Kitase: Square 'learnt a lesson' with FF XIII, franchise needs more frequent releases

@CaptainProtonX

Except I just played the Assassin's Creed series and with the exception of the first one, they were all great games.

@CaptainProtonX

I think what they are implying is that they plan on cutting each game into 4 sections so that each game part is 10 hours long like american games releasing games 4x faster.

@CaptainProtonX
But we normally get 3 of these games per generation, if not more.

this time, they spent almost the entire generation with no release for the franchise. i would have expected the first tittle to hit no more then 2 year in, then every 2 years after till the next gen starts.

@Morisato13

Painful memories of CyberConnect2's .hack series.

@dagamer34 But they were also pretty much the exact same games with minor differences for full price each time. No, thank you. This news is horrible.

@CaptainProtonX
Leave it to SE to learn the wrong lesson here. It's not unprescedented, they learned all the wrong lessons going from 11 to 14, and from 14's bombing to trying to FIX 14. (Clearly graphics were why it bombed!)

@Morisato13

You know if it was 10 hours long and enjoyable I wouldn't mind.

Problem is every "fan" of FF13 had this to say "It gets good after 20 hours"
.......

@CaptainProtonX
Seems to me that Square Enix clearly learned all the wrong lessons. Someone really should sit the designers of the company down with copies of KOTOR, Fallout 3, Fable 2, Mass Effect series, Witcher 2, Skyrim, Deux Ex: Human Revolution, and make them play all the way through from end to end - twice.


Not that I expect them to turn FF into any of those games; at it's core, I expect Final Fantasy to remain true to itself. But just because you remain true to your roots does not mean you cannot evolve to become something much better than you are. It is more than clear that Final Fantasy, like most Japanese developed RPGs has simply failed to evolve - you play one, and it's like going back in time a decade. There needs to be some true evolution there, or the series as well as Japanese developed RPGs in general, will continue to have declining sales. And as expensive as it costs Square Enix to make Final Fantasy games, if sales keep in decline, how many more of these does anyone thing the company is going to be able to continue to make, before having to pull the plug on the entire franchise?

@Jennacide
I see you still haven't bothered to read the PDF before complaining about how they're going about making changes to XIV. Their major concern with the graphics is that they're so crappily optimized that even people on high end machines can't run the game well, so they're reworking them so that more people can actually play (including those who have mid-range PCs). If you can tell me how this isn't a smart move and a huge step in the direction of things that should have been done to begin with, I'd love to hear all about it.

@dagamer34 Assassin's Creed games are all pretty much based on the same engine. You can obviously stand by the quality of the Console/PC releases of the series, but can you say the same for the DLC, the mobile and the Facebook release?

I do however think that Square could solve the quality issue by doing what many other companies that have increased demand do: hire more workers. They could have interns/junior staff work on the existing DLC/side games using existing tools and senior staff research new ones.

@Grey

They're dead serious. They know well that many of us who were passionate fans of the classic Final Fantasies have lost interest in the franchise, because of recent releases like 13.

They have figured out that the way to solve this problem is to make the franchise more like Call of Duty. You know, the way Final Fantasy used to be.

@TemjinZero

What WERE FF13's issues? I mean, really. Yeah, sure it's not as good as 7,8 or 10, but it sure as hell wasn't bad enough to warrant all the hate it got.
I realize that since FF is such a high-profile franchise, it has huge expectations to live up to. Aside from the poorly told story and boring corridor-like exploration, the game was still superb. It has one of the(if not, THE) best battle system on the series yet, mainly because it focused more on strategy over grinding (which was a godsend).

Honestly, this whole "FF has been going downhill" is nothing but a bullshit myth. Where are the crappy FF games everyone keeps talking about? Dissidia was awesome, Crisis Core was awesome. Type-0 seems to be awesome as well. Plus, the Tactics series still remains solid. So, really, all this "downhill" bullshit was perpetuated all because 13 got a slightly lower metacritic score then usual. Big. Whoop.

And by the way, as much as I agree that a game series needs to focus more on quality over quantity, the fact remains that part of the reason FF was a more relevant back then it is now, was because releases were more frequent (you know, kinda like how CoD and AC are today). And from what I remember, nobody complained about it then, so why do it now?

@DjiegoMoz

Well, overly linear progression, boring combat, rambling story and annoying character problems aside, there's the much bigger issue of the franchise needing to evolve away from the menu based rpg gameplay they're famous for. It's antiquated by today's standards and is getting outclassed by the success of the more action-oriented competition from the likes of Dark/Demon Souls, Oblivion/Skyrim, Monster Hunter, Fallout, etc. The series is in dire need of a grand evolution.

@Altairio

"It's antiquated by today's standards and is getting outclassed by the success of the more action-oriented competition from the likes of Dark/Demon Souls, Oblivion/Skyrim, Monster Hunter, Fallout, etc. The series is in dire need of a grand evolution."

If you want to play Skyrim, play Skyrim. If you want to play Final Fantasy, play Final Fantasy. Why would you want to take part of Skyrim and put it in Final Fantasy? Do we really want to eliminate variety that badly? But to be honest, I prefer turn based combat to Monster Hunter, Demon's Souls, and Skyrim's solution for combat anyways. Strategy over reflex. Skyrim's open world is amazing, questing is fun... Combat is not. Fallout was only awesome because of VATS - which was turn based.

