Final Fantasy XVI - General News Thread

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Tornak

Keyblade Master
May 18, 2014
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Madrid, Spain
Assuming Square would direct it towards something new and different their shareholders care about sales, why do you think XV is in the state that's it's in, so even if they could doesn't mean they would, not in the slightest.
XV is in the state it is because of them not knowing how to get into HD development, introducing games years before proper development even started, trying to make a profit of undoubtedly huge investment (hence, the XIII trilogy), releasing a mess of a game (XIV), having to pull all of your manpower to fix it (ARR) and then starting anew in a brand new generation of consoles, with the script changing more often than not and not a clear vision up until 2012, when a hard date was decide. To that, add having to ditch Crystal Tools, and then using Ebony as well as Luminous Engine when the latter was being worked on at the same time. It's a HIGHLY unusual, overall, situation.

They have more than a couple of divisions to work properly on different stuff concurrently, and a new IP (not even AAA, you can create great and profitable games like Nier: Automata)/another untouched IP/a new mainline FF is going to get more potential sales than the umpteenth return of Lightning. These might be better in the shorter term, but they mud their library and ulitmately prevent it from growing, just doing the same stuff over and over, throwing shit to a wall until it gets stuck and basically working as patches (because XIII were patches in more than a few ways -namely, linearity, more combat freedom...-. A sequel to XV would be the exact same. It's a very sad thought).

Btw, if Ito isn't the director, I won't throw shitfits like many do with everything Nomura-related. He's one of many directors within a company that's slowly starting to grow again (and also happens to be the most talented one of the old guard). They're a huge company, it's if they try to get Toriyama or whoever to direct the project when you should worry. Everything has been a mess ever since the FNC was announced, and only recently, with ARR and XV (dissapointing, but a good game that had potential to become a great one with more time or better management), they've gotten to a level that's not embarrasing. If they can't find decent people both creatively and management-wise (Tabata is less of a creative force, unfortunately), then I don't know what to tell them.

I'll always be pessimistic with S-E, but denying the potential, especially when there are so many teams, seems a bit absurd and mostly just emotional talk. They have a shitton of money, resources, relationships and investors, they have a from decent-to-good seller in XV, as well as succesful mobile games and MMORPGs: they definitively have talent over at, say, BD5 to produce a good game within FF standards of before, even if they have to adapt to a SP structure.

You're honestly just letting the frustation get to you and extrapolating everything that went wrong with XV. And no offense, but you don't strike me as a person who was too interested in the series beyond Versus, so of course you feel like that, and that's fine.
 
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Hey Everyone

Keyblade Master
Dec 30, 2016
794
191
26
Unknown, Unknown
XV is in the state it is because of them not knowing how to get into HD development, introducing games years before proper development even started, trying to make a profit of undoubtedly huge investment (hence, the XIII trilogy), releasing a mess of a game (XIV), having to pull all of your manpower to fix it (ARR) and then starting anew in a brand new generation of consoles, with the script changing more often than not and not a clear vision up until 2012, when a hard date was decide. To that, add having to ditch Crystal Tools, and then using Ebony as well as Luminous Engine when the latter was being worked on at the same time. It's a HIGHLY unusual, overall, situation.

They have more than a couple of divisions to work properly on different stuff concurrently, and a new IP (not even AAA, you can create great and profitable games like Nier: Automata)/another untouched IP/a new mainline FF is going to get more potential sales than the umpteenth return of Lightning. These might be better in the shorter term, but they mud their library and ulitmately prevent it from growing, just doing the same stuff over and over, throwing shit to a wall until it gets stuck and basically working as patches (because XIII were patches in more than a few ways -namely, linearity, more combat freedom...-. A sequel to XV would be the exact same. It's a very sad thought).

Btw, if Ito isn't the director, I won't throw shitfits like many do with everything Nomura-related. He's one of many directors within a company that's slowly starting to grow again (and also happens to be the most talented one of the old guard). They're a huge company, it's if they try to get Toriyama or whoever to direct the project when you should worry. Everything has been a mess ever since the FNC was announced, and only recently, with ARR and XV (dissapointing, but a good game that had potential to become a great one with more time or better management), they've gotten to a level that's not embarrasing. If they can't find decent people both creatively and management-wise (Tabata is less of a creative force, unfortunately), then I don't know what to tell them.

