Ben-DutkaFor Final Fantasy fans, this is an interview you'll want to read. FFXIII director Motomu Toriyama sheds a lot of light on the latest installment and the future of the franchise.
Gamasutra caught up with Toriyama at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and they really wanted to focus on the strong feedback – both positive and negative – concerning FFXIII. Obviously, one of the biggest fan complaints centers on the lack of towns, one of the franchise's staples in the past. Toriyama says this is due to his own strengths, the challenging production process for high-definition consoles, and production of the Crystal Tools engine. We've heard this before but Toriyama is saying it again:
"In the Final Fantasys on previous non-high definition consoles, we were able to kind of take everyone's ideas and include them in the games." I call it a bento box system, where you have all of the different little things in there. So we had minigames or towns were you were able to talk to all of the townspeople. But with the HD console you're not really able to do that because it takes so long to develop."
The game was already going to take a long time to develop and if they had included "all those other aspects," we would've been waiting a lot longer. Instead, they decided to simply focus on "what was truly important to the game" and work to emphasize them. Okay, we get this, but would it be illogical to assume that now that Square-Enix has a handle on things, maybe stuff like towns could return for the next entry? No, not illogical at all. Added Toriyama:
"Now that we have that base technology… The next time you see a Final Fantasy, we might be able to pack in more of those elements that existed in the past. And I also think that a game doesn't need to have all of those items in the future. We can create additional downloadable content for people to add, too. It doesn't have to come with that game itself."
Well, we're pretty sure you can't make towns downloadable but we understand his meaning. Toriyama finishes by saying it's the role of the director "to decide what we can accomplish" in a set amount of time and the good news is that the next title they make "will have those elements, and the improvements to those elements" they spoke about in the interview. FFXIII began it's life very early on in this generation, remember. Few, if any, developers had a firm grasp of the PS3's complex architecture. Therefore, Toriyama's explanation does make a bit of sense…but it still may not be enough for the hardcore FF faithful. We'll see how they react.
Related Game(s): Final Fantasy XIII
How long have i had this profile picture for!…
*Turns into a ugly fail L'cie*
It seems common that when developers deal with a new platform it takes them time to adjust to all it's new complexities. I'm willing to believe that this could be part of the cause for developmental time constraints put on ffxiii.
I still don't know whether to believe the claims that the xbox 360 version had nothing to do with it. I'm not claiming the 360 couldn't have handled the towns, more that it's possible SE's agreement with M$ may have hindered the development in some way.
Perhaps M$ required SE to use no more than 3 disks, or to have the game completed by a certain date. Most likely we will never know the truth of the matter. It's possible M$ had nothing to do with their decision to remove content at all.
After these comments by Toriyama we should definitely expect the full FF experience next time around, however from the sounds of it, SE may be willing to attempt the all too common practice of trying to ride the dlc money train.
Personally I feel SE is handling the entire situation poorly. With the quality of games available now, to remove content in exchange for HD graphics, I feel said graphics should be 1080p. SE is know for having the best graphics after all.
On the other hand I never feel that content should be removed for the sake of graphics. A rpg should should contain the element of role play or else it cannot carry the genre title and should be named something else. I hope as I'm sure most of us do that the next installment will not let us down.
From what I've read from everyone on here who has played they game they enjoy it quite a bit, however I still hear in your comments the disappointment from what is not there.
I say to SE, though this game may be enjoyable, bring back our towns, our mini games, our role playing, bring back our Final Fantasy.
Really great hands-on preview of Resonance of Fate up on VG Chartz. They take a few jabs at FFXIII in it, but all in good fun. 🙂
http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=7349
-Arvis
I try to shy away from posting links before Benny has had his breakfast.
"Along with the exploration is of course the important JRPG staple of towns! That’s right, there are towns. Within towns are shops. Yes, they can be done, even on HD consoles."
Thanks for the link Arvis, I'm really looking forward to this game and you're right they do take a few jabs at FFXIII 🙂
Yeah, I can't wait. Amazon should have it to me in a week or two. 🙂
You and I will be the only people playing it… 🙁
-Arvis
No worries, word of mouth will spread like wildfire and more and more people will try it out. Many PS3 owners have been complaining about a lack of JRPG, should be interesting to see how many of these people put their money where their mouth is.
Resonance of Fate was a pre-order for me until a better deal surfaced. I'm going to use the $10 from FFXIII and $10 from GOW 3 to get $20 knocked off of the game.
Amazon didn't offer release day delivery so I figured there was no sense in pre-ordering if I can't get it that day. Besides that I'm not giving my money to Gamestop, so Amazon gets it instead.
Honestly, I don't miss the towns. Wandering around, talking to people I really don't care about just don't appeal to me. Now if I was like Kratos and could kill the towns people on the spot, that's something different, but that's what we have GoW3 for.
Don't miss the towns one bit.
You murderer.
What a lame excuse, stop being a sony fanboy and wake up and smell the coffee.
The real reason the [i]TOWNS[/i] got cut from the game is because Square-Enix was dealing with a very difficult development process.
Like it or not, PS3 is not easy to develop for and the process takes a long time.
It had nothing to do with 360, either.
Lost Odyssey if it was in full High Definition would be no more than [b]five[/b] discs, which some games are.
Also Square-Enix, the same company which designed Final Fantasy 13 designed the video game "The Last Remnant" – its in HD.
Alot of the graphics in town are not as good as FF13, yet with composite compression techniques – do you know how easy it is to make it look as good!!?!?
The Last Remnant lasts for 100 hours, its bigger than FF13 and is on only 2 discs. It could have been on 3 discs and still beat out FF13.
So the real problem, that may have led to lack of towns….is possibly the learning curve with ps3 development. It's not as easy to make seamless loading times, at least if not comrpessed, as it is on PC.
Look at all the PS3 RPGs released thus far.
Folklore and Demon Souls don't exactly have seamless loading of towns….
There is one game which does have it, The Last Guardian, though that is first party and Square-Enix does not have the same tools as they do to begin with.
Again, Versus 13 will most likely be multiplatform but it will contain plenty of towns as well. As to what caused the ultimate issue with FF13's lack of content, I think they may have cut it in favor of DLC….and possibly some of the towns were getting bogged down with loading times on either console.
Last edited by Digital on 9/24/2010 12:46:15 AM
PS:
Sony fanboys need to stop jumping the gun to thinking the "360" DVD format is the problem.
Star Ocean 4 was also basically in HD, and that's bigger than final fantasy 10, 7 or 13 with ease. Yet it was only on 2-3 discs.
So the first place anyone should be looking at, is the difficulties with their development tools when it come to loading times IMO.