Will the real Leviathan please stand up?

[Celtodeno]

Look at the picture carefully.

The red dots on the picture on the right indicate places where you can target and "Break" off. the pieces in the right hand corner are the broken piece, they fit into the slots.

The picture on the left is how the battle begins, the picture on the right is how the battle ends.

[ellohwell]

maybe when yoshi-p took over. he took one look at the old Leviathan and said "i don't like it. do it again" you stapping his authority. but really like i say i doubt we will ever know why. but there is a sticky thread for quests to ask him in the next live letters from the producer. maybe you should ask on that. maybe you will get an answer

Why is Yoshi so offensive to his staff members in your imagination?

The original leviathan seemed more imaginative than this new one.

Anyways, I posted the question in that thread, but I think I already used my quota of questions.

[ellohwell]

Look at the picture carefully. The red dots on the picture on the right indicate places where you can target and "Break" off. the pieces in the right hand corner are the broken piece, they fit into the slots. The picture on the left is how the battle begins, the picture on the right is how the battle ends.

Yeah I know but is that supposed to be relevant?

[grandm]

Why is Yoshi so offensive to his staff members in your imagination?

The original leviathan seemed more imaginative than this new one.

Anyways, I posted the question in that thread, but I think I already used my quota of questions.

i don't think he is. and i'm not saying that is the reason. i was mearly giving alternative idea to the two that you gave. but there is as much chance of it being because he didn't like the old work as it is that they couldn't animate it. until we hear from some1 that really knows what happened its all guess work

[Arcell]

Look at the picture carefully.

The red dots on the picture on the right indicate places where you can target and "Break" off. the pieces in the right hand corner are the broken piece, they fit into the slots.

The picture on the left is how the battle begins, the picture on the right is how the battle ends.

Not unlike Monster Hunter, the breakable spots even match most of the breakable parts from Lagiacrus.

The creature in Limsa's opening IS Leviathan. I believe they even mention him by name a few times during those starter quests, not to mention the fact that the Sahagins summon him in the 3rd Limsa intro quest. It's definitely Leviathan.

[ellohwell]

Not unlike Monster Hunter, the breakable spots even match most of the breakable parts from Lagiacrus.

The creature in Limsa's opening IS Leviathan. I believe they even mention him by name a few times during those starter quests, not to mention the fact that the Sahagins summon him in the 3rd Limsa intro quest. It's definitely Leviathan.

The plot thickens...

I guess it was just too hard to animate. The devs said it was hard to animate for the cutscenes, if i recall, so maybe that's why they simplified him.

[Akoree]

Why did they need two leviathans though? Just because they have time to make two, doesn't mean they should act on that impulse.

There are two reasons I can see: The first reason being that the original leviathan was way too difficult to animate and they didn't know how to implement a workable battle against such a creature. The second reason is to do with plot. The sea serpent may in fact be something different than Leviathan altogether, a literal red herring.

If you watch the "The Making of a Realm #2" where they talk about the monsters, Shinya Ishida (Motion Designer) says:

"Each movement of the serpent's fins was animated separately, which was quite a trying process."

I presume the old "Sea Serpent" model required a lot of work to animate, which is quite odd considering the advances in physic engines (I don't even know if FFXIV has one ) which would make each fin animation natural and easy to generate. I don't know how they couldn't foresee how this could be a major problem when implementing this creature in an actual combat scenario when it was quite obvious by the way they were talking about it prior to launch that the serpent took so much time to animate by keyframes.

If that is the case, Yoshi-P's team probably had to create a new concept and model which could be used as a Primal fight in the future and that is the image which was presented to us in the reveal of FFXIV 2.0.

[ellohwell]

If you watch the "The Making of a Realm #2" where they talk about the monsters, Shinya Ishida (Motion Designer) says:



I presume the old "Sea Serpent" model required a lot of work to animate, which is quite odd considering the advances in physic engines (I don't even know if FFXIV has one ) which would make each fin animation natural and easy to generate. I don't know how they couldn't foresee how this could be a major problem when implementing this creature in an actual combat scenario when it was quite obvious by the way they were talking about it prior to launch that the serpent took so much time to animate by keyframes.

If that is the case, Yoshi-P's team probably had to create a new concept and model which could be used as a Primal fight in the future and that is the image which was presented to us in the reveal of FFXIV 2.0.

Our characters' hair and clothes seem to move according to a physics system, so it stands to reason that the original Leviathan could move according to such a system also. Logic seems to suggest that there was no reason that they had to manually animate each fin, but I guess that's their perogative...

[ellohwell]

Maybe japanese people complained that Leviathan wasn't leviathan-y enough or something.

[Alhanelem]

The leviathan from the cutscene is too high poly to be used as a monster or summon.