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[Kagari]

Localization was already sketchy with that dumb hide and seek line.

 

[dramatis]

I don't mean to open a heaving can of worms, but I don't really agree entirely with people's offended reactions towards Cindy, and this comes from someone who believes strongly in gender equality. I'll try and bullet point it:

1. Character-wise she's confident, positive, independant and clearly owning her sexuality. They've presented her SO FAR as someone who isn't desperate for attention, isn't portrayed as weak, and is simply dressing that way because she wants to. A woman expressing her sexuality shouldn't be taboo and confused with objectification all the time. In this case, I think the cynical, knee-jerk approach to her outfit is the easy one to make, but not necessarily right.

2. The main guys are clearly attracted to her and give themselves away on that, but she shows no visible interest, keeping her in control. She's not reliant on any guys, and is instead providing for her dad and seems capable and good at her job.

3. The guys are sexualised as much as the girls. This is a sexy cast. Gladio has his abs out constantly. They're all pretty boys. They all fulfill popular attractive archetypes; the tough guy, the smart guy, the funny guy. Everyone's attractive, so how is having an equally hot girl an example of gender inequality? In Japanese games they have a tendency to sexualise the guys just as much as the girls, a fact that is often glazed over.

4. She's in the burning desert, in hot garages, fixing cars and greeting customers for a living. Her outfit isn't exactly at odds with the situation and climate.


So that's what I think. I think there's a time and place for outrage towards treatment of game women (like the porn-esque Quiet scenes in MGSV), but in this case I don't see much of a cause besides generic outrage towards tits being there. Please don't get mad GAF, this is just IMO.

You literally check all the boxes for excuses with your explanation of why Cindy is 'okay'.

1. "She chose to dress sexy": The fundamental problem with this statement is that it becomes the clutch excuse for every 'sexy' female design. Moreover, it's forgetting the important detail that the character herself is not given agency in how she's dressed—the character designers designed her and dressed her. In here, there is no "a woman expressing her sexuality". Instead it is the interest of male developers designing a female character that serves as good eyecandy and promotional material, including the equivalent of a 'pinup skin' for the car. In every frame Cindy is in, you see her tits or her ass in some way, because god forbid the camera not show some sexual part of her body.

2. "It's not like she shows interest in the guys anyway": This is the excuse for Cindy "having control"? When a female character design is made visually a fanservice feast, she's not a sexual object because she doesn't reciprocate the attention? When a bunch of guys are leering at her, she's not being a sexual object as long as she's not returning the interest? So guys catcalling or harassing a female would be okay because she's "in control"?

3. "The guys are sexualized too!": Gladio shows his chest and abs, so he must be sexualized, right? Is Noctis and co. bending over with the camera panning on their tight pants to show their butts to me? Do they have animations that cater to a particular fetish, like Gladio's sister has with her cutesy animations slotting into the 'cheerful bubby girl' stereotype that feeds otaku interest? Or how Cindy is bending over all over the place to show you her buttcheeks? Does the camera do slow pans up Gladio's body like it does Cindy's?

4. "She's wearing what she should in the climate!": When you fix cars, there's sharp edges, hot oil, and lots of grime. You wear body-covering clothing to reduce injury and keep cleaner. This excuse also does not work. It's quite telling that Cid is fully dressed, while Cindy is hanging out everywhere—but both are mechanics in the same situation and climate, yet only one is a sexual object. If I remember correctly, Cindy is the one who stands outside waiting for player interaction while her grandfather is inside fixing the car.

Cindy is a pointless addition to the game, because Cid already fills the mechanic role. So why does Cindy exist? You and I both know the answer.

 

[Voror]

It's very strange we can't take on multiple hunt contracts at once. Is that something that could be fixed with a patch? I can't see any reason why we couldn't take on all of those at once.

Does anyone actually like Cindy's outfit? I've seen posts with those possible redesigns where she's wearing something actually suitable for a mechanic and they are so much better.

Really hope ambient banter ends up subtitled or has an option. I'm thinking I want to play with Japanese, but if it's not subtitled I might just go with English.

