I'm in such a weird place with this game.
On one hand, I'm mostly on the same page as the devs.
Final Fantasy used to be the premier RPG series, and now it is being outsold many times over by the likes of Witcher 3 & Skyrim. They obviously have to do something. For all the "it has no identity" that people keep saying, my possibly outdated view is that Final Fantasy does have an identity, and it primarily revolves around it being expensive. High-budget, high quality, ambitious, sprawling, with the best artists, composers and writers in the industry putting in their best work. Final Fantasy on a Xenoblade budget isn't Final Fantasy anymore.
For a lot of the other decisions they've taken, I think it hinges on what one of the devs said about the negative connotations of the JRPG label. That the "genre" is now niche isn't something that is in much dispute on here I think, but the more controversial part is what was unsaid: That the negative reputation is partly earned. In the interest of keeping this post brief, I'll just say that I think higher fidelity brought with it higher specificity, and that was unfortunate. And also that technical limitations were a blessing in many ways. And also that many developers seem to continue to just do what has always been done, never asking themselves if it continues to make sense.
And in XVI, they're asking those questions, right? And I agree with them, if you're going to have this photorealisticish art style with people that look like normal people, having them standing around taking turns to hit each other is going to look kinda weird.
They're right that you can't convey a massive, globe-spanning story with an open-world format, and that you need some level of limitation or abstraction to convey a real sense of scale.
It also doesn't make sense to aim a single-player, story-driven game almost exclusively at the teen audience. I don't think they necessarily need to go adult - I think Nintendo EPD finds great success with its "all ages" strategy, but yeah, having something that isn't kind of embarrassing if you're older than 16 is probably a good idea given the expected age of the people buying this sort of game.
So my expectation, based on all that, and based on other things the devs have said, is that this would be a kind of, like, a serious fantasy world that you can immerse yourself in. Imagine my surprise when I see the trailers and it has characters doing silly combos in the air and over-the-top kaiju battles. The devs cited Game of Thrones, but this looks like Power Rangers.
And I have to square this against YoshiP's absolutely dumb-as-shit comments with regards to diversity. He has the incorrect belief that medieval Europe was a racial monoculture AND he thinks the game he's making has to stay true to its medieval setting and nothing must compromise its purity. Except, clearly, the gameplay.
It's also totally unnecessary. Witcher 3 and Skyrim didn't do gangbusters because of their combat. It just isn't the defining feature of an RPG. Will combat be the defining feature of Final Fantasy 16? I don't know! It's all they talk about it. But for all we know, it has a narrative, side stories, characters, world-building, all of these things on the same level as Witcher 3. You'd never guess based on what they show us, though, right?
I mean the first video of this game I watched, within twenty seconds the player was holding the trigger buttons in a scripted sequence to move a barrier in front of a door. ??? This is what they choose to show us??
I'm on team concern on the marketing for this one.
www.unseen64.net
