I get that, and I even agree. But the most important point for me is: it was a hell of a lot more fun for me than anything post FF6 (except 9)... Fun is all I care about. :P I'm a sucker for sequels if they're decently done. And I feel that TAY, despite its issues, was decently well done.Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
Anyway, maybe what we really should be doing is starting a petition to try to convince SE to localise FFLegends?
Ah, to be young and believe in petitions. BTW, SNES isn't the greatest console of all time, PS3 is, because it plays PS1 games, which is the best console of all time.
I've been wanting this for a while, posted about it in our remake/something thread (specific!), forgot about that FFLegends game... Love to see something like that, but another great point got brought up - Final Fantasy is all about doing something new everytime, and that spirit has been destroyed since the merger (hate to blame it on that, but it just so happens to coincide). I'd love for them to get back to that, only call MMO's "FFOnline," stop releasing any sequels or spinoffs, and just make new games. If they have to be on a smaller scale, so be it.
I have a feeling that it will find its way here somehow if it performs decently in Japan. I wonder how much effort these titles take to make and localize when compared to larger efforts like for Final Fantasy XIII or its sequel?
I believe in the power of humanity.
X-2 has one of the best battle systems of any Final Fantasies. And it wasn't taking itself seriously, so a comparison of the story with other FFs will be doing it a disservice.
And I have an issue with this 16-bit FFs are the best. I played IV for some time. And then I got bored in the sealed cave. And then I played it again the other day and got to the moon. Before I got bored again. The storyline was never particularly interesting and for the most part, I couldn't care about the characters.
This has happened to me in FFV and FFVI (both at the end-world state) and IX, strangely enough (although for the most part, I liked the story, characters and art of IX, I just could not handle the slow pace of battles anymore). Before people bash me saying that I am too interested in graphics, I also played Chrono Trigger. And although I did stop playing for some time (strangely linked to when I got God of War 3, Final Fantasy and some other games), I came back and finished it. And I am going to New Game + it.
So I challenge all the people who say that 16-bit FFs have a better artistic style or gameplay or story or characters to actually prove it. Because I do not know how VI can have greater character development when there are more characters than there are in VII but less in-game dialogue by them. Or how the old FFs had a greater artistic style, because IV, V and VI look very similar. As for the Kefka destroyed the world because he's such a nutter argument, that is confirmation bias at its best, because Square were too lazy to flesh in a backstory is just as plausible an explanation (and the first one people latch onto with Ultimecia).
So let me finish with a moderating statement. This isn't meant as a bash of the old FFs. They were great games considering the time they existed in. But they are not superior to the newer ones. They just didn't have the resources to compete.
I will happily grant you that X-2 had a great battle system, but trying to excuse the problems with the story because it wasn't taking itself too seriously is a cop out. I have no problem with a story that doesn't take itself too seriously (some of my favourite games do this frequently), but that doesn't excuse a bad story. And the story in X-2 was pretty awful.
This I will also grant you since I don't think FFIV's story telling has aged well looking back on it, but to simply leave it at that would be to ignore how influential the game was. You can basically thank it for actually developing story telling in JRPG's in the direction that every FF title after it did, and which many other JRPG's were riffing off of for years. It was the first really popular title I can think of with a fairly complex story given the time, and any real character development. That is significant in and of itself and makes it a landmark title in the genre if you ask me. It's just best to go into it for the first time these days keeping in mind that much of what it did was very new at the time.And I have an issue with this 16-bit FFs are the best. I played IV for some time. And then I got bored in the sealed cave. And then I played it again the other day and got to the moon. Before I got bored again. The storyline was never particularly interesting and for the most part, I couldn't care about the characters.
I could actually go on about this all day, but to preface this, I like the 16-bit titles more in general than most PSX or later titles, but I don't think they're necessarily always better games in all respects. Taking FFVI as an example, which is my favourite FF no less, yet I happily admit that its combat system is pretty awful. There weren't enough limits on the player to make developing any sort of strategy a necessary part of playing the game if you want to get through without grinding for days, and the whole thing devolves into spam your most powerful spells, heal when needed and use osmose to regain MP when needed. In fact, Osmose alone almost totally breaks the game.So I challenge all the people who say that 16-bit FFs have a better artistic style or gameplay or story or characters to actually prove it.
