Final Fantasy XIII Linear “Since Towns Were Too Much Work”

Protip: It's possible for it to still be a fun game. Plenty of people enjoyed it.

yeah, just forget there's a controller.

Plenty of people enjoyed Sonic the Hedgehog for the 360/PS3, too.

It's a godawful game where the inclusion of a royal damsel in distress puts its plot squarely in Mario territory.

From interviews about FF XIV:

Yeah, we used stick figures because drawing actual characters would be too much of a hassle. They move really fluid, don't they?

The soundtrack is some midi stuff from 1990. It's quite good, why compose something new?

The background graphics are scanned pictures we got from a kindergarden contest. They are so cute!

The programming was a lot of work, we had to edit NES code to work on the PS3. Why can't the PS3 be compatible to NES? Making games would be so much easier.

Keep in mind that the teams of people working on this game are given very, very strict deadlines along with very massive amounts of work. Its the producers who are to blame when stuff like this happens. They promise x thing by x date and then throw money at the workers and expect the impossible to get done.

Having said that (because I've worked for similar companies), I have no intention of playing the game.

I know exactly what you are talking about. I am a programmer and sometimes you just want to pop a cap in the head of the business people.

its not strictly true though, SE is a big company with plenty of available staff to work on different tasks, plus plenty of other companies under their umbrella they could outsource from. FFXIII took a very long time to develop, by far enough time to have included these more advanced features, but it just speaks to me of poor use of time.

They had 5 years to work on this thing...

I agree... 5 years of development is HALF a fucking decade. If they churned out this interactive movie that they try to pass as a game, it's not just because of the deadlines imposed by executives, but because of a shoddy direction, lack of agreement among the people in the staff, among many other things.

If this is the way Square Enix is going to produce games, then I'm never buying one of their titles ever again, until they change their working practices.

That said, I think that this reception by the people buying, not making reviews, is something good, actually. It should come to show Square Enix and other companies that observe the situation that such things are not well received by the consumers who are forced to pay the full fee for a product such as this.

I wanted to buy Final Fantasy XIII, not Advent Children 2. I don't care if the story is absolutely epic, the graphics awesome and the music an aural orgasm. In the end, I want to play a game.

Maybe this is why Nomura says there isn't going to be a FFVII remake... The staff might be unfit to make it... But that's just speculation on my part.

As far as I'm aware, didn't SE sack a bunch of employees during those 5 years?

If I remember well. Didn't Squeenix can/sacked/booted/dismissed/fired/pissed-off a substantial portion of it's workforce?

Perhaps they first fired some of their many workers, then went to the others: Hey! Make our game now you bunch of asswipes!

But then realized too late they didn't have enough people to work their...

No, no, it does sound like laziness. And stupidity. Might be a design choice, but it's a design choice to avoid any hassle that could arise in the goal of making a truly groundbreaking game filled with, I don't know, innovation maybe?

Hmm... The word innovation coined with a Final Fantasy title... I don't remember having heard that since... Oh, how long ago was it?

More than ten years now...

PASSION MEANS NOTHING IN THE FACE OF THE EXECUTIVES

> PASSION MEANS NOTHING IN THE FACE OF THE EXECUTIVES
Pretty much.

Note that it's "too much work", what I take to imply means that "the execs wanted to observe a schedule that would not allow us to do this and that, and so it was dropped."

geezes u ppl think its so easy to program a game, i mean yes they had time to make the game...but its not like its the only project they had to do. u guys talk of them being lazy asses when u dont even how much determination and patience to create such high def-ness. i bet 80% of u all wouldnt even be able to make a high def 40 minute 3d animation w/o it loosing its quality( meaning laziness cuz if it looses quality its most likely ur laziness) and/or u BSing it and/or u getting tired of it, and thats just the animations... u would still need to do 60+ hours of gameplay..which would take another 200+ hours....along with the pressure of like millions of fans going down ur back to release the game already like they did. besides if u were true fans u really wouldnt care...ppl would be glad that another FF game came out...i kno i would.

So what you're saying is that you don't care how great a game is as long as it's fanservice?

And people wonder why I want to go to game stores and wreck everything inside.

@Anonymous 12:01//01/02/2010 :
No, we don't think its easy.. Ive worked on several games, and while its hard, its absolutely possible to make a decent game in a year or two.. Now if you factor in that they had 5 years, a shitload of money that they could have used, its hard not to blame them (most likely execs) for doing nothing with the game.. Also : 40minutes of HD animation ? Sure, no problem, if i get a dev team for myself aswell.. It dosnt even have to do shit whith dedication, its a job too, nobody said any of the devs like it (tho i hope they do).. ..
Remember that it wasn't one person who made all the graphics, but an ENTIRE team of artists! Oh yeah, and 200hours of work for 60hours of gameplay.. Well, 5 years amounts to a lot more than 200 hours ;)They had 5 years for getting their shit together, and in the end we're stuck with something rather disappointing..And regarding "not the only project" Usually game devs work on separate projects, until their part is done,after which they move on to the next one.. Now having played "The Last Remnant" Also from SE, i gotta admit its pretty disappointing game too.. Insane amounts of loads, graphics aren't exactly worthy of a x360, and IMO the game should have been in development 6months more, and released under the ps 2.. :/
If they cant get their shit together, they will loose every single fan they ever had thanks to the original classic FF games :S

The SNES FF games all looked great. So what they're not in HD? As long as they're appealing enough, it really doesn't matter, and if simplifying the graphics makes it easier to develop the other, more important aspects of the game, then you're going to end up with a much more enjoyable product.

I think we should be glad for advances in graphical power. Just imagine if there were no progress beyond the PS2. Games would be easier and quicker to develop, and the market would be full of the same kind of games.

Anyway, hasn't SE learnt already about making pretty looking stuff with no substance?

What makes this pathetic though, is that they claims its way too hard, when hundreds of other current gen games have been able to do this.

"I think we should be glad for advances in graphical power. Just imagine if there were no progress beyond the PS2. Games would be easier and quicker to develop, and the market would be full of the same kind of games." -anon

This whole statement is wrong on so many levels that it made me laugh.

The time they spent porting the game was what took away from both versions.

The people who did the port would be the programming team. The people who would have done the cities would have been the art team. Two COMPLETELY SEPARATE groups, so it would not have been an issue at all.

its "couldn't care less"

Saying you could care less means that you currently care about it and there is a level of care lower than what you are currently at. Grammar++

It's "it's", if you are getting on someones grammar. :P