Final Fantasy XV SPOILER THREAD

A wealth of experience developing handheld and mobile projects, sure. Yoshida was a chief planner on a modern MMO. Yoshida's experience seems more directly relevant to me to what he went on to do than Tabata's experience.

Tabata directed three portable action RPGs before he directed a console action RPG. Meanwhile, Yoshida oversaw the development of a collectable card arcade game series and was involved with the early planning stages of Dragon Quest X before taking over the direction of Final Fantasy XIV. Obviously people must have seen talent in Yoshida, and obviously his work on XIV has been largely admirable, but just looking at their pre-mainline FF resumes Tabata seems the more qualified person.
 
Man, can we get to other points? I want more spoilers and not more development hell comments in here. I am interested in the super side quests etc. or other super enemies.
 
No, FFXV wasn't rushed. It was given an over generous development period with an overenthusiastic team who were too willing to listen to feedback and try to appease as many people as possible, both within the development team and within the fanbase.
If there's one thing I want out of FFXVI, it's a talented development team that has a clearly defined vision it intends to realize that shuts itself off from fan feedback completely until the game is done (or at least in the final stages of refinement to patch out game-breaking bugs and the like) and is not focus-tested around appeasing Western fans of open-world games.

The absolute LAST thing I want to see is a new interview every week from the game's director espousing all of the shit he's doing. I appreciate how accessible Tabata made himself but I can't recall any time where a game creator felt the need to talk about his game so much prior to its release where it turned out good. Sean Murray, I'm looking at you.
 
Hoping someone can answer this very simple question.

I just finished chapter 4. The Boss I just beat was
Titan
.

My question is...afterwards,
Ardyn comes in a imperial ship and saves us while introducing himself as chancellor. Then the chapter ends and it says "several days later"...then I end up in Wiz Chocobo Farm. That's it? Did I miss a cutscene or something? What happened during all that?

If this is something that'll be explained later, please just tell me I'll find out later.
 
Tabata directed three portable action RPGs before he directed a console action RPG. Meanwhile, Yoshida oversaw the development of a collectable card arcade game series and was involved with the early planning stages of Dragon Quest X before taking over the direction of Final Fantasy XIV. Obviously people must have seen talent in Yoshida, and obviously his work on XIV has been largely admirable, but just looking at their pre-mainline FF resumes Tabata seems the more qualified person.
I don't see this being the case. Yoshida worked directly on the type of game he went on to oversee.

Tabata worked on handheld games which have a completely different set of expectations, approaches and scope than what a modern console RPG has.
 
Could someone summarize briefly what each chapters are? Especially after 9. I know there's the train sequence, the stealth sequence, the Ardyn battle... but what's the order exactly?
 
So from reading this thread, it seems that FFXV's reaction will be a mix of Bioshock infinite's reaction with a touch of angst over the ending, a la ME3.

However, I am still very excited to play it! You guys made very good points on how the shift from Versus XIII to FFXV and the trimming of the script to meet deadlines have negatively impacted the game, and that it could have been much better in comparison!

I totally got into FF games for the story back in the day (Got FF 1-6, 10 and the tactics offshoots under my belt) and FFT is one of my all times favorites, followed by 6 and 4. But after the FFXIII trilogy (which I liked because I enjoyed the setting and the combat, even if I did find the story to be lackluster) I totally get how SE lost their rep as being able to tell a good story. Glad to hear that XIV was much more successful in that regards tho!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'll be giving this game a shot,even if it could have been much more, but I get how long time fans or people who have followed the game closely could be disappointed.
 
So are the 'side quests' essentially mob hunts like in FFXII? Good variety?

The hunts are the mob hunts from XII. Side quests are sidequests, you help someone out because their car broke down, they want you to find an item for them, etc. Its quest busywork but doing them can lead you to parts of the map you otherwise would have missed, find dungeons and such, the dungeon might lead to a weapon. Things like that.
 
So from reading this thread, it seems that FFXV's reaction will be a mix of Bioshock infinite's reaction with a touch of angst over the ending, a la ME3.

