Final Fantasy XV: Cup Noodle XV Special Edition

[Correction]

@Correction There's no way the new "FF committee" will let Final Fantasy XV be a disaster. They'll keep the game in development and shrouded until its good.

I would share this faith if FFXIII weren't a thing. And an additional layer of managerial oversight is not reassuring of speedy development or a quality end-product worthy of the core franchise. It will sell millions to be sure, but SE is the type of company that can sell 4 million units on a product and still lose money. XV will be a beautiful multimillion-selling mediocrity. I expect it to receive a lower MC score than XIII.

[Tyrath]

But even if FFXV is a disaster, game will still sell loads. Just like FFXIII did. The only way it's not gonna profit is if somehow the game never comes out.

[Elcura]

They learned with XIII, as every game after that was progressively more fun (even if the story/characters didn't get better lol), but considering XV is supposed to be based on KH type combat (which, apart from CoM has never let me down) I doubt it'll be horrible. Biggest concerns would be the camera (which isn't amazing in KH) keeping up with the action.

I'm not hugely worried about game play or music, just story/characters.

[Ratatapa]

I hope you don't have much hope when the Main character looks like a Sasuke clone from Naruto

[Elcura]

Aww you're talking to me. I thought all I did was bitch and whine.

And uhh...I guess so?

[Melena]

Jesus fuck you two are like watching a couple of 6 year olds on the playground.

[Correction]

New Schreier column about XV.

Last year, as we entered the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One era, I theorized that Japanese game developers are all watching Final Fantasy XV. Much like in the PlayStation 1 era, when the critical and commercial success of Final Fantasy VII led to a surplus of RPGs trying to cash off the popularity of Cloud and Aeris, I predicted that the fate of console RPGs in Japan this generation will hinge upon this one titanic game.

Hajime Tabata, co-director of Final Fantasy XV, seems to agree. Last week in Seattle, I asked him about the landscape of RPGs in Japan, and his thoughts mirrored mine:

If Final Fantasy XV doesn't do well, perhaps there's not much of a future for console games. It kind of really depends on how that goes.

FF has long been the bellwether of JRPG viability on consoles and if XV fails it could really be the end of big budget console JRPGs altogether. Japanese developers who still want to publish to consoles must now lean on foreign markets to shore up their sales numbers considering how poorly current-gen consoles are doing in Japan, but we've also seen SE's ridiculous projections for Tomb Raider. Lots of reasons to be nervous about how SE manages expectations of a title that will have been 10 years in production by the time it comes out.

[vagus]

That is sad to read I blame phone games!

[mightyg]

The real problem is jrpg's with truly great stories are few and far between, SE being the biggest offender. I think the last FF with a compelling story was 10. 11 was an mmo, 12 was passable, but felt incomplete, and 13 was like watching a very mediocre anime. Even if XV is fun to play, if the story is just mediocre it'll just be another forgettable play it once kinda game. Probably won't pull in huge numbers in the states in that case. Also 10/10/10/10/10/10 famitsu scores fo sho.

[Correction]

The real problem is jrpg's with truly great stories are few and far between, SE being the biggest offender. I think the last FF with a compelling story was 10. 11 was an mmo, 12 was passable, but felt incomplete, and 13 was like watching a very mediocre anime. Even if XV is fun to play, if the story is just mediocre it'll just be another forgettable play it once kinda game. Probably won't pull in huge numbers in the states in that case. Also 10/10/10/10/10/10 famitsu scores fo sho.

If you look at it another way, if you have a fantastic story to tell and you are a video game maker in Japan right now, do you present it in JRPG form and then put it exclusively on a console, let alone exclusive to that one console? Hell no, you drive your decisions based on one or more realities to minimize risk:

• Go multiplatform
• Pick something other than a JRPG to tell your story
• Scale your budget back to make up for the fact that there is a hard ceiling on the audience for a story-heavy game
• Carefully evaluate if it's worth it to localize it overseas (story-heavy games are amongst the most expensive to localize).
• Say 'fuck a complex story' and re-jig the game to appeal to a wider age group.

These are the types of economic realities that bring us SMT IV on handhelds, delay Bravely Default's international release, put Dark Souls to every platform that can run it and ignite a resurgence of low-budget visual novels in the marketplace. The last 'reality' is what gives us the mushy, inoffensive nonsense AAA studios, including SE, is pouring into expensive games.

[Mrbeansman]

So how long till we reach the Duke Nukem Forever point where nothing they produce can live up to 10+ years of anticipation. And yes I totally expect to be waiting till 2016.

[Correction]

So how long till we reach the Duke Nukem Forever point where nothing they produce can live up to 10+ years of anticipation.

We're already there, that's what Schreier is writing about.

[Tidane]

We're already there, that's what Schreier is writing about.

There are already a large percentage of gamers who treat every single game that way, so I don't know how much difference that would make.

