Yeah, I LOVE long JRPGs. But I have two kids (3 and 1) and a full time job, so they often don't get played as much as I want. It took me almost a year to beat FF7. I'm just starting out a play-through of FF9. I have WoFF:Maxima on my Switch after that's done. I'm sure glad I'm very patient when it comes to gaming, because at this rate I'll get to DQ11 in 2025. Good thing I have no intention of playing FF7R until all of the parts are out, and both kids will probably be moved out at that point and I'll have way more free time!
I made this comment on the Nintendo Switch thread but man as an adult wanting to do more with my life, long RPGs are just not in the cards right now. Yes, I know I still keep plugging away at FFXIV but it's a different experience from a huge 50+ hour rpg. I can just drop in, do a 30 minute dungeon and feel like I accomplished something. Compare that to say DQXI; in 30 minutes I think I barely reached the first dungeon.
So...if FF7R is say a 15 hour or 20 hour game? I'm fine with that.
That's particularly symptomatic of Dragon Quest. At least in XV, it's possible to play for 30 minutes at a time. That's more than half of how I played it, which is probably why I haven't finished yet, among other reasons.
Yeah, XV is fairly friendly to short play sessions. It has a fun camp mechanic while you're out in the field. Or, you know if you play on PS4 or Xbox One you can just leave the game in hibernate and just resume exactly where you left off, even without being in a rest area.
Of course, I guess the same could be said of any game on those platforms.
Aside from dungeons and dungeon-like sequences...which I guess makes sense...XV does let you save everywhere (though the fairly limited number of save slots is irritating). And the camping mechanic, which is the greatest thing ever, encourages it. XV's not on the Switch, so that's a problem that solved itself.
I assume that's how the VII remake will work too, ultimately.
That new video is pretty great. I was very wary of a remake, but I get more sold each video. The trailer from the other day was nice too since it showed off non-reactor areas. I was VERY suspicious they'd only gotten up to the reactor done until then =p.
This makes me want a FF6 remake of the same type.
...but one game at a time, this one has taken far too long as it is. And I'm still not super confident that it's going to take them huge amounts of times between each episode.
I'm sure they had to do a large amount of combat prototyping and game-system prototyping to come up with something that feels modern and fresh, while also feeling true to the original in spirit, even if it's very different.
Now that they've got the major systems in place, theoretically most of the work will be on the art team, level designers, and animators. Which I think that generally goes faster in game design, from what I've heard about the industry in other places. Usually the art team gets finished on a project first and moves on to other things before all the coders and systems-tech people get done with the first thing. So for all we know, the art and level design teams could already be working on worldbuilding for episode 2 and 3.
FF7R2 is going to be a next-gen game, so they have to completely overhaul their engine and modeling processes to stay on the cutting edge. Although I guess the Luminous people are already demoing such an engine.
Here's the JP VA edition trailer. They mentioned around E3 that the game will have JP Audio and English subs, thank goodness. It's not that the english VA's are bad in of themselves (most are), but the dialogue is terrible. "Let's lay down some rubber!" "Feels like we're flying high these days!" It reminds me of early DBZ dubbing.
Barrett's voice is 100x better in Japanese. Just not sure if I can play it in fully Japanese voices or not. I'm sure I'll get used to the English voices over time... I absolutely HATED Sora's voice in KH3 but now I'm tolerating it.
You know what, games need a "no voice" option. Subtitles only. Unless they have that already, in which case, this game could use it. I have a fine inner monologue honed from the old days.
You know what, games need a "no voice" option. Subtitles only. Unless they have that already, in which case, this game could use it. I have a fine inner monologue honed from the old days.
Sometimes there is an option for "Voice" in Sound Options. But I haven't looked recently.
Here's the JP VA edition trailer. They mentioned around E3 that the game will have JP Audio and English subs, thank goodness. It's not that the english VA's are bad in of themselves (most are), but the dialogue is terrible. "Let's lay down some rubber!" "Feels like we're flying high these days!" It reminds me of early DBZ dubbing.
