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RagnarokAngel posted:The problem I had was theres this weird synchronization with what's going on. Because of the non-linearity the character's personal quests are all so self contained, and once they're over the characters become mute (outside of the generic dialouge thats assigned based on party slots). It just makes everything feel so disconnected from the actual events going on in the world, and in a way makes their quests feel meaningless because they will never again come up until the ending credits. Did you just imply that the playable moogle isn't the greatest character in FF6.
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May 24, 2012 19:35
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Yeah, Mog (FF6) and Umaro are the two greatest characters to grace the series. I will not hear otherwise 
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May 24, 2012 19:41
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Pesky Splinter posted:How else did they manage to poo poo out XIII-2 in 18 months? I honestly think FF XIII-2 is Motomu Toriyama trolling the gently caress out of everyone who complained about FF XIII's linarity and railroading.
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May 24, 2012 19:43
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Pesky Splinter posted:How else did they manage to poo poo out XIII-2 in 18 months?[/sub] At this point, I'd prefer it over them more than 6 years to make a game. RagnarokAngel posted:Characters like Mog and Cyan...eh. Them's fightin' words.
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May 24, 2012 19:44
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RagnarokAngel posted:Characters like Mog and Cyan...eh. Cyan? With his wife and kid, and the train? And his letters?  You monster..... You're right about their stories/dialogue ending in the 2nd act after you got them. The cool part was you didn't need to get anyone but the main 3 to finish the game.
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May 24, 2012 20:01
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Yeah, the World of Ruin could have been improved somewhat dialogue-wise, but it's still pretty goddamn awesome when it comes to the actual structure of that part of the game. It's pretty cool to have your party 'lose,' then spend the second half of the game getting everyone back together *and* becoming ridiculously overpowered in the process with the new spells and equipment you pick up in the game's second half. If they ever remake FF6, though, I'd rather see the World of Ruin (a) have a lot of character-specific dialogue depending upon who you bring along with you, and (b) implement some sort of quest-based level scaling, so that if you'd (e.g.) recruited a character, or completed the Tower of Magi, or beaten the Dirt Dragon, or bought an Esper at the Auction House, the monsters along other such quest-type objectives would get minor stat boosts in proportion to the number of things you had completed, in such a way that'd provide a smooth difficulty curve for the entire World of Ruin instead of making the game get easier and easier and easier.
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May 24, 2012 20:07
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Pesky Splinter posted:
Ideas are cheap, it's everything else that takes time to develop. They reused the game engine and a shitload of art assets.
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May 24, 2012 20:12
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"Oh, but
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Tempo 119 posted:Ideas are cheap, it's everything else that takes time to develop. They reused the game engine and a shitload of art assets. There's absolutely nothing wrong with reusing a game engine.
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May 24, 2012 20:18
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TurnipFritter posted:There's absolutely nothing wrong with reusing a game engine. I'm not saying there's anything wrong, I'm saying that's why it was so quick to come out.
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May 24, 2012 20:21
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Tempo 119 posted:I'm not saying there's anything wrong, I'm saying that's why it was so quick to come out. I know that's why it was so quick to come out, it was more my incredulity of them saying "we didn't reuse any content" when obviously, they did. Not that reusing material is a bad thing, mind.
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May 24, 2012 20:24
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Pesky Splinter posted:I know that's why it was so quick to come out, it was more my incredulity of them saying "we didn't reuse any content" when obviously, they did. Although I think they overdid it with X-2, since there were almost no new assets in that game. Pretty much all the monsters and 95% of the locations were just reused directly from X.
