Final Fantasy XV could be an Action/RPG

So says the producer of Final Fantasy XIII-2. My first thought: Final Fantasy is truly dead. My second thought: that would be a huge improvement over Final Fantasy XIII. The latter's great failure was raising the automated play-style of Final Fantasy XII to 11 and at the same time requiring frenetic button-pushing. If it's going to require quick responses, 90% of which will be the repeatedly jam the select button, for heaven's sake let us control the character directly. Combining that with RPG menus really sucks.

I do hope, though, that they don't do this. Final Fantasy XV desperately needs to be a nod to tradition. XII and XIII went so far afield that each broke not only the Final Fantasy series, but the RPG genre itself in diametrically opposed ways (rather than going very outside the box, like Final Fantasy VIII and its innovative, and unfortunately extremely gameable, Junction system).

They need traditional JRPG gameplay, directly navigated airships, and really need to get Uematsu back in order to restore a sense of cohesion to the series as a whole. They need not go as far as Final Fantasy IX did (as great as it was) and give it an aimed-at-children feel. But they do need to bring things back into perspective.

Honestly I still think Final Fantasy X should have been the last main series Final Fantasy game. It was the last to be in the pure JRPG genre, the last to have Uematsu, and the last to have the almost indescribably Final Fantasy feel. XII should have been a spinoff brand (Final Fantasy Ivalice, or Final Fantasy - War of the Occuria, or something of that sort). XIII should have been a totally new series. I mean, really, Chrono Trigger could far more justifiably have been a branded Final Fantasy game; all you'd need to do was add in a Chocobo, a few Moogles, and a guy named cid and it would fit in perfectly. Matsueda was not only the only Square composer on the same level as Uematsu, but also totally compatible with him.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 actually looks like an improvement on the original

If that pans out, it'll be quite a change from Final Fantasy X-2, which failed miserably (see this post, third paragraph). Though, to be fair, Final Fantasy X was a much higher standard to meet (I'd still rank it the best of the lot).

I live in hope that there will be a) towns and b) a user-controllable airship. The lack of the former wrecked the flow of the game; RPGs aren't first-person shooters, there's supposed to be time to go around talking to people and getting a feel for the plot. In FFXIII it was just a rush of ultra-linear* dungeon-crawling with monotonous battles that required way too much button-mashing for their near-automatic mechanics followed by a cutscene followed more ultra-linear dungeon-crawling followed by a cutscene followed by more ultra-linear dungeon-crawling with monotonous battles followed by a cutscene... you get the idea. Come to think of it, if just strung the cutscenes together with new onces detailing the major battles, it would work better as a movie than a game.

The lack of an airship was just an unjustified breach of Final Fantasy tradition that further undermined the cohesion of the series. And in this game, unlike Final Fantasy XII, an airship would have actually been useful! Activating all the Cie'th teleport stones on Pulse is a huge pain in the ass! Getting an airship to fly between Orphan's Cradle, Edenhall, and Pulse instead of portals would have been easy as pie for the developers, would have made more sense, and would have been a boon to the players if it could drop you off at different points in Pulse. Or, God forbid, fly freely like in FF I-IX! And yes, you can do that in games without the ability to walk on an overworld map; see Secret of Mana I & II, or Lost Odyssey for that matter.

Back to the subject at hand, the trailers has gotten me looking forward to the game. Hopefully they'll improve the battle system. The plot looks more interesting than the original, though its hard to tell at this point (I'm sure one couldn't have predicted from the trailers that the heroes would do everything the gods Fal'cie wanted every step of the way while knowing they were doing it even to the point of killing Orphan and releasing a genocide only for said genocide to averted by a massive Deus ex Machina). Oh, and Kaias still reminds me of Cid Reines, though apparently he's unrelated. Also, his identity as a Time Agent Who Can Never Die sounds familiar.

*Final Fantasy X took linearity as far as it could go and pulled it off brilliantly. Final Fantasy XIII took it much further and didn't.

