[Thought Experiment] Is Dawntrail's 7.0 MSQ Planned to be "Terrible"?

[Cleretic]

I don't get why Squeenix is so averse to actual gameplay these days. Does anyone think FFIV or FFV or FFVI would be the beloved classics they are if they'd had this same ratio of cutscene to gameplay?

This is a much bigger conversation about how game developers at large approached being able to be more cinematic over the decades, but in these particular cases I'm not entirely sure how true it is. I think that a sequence like the Necron surroundings or Geode's death would be cutscenes in an SNES-era Final Fantasy; they'd just be one or two-minute cutscenes that amount to some chibi-style sprites moving around the map with some sound effects. (Necron's cutscene-fight could make a case for being a 'fake fight cutscene' like Galuf Vs. Exdeath in FFV, maybe?)

Rather than talking about XIV which is kinda uncomparable to the rest of the series in terms of structure and requirements, the obvious best comparison point is the VII remake games. I'm not the best person to make that comparison--I have no experience with Rebirth and VII is one of the more middling games in the series to me so I don't remember it super well--but as I recall, they didn't 'un-gameplay' anything that was a gameplay sequence in the original, and most of the added cutscenes were things that either weren't in the original (i.e. the new stuff around Sephiroth), or were very incidental things that they're bigging up (i.e. the Sephiroth clone you can find early on). And of course there's a big pile of gameplay sequences that are similarly new or bigged up. The result is undeniably more game and more cutscene per 'plot beat'--after all, VII Remake ends where the original tutorial ends--but with cutscenes, what would've been a one-minute scene in a 1995 game is now a seven-minute scene in a 2025 game simply because they can depict a lot more of it.

If you really want to start dissecting this stuff as a whole thing, you can also look at, like, Bravely Default, which essentially has the same cutscene limitations as an SNES-era FF. And they mostly expanded that storytelling into a 'bigger game' by including a metric ton of optional, essentially dialog-only scenes--most of which I'm gonna be honest are completely worthless unless you're a foodie, the Bravely series weirdly loved talking about food.

[PorxiesRCute]

This is a much bigger conversation about how game developers at large approached being able to be more cinematic over the decades, but in these particular cases I'm not entirely sure how true it is. I think that a sequence like the Necron surroundings or Geode's death would be cutscenes in an SNES-era Final Fantasy; they'd just be one or two-minute cutscenes that amount to some chibi-style sprites moving around the map with some sound effects. (Necron's cutscene-fight could make a case for being a 'fake fight cutscene' like Galuf Vs. Exdeath in FFV, maybe?)

Now that you mention it, the fake-battle cutscenes in the early games aren't really something they can do with the way modern FF games play, even though they were so iconic. Everyone remembers Galuf vs Exdeath and Tellah vs Golbez; the fake battles where Kefka walks around on-screen were such a neat use of the format; and "you spoony bard" is still a huge meme in the English fandom. (Even the Japanese fandom has its own huge meme from the FuSoYa and Golbez vs Zemus battle.)

I guess the closest thing they can do in XIV is roleplay battles, but everyone whined so much about those that they only did one in Dawntrail. I loved In From The Cold and the gauntlets where you played as a bunch of characters back to back. They made XIV feel like a real Final Fantasy game. But I'd be surprised if there are any roleplay battles at all in 8.0.