IGN FF16 review is almost like a critique of FF14's own issues

[CStrife912]

Well that's what I'm saying too, they took the worst parts of both sides. They could've just gone crazy and no shame grabbed a bunch of models to fill the world. But they decided it'd be best to have a world with mostly repeating monsters AND still have taken from older titles. So it doesn't make a lot of sense here. There's plenty of non-weird creatures to fill out a world of FF.

Also, personal opinion - But I don't really think "Dark Medieval" is a good excuse to not provide variety. So they think Medieval is just Orcs, Goblins, and Humans? It's played out, dull, weak.. We have those garbage pile medieval games all over the place.. FF is good because variety, not because Orcs and Goblins.

I agree it shouldn't be an excuse but I am just spitballing at what they were probably going with....I mean its heavily western high fantasy focused so orcs, goblins and humans sort of play out close to that. I don't think we have had high fantasy medieval games in quite some time unless you can refer me to some cause by all means its one of my fav settings lol I could always play more games set in that sort of time period.

[RitsukoSonoda]

In regards to lack of monster variety. This seems to be an industry trend with large companies where they try to push extreme details resulting in an exponential increase in time spent doing 1 single model compared to past games. It also results in an exponential increase to file size compared to past games resulting in most AAA games easily hitting 100 or so GB in size at launch and getting bigger as DLC is added later. A number of titles going well beyond 100GB in size at launch as well.

I'd expect FF16 to get at least 1 DLC later due to in game references to lands beyond the Twins and the absence of a water element Eikon when the game lore said there were 8 Eikons due to there being 1 for each element. Typically from looking at the franchise history the missing water Eikon would have been Leviathan. Also looking at random NPCs it shows water and ice aren't the same as people use water crystals to do things like conjure water for wells while they use ice crystals to freeze perishable food. Also it kind of seemed like there should be 1 mother crystal for each element as well.

[R041]

In regards to lack of monster variety. This seems to be an industry trend with large companies where they try to push extreme details resulting in an exponential increase in time spent doing 1 single model compared to past games. It also results in an exponential increase to file size compared to past games resulting in most AAA games easily hitting 100 or so GB in size at launch and getting bigger as DLC is added later. A number of titles going well beyond 100GB in size at launch as well.

I'd expect FF16 to get at least 1 DLC later due to in game references to lands beyond the Twins and the absence of a water element Eikon when the game lore said there were 8 Eikons due to there being 1 for each element. Typically from looking at the franchise history the missing water Eikon would have been Leviathan. Also looking at random NPCs it shows water and ice aren't the same as people use water crystals to do things like conjure water for wells while they use ice crystals to freeze perishable food. Also it kind of seemed like there should be 1 mother crystal for each element as well.

It's a good excuse.. Until you compare it to the FFVII:R bestiary. Also you notice the constant duplicates, because XVI throws like 20 at you at a time, where VII:R is more sparsely paced. I do know they were talking about pushing the game to 2 discs because of space, but I'm pretty sure most of that was cutscene stuff, environments, music, and voicelines. Audio files are very expensive. I'd be curious to see someone rip it and see what file types used what space.

I still don't think I consider Akashic as separate versions, so it kinda comes out to about half the bestiary.

[RitsukoSonoda]

It's a good excuse.. Until you compare it to the FFVII:R bestiary. Also you notice the constant duplicates, because XVI throws like 20 at you at a time, where VII:R is more sparsely paced. I do know they were talking about pushing the game to 2 discs because of space, but I'm pretty sure most of that was cutscene stuff, environments, music, and voicelines. Audio files are very expensive. I'd be curious to see someone rip it and see what file types used what space.

I still don't think I consider Akashic as separate versions, so it kinda comes out to about half the bestiary.

Reskins/colors honestly aren't anything new in games. We got them back in the beginning days of the NES. If you only counted unique sprites/models you'd find every bestiary to be considerably smaller. Granted on those older titles they do have a much larger amount of unique sprites/models to begin with. In regards to the FF7 remake games they've basically already got a template for the design already from the original game.

[R041]

Reskins/colors honestly aren't anything new in games. We got them back in the beginning days of the NES. If you only counted unique sprites/models you'd find every bestiary to be considerably smaller. Granted on those older titles they do have a much larger amount of unique sprites/models to begin with. In regards to the FF7 remake games they've basically already got a template for the design already from the original game.

Totally - I'm not saying reskins are new. I also work on game art and know how that goes. It's just their initial set BEFORE the reskins happen, is very limited.

Also I don't know what you mean about a template from the original game.. Are you talking about the fact that VII:R had pre-existing ideas for creatures?
Then sure. So does XVI with all past FF titles. Like I said again, they have such an expansive library to choose from. They DID pick from some, and even did direct model rips.. But they didn't do enough. That can be said for any new FF releasing to be honest. There's decades of ideas.

But what I'm talking about here are unique assets, not just the ideas. Like how the Eikons are pulled from existing FF ideas and tropes, but are new designs. Hope that gives better context.

Also Akashic, although a reskin - Felt kinda lazy you know? Like I don't usually mind reskins in general. But you just take all of the existing monsters, give them a material overlay and call it good for 2x the monsters. I've never liked that in literally any game. It just sucks, and it's always lazy. They could have reskinned them to look DIFFERENT, or shown how they actually changed. Instead of just adding glowy eyes and a material overlay. It's not good, it's never been good in games. They took the lazy way out in like 90% of this game.

