Message to Developers about Map redesigns...

[Rane]

The current zones just don't offer any sense of place. As I run through the Black Shroud, I find myself trying to pretend that I haven't just run across the same river for the tenth time, and that my character is actually traversing a forest. When I look across a lake toward the far shore, I try to tell myself that my character COULD swim over there and run through the trees if he really wanted to. But I just can't convince myself.

There's something wrong when you have to do that in a modern MMO.

I think it's actually more than just copy/paste, though that's a big problem. Coerthas is marginally better than most zones in my opinion, but even so, when I look across the field there, I don't see a field. I see an unnatural jumble of rocks. Even for what's supposed to be rocky terrain, it just doesn't look right. Given all of the great Final Fantasy worlds Square has produced over the years, how did these areas end up like this?

I get the feeling that these areas really weren't designed from the ground up as actual places. Rather, when I look at the Coerthas main map, I get the feeling that these "areas" are a collection of square-shaped map tiles that have been laid side by side. Some of the tiles were rotated, and some were edited a little, and then they were dropped down alongside each other. Plop enough of them down, do a little more editing, and voila!: a field map.

I'd like to note that this is pure speculation and nothing more. And if the map redesigns are as extensive as it looks like they're going to be, all of this will be a distant memory by the time of the PS3 launch. I hope that's the case, and I really, really appreciate that Yoshida and the dev team are willing to put in the enormous amount of effort that a redesign requires.

I think the current team already knows this, but the new areas need to start with an artistic vision of an actual location. From there, every step of the creation process needs to be directed at making that vision a reality. The goal isn't to make a "map"; it's to breathe life into a world.