But by the same token, in FFVII you can easily equip almost all of the materia you have access to at any given time (or at least all of the stuff that's powerful enough to guarantee you never have much trouble in battle), not to mention limit breaks which are easily gained and stored, MP which is high enough that you'll almost never run out between save points, and if you do, the abundance of recovery items in the game, and generally decent strength of regular attacks makes it little issue. I could go on and talk about FFVIII, but anyone who can't see that it's gameplay is completely broken isn't worth the time it would take to explain why they're wrong.
Meanwhile FFV easily has one of, if not the best battle system in the series Almost none of the abilities are really over powered that I can think of at the moment aside from gil toss, but at least it's limited by how much you really want to throw away all of your gil. Spells weren't as obscenely powerful as they became in later entries and you were fairly limited since you could only equip so many abilities at once. Usually just one additional ability over and above what a job class includes. Adding in the different stats with various jobs meant that you actually had to put some thought into what abilities you used based on your current situation, as well as what you wanted to learn in the future. And to top it off, pretty much every job class was useful for something, whether it be an ability, or being strong against certain enemies, or what have you. And given the sheer number of jobs, it having any illusion of balance would have been remarkable. The fact that it actually is one of the better balanced games in the series is downright outstanding.
The question you need to ask is how many characters in FFVII really had any real character growth and how often did it happen? Because while FFVII certainly had far more dialogue than FFVI, most of it never really develops anything and at most serves to just move the plot forward and get the character moving to the next objective. Now it's been a while since I played FFVII, but I can only think of one scene per character, maybe two at the most where the dialogue really serves to demonstrate some significant changes or backstory development in the characters of FFVII. FFVI may have had less dialogue by necessity, but it still had at least that much, and the real kicker is that almost all of those character developing scenes in it were quite believable and relatable, not to mention the fact that they touched on some things that many RPG's hadn't at the time. Celes trying to kill herself being a big one, but others such as the revelation that Edgar accepts the responsibility of the throne so Sabin can be free of it, Locke coming to terms with his inability to save Rachael, or Cyan learning to move on and start living again after his family died are all moments where there may not have been tons of dialogue but they were still handled with a maturity that isn't often seen in gaming, and which many people can relate to on some level.Because I do not know how VI can have greater character development when there are more characters than there are in VII but less in-game dialogue by them.
I don't think that FFVII did as well at tackling themes which the player can relate to in general, outside of maybe learning about Barrett's history with Dyne and Cid's dreams of outer space and to some extent their dealing with Aeris' death. Long story short, FFVI might have had less dialogue, but it did a lot more with what it had than FFVII was able to if you ask me. I like FFVII mind you, and maybe some of the problem is the piss poor localization it had, but I still just didn't find the character development as relatable or interesting.
Considering Yoshitaka Amano did the concept art for all of them and they all had much of the same staff to my knowledge, it shouldn't be surprising that they look similar. For that matter, I feel that FFVII, VIII, and X all look quite similar in terms of design. X breaks away from VII a bit more than VIII in terms of world design if you ask me since VII had a much more realistic look to it, but the similarities in Nomura's character design still stands out, even given how blocky the characters in FFVII are.Or how the old FFs had a greater artistic style, because IV, V and VI look very similar.
But what I think the earlier games did do a lot better was instill some real personality into the characters in game. When you don't have a lot of pixels to work with it forces the artists to focus on some of the more recognizable features. Which is essentially why characters heads were the same size as their bodies back then, why you can't make out any facial features aside from the eyes and why each main character in games like FFVI are given very distinctive clothing and hair colours/styles. The heads are so big because the human brain spends a lot more processing power on recognizing faces and facial expressions than just about anything else, the eyes are the only facial feature you can make out because they can be used to convey far more emotion than a nose, or even the mouth, and characters were given some very interesting clothing and hairstyles because they needed to be instantly recognizable and stand out from other characters and NPC's. Now because of this focus on the most important aspects of the design of these characters, I do strongly believe that they not only looked a lot more interesting than many characters we see in modern video games, but they stood out a lot better and even emoted better than characters in most games. Instead of getting hung up by complex facial animation that skirts the uncanny valley in an attempt to convey emotion or, in the case of FFVIII, having no facial animation, they had to focus on the fundamental aspects of various facial expressions for conveying emotion and did so in a much simple and more effective manner than striving for realism in games ever has.
These are also essentially the same reasons why TF2 has such a striking art style and Pixar are so undeniably good at what they do.
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. Are you trying to say that explaining Kefka's reasoning for destroying the world as being that he's crazy is a cop out for him not having a backstory? Because they outright say in the game that he's crazy. It's something that's easily missed since it's an NPC in an obscure part of Vector who says it, but it is there. I'll gladly admit that it's not an amazing backstory, but the character is interesting and entertaining enough throughout the actual game that it didn't really matter to me that much.As for the Kefka destroyed the world because he's such a nutter argument, that is confirmation bias at its best, because Square were too lazy to flesh in a backstory is just as plausible an explanation (and the first one people latch onto with Ultimecia).
Let me also finish by saying I don't hate the modern FF's (except FFXIII but it really had no redeeming qualities), but like many games have done with the constant march of technology, they're guilty in many ways of not adapting what has always worked visually (not just in games but in animation and visual arts in general) to the modern consoles largely because with fewer technical limitations, the pursuit of realism seemed easier and more desirable than ever. Gameplay is another matter entirely mind you since both eras have had their successes (FFIV, V, IX, X-2, and XII) and their dismal failures (VI, VII, VIII, XIII). But to say that the 16-bit titles didn't have the resources to compete is folly.So let me finish with a moderating statement. This isn't meant as a bash of the old FFs. They were great games considering the time they existed in. But they are not superior to the newer ones. They just didn't have the resources to compete.
Aside from the fact that that's like saying hand drawn animation can't compete with 3D animation in film or TV which is an absurd stance to argue, it also misses the fact that the pursuit of realism has in many ways resulted in more modern titles either forgetting or ignoring some of the fundamental visual design principles the older games had to adhere to simply because it was the only way to make anything that looked visually appealing. This is something that isn't even remotely limited to only FF titles though as most modern games are guilty of it.
By this, I meant actual resources in terms of money and staff. I don't know how big the staff was for the old FFs, but it certainly wasn't the 300+ that worked on VII onwards. I will also give you that Celes trying to off herself was a very mature them that probably will never be handled again in a video game.
But even there, has it really been developed? Cid dies, there are a few scenes of Celes being upset and then she jumps off a cliff. Here is the scene in entirety.
It's not like it was a built-up thing or that there was any evidence of Celes being clinically depressed at any point in the game. She literally just decides on the spur of the moment to jump off a cliff. And, if you look through this, Cid first tells her to jump off a cliff and then leaves a note saying there's a boat and go find your friends. Contradiction of note there.
I'm not saying the latter FFs would challenge Dostoevsky for delving into the depths of the human minds, but I think they were better than that. There generally was some sort of build-up to a characters actions (and their history shaped their personality).
As for the worlds looking the same, let's look at a town from IV (the first sensible one from Google images):
From V:
From VI:
(And I think this is supposed to be ruined town.
Versus VII:
VIII:
IX:
I think VII-IX exhibit a very different aesthetic relative to IV-VI. Which I would expect, because they had greater technical ability to transform an artistic vision into an artistic reality.
EDIT: Looking at those pictures together, it is quite cool to see how the graphics improved from game to game. Anyway, back to discussion.
VII onwards didn't have 300+ sized development teams. FFVII itself was around 120+ according to Wikipedia, and even with modern consoles, it would be unusual for a development team to go above that number. In fact, Assassin's Creed 2 was the first time I'd heard of it happening for something that wasn't an MMO or the like, and still blows my mind at 450+ people. Money I'll grant you as well, but keep in mind the limitations of the cartridge format in terms of storage. Even if you had thrown the staff and money at FFVI that they did FFVII and later titles, it's not going to get more onto the cartridge that late in the SNES life cycle unless they used most of it to develop a cartridge with more storage space. That kind of money and staffing wouldn't have been a benefit to older titles because the technical limits were such that you didn't need them.
I won't quote the script portion so things are a bit more concise. For starters, I won't deny that things are rushed a bit more than they would be in reality or in other media. I mean, would anyone really want to play days, if not weeks of Celes and Cid alone on an island? That said, just because the build up isn't plainly spelled out in dialogue doesn't mean it can't be inferred from what is happening.I will also give you that Celes trying to off herself was a very mature them that probably will never be handled again in a video game.
But even there, has it really been developed? Cid dies, there are a few scenes of Celes being upset and then she jumps off a cliff. Here is the scene in entirety.
...
It's not like it was a built-up thing or that there was any evidence of Celes being clinically depressed at any point in the game. She literally just decides on the spur of the moment to jump off a cliff. And, if you look through this, Cid first tells her to jump off a cliff and then leaves a note saying there's a boat and go find your friends. Contradiction of note there.
