[QUOTE="VendettaRed07"]
[QUOTE="hakanakumono"]
Let's see.
1. They're expected to have some of the highest production values in the industry, if not the highest on consoles.
2. It costs many times what it cost to produce 7, 8, and 9.
3. They aren't any more successful than they were with 7, 8, and 9.
If they didn't hold themselves to #1, it might be easier.
hakanakumono
Production value, graphics, cinematic cutscenes were one of the few things FF13 and FFXII shined in.
So? SE can certainly afford it
They aren't nearly as successful amongst fans and many critics in terms of how good they are.. In fact the old games were so good the new ones just sell on name alone.
They just need to make something good. They try too hard to reinvent the wheel because of this false stigma that you can't make JRPGs like they used to because the formula is too tired. Like I have no idea where that thought process came from but it is clearly screwing with the JRPG developers heads and it seems like they just don't know what to do or where to go with their games anymore because they feel they can't stick with what they are doing
All they need to do is take what people love and expand upon it.. I mean honestly how much have WRPGs really changed in the past 10 years? At their core very little, they have just expanded on what was there before and thats ALL japanese developers need to do... Thats what Atlus did with the Persona series and those are some of the greatest RPGs of all time... all they need is a lot too explore, good combat, likeable characters and good story and EVERYONE will be happy. But they have failed to do any of that on consoles since FFX over 10 years ago.
First of all, there is really no way for Square to make "everyone" happy, or even a large enough number to avoid incessant whining about their titles. The Final Fantasy fanbase is perhaps the most fickle fanbase in existence. For example, with FFXII, I remember complaints that the game didn't use a separate screen for battles. It's a very minor change, but for a Final Fantasy fan it can be enough to spawn angry hatemail. Funny you mention "a lot to explore," because Square received complaints from FFXII due to the scale of the game, where people claimed areas were too large. FFXIII is linear, but it's actually more linear than early builds. It was made more linear, out of fear that they would anger fans again like they did with FFXII. And FFXIII-2 will be the polar opposite of FFXIII, and naturally, garner a lot of hate in the process. Not that Square doesn't deserve criticism; they cant seem to write a competent story to save their lives these days. But making fans happy shouldn't be too high of a priority, considering it's impossible given that each fan seems to think that any given FF game that isn't customed tailored entirely to their tastes is garbage.
As for Square being able to afford it, I have a hard time believing that. If costs have increased exponentially (they have), then in order to produce the same amount of content with much higher quality graphics, music, video, etc, videogame prices would have to increase exponentially. They haven't. You cant throw the same amount of time and money at a game and get the same amount of content as you could with the PS2, PS1, or SNES. Square knew this, and that's why they worked on the Crystal Tools engine. But that became more of a problem than a solution.
I know everyone is going to complain about something but they can minimize how many people are complaining by making the games actually good... or actually they could keep doing what they are doing and keep making so many terrible console games so people will stop caring enough to complain in general.
By a lot to explore I don't mean just space.. 12 was large on scale but there was nothing to do and there were just a bunch of big open areas where you would just walk around.. Not like in VII, VIII, or IX where they were full of unique individual towns that had new items weapons, people to talk to and so on. We haven't really had a final fantasy game like that since X, that just led you through the game and didn't try to spin the genre on its head by turning into an MMO or whatever FFXIII tried to be.
And SE can't just say well its the fans fault and we are giving them what they want because I don't ever remember people saying oh well we need to walk down a hallway for 30 hours thats what we want. I don't see any reason why they can't make something like X again. THAT was linear, but the way the game progressed, because you were constantly involved in the story, and the world actually felt like a real world where you knew where you were and where you were going through out the game in real world environments instead of being in random places in random platforms in the sky fighting randomly placed enemies there. Nothing about it was logical it was just so abstract and weird you could not get invested in it like previous games.
They can't just keeping doing the opposite of what their last game did to try and fix it, just take the games everyone actually liked and expand upon it and thats all they need to do.. I don't know how that is out of their financial reach. Lost Odyssey did it, it wasn't that great of a game but it was certainly more of a FF game than any other in the past 10 years, that had just as much content as any of the playstation FF games, EVEN Blue Dragon did, so it has nothing to do with cost. Because if Mistwalker can do it then how on earth can square not that just doesn't make any sense.
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