Lost Odyssey was turned based and that game was significantly better than FF13. So combat is not the issue here. It's a style of game that may not be as popular, but not everything has to be the same. It's the crap story, crap VAs, and crap characters of FF13 that bored people. Also the 15 hour long tutorial and lack of exploration.

@DjiegoMoz

Boring combat is right. As compared to previous FFs, yes, it was worse in every single aspect.

In previous FF games, I found though I liked having battle settings on Active for the fast-pace, I actually more often switched the settings to 'Wait' so that I could treat the games with ATB gauges more turn based and think out moves more properly and react to battle situations as they changed.

FFX was great in that sense being full turn based for me. I enjoyed the character switching and specialization for handling enemy types and it made the game's battle system really fun and I used every character evenly, unlike other FF games where I pick my favorite team and go.

13's battle system was a bunch of mashing X. That or wishing I hadn't learned so many low level abilities that cluttered the battle menus up so badly it took so long to get to the command I wanted, and then died because I was fumbling around the menu. After 40 hours, I got tired of spamming X and just enabled remember cursor position and left it on auto-attack because that was more effective than me looking for the attack. I eventually started falling asleep while in combat due to combat being heavily dragged out with ridiculously high enemy HP values.

You can't really say that's good game design when it's more thoughtless than ever.

@DjiegoMoz

Boring combat is right. As compared to previous FFs, yes, it was worse in every single aspect.

In previous FF games, I found though I liked having battle settings on Active for the fast-pace, I actually more often switched the settings to 'Wait' so that I could treat the games with ATB gauges more turn based and think out moves more properly and react to battle situations as they changed.

FFX was great in that sense being full turn based for me. I enjoyed the character switching and specialization for handling enemy types and it made the game's battle system really fun and I used every character evenly, unlike other FF games where I pick my favorite team and go.

13's battle system was a bunch of mashing X. That or wishing I hadn't learned so many low level abilities that cluttered the battle menus up so badly it took so long to get to the command I wanted, and then died because I was fumbling around the menu. After 40 hours, I got tired of spamming X and just enabled remember cursor position and left it on auto-attack because that was more effective than me looking for the attack. I eventually started falling asleep while in combat due to combat being heavily dragged out with ridiculously high enemy HP values.

You can't really say that's good game design when it's more thoughtless than ever.

@TemjinZero

Ack... lagged double post. I'm sorry! T_T

@Punkrawk Bbob

"If you want to play Skyrim, play Skyrim. If you want to play Final Fantasy, play Final Fantasy."

And if you want to watch your fan base erode as your franchise becomes more and more niche, continue to stick to formula and use mechanics initially done out of necessity, that are becoming more and more outdated for a AAA blockbuster game. It's time to face facts, the genre has shifted. Final Fantasy doesn't have to become Skyrim, but something has to change if they want to continue to grow their audience. Evolve or die.

@Altairio

I cannot believe I missed an opportunity to use "PARADIGM SHIFT!!" in that last post. It actually hurts. I am so disappointed in myself.

@Altairio

You do realize that FF13 DID grow it's fanbase? FF13 outsold FF12. So don't worry, they are selling out. Unfortunately it's killing their name in the process. They need to launch a new RPG series aimed towards the casual market and stop screwing up the FF branded titles with half-assed ideas to make it more marketable.

@DjiegoMoz
I agree.

@foxhound

Ruh Roh

you said modernize ....... that means the next FF game will be an FPS :P

@foxhound

Yes, remakes, clearly the bastions of quality and effort that Square-Enix should be giving complete focus.

@ouenwoof
I think you've misunderstood the request I mentioned.
The E3 "tech demo" of that FFVII came out in 2005. Yet, even in present day, the demand for such a remake is ridiculously huge. Mind you, this is also including the fact that the devs said repeatedly that they wouldn't attempt it any time soon due to FFXIII AGITO and such. That's why I think it's a bit silly that they aren't at least "considering" to entertain the notion of high profit from tapping into a fan-beloved game in the series. I really don't think gamers would fret too much if AGITO was thrown on a "paused development" to issue a game of AAA-caliber like FFVII.

Do I want them to remake every one of the games in the series? Hell no. Nor would I want them to be shovelwared upon us in the same business model as a CALL OF DUTY or ASSASSINS CREED annual series. It works for their respective IPs, but not for that of FINAL FANTASY.

Ironically, if they cut the filler parts and get the games below 20 hours, I'd start buying them again.

@jonjon72
Men didn't look like men in the SNES games, they looked like simple sprites, and often just as girly in the concept art.

@mrantimatter

The men looking like men has nothing to do with the SNES versions. That is another comment

@PN04 I'm not sure they can slow down anymore than they have already without the risk of Duke Nukem Forever jokes.

@Prince David It's not comparable to those titles. Final Fantasy should not be like a Western open world game. It's like asking Skyrim to be more like God Of War as the combat is better.

@fourfourfun yeah good point. I enjoy all these series and the styles are very different.

@fourfourfun
Funny thing is that FF games used to have an open world for you to explore which was one of the huge draws for me.

It seems to have mostly changed with FFX.

@Timjoy
You know what a deep strategy RPG needs?

To be completely redesigned as a third person shooter. And just in case that isn't close enough to a shooter game, you will actually have levels that you are literally a person running around shooting.

I mean does every developer in the world think that the audiences have become so ADD that no one could imagine purchasing a AAA turn based tactical RPG?