Final Fantasy Committee Created

[Mo-Nercy]

Good.

FFXIII wasn't great, but that's not to say the effort wasn't there. It tried to introduce a new generation of gamers to Final Fantasy. Gaming has become a mainstream entertainment industry over the past few years and SE can't expect to please everyone. Certain "old school" fans cry out for remakes but I reckon that'd just be a horrible waste of resources. They operate a business and the only way to grow a business is to attract new customers. Remasters, direct sequels, mobile phone games aren't going to do anything for them.

Focus solely on a next-gen game. Make it a Game of the Year contender - a game that sets a new standard for RPGs, rather than rehashing old ideas.

[Loony BoB]

Make them new IPs to mess around with different concepts but keep Final Fantasy Final Fantasy.

Experimenting with new concepts is part of what makes Final Fantasy Final Fantasy. That's why it's such a success - it does new things, it leads the way. In XIII and XIV 1.0 they failed to capture the reviews they hoped for but XIV 1.23 was great and XIV 2.0 is getting strong reviews all over the place. XIII-2 was excellent, ending excepted. With that in mind, I'm not too bothered about the people on this committee. The person who made mistakes in XIII corrected almost every one of those mistakes in XIII-2. The person who made mistakes in XIV is no longer even working for Square Enix last I checked.

The biggest problem SE have is whoever it is that tells people that the games are going to sell like wildfire (here's looking at you, Tomb Raider).

[Bolivar]

I always want them to experiment, they just don't have to keep adding the name to rhythm titles, handheld crossover fighters and monster hunter-likes...

[Philosoraptor]

I think the biggest recent problem in terms of a disappointing (to put it mildly) game and significant PR hit has to be All the Bravest. Someone deserved to be canned over that PoS.

Theatrythm et al don't seem like particularly good ideas to me either; I can accept their existence, but they're not my thing and not where I'd have taken the series if I ran the zoo, and I suspect they somewhat dilute the brand.

But All the Bravest actively hurt the brand.

It can't help that the last two "main series" titles had problems, but they've had two weak, or at least controversial, main series games in a row before and bounced back from it.

[Freya]

Dude Theatrhythm is on of the best FF games I've played in a while and definitely one of my favorite 3DS games. But it's a one time maybe two time thing. If they make it into an ongoing thing ehhhh..


But atb was bad. It was a cash grab, that's it.

[black orb]

>>> Is this a joke or something?, the title "Final Fantasy" = Money for SE.
So why they would not want to put the FF title to any game possible?, and this "Committee" are the same SE employees?. Comedy..

[Psychotic]

Not convinced. Get some people from outside of the Final Fantasy series with a proven track record of making games. Western games, I would also like to add.

[Loony BoB]

Not convinced. Get some people from outside of the Final Fantasy series with a proven track record of making games. Western games, I would also like to add.

Eh, I already have an endless supply of Western games. I'm happy to have games from a different culture rather than "more of the same". Not every series in the world needs to be overly westernised.

Although... I must admit Final Grand Theft Fantasy is a game I would probably play. Sandbox game in a fantasy world where instead of stealing cars and shooting other gangs with guns, you instead steal chocobos and freeze/burn/electrocute random citizens? Yes, please! But I would absolutely not want it to replace the traditional JRPG style we find in the FF series. If anything, I feel the intent of working towards making the game more suited to a Western audience has hindered FF more than it has helped. It was, after all, part of how they designed FFXIII. I'm sure I read somewhere that they were wanting to stick to the rawest of ingredients when making that game (and they stated that would be the battle system) and I'm also sure they did this while taking inspiration from Western games that have a similar gameplay focus such as Call of Duty.

[Psychotic]

I didn't say westernise it, which is the direction Square seem to want to take anyway. Times have changed and it aint the 1990's anymore - Japan is not number one like it was. They're resting on their laurels and they've become complacent. I know EoFF has a distaste for the West when it comes to games, but I don't mean Call of Duty or Skyrim or EA or whatever else it's hip to turn your nose up at. Keep your unique charm but get some external ideas and ways of thinking on board too. Go Indie, even! Get the Dwarf Fortress guy. Get notch from Minecraft. Mix it up. Inno-bloody-vate.

[Loony BoB]

I honestly don't think they are lacking in innovation compared to Western developers. I think that the innovations just didn't meet the tastes of a lot of the fans. Criticising Square for a lack of innovation is kind of baffling to me in that every FF has something generally "never done before".

I genuinely have no "distaste for the West", I just feel that SE doesn't need them in order to keep FF fresh and/or great. What they might need from the West, if anything, is the background organisation, the structure, the marketing teams, that sort of thing. Not to mention the ability to give new talent a shot (luckily they did this with Yoshi-P and it's paid off, so hopefully they do more of the same). I don't think FFXIII-2, the latest of the offerings from SE, needed anything westernised about it, and the only bad thing about the game was the end. But then, I can say that about a couple of major Western games in recent years, too (DE:HR, ME3).

Essentially I agree that they could use "external interested parties" in such a committee but I don't see any reason for them to be English/American, let alone non-Japanese.

[Jinx]

I wouldn't say that doing something "never done before" in your series is really innovation. Sure, they change things up every game, but nothing ever really feels unique or drastic enough to make it feel innovative. The games--even when they're different, like FFXII--are all pretty formulaic. From what we've seen from trailers, it seems like FFXV is taking that to a new level, but I'm still not sure I would consider the changes (as of yet) something that really breaks the mold and refreshes the series. I think they're definitely headed in the right direction, though.

I honestly also think that maybe the series is just stale. It's old. There's 15 games and tons of spin-offs. It might just be that Final Fantasy is coming to its end. Nothing lasts forever

[Bolivar]

Seeing how subjectively people, even in this thread alone, use the term "innovation" convinces me of just how hollow a buzz word it is when discussing games.

[Spuuky]

Sorry, but a committee like this can't be made up of people who are currently making the games. That defeats the purpose of such a group.