Barrett's voice is 100x better in Japanese. Just not sure if I can play it in fully Japanese voices or not. I'm sure I'll get used to the English voices over time... I absolutely HATED Sora's voice in KH3 but now I'm tolerating it.
kingdom hearts' english voice acting in general is SOOOOO BAAAAAAD
I cannot speak to the japanese voice acting since I don't understand japanese, maybe it's also bad, who knows
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
I am convinced that 75% of people hate all voice acting in their native language, always.
I dunno, none of it sounds bad to me. I have heard BAD VA. This is just not amazing VA. Not amazing should be fine.
At least we get translations with effort put into them now. And games that actually bother to do English VA.
I will play it in English and like it. Sure, some of the lines are a bit cheesy, but from what I've seen in the trailers thus far, there was nothing that I hated. In fact, if it wasn't for all the anti-VA sentiment in this thread, I wouldn't have even thought twice about the VA.
I am convinced that 75% of people hate all voice acting in their native language, always.
I dunno, none of it sounds bad to me. I have heard BAD VA. This is just not amazing VA. Not amazing should be fine.
At least we get translations with effort put into them now. And games that actually bother to do English VA.
Well this game is at a disadvantage that the original had 0 voice acting and I've played it a million times. And there's already VA work for most of the characters elsewhere.
I am convinced that 75% of people hate all voice acting in their native language, always.
I dunno, none of it sounds bad to me. I have heard BAD VA. This is just not amazing VA. Not amazing should be fine.
At least we get translations with effort put into them now. And games that actually bother to do English VA.
In the case of Final Fantasy VII, the English dub voice actors definitely got better with time and experience. Now they're starting from scratch for these particular roles.
But since English is a second language for me, even if it's the one I overwhelmingly use, I still prefer the "original" language of anything. I don't go out of my way to watch Chinese dubs of Star Trek.
I am convinced that 75% of people hate all voice acting in their native language, always.
I dunno, none of it sounds bad to me. I have heard BAD VA. This is just not amazing VA. Not amazing should be fine.
At least we get translations with effort put into them now. And games that actually bother to do English VA.
In the case of Final Fantasy VII, the English dub voice actors definitely got better with time and experience. Now they're starting from scratch for these particular roles.
But since English is a second language for me, even if it's the one I overwhelmingly use, I still prefer the "original" language of anything. I don't go out of my way to watch Chinese dubs of Star Trek.
Well to be fair, the Remake will be AT LEAST three games long unless they just give up at some point, so these guys will easily become the most experienced FF7 dub yet.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I wonder how much is bad VA and how much is actually bad direction. I mean fukn Snow is Troy Baker and he KILLS it in TLOU and Uncharted 4. Snow isn't aggressively bad but he ain't no Noel.
Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
The VA work in that demo video is a vastly better experience than the trailers. Still not excellent, but it's good enough that I'll probably be using English voices.
Barrett's not great, but it's worth remembering he was a tough guy Mr T parody for much of the first disc, and didn't get any kinda nuance until they hit Cosmo Canyon, maybe the voice work can reflect that. I'm liking new Cloud and what we've heard of Tifa and Aerith.
I wonder how much is bad VA and how much is actually bad direction. I mean fukn Snow is Troy Baker and he KILLS it in TLOU and Uncharted 4. Snow isn't aggressively bad but he ain't no Noel.
a lot of it is definitely on the direction quality or lack thereof, even great actors can sound like stilted space aliens with poor direction.
Actors might not even have a proper context for the scene they are making, they almost certainly are not doing the voice with the other actors.
Director is there to make the voice is appropriate for the scene and character even if the actors themselves are working blind.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
The VA seems better in context from that gameplay vid, but Barrett still sounds really bad to me. It reminds strongly of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLzDttETzSU
Basically, it sounds like they've got some rando white VA actor and described an inner-city accent to him where they're basically just having them sound like Mr. T from the A-Team without bothering to understand that it was just a show, not actual people. The fact that Squareenix is a Japanese company just doesn't matter for this; they're big enough and this project is big enough that it should not be a challenge to come up with decent voice actors for everybody in the main target regions, regardless of the original language. Getting a decent voice actor these days is not a big deal, and they should further take advantage of native English speakers by having them go over some of this dialogue to fix it (fuckin' nobody says "put the rubber to the road", and the way Barrett says "mako" is not how an English speaker would at all read it).
