Final Fantasy XIII

[Newtype]

XIII isn’t a big, open, explorable world. It’s a series of discrete maps that you run through and forget about entirely, once you’re the hell out of there.

 

There are (so far) six playable characters, and the game swaps them in and out with reckless abandon. One moment you’re adventuring with Lightning and Sazh from the demo, the next you’re following the adventures of Vanilla and Hope. The game keeps coming up with more-and-more-contrived rationales (plane crash!) to split your party into different groups.

 

You can have up to three characters in your party, but only when the game says so. And here’s the real kicker: You only control one of them during battle, and you don’t even get to pick who that is. At least for the first 17 hours, you only control whoever the game tells you to, and the computer picks up the slack on the rest.

 

There are almost no towns, nonplayable characters to chat up, extra side missions, hidden sequences, fancy equipment to save up for and buy, or reasons to run around and grind enemies for extra level-ups. Heck, there’s no need to even wonder what to do next.

 

Forget Spirits Within and Advent Children: Final Fantasy XIII for PlayStation 3 is the best Final Fantasy movie ever.

 

The polar opposite of Final Fantasy XII’s MMORPG-like open questing; indeed, there is not a town to be seen anywhere, and shopping is handled through the sterile interface of the save points.

 

Glimpses of later maps in the hint book seem to indicate this linearity persists to the very end – it is a wonder the game even bothers with a map.

 

Further fueling the suspicion that the game has been dumbed down to remedial level is the fact that several key gameplay elements remain locked even after 8 hours of playtime, and the game only sees fit to fully enable its leveling system after 4 hours.

 

One less game to buy next year.

[Iambaytor]

...sadness

[bishopcruz]

I'll give it a try, people hated on FFXII with abandon just because it was different. Maybe this will work. I'm not particularly hopeful from the sounds of things, and the lack of towns and exploration makes worry, but I have yet to play a completely awful FF. Even 8 only sucked in comparison to the rest of the series.

[The NZA]

i hurd they had to take out alla towns cause of that xbot version derp derp

 

i typically play FF for some kind of story that hopefully doesnt shit on itsefl in the final hour or so. i cant say ive overly-explored one since when they were 2D, so seeing as how nothing's being said on story or presentation yet. im still happily on board.

[Maldron]

i hurd they had to take out alla towns cause of that xbot version derp derp

 

i typically play FF for some kind of story that hopefully doesnt shit on itsefl in the final hour or so. i cant say ive overly-explored one since when they were 2D, so seeing as how nothing's being said on story or presentation yet. im still happily on board.

 

Eh. It's like, at this point, I feel obligated to get it, the same way I felt obligated to that borechore high-end lagfest XII.

 

Even Persona recognized their mistake with one-character control from 3 and changed it in 4. The fact that they didn't learn that it wasn't what people wanted makes me sad.

[The NZA]

so, let's look at a less one-sided (and fever-induced) take on the game so far, courtesy of Kotaku.

 

 

 

The more important thing to understand is that, the very first time you access a save point (contextualized in-game as a kind of nifty holographic computer terminal thing), the three options are "Save" "Shop" and "Quit." "Quit" doesn't mean "quit the game" — it means quit the save point menu. "Save" means save the game. "Shop" means — yes, enter the shop.

 

So, there's your first clue: You shop from the save point menus. Whoa. Have you solved the mystery yet?

 

Here it comes — I'll be gentle: No towns.

 

You gasp! Sadly, the only towns you see in the first great big chunk of Final Fantasy XIII are destroyed, dilapidated, filled with monsters. The major story MacGuffin is intimately tied to this floating Utopia called Cocoon, which some religious organization sees fit to regularly purge of shady individuals, so in order for this story to work, basically no towns in the "outside" world is kind of a given. Of course, the existence of a utopia doesn't precisely guarantee that all the world outside said utopia consist of straight lines in which large objects regularly fall, obstructing the path backward. Though there's a reason for that, too.

