Final Fantasy XV - General News Thread

[Paperchampion23]

Hopefully Insomnia too.(maybe even Post game.)

It's sad because the entire city is actually rendered in

God, they don't even need to make it into a full fledged, living breathing city. If they just turned it into the largest exploreable dungeon ever where you can explore most of the city and just fight high level daemons all day or secret bosses, I'd gladly pay tons of money for it. The entire city is already fully rendered, just make a separate map for it and throw us in there with some content! If they did it with Gralea as well, but instead of Daemons, it was even higher leveled Magitek Army enemies, I'd die of happiness.

Seriously, thats how you make these 2 cities open to explore, just "endless" dungeons with some points of interests sprinkled around the map. Salivating (and crying) just thinking about it.

 

[DrBretto]

I don't know about "fully" rendered. You can't see anything up close, so there's a ton less detail. If you could walk around the whole thing, you have to build all the up close detail to go with it. It'd be a massive project.

 

[Nova]

I swear i remember in one of the french coverages(?) they mentioned how challenging it was to render buildings in Insomnia while keeping the framerate stable.

 

[Paperchampion23]

I don't know about "fully" rendered. You can't see anything up close, so there's a ton less detail. If you could walk around the whole thing, you have to build all the up close detail to go with it. It'd be a massive project.

If you look at some of the world of wonder trailers and the french dev interviews, you can see that the city is (at least) capable of processing the Luminous engine's light tech. They show the city from different angles and such. Even the loading screen you see in game is of a version of insomnia you never actually get to see, same with Gralea. If course the textures must be unfinished, but the fact that they are even able to process and at least realize the size of the city is nuts. I guess what I mean is that if they could ever do that, it would still need work, but the entire layout of the city is there and it would just require them to multiply the assets in most places, save for some unique areas. It seems like all of the buildings that are rendered are unique though.

Sorry I go crazy for map geography in games and stuff so I'd love to know how exactly they made it.

 

[Paperchampion23]

I swear i remember in one of the french coverages(?) they mentioned how challenging it was to render buildings in Insomnia while keeping the framerate stable.

Well the city is rendered fully (skeleton wise) at certain parts of the game, but just like Dr. Bretto said, its not in detail.

 

[Storm]

gralea is incredible

it's a bit more on the futuristic side than i thought

make at least a small area explorable for god's sake

 

[DrBretto]

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/932981-final-fantasy-xv/74709293#44

Great read here if you're interested in the development timeline. Very detailed with sources and a good read. The Wada administration was just a shitshow.

 

[Paperchampion23]

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/932981-final-fantasy-xv/74709293#44

Great read here if you're interested in the development timeline. Very detailed with sources and a good read. The Wada administration was just a shitshow.

By looks of that, I definitely seems like they were even having massive problems when they rebranded the game to XV. They honestly should have just kept the scope and made the trilogy as intended, because in the end it really did hurt the story and world/lore around it.

Really hope they can slowly climb to that potential again over time with these story patches they have planned. I actually truly hope we can see part of this vision actually come together.

 

[DrBretto]

By looks of that, I definitely seems like they were even having massive problems when they rebranded the game to XV. They honestly should have just kept the scope and made the trilogy as intended, because in the end it really did hurt the story and world/lore around it.

I want to say that the biggest problems were trying to develop the game alongside the engine and setting a hard end date without being able to re-evaluate and see if it's worth extending it. I totally understand the need to set the date to keep people focused, but in the end, they know they needed to push out a quality product and I literally think a 9 month delay would have been less damaging than releasing something that feels unfinished.

 

[Paperchampion23]

I want to say that the biggest problems were trying to develop the game alongside the engine and setting a hard end date without being able to re-evaluate and see if it's worth extending it. I totally understand the need to set the date to keep people focused, but in the end, they know they needed to push out a quality product and I literally think a 9 month delay would have been less damaging than releasing something that feels unfinished.

