I was seeing the Unity logo on Kongregate for months, probably in slightly rapacious idle games, before I heard of it being used in commercial releases, so I know I assumed at first that it was some kind of alternative to Flash.
That was years and years ago, though.
That was definitely how I remember Unity first coming onto the scene. Kongregate even had like a promotional thing featuring games made with Unity. And yeah, most of them were pretty bad. But a couple years later people were actually managing to make some decent stuff.
So I've heard people say that Final Fantasy 15 starts getting bad around chapter nine or so, and I figured "eh, how bad can it be?" So bad. There's no real plot reason for Noct and Gladio to be at each other's throats, if I see that goddamn train one more time I'm going to scream, and the bad guy with the hilariously bad guy armor DIED OFFSCREEN BEFORE HE COULD DO ANYTHING TO AFFECT THE STORY. Now I'm stuck in a poorly-lit, never-ending generic warehouse, alone, with the guy with the obvious bad guy voice taunting me... and I'm still not sure why he decided to be a bad guy? After helping me out multiple times? And I'm really not sure what his motivation is other than to be a confusing jerk?
God, this game could have been so great if it was better-written, but holy shit.
So I've heard people say that Final Fantasy 15 starts getting bad around chapter nine or so, and I figured "eh, how bad can it be?" So bad. There's no real plot reason for Noct and Gladio to be at each other's throats, if I see that goddamn train one more time I'm going to scream, and the bad guy with the hilariously bad guy armor DIED OFFSCREEN BEFORE HE COULD DO ANYTHING TO AFFECT THE STORY. Now I'm stuck in a poorly-lit, never-ending generic warehouse, alone, with the guy with the obvious bad guy voice taunting me... and I'm still not sure why he decided to be a bad guy? After helping me out multiple times? And I'm really not sure what his motivation is other than to be a confusing jerk?
God, this game could have been so great if it was better-written, but holy shit.
The bad guy's motivation is actually pretty decent if you manage to decrypt it from what little information is given.
"Ahh, bad monsters are everywhere!"
"Don't worry everybody, I have the ability to absorb the monsters and get rid of them!"
"Yay!"
*later*
"I've absorbed all the monsters. We're safe."
"...Doesn't that make you a monster now? Ahh!"
"Burn it all down then."
That and (if I remember correctly)
I'll get my revenge by enacting this 1000 year plan to troll with this ONE descendant
It's so dumb and maybe something could've been done with it but like so much it's pushed so far into the margins that there's just so little feeling of narrative worth to it, despite the fact it should FEEL important
...I mean, if things are THIS unexplained and random after two-plus years of adding new cutscenes to make things make more sense, how were things when it was first released?
I...dunno? Man I don't remember much about it but wasn't the argument between the two about Iggy is fukn blind and you can't even wear the damn ring? And well, Noctis basically saw Luna die and is incapable to process all the shit that's going at the moment. I'd say not much will change from here until the end so if you're not having fun you're better off playing other games.
I do think it's an interesting touch that in FFXV:
The bad guy actually wins. Not temporarily, but properly. As I understood it, his grand scheme was to wipe out the family that screwed him over. Mission accomplished.
I...dunno? Man I don't remember much about it but wasn't the argument between the two about Iggy is fukn blind and you can't even wear the damn ring? And well, Noctis basically saw Luna die and is incapable to process all the shit that's going at the moment. I'd say not much will change from here until the end so if you're not having fun you're better off playing other games.
I mean, I get that the argument between them is supposed to stem from frustration over fighting the empire and Iggy and hoping Noct gets serious about helping humanity and his friends, but it's so poorly-written it comes off as ME HATE NOCT NOW.
I probably have bad taste lol. It's ok I get where you are coming from. I guess I kinda turn off my brain a bit and don't think much of this is not how people talk and go more like typical japanese shonen writing ahoy!
...I mean, if things are THIS unexplained and random after two-plus years of adding new cutscenes to make things make more sense, how were things when it was first released?