 

 

Final Fantasy XIII as: Something New

Square-Enix have no doubt done "The Research," and the numbers have come up in favor of "Players like seeing new things." The choice, then, was to drip-feed the players new things, or to bombard them with new things. The producers of Final Fantasy XIII bet on bombardment. Final Fantasy XIII is an impish ghoul standing atop a cliff, rolling boulders of fun down on the heads of unsuspecting players. Once I, personally, learned to stop worrying and love my own willingness to forgive Final Fantasy XIII for not having any towns, I came to applaud the ballsiness of it all. They are taking a genuine risk with this game. Does it pay off? Well, yes — after about eight hours. We're going to get to that in a minute.

 

Let's be as positive as possible for a minute: No towns means that the story doesn't ever stop and stick. It means no wandering around a town, talking to every NPC until the least likely one gives you the perfect piece of information you need to proceed. No towns means that no caves to the north of town that are locked and inaccessible until you talk to that least likely NPC who tells you that there's a cave to the north full of monsters. With no towns, all actions in the game are seamlessly linked to the story. We are moving forward. Why are we moving forward? Because the enemy is behind us. Why are they behind us? Because they don't like us. Or: Because we miraculously managed to escape in the first place. Why the need to escape; how did it all get started? The chase is so exciting, after a point, that we don't bother answering this question.

 

Square-Enix's market research must have yielded the result that fans' favorite parts of RPGs are the fighting, the dungeons, the interactions between the characters, and big-budget cut-scenes. By cutting out the towns and focusing on dungeons and fights, they give the game a breathless and relentless pace. They also make the cut-scenes feel more plentiful and closer-between. In short, funneling the player down one straight path gives the game developers more (and bigger) opportunities for entertainment. Also, there's the "artificial" "difficulty" issue — have you ever gotten stuck in an RPG because you didn't know where to go or what to do, probably because the game developers didn't signpost it clearly enough? Well, that won't happen in Final Fantasy XIII.

 

....everyone getting that? the lack of towns is plot-based, not lazy design. this is (apparently) square, after taking a beating for doing something new in FF XII...continuing to try to break the formula they helped create. i gotta say, im not sure if they'll pull it off based on this alone, but again, im very much down for the ride.

let's continue.

 

Now, to be negative: It feels empty. Without some concrete clues that there is a world worth saving, this weird, headache-like feeling of nihilism falls down over the experience like a curtain of ash. You start to feel like the janitor at Disney World — sweeping up empty Coke bottles beneath motionless symbols of dead splendor. I suppose this is a positive as well — the game exudes atmosphere and hokey tension; the "world worth saving," as embodied in a floating utopia seen mostly in beautiful CG cut-scenes, is less a thing we know and more a thing we believe in. The game suspends your disbelief in a religion-like way. It's kind of neat, after a while, and as the characters inevitably whine their little heads off, you think, hey, I'd be [i am] whining, too. Then there's the no-freedom-like no backtracking thing: Is this the game telling you not to look back, encouraging you to enjoy the story as presented, or is it the developers fearing that to let you linger is to potentially kill your interest in the game?

 

some of my favorite RPGs feel empty/isolating, this would again be new for the series. it sounds like he's speaking to the pacing, though, and experience here tells me a lot of what the game's remembered for is how said pacing holds up in the 11th hour.

 

the characters get discussed a bit - i skimmed this, as im really trying to stay in the dark with games im already sold on - but FF protagonists have not been a strong point for a while now, so i was happy with this:

 

 

Thankfully, there's Lightning. She is the best parts of Cloud, the best parts of Squall, the best parts of Auron, the best parts of Terra, and none of the bad parts of any of those characters. She's tough and she's hot. She is liquid-hotrogen. She isn't annoying or brooding at all! And she just keeps punching Snow in the face every time he says something dumb. You go girl! She is sympathetic to Hope, which is interesting, because you'd think she'd consider him as unbearable a little twerp as we do. That she has a little sister — the aforementioned tiny girl who has a romantic relationship with Snow — who she cares for quite deeply is even more interesting. She's not the cold jerk she could have been. The fans wouldn't have cared if she was a jerk, too. They like jerks. What Lightning represents is actual effort. Also, what were those things that lightning comes out of again? Oh, right — clouds.

 

@ said plot, and pacing:

 

The biggest, most negative thing I can say, however, is that it takes to long to drop the first plot bombshells. Every hour or so, something pops up that makes you think, "Oh, that's it? That's what this game is about?" And then you plod forward half-disappointed, half-hoping that there's something bigger. Then it gives you something incrementally bigger. Then you plod forward again. It's like this:

 

Cut scene —> Would you like to save? —> Cut-scene —> Walk forward five minutes, fight some monsters —> Save point —> Cut scene —> Boss —> Cut-scene —> Would you like to save?