And here I was excited for a few minutes

There's going to be a new Suikoden game! Unfortunately, it looks very much like it's not going to be a Suikoden game, but a Suikoden Tierkreis game; in other words, no True Runes, no recurring characters, no familiar countries, and no Suikoden mythology (beyond the stars of destiny, and the multiverse concept suggested in passing in the main titles, but that's hardly original). In other words, it's not worth buying a PSP for me to play it.

But, I'm told on the linked thread, it really doesn't matter because virtually no one localizes games for the PSP anymore (which may or may not be due to piracy). I really can't see what they're thinking. Going back to Sony would have made a certain amount of sense if they were going to go back to the main Suikoden universe. It makes no sense at all if they're sticking with the Tierkreis multiverse, since it cuts off the Nintendo DS-owning Tierkreis fanbase. Is there some sort of franchise-wrecking fever going around in Japanese video game companies (cf. what's going on with Square-Enix and Final Fantasy)?

Nintendo's Wii U won't play DVDs or Blu-Rays

This isn't surprising, considering that their consoles have never been standard-media friendly. They've also consistently been a generation behind in storage capacity, though that was only really a problem with the Nintendo 64 since it opted out of the optical storage revolution and single-handedly took Nintendo from being the undisputed champion of the video game world to being an also-ran surviving solely on it's own first party franchises (which were and are extremely popular).

Nintendo's always been paranoid about piracy. That's one reason why they chose to keep cartridges in the Nintendo 64, killing their massive third-party support, and that's why they opted for funky proprietary optical solutions in the Gamecube and Wii.

Square Enix post a large loss

There were some pretty insightful comments on the Slashdot article, actually. I don't agree with what some have said that they haven't released any good games since the merger (Final Fantasy XII was fantastic--fully worthy of the Final Fantasy brand even though it didn't feel like a Final Fantasy game), but they are right on the money with these:

They need to kill FFXIV (Score:2)

by _xeno_ (155264) on Friday May 13, @04:11AM (#36115856) Homepage Journal

Who knows exactly how much FFXIV is costing them in development costs and server costs, but that ship has sailed. There's no point sinking money into something that will never turn a profit.

It's been seven months now. The improvements the game has made are minor at best. (The two biggest are that leveling combat classes is now possible, and that the market place works. Not well, mind you, but it works.) If you ask anyone playing whether or not you should, they'll tell you flat-out it isn't worth it.

This is not the sign of a game on the road to profitability. With every week that goes by, the ability to earn new players goes down.

Once they've stopped throwing money at a failed game, then they can start worrying about creating new games that people actually want to play.

But first, they've got to stop the bleeding.

I always thought that making MMOs part of the main series was a bad decision. Releasing one that clearly wasn't close to ready was a truly idiotic one. More's the pity, because they actually got Nobuo Uematsu to come back to do the score for that game.

So what? They could make that any time they want (Score:1)

by XahXhaX (730306) on Friday May 13, @04:04AM (#36115844)

They've been sitting on remaking FF7 for years. $150 million would probably be covered by just the initial release if they were to produce an updated version with modern tech.

Not that I care either way--I hated that game and pay less attention to Square with each year. But they _could_ do it any time if they only wanted to.

Final Fantasy VII still has a massive fanbase. I'm one of the rare people who actually thought Final Fantasy VIII was better than VII, but even I would be enthusiastic for a VII remake on the PS3 a la the demo they released a few years back. Besides, of all the Final Fantasy games, VII seems most in need of a remake. It was their first foray into 3D graphics and the results did not age well at all.

Yahoo Pipes is awesome

I'd heard of Yahoo Pipes many times, but I hadn't used it until now. I have to say that it is a fantastic product. There are some sites that still haven't gotten into the 21st century regarding site feeds. They've for what is all intents and purposes a blog, but it doesn't have a feed. Half an hour fiddling with Yahoo Pipes for the first time and I gave a site like that (Suikosource, a website devoted to the Suikoden series of video games which doesn't update regularly) an RSS feed. It's crude--I haven't figured out how to separate title and body--but it does what I need it to do: tell me when there's new content.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 announced for the end of the year

On the one hand, I am excited to see another non-MMO Final Fantasy game is going to be released in a reasonable amount of time. On the other, after two radical departures from the tradition of the series in a row (in completely opposite directions), I think they really needed to make a serious return to tradition a la Final Fantasy IX.

