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DACK FAYDEN posted:9 is the only game I have ever played that was based entirely around pandering and simultaneously was incredibly enjoyable. Even though every ten minutes I was going "OH, I GET THAT REFERENCE" and any other game would have pissed me off by doing that... they made it work. It's lighthearted, almost summery, in a way that no other FF really has been, in my eyes. It's pretty much the Disney version of FF, and I like it for that. 
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Jul 20, 2013 18:58
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Endorph posted:That's a problem with FF13, not a problem with JRPGs in general today, or cutscenes and voice acting. I think the problem with FF13 IS that it's new and shiny, but not in the way you mean it. Square doesn't know how to develop modern games in a timely fashion because their company structure for dev teams is still working like they're making PS1 games, and that doesn't work for putting out a current-gen game on time with no massive overruns like their art department had. Also, their reliance on pre-rendered CG over in-engine cutscene forces them to stick to events from the very earliest drafts of their script. So the problem is Square making being new and shiny a problem, I guess.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:20
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Defiance Industries posted:I think the problem with FF13 IS that it's new and shiny, but not in the way you mean it. Square doesn't know how to develop modern games in a timely fashion because their company structure for dev teams is still working like they're making PS1 games, and that doesn't work for putting out a current-gen game on time with no massive overruns like their art department had. Also, their reliance on pre-rendered CG over in-engine cutscene forces them to stick to events from the very earliest drafts of their script. Luckily, they replaced their CEO a few months back (there was a thread about it), and he specifically addressed several elements of their development practices: quote:Matsuda said the publisher has three major reforms in mind, and the first of these is to back away from its traditional development model, which has developers beavering away at games in secrecy for years before a profit is made. So, that's good news.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:24
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DACK FAYDEN posted:9 is the only game I have ever played that was based entirely around pandering and simultaneously was incredibly enjoyable. Even though every ten minutes I was going "OH, I GET THAT REFERENCE" and any other game would have pissed me off by doing that... they made it work. It's lighthearted, almost summery, in a way that no other FF really has been, in my eyes. On that note -- is the dude who collects coffee in Dali Village a reference to anything? He's probably my favorite supporting character in a game filled with great ones, but I didn't know if it was a particular callback or just a cool old guy.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:28
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Bongo Bill posted:Luckily, they replaced their CEO a few months back (there was a thread about it), and he specifically addressed several elements of their development practices: In theory, it could work. I'm not super-confident that they'll move away from CG videos because that is the only thing they're still good at, even though it causes problems.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:30
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Defiance Industries posted:I think the problem with FF13 IS that it's new and shiny, but not in the way you mean it. You almost gotta wonder if they did it on purpose.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:35
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:I'd much rather play VIII than XIII. And I don't consider VIII very high up in the series. At the risk of getting into "which is worse, being pissed on or crapped on", FFVIII vs. FFXIII is a weird little debate in my head. They're both easily my least favorite FFs but I don't absolutely hate either o them. It takes a lot for me not to see any positives at all in a game and amidst all the garbage, both VIII and XIII do some things right. In terms of playable characters, XIII steamrolls over VIII. This is easy because the competition is almost nonexistent on the side of 8. A bunch of cardboard cutouts without even a whiff of development. Badly done or no, Snow, Hope, Sazh and Vanille all had their little arcs where they grew. I personally enjoyed the first half of XIII because I was waiting for the inevitable Show/Hope confrontation. In terms of world, XIII again takes it but only because FFVIII's world is the biggest goddam mess. None of it makes any sense. The Centra civilization is treated like some long lost treasure trove of knowledge but they've only been gone like a hundred years. No one mentions that monsters are going to be falling from the Moon any day now the entire game. As poorly explained as the whole fal'Cie thing was, it was at least there. You understood what Cocoon and Pulse were mostly about. And yet, in spite of all this...I would also probably rather play VIII. It has a sense of familiarity that XIII lacks. It's in the format of an old JRPG, with a worldmap and everything. The world might make nos ense but at least you get to go to different towns and continents and stuff. And, in spite of everything, I like a few of the characters in VIII. Seifer especially I prefer to anyone in XIII. I dunno what it is but Seifer has always stood out to me among the cast of VIII. He had the best development and characterization in the game and he just flat=out appealed to me more than anyone in XIII. That's at least very much a preference thing, I admit. And we can't dismiss the music aspect either. VIII has a soundtrack on par with most other FFs. Squall and Rinoa might be a horrible couple but a love story with good music can almost work just because of the music. At least for me. Love Grows is extremely beautiful. I guess at the end of the day, I would rather replay VIII because it never had stuff as tedious as that tower on Pulse. God, gently caress that place.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:37