Yeah, I think it's general agreement that finding out the way they do is lame. If they weren't going to have them present for the invasion, there has to be a better way to have them find out. Like they notice Imperial Ships flying out en masse then figure something is going on. Hell, they have television in this world so having them see a report with actual visuals could work better I'd think.

Thanks for the impressions. I do hope that the look gets tightened up in this time and perhaps they can work out some bugs for future patches, though perhaps I've been spoiled by CD Projekt Red.

 

[Koozek]

Localization was already sketchy with that dumb hide and seek line.

"We'll play hide and seek with him!"

Get Alexander O. Smith back on board, please

 

[Lunafreya Nox Fleuret]

Cindy was apparently designed with heart and soul and no sex appeal according to SE in one ATR. You know that's a lie and she's a pointless character in the game. Her voice makes me cringe so hard and the camera movement.... don't even get me started.

 

[Mifec]

Koozek want's me to have nightmares tonight.

 

[ULTROS!]

I do hope people aren't expecting the story to be 100% better than Xenogears or something with 100 locations.

 

[jett]

Talking to shopkeepers adds nearby POIs to your map. They can also give you monster hunt side quests, but only one at a time which seems silly.

FUUUUUUCK, THIS WAS MY BIGGEST CONCERN

Xenoblade had you take as many as possible, why is it so hard Square?

what the FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

why would you do this squeenix

 

[Sanctuary]

Seriously Xenoblade and Dragon's Dogma are the closest open-world comparisons. And maybe MGS5?

Considering those were my two favorite RPGs of last gen (*not counting the Souls games), and I thought the combat was great for the kind of games they were, this sounds like it will be better than expected in that regard.

what the FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

why would you do this squeenix

I'm usually never one to say this, but...it's been delayed two months, and there are two large patches coming. Many things can be tweaked between now and release. Will they do it? Probably not, but there's still that chance.

 

[Lunafreya Nox Fleuret]

I do hope people aren't expecting the story to be 100% better than Xenogears or something with 100 locations.

As if any JRPG these days will ever beat that titan of a story. Xeno, imo has the most suspenseful stories except for X which admittedly had a crap story. Still.... Xeno does villains like no other and the surprise reveals are amazing... man I need to go back and play gears + saga all at once again.

 

[Frumix]

Square, publicly apologize and cut Cindy out of the game or you can kiss your business goodbye.

 

[YankeeDonB]

Cindy was apparently designed with heart and soul and no sex appeal according to SE in one ATR. You know that's a lie and she's a pointless character in the game. Her voice makes me cringe so hard and the camera movement.... don't even get me started.

Cindy's outfit is absurd. But I don't think she's a pointless character. Her dad is old, sits around fiddling with engine swords and reminiscing about the old days. Cindy is the face of the business and does roadside assistance. There's nothing wrong with this type of father/daughter mechanic team, and it actually sits nicely with the generational divide theme the game has going.

How they treat the character is a separate matter.

 

[RPGCrazied]

I do hope people aren't expecting the story to be 100% better than Xenogears or something with 100 locations.

No, but after FF7R sells like hotcakes and shatters sales numbers, they could go ahead and remake that game too. I won't mind. SE probably couldn't handle that task though.

 

[Skilletor]

Of everything people have said about this game, not being able to take multiple hunts is probably the only thing I care about and one of the worst things ever.

 

[Servbot24]

Square, publicly apologize and cut Cindy out of the game or you can kiss your business goodbye.

I want to see them squirm.

Squirm, you maggots!

 

[Crossing Eden]

I don't mean to open a heaving can of worms, but I don't really agree entirely with people's offended reactions towards Cindy, and this comes from someone who believes strongly in gender equality. I'll try and bullet point it:

1. Character-wise she's confident, positive, independant and clearly owning her sexuality. They've presented her SO FAR as someone who isn't desperate for attention, isn't portrayed as weak, and is simply dressing that way because she wants to. A woman expressing her sexuality shouldn't be taboo and confused with objectification all the time. In this case, I think the cynical, knee-jerk approach to her outfit is the easy one to make, but not necessarily right.