Not much changed! There's a bunch of minor scenes, but the only plot-relevant stuff is the Shiva expo dump in chapter 12, the glimps of what happened to Ravus and the Emperor in chapter 13, and a small addition to the games post credit scene. Everything else is relegated to DLC (including a dramatic reworking of the games final chapter)
I...dunno? Man I don't remember much about it but wasn't the argument between the two about Iggy is fukn blind and you can't even wear the damn ring? And well, Noctis basically saw Luna die and is incapable to process all the shit that's going at the moment. I'd say not much will change from here until the end so if you're not having fun you're better off playing other games.
I mean, I get that the argument between them is supposed to stem from frustration over fighting the empire and Iggy and hoping Noct gets serious about helping humanity and his friends, but it's so poorly-written it comes off as ME HATE NOCT NOW.
I didn't see it as hatred, but Gladio going for a tough-love approach to try and get Noct through it.
Which can work if you judge it right, and can just makes things worse if you judge it wrong.
(Gladio judged it wrong)
...I mean, if things are THIS unexplained and random after two-plus years of adding new cutscenes to make things make more sense, how were things when it was first released?
Not much changed! There's a bunch of minor scenes, but the only plot-relevant stuff is the Shiva expo dump in chapter 12, the glimps of what happened to Ravus and the Emperor in chapter 13, and a small addition to the games post credit scene. Everything else is relegated to DLC (including a dramatic reworking of the games final chapter)
I can't speak to the Royal Edition changes, but yeah that's pretty much it. They didn't even change much of Ch. 13. It still played out exactly the same narratively. The big "addition" just amounted to seeing some sections from Gladio and Ignis's POV, that's all.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I...dunno? Man I don't remember much about it but wasn't the argument between the two about Iggy is fukn blind and you can't even wear the damn ring? And well, Noctis basically saw Luna die and is incapable to process all the shit that's going at the moment. I'd say not much will change from here until the end so if you're not having fun you're better off playing other games.
I mean, I get that the argument between them is supposed to stem from frustration over fighting the empire and Iggy and hoping Noct gets serious about helping humanity and his friends, but it's so poorly-written it comes off as ME HATE NOCT NOW.
I didn't see it as hatred, but Gladio going for a tough-love approach to try and get Noct through it.
Which can work if you judge it right, and can just makes things worse if you judge it wrong.
(Gladio judged it wrong)
I think it would've worked brilliantly if Noctis called him out on it. Instead they just get pissy at each other for no real reason for like 15 minutes, and then everything goes back to normal.
IIRC everything gets back to normal like after the time skip. I think they don't get really to interact when they reunite after
rescuing Prompto
but I might be misremembering.
I "recently" got to this point, having never played before the patching.
1) Party is divided before entering the fortress 2) Prompto is kidnapped 3) You rescue Prompto after reuniting (I'm pretty sure, it was a couple months ago) 4) After the encounter with Ardyn, you return to the continent and then get the ability to time travel.
Since I actually really like the sidequests (and missed so many of them), I'm basically planning to spend several more hours in that limbo.
....I should have pretended the game ended after the Leviathan boss fight.
I feel like there's some really cool stuff there, but they did a really bad job actually telling the story and often added some very unrelated (and poorly executed) character moments that took way from it even further. I think some more frontloading of the mythos and history of the world would have done wonders. If you look up more about the history and what the actual big bad was, it's pretty rad. But you get almost none of that playing through the main game.
Thinking back to older modern FF games, you at least get introduced to one important plot point immediately - Espers and The Empire in VI, Sephiroth and Shinra in VII, Gardens in VIII, Mist and Alexandria in IX, Zanarkand and Sin in X. You may not know exactly how they all fit in, but you have an idea what they are and why they are important.
XV has very little in-game about who these nations are, why the crystal matters, and what getting armiger powers from tombs really represents. Even when XV eventually gives you some of that and gets to the Astrals, it's not very clear how they fit in or what the end goal is. It's like they took some other game concept with the open world road trip to avoid a political plot and tried to splice in some completely unrelated traditional FF-style plot points.
I enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay and the characters enough to not be bothered by the various plot holes/gaps. It isn't like my favorite FF ever (that's probably FFXIV at this point) but I hope they learn (they won't) some lessons and build (they won't) on what they did here instead of doing the usual and discarding everything on the eventual FFXVI like they did with X > XII and XII > XIII.
....I should have pretended the game ended after the Leviathan boss fight.
I feel like there's some really cool stuff there, but they did a really bad job actually telling the story and often added some very unrelated (and poorly executed) character moments that took way from it even further. I think some more frontloading of the mythos and history of the world would have done wonders. If you look up more about the history and what the actual big bad was, it's pretty rad. But you get almost none of that playing through the main game.
Thinking back to older modern FF games, you at least get introduced to one important plot point immediately - Espers and The Empire in VI, Sephiroth and Shinra in VII, Gardens in VIII, Mist and Alexandria in IX, Zanarkand and Sin in X. You may not know exactly how they all fit in, but you have an idea what they are and why they are important.
XV has very little in-game about who these nations are, why the crystal matters, and what getting armiger powers from tombs really represents. Even when XV eventually gives you some of that and gets to the Astrals, it's not very clear how they fit in or what the end goal is. It's like they took some other game concept with the open world road trip to avoid a political plot and tried to splice in some completely unrelated traditional FF-style plot points.
This calls to mind an interview with one of the developers done after it came out regarding some of the storytelling decisions in the game, bringing up the point where the characters find out about Insomnia's invasion after the fact, and Regis' death over the phone. He said that they wanted the player to basically be in Noctis' head in that kind of confusing moment. And that's basically why the story throughout the game is what it is.
It...just doesn't work though for a lot of reasons though? Probably chief among them that Noctis has about 15 seconds of screentime with his dad, and you are never actually in Insomnia until the very end of the game, so there's just no emotional connection there.
And I think that quote is so emblematic of the games issues. I think the way the game tries so hard to disengage the characters from the the world, from other characters (be they allies or antagonists even!) is so prevalent throughout and just hurts the narrative more than anything.
I enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay and the characters enough to not be bothered by the various plot holes/gaps. It isn't like my favorite FF ever (that's probably FFXIV at this point) but I hope they learn (they won't) some lessons and build (they won't) on what they did here instead of doing the usual and discarding everything on the eventual FFXVI like they did with X > XII and XII > XIII.
Based on my hands-on with both XV demos and the in-depth previews I've seen of 7R, I'm hoping XVI has a lot more 7R DNA in it than XV.
Take that opinion for what little it's worth - I've never actually played XV (full) or 7R. Pretty sure I'll never touch XV (I hate open world games and I strongly disliked the battle system in both demos), but I absolutely cannot wait for 7R, and I don't even really care that much about the FF7 nostalgia aspect. It looks like a real good vidya game.
Also I don't think we'll get XVI until after 7R is completely finished, which will probably take so long that there's a non-zero chance that XVI is their third FF MMO.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
It currently isn't in their cards. IIRC it was during one of their business calls that FFXIV is doing so good and FFXI is still bringing in money that they aren't interested in doing another MMO. Hell, FFXI is still receiving content updates despite the story being done.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Stuff like that is my nightmare and one of the reasons that I hate everything about FF7:RE on a personal level. I really worry about how much it gets in the way of the next mainline FF game.
Stuff like that is my nightmare and one of the reasons that I hate everything about FF7:RE on a personal level. I really worry about how much it gets in the way of the next mainline FF game.
It isn't their only development effort (not counting the MMO teams which are a different model anyways), but yeah. I don't get it. Make an HD version. Or just go in and make better models for everyone and leave it at that (while cleaning up the prerendered backgrounds a bit). The whole remake stuff is overkill.
I mean from a business standpoint I get why they're doing it (even if it "only" reached 50% of FF7 sales at least you have 50% guaranteed sales vs a new unknown title with no certain way to know how it'll perform) but Final Fantasy is such a mess as a brand at this point. At least from FF4-FF9 there was a certain cohesion in how they played but (despite their quality) from X onwards I'm not sure they even know what a "Final Fantasy" is.
I mean even from the other anthology RPG series (Tales and DQ) you have a decent idea what to expect from each title. I wonder if they should just reboot the brand as it is.