 

That goes on for maybe the first twelve hours. If you like Metal Gear Solid, you won't complain. If you like Final Fantasy VI or VII, it's going to feel like a toothache.

 

again: something quite different. im hopeful this will somehow avoid the traditionally anticlimactic endgame, where said pacing falls apart? anyway.

 

there's a bunch after that on the cmbat system, and how having infinite MP doesnt make the game easier somehow. but here's what i came for:

 

Final Fantasy XIII as: The Sequel to Final Fantasy XII The biggest criticism of the game among those who have just started playing it is that you "only control one character." This is an unfortunate criticism, mostly because it's true. However, it's about as valid as the first major criticism of Final Fantasy XII: that there are too many enemies to fight, and choosing "fight" for all of them just takes too much time. This is because the game wanted you to use the Gambit system to program your allies' AI.

 

Years after Final Fantasy XII, the Japanese gamers still regard it unfairly as an atrocity, in that it made people motion-sick, that the characters were ineffectual, and that the battles were tiresome and confusing at worst and boring, tangentially interactive experiences at best. (NZA side-note: japanese gamers irrelevant to world scene for nearly a decade now, news at 11).

 

 

Final Fantasy XIII features a much slower field-map camera, which moves at a much more human-head-like speed. The characters are all bottom-up-constructed cosplayers' dreams come true who are carefully and minutely constructed such that each character will be someone's favorite character. And the battles try admirably hard to be like classic Final Fantasy while also not completely ignoring the objective triumph of Final Fantasy XII's amazing, breezy, sticky, frictive conflicts. The Optima Change System makes you feel far more connected to and alive with the characters than the Gambit System did, probably because it requires you to press buttons every once in a while. The Gambit System, love it as I do, turns Final Fantasy XII into a kind of virtual pet: Wind it up and watch it go. Final Fantasy XIII gives you a button to press to change tactics, and then carefully constructs all manner of battles that exploit every nook and cranny of the mechanics. It's hard to explain exactly how a boss battle flows in Final Fantasy XIII. Suffice it to say that, after a point, the system clicks and you are In The Zone. You are Dodging Asteroids and Shooting Aliens at the same time. You are scoring four stars out of five at the end of a battle, sighing, and saying, "Yeah, I guess I deserved that." How do you know you deserved it? What has the game done to you? Who knows. It's got you, though.

 

so, 25 hours in impression:

 

 

 

Love:

 

The Music: Masashi Hamauzu's score is constantly effervescent and inventive. It's always doing something new. The battle themes are some of the best videogame music since Chrono Cross. People might not like XIII's music as much as the music in some of the other Final Fantasy games because it's clearly not bombastic or pop-song-like enough. Bombastic, pop-song-like music is great, though so is deep, complex, well-produced, musician-like stuff like this. Hamauzu is a talented musician, not just a "videogame music composer," and the quality of the tracks is staggering when you also consider their volume.

 

The Graphics: My god, I want to eat everyone's hair.

 

The Math: Some boss battles will make you feel like a genius.

 

The Structure of the Story: Every once in a while, the game's not about "I wonder what's going to happen?" — it's about "I wonder what already happened before the beginning of the plot to explain why I should care about that thing that just happened?" I am putting this under "love" (note present tense) because, if nothing else, it's a lot better than "I hate these people, I hope they all die, and I don't even care if they don't."

 

Hate:

 

Whiners: I want to punch that little kid in the face. I go into every cut-scene hoping someone decks him, lays him out, lambastes him.

 

Vanille's arms: Why the hell are they so short? They're not even long enough to untie her pigtails. I pray they don't "explain" the length of her arms in a poignant cut scene at some point.

 

Having a Fever: Why are the words "Optima Change" literally visible on the screen at all times during the battles? I know I can press the L1 button to open my Optima Change menu! Stop crowding my Cinematic Action Movie Like Videogame Battle Experience with your Stupid Buzzwords! . . . . . . and several (infinite) other hot-headed complaints accessible only to people who are playing a game with lots of small text and flipping, flying numerals through throbbing skull pain.