Ok, I'm straight up convinced that male gamers that defend this shit don't know what "owning sexuality" actually means. Or what sexuality means. News flash, literally nothin about her character has to do with sexuality. She's not owning it in anyway, she's a character specifically designed to appeal to a male demographic. It's very clear objectification in every aspect of the character. Gamers CONSTANTLY confuse sexualization with sexuality and it naseating. She's a character, she doesn't dress that way because she chooses to, but because she was designed that way.

2. The main guys are clearly attracted to her and give themselves away on that, but she shows no visible interest, keeping her in control. She's not reliant on any guys, and is instead providing for her dad and seems capable and good at her job.

This was in the demo, and it was only Prompto and Gladio. It was portrayed in a way that made it seem like she didn't know what they were implying.

3. The guys are sexualised as much as the girls. This is a sexy cast. Gladio has his abs out constantly. They're all pretty boys. They all fulfill popular attractive archetypes; the tough guy, the smart guy, the funny guy. Everyone's attractive, so how is having an equally hot girl an example of gender inequality? In Japanese games they have a tendency to sexualise the guys just as much as the girls, a fact that is often glazed over.

Unless I'm missing something there are no zoom in shots on the abs of the dudes. Literally the first shot of Cindy in the game is a zoom in shot of her butt. Just being attractive doesn't=sexualization. Nathan Drake is a lot more attractive than the dudes in this game, he'll even Nyx is more sexualized than the main casts in this game.

4. She's in the burning desert, in hot garages, fixing cars and greeting customers for a living. Her outfit isn't exactly at odds with the situation and climate.

What I'm about to tell you may come off as a shocker, it may literally blow your mind. And But mechanics don't dress in short shorts, a thong, and a bra couple with a top made specifically for exposing their midriff during the summer. We're in the hottest fucking summer of all time, do you sincerely have that little self awareness that you're making the argument that "it's hot" is a reason to dress like this at work? Wtf �� No mechanic you've seen or will ever see in person or on the internet dresses like Cindy when it a hot out. Aside from porn stars playing as mechanics.

So that's what I think. I think there's a time and place for outrage towards treatment of game women (like the porn-esque Quiet scenes in MGSV), but in this case I don't see much of a cause besides generic outrage towards tits being there. Please don't get mad GAF, this is just IMO.

Nothing generic about getting appalled by a horrid and transparent character design. Your justifications are incredibly generic tho.

 

[Dark_castle]

I'm really confident in terms of music, gameplay, story and characters but good lord this is some ugly game. The IQ is tremendous and it still runs really bad.

Tabata's previous games include Crisis Core, 3rd Birthday and Type-0. I'm not sure being very confident on the story and characters of XV turning out good is a wise idea.

 

[Bl@de]

• The game does not look good. I was sitting fairly close to a pretty big TV, but even forgetting that there's intense shadow dithering, aliasing to the high heavens (you've all seen the hair), texture and vegetation pop-in and on top of that the frame rate was incredibly inconsistent. I kinda just got used to the combat being a bit of a mess visually. It was often hard to tell what in the hell was happening.
• Moving the camera around somehow makes things worse.

Ouch. I think I'll wait for the PC version in 1-2 years. It seems like they really have to cut corners to get it running on console hardware. Image quality getting worse with every showing.

 

[Sanctuary]

As if any JRPG these days will ever beat that titan of a story. Xeno, imo has the most suspenseful stories except for X which admittedly had a crap story. Still.... Xeno does villains like no other and the surprise reveals are amazing... man I need to go back and play gears + saga all at once again.

I only ever made it to the second disc when I first played it. That's one of the games I had been planning on returning to over the next few months. Currently finishing FFIX. I will not however play the Xenosaga games. Fuck that shit. I saw a friend of mine "playing" it once, and it was literally hours of cutscenes.

Why all the outrage over Cindy anyway? She's obvuiously a harmless homage!

Spoiler

Before someone MUST be outraged, I'm kidding.