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dukerson posted:On that note -- is the dude who collects coffee in Dali Village a reference to anything? He's probably my favorite supporting character in a game filled with great ones, but I didn't know if it was a particular callback or just a cool old guy. NikkolasKing posted:XII fans and XIII fans always seem so opposed to each other. This might be "every game is the worst game in the series" fandom but these two in particular just never get along. I guess it's because XIII was obviously trying to be the complete opposite of XII in both gameplay and story. 
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Jul 20, 2013 19:39
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FF8 has a good soundtrack -- at times. It often reuses tracks and some of the later town themes are pretty bad (Esthar's should have been better, for example; instead, it's just kind of there). Really, the vast majority of FF8's good music is in its first disc, where we're introduced to its boss theme, Laguna's battle theme, the train mission theme, the attack on the sorceress, etc. etc. Winhill is probably the biggest offender and is just straight garbage. FF13, however, has consistently awesome music from beginning to end. Especially "Dust to Dust" and "Desperate Struggle."
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Jul 20, 2013 19:43
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I think FF8 wins out simply because both of them are stories where the objective is "save the world," but in FF8 they give you reasons to care about said world. In FF13, there's probably more save points than there are non-hostile creatures. The world is a series of corridors you are sent through as quickly as possible and never really given a chance or reason to attach any sentiment to them other than that they usually look neat. Some people may rag on towns, saying they can just be replaced by some vendors, but the truth is that towns, and the NPCs in them, help us invest in the game world. For all its story failings (and there are a shitload) FF8's towns are pretty interesting and there's a lot of throwaway NPCs who still have little bits of personality to them. So when the world is threatened, I sort of cared. In FF13, they told me Cocoon was gonna crash and everyone there would die, and I can't say I cared because they were all assholes anyway.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:45
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Krad posted:The whole point I was trying to make was that old... ish games (up to the PS2) could get away with doing more things as opposed to modern games because of budgets or whatever, and in my eyes, that does hurt a 40 hour long story-driven RPG. I was wondering how easy it would actually be to make a cutscene in something like Final Fantasy VI or VII. There are no voice actors to arrange, no motion actors to perform, it's just a simple series of movements, animations, and text boxes. A lot of the animations in FFVII were recycled, so if you wanted Cloud to tap his foot, turn to the camera, and then shrug, then you just need two pre-made animations. I thought about this when playing FFVII because there are quite a few instances of the game being aware of its own mechanics, like Cloud complaining that his materia's all in the wrong order when he gets it back from Yuffie. The gameplay and cutscenes in XIII could have been made in separate universes for all they had to do with one another. For instance, Lightning breaks her gravity device just before she gets a chance to use it in gameplay, and then it gets magically fixed near the end of the game just so she could use it in the cutscene that pretended to be early gameplay footage.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:46
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That loving Sned posted:I was wondering how easy it would actually be to make a cutscene in something like Final Fantasy VI or VII. There are no voice actors to arrange, no motion actors to perform, it's just a simple series of movements, animations, and text boxes. That's part of the problem with their use of CG. Because that video was already made, they HAD to use it, even if it didn't fit with the story. If FFVI had used CGI videos, Terra would probably be a dude and Locke would be some kind of dark knight-type character, because that's what they were in the very earliest drafts.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:49
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Defiance Industries posted:If FFVI had used CGI videos, Terra would probably be a dude and Locke would be some kind of dark knight-type character, because that's what they were in the very earliest drafts.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:54
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I think most of the information out there is in Japanese, though there's some stuff on the final fantasy wiki about it in the articles on individual characters.