 

/sold. check out the full article if you're inclined - dont know about everyone else, but ive got plans for march.

[Iambaytor]

I want to remain positive, but that article sounded mildly desperate. Then again I sat on XII for 2 years and then played it and realized it's the best game in the entire series that isn't Final Fantasy 6. I will most likely get this when it is ultra cheap, I haven't hated one yet (though I came dangerously close with 5 and 11) so I'll wait on this. If it doesn't do it for me then I'll just have to wait for Final Fantasy MMORPG-Wankfest Part 2 to pass on and move on to 15 I suppose.

[The NZA]

see, aside from the obvious rants/fever-induced madness, im not sure what strikes you as desperate.

 

again though, im a fan of progressive JRPGs. if we dont tweak the formula and try new shit, we dont get FF XIIs or Earthbounds or any of that, we get creative teams too scared to stop listening to the fans who want the same game redone for several decades (m looking at you, dragon quest). if everything here has gone to shit and we're on the run from i-dont-know-what that already sounds bold for an FF...and again, i just hope it delivers in the end.

 

i cant even be optimistic about FF XIII Versus yet, as ive still not seen enough footage to believe its more than an elaborate screensaver.

[Iambaytor]

Let's be as positive as possible for a minute: No towns means that the story doesn't ever stop and stick. It means no wandering around a town, talking to every NPC until the least likely one gives you the perfect piece of information you need to proceed. No towns means that no caves to the north of town that are locked and inaccessible until you talk to that least likely NPC who tells you that there's a cave to the north full of monsters. With no towns, all actions in the game are seamlessly linked to the story. We are moving forward. Why are we moving forward? Because the enemy is behind us. Why are they behind us? Because they don't like us. Or: Because we miraculously managed to escape in the first place. Why the need to escape; how did it all get started? The chase is so exciting, after a point, that we don't bother answering this question.

 

That whole paragraph just makes me cringe. They're trying to justify a bad idea by saying it takes away from something that never bothered anybody in the first place. Now I can see the point that it stops those invitable "What the fuck do I do now?" moments, but this game is sounding less and less like a new progressive turn for the series and more like the first 2 hours of Final Fantasy X stretched out to a full-length game.

 

Besides, I like that they want to keep the series constantly changing so as to stay fresh but would it kill them to at least let us get at least a little tired of it first. (With the exceptions of 2 and 5 where you get tired of the system immediately)

[Thelogan]

I played this game 5 years ago, it was called The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age and it wasn't that good.

 

The town-less "RPG on rails" isn't really an innovative new concept.

 

I'll prob'ly end up playing this, but it doesn't really sound that great to me. I'm not excited anymore.

[The NZA]

That whole paragraph just makes me cringe. They're trying to justify a bad idea by saying it takes away from something that never bothered anybody in the first place. Now I can see the point that it stops those invitable "What the fuck do I do now?" moments, but this game is sounding less and less like a new progressive turn for the series and more like the first 2 hours of Final Fantasy X stretched out to a full-length game.

 

guess its just me (possibly bish?) that played JRPGs to death in the day, but yes, having to talk to specific townsperson/NPC to advance plot was a problem for a long time, man. still rears its ugly, trying-to-pretend-its-not-linear head from time to time.

 

again, if FF = exploration mostly for you (and it didnt for me, again, for many years now, though XII was a different story), i get it. but considering i usually come for story/plot (hopefully some character, but again, this series is usually stingy and only does so for a few of your team), this sounds like its aiming to give that while, again, trying to do something different about the horrible pacing problem the series has had at least since VII, for me.

 

Besides, I like that they want to keep the series constantly changing so as to stay fresh but would it kill them to at least let us get at least a little tired of it first. (With the exceptions of 2 and 5 where you get tired of the system immediately)

 

*shrugs* im plenty tried. the only discouraging thing for me here is that the combat system - while it sounds interesting and i cant wait to try it - still has its roots in tired-ass Active Time Battle. we've literally been at that a few decades now.

 

I played this game 5 years ago, it was called The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age and it wasn't that good.

 

The town-less "RPG on rails" isn't really an innovative new concept.

 

I'll prob'ly end up playing this, but it doesn't really sound that great to me. I'm not excited anymore.