 

[RedZaraki]

Cindy was apparently designed with heart and soul and no sex appeal according to SE in one ATR. You know that's a lie and she's a pointless character in the game. Her voice makes me cringe so hard and the camera movement.... don't even get me started.

If her sex appeal is literally a non-factor for the character designers, then why not cover her up a bit? Or not have the camera highlight her sexually all the time?

Don't give me that "cultural differences" crap either. Everything about this is intentional.

 

[Koozek]

You literally check all the boxes for excuses with your explanation of why Cindy is 'okay'.

1. "She chose to dress sexy": The fundamental problem with this statement is that it becomes the clutch excuse for every 'sexy' female design. Moreover, it's forgetting the important detail that the character herself is not given agency in how she's dressed—the character designers designed her and dressed her. In here, there is no "a woman expressing her sexuality". Instead it is the interest of male developers designing a female character that serves as good eyecandy and promotional material, including the equivalent of a 'pinup skin' for the car. In every frame Cindy is in, you see her tits or her ass in some way, because god forbid the camera not show some sexual part of her body.

2. "It's not like she shows interest in the guys anyway": This is the excuse for Cindy "having control"? When a female character design is made visually a fanservice feast, she's not a sexual object because she doesn't reciprocate the attention? When a bunch of guys are leering at her, she's not being a sexual object as long as she's not returning the interest? So guys catcalling or harassing a female would be okay because she's "in control"?

3. "The guys are sexualized too!": Gladio shows his chest and abs, so he must be sexualized, right? Is Noctis and co. bending over with the camera panning on their tight pants to show their butts to me? Do they have animations that cater to a particular fetish, like Gladio's sister has with her cutesy animations slotting into the 'cheerful bubby girl' stereotype that feeds otaku interest? Or how Cindy is bending over all over the place to show you her buttcheeks? Does the camera do slow pans up Gladio's body like it does Cindy's?

4. "She's wearing what she should in the climate!": When you fix cars, there's sharp edges, hot oil, and lots of grime. You wear body-covering clothing to reduce injury and keep cleaner. This excuse also does not work. It's quite telling that Cid is fully dressed, while Cindy is hanging out everywhere—but both are mechanics in the same situation and climate, yet only one is a sexual object. If I remember correctly, Cindy is the one who stands outside waiting for player interaction while her grandfather is inside fixing the car.

Cindy is a pointless addition to the game, because Cid already fills the mechanic role. So why does Cindy exist? You and I both know the answer.

Yeah. You're right. I take my post back where I said those might be good points Haven't thought it through. It's probably just the hot garbage I've always thought it was, no need to find any deeper meaning behind it. Who knows, though, maybe there's a reason for the way she looks and we will feel ashamed of our words & deeds. That fan-made redesign would've been perfect, man

But I agree with this and don't think the character itself is unnecessary, as her dad is old already and probably not fit for doing the hard daily work - the problem is her portrayal:

Cindy's outfit is absurd. But I don't think she's a pointless character. Her dad is old, sits around fiddling with engine swords and reminiscing about the old days. Cindy is the face of the business and does roadside assistance. There's nothing wrong with this type of father/daughter mechanic team, and it actually sits nicely with the generational divide theme the game has going.

How they treat the character is a separate matter.

 

[Fahzgoolin]

great write up. More reasons to ignore this at launch.

 

[AwakenedCloud]

It's a bad day when it looks like your game got Photoshopped together.

 

[Lunafreya Nox Fleuret]

I only ever made it to the second disc when I first played it. That's one of the games I had been planning on returning to over the next few months. Currently finishing FFIX. I will not however play the Xenosaga games. Fuck that shit. I saw a friend of mine "playing" it once, and it was literally hours of cutscenes.

While that's true about Saga.... the cutscenes are so epic, imo and the story is really good also but there are too many things to understand. But yeah, I agree about that with you even though Xeno is my favourite series of all time.

 

[Tyaren]

Lol, good retort...but it also validates one of his points. The male characters are also sexualized, especially Gladio. Just look at him:
Tall, gruff and deep voice, dark haired, stubble, tatoos, scars, muscular with his abs out in the open and clad in black leather. He's basically not very different from these guys...