Still, they could make this work wonderfully if they focus on a) not repeating Final Fantasy X-2's major failings and b) correcting Final Fantasy XIII's failings.

Regarding Final Fantasy X-2's failings, they should definitely avoid:

• Hiding essential plot resolutions in a secret unlockable ending that involves mashing the X button during a particular point mid-game that you need a guide to even know about. That still burns me up, especially since without said hidden ending the Yuna/Tidus relationship doesn't get its resolution which was the raison d'etre not only of the game's plot but of the game itself. And the way they did tie it up was so perfunctory and deus ex machina that it was just lame. But I'm getting a bit off-topic.
• Having the musical score be ill-matched to its in-game presentation. Final Fantasy X-2's musical failing wasn't that it was bad (listening to it as a separate soundtrack made me conclude that it was actually quite good), but that it didn't serve well as presented and left a bad taste in my mouth (to say the least). Using a track for the airship that gets really annoying really fast was the worst part, especially considering how much time you spent on the airship in that game. If they bring back the same guy that did Final Fantasy XIII, that shouldn't be a problem; he understands mood very well and I expect he would bring in some tracks from the first game to provide musical continuity (not too much, though). That's something Final Fantasy X-2 sorely lacked.
• Trying to hard to appeal to new players as if this were a totally independent entry. It should be accessible, but shouldn't pull crap like the afore-mentioned massive failure with the Tidus/Yuna ending and the failure to ever establish why the villain looked exactly like Tidus, came from the same city (sortof), had the same special attack, had the same voice (actor), etc.

As for the failings of Final Fantasy XIII that they need to avoid:

• Being excessively linear. Final Fantasy X took linearity as far as it could go and did it very well. Final Fantasy XIII took it much farther and failed, unfortunately.
• Eliminating central Final Fantasy, and even RPG, traditions. In other words, it needs to have an airship that's controllable by the player in some fashion and it needs to have towns, dammit! Sure, you can collapse the practical functions of a town into a save point, but it ruins the pacing of the game. Your characters never, ever get a break and psychologically neither do you. Besides, without talking to people in towns, all the information in the game is force-fed to you. I much prefer going around and discovering things.
• Having a combat system that involve too much mindless button pushing. They either need to move towards a more Final Fantasy XII-like system where you can set up precise gambits to determine automated action, and have it activate without having to press any buttons, or they need to move back towards the traditional combat system where there's no auto mode and you can control the other two characters. Heck, it'd be better if they made it an outright Action/RPG; at least then the button-mashing would be a little less mindless.
• Making the game so difficult, mainly through fake difficulty like the rule that it's game-over if your leader dies, and then having to take it back by making death meaningless (you just get to continue from where you were). This is especially ridiculous when you consider that the means of running away from battle initiates a game over state.

Things they should keep:

• The listening in on conversation. This may not be possible if they have full towns (too much voice acting would be probably be required), but it was still really, really cool. If they do keep it, they do need a lot more formal conversations where you talk to someone with the X button.
• Having everything said by important characters be voiced. That's something that was done in Final Fantasy X, but was abandoned in favor of voice-only-during-cutscenes thereafter. It was brought back in Final Fantasy XIII (in fact, everything said by anyone was voiced), but as mentioned XIII had no towns so you encountered far fewer NPCs than in any other game.

There's a better quality version of the trailer posted with the linked story here. It's in English, which makes it even better. I wonder if the guy at the end of it, and who is obviously half of the game's logo, is Cid Raines. It looks like him to me, and I certainly hope it is. He ended up being such a pathetic villain (if you don't consider him a very pathetic tragic semi-hero), especially the way he seemed to die, he really deserved better and should be revisited. He was a very tough boss, though.

