Petition to Square Enix to create a new 16 bit FF game

[Depression Moon]

Hold on a minute, you can save Cid?

[Mirage]

Yes.

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah, if you just feed Cid healthy fish (the fast moving ones) but honestly, saving Cid just nets you a very boring "Thank you Celes, hey I made a raft, why don't you go find your friends?" and he'll just stay on the island and do nothing. I usually purposely kill him (by feeding him weak fish) cause the suicide attempt scene is just nicer to watch and actually adds a bit to Celes' character.

[Loony BoB]

For what it's worth, I find FFXIII to be no more or less melodramatic than any other FF I've played from VI onwards. FFI & II were completely lacking in any kind of drama whatsoever because the characters had less personality/story/background given to them than the average two-line NPC has in FFVII. FFV wasn't what I'd call melodramatic, really, but it didn't have too much drama purely due to the lack of lengthy dialogue. Mourning for entire nations being wiped off the face of the earth would generally last about six lines. But that's okay because it was always a light-hearted game with a job system I couldn't get enough of. But yeah, overall, if you're looking for melodrama, every single player FF from VI through to XIII is full of it. To say XIII suddenly had more than most is a little silly, for me.

[champagne supernova]

Agree with Bob generally with the exception of XII which I think was only slightly melodramatic at certain points. But they are fantasy games - they need some melodrama. I think Vagrant Story probably got the balance very close to perfect in terms of story.

Oh, look at FFIV. People killing themselves left, right and centre (then actually not). People being brothers and related and so on - yeah, it was also fairly melodramatic. Can't remember V though.

[Loony BoB]

V's biggest melodrama was always the (SPOILER)death of Galuf and 'passing on of his strength' to Lenna. I mean, firstly there is the omg he died stuff, then there is the "oh, Lenna can suddenly do all the things he could stuff. Which I would actually say is far more deus ex machina than anything XIII had to offer. There was a lot of "spirit" stuff as well.

[VeloZer0]

Oh, look at FFIV. People killing themselves left, right and centre (then actually not). People being brothers and related and so on - yeah, it was also fairly melodramatic. Can't remember V though.

Actually FF4 would be less melodramatic and more realistic with people moving on and focusing on what they had to do after each 'death'. If FF4 was written in the style of FF13 your party would have slit their wrists after the first two or three deaths.

[Mirage]

V's biggest melodrama was always the (SPOILER)death of Galuf and 'passing on of his strength' to Lenna. I mean, firstly there is the omg he died stuff, then there is the "oh, Lenna can suddenly do all the things he could stuff. Which I would actually say is far more deus ex machina than anything XIII had to offer. There was a lot of "spirit" stuff as well.

Lenna was with the party from the beginning of.

[Loony BoB]

Oops, sorry, wrong name. That other chick. The one I didn't like. Blondey. Uhm. *checks* Ah. Krile. That's the one. Even her name is annoying. =|

As for XIII's characters slitting their wrists after a couple of character deaths, I disagree. For all Snow, Serah and Sahz knew, (SPOILER)they would not be getting their loved ones back. They were crystal, gone forever. And in the case of Hope, very early in the game he witnesses (SPOILER)his mother's death. But they all kept going. I imagine they wouldn't have slit their wrists over each other's deaths considering how many people they probably knew had died. Few of them were friends until very late in the game and they had carried out the killing of many a beast/soldier before then.

Oh, and the only other two I haven't mentioned lost (SPOILER)everyone they ever knew on their planet. So... yeah.

Either way. Final Fantasy bleeds melodrama. I'll give you that I can't think of too much that went on with XII melodramatically, but the plot was so hard for me to keep up with. =| Cid, though. That guy alone was all kinds of melodrama. xD He could have been an actor of many a character in a one-man play.

[champagne supernova]

I'll give you that I can't think of too much that went on with XII melodramatically, but the plot was so hard for me to keep up with. =| Cid, though. That guy alone was all kinds of melodrama. xD He could have been an actor of many a character in a one-man play.

That's the Sansea's fault. By the time I got to the end of that, I had almost forgotten the story. Oh, and the trip to Mt Burmecia (or whatever it's called) took forever. Also to Archades. Maybe XIII forced story down to often, XII maybe not often enough.

And yes, Cid was melodramatic. But never Kefka/Sephiroth/Kuja melodramatic.