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
It makes me sad because so many of my favorite things in the genre no one else is even doing. So it's not really like I can get that specific fix just going somewhere else. There's always other good JRPGs that I can enjoy but nothing that brings everything to the table the FF games would bring for me.
I'm guessing the FF7 remake is pretty much the next mainline Final Fantasy, and given it's going to be episodic, Final Fantasy 16 might be a looooooong way out.
In some ways, XV felt like it was trying to be a modern VI. And in VI you get to the World of Ruin, you get to re-explore everything and seeing the world broken and in a state which is ultimately a fantasy take on post-apocalyptic.
XV has a world of ruin. But there's nothing to it. It's all just exposition from a few conversations in an instanced basecamp. You don't get to see the world as it is. And I think that was one of the biggest detriments to the game. It goes from a very slow paced stroll through the world with the bro's road trip, to this insanely fast sprint to reach the finish line. The pacing was kinda messed up.
XV probably would have been a much better game if they had put another 10-15 hours of gameplay into it in the world of ruin.
Honestly, the main problem with XV is that it felt rushed and unfinished.
The lack of world detail/lore. The sometimes terrible facial animation. The lack of flavor text for the hunts. (Could it have killed them to at least have posters that said something besides "WANTED: for habitat destruction?") The lack of really anything meaningful to discover in the map outside of quests. The pitiful weapon selection. The... just everything after the Leviathan fight. And the general lack of character development or even better-than-mediocre dialog between the four. Seriously, the only lines I remember are the ones repeated endlessly, and the best character moment by far is (twist spoilers)
when Prompto out of nowhere says he's a demon/robot/whatever, and then everyone is "we still love you, man" and while it's kinda touching IT NEVER COMES UP AGAIN OR HAS EVEN THE SLIGHTEST BEARING ON THE PLOT.
This was sold to me as a bromance. Where's the bromance? Where's the conflict? Where's the ribbing and affection? I thought this game would surely do something with the fact that these four friends are actually a prince and his retainers, and then cause conflict when he pulls rank or something ("I am your prince!"), but so little of that is there.
Which is bizarre because the game was in development for so goddamn long. Maybe the development team bit off much more than they could chew? It's depressing because the bones of a truly great experience are there, but the actual game falls well short of bringing it to life. I'd gladly have cut, say, not-Venice in exchange for a more realized world and a better endgame.
Pretty sure the prevailing theory is that XV was shoveled out as fast as possible from a near-total reboot when Nomura left the directorship. It looks as though they kept the character models, probably a bunch of other media resources, and redid everything else.
That sort of thing is almost always a recipe for disaster. I'm really surprised they threw as much money at it as they did when that was the core approach - anime episodes and a movie, for a game that was forced into existence from the corpse of a canceled project?
The whole thing is just entirely bizarre to me.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Yea the "in development for so long" doesn't really apply to a large part of it because when it switched directors it became a different game. The game we got was not the game Nomura was making.
While it's probably likely the game was completely redone after Nomura left, Nomura left two years before the game came out. Two years is a decent amount of time to put together a large AAA game when you have the head-start of a bunch of art assets. Either Tabata bit off more than he could chew or things were still in disarray when he came on board, or both.
I'm still baffled FFXV got so much support for so long after release. The patch notes almost read like something out of an always-online game, but it's single-player only. It's like Square expected people to play the game for an eternity, which doesn't happen with single-player games. The whole thingis just weird.
I got the distinct impression that all the continued support was them trying to squeeze every possible drop of blood out of the stone, in an effort to make the whole storied development of XV... mean something in the end. Almost as if the game being released and quickly forgotten about would have been worse in their eyes.
And I dunno, in my humble opinion I kind of think it worked in the end. Though even S-E eventually realized they couldn't keep the life support machine on forever, finally cutting the thing loose when they canceled that second wave of DLC.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
They spun off that multiplayer game, as if they expected it to take off like GTA Online or Red Dead Online or something.