Outside of the VA work, everything else looks fantastic. The environment design, models, and music look amazing, and I thoroughly appreciate that they've kept the same enemies for the different locations and integrated them into the environment. Seeing the way combat plays out makes me less wary of the 20-30 hour game design as well. In the original, going into and out of combat, the combat itself, and the combat results screens eat up ENORMOUS amounts of game time, even with the combat speed cranked to max. In the Remake, we're seeing whole battles start and finish before the end of the first round of turns in the original game. That streamlines a ton of time bloat out of the game, which means that 20-30 hours is instead going to be filled with the fairly tight (instead of classica time-consuming) combat and story-related material. So the actual story content of this first game might actually even be comparable to the bulk of the first game, when you've cut out all the time spent hacking through ATB fights.
And the seamless transitions between battle, exploration, and cutscenes is a huge improvement to the overall feel of the game. Battles not taking place in some other dimension from the world you're in is great, not to mention the enormous amount of time saved in not having transitions and also knowing when a fight is going to happen (because you can see the enemy). Fighting through that mako reactor with that heavy techno-industrial theme is strumming some heavy nostalgia chords, but it also looks really great as it's own thing and not just as a Remake.
Okay, figured out what I was missing when the FF 15 tutorial told me to make an ice spell... instead of just pressing a button to confirm, you have to push down to a big bar that blends into the rest of the menu background and THEN press confirm.
Finally started the game! And... is it me, or does 15 have the least epic intro to a mainline Final Fantasy ever?
One minute of jumping around through fire.
Two minutes of the king telling you "well, 'bye" as you go off on a quest that isn't defined at all until you dig through the lore in the menu.
Two minutes of pushing a stalled car (which we didn't even see break down) as we listen to the first half of "Stand By Me."
Title, then you're dumped in a redneck truck stop.
I swear, the very first Final Fantasy managed to have a more epic opening than that on NES hardware.
On the plus side, I'm tickled by a Final Fantasy taking place in a redneck truck stop.
Getting a decent voice actor these days is not a big deal, and they should further take advantage of native English speakers by having them go over some of this dialogue to fix it (fuckin' nobody says "put the rubber to the road", and the way Barrett says "mako" is not how an English speaker would at all read it).
Sorry but fuck that noise, we don't need any goddamn May-Koh reactors.
Also this is what Barret's English VA looks like:
John Bently's been in a bunch of recent blockbuster games for whatever that's worth.
Okay, figured out what I was missing when the FF 15 tutorial told me to make an ice spell... instead of just pressing a button to confirm, you have to push down to a big bar that blends into the rest of the menu background and THEN press confirm.
Finally started the game! And... is it me, or does 15 have the least epic intro to a mainline Final Fantasy ever?
One minute of jumping around through fire.
Two minutes of the king telling you "well, 'bye" as you go off on a quest that isn't defined at all until you dig through the lore in the menu.
Two minutes of pushing a stalled car (which we didn't even see break down) as we listen to the first half of "Stand By Me."
Title, then you're dumped in a redneck truck stop.
I swear, the very first Final Fantasy managed to have a more epic opening than that on NES hardware.
On the plus side, I'm tickled by a Final Fantasy taking place in a redneck truck stop.
I mean, I played the 1.0 version of XV. If you're playing the Royal Edition, your experience is likely to be a lot different than mine, because they patched in (for free) some new content, expanded some scenes, totally fixed one of the later chapters in the game because the original release version was so awful. And anyway, I can't speak to how you're percieving things in the Royal Edition.
But. I hated XV 1.0. Nearly everything about it. I hated the story. I hated the characters. I hated the magic system (grenades). I hated combat. I hated the car. I hated almost everything.