[TrollHunter]

Hope might as well be cutting his wrist behind the scenes for like the first half of the game. Everyone else? They fared well and hope seemed to be more of an annoying pessimistic brat than a helpful member of the party. I'm very relieved that the story is almost pure character development because I wouldn't have been able to deal with snow claiming hero status and hope contradicting his name for like 50 hours of gameplay.

[Bastian]

And why not go the full deal and go back to 8-bit rather than 16-bit?

I knew someone would say this eventually and I should have preempted it by saying ahead of time: the 16-bit ones were better. No one refers to the 8-bit era of FF as the Golden Era, but yet the 16-bit era commonly is.

But you'd think that if FFL sold well, they'd make it global. But they didn't make it global. Suggesting that it didn't sell well enough to justify it.

The error in that thinking is that what sells well in Japan will not sell well overseas. Hence the whole Project Rainfall hoopla going on (Nintendo of America feels that RPGs do not sell well enough in this territory to warrent localizing the three main Wii RPGs coming out over here). FFLegends probably did sell fairly decently (I have no numbers on it) and may at some point be ported to Wii ware or 3DS ware or something. It took quite a while for Sqeenix to port FF4:TAY from mobile to Wii ware, so FFLegends may still be ported yet, and may still be localized overseas. We'll have to see.

[champagne supernova]

And why not go the full deal and go back to 8-bit rather than 16-bit?

I knew someone would say this eventually and I should have preempted it by saying ahead of time: the 16-bit ones were better. No one refers to the 8-bit era of FF as the Golden Era, but yet the 16-bit era commonly is.

Actually I think most game critics rate the PSone era above the SNES era. Not that that is a good enough reason in the first place.

I think WK has a good point in saying that limiting certain things forces developers to focus on other areas, but why should I pay for that learning experience? Why don't they use it as an in-house training exercise for their staff? Or why does it have to be a FF? Why can't Square-Enix develop a completely new IP for this rather than diluting the FF brand.

[Slothy]

I think WK has a good point in saying that limiting certain things forces developers to focus on other areas, but why should I pay for that learning experience? Why don't they use it as an in-house training exercise for their staff?

Every game ever made has essentially been an on the fly learning exercise at some point. If it wasn't then the development team didn't put much effort into it. Also, why not sell the end product of such an experiment if it can be made to a high enough standard? A training exercise they can make money on would seem to make more sense than one they won't sell, particularly when the whole point of the business is to make games people will buy.

Or why does it have to be a FF? Why can't Square-Enix develop a completely new IP for this rather than diluting the FF brand.

None of these are bad ideas, but let's face it, when it comes to sales the FF name alone pushes units and the brand past the point of being far too diluted quite a while ago.

[Loony BoB]

Call me a sceptic, but I don't understand just how degrading the graphics is going to improve their abilities for storytelling and gameplay. If they have it in them, then they have it in them. If they don't, they don't. I honestly don't imagine that when they came up with the storyline for FFXIII that they intended on half-arsing it. I actually believe they would have come up with the story before the graphics were made. I don't think they would do this any differently regardless of the systems they are designing for. You make the story before you put together the graphics. For me, that's logic. Maybe I don't understand the game development industry enough. Hmm. As for gameplay, we all know from other FF's that they're capable of putting together gameplay, but from what I understand the entire time they made FFXIII it was with the intention of focusing on just battling and storyline. Which is something I disagree with, as do many, but again - it's not that they lacked gameplay ability, it's that they were told not to use it. For whatever stupid reason.

I disagree regarding them passing the point of being far too diluted "quite a while ago" - they haven't made a single player game with less than an 80 rating since the PS1 generation. It's not that the games don't sell and aren't rated at the bare minimum of "very good", but more that they spend so much on the development that they struggle to make a profit despite the high sales. Also, while FFXIV was a disaster, I wouldn't say FFXIII was. Sure, you might not like it, but then I didn't like FFX and it's one of their highest rated games. You can't deny success, and it is judged by ratings and sales. Sure, some areas can be criticised and SE will hopefully learn from that (as they seem to be doing lately, fingers crossed...), but the overall package still has been liked more than disliked and that's not bad or "diluting". FFXIV, though, well... we'll have to see what happens there in the long run. I'm cautiously optimistic, and at the very least have respect for SE for pushing so hard to make such dramatic changes to the game in order to help it turn good.