But they never did anything with it. I never tried it cause I hated XV, but my understanding was that after they spun the multiplayer game off to be its own thing, they basically immediately dropped support for it and it was just a big empty world with a few hunts to do with your buddies.
I think the biggest issue with FF15 was the DLC. From a narrative standpoint, the mainline story absolutely assumes you've done it and a bunch of character development and story beats make zero sense without it. With the DLC, I find the story is decent. Not their best, but good enough for me to feel like I got my money's worth.
I think the biggest issue with FF15 was the DLC. From a narrative standpoint, the mainline story absolutely assumes you've done it and a bunch of character development and story beats make zero sense without it. With the DLC, I find the story is decent. Not their best, but good enough for me to feel like I got my money's worth.
And the DLC didn't even exist at launch, so people like me have never even seen that story (I gave my copy to my sister after I had beaten it, so I'll never get a chance to play it unless I re-buy the game).
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That was definitely how I remember Unity first coming onto the scene. Kongregate even had like a promotional thing featuring games made with Unity. And yeah, most of them were pretty bad. But a couple years later people were actually managing to make some decent stuff.
God, this game could have been so great if it was better-written, but holy shit.
The bad guy's motivation is actually pretty decent if you manage to decrypt it from what little information is given.
"Ahh, bad monsters are everywhere!"
"Don't worry everybody, I have the ability to absorb the monsters and get rid of them!"
"Yay!"
*later*
"I've absorbed all the monsters. We're safe."
"...Doesn't that make you a monster now? Ahh!"
"Burn it all down then."
That and (if I remember correctly)
It's so dumb and maybe something could've been done with it but like so much it's pushed so far into the margins that there's just so little feeling of narrative worth to it, despite the fact it should FEEL important
I mean, I get that the argument between them is supposed to stem from frustration over fighting the empire and Iggy and hoping Noct gets serious about helping humanity and his friends, but it's so poorly-written it comes off as ME HATE NOCT NOW.
Not much changed! There's a bunch of minor scenes, but the only plot-relevant stuff is the Shiva expo dump in chapter 12, the glimps of what happened to Ravus and the Emperor in chapter 13, and a small addition to the games post credit scene. Everything else is relegated to DLC (including a dramatic reworking of the games final chapter)
I didn't see it as hatred, but Gladio going for a tough-love approach to try and get Noct through it.
Which can work if you judge it right, and can just makes things worse if you judge it wrong.
(Gladio judged it wrong)
I can't speak to the Royal Edition changes, but yeah that's pretty much it. They didn't even change much of Ch. 13. It still played out exactly the same narratively. The big "addition" just amounted to seeing some sections from Gladio and Ignis's POV, that's all.
I think it would've worked brilliantly if Noctis called him out on it. Instead they just get pissy at each other for no real reason for like 15 minutes, and then everything goes back to normal.
but I might be misremembering.
I "recently" got to this point, having never played before the patching.
Since I actually really like the sidequests (and missed so many of them), I'm basically planning to spend several more hours in that limbo.
Things actually settle down after
After that, it's essentially back to the status quo among the bros.
....I should have pretended the game ended after the Leviathan boss fight.
I feel like there's some really cool stuff there, but they did a really bad job actually telling the story and often added some very unrelated (and poorly executed) character moments that took way from it even further. I think some more frontloading of the mythos and history of the world would have done wonders. If you look up more about the history and what the actual big bad was, it's pretty rad. But you get almost none of that playing through the main game.
Thinking back to older modern FF games, you at least get introduced to one important plot point immediately - Espers and The Empire in VI, Sephiroth and Shinra in VII, Gardens in VIII, Mist and Alexandria in IX, Zanarkand and Sin in X. You may not know exactly how they all fit in, but you have an idea what they are and why they are important.
XV has very little in-game about who these nations are, why the crystal matters, and what getting armiger powers from tombs really represents. Even when XV eventually gives you some of that and gets to the Astrals, it's not very clear how they fit in or what the end goal is. It's like they took some other game concept with the open world road trip to avoid a political plot and tried to splice in some completely unrelated traditional FF-style plot points.