Accepting that those events are taking place over days at least, if not weeks (otherwise we can safely say Cid died because he was force fed too many fish for one man to digest in a week let alone a day), we have a situation where Celes wakes to find herself in a ruined world and confronted with the possibility that her friends if not already dead are beyond her reach with the world slowly dying. To add to this, everyone else who was on the island already gave up and killed themselves and the only real thing she's left to live for is taking care of the one person in the world she thinks of as family. But is then forced to watch him slowly die the same way the world is. Considering this, it's not even a large step, let alone any sort of leap, to understand exactly why she tries to kill herself. Finding Locke's bandanna on the bird afterward gives her something else to hope for though because she thinks that someone else she cares about may still be alive. This is one of the things that I like about this scene actually because they didn't have to spell everything out. If it's not obvious that Celes would be losing hope and running out of reasons to live in this sort of situation then I'm not sure how it can be made more obvious without beating the player over the head.
I'll also add that Cid didn't tell her to jump from the cliff. He told her that others had but asked her not to give up hope because he didn't want her to die.
Again, not quoting the pictures to keep things sort of concise.As for the worlds looking the same, let's look at a town from IV (the first sensible one from Google images):...
From V:...
From VI:...
(And I think this is supposed to be ruined town.
Versus VII:
...
VIII:
...
IX: ...
I think VII-IX exhibit a very different aesthetic relative to IV-VI. Which I would expect, because they had greater technical ability to transform an artistic vision into an artistic reality.
I'll start by mentioning that that isn't a ruined town in VI. It's definitely in the world of balance and that house in the bottom left had burned down if I'm not mistaken, but the town itself was unscathed at that point.
Second, including IX is somewhat silly as Yoshitaka Amano did the character design for that one, and it was made as something of an homage to the 2D titles, which is why it actually is quite similar in visual style to the earlier games, even if not in scale. It also would have had a different development team than VIII without a doubt and maybe even VII, since it was released within about a year of FFVIII, and the director was not the same guy behind FFVII, VIII, X, X-2 or XIII. It's also a little misleading to base comparisons on a single screen shot from each game.
Unfortunately Google is not very helpful at coming up with many more in game shots to compare, but both VII and VIII did always have a bit of a more realistic take on their worlds if you ask me that were quite similar visually in many instances, but none more so than the character design. Especially when comparing battle sprites between VII and VIII since they're the most directly comparable, but even in terms of having a more modern design and use of colour they always struck me as being quite similar.
There's an exclamation mark in there. Not really discouraging her from jumping off a cliff.
It's suicide. Cid literally says people jumped off a cliff and Celes ran off and jumped off a cliff. I'd hope people have more of a think down when they attempt suicide than this.
But most of this you are inferring. Nowhere in the game does it suggest this takes place over days. It's fairly easy to suggest time has gone past - fade to black and then from back. And yes, you can understand why she'd try to kill herself. But there is never any indication, apart from 2 lines of dialogue, that she understood why she should kill herself. And yes, this is a video game and we can't have weeks of gameplay of Celes getting slowly depressed. But they could just show snippets of scenes: Celes burying Cid, her sitting around doing nothing at the house, sitting at the beach, so on, until she finally says something akin to what she says there: everybody's gone.
If they had done something like that, it would have been a good example of storytelling. The way it comes across is - let's do something dramatic and make our character jump off a cliff.
Compare this to the end of Disc 2 of VII.
What happens there is fairly (if not deliberately) ambiguous, but the way I see it, it is a much more realistic representation of how the two of them would get together than Celes is a representation of how despair would drive someone to jump off a cliff.
EDIT: I counted the credits and there's 300 odd people, which is where I got my figure. Actual individuals on the development teams is a more relevant number. Although I can't find a number for this for VI.
Last edited by champagne supernova; 07-06-2011 at 08:36 PM.
I'm not sure if I'll sign this. There are a couple of mistakes that I noticed and I don't think Square will take you seriously if you didn't take the time to look over and correct those mistakes before sending it in to them.