And yes, there is very little sense of urgency to the story. You get sent out on your own, you've got a quest to go find your lady love and marry her, but instead of doing that you just kind of romp around the countryside doing absolutely nothing at all. It's kind of a dumb game.
There were a few things I did like about it, however. I liked the camping. I liked the fishing. The fishing was the best part of that game in my opinion. I fished the shit out of that game.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
It says a lot that the thing that most hyped me about that new trailer was finally having a release date.
Basically, it sounds like they've got some rando white VA actor and described an inner-city accent to him where they're basically just having them sound like Mr. T from the A-Team without bothering to understand that it was just a show, not actual people. The fact that Squareenix is a Japanese company just doesn't matter for this; they're big enough and this project is big enough that it should not be a challenge to come up with decent voice actors for everybody in the main target regions, regardless of the original language. Getting a decent voice actor these days is not a big deal, and they should further take advantage of native English speakers by having them go over some of this dialogue to fix it (fuckin' nobody says "put the rubber to the road", and the way Barrett says "mako" is not how an English speaker would at all read it).
It's worth remembering, for those who might not know, that in Japanese, Barret doesn't "sound" like Mr. T. He sounds like Solid Snake, that is to say, gruff and angry and mockingly dramatic. More "militaristic" than Tifa and Cloud, in any case, though next to them sounding like Solid Snake is probably not difficult. Turning him into Mr. T was a decision of the English localization team at Squaresoft and Sony Entertainment (with, presumably, everything not handled directly by Squaresoft being approved by them), and it's become memetic in the intervening twenty years. People don't really remember Tifa's "sexy walk" or Cloud's dumb-looking squats (very much), but they absolutely remember Barret waving his fist (and gun) around angrily and bellowing at people.
Squaresoft probably didn't really care at the time, or thought it was fine. The character isn't as ridiculous in Japanese, while still falling in the domain of "heroic scary black men", and it's not as though 90% of black characters in contemporaneous American video games weren't scary black men either. With that constraint in mind, I really like Beau Billingslea's performance of Barret (he's probably my favorite among the dub voice actors, frankly), but that's because I have a soft spot for him from Cowboy Bebop (where he's not playing a black character), and his frequent secondary roles with Namco, etc., all of which involve pretty much the same voice. So I forgive that personally.
Okay, figured out what I was missing when the FF 15 tutorial told me to make an ice spell... instead of just pressing a button to confirm, you have to push down to a big bar that blends into the rest of the menu background and THEN press confirm.
Finally started the game! And... is it me, or does 15 have the least epic intro to a mainline Final Fantasy ever?
One minute of jumping around through fire.
Two minutes of the king telling you "well, 'bye" as you go off on a quest that isn't defined at all until you dig through the lore in the menu.
Two minutes of pushing a stalled car (which we didn't even see break down) as we listen to the first half of "Stand By Me."
Title, then you're dumped in a redneck truck stop.
I swear, the very first Final Fantasy managed to have a more epic opening than that on NES hardware.
On the plus side, I'm tickled by a Final Fantasy taking place in a redneck truck stop.
XV is an extremely personal game. You kind of get that impression when you see a traveling entourage pushing a luxury sedan down a desert highway. You barely get any context for this whole dynastic monarchy that Noctis represents beyond those poorly-explained combat-heavy flash backs/flash forwards and the brief meeting between Noctis and his dad, King of Insomnia (tm). Sidney, regional gem and hilariously dressed small-town mechanic, is a more prominent character than Noctis' father.
It's all very purposeful. Though whether or not that's a good thing is up to the viewer. I hugely prefer the 20th century Earth-style Final Fantasy games, with highways and rundown convenience stores and broken down cars and hard-scraping employees wearing short shorts, that's the reason I like Final Fantasy VII to begin with. So I eat all that shit up, but it's not for everyone.
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That's particularly symptomatic of Dragon Quest. At least in XV, it's possible to play for 30 minutes at a time. That's more than half of how I played it, which is probably why I haven't finished yet, among other reasons.
