Friday, August 10, 2012

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Trailer

So "Final Fantasy XIV".  Um... Not exactly Final Fantasy's strongest moment, was it?  Yeah...  If there were any people left believing that the Final Fantasy series was just as strong as ever, FFXIV broke their spirits pretty quickly, and I don't think FFXIII-2 has done much to win back the crowd.  Anyway, I mostly ignored FFXIV as soon as it was announced, since its an MMO, and I don't play MMOs.  That's not my thing, and it never will be.  Even when the game was released and turned out to be the biggest turd in history, I didn't play it, I didn't really comment on it, and I let the entire miserable event pass right by.  However, Square Enix wisely decided that they weren't going to simply roll over and lose millions of dollars, so they fired the old team and set to work saving FFXIV.  Here's the new trailer:


So I don't know about anybody else, but that looks ROCKING.  Now, obviously I'm not convinced enough to actually go out and buy a copy of FFXIV, there is absolutely no room in my life for an MMO, I still got to play "Chrono Cross", "Xenogears", "The Last Story", "Terranigma", "Mystic Quest", and "Pokemon Black Version", along with finishing "The Last Remnant" and then somewhere in that huge ass-storm I need to have a life.  But still, this is one of the coolest looking trailers Square Enix has released in years.  This is what a PS3 AAA Final Fantasy game should look like, and sadly... its wasted on a damn MMO.  What a shame.

Let me be the first person to say that Square Enix is actually doing something right for a change with their relaunch of FFXIV.  I really hope it works out for them, because they clearly put a lot of work and love into making this world work.  The new director is this guy Noaki Yoshida, who appears to be the straightest shooter at that company.  Every move he's made has been clearly laid out, going so far as to publish whole design documents online and tell the fans exactly what he's doing to make FFXIV profitable.  Its a new level of openness that invites the fans to understand exactly why a second Final Fantasy MMO might not be such a bad idea.  And this kind of openness is unheard of at Square Enix - there has been so little word about "Versus XIII" that last month a rumor that the game was quietly canceled was seriously believed by every major gaming press site.  So Noaki Yoshida, you're the man.  I hope you can make some proper single-player RPGs in the future.  (Nobody can do a worse job than Motomu Toriyama has.)

But really, the great tragedy is that FFXIV looks like a true Final Fantasy game.  That's not to say that Final Fantasy can't have all kinds of different tones and art styles and technological levels, but games like FFXIII are just endless technology.  I mean, futurism has a place, but Final Fantasy was always a cool mixture of different technological levels, right from the very first game.  You start out in medieval castle town and at some point wind up in a floating space station fighting a wind dragon.  And pretty much every game was like that, there was always some lost ancient hyper advanced civilization lying in ruins someplace.  This all cosmetic, but its a style that is very thrilling.  FFXII got the mixture, FFXIII did not.  And for all the futurism of FFXIII, half the crap that happens in that game anyway is just esoteric magical acts of evil gods anyway.

But more importantly this trailer is the tone.  ITS AN ADVENTURE!  Go out, explore, fight evil, save towns!  It isn't characters standing around moping endless, or needlessly pretty boys weeping about some stupid time travel paradox that killed their girlfriend.  There's no spoken dialog at all, its go out there and fight that huge Meteor that's crashing into the planet.  That's an RPG!  That's fun!  This is what I wanted, this is almost exactly what I pictured for "Final Fantasy XV" years ago, and its wasted on a game that I'll never play.

Meanwhile the real "Final Fantasy XV" will probably be a garish melodrama with designs by Nomura directed by Toriyama.  And I can go weep in a ditch someplace.

5 comments:

  1. AWW man now this looks like it can be good. I might try it out if they free trial thing. Hopefully it'll at least be better then FFXI.

    To your current thought: I wouldn't rush through Chrono Cross too fast. Xenogears is a good game but it's nothing to jump to. The story is complex as hell, but since you play alot of JRPGs then you can keep up, and the battle system is.....ok.

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  2. Man Kitase or Ito or Tabata should direct XV

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  3. This trailer contains no footage of any actual gameplay, so not one second of it counts for anything.

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  4. I'll really never be able to give FFXIV a second chance. The game was just such a blow on my already lacking view of the franchise's future, things will never be the same.

    Anyways, I'm eager to hear your thoughts on Xenogears. It's a love-it-or-hate-it kind of game, but it truly is an excellent game in my book. The story is really top notch, as you can see from Perfect Works, the gameplay, while it could use some tweaks, is still a blast, having two different battle systems, and the music is nothing short of exceptional. It's a shame Square dumped the two main creators of the entire Xeno quasi-franchise, as the story has so much potential for an entire franchise.

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  5. I'll be giving this game a go. I've never played FFXI and if anything, I would like to try out FFXIV 2.0 for maybe three months or so at least. Maybe that'll be it, I dunno.

    On other news, I know that you said you're not into how KH3D has been presented pre-release at all, but I was wondering if you're going to be giving it a go sometime within the forseeable future. I played it and found it just about as decent as Birth by Sleep, and about fifty times more impressive than Re:coded. Seeing as it kinda leads the series into KH3, as well as cryptically confirms it in a journal entry, I'd like to hear your opinion on the game. It's all good if you've already decided not to play it, but that's definitely a review from you I've been looking forward to reading in any case.

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