Actually, it almost has to be him. If it isn't, they'll either have to introduce another Cid into the same universe (though they arguably did that with Al-Cid Margrace, the false Cid, in Final Fantasy XII) or else violate another immutable Final Fantasy tradition.

Apparently Final Fantasy XIV sucks

At least according to almost all critics. Since I don't do MMOs, I haven't got it and never planned to. I thought trying to insert MMOs into the main Final Fantasy series was a horrible idea when FFXI came out, and think it's doubly so now.

I hope this won't be the deathknell of the Final Fantasy series. It certainly doesn't help after Final Fantasy XII and XIII were both radical departures from the tradition of the series in totally opposite directions (heck, Final Fantasy XIII even did away with even a vestigial airship for you to control). Don't get me wrong, I really liked XIII, and I loved XII. The series already feels like its losing cohesion.

If it were to end, then it's a pity they didn't stop with X. That would have been a perfect stopping point, considering both the overall feel of the game and the nice, round number. It also still is my favorite of the whole series. XII, and XIII too, should definitely have still been made, but should have been branded differently. Final Fantasy XII was heavily influenced by the Final Fantasy Tactics team anyway. It was awesome, but it was its own kind of awesome, not a specifically Final Fantasy kind of awesome. Final Fantasy X-2: nah. It's origin was the need to explicate Tidus' fate, and they did a horrible job even doing that. All you had to do was excise one solitary line of optional dialog from FFX which made you think the scene where he comes back might be a dream and it there'd have been no need anyway. Besides, I personally consider it to be a Compilation entry, like the movie Final Fantasy: Advent Children anyway, and not a real main Final Fantasy game.

If XV isn't torpedoed by Final Fantasy XIV, I think it needs to be like Final Fantasy IX: a return to tradition to bring the series as a whole back into focus. Getting Uematsu to do the entire soundtrack, as they did with Final Fantasy XIV (more's the pity!), would be awesome. I also feel like they not only need to have an airship, it should be a freely navigable airship like I-IX had. This need not mean bringing back the conventional overworld map. Seiken Densetsu II and III had an airship equivalent without an overworld map, as did Lost Odyssey for the XBox 360.

Court Rules that EULAs Trump First Sale Doctrine

The AP and Slashdot have the story. From the AP story:

There are also fears that book publishers, music labels and movie studios will try to come up with their own licensing agreements to restrict the rental or resale of their copyrighted material.

That's what's terrifying about this ruling. It is easy to see how knowledge and art could be lost to the public through this kind of extreme copyright system. If the company holding the rights doesn't feel like making it available anymore, and you're not allowed to sell used copies, that work is essentially banned as effectively as if the government had censored it.

Now, I don't see this as likely applying to books, movies, or music in the too-near-term. What I'm more concerned about is video games, which are just another kind of software after all. Masterpieces could simply be lost. This will also fuel the fires of piracy.

And yes, people resorting to piracy is worse for software and other media vendors than buying used. The copyright holder might not get any more money from the sale of a used program or game than a P2P download, but that person buying a used program or game is far more likely to buy more new items than the pirate. He's playing by the rules, don't rob him of the that avenue.

Nintendo Makes Meager Price Drop on DSi

What they need to do is not to cut the price to $149, but rather to cut it to $129 and replace the DS Lite (actually, that should have been the case when it came out). It just isn't enough of an upgrade to justify a price premium, especially considering that it takes away backwards compatibility. Hmm, I guess a $20 premium might make it a bit more attractive than it was when the premium was $40, though.

Ever Wonder Why Playstation went with Symbols

PC World has an interview with the guy behind that unique design decision.

Sony Predicts at least another 10 years of discs

Ars Technica has the story. When game discs finally go, assuming the DRM dragon hasn't been slain, it will create a world in which content will easily cease to exist. When a company ceases to support a game or a platform, it would disappear, at least as far as the law is concerned. What would our society be like if the Greeks and Romans had built self-destruct codes into their books?

The ethical hacker could easily be a hero in that new future, saving works of art from DRM-induced oblivion.