Of course, I guess the same could be said of any game on those platforms.
I assume that's how the VII remake will work too, ultimately.
Aside from the different art direction, it is an abridged version. Which could still be a plus! But yeah, different game.
This makes me want a FF6 remake of the same type.
...but one game at a time, this one has taken far too long as it is. And I'm still not super confident that it's going to take them huge amounts of times between each episode.
Now that they've got the major systems in place, theoretically most of the work will be on the art team, level designers, and animators. Which I think that generally goes faster in game design, from what I've heard about the industry in other places. Usually the art team gets finished on a project first and moves on to other things before all the coders and systems-tech people get done with the first thing. So for all we know, the art and level design teams could already be working on worldbuilding for episode 2 and 3.
...I played a lil bit of it on my phone. It was..fine for a phone game? The first chapter is free so you can try it out.
Sometimes there is an option for "Voice" in Sound Options. But I haven't looked recently.
Well this is FFVII, after all. The game that gave us the “king VERMIN” conversation.
kingdom hearts' english voice acting in general is SOOOOO BAAAAAAD
I cannot speak to the japanese voice acting since I don't understand japanese, maybe it's also bad, who knows
I dunno, none of it sounds bad to me. I have heard BAD VA. This is just not amazing VA. Not amazing should be fine.
At least we get translations with effort put into them now. And games that actually bother to do English VA.
Barring that sort of total disaster, another one I compare voice work to is Arc Rise Fantasia. Not terrible but aggressively mediocre at most times.
Well this game is at a disadvantage that the original had 0 voice acting and I've played it a million times. And there's already VA work for most of the characters elsewhere.
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
In the case of Final Fantasy VII, the English dub voice actors definitely got better with time and experience. Now they're starting from scratch for these particular roles.
But since English is a second language for me, even if it's the one I overwhelmingly use, I still prefer the "original" language of anything. I don't go out of my way to watch Chinese dubs of Star Trek.
Well to be fair, the Remake will be AT LEAST three games long unless they just give up at some point, so these guys will easily become the most experienced FF7 dub yet.
Yo, this is the best demo explainy video I've ever seen! The narrator sitting back at points and letting the in game audio play is much appreciated.
Barrett's not great, but it's worth remembering he was a tough guy Mr T parody for much of the first disc, and didn't get any kinda nuance until they hit Cosmo Canyon, maybe the voice work can reflect that. I'm liking new Cloud and what we've heard of Tifa and Aerith.
a lot of it is definitely on the direction quality or lack thereof, even great actors can sound like stilted space aliens with poor direction.
Director is there to make the voice is appropriate for the scene and character even if the actors themselves are working blind.
Basically, it sounds like they've got some rando white VA actor and described an inner-city accent to him where they're basically just having them sound like Mr. T from the A-Team without bothering to understand that it was just a show, not actual people. The fact that Squareenix is a Japanese company just doesn't matter for this; they're big enough and this project is big enough that it should not be a challenge to come up with decent voice actors for everybody in the main target regions, regardless of the original language. Getting a decent voice actor these days is not a big deal, and they should further take advantage of native English speakers by having them go over some of this dialogue to fix it (fuckin' nobody says "put the rubber to the road", and the way Barrett says "mako" is not how an English speaker would at all read it).
Outside of the VA work, everything else looks fantastic. The environment design, models, and music look amazing, and I thoroughly appreciate that they've kept the same enemies for the different locations and integrated them into the environment. Seeing the way combat plays out makes me less wary of the 20-30 hour game design as well. In the original, going into and out of combat, the combat itself, and the combat results screens eat up ENORMOUS amounts of game time, even with the combat speed cranked to max. In the Remake, we're seeing whole battles start and finish before the end of the first round of turns in the original game. That streamlines a ton of time bloat out of the game, which means that 20-30 hours is instead going to be filled with the fairly tight (instead of classica time-consuming) combat and story-related material. So the actual story content of this first game might actually even be comparable to the bulk of the first game, when you've cut out all the time spent hacking through ATB fights.