Edit: Sometimes I feel like CBU:III is a team that wants to prove they can cut costs, and some things tend to really suffer for it. Because they often put more effort into spectacle and sell-ability than they do actual gameplay.

[CStrife912]

There is one aspect I’d love to know but doubt we ever would and it would sort of merge into what you’ve said. I would love to see a comparative budget between 15, 7 remake and 16 because it seems 16 managed to be way more efficient in terms of announcement to release compared to the other 2 especially 15 (im not including movie, anime and dlc just the core 10 year late game) I’m wondering if S-E gave them a smaller budget hence some decisions or if they had a blank cheque and this was the result. I know the company would be on edge after the massive investment into 15 to 7 remake which both suffered multiple issues (7 remake now has direction and focus so they are now efficient with part 3 and hopefully part 3)

[RitsukoSonoda]

Edit: Sometimes I feel like CBU:III is a team that wants to prove they can cut costs, and some things tend to really suffer for it. Because they often put more effort into spectacle and sell-ability than they do actual gameplay.

Honestly if you look at the evolution of AAA titles it feels a majority of them focus their efforts into spectacle and sell-ability than actual gameplay and substance. Add to it that they also appear to be homogenizing across companies as they have been prone to trying to copy what worked for X other game that was successful.

[TheDecay]

Honestly if you look at the evolution of AAA titles it feels a majority of them focus their efforts into spectacle and sell-ability than actual gameplay and substance. Add to it that they also appear to be homogenizing across companies as they have been prone to trying to copy what worked for X other game that was successful.

There's plenty of actual gameplay in Elden Ring, God of War, Resident Evil, etc.

Even disasters like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor or Cyberpunk 2077 have more gameplay than FF16.

When you look at what wins Game of the Year awards, it's almost always games with a lot of gameplay, like Elden Ring and GoW. In the past two decades, there are only one or two times when a game that wasn't gameplay-heavy wins multiple GOTY accolades and both of them are TLOU1/2.

And in this year, we had Hogwarts Legacy and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, both of which had more gameplay than FF16, although Hogwarts was shallower than FF16. We will also soon have Starfield which will probably have significant amounts of gameplay.

The spectacle-over-gameplay philosophy is really only limited to a few studios and publishers, SE being one.

While the trend you are describing may be correct, Square Enix is not following the same trend as other publishers, they are far worse. Final Fantasy games are 100% the Marvel movies of RPGs/action games.

[RitsukoSonoda]

However when you compare the substance and gameplay from older games in franchises like God of War you see that those too have been trimmed to be more linear over time. Elden Ring was a case of the opposite scenario of refining and expanding on past titles as a Souls Game by applying the formula to an actual open world. Jedi Survivor is just the 2nd entry in that Jedi Souls type of game and Hogwarts Legacy was a stand alone game. They had to put more effort into things like their gameplay because they don't have a legacy built on the game's title to fall on yet. Cyberpunk2077 for the most part was just glitchy though combat aspects were found to have been trimmed or removed that were showcased in the tech demos they revealed at games events before it's launch.

Starfield I'll hold out on for a bit. I never bothered buying an Xbox X/S and Bethesda announced an "exclusive partnership" with AMD for the PC port which in the past has indicated titles not having support for Nvidia or Intel GPU specific optimizations. Kinda sad TBH because the first year or so of Bethesda titles tend to be the most interesting with all the bugs and glitches. And Bethesda saying it will be the most glitch free launch they will have ever done on a game doesn't mean much to me as that could still be more than any other buggy recent launch. :P

The primary issue IMO with FF16 is the actual game being designed as an action game. There isn't anything substantial enough to call it an RPG of any kind. Linear action games have a story and cast and generally give as many build options or more to players to progress and complete the game with. It's a switch as drastic as if the MCU decided to turn the next Avengers movie into a romcom harem anime.

[TheDecay]

Totally - I'm not saying reskins are new. I also work on game art and know how that goes. It's just their initial set BEFORE the reskins happen, is very limited.

Also I don't know what you mean about a template from the original game.. Are you talking about the fact that VII:R had pre-existing ideas for creatures?
Then sure. So does XVI with all past FF titles. Like I said again, they have such an expansive library to choose from. They DID pick from some, and even did direct model rips.. But they didn't do enough. That can be said for any new FF releasing to be honest. There's decades of ideas.

But what I'm talking about here are unique assets, not just the ideas. Like how the Eikons are pulled from existing FF ideas and tropes, but are new designs. Hope that gives better context.

Also Akashic, although a reskin - Felt kinda lazy you know? Like I don't usually mind reskins in general. But you just take all of the existing monsters, give them a material overlay and call it good for 2x the monsters. I've never liked that in literally any game. It just sucks, and it's always lazy. They could have reskinned them to look DIFFERENT, or shown how they actually changed. Instead of just adding glowy eyes and a material overlay. It's not good, it's never been good in games. They took the lazy way out in like 90% of this game.

Edit: Sometimes I feel like CBU:III is a team that wants to prove they can cut costs, and some things tend to really suffer for it. Because they often put more effort into spectacle and sell-ability than they do actual gameplay.

God of War PS4 reskinned a lot of enemies too but many of them are different in terms of gameplay so that they actually feel like different enemies.

The Akashic enemies are quite literally no different from the regular counterparts other than the texture.