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[longdi]

FF12 also went through dev hell and came out somewhat decently despite the director leaving halfway through...it wasn't to this degree, but it was still a hot mess that was disguised by release.

People in this thread, when they are referring to the original concept are talking about Versus 13. Nobody on V13 was responsible for 13 outside of Nomura who worked on some character designs.

I just re-watched FFv13 clips, and did the PS3 gameplay looked better than FF15...?

As for the concepts and all, im not sure if FFv13 did happened, that it would be any better than FF15, remember it was supposed to share the same universe with Lightningx3 and the scenarios will be handled by the KH team, red flags all over...

 

[Falk]

it was supposed to share the same universe with Lightningx3

It was supposed to share the same concepts and mythology, not universe.

They'd have L'cie, Fal'cie, focus, Etro/Pulse/Lindzei, etc but their own retellings.

Sorta like how each FF has the same summons, Chocobos, Cid, etc but a little more specific.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

I can't help but feel like this is one of those games which will fair far better with people who haven't followed it for 10 years.

 

[Hyro]

PS2 games apparently look better than this game.

Source: The Internet

 

[duckroll]

I can't help but feel like this is one of those games which will fair far better with people who haven't followed it for 10 years.

One could also argue that the game as it is, would probably be better off if when it was rebooted in 2012, they didn't feel the need to keep anything to pander to people who might have followed the game for 6 years at that point.

 

[AkirraKrylon]

PS2 games apparently look better than this game.

Source: The Internet

FFXV looks liek a PS2 game guyz! Did u see dat dioramamamama of teh city at the end? Lol worst game EVAR.

Seriously....saying this game looks like a PS2 game is just mind numbing.

 

[jett]

PS2 games apparently look better than this game.

Source: The Internet

This Leviathan sequence looks really ugly tho.

 

[KZXcellent]

FFXV looks liek a PS2 game guyz! Did u see dat dioramamamama of teh city at the end? Lol worst game EVAR.

Seriously....saying this game looks like a PS2 game is just mind numbing.

Parts of it, like that Diorama-looking city do look really bad. Just because someone criticizes one thing doesn't mean they're putting the entire game on blast.

 

[Fj0823]

I'm late.

At what stage of the Final Fantasy cycle are we?

Is XIII a masterpiece ruined by XV yet?

 

[Via Purifico]

One could also argue that the game as it is, would probably be better off if when it was rebooted in 2012, they didn't feel the need to keep anything to pander to people who might have followed the game for 6 years at that point.

Were they bound to the Roen deal? that seemed to be one of the things that stuck around after all these years.

 

[Hyro]

FFXV looks liek a PS2 game guyz! Did u see dat dioramamamama of teh city at the end? Lol worst game EVAR.

Seriously....saying this game looks like a PS2 game is just mind numbing.

Everything in this thread is mind numbing, really. That's why I'm having so much fun.

 

[KZXcellent]

I'm late.

At what stage of the Final Fantasy cycle are we?

Is XIII a masterpiece ruined by XV yet?

Give us a month. The first LTTP for XV will have that.

 

[SaniOYOYOY]

I can't help but feel like this is one of those games which will fair far better with people who haven't followed it for 10 years.

dude if you really think this will fulfill that 10 years of hype, just no

people who go in as blind as they could tho will like it very much I think.

I'm late.

At what stage of the Final Fantasy cycle are we?

Is XIII a masterpiece ruined by XV yet?

on gaf? lol no xiii will still be the cool thing to hate.

later,when we can look gg15 as it is objectively as possible, I see ff15 received in a similar fashion to ff12 , really polarizing. except yeah ff12 VA destroys 15 and 15 actually has a protagonis

 

[Vincent Grayson]

One could also argue that the game as it is, would probably be better off if when it was rebooted in 2012, they didn't feel the need to keep anything to pander to people who might have followed the game for 6 years at that point.