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May 24, 2012 20:30
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Epi Lepi posted:Again, I call bullshit, the game makes fine sense up until Ultimecia comes out of nowhere and you're like "Wait what? Edea's not the main villain??" I think that's on the third disc, but maybe its on the second. Yeah the story falls apart like every Final Fantasy game, but you gotta be pretty thick to not be able to follow the game immediately after Disc 1. 1. The Orphanage bit makes no sense, not that it's a particularly important plot point. It throws in the bit of Guardian Forces causing amnesia for a completely unexplained reason ("it just does" is not an explanation). 2. Ellone transporting Squall physically through time when previously all she could do was send a person's consciousness 3. Anything involving Squall and Rinoa's relationship makes no sense whatsoever. 4. Ultimecia and witch succession are a complete asspull. 5. Adel, despite the Laguna flashback, has 5 minutes of no reason for being in the story at all. Unfortunately, these bits are central to the storyline and why nothing past Disc 1 makes sense. Azure_Horizon fucked around with this message at 21:45 on May 24, 2012 |
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May 24, 2012 21:43
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Azure_Horizon posted:1. The Orphanage bit makes no sense, not that it's a particularly important plot point. It throws in the bit of Guardian Forces causing amnesia for a completely unexplained reason ("it just does" is not an explanation). I'm just saying there's a bunch of stuff in between the end of Disc 1 and Esther, which is when all of that stuff takes place, with the exception of the Orphanage/Amnesia reveal. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it mentioned prior to then that GFs can mess with people's memories? I feel like there was some mention of that in Balamb at some point.
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May 24, 2012 21:57
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I'm pretty sure that gets mentioned several times in the first hour of the game.
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May 24, 2012 21:59
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Epi Lepi posted:I'm just saying there's a bunch of stuff in between the end of Disc 1 and Esther, which is when all of that stuff takes place, with the exception of the Orphanage/Amnesia reveal. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it mentioned prior to then that GFs can mess with people's memories? I feel like there was some mention of that in Balamb at some point. It's mentioned once in the study terminal in the beginning of the game, but it's never explained why or how (except that, for some reason, it tampers with the section of memory in the brain), since it directly conflicts with the idea of Junctioning (since that apparently has no negative effects, and what if I simply played FF8 using no GFs?). It's magic amnesia, plain and simple, and it's superbly contrived.
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May 24, 2012 22:02
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I don't think it's mentioned "several" times in Disc 1. But it is in there. Unfortunately, you essentially have to go looking for the reference, as a normal player will not find out otherwise. If memory serves me correctly, they mentioned the GF thing in the class computer terminal Squall can boot up and it's mentioned in the little codec thing the game has in the menu screen. But in terms of an NPC mentioning it to you, I don't think that ever happens.
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May 24, 2012 22:06
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Pesky Splinter posted:Of course they loving did, did they really think us that stupid? It's insulting! How else did they manage to poo poo out XIII-2 in 18 months? Because it actually isn't that hard to put out a game in 18 months when you're using the same engine and a number of the same models and artwork. The reason why FFXIII took an eternity to come out is because they hosed up its production massively, not because the game actually needs to take that long to make. FFXIII-2 isn't exactly a high-budget production and it shows in a lot of ways. 18 months is pretty drat believable as a development period for it. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 22:11 on May 24, 2012 |
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May 24, 2012 22:07
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ImpAtom posted:Because it actually isn't that hard to put out a game in 18 months when you're using the same engine and a number of the same models and artwork. The reason why FFXIII took an eternity to come out is because they hosed up its production massively, not because the game actually needs to take that long to make. I know that, the bit I took issue with was the "we haven't recycled content" section. Of course they're going to! They did! They have! Why say they haven't? I just don't get why they said it. Even more so when they proudly said "we've made enough content for two games". We expect it to have recycled content or some kind. Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 22:22 on May 24, 2012 |
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May 24, 2012 22:19