However, I am still very excited to play it! You guys made very good points on how the shift from Versus XIII to FFXV and the trimming of the script to meet deadlines have negatively impacted the game, and that it could have been much better in comparison!

I totally got into FF games for the story back in the day (Got FF 1-6, 10 and the tactics offshoots under my belt) and FFT is one of my all times favorites, followed by 6 and 4. But after the FFXIII trilogy (which I liked because I enjoyed the setting and the combat, even if I did find the story to be lackluster) I totally get how SE lost their rep as being able to tell a good story. Glad to hear that XIV was much more successful in that regards tho!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'll be giving this game a shot,even if it could have been much more, but I get how long time fans or people who have followed the game closely could be disappointed.

Very good post 1+
 
I just want to say something regarding the story since I have finished the game.

I completely agree that it looks like a lot of stuff was cut from the script in order to fit it within the game. This might not sit well with others obviously, and it really has a great effect on the narrative which ends up being confusing and messy during the majority of the game. But again, if the story content was all there, and provided that we have an idea of what the end was going to be, I highly doubt if the extra content could have made the story better, if at all.

I feel like Nomura had this whole story and trilogy in mind and as awesome it can sound in theory, the resources and time it would require would have been too much. So by the end of the game, the task was to take what Nomura had envisioned and make a game out of it that was fun to play. I feel like they achieved exactly that because the game is fun to play, but this comes at the cost of the narrative. Now the writing obviously couldn't be better but the narrative is also important here. Thankfully the character interaction is something that isn't effected by the cutting of the script but it is pretty obvious for the characters that are not the main party members.

For example, while Ardyn is a pretty good villain by the end of the game, IMO, the other side characters all have stories that feel unfinished. Aranea gets a complete personality change without much explanation and the same can be said for pretty much every character.

I will say this though, I don't mind Luna's death. If the ending was anything to go by, I feel like she served her purpose. Not to say it was a good thing but atleast I was satisfied with her arc in the end as both her and Noctis were together one last time. It was an emotional scene for me even though Luna was never really developed or given chance as a character. I do implore others to explore more of the world as there was such a good scene showing Luna as the oracle. I hope there are more hidden scenes that detail her character since she was interesting to say the least. Still, the ending was good to me no matter what others will say.

There were some clear leap of logic during the story but these are to be expected from a FF game. There were plenty such moments in the past games as well. We literally go inside Sin to fight the final boss in Final Fantasy X, for example. A lot of the stuff in that game never made sense to me either :P
 
I just want to say something regarding the story since I have finished the game.

I completely agree that it looks like a lot of stuff was cut from the script in order to fit it within the game. This might not sit well with others obviously, and it really has a great effect on the narrative which ends up being confusing and messy during the majority of the game. But again, if the story content was all there, and provided that we have an idea of what the end was going to be, I highly doubt if the extra content could have made the story better, if at all.

I feel like Nomura had this whole story and trilogy in mind and as awesome it can sound in theory, the resources and time it would require would have been too much. So by the end of the game, the task was to take what Nomura had envisioned and make a game out of it that was fun to play. I feel like they achieved exactly that because the game is fun to play, but this comes at the cost of the narrative. Now the writing obviously couldn't be better but the narrative is also important here. Thankfully the character interaction is something that isn't effected by the cutting of the script but it is pretty obvious for the characters that are not the main party members.

For example, while Ardyn is a pretty good villain by the end of the game, IMO, the other side characters all have stories that feel unfinished. Aranea gets a complete personality change without much explanation and the same can be said for pretty much every character.

I will say this though, I don't mind Luna's death. If the ending was anything to go by, I feel like she served her purpose. Not to say it was a good thing but atleast I was satisfied with her arc in the end as both her and Noctis were together one last time. It was an emotional scene for me even though Luna was never really developed or given chance as a character. I do implore others to explore more of the world as there was such a good scene showing Luna as the oracle. I hope there are more hidden scenes that detail her character since she was interesting to say the least. Still, the ending was good to me no matter what others will say.

There were some clear leap of logic during the story but these are to be expected from a FF game. There were plenty such moments in the past games as well. We literally go inside Sin to fight the final boss in Final Fantasy X, for example. A lot of the stuff in that game never made sense to me either :P

im sure nomura would made xv into one game instead but square said no put tabi in to make deadlines in the end cost the game some story content my promlem is luna just the word of month from tabi saying she a strong female chracther when she not at all i know that aqua a strong female characther just ecasuse she showed me in bbs
 
The hunts are the mob hunts from XII. Side quests are sidequests, you help someone out because their car broke down, they want you to find an item for them, etc. Its quest busywork but doing them can lead you to parts of the map you otherwise would have missed, find dungeons and such, the dungeon might lead to a weapon. Things like that.

So side quests are really just boring fetch quests... great, just great. :/
 
FFXV only started in late 2012 and that also includes working with a work-in-progress engine. It's best to assume that most of Versus XIII didn't make it into this game or has been heavily repurposed. I don't think you can say that development really took 10 years.

It's really just about 4 years.

Whatever the case maybe, the Final Fantasy franchise is now free of its formal shackles and I hope to see something fresh again.

Like putting some more budget into their other Ip's?
 
im sure nomura just made xv into game instead of a triloghy he wanted but square said no put tabi in to make deadlines in the end cost the game some story content

A-World-of-the-Versus-Epic.jpg


Let's make no bones about it. Nomura wanted an entire franchise of games that would really go for a grand scale.

I can understand why SE executives would feel skittish on that after what the lighting trilogy did to their sales margins and how much investment it would actually take to make something so grandiose.

On the other hand, putting Tabata in charge of warping the project until it was unrecognizable just to ship it out as fast as possible was not a very smart plan either. And even after Tabata was on the project, unfortunately seeing all the trailer footage and assets from his version cut, it seems to me that they didn't bother to try and give him time to implement what he wanted to implement either.

So either way, we end up with unfinished goods.

I just want to say something regarding the story since I have finished the game.

Decently good post Malik. 1+
 
im sure nomura would made xv into one game instead but square said no put tabi in to make deadlines in the end cost the game some story content my promlem is luna just the word of month from tabi saying she a strong female chracther when she not at all i know that aqua a strong female characther just ecasuse she showed me in bbs

your posts are great
 
So side quests are really just boring fetch quests... great, just great. :/

No, and people have said that a lot aren't. You are going to get those sure, but you are also going to get some that aren't. How the ratio is, I have no idea other than there are about 80 side quests. You get to quests with a few of the guests as well as your party members that are more involved.
 
I wonder what it would have taken to condense whatever narrative Nomura and Nojima had developed for the entire Versus story into a single game while keeping it as a good one. Why did they feel it had to be several games at all? Did the story perhaps get away from them to the point they didn't feel it could realistically done in one game?
 
I wonder what it would have taken to condense whatever narrative Nomura and Nojima had developed for the entire Versus story into a single game while keeping it as a good one. Why did they feel it had to be several games at all? Did the story perhaps get away from them to the point they didn't feel it could realistically done in one game?
Nomura
Kingdom hearts

Theres your answer
 
I wonder what it would have taken to condense whatever narrative Nomura and Nojima had developed for the entire Versus story into a single game while keeping it as a good one. Why did they feel it had to be several games at all? Did the story perhaps get away from them to the point they didn't feel it could realistically done in one game?
i think it maybe they though they needed to devolp the chrachters in more then one game
 
I wonder what it would have taken to condense whatever narrative Nomura and Nojima had developed for the entire Versus story into a single game while keeping it as a good one. Why did they feel it had to be several games at all? Did the story perhaps get away from them to the point they didn't feel it could realistically done in one game?
To expand the scope and to offer much more gameplay variety. Do you want to see the story unfold in QTE sequences? Game writing is completely different. Writing a story is one thing, tailoring it to gameplay is completely another thing altogether.
 