I totally agree. In a perfect world, they'd have done that, but I'll take it as it is, because it's a new Final Fantasy game, and that's good enough for me.

dude if you really think this will fulfill that 10 years of hype, just no

people who go in as blind as they could tho will like it very much I think.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Random dude who walks into Walmart and sees FFXV and thinks "Oh yeah, I remember those games." and picks it up is far more likely to enjoy it than the people who have been hanging on to Versus since 2006.

 

[benzy]

Were they bound to the Roen deal? that seemed to be one of the things that stuck around after all these years.

Versus/XV project would have been canceled if the higher ups didn't like the 2013 vertical slice. They could have moved on from Versus if they wanted.

 

[duckroll]

Were they bound to the Roen deal? that seemed to be one of the things that stuck around after all these years.

This is a non-issue. Considering the cost poured into the game as it is, letting a contract lapse due to a game getting cancelled is nothing. The point is, they consciously decided to turn VersusXIII into XV instead of canning it and allowing a team to build FFXV from scratch. 2012 to 2016 is 4 years. They spent 4 years salvaging a RPG from a blueprint that was 6 years old and in development hell.

Hard to blame people for hanging on for 10 years when Square Enix was actively enabling it and using it as a source of publicity and interest for their game.

 

[Ray Down]

remember it was supposed to share the same universe with Lightningx3 and the scenarios will be handled by the KH team, red flags all over...

It's more just shared ideas shared across the universe but with different ideas and executions across the board.

In 13 l'cie are pick by the Fal'cie and basically given the ability to use magic and a goal to achieve or else you become a zombie if you don't complete, you also live forever or something.

In Type-0 you become a I'cie though the crystals and basically become a saiyan. Though the longer you are a I'cie the more you lose your free will and become just a moving vessel for the crystal will. You also got the whole memory angle in Type-0.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

I can't help but feel like this is one of those games which will fair far better with people who haven't followed it for 10 years.

Conversely, you could end up with a situation where those of us who have followed it for so long are more understanding of the game's faults because we know the misery it went through, whereas to a neophyte it might seem like an unjustified mess.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Random dude who walks into Walmart and sees FFXV and thinks "Oh yeah, I remember those games." and picks it up is far more likely to enjoy it than the people who have been hanging on to Versus since 2006.

This is exactly what I'm wondering. Are they going to enjoy it or pick it up saying "I remember those games," only to play it and think "Wow that's nothing like the (rose-tinted) quality I remember!"

 

[dramatis]

This is exactly what I said though.

This is incredibly patronising and unnecessary and features no argument that actually supports your initial point.

You're the one who asked why people aren't more 'disappointed' by how the map isn't what the devs and marketing promised. I think you're more angry than disappointed, which is why you're lashing out.

But the truth is that SE Japan definitely could not make the map that people endlessly compared to the maps in other open world games. If you couldn't see it and you're getting mad, then yes, you weren't paying attention. Marketing has been deceiving before, with Watch Dogs and Destiny, and famously this year with No Man's Sky. FF13 was cagey about the gameplay structure back before it came out.

You did not say what I said. This is what you said:

But it's kind of obvious they couldn't get everything done. Looking back they were building out the train station in the start of 2015, so after a few years of development they seemed to realise they were nowhere near completion and couldn't get it done in under 10 years or something.

I thought they were just being coy with their marketing, with a lot of it focused on areas early in the game, but nope we've kind of seen everything and that's all they have. No Solheim, Tenebrae is a few rooms, loads of towns on that map not there.

I'm kind of amazed more people aren't disappointed in this and are still obsessed with arguing nonsense like if Luna is strong or the ending is good tbh.

It's a third of a game.

If it's incredibly obvious to even a layperson with no experience in game development that it was impossible, why on earth did Square-Enix, the only people who actually knew the status of the project think it was possible?

I'm saying when I saw that map picture for the first time long before now that I didn't trust it to begin with. You're looking back on it with hindsight. Your second post implies that you believed the model map was possible, you believed the FF15 devs, and you got suckered.