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Epi Lepi posted:I'm just saying there's a bunch of stuff in between the end of Disc 1 and Esther, which is when all of that stuff takes place, with the exception of the Orphanage/Amnesia reveal. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it mentioned prior to then that GFs can mess with people's memories? I feel like there was some mention of that in Balamb at some point. Yeah, and by "bunch of stuff," you mean "cool poo poo" that's about as intellectually deep as Transformers and once Squall gets ice-lanced, the story goes out the window for the rest of the second disc and nothing of importance happens until Disc 3 when Ultimecia is introduced and everything goes out the window. Let's see, we'll list out all the super-important poo poo that happens: - You escape from prison (I guess it's important because otherwise you'd spend the rest of the game in prison which honestly would've been an improvement on FF8) - You blow up a missile base (very Die Hard, but also essentially pointless) - You make the Garden fly in an FMV (so you can have a really lovely airship that makes for good FMVs. Essentially pointless) - NORG (FSHURUSHURUSHURUSHURUBJURUJURUJURUJURU) - You protect some hippies from a militarized nation (stupid and pointless and exists only so some obscure and boring NPCs can namedrop Esthar... if you can even find them in the first place, and only during a very small window of time) - You put on a concert - I mean seriously you put on a motherfucking concert and the game pretends that this is world-shatteringly important - Let's fight dudes in Balamb (which forces you through a really, really annoying sequence just so Fujin and Raijin can tell you that Seifer is still alive and fighting for the Sorceress. Again. Of course, you've already known this since the end of Disc 1) - This is your brain on Guardian Forces (character development literally ends here, the player characters don't go anywhere from this point and Ward, who has all of like ten minutes of screen time from this point out, has more than anyone else in Squall's party) - EPIC GARDEN BATTLE (guys look at this AWESOME FMV look at those DUDES ON MOTORCYCLES HITTING THAT RAMP FROM ONE GARDEN TO ANOTHER and now FVMS GOING ON IN THE BACKGROUND DAMMIT Nigga DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, Some ho IS GONNA DIE this poo poo is so - Fight Edea (and here we are, at the end of Disc 2, we finally have SOMETHING relevant to the plot. The "plot." And it's all about to get thrown out the window because as soon as you put in Disc 3, ULTIMECIA) Literally the only good thing to come out of FF8 is I had this Japanese national teaching a linguistics course in university, awesome older guy--basically he looked like a 70-year-old Arino--who had a cursory exposure to video games from his son, and gave us an example of the difference between the SVO of if-then logic in English and Japanese, and the example he used was, in super "I am fluent but I honestly don't care that I'm lacking some English phonemes" English, "Squall is dead. If nobody will revive him, Squall is still dead." Fur20 fucked around with this message at 22:36 on May 24, 2012 |
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May 24, 2012 22:25
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Best FF8 theory I've ever heard is there was a gas leak in the office that they didn't discover until after the game shipped.
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May 24, 2012 22:37
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Pesky Splinter posted:I know that, the bit I took issue with was the "we haven't recycled content" section. Of course they're going to! When they said recycled, they mean that they didn't use the content they cut from FFXIII, not that they didn't recycle content, or at least that is their claim. Not that they didn't recycle content from FFXIII at all.
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May 24, 2012 22:44
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ImpAtom posted:When they said recycled, they mean that they didn't use the content they cut from FFXIII, not that they didn't recycle content, or at least that is their claim. Not that they didn't recycle content from FFXIII at all. Oh! ...oh... That's what I get for being an idiot and not reading it properly.  Well, I was wrong then.  Though part of me is cynical enough to think that they did use at least some of the cut content.
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May 24, 2012 22:50
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Pesky Splinter posted:Oh! Well, if they didn't, they're kind of dumb, but "S-E is kind of dumb" is actually easier for me to believe. v  v
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May 24, 2012 22:53
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I'd be more annoyed if they didn't use some of that content. They spend five years making it just to not use it, we should be able to see it.
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May 24, 2012 22:58
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You know what I miss that was handled really well in FFX and FFX-2? Weapons and/or equipment that are clearly 'ultimate' and definitively better than basically anything else you could be using. It'd have been so easy to do that in XIII and XIII-2 and it's disappointing that they didn't.