And regarding one of his points:

4. She's in the burning desert, in hot garages, fixing cars and greeting customers for a living. Her outfit isn't exactly at odds with the situation and climate.

You usually cover up in a desert when the sun is burning down on you. You don't get out the bikini and hotpants, lol.

 

[Nauren]

Thanks for the write up. Looking forward to the game.

 

[Psychological Intellect]

the fuck

did they really give the mechanic girl ass cheek tan lines? really?

 

[Koozek]

the fuck

did they really give the mechanic girl ass cheek tan lines? really?

Fantasy Based on Reality.

 

[Sanctuary]

the fuck

did they really give the mechanic girl ass cheek tan lines? really?

They went all out on the blemish details too.

 

[Korigama]

I do hope people aren't expecting the story to be 100% better than Xenogears or something with 100 locations.

Pretty sure no one's asking for that. Simple competency (decent dialogue, interesting characters, things that happen make sense) would be the bare minimum. Given how things have gone with FF as of late, however, lowered expectations are perfectly understandable.

I would also consider each Xeno IP being its own, distinctive thing to be a blessing, particularly given how much I hate Xenosaga (which I'm only addressing because it was brought up).

 

[cackhyena]

the fuck

did they really give the mechanic girl ass cheek tan lines? really?

I'm sure some fan somewhere is rationalizing it.

 

[johnnydrama]

Early console impressions of W3 on GAF agrees with me.

I mean, if we're gonna compare other console games to FFXV, I'm gonna use release screenshots. I also know the game ran at 20 FPS in certain areas.

Here's another one.

Highly compressed, extremely poorly captured screenshots from the tutorial area, which is the ugliest place in the game. You have proved the point, man.

 

[RedZaraki]

You know what I'd really like?

I'd like a new sprite-based Final Fantasy. Nothing complicated, no huge budget needed. Take a team of 10 people, give them a year and a half, and see what they can do.

Ala Mega Man 9 or that Sonic Mania.

Doesn't need to be much more than a Final Fantasy V type of experience. Straightforward, 4 crystals, chocobos, moogles, ATB, World Map, etc. Sell it on PC, 3DS, and Vita.

I would absolutely love that.

 

[Voror]

That translation stuff is also a real bummer to here. I understand that in translating it's not going to be one to one the same, but outright changing the meaning is irritating. It's like how FFVIII with "Whatever" and other things in that game which give off completely impressions of the characters.

I do wish we had Smith on this.

 

[Z3M0G]

Graphics and Performance

• Loading times varied from standard fare for an open world game on PS4, to between 1-2 minutes. These longer ones seemed to only happen between chapters, and when loading the game up from scratch.
• After around 2 hours and 40 minutes the game crashed. Just the one and only back to the dashboard.
• The game does not look good. I was sitting fairly close to a pretty big TV, but even forgetting that there's intense shadow dithering, aliasing to the high heavens (you've all seen the hair), texture and vegetation pop-in and on top of that the frame rate was incredibly inconsistent. I kinda just got used to the combat being a bit of a mess visually. It was often hard to tell what in the hell was happening.
• Moving the camera around somehow makes things worse.
• It's perhaps not the best way to explain this due to the size of this shot but I'd like to draw your attention to the shrubs in the upper left corner of this screen. When blown up to a decently sized TV, even at this close distance, those shrubs looked like sprites from Minecraft/Stardew Valley, and I swear I'm not being hyperbolic.
• Also I tried driving in 1st person and there was some bug (I can only assume) where everything looked pixellated and low-res when looking through the windscreen. Needless to say I refrained from using 1st person after that.

The game content should be complete so the delay is hopefully to focus on cleaning this stuff up right here as much as possible...

 

[Lunafreya Nox Fleuret]

the fuck

did they really give the mechanic girl ass cheek tan lines? really?

That's the joke about her design being heart and soul

 

[TheTux]

About the car not going fast that could have to do with future upgrades available later in the game making it faster.

Increase speed limit DLC/microtransaction ingame lol.

 

[Mifec]

Increase speed limit DLC/microtransaction ingame lol.