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Jul 20, 2013 19:59
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Start to finish what's the approx play time on FF13 if you don't get super side tracked?
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Jul 20, 2013 20:05
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strikehold posted:Start to finish what's the approx play time on FF13 if you don't get super side tracked? 30-40 hours, maybe a little more.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:07
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strikehold posted:Start to finish what's the approx play time on FF13 if you don't get super side tracked? I finished it in 40 hours, and didn't do any sidequests in Gran Pulse. I just plowed through the super hard robots, because I thought the marker on my map was for my current mission, except it was actually where to go to progress the story. For reference, FFIV and VI took me about 20 hours first time. VII was about 40 hours, but only 25 on my second time.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:07
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There's not a lot of room to get side tracked in FF13. Doing everything I could before the final boss was around 50 hours, I think.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:11
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Defiance Industries posted:I think FF8 wins out simply because both of them are stories where the objective is "save the world," but in FF8 they give you reasons to care about said world. In FF13, there's probably more save points than there are non-hostile creatures. The world is a series of corridors you are sent through as quickly as possible and never really given a chance or reason to attach any sentiment to them other than that they usually look neat. Some people may rag on towns, saying they can just be replaced by some vendors, but the truth is that towns, and the NPCs in them, help us invest in the game world. For all its story failings (and there are a shitload) FF8's towns are pretty interesting and there's a lot of throwaway NPCs who still have little bits of personality to them. So when the world is threatened, I sort of cared. In FF13, they told me Cocoon was gonna crash and everyone there would die, and I can't say I cared because they were all assholes anyway. I have no idea how anyone who likes RPGs could be against having towns in the games. Not only are towns essential for immersing you in the world, they're great spots to take a breather. I can't tell you how annoyed I was with XIII's determination to try and be an action game. Just go, go, go, for hours and hours. RPGs are long and towns serve as a good place to come down off all the questing and dungeons and boss fights and just to let everything simmer. It's not relevant to VIII vs. XIII but this track from XII is kinda what I'm getting at. It's basically the calm after the storm theme. YOu've gone through this huge-rear end dungeon, fought these monsters, beaten a boss, and now it's time to relax and revel in your accomplishment. A RPG needs a town for much the same reason I think.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:34
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NikkolasKing posted:No one mentions that monsters are going to be falling from the Moon any day now the entire game. Isn't that because the Lunar Cry isn't something that happens very often? And it began shortly before you got to the space station? I'm fairly certain that either the encyclopedia and/or a couple NPCs mention that monsters come from the moon long before that.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:43
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SpazmasterX posted:Isn't that because the Lunar Cry isn't something that happens very often? And it began shortly before you got to the space station? I'm fairly certain that either the encyclopedia and/or a couple NPCs mention that monsters come from the moon long before that. My bad on one point. I was under the assumption it was a scheduled occurrence such as it happened once every hundred years or something That doesn't appear to be the case. It can obviously be predicted but it isn't a regular event. And this isn't like NORG or whatever where it being stuck away in the info center is acceptable. This is a monumental, global event. More people should be discussing an ungodly number of abominations falling onto the planet in a week. There is no timeframe given to FFVIII but I'm guessing it's like, a couple of months. People are preparing for Christmas at the start of November but most people aren't talking about this?