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May 24, 2012 23:00
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Mrs. Badcrumble posted:You know what I miss that was handled really well in FFX and FFX-2? Weapons and/or equipment that are clearly 'ultimate' and definitively better than basically anything else you could be using. It'd have been so easy to do that in XIII and XIII-2 and it's disappointing that they didn't. Pretty sure I only upgraded Lightning's and Vanille's weapons (not even to their  ultimates) in XIII because it's literally inconsequential if you don't. Grinding for all the screws and poo poo you need to do it is a frustrating timesink anyway.Oh hey something else XIII has in common with VIII 
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May 24, 2012 23:22
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Mak0rz posted:Pretty sure I only upgraded Lightning's and Vanille's weapons (not even to their The 'ultimate' weapons in XIII were kinda trash anyway because some were definitively better than others but it wasn't worth actually taking the time to grind out several of them to level 100 just to pick which one you wanted. Should've had a fourth tier that had the top stats and all actually helpful abilities from all of a character's available lv. 4 weapons, or something.
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May 24, 2012 23:24
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I'm really glad it didn't have that honestly. Having one weapon which is just objectively better than all others is boring. I wish they'd actually done better about balancing the weapons so that they were all valid choices.
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May 24, 2012 23:28
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ImpAtom posted:I'm really glad it didn't have that honestly. Having one weapon which is just objectively better than all others is boring. I wish they'd actually done better about balancing the weapons so that they were all valid choices. It's not boring if you balance postgame enemies so that they're still challenging with that equipment.
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May 24, 2012 23:53
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Mrs. Badcrumble posted:It's not boring if you balance postgame enemies so that they're still challenging with that equipment. It is to me because it limits your build to "equip this weapon." FFXIII screwed it up, but if you had multiple valid weapon choices with their own pluses and negatives, then it would actually add extra potential choice to the game.
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May 25, 2012 00:32
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Mrs. Badcrumble posted:It's not boring if you balance postgame enemies so that they're still challenging with that equipment. As far as I can tell, the "balance" with using maxed level 3 weapons is that it gets harder to get 5 stars in every fight. Which matters in exactly 0 ways by the time you can realistically get even one of them.
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May 25, 2012 01:04
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ImpAtom posted:It is to me because it limits your build to "equip this weapon." FFXIII screwed it up, but if you had multiple valid weapon choices with their own pluses and negatives, then it would actually add extra potential choice to the game. FF6, 7, 8, and 9 handled this perfectly well while still having pretty obvious 'best' weapons. FFX-2, also (FFX's ultimate weapons were pretty rockin' but the ideal armor build was pretty obvious). FFXIII could also handle it perfectly well by having 'best' weapons but keeping its current level of variety on the accessory side of things (or greater variety, in fact, since too many of the accessories were pretty boring and had little to nothing in the way of unique effects).
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May 25, 2012 02:55
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The White Dragon posted:Yeah, and by "bunch of stuff," you mean "cool poo poo" that's about as intellectually deep as Transformers and once Squall gets ice-lanced, the story goes out the window for the rest of the second disc and nothing of importance happens until Disc 3 when Ultimecia is introduced and everything goes out the window. No one ever said it was deep or meaningful, though I think you're being a pedantic rear end in defining what's part of the story and what's not. I said it was coherent. Though I did forget about the concert haha. I mean seriously though, how are the missile base section and escaping prison and fighting Galbadian Garden meaningless? The whole plot of the game before the crazy Ultimecia time travel bullshit is that Edea is a sorceress that took control of Galbadia and is looking to conquer the world. The concert is dumb, the amnesia is weird and NORG is what the gently caress, but turning the Garden into a flying base is this games fairly unique solution to the missile problem.