This calls to mind an interview with one of the developers done after it came out regarding some of the storytelling decisions in the game, bringing up the point where the characters find out about Insomnia's invasion after the fact, and Regis' death over the phone. He said that they wanted the player to basically be in Noctis' head in that kind of confusing moment. And that's basically why the story throughout the game is what it is.
It...just doesn't work though for a lot of reasons though? Probably chief among them that Noctis has about 15 seconds of screentime with his dad, and you are never actually in Insomnia until the very end of the game, so there's just no emotional connection there.
And I think that quote is so emblematic of the games issues. I think the way the game tries so hard to disengage the characters from the the world, from other characters (be they allies or antagonists even!) is so prevalent throughout and just hurts the narrative more than anything.
Take that opinion for what little it's worth - I've never actually played XV (full) or 7R. Pretty sure I'll never touch XV (I hate open world games and I strongly disliked the battle system in both demos), but I absolutely cannot wait for 7R, and I don't even really care that much about the FF7 nostalgia aspect. It looks like a real good vidya game.
Also I don't think we'll get XVI until after 7R is completely finished, which will probably take so long that there's a non-zero chance that XVI is their third FF MMO.
Seriously.
Oh shit FFXI is almost 20 years old?! Where has time gone.
It isn't their only development effort (not counting the MMO teams which are a different model anyways), but yeah. I don't get it. Make an HD version. Or just go in and make better models for everyone and leave it at that (while cleaning up the prerendered backgrounds a bit). The whole remake stuff is overkill.
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I mean even from the other anthology RPG series (Tales and DQ) you have a decent idea what to expect from each title. I wonder if they should just reboot the brand as it is.
XV has a world of ruin. But there's nothing to it. It's all just exposition from a few conversations in an instanced basecamp. You don't get to see the world as it is. And I think that was one of the biggest detriments to the game. It goes from a very slow paced stroll through the world with the bro's road trip, to this insanely fast sprint to reach the finish line. The pacing was kinda messed up.
XV probably would have been a much better game if they had put another 10-15 hours of gameplay into it in the world of ruin.
The lack of world detail/lore. The sometimes terrible facial animation. The lack of flavor text for the hunts. (Could it have killed them to at least have posters that said something besides "WANTED: for habitat destruction?") The lack of really anything meaningful to discover in the map outside of quests. The pitiful weapon selection. The... just everything after the Leviathan fight. And the general lack of character development or even better-than-mediocre dialog between the four. Seriously, the only lines I remember are the ones repeated endlessly, and the best character moment by far is (twist spoilers)
This was sold to me as a bromance. Where's the bromance? Where's the conflict? Where's the ribbing and affection? I thought this game would surely do something with the fact that these four friends are actually a prince and his retainers, and then cause conflict when he pulls rank or something ("I am your prince!"), but so little of that is there.
Which is bizarre because the game was in development for so goddamn long. Maybe the development team bit off much more than they could chew? It's depressing because the bones of a truly great experience are there, but the actual game falls well short of bringing it to life. I'd gladly have cut, say, not-Venice in exchange for a more realized world and a better endgame.
That sort of thing is almost always a recipe for disaster. I'm really surprised they threw as much money at it as they did when that was the core approach - anime episodes and a movie, for a game that was forced into existence from the corpse of a canceled project?
The whole thing is just entirely bizarre to me.
I'm still baffled FFXV got so much support for so long after release. The patch notes almost read like something out of an always-online game, but it's single-player only. It's like Square expected people to play the game for an eternity, which doesn't happen with single-player games. The whole thingis just weird.
And I dunno, in my humble opinion I kind of think it worked in the end. Though even S-E eventually realized they couldn't keep the life support machine on forever, finally cutting the thing loose when they canceled that second wave of DLC.
But they never did anything with it. I never tried it cause I hated XV, but my understanding was that after they spun the multiplayer game off to be its own thing, they basically immediately dropped support for it and it was just a big empty world with a few hunts to do with your buddies.
And the DLC didn't even exist at launch, so people like me have never even seen that story (I gave my copy to my sister after I had beaten it, so I'll never get a chance to play it unless I re-buy the game).