The simple fact is that the vast majority of vocal gamers have extreme opinions and have to be right. If it wasn't the long time from announcement to production, they'd have another reason to hate it (as if simply being a Final Fantasy game isn't enough). The people who "like" Final Fantasy games will hate it because it isn't "Final Fantasy MyFavorite 2". A few people will look at it objectively and say "it is good/bad for these reasons", at which point they will be torn to shreds by both sides because their opinion is different. That obviously isn't specific to Final Fantasy, SquareEnix, or JRPGs, but it always seems to be much more prevalent when they're being talked about.

I don't know anyone who had high expectations for Duke Nukem Forever or anyone who actually bought the game. It was a running joke and, when it finally got released, the easy comment was to talk about how long it had been in development and how bad it still was. It was an obvious cash grab to take something that had a following and pump out a generic game as quickly as possible. As much as I hate SquareEnix, their previous development philosophies, and their general outlook on everything, I think that the fact this game has taken so long is, in many ways, a good sign.

The game was announced in 2006, and SquareEnix was cocky. I don't know why, but apparently the money from their MMO and the sales of FF12 had them riding high. They were (apparently) a year or two into the development of FF13 (minus a year of development when it was a PS2 title). At that point, they decided to build their own multiplatform game engine for all their games (which was the start of their mistakes in this chain). A year later, that fateful year of 06, they announced three games with pre-rendered concepts. Nothing that you should have when you're announcing a game, the biggest missing piece being a working engine. Three years later, they completed one of those games with their new engine. It was certainly pretty (and personally, I don't hate the game anymore than I hate the other Final Fantasy games) and well received critically, but they had sunk a lot into the game. And oh, by the way, that MMO they had shown concept of in 2005 was now called Final Fantasy XIV, used the same engine, and would be released in 2010 as a steaming pile of shit.

So where is Final Fantasy Versus Fabula Nova Crystallis XIII-V in all this? Sitting around, perhaps with some artists drawing pretty pictures and putting together more concept footage, with Nomura furiously masturbating over his creations and vision. It was obvious that the engine they had built for their games was not solid enough to handle the variety of genres they threw at it and if they had another three to five year development cycle, the game would be releasing in 2012-2014. Someone (accurately) released that the concept that they had pushed in their announcement was simply not viable with what they had and what they were working with, especially after they released how absolutely shit FF14 was. Someone (probably Toriyama, because fuck that guy) realized that the engine they had could probably handle another game like FF13 and, since they had the assets already, they could throw something together. FF13-2 comes out about two years later and sells some copies, probably making them a nice penny. As they take all the decent developers they have and throw them at FF14, someone (Toriyama) reveals that he put a hook in 13-2 for 13-3, so they agree to let him make that while they contract out little mobile titles and publish other people's games.

And there's Final Fantasy: The Boy's Club and Kingdom Hearts 3 (oh, they were tossing out mobile KH games during this time too, right?), waiting for someone to look at them and make them pretty. I continue to imagine Nomura working in a closet somewhere, drawing pictures, as I am still baffled that they put his name on things and point to it as if to say "yeah, that's the guy you want being director of whatever; he designed some characters and looks like a pretty creative dude". Apparently he was helping out with those mobile titles while all of his underlings were running around the SquareEnix offices (in the nude, I would guess), attempting to put out all the fires. At some point, the developers stopped working on whatever they were working on and moved back to FF15 (did I mention they decided to rename it because obviously putting 13 on the box will not help anyone). They apparently did something, because they showed us what looks like gameplay footage at various conferences (sidebar: has anyone actually played the game or are these just more dressed up concepts?). Since we were patient little boys and girls, they gave us an announcement in 2013 of the change of name and release platforms. Oh btw, we'll show you a KH3 concept trailer as well and then say it was too early to announce it, but we thought that we'd get your hopes up.

Did I mention that, at some point, they had some of their developers working on a new engine or a lighting engine or something, which they used to create a pre-rendered trailer of something that they showed at a bunch of conferences to be like "look what we did; it is a thing!"

And the fact that FF15 hasn't been released yet brings with it a slight amount of optimism that they realized what wouldn't work and allowed a proper development cycle to occur behind the scenes, at which point they can announce a release date that isn't nine years into the future. Slight amount of optimism. Not a lot. But maybe.

TL;DR: Final Fantasy XV might actually be in production now, SquareEnix has some number of developers that could be working on something, and SquareEnix has absolutely no idea how to properly manage expectations, a software project, or their financial outlook. Also FF14's client/server code is actually still extremely terrible and looks like it was built like a house of cards on a pit of sand above a fault-line with a volcano next to it (read: not well).

[Kirin]

New Schreier column about XV.

FF has long been the bellwether of JRPG viability on consoles and if XV fails it could really be the end of big budget console JRPGs altogether. Japanese developers who still want to publish to consoles must now lean on foreign markets to shore up their sales numbers considering how poorly current-gen consoles are doing in Japan, but we've also seen SE's ridiculous projections for Tomb Raider. Lots of reasons to be nervous about how SE manages expectations of a title that will have been 10 years in production by the time it comes out.

While I agree with XV's success having a huge impact on the longevity and market power of the PS4 in Japan in the long term, the market is vastly different now than during the PS1 era; especially for JRPG's. Just thinking about the studios like Monolith, Atlus, and Level 5 now, let alone the smaller ones like Nippon Ichi, Namco/Bandai and the publishers like XSeed. Even first/second party developers have stepped up their ability over the past 3 generations.

Lets take SE's ineptitude over the last generation and a half out of the equation. They, like a lot of other developers, have been caught up in a vastly more expensive (and longer) development cycle with heightened pushes toward making everything photo-realistic and are quickly having to adjust to the current climate that didn't exist even 2 years ago. Mobile has thrown a huge wrench in that works, and there is a big divide in my opinion between putting 2-3 years into a "AAA" console title vs 6 (maybe less) months into a "AAA" mobile title. Digital distribution has blossomed and has cut down on huge expenditures for publishers. That said, as mentioned text heavy titles are even more expensive to localize and translate. Mobile games would have considerably less text on the whole.

With titles like Trails in the Sky doing pretty well though via Steam and GoG, if publishers know they have a quality title on their hands and can eat the cost vs time issue then it can work. You're seeing smaller studios handle publishing these titles themselves now as well. Atlus USA and NIA have not done bad for themselves by any means. Groups like XSEED seem to relish the challenge like Working Designs did, but can actually profit.

XV will not be a commercial failure. No way that occurs. Though if the story is not on par with more regarded entries in the series (4, 6, 10, first half of XII, tactics), then I do think you'll see an overall approach shift leaning more toward a Tales or Persona style with renewed focus on battle system refinements and different approaches to story telling.

A lot of good and bad happened in the aftermath of VII. I would not be against XV being a sacrificial lamb if it meant more Legend of Dragoon's, Star Oceans and Wild Arms. There is also a lot to be said about nearly perfecting older approaches like what Dragon Quest 8 did.

[Correction]

Level-5 is the anti-SE, they know how to assemble competent core teams and not waste the talents of their senior producers and designers herding cats on projects that never ship. They also know how to make a lot of money on small platforms, Youkai Watch is a goddamn phenomenon and is probably single-handedly keeping Japanese gamers interested in 3rd party 3DS games.

[Mrbeansman]

There's no reason the mobile market needs to be so abhorrent its just smart phones as they are now can only support a select few kinds of games. If only smart phones had some sort of plastic or metal bulge that could be actuated with your fingers in order to preform functions.

[Elcura]

The real problem is jrpg's with truly great stories are few and far between, SE being the biggest offender. I think the last FF with a compelling story was 10. 11 was an mmo, 12 was passable, but felt incomplete, and 13 was like watching a very mediocre anime. Even if XV is fun to play, if the story is just mediocre it'll just be another forgettable play it once kinda game. Probably won't pull in huge numbers in the states in that case. Also 10/10/10/10/10/10 famitsu scores fo sho.

I'd say there wasn't really a FF in recent memory with a good story. Some you like more than others, but I never really think about FF when I think about games with good stories. Though the problem with a lot of FF games is that the gameplay isn't amazing enough to make you not care about the story as much. If XIV is genuinely fun then story becomes a lot less important. You think people who play KH do so primarily for the gripping plot or characters?

Generally there aren't a lot of games with great stories, but there are a lot of fun games.

[Lucavi]

They learned with XIII, as every game after that was progressively more fun (even if the story/characters didn't get better lol), but considering XV is supposed to be based on KH type combat (which, apart from CoM has never let me down) I doubt it'll be horrible. Biggest concerns would be the camera (which isn't amazing in KH) keeping up with the action.

I'm not hugely worried about game play or music, just story/characters.

I'm worried about framerate (I don't trust consoles because they're always far slower than PC) and an overuse of cliche tropes (on either side: eastern or western). Just give me something that feels good, characters I can care about (loving or hating characters is a good thing; anything is better than indifference), a great framerate that doesn't slow down in action and I think I can deal with anything else.

Also, AI. Give me good freakin AI. On both sides: I want my guys to be smart, but I want the enemies to be smart.

[Obsidian]

I'd say there wasn't really a FF in recent memory with a good story. Some you like more than others, but I never really think about FF when I think about games with good stories. Though the problem with a lot of FF games is that the gameplay isn't amazing enough to make you not care about the story as much. If XIV is genuinely fun then story becomes a lot less important. You think people who play KH do so primarily for the gripping plot or characters?

Generally there aren't a lot of games with great stories, but there are a lot of fun games.

I think the last console RPG I played that had a fantastic story was Lost Odyssey. Tales of Vesperia/Xillia/Xillia-2 all had pretty good stories, but Lost Odyssey blew me away (especially the Thousand Year Dreams).

[Silenka]

I think the last console RPG I played that had a fantastic story was Lost Odyssey. Tales of Vesperia/Xillia/Xillia-2 all had pretty good stories, but Lost Odyssey blew me away (especially the Thousand Year Dreams).

HOLY SHIT THIS.

And you wanna know a large part of why FF stories suddenly got shitty and Lost Odyssey was AMAZING? Sakaguchi Hironobu. Man, it's so sad that he's making like...shitty iphone games now.

I've been kicking myself over and over lately that I don't have a 360 because I want to play Lost Odyssey again so badly, but not going to buy a whole console for one game, even if it is one of the best games I've ever played.