S-E would do it.

 

[Black Mantis]

I can deal with the graphics not being great (personally looks fine to me), but I hope they can sort out the performance issues. Definitely waiting for the reviews to come out first.

 

[NoctisVsStar]

Thanks for the impressions OP.


Day-0

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

Gladio isn't being sexualized until there's close ups of his abs, glistening in the sun, then there might be a point there. Cindy is just kind of embarrassing titillation for 12 year olds.

No comments on the gameplay impressions (nice write-up either way!), but my God this game looks dreadful. Most Japanese developers really haven't transitioned well to the current generation... Just never expected Square-Enix to be one of the worst ones in that regard.

It's not just the current gen, we're ten years in with Japanese developers struggling.

 

[hemo memo]

oh my god

Lmao

 

[Itchy//Tasty]

Ok, I'm straight up convinced that male gamers that defend this shit don't know what "owning sexuality" actually means. Or what sexuality means. News flash, literally nothin about her character has to do with sexuality. She's not owning it in anyway, she's a character specifically designed to appeal to a male demographic. It's very clear objectification in every aspect of the character. Gamers CONSTANTLY confuse sexualization with sexuality and it naseating. She's a character, she doesn't dress that way because she chooses to, but because she was designed that way.


This was in the demo, and it was only Prompto and Gladio. It was portrayed in a way that made it seem like she didn't know what they were implying.

Unless I'm missing something there are no zoom in shots on the abs of the dudes. Literally the first shot of Cindy in the game is a zoom in shot of her butt. Just being attractive doesn't=sexualization. Nathan Drake is a lot more attractive than the dudes in this game, he'll even Nyx is more sexualized than the main casts in this game.


What I'm about to tell you may come off as a shocker, it may literally blow your mind. And But mechanics don't dress in short shorts, a thong, and a bra couple with a top made specifically for exposing their midriff during the summer. We're in the hottest fucking summer of all time, do you sincerely have that little self awareness that you're making the argument that "it's hot" is a reason to dress like this at work? Wtf �� No mechanic you've seen or will ever see in person or on the internet dresses like Cindy when it a hot out. Aside from porn stars playing as mechanics.


Nothing generic about getting appalled by a horrid and transparent character design. Your justifications are incredibly generic tho.

It's fine to disagree, but your incredibly condescending attitude is not. Don't talk to me like I'm fucking stupid, know nothing about women and am 'making excuses' because I simply have a different opinion.

Yes, I think her design could've been better, some of you make good points and I completely see where you're coming from, but I don't think it's quite worth all the outrage and hate either. But to each their own.

So, anyone else want to take a shot at me personally? Horrendous human being here, sitting waiting for his comeuppance.

 

[nOoblet16]

It was scaled down when it was Versus, and the engine was significantly different, so were the assets.

It was probably not open world either, but rather chunks of big areas.

 

[Tyaren]

Gladio isn't being sexualized until there's close ups of his abs, glistening in the sun, then there might be a point there. Cindy is just kind of embarrassing titillation for 12 year olds.

Gladio is very much sexualized in his design even without the camera focusing on his abs...which it did by the way in the first scene you saw him in Duscae...

And it obviously caught the attention of his (Tumblr) fans. XD

Regarding Cindy, yes, it's pretty juvenile titillation...

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Save us PS Neo.

My wallet is ready for you. But is this game ready?

 

[Bluenoser]

Is it a fluke that both you and Lucy O'Brien used the term 'millennial' chutzpah? It can't be.

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2016/08/23/final-fantasy-15-might-make-me-love-final-fantasy-again

 

[cackhyena]

Neo won't save what's seemingly wrong with this game. Time travel would.

 

[Lunafreya Nox Fleuret]

Save us PS Neo.

My wallet is ready for you. But is this game ready?

Waiting for NEO would take too much time and kill my hype.

 

[Mediking]

Thanks for the impressions OP.


Day-0

Agreed but you already knew it was Day 0 for me as well. Yo, has Kagari-senpai posted an impressions article or something? Maybe talked about her thoughts in a stream?