Keiji Inafune talks about Japanese Games: how it relates to XIV

[Alerith]

Legend of Dragoon is heading to the PSN

Well, time to buy a PS3, register for PSN and kiss my social life goodbye...

I honestly think LoD blew FFVII out of the water and it's on par with FFVIII. For not being designed by Square, It's one of my favorite RPGs of all time.

[Denmo]

Well, time to buy a PS3, register for PSN and kiss my social life goodbye...

I honestly think LoD blew FFVII out of the water and it's on par with FFVIII. For not being designed by Square, It's one of my favorite RPGs of all time.

LoD was somewhere between a beautiful game to a big ugly mess, and I couldn't tell you where I stood in there because the scope of the game was so crazy.

The battle system was OK. Timed attacks got monotonous, and "HUH, HAH. DOUBLE SLASH!" sure got annoying. But there was real challenge in it and some of the boss fights were kinda memorable.

The maps and areas were pretty, but confusing at times.

The story was weird. I can't even tell you 90% of it today because I can't remember. Something about dragoon souls? Hero loses town to evil empire? That one lancer guy dies? I forget the rest.

And then that last boss. Oh. My. God. That had to be the lamest boss fight and quirkiest end cutscene I'd ever seen. I couldn't even tell it was over when it was over. The music stayed the same throughout, and all the while I thought, "Man these guys are trying too hard."

It was decent. But it didn't necessarily do anything new at the time of its release.

[Firon]

yeah sure let me see you beat Ruby Weapon, and Emerald Weapon with just attack without proper metaria set up.

In FFXIII 90% of the game you just have to hit X and L1 to switch between paradigms. Not to mention half of the game is a tutorial. lol

You can do this lol and emerald weapon is a joke if you don't have any materia on you so he does shit dmg.....

Most ppl who play 13 cant even beat Gui longs

[Fear]

FFXII to me just seems way to hard to get into, the storyline at the begining of the game makes no sence, the voice acting is terrible compared with FFX (they dont even use full acting for most NPCs, I think even FFX has more of it), I like being able to controll the chars.

To me FFXII doesn't feel like an FF game, I just struggle trying to get into its story, I just wish for future games SE would focus more on story than on battle I like the FF1-9 storylines better than 10/2,12,13/2. Hell I even miss how in some games SE would put a slightly romantic theme into it because it feels more real and believable instead of people just helping for no god damn reason, never wanting anything in return.

[Charismatic]

Reason I didn't like 12 and 13 is because I like complete control over my party, AI is no substitute.

This is clearly a lie.
If you liked complete control over your party, you wouldn't have a problem with FF12 for this reason considering the fact that you must actually set up and turn on gambits yourself. Its not like the game automatically puts your characters under AI control, you have to do it yourself.


And heck, its not like you can't turn gambits off once you've enabled them... or even override whatever the comp is doing. Also, its not AI... the gambits quite literally only have the characters do exactly what you've told them to do, they don't think for themselves... it is all up to you.

[Denmo]

the voice acting is terrible compared with FFX

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSzCwFu1dYY

[Cendres]

Definitely agree with you Denmo. I loved FFXII, the plot, the characters, the battle system, all of it was really well done. But it never seems to get the props it deserves, especially among my FF-fan friends. Some of them refuse to even play it!? Crazy...

Fundamental problem with both FFXII and XIII was the story. Lots of people have different reasons why they hated those games but to me the one glaring issue was that the pacing of the story was all wrong, from beginning to end. You never feel pulled into it as you would with older titles, some of the characters never get a full background or their own story. An FF are a bunch of side stories within an overarching one. This was missed in the latter games, like they spent so much time being innovative with the combat they didn't have the time or resources for what the fans really care about, knowing who these people are and what their goals are and what happens when they defeat the big bad.

I have not played or even looked at XIII-2 but I hope it regains this.

[Cendres]

Western Audiences = sheep

They follow what everyone else does. EQ -> WoW -> GW-> Tabula Rasa -> AoC -> WAR -> AION -> FFXIV -> RIFT -> SWTOR -> TERA/GW2, Apple craze/Apps, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Halo, Battlefield, Skyrim, Twilight, Hunger Games, Mass Effect, the list goes on.

I find Japanese developers usually they try to mix up the formula a bit with some additions (they usually don't go over too well i.e. FFXII, FFXIII/2) Western developers however just rehash the same game and add a new number or subtitle and release it incomplete, and sucker people into buying pieces of the game in DLC. Too bad it sells. SE is slowly gravitating toward this model.

Just my opinion.

I think you have that backwards.... Western audiences question EVERYTHING. Why do you think we get called whiners? A bunch of those games you listed were hyped and failed flat because they did not meet EXPECTATIONS. Our expectations are through the damn roof. So much so that we demand a new ending to Mass Effect.. Seriously, I would invite you to visit the Bioware forums for just a few minute and read what's on there.

Japanese devs for the most part are stagnating, staying with what is safe, SE has tried to change but it's like they are not sure how or how much is too much or what... FFXIV I think is a good step in the right direction at this moment.

[Vaer]

I think you have that backwards.... Western audiences question EVERYTHING. Why do you think we get called whiners? A bunch of those games you listed were hyped and failed flat because they did not meet EXPECTATIONS. Our expectations are through the damn roof. So much so that we demand a new ending to Mass Effect.. Seriously, I would invite you to visit the Bioware forums for just a few minute and read what's on there.

Japanese devs for the most part are stagnating, staying with what is safe, SE has tried to change but it's like they are not sure how or how much is too much or what... FFXIV I think is a good step in the right direction at this moment.

A bunch of those games were hyped and failed because they are exactly the same thing, with different premises. AoC/WAR/AION/RIFT/SWTOR, same stuff different label. To be fair, AoC and WAR launched in a bad state but they are still quest on rails games. Every new Call of Duty game is the exact same thing. I see this sheep mentality everywhere. They all flock to the same "new" thing, then complain about whatever they don't like. Once Diablo III is released, everyone will go play that and then some people will complain it's not like II.

I've heard of that silly Mass Effect ending petition, my stance on that is it should be up to the game developers to decide what the ending is. If they cave and change the ending I will lose all respect for BioWare.

The biggest example of messing with the formula is how FFXIV launched. Yeah, that didn't go over too well even if they wanted to "innovate." When was the last time a successful western MMO came out that didn't have the same on rails quest system?
ArenaNet is probably one of the very few western MMO dev that are coming out and saying anything about "innovation."

People played FFXI for a long time as it was a niche game that was different from all the western copypasta quest on rails junk that was primarily being released by the west.

Saying anything is stagnating is subjective. I could say I can't tell a difference between each of Bethesda's new buggy ass games and their old ones, or any of the "new" shooters in a gameplay mechanic sense.

Expectations are a human problem. If you set the bar so high you will probably be disappointed no matter what the game devs come out with.

[Yves]

Really interesting article snippet and thank you for sharing. It's always interesting to see some of the inner perceptions of developers and their take on the social factors that shape the industry.