And the seamless transitions between battle, exploration, and cutscenes is a huge improvement to the overall feel of the game. Battles not taking place in some other dimension from the world you're in is great, not to mention the enormous amount of time saved in not having transitions and also knowing when a fight is going to happen (because you can see the enemy). Fighting through that mako reactor with that heavy techno-industrial theme is strumming some heavy nostalgia chords, but it also looks really great as it's own thing and not just as a Remake.
Finally started the game! And... is it me, or does 15 have the least epic intro to a mainline Final Fantasy ever?
One minute of jumping around through fire.
Two minutes of the king telling you "well, 'bye" as you go off on a quest that isn't defined at all until you dig through the lore in the menu.
Two minutes of pushing a stalled car (which we didn't even see break down) as we listen to the first half of "Stand By Me."
Title, then you're dumped in a redneck truck stop.
I swear, the very first Final Fantasy managed to have a more epic opening than that on NES hardware.
On the plus side, I'm tickled by a Final Fantasy taking place in a redneck truck stop.
Sorry but fuck that noise, we don't need any goddamn May-Koh reactors.
Also this is what Barret's English VA looks like:
John Bently's been in a bunch of recent blockbuster games for whatever that's worth.
I mean, I played the 1.0 version of XV. If you're playing the Royal Edition, your experience is likely to be a lot different than mine, because they patched in (for free) some new content, expanded some scenes, totally fixed one of the later chapters in the game because the original release version was so awful. And anyway, I can't speak to how you're percieving things in the Royal Edition.
But. I hated XV 1.0. Nearly everything about it. I hated the story. I hated the characters. I hated the magic system (grenades). I hated combat. I hated the car. I hated almost everything.
And yes, there is very little sense of urgency to the story. You get sent out on your own, you've got a quest to go find your lady love and marry her, but instead of doing that you just kind of romp around the countryside doing absolutely nothing at all. It's kind of a dumb game.
There were a few things I did like about it, however. I liked the camping. I liked the fishing. The fishing was the best part of that game in my opinion. I fished the shit out of that game.
It's worth remembering, for those who might not know, that in Japanese, Barret doesn't "sound" like Mr. T. He sounds like Solid Snake, that is to say, gruff and angry and mockingly dramatic. More "militaristic" than Tifa and Cloud, in any case, though next to them sounding like Solid Snake is probably not difficult. Turning him into Mr. T was a decision of the English localization team at Squaresoft and Sony Entertainment (with, presumably, everything not handled directly by Squaresoft being approved by them), and it's become memetic in the intervening twenty years. People don't really remember Tifa's "sexy walk" or Cloud's dumb-looking squats (very much), but they absolutely remember Barret waving his fist (and gun) around angrily and bellowing at people.
Squaresoft probably didn't really care at the time, or thought it was fine. The character isn't as ridiculous in Japanese, while still falling in the domain of "heroic scary black men", and it's not as though 90% of black characters in contemporaneous American video games weren't scary black men either. With that constraint in mind, I really like Beau Billingslea's performance of Barret (he's probably my favorite among the dub voice actors, frankly), but that's because I have a soft spot for him from Cowboy Bebop (where he's not playing a black character), and his frequent secondary roles with Namco, etc., all of which involve pretty much the same voice. So I forgive that personally.
XV is an extremely personal game. You kind of get that impression when you see a traveling entourage pushing a luxury sedan down a desert highway. You barely get any context for this whole dynastic monarchy that Noctis represents beyond those poorly-explained combat-heavy flash backs/flash forwards and the brief meeting between Noctis and his dad, King of Insomnia (tm). Sidney, regional gem and hilariously dressed small-town mechanic, is a more prominent character than Noctis' father.
It's all very purposeful. Though whether or not that's a good thing is up to the viewer. I hugely prefer the 20th century Earth-style Final Fantasy games, with highways and rundown convenience stores and broken down cars and hard-scraping employees wearing short shorts, that's the reason I like Final Fantasy VII to begin with. So I eat all that shit up, but it's not for everyone.