Aside from the fact that making such a huge map is taxing on development resources, having such a huge map by itself to begin with is not a good idea for gameplay. Weren't there quite a few people who told people who liked Versus concepts to just let it go, that what they wanted isn't going to happen? Isn't it just as silly to get stuck on a map that was never shown fully in in-game assets?

 

[AkirraKrylon]

Parts of it, like that Diorama-looking city do look really bad. Just because someone criticizes one thing doesn't mean they're putting the entire game on blast.

Oh absolutely - the city skyline view looked pretty bad for those few seconds not denying that. But there was a good stretch of time in this thread when that portion of the game first leaked where people were criticizing that and saying this game was trash as a result.

 

[Maintenance]

I'm having fun watching someone waste an alt account on this game though. Sitting two three years on it to use on this game, that's dedication.

 

[Via Purifico]

Versus/XV project would have been canceled if the higher ups didn't like the 2013 vertical slice. They could have moved on from Versus if they wanted.

This is a non-issue. Considering the cost poured into the game as it is, letting a contract lapse due to a game getting cancelled is nothing. The point is, they consciously decided to turn VersusXIII into XV instead of canning it and allowing a team to build FFXV from scratch. 2012 to 2016 is 4 years. They spent 4 years salvaging a RPG from a blueprint that was 6 years old and in development hell.

Hard to blame people for hanging on for 10 years when Square Enix was actively enabling it and using it as a source of publicity and interest for their game.

I should have been more specific, I was just shooting in the dark on what made them kept anything from 10 years ago not exactly the entire game as it is.

But yeah they should have moved on instead of giving into years of hype and just making it its own thing. The way they were silent about Versus should have been a red flag.

 

[Kaizer]

So guys, as someone who's been following this game since its initial announcement back in 2006 & is still eagerly looking forward to playing it next week (I always expected the overall opinion of it to be mixed) what would you say is the biggest reason or factor for why this game's development was so troubled?

Was it their decision to stick with their proprietary engine rather than use something like the Unreal Engine? I find it very significant that the FFVII Remake is being built with Unreal, but I'm extremely uninformed when it comes to how significant the actual game engine is in terms of actual game development.

 

[Pooya]

VersusXIII had lots of internet hype back then while everyone everywhere was shitting on XIII. So I understand they were not confident enough in building a new concept and went with what they thought is proven to connect with the audience but yeah... it doesn't really connect with the general wider audience and if it did, it was back in 2011 not in almost 2017. Still most of its elements were the right choices, openworld and real time gameplay, they needed to have those now, they got those right but they could do it with a new world concept rather than frankstein rewrite of someone else's story.

 

[SaniOYOYOY]

I'm having fun watching someone waste an alt account on this game though. Sitting two years on it to use on this game, that's dedication.

I KNOW WHO THIS IS LOL.

Spoiler

3 years tho not 2

So guys, as someone who's been following this game since its initial announcement back in 2006 & is still eagerly looking forward to playing it next week (I always expected the overall opinion of it to be mixed) what would you say is the biggest reason or factor for why this game's development was so troubled?

Was it their decision to stick with their proprietary engine rather than use something like the Unreal Engine? I find it very significant that the FFVII Remake is being built with Unreal, but I'm extremely uninformed when it comes to how significant the actual game engine is in terms of actual game development.

I would say nomura's ambition to span this into 3 separate game. It ended up being a mess trying to cramp this all into 1 game

luminous engine will be fine unlike crystal engine, from witch demo they even suport dx12 if im not mistaken. I just wanna say saving eventual PC port for people to doubledip is a bullshit business practice

 

[UberTag]

I'm late.

At what stage of the Final Fantasy cycle are we?

Is XIII a masterpiece ruined by XV yet?

There was a time when we didn't have to Sonic cycle this franchise and the games were legitimately good. I miss those times.

That said, at least we got an amazing soundtrack out of the deal. I feel like I've pre-ordered the wrong thing. I should be buying the OST next week and not the game that goes with it.

 

[Maintenance]

I KNOW WHO THIS IS LOL.

