Square Enix Appears To Have Ended Working Relationship With Sweet Baby Inc.

[Mecia]

How does this pertain to XIV exactly? The real issue to me is Koji Fox's dishonest successor.

[PercibelTheren]

Stop trying to make Gamertage 2 happen, it's not going to happen. This obsession with a tiny consultancy firm is pathetic and shows that you know literally nothing about what consultants even do.

[Uncle_Jafar]

The writers are more to blame than anyone else. What sweet baby does any other corporate PR department can also do.

[PercibelTheren]

The writers are more to blame than anyone else. What sweet baby does any other corporate PR department can also do.

You see, we can't admit the writers of whichever gaming company we're fanboying for messed up, though. We have to blame something external.

[CaptainLagbeard]

You see, we can't admit the writers of whichever gaming company we're fanboying for messed up, though. We have to blame something external.

Sure, it is ultimately the writing and art teams that make the final products...

But they're not being help by people who tell them that this


is going to be more popular with the average person that this

[Hallarem]

Fantasy is supposed to be escapism, you don't want the real world in your fantasy world. The real world is enough.
FFXIV just is suffering from what WoW is suffering from too. Lack of competition. WoW has FFXIV beat on gameplay, here to the ends of the earth.
FFXIV has WoW beat on the visuals, the "2nd life escapism" and roleplay mechanics, housing etc.

If both of these MMO's had some actual competition that kept them evolving, they'd be amazing and could vibe off on that competitive atmosphere, trying to one up each other constantly and with that us players would benefit from better, more passionate games. But let's face it, the company will rather go for easy cash than actually put in some BIG CHANGES and effort.
FFXIV is content on rehashing old FF stories and pulling a "remember FFIX" instead of making something of their own and the list gooooes on. Pumping out the same formula because its SAFE and I hope to God it stops being safe for them soon enough for them to wake up a.k.a people leaving and unsubbing.

[Xuled]

hopefully no more subtier writing but the players will still come up with cringe "head cannon". can't be helped unfortunately.

[Nestama]

Sure, it is ultimately the writing and art teams that make the final products...

But they're not being help by people who tell them that this

is going to be more popular with the average person that this

Both games here have pretty meh stories, but the gameplay from both is pretty fun. How a character looks doesn't matter to me, tbh. All I care about is "will I have fun?" and that's what I got.

[lolnotacat]

Snip...

Forspoken is kinda wild. I actually think Frey from Forspoken is really attractive when shown in screenshots without emotion, and Ella Balinska, the woman she's modeled after is drop dead gorgeous. To me (I'm not a graphic artist so this is just a layman view), it looks like they were trying to focus too much on realism and when emotion is involved, Frey immediately dropped into uncanny valley.

I think the real issue with Frey and the art design in general is it looks muddled and focuses too much on the wrong things in an attempt to be realistic. It actually reminds me of something Yoshi-P said when talking about the graphics update. I'm paraphrasing, but he was asked if they were going to make the characters more realistic, and he said no because it would detract from the look and style. I think he's fundamentally correct -- look at how stylized Stellar Blade is to use your example.

Now look again at Frey from a more forgiving screenshot. Aside from the swept over sidecut that modern game developers love and I hate, I'm not gonna be convinced this is unattractive. She's a little plain Jane, but that also has its own appeal.



Personally, I don't always need characters to be dressed up in scantily clad outfits to enjoy them. Yes, I do want them to at least be conventionally attractive, and having some coomerbait is nice occasionally (Nier Automata is one of my favorite games), but generally the art style needs to fit the game's aesthetic as a whole. I think having a character designed like Eve would be kinda silly in a pseudo-realistic fantasy Isekai (not counting that pretty much everything from Forspoken was a flop).

[Destati]

Well it's making the DEI-hating crybabies crawl out of the woodwork to wax lyrical about more nonsense.

Stop trying to make Gamertage 2 happen, it's not going to happen. This obsession with a tiny consultancy firm is pathetic and shows that you know literally nothing about what consultants even do.