I'll always be pessimistic with S-E, but denying the potential, especially when there are so many teams, seems a bit absurd and mostly just emotional talk.
They have a shitton of money, resources, relationships and investors, they have a from decent-to-good seller in XV, as well as succesful mobile games and MMORPGs: they definitively have talent over at, say, BD5 to produce a good game within FF standards of before, even if they have to adapt to a SP structure.

You're honestly just letting the frustation get to you and extrapolating everything that went wrong with XV. And no offense, but you don't strike me as a person who was too interested in the series beyond Versus, so of course you feel like that, and that's fine.

I know the potential is there, but it's heavily squandered by their management. FFXV was just straw that broke the camel's back, though I will admit it was FF7, Kingdom Hearts, and Versus XIII is what made me try Final Fantasy. I extrapolate because unless their management improves I have almost no reason to believe they won't make the same mistakes especially considering how successful FFXV is by being the jack of all trades master of none. It's because they have history with bad development cycles, hell it's gotten to the point that I'm actually afraid for Kingdom Hearts 3(my heart can't take that ok?, if KH3 ends up like FFXV). XIII, XIV, and XV suffered from bad developmental cycles, and bad management, but mainly bad management.
Also extrapolation from XV is because it's their most modern developer and marketing fuck up. That and because it failed my basic expectations. Also I was interested in the franchise past XV if XV did well, and lived up to my very basic expectations, as well as being a great not just a good game it didn't do it, therefore my expectations past XV is very low

I wouldn't 100 percent blame the FNC shit on Toriyama that lies to the feet of Wada, that nigga practically forced out an FFXIII-2, and was heavily in charge of the XIII, and XIV problems, I believe that if FFXIII was using Unreal Engine 3, the development would have been a lot smoother, I mean for crying out loud they made unused assets that could make an entire new game, I'm like WTF.


The script changes seem like they were caused by the hard release date than simply them not having a clear vision, as the plot leaker, the original one said that Nomura's FFXV Part 1 would have taken till 2017-2018 to release, and the higher up's were staunch about a hard 2016 release date(bad idea)

Well luckily they got a many business divisions so if they decide let's work on a sequel to FFXV, it won't stop FFXVI from happening, though I question how their vision for XVI would be considering how XV is( it feels like it's trying to be too many things at once, being the jack of all trades master of none, and my fear is they will do it again just for sales doing the popular thing as opposed to doing what their director wants to do), so their library can continue to grow regardless.


Nier Automata is a little different it doesn't need the sales of XV to be profitable therefore their is more director automony, Nomura/Tabata didn't have that, but I would say that since Nomura would have more clout due to his profile, so he can negotiate better knowing Square they will try going with the biggest and baddest graphics with XVI, try to please everybody for sales, I'm open to being wrong, but I'm not going to be surprised if I'm not
 

Tornak

Keyblade Master
May 18, 2014
718
421
31
Madrid, Spain
I know the potential is there, but it's heavily squandered by their management. FFXV was just straw that broke the camel's back, though I will admit it was FF7, Kingdom Hearts, and Versus XIII is what made me try Final Fantasy. I extrapolate because unless their management improves I have almost no reason to believe they won't make the same mistakes especially considering how successful FFXV is by being the jack of all trades master of none. It's because they have history with bad development cycles, hell it's gotten to the point that I'm actually afraid for Kingdom Hearts 3(my heart can't take that ok?, if KH3 ends up like FFXV). XIII, XIV, and XV suffered from bad developmental cycles, and bad management, but mainly bad management.
Also extrapolation from XV is because it's their most modern developer and marketing fuck up. That and because it failed my basic expectations. Also I was interested in the franchise past XV if XV did well, and lived up to my very basic expectations, as well as being a great not just a good game it didn't do it, therefore my expectations past XV is very low

I wouldn't 100 percent blame the FNC shit on Toriyama that lies to the feet of Wada, that nigga practically forced out an FFXIII-2, and was heavily in charge of the XIII, and XIV problems, I believe that if FFXIII was using Unreal Engine 3, the development would have been a lot smoother, I mean for crying out loud they made unused assets that could make an entire new game, I'm like WTF.


The script changes seem like they were caused by the hard release date than simply them not having a clear vision, as the plot leaker, the original one said that Nomura's FFXV Part 1 would have taken till 2017-2018 to release, and the higher up's were staunch about a hard 2016 release date(bad idea)

Well luckily they got a many business divisions so if they decide let's work on a sequel to FFXV, it won't stop FFXVI from happening, though I question how their vision for XVI would be considering how XV is( it feels like it's trying to be too many things at once, being the jack of all trades master of none, and my fear is they will do it again just for sales doing the popular thing as opposed to doing what their director wants to do), so their library can continue to grow regardless.


Nier Automata is a little different it doesn't need the sales of XV to be profitable therefore their is more director automony, Nomura/Tabata didn't have that, but I would say that since Nomura would have more clout due to his profile, so he can negotiate better knowing Square they will try going with the biggest and baddest graphics with XVI, try to please everybody for sales, I'm open to being wrong, but I'm not going to be surprised if I'm not
What I'm saying is that XV cannot be extrapolated to any other game because that game is so particular that most of its problems will never happen again (unless S-E decides to create a whole new engine, has to make a trilogy nobody wants and has to save a gigantic game). Wada is gone and the new CEO seems to be competent enough to save the ship. You can be pessimistic, but fuck no, XV's problems shouldn't be used in an argument as it's a vastly different situation. Remember, this whole thing is a legacy (Wada has four big messes in terms of development: XII, XIII, XIV and Versus/XV; Matsuda has been able to make his company release games at a steady pace and with more than good reception).

And my point is that if you ditch stupid, fan-wanking sequels that most people don't care about, you can potentially have more Nier-tiered games, with more risks and less pressure. Just because you can't reuse as many assets, it doesn't mean that they're not affordable and that you have to shit out crappy sequels.
 

T.O.T

Blitzball Champion
Feb 2, 2017
533
540
And my point is that if you ditch stupid, fan-wanking sequels that most people don't care about, you can potentially have more Nier-tiered games, with more risks and less pressure. Just because you can't reuse as many assets, it doesn't mean that they're not affordable and that you have to shit out crappy sequels.
Sequels for games in the FF mainline series just haven't worked. Sure, many assets end up being reused with probably a lower budget, but the prequels/sequels have never sold as well as the initial number. I doubt that's going to change. It will be interesting seeing how the episodic formula is approached as it very well may become the norm later on if it takes off for the series.
 
It will be interesting seeing how the episodic formula is approached as it very well may become the norm later on if it takes off for the series.
The ideal approach would be to have a solid structure in place for the overall narrative first. From there, there are two ways to go - take the road that many multi-part narratives (i.e. The Last Airbender; Lord of the Rings; The Legend of Heroes; .hack) take and have each part be its own story, but with ties to the next game; or do what Life Is Strange and The Wolf Among Us did and end with more snappy cliffhangers leading into the next episode. Now the last approach is something I'd not do if I was in charge of making a three-part (I think three parts are enough) FF game, largely because it lends itself less to a broad RPG epic and more to a crime adventure game IMHO, but if they can make it work, why not.

Now, let's say they want to take the first approach. The way this is often done (and, FWIW I consider to be optimal) is to have the first part introduce the majority of the key players - not everyone, but at least... say, 2/3 - 3/4 of your essential cast should be set up here. For example, in The Fellowship of the Ring, LotR sets up the nine members of the fellowship and other important characters like Elrond, Saruman and Arwen. The focus on the story here should be on the growth of the group and developing the key parts of your world, the ending should, ideally, recontextualize how the characters interact or set up a much broader conflict - going by my main example, again, the break-up of the fellowship and the resulting question of whether or not the quest to bring peace to Middle Earth will be successful. The second part should start to grow the scale of the conflict and pay off the first minor few setups from the first part, but not resolve the key conflict. There are two ways to end this part of the story - either with a loss (see: Star Wars Episode V; TLA Book Earth) or a minor victory (Two Towers), depending on where you want to go story-wise (personally I'd go with the minor victory, I feel it works better in a video game environment). And the third game should, of course, resolve the final conflict at its conclusion.

That's just how I'd do it, but it's been done so many times that taking that route and knowing how to make each individual part be satisfying on its own should give a functioning result.
 

Hey Everyone

Keyblade Master
Dec 30, 2016
794
191
26
Unknown, Unknown
What I'm saying is that XV cannot be extrapolated to any other game because that game is so particular that most of its problems will never happen again (unless S-E decides to create a whole new engine, has to make a trilogy nobody wants and has to save a gigantic game). Wada is gone and the new CEO seems to be competent enough to save the ship. You can be pessimistic, but fuck no, XV's problems shouldn't be used in an argument as it's a vastly different situation. Remember, this whole thing is a legacy (Wada has four big messes in terms of development: XII, XIII, XIV and Versus/XV; Matsuda has been able to make his company release games at a steady pace and with more than good reception).

And my point is that if you ditch stupid, fan-wanking sequels that most people don't care about, you can potentially have more Nier-tiered games, with more risks and less pressure. Just because you can't reuse as many assets, it doesn't mean that they're not affordable and that you have to shit out crappy sequels.
Nier is a lot different, it wasn't made at FFXV's budget, a FFXVI will probably have an even bigger budget than FFXV, so that they can do all the things that made FFXV popular and make more money. Nier Automata is a product of being of a more reasonable lower budget, and didn't have a focus on graphics, or sales where as FFXV did, and Square having a much more hands off approach where as Nomura/Tabata it was a lot more intrusive. That's why I don't bother to look at Nier when it comes to hopes about Final Fantasy XVI, because if anything XVI is going to try and replicate what made XV successful to make more sales that means higher budget values, better graphics, more open world, and action combat.

FFXV's problems aren't just from development, some of them were outright incompetence, and corporate cynicism, and a lack of faith in FFXV in general as well as a needed sales target or else the franchise would be doomed. Nier had absolutely none of this, hell it wasn't even Square who developed it, it was Platinum Games.

FFXV was supposed to be like the FF7 Remake/Multi-Part, but because they didn't have faith in it, it got condensed into one game, which is probably the cause of some if not most of the storytelling issues.
They made the game open world, Versus XIII was just open not open world, what would happen if you took a 2D FF game and blew up the world in 3D approach. It was turned into an open world game, because it's popular even though they didn't bother to develop it well.
Holes were created in the story to be sold as DLC, for whatever asinine reason, they decided to put it in the worst place possible.
There are also somethings that are simply bad game design(ie. Leviathan) that can't be excused by developmental issues.
They were forced to use an unfinished engine as opposed to using something that oh I don't know is finished, because they didn't want a Crystal Tools scenario.

The only real developmental issues Versus XIII ever had were caused by the engine, and the staffing issue.
XV was supposed to be Versus XIII, then they decided no it should be some sort of a reboot that is just a great game in it's own right or something, but they managed to fail at even that. Developmental issues don't excuse the bad game design in areas, and the bad story design, especially when they had top priority.


Also all of this was under Matsuda, the only thing Wada was to be blamed for when it comes to Versus XIII's development is making it not happen until they got the next gen consoles and realized oh shit, we can't make this game for PS3 anymore, and was dumb enough to think that XV could come out in 2014.

Also sequels aren't the cause of riskless games it's budget, and the gamers themselves.
 
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T.O.T

Blitzball Champion
Feb 2, 2017
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540
VR? Oh fuck no... VR is a shitty fad that should die already. I don't imagine it'd be any fun playing a 60+ hour-long RPG in VR, unless of course, they'd make yet another on-rails nightmare.
I think VR won't kick off until it gets to the point where we as the player can feel every action taken and received. Granted, that in itself may upon up a different can of worms.
 
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Nova

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Jul 14, 2015
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Any reason why in particular?
Imo his skills feel more fit for managing Kingdom Hearts projects as a co-director for Nomura. Considering that the latter has been dependent of one since Birth by Sleep & onwards, which i have doubts will change in the future, Yasue being put in charge with a mainline FF would be too much i feel.

Thats not to say he's incompetent, though.