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Jul 20, 2013 20:52
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Defiance Industries posted:For all its story failings (and there are a shitload) FF8's towns are pretty interesting and there's a lot of throwaway NPCs who still have little bits of personality to them. So when the world is threatened, I sort of cared. Hold on now, what's this? From the one time I managed to get all the way through it, I distinctly remember my biggest complaint was how empty the world seemed. Like you get the Garden Airship and there are only literally 4 towns you can even visit again, and most of them are only 2 or 3 screens with nobody in them. Like that "town" next to Garden in the beginning of the game - there's just nothing there! I think if you took every proper town in FF8 and put them together they wouldn't even be as big as Midgar. I didn't get a sense of saving the world in FF8 because two Gardens and a handful of teenagers seemed to be the only people who even exist (other than that like one scene with the parade). At least FF7 made me feel like it was friggin' huge.
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Jul 20, 2013 21:20
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NikkolasKing posted:NORG Can anyone clarify as to what the hell this part of the game was? I know there was a ton of poorly explained or lazily developed stuff in VIII but I cannot for the life of me remember a moment before or after the NORG fight where he is mentioned again.
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Jul 20, 2013 21:29
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Great Lakes Log posted:Can anyone clarify as to what the hell this part of the game was? I know there was a ton of poorly explained or lazily developed stuff in VIII but I cannot for the life of me remember a moment before or after the NORG fight where he is mentioned again. He's an excuse the have some fights for Squall and Crew and as an (wholly unnecessary) explanation of where Cid got the money to build SeeD
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Jul 20, 2013 21:33
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precision posted:Hold on now, what's this? From the one time I managed to get all the way through it, I distinctly remember my biggest complaint was how empty the world seemed. Like you get the Garden Airship and there are only literally 4 towns you can even visit again, and most of them are only 2 or 3 screens with nobody in them. Like that "town" next to Garden in the beginning of the game - there's just nothing there! FFVIII certainly has nothing on VII or IX in terms of feeling "alive." (and that's saying something, considering most every continent in IX aside from the Mist Continent has barely any habitation) However, I wouldn't say it felt completely barren and uninteresting. The problem, I think, was how modern and relatively mundane everything was. As pretty as they are, places like Deling City and Fisherman's Horizon are just..normal. THey have none of the fantastic elements that make you want to run around places like Rabanastre. Even FFVII, which was somewhere in the 20th century in terms of general technology, had a dystopic(I don't think that's a word) element that still made you interested in seeing it all. But in VIII...it's all just so plain. And the town themes do not help. Really, between songs like that and the abysmal world map theme, no wonder FFVIII's world falls flat compared to most other FFs. Anyway, all of this is why the only town NPCs I can remember are the Master Fisherman you almost kill with the Garden and the transvestite in Dollet's bar. Great Lakes Log posted:Can anyone clarify as to what the hell this part of the game was? I know there was a ton of poorly explained or lazily developed stuff in VIII but I cannot for the life of me remember a moment before or after the NORG fight where he is mentioned again. They had to explain what those creepy Garden Faculty goons were all about. Also it does explain why SeeD, despite solely existing to kill Sorceresses, is out there being mercenaries and poo poo. Sure, it might have been unnecessary overall, but I can think of several other things I'd change in VIII before I got to NORG.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:03
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Yeah that's another thing. FFVIII's visual aesthetic for most of the game is literally just "sometime in the early 90s", but not in a crazy way like The Bouncer, just in this completely pedestrian and normal way. It says a lot when the character designs that fans like the most are "a sexy teacher in a pretty normal outfit with boots and a whip" and "a guy in a trenchcoat". It really took the "Fantasy" out of "Final Fantasy". And then you go into space and it's like 
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Jul 20, 2013 22:08
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DACK FAYDEN posted:A crystal is a big, shiny, pretty, but ultimately useless rock. Truly FF13 is a "new crystal story". Cocaine is a crystal. Has anyone tried crushing a FFXIII disc and snorting the remains?
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Jul 20, 2013 22:13
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Level Slide posted:Cocaine is a crystal. Has anyone tried crushing a FFXIII disc and snorting the remains?