Spoiler

3 years tho not 2

Oh crap, forgot that we're in 2016.

 

[LordKano]

Soooo, I just watched the boss fight against the Leviathan.

It reminded me of the final boss in Sonic Adventure. But it was a terrible boss, and it doesn't really look good in FFXV either.

 

[gosoxtim]

i dont get what in thoses ten year did tabi really over marketed this game that he frogt aboutthe game

i mean i hope kh3 isnt like this prefer nomura just keep quiet show us new stuff and disney focus marketing

 

[Hyro]

Oh crap, forgot that we're in 2016.

Everyone wants to forget we're in 2016.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Man that Ardyn train sequence would be incredibly well done if it weren't for the acting. Arydyn's dialogue and animation in that set piece is actually on point but the the dude's VA saying "Dude are you seriously trying to kill me." in the same tone he says everything just does not sound right at all. That said, the train sequence is lit.

 

[RubberJohnny]

You did not say what I said. This is what you said:

I said it was patronising because you pulled this "you don't understand development" bit out of nowhere, I understand it perfectly fine - and you failed to explain why they found it possible when you apparently spotted it instantly, you're just waffling around the point. Devs shutting down, open world fatigue, Versus fans being picked on - none of this has anything to do with your or my point.

I'm saying when I saw that map picture for the first time long before now that I didn't trust it to begin with. You're looking back on it with hindsight. Your second post implies that you believed the model map was possible, you believed the FF15 devs, and you got suckered.

I'll explain exactly why I thought it feasible.

First of all, no one ever mentioned the scale. I saw estimates that it was around Just Cause 2 size, but I don't think there's been a pre-release size estimate for a videogame that's gotten it right - Fallout, GTA, they usually think they're far more massive than they end up.

Anyway, Just Cause 2 is demonstrably a videogame that exists and was put out by Square Enix, the FFXV dev team mentioned they were getting help from the same Just Cause devs on the engine. And most of the FFXV map is water or impassable mountains, making the actual area far smaller still - it's not impossible to imagine a game that trades out JC2's dozens of identikit bases and settlement for a dozen more unique ones and a higher quality campaign, especially considering the gulf in sales expectations and prestige between the Just Cause series and the Final Fantasy one. We also know that SE Japan are capable of much more because of their statements about how the bulk of work for FFXIII never made it into the final game.

They'd already shown they'd de-scoped the project from Versus by dropping the large city environments and heavily scripted action setpieces of the Insomnia intro, which seemed to eat up most of that projects development. The biggest urban environment left looked to be Altissia, which looked Beauclair from Witcher 3 size or smaller, and CDProjektRed managed to develop that and 30 hours of content in only a year.

Episode Duscae looked like it provided a great and feasible example of this, a square mile of explorable terrain with maybe one unique structure that you couldn't enter and some simple fetch-based side quests. Really you just seem to be arguing you can't hold them to the standards of other developers because they're Japanese and therefore incompetent, I don't buy that.

 

[Falk]

I just wanna say saving eventual PC port for people to doubledip is a bullshit business practice

Eh, the game made it past the finished line with a 2 month delay as is targeting 2 platforms (or 2.5 or whatever you want to count Pro support as)

A PC version would have been completely out of the question launching Nov 29th.

 

[Hyro]

Man that Ardyn train sequence would be incredibly well done if it weren't for the acting. Arydyn's dialogue and animation in that set piece is actually on point but the the dude's VA saying "Dude are you seriously trying to kill me." in the same tone he says everything just does not sound right at all. That said, the train sequence is lit.

Link to this scene in question?

 

[duckroll]

So guys, as someone who's been following this game since its initial announcement back in 2006 & is still eagerly looking forward to playing it next week (I always expected the overall opinion of it to be mixed) what would you say is the biggest reason or factor for why this game's development was so troubled?

Was it their decision to stick with their proprietary engine rather than use something like the Unreal Engine? I find it very significant that the FFVII Remake is being built with Unreal, but I'm extremely uninformed when it comes to how significant the actual game engine is in terms of actual game development.