I'm trying to stear clear from here but I need to ask about the fishing in this game. For any of those who have played it how is the variety of the fishes?
 
I wonder what it would have taken to condense whatever narrative Nomura and Nojima had developed for the entire Versus story into a single game while keeping it as a good one. Why did they feel it had to be several games at all? Did the story perhaps get away from them to the point they didn't feel it could realistically done in one game?

Maybe they wanted multiple titles to tell a saga of stories of the characters and not just one?

I can understand wanting to space things out myself if they have a lot of ideas and can't actually cram them all into one game.

Even with the changes, i think Tabata could have made a good narrative even being charged with all the cutting necessary. But the way many characters are supposedly just underutilized or barely there in the story for a scene or two makes me think the editing process nowhere near as clean as it should have been.

Tabata should have really cut out quite a few of the characters that weren't going anywhere, and made something that was more in line with the ending he wrote
 
can people talk more about the characters? I want as many impression as possible on how strong the core cast characterwise is.

I've heard that the core bros are not interesting by themselves but are good as a group.

I'm not sure who else really matters. Ardyn is the main bad guy, he does bad guy things. Luna is the Aerith of the game without being anywhere near as interesting as Aerith. Cindy is a nobody, Iris is a nobody, Areana is a nobody(none of them even show up post timeskip) Ravus only shows up in two scenes, Gentiana is Shiva and generally is in the backround.
 
I've heard that the core bros are not interesting by themselves but are good as a group.

I'm not sure who else really matters. Ardyn is the main bad guy, he does bad guy things. Luna is the Aerith of the game without being anywhere near as interesting as Aerith. Cindy is a nobody, Iris is a nobody, Areana is a nobody(none of them even show up post timeskip) Ravus only shows up in two scenes, Gentiana is Shiva and generally is in the backround.
wow i would to hear more about the bros as single person but i understand this game about the group
 
I just want to say something regarding the story since I have finished the game.

---

Thanks for the impressions, Malik, it was a really great read! I feel like when they cut down Versus' story for XV, they should have probably been a hell of a lot more conservative again with what they left in. I think they would have been better off with a small cast of supporting characters that had solid screen time, were relevant to the overall narrative, and had stories that were resolved by the end. I'm still really surprised about the Aranea/Iris/Cor situations. Ravus/Iedolas/etc seem to have gone the way of Jihl/Cid/Yaag in terms of being underutilized, bizarrely even more so. At least with FFXIII, we see what happens to Jihl and Cid, and we are there the moment before Yaag dies. (I'm complimenting XIII's use of its supporting cast, and it pains me.)

At the very least, I think XV has done three solid steps for me with its lead/party/villain in areas that both XII and XIII had issues with. Noctis seems to be one of the most genuinely well-written FF leads, that also has good character development. I really like the poor kid! I also think Ardyn (like Sephiroth, for example) is at least a constant presence throughout the story. Noctis has interactions with Ardyn from very early on in the game, so by the final boss, there is a lot of history and interactions there. I think another positive is that Noctis/Gladio/Ignis/Prompto have good chemistry with each other and spend a lot of time together. Unfortunately, like with Luna, I was hoping they might be more realised characters outside of moving Noctis' own story forward. I guess we get DLC for that, which is a bit of a shame in itself. I was musing the other day that the bros -> Noctis' story are like what Vaan -> Ashe's story. Like we saw with the Omen trailer, if the bros weren't there, we would have had a very different ending to XV. A positive for XII is that Vaan very much has his own subplot, and has more of a direct influence on Ashe's story and the overall narrative. A positive for XV is that the bros weren't advertised as the leads of the game!

im sure nomura would made xv into one game instead but square said no put tabi in to make deadlines in the end cost the game some story content my promlem is luna just the word of month from tabi saying she a strong female chracther when she not at all i know that aqua a strong female characther just ecasuse she showed me in bbs

I completely mind-blanked that BBS was the name of a game, and read it as 'because she showed me in boobs'. Superior version? I think so.
 