 

me, i'm gonna give it a go before jumping on the trendy hate-wagon of anti-hype, but im kooky like that.

fun fact: Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, as i recall, didnt really have much towns either, and that was better than almost half this series.

i love how a linear RPG makes its linearity known, and takes out random areas of NPCs repeating banal dialogue in favor of plot/atmosphere consistency, and nobody's on board for it. this right here might be part of the reason why the genre's not gotten very far in a long, long time.

[The NZA]

...alright, my snark's not helping. let me get specific...we'll use FF VIII, since its popular, despite being largely crappy.

 

FF VIII prolly took a good 60 hours. many of those were just me taking steps, watching a load screen, jamming on the X button until victory, etc. i only remember one or two boss fights, because they were kinda cool/stood out.

i remember absolutely none of the locales past Balamb Gardens, and even less of what NPCs had to say. I actually have to go check the wiki to remember certain characters' names, as they played no real role in the game for me...i liked Quistis, but past the school, she had no reason to be there. Even less so for Selphie or Zell, i thought.

 

what i do remember, however (aside from the awful plot twist and last-minute villain) are scenes like hijacking a train, which i recall doing with a slight sense of urgency...or the finale of disc 1, the assassinate Edea mission. or that braveheart-esque battle at Balamb (sp?) garden when it got invaded by blue guys on motorcycles or something. i wish there was more of that in the game. i also remember the ballroom dance and the forced romance it turned into by disc 3 or so, with a series of CG's showing how love can make you breath in space or some shit, but let's not focus on that.

 

...what im saying is i can piece together a few hours of CG's/events, tops. most of the towns, i recall they had nice environments (and the OST was good there) but they were entirely forgettable, much less anything anyone had to say about losing their dog or something.

 

so, if this FF is looking to stress plot via racing forward (and opposite with flashbacks) rather than putting the main point of the adventure in the backseat like is often the formula - plus, we get what could possibly be a memorable protagonist, even XII didnt have that! - i again point out my confusion at how these are bad things.

if any of you visited any section in VIII that made up for time compression or that orphanage bullshit, please point me there, i can dig up a save file and try to redeem that title sometime.

 

*edit: here's a few quotes from people playing the import right now.

 

The world in FFXIII is really, really well realized. The story itself might not center on a lot of the details, but you can see and hear it all around. As you play through each area, and as the story progresses and the characters talk about the various things they know, I feel the worldview is explained really well. Everything has a purpose in the world, even if in terms of gameplay and purpose to the story they are just a background detail or a "filler" area.

 

There's a lot of detail in the areas which are very consistent with what they're supposed to represent and function as, and Gran Pulse is definitely completely different from Cocoon in terms of concept, visual design, and ecology/technology. I find it all really interesting because the worldview in FFXIII is pretty unique and alien, and as such it's interesting to learn more about the world and the people and animals which exist in it. The enemy design is really good too, with a definitely clear lineage difference in concept design for what should exist on Cocoon, and what exists on Pulse, and why.

 

For those of you who are extremely far in the game, does the linearity ever relent? I know FFX was super linear but eventually the game did open up towards the end. was wondering if that is happening with XIII as well.

 

yes

 

there's a lot about the presentation and really awesome settings, some diagreements about plot/story (its loved or absolutely hated thus far) but im trying to bypass those for spoilers/waiting to see how it is translated.

[Newtype]

I'll just jack your copy when your done.

[The NZA]

wait, then i gotta jack your 3D Dot Heroes, good sir.

[Newtype]

wait, then i gotta jack your 3D Dot Heroes, good sir.

 

No deal.

 

The more I hear about this game the less I want to play it.

[The NZA]

you're gonna end up playing it eventually anyway, might as well accept it. everything you've posted so far has been from people who played less than 10 hours of it, as i understand it.

 

 

ima borrow 3D Dot Heroes when you're done either way sir, no skin offa my back. but if this turns out good, im gonna sell it harder than george pushed KOTOR.

 

[Newtype]

Interviews with the Final Fantasy XIII development team appear to have yielded some surprising revelations, including the admission that the game’s linear structure was due in large part to the trouble inherent in designing towns in a “high definition” manner it was too much work.