I think the biggest factor is very clear, even at various points during the 10 years - scope. No one working on the game either as Versus or XV ever seemed to have a great grip of what they wanted the game to be in a macro sense. There were tons of ideas for micro parts of the game, because they had tons of cool ideas they wanted to express, but there was no control on the scope.

Even in Versus days, it was clear from Nomura interviews that he was changing how things worked from year to year based on what he played and what he thought would work better. One moment he would be talking about the importance of CG sequences, the next he would be talking about seamless cutscenes (set pieces) you can play through ala first person shooters. He also talked about wanting a mix of random-ish symbol encounters on the map, and seamless encoutners on the field. The scale of the world map changed completely mid-development.

When the game was handed to Tabata as XV, this didn't change at all. The specifics of the battle engine changed from month to month based on the negative vibe from each showing. The approach to the design of the game became so attached to the feedback loop that it seems to have been more important to them to keep changing things big and small based on what people might prefer the most rather than just locking down content and being satisfied and confident in the design they had. We see this approach applied all the way to launch, with the day one patch adding more CG scenes from Kingsglaive into the story, because people apparently asked for it.

 

[Shandy]

Conspiracy theory: Game was delayed 50% for technical reasons and 50% to get it closer to GOTY period so as to avoid giving people too much time to mull over it.

Please take Final Fantasy away from the hack responsible for Type 0.

Murdered PE as well.

Tabata, Toriyama and (unpopular opinion?) Nomura all seem like they do better when there's someone above them who can control their input and veto anything they approve that's just silly. The 3rd Birthday is a tremendous example of this, when all three of them were sufficiently senior enough for all their bad decisions to just float on by. Story director Toriyama's input should have been rejected by creative director Nomura. Failing that, game director Tabata should have put the screws to both of them.

This applies as equally to gameplay mechanics as it does narrative, too. Tabata should have laughed the random outcomes of DNA combining in The 3rd Birthday back to whoever came up with it. And he should have laughed the random proccing of abilities back, too. But he didn't because... question mark? Maybe he's just not that good? Maybe he got XV by process of elimination. "Nomura can't get the job done, putting Toriyama in charge will go over like a lead balloon, Ito is working on a new game that definitely exists and will be amazing shut up and let me have this. Give it to the PSP guy?"

Hell, based on Judgment Disc, there are a couple of mechanics that stump me for their existence and I would love to know the rationale behind them. Though I have a feeling the answer to "If you can sprint infinitely, why even have a stamina bar?" is "Because other games have it." Which struck me a lot playing that demo, that they imitated mechanics and features from moderately to monstrously successful games without putting the same kind of thought and care into crafting them that contributed to the success of their inspiration.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Link to this scene in question?

Direct link. So at one point it's implied that he's hallucinating and attacking Prompto, which could be infered based on the dialogue and body language. But Prompto makes no mention of this after waking Noctis up.

 

[jett]

Man Chapters 10 and 11 just breezed through.

Man that Ardyn train sequence would be incredibly well done if it weren't for the acting. Arydyn's dialogue and animation in that set piece is actually on point but the the dude's VA saying "Dude are you seriously trying to kill me." in the same tone he says everything just does not sound right at all. That said, the train sequence is lit.

What? Everything about it is kinda bad.

 

[jimmypython]

I just re-watched FFv13 clips, and did the PS3 gameplay looked better than FF15...?

As for the concepts and all, im not sure if FFv13 did happened, that it would be any better than FF15, remember it was supposed to share the same universe with Lightningx3 and the scenarios will be handled by the KH team, red flags all over...

of course it's better. It was the original KH2 team - because of Versus they couldn't start KH3 development until the Osaka team was up and running.

Conspiracy theory: Game was delayed 50% for technical reasons and 50% to get it closer to GOTY period so as to avoid giving people too much time to mull over it.