If it were my decision, I wouldn't go through with this. 16 bit FF games, at their time, were very good for their generation. Hell, they were massively influential, too. But imagine if, after FFVII through XIV, they were released now. Would they be influential? No. Not at all. It's all old-school and perhaps people with nostalgia might like the idea of playing such things, but let's face it, these games just won't cut it in today's gaming environment. If they would, then surely other companies would be churning them out in a big way. The only thing I can think of that it works for would be Pokémon on the DS, and that's largely down to the "CATCH A LOT OF CUTE ANIMALS AND EVOLVE THEM!" rather than an amazing storyline.
To think that somehow SE is suffering from gameplay and storyline purely because of the graphics is naive. There are other games out there that have good storyline, characters, gameplay and graphics. Perhaps it is not so much the problem that SE are struggling to make time for gameplay but rather the time they do spend on said gameplay is not spent to good effect?
Basically, my thought is along the lines of "Graphics and gameplay are two seperate things dealt with by seperate teams. Downsizing graphics does not make a good game, just like cutting back storyline does not lead to amazing graphics."
EDIT: Personally, I would be more in favour of them employing...
1. The use of major fantasy authors to come up with solid plots from start to finish.
2. Thatgamecompany to come up with more/better minigames.
3. A new PR team to focus on communication with fans and what they want.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
Having your job description be "get a consensus out of the Final Fantasy fan base as to what they want from the series" sounds like something waiting for bad people in hell.
>>Am willing to change opinions based on data<<
That's what I was going for. Although 16-bit could be re-imagined in a very creative way while still using the power of modern consoles (like the way LBP used classic 2D platformers as a kind of inspiration for the game it came up with). There are a few other games that are much closer to old-school 16-bit games, such as BlazBlue (I think that's the sprite fighting game) and Record of Agarest War Zero, with varying levels in the success of implementation.
Point being that the visual style of 16-bit consoles can be reimagined for the modern generation, but they need to utilise the power that the consoles have, and secondly, a release of VI as is in this day and age would be a critical and commercial fail.
And I'd add story to that too. Obviously there is some overlap, but blaming story and gameplay declines due to increasing graphical standards is silly. Yes, the developers of XIII said they couldn't give us a broad game world because it takes a long time to make graphics, but everybody knows that is rubbish. The team just developed the game badly, hence why they had enough content cut off to make another game.
Although I would disagree with Bob that the stories and characters of FF have declined. I found the older FFs to be inferior to the PSone era in terms of story and character development. From then on, I would say quality has been fairly similar. Fair enough, there is still some ridiculous propositions in the stories and they are still somewhat overly melodramatic and twisty (even the very subtle XII), but they've been very good (for games).
I think what Square-Enix really need to do is start making games with a clear vision. XIII wasn't a fundamentally flawed game. There were a lot of good aspects to it and it was immensely polished, like all FFs. However, it was clear that it never reached the potential that it could have because the design team weren't focused from an early point. That's why I have hope for XIII-2. There seems to be a much clearer focus on what they want. And even maybe Versus, although it seems to be in development nowhere, because it seems that there has been a design vision that has been carried through the project.
Oh, sorry if I gave off the impression that I actually believed the stories and characters have declined. I've frequently mentioned that XIII, for me, had the best collective group of playable characters since VII or possibly ever. I for one liked the storyline, too, and love the mythology. But I still think they should look at getting in a new author in for the next game purely on the basis of being original and creative. I'd just be very interested in seeing them become more global in their scope when it comes to storylines, taking themes (for both story and visuals) from obscure areas of the world. I understand many of their stories are still to this day based on Japanese folklore.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
I don't know if I would like a fantasy author to write the entire script, but I'd definitely say they should get involved in a sort of overseer role.
I don't think an author would be able to implement the linkages between story, history, culture with the gameplay, which is necessary for a game. Looking at VII, materia was critical to both gameplay and story. GFs in VIII and Espers in XII were less involved from a story side (apart from making people forget), but Eidolons in IX, Espers in VI, Aeons in X and the whole l'Cie thing in XIII were critical to the story.
However, I think an author would make dialogue more believable, get rid of some ridiculous melodramas and twists and make sure there aren't any really silly things (GF memory loss and laughing scenes for example) don't occur, or are at least toned down.
I don't think anyone is saying that Final Fantasy XVII should be done in the 16 bit graphical style (though nothing would please me more) because, no, that wouldn't be marketable to the masses.
But there are those of us who would like new 16-bit style FF games made. Perhaps FF Legends can become a spin off series and release games in this vein for the iPhone or Wii ware or something. Some of us actually prefer that graphical style and gameplay style to the modern entries in the series.
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