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Jul 20, 2013 22:15
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And I assume Lightning Returns was from snorting FFXIII-2.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:18
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Level Slide posted:And I assume Lightning Returns was from snorting FFXIII-2.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:20
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precision posted:Like that "town" next to Garden in the beginning of the game - there's just nothing there! Zell's mom was there. 
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Jul 20, 2013 22:30
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Endorph posted:No, that was just straight-up cocaine. No wonder Lightning Returns looks awesome.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:48
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At the end of the day, despite the numerous problems the games have, for me FF13 and 13-2 are just fun. They are! Maybe they're the Summer Blockbuster Movies of the FF franchise where in this convoluted analogy FF6 would be Memento, FF7 would be Donnie Darko and FF12 would be Game of Thrones, but I don't care. Corridors? gently caress it man, there are pretty lights, I genuinely like all the characters (YES EVEN VANILLE gently caress YOU), the combat is amazing and while the higher parts of my brain are having a wank session about how I really ought to get around to playing Deadly Premonition for the third time my dumb lizard brain is going  Signed, Billy, aged 7 e: this post is 100% sincere, really
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Jul 20, 2013 22:58
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NikkolasKing posted:My bad on one point. I was under the assumption it was a scheduled occurrence such as it happened once every hundred years or something That doesn't appear to be the case. It can obviously be predicted but it isn't a regular event. According to the FFWiki, the Lunar Cry occurs naturally at regular intervals. Once the amount of monsters on the moon reaches a certain saturation point, the planet's gravity ends up pulling them down, leading to widespread devastation. However, the Lunar Cry can also be artificially triggered by using Lunatic Pandora, which is what happens in the game during Disc 3.
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Jul 20, 2013 23:58
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precision posted:At the end of the day, despite the numerous problems the games have, for me FF13 and 13-2 are just fun. They are! Maybe they're the Summer Blockbuster Movies of the FF franchise where in this convoluted analogy FF6 would be Memento, FF7 would be Donnie Darko and FF12 would be Game of Thrones, but I don't care. Corridors? gently caress it man, there are pretty lights, I genuinely like all the characters (YES EVEN VANILLE gently caress YOU), the combat is amazing and while the higher parts of my brain are having a wank session about how I really ought to get around to playing Deadly Premonition for the third time my dumb lizard brain is going So perhaps every game is the best game in the series after all! Personally I like V, VI, VII, IX and X the most but I don't think there's any (non-MMO) game in the main series that I'd outright dislike playing. They all have enough going for them that I can ignore the weaknesses and focus on the strengths. V and X-2 may not have the strongest stories but I'm a sucker for their customization and class systems, while VII for example is too easy but at the same time I love the materia system, atmosphere and story. At least there's something for everyone.
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Jul 21, 2013 00:07
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Have I just been getting lazy from playing 7 and 8 back-to-back or is 9 just harder? I have to actually use items in battle and bosses are actually difficult. I've already died like, more than twice. What gives
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Jul 21, 2013 00:15
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9 is a bit harder than 7, and most games are harder than 8, so you do need to pay some attention to the game. Until you learn the 9999 moves and crush everything.
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Jul 21, 2013 00:20
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Mr. Maltose posted:9 is a bit harder than 7, and most games are harder than 8, so you do need to pay some attention to the game. Until you learn the 9999 moves and crush everything. I just have to readjust to actual classes again, but even with that they took away my white Mage right away. I'm gonna wander around a bit and see what blue magic I can pick up that might be useful with this dragon-looking water boss.
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Jul 21, 2013 00:23
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So do you guys like ANY Final Fantasy? I mean they all have terrible stories and most have terrible characters but I thought 7 was really good, and I liked 12 I don't understand the love for 6 though. I really don't like the characters or gameplay. Phantasy Star 4 is better in every way.
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Jul 21, 2013 00:24
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That dude is the first real roadblock in the game. A good trick is throwing a tent at it to inflict blindness.
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Jul 21, 2013 00:24
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