Tabata, Toriyama and (unpopular opinion?) Nomura all seem like they do better when there's someone above them who can control their input and veto anything they approve that's just silly. The 3rd Birthday is a tremendous example of this, when all three of them were sufficiently senior enough for all their bad decisions to just float on by. Story director Toriyama's input should have been rejected by creative director Nomura. Failing that, game director Tabata should have put the screws to both of them.

This applies as equally to gameplay mechanics as it does narrative, too. Tabata should have laughed the random outcomes of DNA combining in The 3rd Birthday back to whoever came up with it. And he should have laughed the random proccing of abilities back, too. But he didn't because... question mark? Maybe he's just not that good? Maybe he got XV by process of elimination. "Nomura can't get the job done, putting Toriyama in charge will go over like a lead balloon, Ito is working on a new game that definitely exists and will be amazing shut up and let me have this. Give it to the PSP guy?"

Not sure about other people, but I don't recall any bad decisions Nomura made. He is the one constantly gets screwed by others (Upper management, FF13 schedule, FF14 disaster etc).

I am kinda amazed he still has yet to quit the company.

 

[LordKano]

And I just watched the final boss. Wow, it looked terrible. I'm glad I wasn't hyped by the game and I feel bad for the people who worked ten years on this project.

I hope Tabata won't suffer too much from this.

 

[hosannainexcelsis]

And I just watched the final boss. Wow, it looked terrible. I'm glad I wasn't hyped by the game and I feel bad for the people who worked ten years on this project.

I hope Tabata won't suffer too much from this.

If you think the game is terrible, why would you hope the guy who made it isn't harmed by its reception?

 

[jett]

So what's Ardyn's backstory anyway?

 

[AkirraKrylon]

And I just watched the final boss. Wow, it looked terrible. I'm glad I wasn't hyped by the game and I feel bad for the people who worked ten years on this project.

I hope Tabata won't suffer too much from this.

I guess it is a matter of opinion but I thought the final boss battle looked really cool.

I think it works better as a whole when you wrap Ifrit into the "final battle" segment...Ifrit's second phase was really cool and looked like it would be a lot of fun. It's kind of similar to Jenova Synthesis > Bizzarro Seph > Safer Seph

 

[DiipuSurotu]

FF12 also went through dev hell and came out somewhat decently despite the director leaving halfway through...it wasn't to this degree, but it was still a hot mess that was disguised by release.

People in this thread, when they are referring to the original concept are talking about Versus 13. Nobody on V13 was responsible for 13 outside of Nomura who worked on some character designs.

FFXII had two directors, and one of them (Hiroyuki Ito) never left. He directed the game from start to finish and even further (with the International version). Which is probably why the game holds up gameplaywise.

 

[Kanann]

Good bye SQEN AAA RPG.

oh wait, DQXI.

 

[LordKano]

If you think the game is terrible, why would you hope the guy who made it isn't harmed by its reception?

Because he was just supposed to clean the mess Nomura made and finish the game, like Minagawa did for FFXII.

It was too big of a project for him.

 

[Maintenance]

oh wait, DQXI.

You meant AAA though.

 

[Crossing Eden]

What? Everything about it is kinda bad.

Acting wise yes, but what they should've done is made Ardyn's actor act more like Prompto with more than just dialogue and body language, and actually have the dude acknowledge that he was just attacked.

 

[Ray Down]

Good bye SQEN AAA RPG.

oh wait, DQXI.

DQ aren't AAA games.

 

[duckroll]

FFXII had two directors, and one of them (Hiroyuki Ito) never left. He directed the game from start to finish and even further (with the International version). Which is probably why the game holds up gameplaywise.

This isn't true. Matsuno was the only director of the game at the start. He was the director, writer, AND producer. When he left, they lost all three roles. Ito was the battle director leading the game design team, Minagawa was the art director leading the art team. They both stepped up as directors of the project. Kawazu was brought in to take over as producer to oversea the overall project. Other writers were brought in to fill in stuff they needed written or rewritten with Matsuno gone.