I feel like I have a dreadful misunderstanding of how summons work in the lore if Areana becomes Bahamut. :| Also it's pretty funny how much Ifrit gets wrecked, dude got wrecked by a half naked ice harem, parkoured his way to freedom past a ton of swords but can't deal with ice:
wU5efdM.gif


There are gonna be so many articles about the treatment of women in this game, starting with the way a lot of them are dressed..
 
I've heard that the core bros are not interesting by themselves but are good as a group.

I'm not sure who else really matters. Ardyn is the main bad guy, he does bad guy things. Luna is the Aerith of the game without being anywhere near as interesting as Aerith. Cindy is a nobody, Iris is a nobody, Areana is a nobody(none of them even show up post timeskip) Ravus only shows up in two scenes, Gentiana is Shiva and generally is in the backround.

Were the conversations cut out between Luna & Ravus and Luna and Gentiana from the Judgement trailer?
 
I feel like I have a dreadful misunderstanding of how summons work in the lore if Areana becomes Bahamut. :| Also it's pretty funny how much Ifrit gets wrecked, dude got wrecked by a half naked ice harem, parkoured his way to freedom past a ton of swords but can't deal with ice:

There are gonna be so many articles about the treatment of women in this game, starting with the way a lot of them are dressed..

There are two characters in the game that are dressed a bit more skimpy and Shiva isn't even supposed to be a real person. Luna is better than other characters in the past and Gentiana and Aranea are fucking awesome. Let there be some eye candy for men too. Cindy even has some good background story.
 
There are two characters in the game that are dressed a bit more skimpy and Shiva isn't even supposed to be a real person. Luna is better than other characters in the past and Gentiana and Aranea are fucking awesome. Let there be some eye candy for men too. Cindy even has some good background story.
There are characters in the game that are dressed worse than Shiva??
 
Speaking of Gentiana...what does she contribute to the story?

She is Shiva..and apparently oversees the Lucius and Oracle lines. Since summons are basically the Gods of this world and Shiva is supposedly the most domesticated, it makes sense for her to watch over the cursed blood in a human like form.
 
She is Shiva..and apparently oversees the Lucius and Oracle lines. Since summons are basically the Gods of this world and Shiva is supposedly the most domesticated, it makes sense for her to watch over the cursed blood in a human like form.
Oh wow I was hoping she'd end up being a summon thanks.
 
There are two characters in the game that are dressed a bit more skimpy and Shiva isn't even supposed to be a real person. Luna is better than other characters in the past and Gentiana and Aranea are fucking awesome. Let there be some eye candy for men too. Cindy even has some good background story.

Is it even possible to dress more skimpy than this?
http://imgur.com/a/0hDoW (NSFW)
 
I love how one of the ways they tried to make the characters interesting is, "Hey remember this classic FF summon? This character is secretly him/her in disguise!!"
 
She is Shiva..and apparently oversees the Lucius and Oracle lines. Since summons are basically the Gods of this world and Shiva is supposedly the most domesticated, it makes sense for her to watch over the cursed blood in a human like form.

Gentiana, you are so very fired due to your subpar work in overseeing the Oracle line in particular. Poor Luna.

In regards to Shiva's XV design, don't think she has any issues that her other incarnations haven't had, too. She's wearing about the same amount of covering as VIII's, etc. It doesn't really annoy me as much, as Ifrit's XV design balances her out a little.

FFX's Shiva is the GOAT, though.

Is it even possible to dress more skimpy than this?
http://imgur.com/a/0hDoW (NSFW)

...whilst I'm not as bothered by Shiva's XV design, the hilarious camera angles and poses are another matter entirely, though. I think we're a step away from giving her a gynaecological examination in a few shots.

The sexiest Shiva of all:

20141003174631


Dat fuselage.
 
But good lord, it's Shiva. It's not like Shiva was ever pure dressed. She is a goddess. Ifrit also doesn't wear much.
While true the games camera and his animations don't go out of their way to flaunt his body. Same can't be said for Shiva.
 
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