've been noticing something similar happening with DQX among its fanbase. So while making an FF action RPG itself isn't something fans are angry about, its the fact that its being slated as a numbered entry which would make it move even further from the core elements that old time fans loved about the series. Its definetly going to be a dividing title if it was made.

Course I'm still banking on SE just turning FFVersusXIII (which is an Action RPG) into FFXV. Its been pretty much established that the new XIII mythos is being interpreted differently for each game, so how is that any different from how earlier games reinterpret plot points like the Crystals, Meteor, and Summoners?

As for the whole "Dungeon, World Map, Town, Dungeon" set-up, I honestly disagree with it being an old outdated relic. Otherwise, XIII wouldn't have gotten such a negative backlash from excluding these elements. Hell, games like Xenoblade Chronicles seem to have taken the formula to a higher tier by making all the elements more engaging and less monotonous, by reincorporating better NPC interaction, better quest systems, and better exploration. Hell DQVIII pretty much built the best compromise between old school world map systems and the newer ones. I feel the system works, its SE who has convinced themselves its old and outdated.

[VeloZer0]

OK, I am out of touch with majority of opinions at this point but i am more disheartened by the whole " Why not making it a new IP/SE new RPG" as if Squaresoft/enix hasn't produced different kinds of action RPGs before or an FF game is nothing more than turn-based/ATB as if the market wasn't filled with turn-based RPGs or the fact that people here ignoring the newer formula such as 2 numbered MMO games (FF11/FF14), one offline MMO (FF12) and 2 movies (FF10/FF13).

I think that a lot of people are upset about the dilution of the FF brand. Before having a "Final Fantasy" used to mean quite a bit more that it does now. Sure there were some shameless cash ins, but all and all if you bought a numbered FF entry you could be fairly certain of what you were getting. Now we are heading to a time where "FF" is just a euphemism for "Made by Square-Enix".

[Bolivar]

As for the whole "Dungeon, World Map, Town, Dungeon" set-up, I honestly disagree with it being an old outdated relic.

In the interest of fairness, what ShinGundam said was this:

Bolivar is the most insightful poster on this forum and Revenant Wings was a good game.

Haha, j/k. Seriously, it was this:

My personal view is the concepts of turn-based, world map, random encounters, etc aren't outdated but the execution of the game in terms of map design and structure of the world and narrative is really getting there.

I'm not sure what's meant by that, but if we're talking about XIII here then, yeah, they could put a lot more ingenuity into the execution of this stuff.

I read the article, and I think we're gonna have to wait until the full interview's posted to decide whether this article title is flame bait or not. There's a couple statements like "FF always changes, we'll always try something new," "we left the door open after XIII and XIII-2 to do something different," and "you can't ignore this trend" which, taken together, make it seem like they're considering it for FFXV. But these could have been at different points and just spun by Edge (they're Xbox 360 fanboys anyway...)

We'll see though.

[Depression Moon]

I didn't think Dragon Age was considered to be an Action-RPG, but a WRPG. I was thinking something like Kingdom Hearts is classified as an Action-RPG. As far as the subject goes, if they're referring to WRPGS then I don't think it's a good idea. I play Final Fantasy because it's a JRPG series and not a WRPG series. I probably won't try the game out if I find both XIII and Versus XIII to be bad.

When they mentioned at E3 that the only Japanese game shown from SE was XIII-2. I thought that was pretty sad. I'm thinking maybe people are playing less of these games is because they're less available on consoles. I would buy some if I knew of any for the PS3. White Knight Chronicles doesn't appeal to me and the other ones are for the 360, but no new ones have been made in a long while.

Also perhaps people are also tired of the same kind of stories presented in these games. Maybe not, because a lot of WRPGs seem to stay similar in story as well.

[VeloZer0]

I'm not tired of the types of stories they are telling, I am tired of having them half baked and poorly written. I don't think this message is getting through to SE though.

[Bolivar]

D.Moon, I can't say for sure, but from what I heard they made Dragon Age II way more in the style of a hack-and-slash. That may be what they're referencing since I know Dragon Age Origins was playable in FFXII style, something Bioware kinda started themselves with KOTOR. Oh, and play Demon's Souls and Valkyria Chronicles.

Anyway, apparently there are a lot of great JRPGs today, they're just on handhelds. Which not a lot of people buy because advertising is less there, and the dedicated consumer base on them is kinda small. It's like a chicken-or-the-egg kinda problem. But I think we've already hashed out here already that small teams are more likely to succeed with a vision on games like RPGs. And you can't build a console game today with a small team. There's so many expectations of what an HD game has to do that a lot of the great writing and game design falls to the wayside. I've said a lot of this before, but I think the moral of the story is this generation isn't friendly for RPGs. But current gen games sell a lot of copies and make a lot of money and Square will gladly throw the integrity of their franchises to the flames trying to figure out how to tap into that. Right now I'd totally be down for FFXV being on the Vita & 3DS.

And by RPGs you all know what I mean. Yeah, there's a lot of popular "those" RPGs today, but all of those games blow.

[Flying Arrow]

I didn't think Dragon Age was considered to be an Action-RPG, but a WRPG. I was thinking something like Kingdom Hearts is classified as an Action-RPG. As far as the subject goes, if they're referring to WRPGS then I don't think it's a good idea. I play Final Fantasy because it's a JRPG series and not a WRPG series. I probably won't try the game out if I find both XIII and Versus XIII to be bad.

I'm curious as to your definition of a WRPG. The term refers to "Western RPG" but that really only seems to cover region rather than mechanics. Lots of games are considered WRPGs, but the term is only used to differentiate them from RPGs made in Japan. Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age are both WRPGs but are in no way shape or form of the same genre of game. I don't consider WRPG to be a genre, although I do consider JRPG a genre - not because of region, but because they all share very similar mechanics. There's no mistaking a JRPG for any other genre.

If you mean WRPG in the sense that it's tactical PC RPG a la the mid-90s-2000s, then yeah. I wouldn't call it an action RPG - although it's not completely turn-based either, IIRC.

Anyway, I don't mean to challenge you or anything. I was just curious.

As for the article, does it mention Dragon Age? If he considers Dragon Age the new wave of RPGs (it's really only a two game series and doesn't really have any imitators)... then I question if he even knows what he's talking about. FFXII was a lot like Dragon Age in a lot of ways, so if he's looking for inspiration on where to take the series then he needs to realize the FF series has kind of already been there.

Thing is, I don't really see a lot of overlap between a Dragon Age player and a Final Fantasy player, no matter how much Final Fantasy imitates Dragon Age. The general vibe I get these days is that FF (and JRPGs in general) has just stigmatized itself, especially in the eyes of those who have grown up/are growing up with Western RPGs.

The best comment from the Edge article:

Just give us a decent turn based JRPG with a full world to explore and a decent and involving storyline. It really is that simple.

Yes yes and yes. SE need to stop making excuses about why they can't do this or that and just make a damn fully fleshed out JRPG that people can sink their teeth into.