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May 25, 2012 05:02
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Mrs. Badcrumble posted:FF6, 7, 8, and 9 handled this perfectly well while still having pretty obvious 'best' weapons. FFX-2, also (FFX's ultimate weapons were pretty rockin' but the ideal armor build was pretty obvious). FFXIII could also handle it perfectly well by having 'best' weapons but keeping its current level of variety on the accessory side of things (or greater variety, in fact, since too many of the accessories were pretty boring and had little to nothing in the way of unique effects). I really don't think any of them handled it well actually. I found it incredibly boring that there was a "best" weapon and I just got it, equipped it, and was done. FFVII at least theoretically asked you to equip other poo poo to level materia up. I don't understand why you'd want lesscustomization from weapons? What benefit does having one ultimate weapon have over having a variety of weapons with their own uses? I guess that's what I don't get. Why would you want one choice over multiple choices when it comes to character builds? ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 05:10 on May 25, 2012 |
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May 25, 2012 05:05
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Epi Lepi posted:No one ever said it was deep or meaningful, though I think you're being a pedantic rear end in defining what's part of the story and what's not. I said it was coherent. Though I did forget about the concert haha. At the very least, the missile base is meaningless because, despite setting the "Error ratio" on the missiles to max (why is that even an option?), they STILL would've nuked the Garden if it hadn't moved. As a matter of fact, if you hadn't messed with the error ratio at all, Garden would've been safer because all the missiles would've hit where Garden WAS instead of exploding all around it as it flew off. Maybe it was such a close call because the missiles had evil Sauron eyes for some stupid reason. FF8 really is a mess. Watching the latest LP really lets you pick out how almost every scene introduces several plot holes, or things that can theoretically be explained but only if the explanation is that everyone is monumentally retarded. It's pretty clear that no one on the writing staff really took a hard, critical look at the script after it was written and asked, "does this make sense?" Edit: Epi Lepi posted:Getting the Ultimate weapon is another thing, in Final Fantasy 7 I remember having to jump through hoops to get the ultimate weapons for each character and it made it more satisfying. On the other hand, FFX. gently caress all the ultimate weapon nonsense in that game. Schwartzcough fucked around with this message at 05:24 on May 25, 2012 |
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May 25, 2012 05:21
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ImpAtom posted:I really don't think any of them handled it well actually. I found it incredibly boring that there was a "best" weapon and I just got it, equipped it, and was done. FFVII at least theoretically asked you to equip other poo poo to level materia up. I'd rather multiple characters that are better for different things than multiple weapons that are better for different things. I like to collect equipment in my RPGs but I don't really like inventory management, I want to have the Best and just use it. I miss the concept of an ultimate weapon in games, I feel like they don't really do that anymore. Like in Mass Effect 3 I'd rather have to find a super sweet Turian Sniper Rifle for Garrus that only he can use and is individual to him rather than give him whatever random rifle from my inventory. Getting the Ultimate weapon is another thing, in Final Fantasy 7 I remember having to jump through hoops to get the ultimate weapons for each character and it made it more satisfying.
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May 25, 2012 05:22
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I'm gonna go out and say what a lot of people are thinking: I liked the ultimate weapon challenges in Final Fantasy X. Yes, chocobo racing. Yes, butterflies too. gently caress YES, Blitzball. I earned each and every one of those sigils, and in return I was given holy-poo poo-awesome weapons of destructive power. As it should be.
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May 25, 2012 06:09
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fount of knowledge posted:I'm gonna go out and say what a lot of people are thinking: I liked the ultimate weapon challenges in Final Fantasy X. Yes, chocobo racing. Yes, butterflies too. gently caress YES, Blitzball. You liked them ALL? You should be studied for science, because you are not of this Earth. Everyone hates at least one of the FFX ultimate weapon trials.
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May 25, 2012 06:19
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RagnarokAngel posted:The early characters get like Terra, Locke, Celes, Edgar and Sabin are really deep and great. I agree with you about Mog, but Cyan? The train sequence was really touching.
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May 25, 2012 06:33
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Epi Lepi posted:No one ever said it was deep or meaningful, though I think you're being a pedantic rear end in defining what's part of the story and what's not. I said it was coherent. Though I did forget about the concert haha. The entire second disc could be edited out, save for the intro with Laguna, the escape from the prison, and final showdown with Edea, and not only would you lose nothing of relevance to the plot, but you wouldn't even lose characterization or continuity.
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May 25, 2012 07:24
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