Yup, exactly how I feel. I think most of that team senses this. That message Tabata delivered makes it seem like he still owes us something. I just want the game's presentation to be phenomenal. But, yea I definitely needed a lot more time in the oven, if not to make more unique quests and remove some of the padded ones that are super redundant. I think the real issue is that Square wanted to finally put out another mainline FF title, as its been 7 years since XIII came out, but patience, just like everything else would have gone a long way for a game like this.

 

[Lulcielid]

Their budget is not infinite nor is their shareholders patience.

 

[Storm]

thank god wada is out

 

[DrBretto]

Their budget is not infinite nor is their shareholders patience.

This is also a solid point.

Like I've said before, I'm happy with it anyway. FF games are timeless, IMO, so if I have to wait for more of the content, it's really no skin off my nose. I generally don't pay too too much attention to the story until the second playthrough anyway. I can never tell which characters to pay attention to and whatnot on the first run in most games.

Edit: Just to be clear, that's not to trivialize anyone else's frustrations. Just offering my personal perspective.

 

[Paperchampion23]

Their budget is not infinite nor is their shareholders patience.

Of course, but my point is that the lack of either definitely hurt the game in some way. That being said, I absolutely love the game, but I like every other FF game, I have my criticisms, and this one gets its fare share as well. Luckily for us though, they have enough of a budget and time to still find the place and support the game outside of DLC's.

 

[Nova]

By looks of that, I definitely seems like they were even having massive problems when they rebranded the game to XV. They honestly should have just kept the scope and made the trilogy as intended, because in the end it really did hurt the story and world/lore around it.

Really hope they can slowly climb to that potential again over time with these story patches they have planned. I actually truly hope we can see part of this vision actually come together.

I think its possible to have plenty of content in without doing a trilogy with more time.

 

[Paperchampion23]

I think its possible to have plenty of content in without doing a trilogy with more time.

True, but the point i was trying to make was that both sides could have had what they wanted. The devs could make a complete story, while the execs get a game out for profit on time. But yes, regardless, they needed more time.

 

[Slaintimez]

In my opinion it will be not that hard to fix flaws via DLC's and addon's, all they need to do is flesh out some characters via cutscenes, and make some thing explorable(if not fully explorable tenebrae, but atleast some sort of dungeon here), i think chapter 10 was perfect example how to handle linear path of the game.

 

[DrBretto]

In my opinion it will be not that hard to fix flaws via DLC's and addon's, all they need to do is flesh out some characters via cutscenes, and make some thing explorable(if not fully explorable tenebrae, but atleast some sort of dungeon here), i think chapter 10 was perfect example how to handle linear path of the game.

I agree with one caveat:

Not everyone out there will agree on what's a flaw. I was just in the middle of a discussion on G-faqs about Pitioss Ruins, for example. Now, I recognize it as fighting the controls as being part of the point of it. It's punishing a la chocobo races in X and it's for the masocists in all of us. I guarantee you, there will be a huge portion of the fanbase that considers that a "flaw" but that is clearly by design. Same goes for the Type-F controls, which actually strike me as more of a technical limitation than anything (you can't get up close to Lestalum, for example, because it needs you to ride through those tunnels so it can load. And you can't fly low on the lake in duscae, my guess is because the scale isn't uniform and flying too close would reveal it, just as a couple of examples) and that can't just simply be "fixed"

I think there will be a large portion of the fanbase that is just simply not going to be fans. There's nothing they'll do that could satisfy everyone. And that's just one of those is what it is things.

 

[Nova]

They also weren't really planning on adding an airship to the game until they consulted Avalanche late last year on vertical tech to get it to soar higher in the skies.

 

[DrBretto]

They also weren't really planning on adding an airship to the game until they consulted Avalanche late last year on vertical tech to get it to soar higher in the skies.

From what I read, the Avalanche stuff didn't help any, so they still did it on their own.

And you can see what they were talking about for why it's so hard. Scaling issues, detail issues, not to mention pop-in and all that. Considering what they were up against, I still feel like they made something fun an unique out of it.