 

Learning that it was due at least in part to the hassle of designing cities with good graphics suggests Square Enix may be severely out of its depth, particularly considering most world class developers have no trouble designing games with cities aplenty.

[Iambaytor]

...Wow. This game is a locomotive careening off a cliff in slow motion, I may sit on this longer than I did Final Fantasy XII and I just picked that up last year.

[The NZA]

you've got to be kidding me. alex, that's coming from a forum with one dead link and another points to a japanese amazon listing...meaning, nothing. this is what sites did when kojima said MGS4 could be done on the 360, and crap headlines like "PORT INEVITABLE?!!1" came from it. ugh, this is why no one takes gaming journalism seriously.

 

newt did well not to cite that tripe - that's gotta be some of the worst n4g fanboy drivel ive seen on this game yet. even the negative reviews overseas - the ones in the 9's - still cite how breathtaking the game is, how the combat engine is the best the series has seen, and the atmosphere - both early on when its linear and later on when the game opens up due to its plot.

 

if you're not even looking at gameplay videos, but looking to FUD to reaffirm your weird preconceived notions, go nuts. people who've actually played the game so far have said exactly the opposite...you might as well just have cited this and been done with it.

 

*edit: holy shit, its worse than i thought. that "translation" came from Sankaku Complex. if you're not aware of the "quality" of their traditional fan-baiting mistranslations....let's just say they make kotaku look fair & balanced and leave it at that.

[Visitant]

...are you kidding me? how far did you play into XII? honestly, that was the best storyline since VI. VIII was crap, by the way.

 

I love you so fucking hard right now. Manlove aside, I am looking forward to this since i've braved damn near anything with a FF name since I was little. I am REALLY curious about Versus though; I might enjoy it more than the main story but I am willing to give both a chance. I mean hell, neither of them have Squall in it so that's a good start.

[Mr. Sexy Hat]

I haven't touched and FF game since i threw my copy of 10 into the bin. But for some reason I want this game but i don't know why...

 

Do you guys get any good pre order stuff with this?

EB Games in Aus all they have is a FFX11 calender.... Its mid way through Feburary for fucks sake.

[Newtype]

And I believe every word of it because it's also the reason why Doj isn't getting his FF VII remake.

[The NZA]

ah, good - another PSU link with a "translation" it doesnt bother citing/linking to. they ban this kinda stuff on GAF for that reason...what did come through that i read was Nomura saying it wasnt in development at this time, which makes sense since his studio should be working on Versus and like 2 Kingdom Hearts games i imagine.

 

look, you're welcome to pass up on what looks to be one of the series' more exciting entries for whatever reason you've decided, but posting FUD does nothing more than convince baytor it's ok to stay 5 years behind the curve or something. i mean, look at this: here's what i totally just read somewhere on the internet to be the next design for the ps3, as was illustrated in a top-secret interview with Kaz which i will not link to:

 

 

uncited sources say its got 5 and a half HDMI's, 2 Cells and a blast processing chip. i just canceled my FF XIII preorder to put money down on 12 of these.

 

Sexy Hat - far as ive seen, theyve not yet announced the pre-order/LE bonuses, if there are gonna be any. im hopeful, as ive read the OST is really good and i imagine that might be tossed in there. we'll see.

 

ps anyone who thinks the FF VII remake isnt coming one day when the development schedule is freed up isnt paying attention to how much square's making off of ports. that makes as much sense as saying a team of over 300 programmers and millions in their budget left out towns early on due to "laziness".

[Newtype]

Maybe if they didn't start work on FFXIII on the PS2 and waited for next gen this wouldn't be a problem.

[The NZA]

...that's not even a complaint, though. this thing's been in development for years now, and this is what it currently looks like:

 

Video Games | Final Fantasy XIII | Import Preview HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

 

Video Games | Final Fantasy XIII | International Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

 

yeah, that looks lazy. like, Uncharted 2 lazy.

look, for whatever reason - it went to the 360, you dont like what some fanboy said about it, etc - you decided to pass it up, and no review or sense will sway you. fair enough, but again, nonsense like that belongs on gamefaqs forums, right next to the "MASS EFFECT ON PS3!?!11" articles.

 

ps here's a sample from the OST:

 

Video Games | Final Fantasy XIII | Japanese Sountrack Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii