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The Official Final Fantasy XIII TRIAL VERSION Thread
- Thread starter Kagari
- Start date
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
It's all too childish. Funny how pre-FFVII games had more "mature" stories to some extent.
I wish there was still some sort of Matsuno at Square. The best stories have been in his games:|
I wish there was still some sort of Matsuno at Square. The best stories have been in his games:|
flabberghastly
Member
Yeah, Matsuno was a severe loss to SE. Takahashi was also an unfortunate one (though that was further in the past).Ether_Snake said:
Right now, I don't see anyone at SE filling in the gaps. FFvXIII looks promising, but I'm uncertain what the potential really is for a decent story. I know Nomura is directing, but do we have any idea who the writer is? I'd also like to see FFXIII succeed, but I'm expecting nothing greater than the usual Final Fantasy fare at this point. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than needlessly disappointed.
DarknessTear
Banned
DarknessTear said:
Question still hasn't been answered yet. I must know!
flabberghastly
Member
Good question. But, admittedly, it's not outside the realm of possibility to compare completely different characters. I mean, I'm sure practically everyone would agree Balthier was a much better character than Zell.HK-47 said:
For the record, Terra and Ashe are both great characters.
TheJollyCorner
Member
BocoDragon said:
I would give up drinking for two weeks to punch you in the dick right now.
edit: and I'd give up blowing loads for two months to punch HK-47 in the dick.
flabberghastly
Member
Shit...Rpgmonkey said:
TheChillyAcademic
Member
HK-47 said:
Different doesnt mean better I suppose, its personal opinion. I felt Terra was a stronger character overall. Thats not to say that Ashe wasn't a capable character, rather my point is that her personality was dictated by the events around her. She didn't, imo, have much of a personality that I found engrossing.
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
lupinko said:
He should be working on RPGs or an MMO with a Western company or something:|
EDIT: See the FFIV pre-rendered sequences of FFIV remake to get an idea of how "more mature" it is. Sure, it was made way back then so it's not mature in the way a movie could be, but it would translate really well today if it was done in HD without being awkward, contrarily to a game like FFVII and its fireworks/goldsaucer/cloud in wheelchair/honey bee INN/etc. and FFVIII's highschool drama.
flabberghastly
Member
No, he should collaborate with Japan's other MIA game-genius, Itagaki.Ether_Snake said:
NG Combat + Matsuno Story = The Game of My Dreams
TheChillyAcademic
Member
flabberghastly said:
If, for any reason, this should ever happen, please be assured I will come find you and end you.
flabberghastly said:
Meh, Matsuno already did just fine with KING ARTHUR himself, aka PROFESSOR F, aka the man who had a camp that goes Whoopee in Deep Space! And so forth, Tokuro Fujiwara.
I'd rather just have more Madworld games.
Anyway back to FFXIII demo discussion, I get my copy on Monday because Play-Asia didn't ship it until the 17th.
Regulus Tera
Romanes Eunt Domus
Rpgmonkey said:
Shitting dicknipples!
TheChillyAcademic
Member
Ouch.
TheChillyAcademic
Member
HK-47 said:
How specifically were the Fabula Nova Crystallis games set chronologically speaking in context to the overall plot and narrative?
Agito - Past
Versus - Present
XIII - Future
?
Hmmm.
TheChillyAcademic
Member
HK-47 said:
Well I suppose past is used a tad liberally. Comparing what we've seen of Agito's time period vs (har) what we see in XIII, one can easily assume that the "past" in Agito is still relatively technologically advanced.
â Narayan
Member
Is Nojima's involvement a good thing or a bad thing?
â Narayan
Member
No.Rpgmonkey said:
No.Himuro said:
Fuck. 
Or even more specifically, do you hate crappy stories with underdeveloped character archetypes that spiral out into WTF land?
I'm kidding. I dont hate Nojima that much.
Also I guess the interview confirms that XIII isnt going the BKO/DQVIII method of a small, static party. Wouldnt be much point in three max active party members with four to choose from, even with temp members.
I'm kidding. I dont hate Nojima that much.
Also I guess the interview confirms that XIII isnt going the BKO/DQVIII method of a small, static party. Wouldnt be much point in three max active party members with four to choose from, even with temp members.
â Narayan
Member
Yes.HK-47 said:
Damn it.
Himuro said:
I thought Nomura didn't have much involvement in their plots though, or did he?
I figured comparing it to something where Nomura has a lot more input would make more sense.
Edit: Well, the outcome doesn't seem too good for him regardless, so I guess it doesn't matter either way. :lol
Regulus Tera
Romanes Eunt Domus
U K Narayan said:No.
No.
Fuck.
Don't worry, he also wrote The Subspace Emissary's plot in Super Smash Bros. Brawl!
Himuro said:
Who wrote Dissidia? I need to know who to blame for that.
HK-47 said:
No, I mean games like FFVIII and stuff were directed by other people.
Versus is pretty similar to Kingdom Hearts in terms of who's directing and writing the project, so I figured it'd be a slightly better comparison than say FFVII or something (if I had to compare) when it comes to how the game would turn out with characters or something.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
TheJollyCorner said:
:lol :lol :lol
lol
So I just got back from checking out both the demo and FF7ACC at Auron_Kale's place, and I'd like to drop my two cents for both:
To start, ACC has had tons of changes that I believe will help ease comprehension of the story to both newcomers and fans of the game (and original release) alike, though they should have been there since the original release. Not only does it briefly explains who Denzel actually is, as well as his significance to not only to Cloud, but his role as a quasi-central character, but it gives at least some empathy for the audience to latch on to. Not to mention, now we actually fucking know how bad geostigma actually is, as opposed to suddenly seeing Cloud's arm go all crazy, and only seeing dark marks on people's skin :/
In terms of quality, I am absolutely baffled by the fact that some scenes do indeed look like they're upscaled DVD. I don't understand this. The amount of dithering is a notable issue as well. I am disappointed that the final BD ended up looking like this, when I was honestly expecting some Pixar shit. The film could have really used a final pass.
Something to note that Kale thought of is that perhaps the entire purpose of the phone falling into the water was for what happens later when
, which I hope to null some of the backlash that that particular scene got when the movie first came out.
I also really appreciated the changes they made to the music, notably when Cloud's geostigma acts up in the church. The original piece that played there was absolutely jarring, and to hear a rather nostalgic piece play in its place was a nice touch.
I really wish that this was the movie that I showed to all of my friends and family, instead of the broken and poorly presented original. Sure, the pacing was nice and quicker, but the story was terrible, and the rework they did on the expositional aspects of the script helped a lot, though the scene with Rufus giving his long speech to Cloud at the beginning was amazingly poorly localized/translated. I don't know or care how close it is to what he says in the Japanese version: the English dub for that scene is fucking horrendous. The entire movie could have used one more pass, notably the scenes where they clearly didn't rerender, and to fix all of the fucking dithering and hair issues. I also noticed some framerate problems in a panning scene sometime immediately before or after Cloud puts on his goggles in the title sequence, which I can only imagine to have been part of the collection of upscaled DVD footage they have sprinkled throughout the feature.
But despite all of that, I greatly enjoyed the additional footage, definitely making a future purchase of the movie well worth having. While the quality isn't consistent, the additional footage is really something else, especially with how they retooled the introductory sequence of the old characters, the bike chase, and then finally the second half of the Sephiroth fight. Definitely worth picking up just to gush as a fan.
I don't expect they'll fix the DVD upscaled scenes for the US release, but regardless, I'll be picking up, demo or not.
One last thing I'd like to note about the movie was that watching this "final version" made me think about the fact that FF7's story is really birthed a lot from Sakaguchi's whole thing with his mom, making me wonder about how different AC would have been if Gooch was still around. I mean, sure, technically The Spirits Within is spiritually related to FF7, but regarding the fact that the story's a continuation, it's very clear that the change of focus in terms of themes and characters in ACC in comparison to FF7's own themes is due to a different writing team and intentions of story telling. Gooch's influence more or less begins and ends with the life stream, and anything regarding life and death surrounding it, but ACC touches on themes that are a bit more subtle than that, or at least that was how I felt.
---
Regarding FFXIII, I really wish I didn't watch the live stream. While it says a lot that such a low quality stream w/ artifacts wowed me as much as it did (and trust me, I was wow'd a lot when I was watching that), I feel that having read a lot of impressions here in this thread, and notably reading what the translations were for the menu commands, really eased my entire experience of the demo. I went through it really quickly, spending only about a minute or two spinning the camera around at the beginning to enjoy the sheer beauty of the graphics and draw distance.
Graphically, as everyone else has said, it was intense. I loaded up Kale's copy of MGS4 and RE5 a bit later to check out his JVC headphone adapter, and while MGS4 is unsurprisingly astounding, and while RE5 has the whole quincunx issue of looking blurry, they're both graphically beautiful games. But when compared to this demo of FFXIII, there really are no words. It makes me wonder what kind of AA they're using for the game, because texture detail is definitely in full force here, yet I spot no aliasing issues.
In terms of combat, again, I think its because I read this thread, particularly the translations for the commands, and read Kobun's complaint about the 1-hit kill thing, and hearing from Kale about how the dude kept ramming him into a corner, I was expecting the worst.
But I breezed right through the demo :/
Kale said it was because I "kept him at a distance," but really, all I did was... well, I just kept comboing him. I didn't do anything special, outside of maybe not wasting ATB time. Something I noticed was that I was given 3 ATB bars right at the beginning, so I spent Blizzaga straight off the bat. I dunno. I'd really like to see a video of someone failing miserably against the boss, and having that compared to someone else who breezes right through it.
I really wonder how differently I might have played if I didn't read this thread or watched the live feed.
Even more, hearing Kale's complaints, and noticing in the live feed footage for myself of how if you still have a move and your target died, the remaining moves are wasted, I simply found myself paying attention to the life bars, and just initiating as much damage as I would need to deal out, rather than just spamming Attack for all 3 notches, or whatever. While its a shame that you don't automatically attack the next closest enemy, if this doesn't get fixed for the final release, I imagine there will be a strategical reason behind it, like perhaps to push the player to be more methodical.
I imagine that my complaints and impressions would have been vastly different if it wasn't for the fact that I followed this thread and saw the game in action through videos, but I hope I added a different aspect to the impressions that people are giving, one that's based on a reaction to the reactions of others.
---
I'd like to thank Auron for letting me come over and hanging out, and tolerating my constant pausing and rewinding during ACC, just to point something out or whatever :lol. You have some insane amounts of stuff I want, man. I just don't get why you have so many multiple copies of stuff too D: Jesus. You've gotta unbox that Raiden, too. That's some injustice right there. Raiden's too cool to be kept locked in a cage
So I just got back from checking out both the demo and FF7ACC at Auron_Kale's place, and I'd like to drop my two cents for both:
To start, ACC has had tons of changes that I believe will help ease comprehension of the story to both newcomers and fans of the game (and original release) alike, though they should have been there since the original release. Not only does it briefly explains who Denzel actually is, as well as his significance to not only to Cloud, but his role as a quasi-central character, but it gives at least some empathy for the audience to latch on to. Not to mention, now we actually fucking know how bad geostigma actually is, as opposed to suddenly seeing Cloud's arm go all crazy, and only seeing dark marks on people's skin :/
In terms of quality, I am absolutely baffled by the fact that some scenes do indeed look like they're upscaled DVD. I don't understand this. The amount of dithering is a notable issue as well. I am disappointed that the final BD ended up looking like this, when I was honestly expecting some Pixar shit. The film could have really used a final pass.
Something to note that Kale thought of is that perhaps the entire purpose of the phone falling into the water was for what happens later when
everyone gets phone calls from the spirit of Aeris
I also really appreciated the changes they made to the music, notably when Cloud's geostigma acts up in the church. The original piece that played there was absolutely jarring, and to hear a rather nostalgic piece play in its place was a nice touch.
I really wish that this was the movie that I showed to all of my friends and family, instead of the broken and poorly presented original. Sure, the pacing was nice and quicker, but the story was terrible, and the rework they did on the expositional aspects of the script helped a lot, though the scene with Rufus giving his long speech to Cloud at the beginning was amazingly poorly localized/translated. I don't know or care how close it is to what he says in the Japanese version: the English dub for that scene is fucking horrendous. The entire movie could have used one more pass, notably the scenes where they clearly didn't rerender, and to fix all of the fucking dithering and hair issues. I also noticed some framerate problems in a panning scene sometime immediately before or after Cloud puts on his goggles in the title sequence, which I can only imagine to have been part of the collection of upscaled DVD footage they have sprinkled throughout the feature.
But despite all of that, I greatly enjoyed the additional footage, definitely making a future purchase of the movie well worth having. While the quality isn't consistent, the additional footage is really something else, especially with how they retooled the introductory sequence of the old characters, the bike chase, and then finally the second half of the Sephiroth fight. Definitely worth picking up just to gush as a fan.
I don't expect they'll fix the DVD upscaled scenes for the US release, but regardless, I'll be picking up, demo or not.
One last thing I'd like to note about the movie was that watching this "final version" made me think about the fact that FF7's story is really birthed a lot from Sakaguchi's whole thing with his mom, making me wonder about how different AC would have been if Gooch was still around. I mean, sure, technically The Spirits Within is spiritually related to FF7, but regarding the fact that the story's a continuation, it's very clear that the change of focus in terms of themes and characters in ACC in comparison to FF7's own themes is due to a different writing team and intentions of story telling. Gooch's influence more or less begins and ends with the life stream, and anything regarding life and death surrounding it, but ACC touches on themes that are a bit more subtle than that, or at least that was how I felt.
---
Regarding FFXIII, I really wish I didn't watch the live stream. While it says a lot that such a low quality stream w/ artifacts wowed me as much as it did (and trust me, I was wow'd a lot when I was watching that), I feel that having read a lot of impressions here in this thread, and notably reading what the translations were for the menu commands, really eased my entire experience of the demo. I went through it really quickly, spending only about a minute or two spinning the camera around at the beginning to enjoy the sheer beauty of the graphics and draw distance.
Graphically, as everyone else has said, it was intense. I loaded up Kale's copy of MGS4 and RE5 a bit later to check out his JVC headphone adapter, and while MGS4 is unsurprisingly astounding, and while RE5 has the whole quincunx issue of looking blurry, they're both graphically beautiful games. But when compared to this demo of FFXIII, there really are no words. It makes me wonder what kind of AA they're using for the game, because texture detail is definitely in full force here, yet I spot no aliasing issues.
In terms of combat, again, I think its because I read this thread, particularly the translations for the commands, and read Kobun's complaint about the 1-hit kill thing, and hearing from Kale about how the dude kept ramming him into a corner, I was expecting the worst.
But I breezed right through the demo :/
Kale said it was because I "kept him at a distance," but really, all I did was... well, I just kept comboing him. I didn't do anything special, outside of maybe not wasting ATB time. Something I noticed was that I was given 3 ATB bars right at the beginning, so I spent Blizzaga straight off the bat. I dunno. I'd really like to see a video of someone failing miserably against the boss, and having that compared to someone else who breezes right through it.
I really wonder how differently I might have played if I didn't read this thread or watched the live feed.
Even more, hearing Kale's complaints, and noticing in the live feed footage for myself of how if you still have a move and your target died, the remaining moves are wasted, I simply found myself paying attention to the life bars, and just initiating as much damage as I would need to deal out, rather than just spamming Attack for all 3 notches, or whatever. While its a shame that you don't automatically attack the next closest enemy, if this doesn't get fixed for the final release, I imagine there will be a strategical reason behind it, like perhaps to push the player to be more methodical.
I imagine that my complaints and impressions would have been vastly different if it wasn't for the fact that I followed this thread and saw the game in action through videos, but I hope I added a different aspect to the impressions that people are giving, one that's based on a reaction to the reactions of others.
---
I'd like to thank Auron for letting me come over and hanging out, and tolerating my constant pausing and rewinding during ACC, just to point something out or whatever :lol. You have some insane amounts of stuff I want, man. I just don't get why you have so many multiple copies of stuff too D: Jesus. You've gotta unbox that Raiden, too. That's some injustice right there. Raiden's too cool to be kept locked in a cage
Interesting that they'll be incorporating strategy into the combat. I imagine it'll be repetitive based on enemy types or something, though.Himuro said:
To hear that he considers it an "evolved form" of the ATB system is curious. It certainly is evolved, but in a way that takes old elements from other RPGs and mixing it with the ATB system of FF, making for something that's different, but evolved? I can't really see the system being expanded upon more than what they do with XIII, whether being copied by another RPG, or even in later entries. I can see them using it again, and making slight tweaks, but I dunno.
I was really wondering just how they'd make menu navigation easier for the full game when I was playing the demo and writing my impressions, so to hear that is assuring. I was a bit worried it'd become cluttered, or maybe they'd make you select which commands you can use by limiting action slots or something. And to know that they purposely pursued (or found) that this combat system promoted different styles amongst players is pretty nice, and another thing I noticed even from just playing the demo, though just how much people will diverge from the core combo system will be curious to see.
polyh3dron
Banned
You mean Bangaa Peedee?Himuro said: