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The Future of Final Fantasy, discussion thread

SpaceGodzilla

SpaceGodzilla

Did You Get that Thing I Sent You?
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"
In what may be one of the oddest Q&A-style updates on a game I’ve seen from a major publisher in some time, Square Enix tweeted today with a reminder that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth development is still progressing and they’re working on committing to a release date — likely still within the initial window of “winter.”

I bring this up because I had heard recently that Square Enix is panicking slightly over Final Fantasy XVI preorder numbers, which are tracking behind FFXV even accounting for the lesser number of launching platforms. Granted, those are pre-order numbers and they’re usually only useful to gauge guaranteed day-one sales (versus potential day-one sales), so the actual number could blow everyone away. But with the current tracking, I wonder if they want to remind people the next chapter of Final Fantasy VII’s remake trilogy exists and give it more marketing time than they had planned.

The initial sales of Remake were quite good, but it slowed down faster than Square Enix seemed to expect, so I imagine they really want Rebirth to sell as well as possible. Well, of course they do, but I imagine they’re really, really hoping for an uptick in sales."

Mod edit- the original title of this thread was “Imran Khan: Square Enix "slightly panicking" over Final Fantasy XVI pre-orders, tracking below Final Fantasy XV”, we’ve updated it as a few weeks later discussion has moved on from the quote about preorders. - PixelKnight
 
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i've always been sort of confused by the thought process that going full DMC with the combat would increase the sales potential or whatever

i'm sure it'll do okay with the name and the budget etc but character action games are pretty niche not some hugely mainstream thing like the heavy combat focus of their marketing kinda implies they think they are
 
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My most reactionary gaming opinion is that I have no interest in new Final Fantasy games until they return to turn-based combat with full party control. Yeah they don't need my money or whatever but I completely lost interest in the series after the PS2.
 
The plot. It thick.

I thought the Remake 2 update smelled fishy for some reason.

Also I’m not going to predict how this game will sell, but the lack of a PC version at launch sucks for me in that I’m probably going to wait a long while to buy it and at that point I might as well hold off for a nice Steam sale, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of folks are in the same boat as me. I find it bizarre that they insist on keeping the series PS exclusive (or at least heavily PS associated) when they could just release it on everything to grow the fanbase over time like Capcom does with their IP.
 
I’m completely interested in Remake 2 cause the gameplay was pretty cool. Even tho I disliked a lot of the story changes and whatnot.

But XVI has done nothing for me. The gameplay just looks so uninteresting that I don’t even care to know anything about it’s setting, story or characters. Just not my type of gameplay.

But I think it’ll do well. Do think it’s been rather muted in trailer and whatnot. Not a high viewership as I was expecting. But I think high reviews would make everything up. Maybe
 
It'll probably be fine, but the air has been sucked out of the room by Zelda, and now Diablo, with SF6 being a significant release in its own right as well.

As far as the game itself, it feels like it's in an odd place. So much focus has been placed on the combat system, and westernized narratives and style ala God of War and Game of Thrones, that it seems to have given up a lot in service of those goals. Every time I see it just looks kind of boring? I mean I don't mind a character action game once in a while, but it's not super high on my list of genres, and it's not something I would want to do for like 60 hours or however long this game is. On the flip side, you have zero party control, seemingly minimal/trimmed RPG elements, etc. Feels like a game that relatively far removed from what fans like about the series, both in gameplay and in style.

We'll see how it turns out maybe I'm just being overly critical, but the marketing has not really grabbed me this far.
 
Branduil said:
My most reactionary gaming opinion is that I have no interest in new Final Fantasy games until they return to turn-based combat with full party control. Yeah they don't need my money or whatever but I completely lost interest in the series after the PS2.
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Whereas it’s opposite for me, the real time action element has made me into a fan - I couldn’t do turn based
 
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I was under the impression that although ps5 sells like hotcakes the software sales are bad. Even wikipedia only lists two million sellers Demons Souls at 1.4 mil and Ratchet & Clank at 1.1. Now it definitely has more like Ragnarok, Spidey Morales or Hogwarts Legacy, but the number is low for a 30 millions console.
 
Other than chocobos and the summons, nothing really screams mainline Final Fantasy imo. And I'm personally not sure about the grittier take the series has been moving towards. I guess it's okay for a few entries, but I hope it doesn't stay that way going forward. I like the goofy whimsical side of FF, and this seems like it's taking itself too seriously.
 
I've seen some wild predictions, some attributing to the team while others to the brand. Even that does not guarantee sales.

Rebirth has a better chance of selling well because its 7, but even Remake fell off a cliff.
 
Alright, I will do Square Enix a favor under the witness you all famis.
If FF XVI get a metascore above 90, doesn't need to be 95 nor 92, just 90, then I will pre order the digital deluxe edition on my shaky PS5.
You got my words, Square Enix.
 
Square is probably chasing the dopamine loving casual gamers. I can play both genre and right now I am playing FFIV pixel remaster and Wild Rift on my Switch. It's good I guess that they are expanding their markets but I think this is not the way to go.
 
ethanswift said:
Alright, I will do Square Enix a favor under the witness you all famis.
If FF XVI get a metascore above 90, doesn't need to be 95 nor 92, just 90, then I will pre order the digital deluxe edition on my shaky PS5.
You got my words, Square Enix.
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FYI, I beat devil may cry 5 twice, both original & special edition. NOT very enjoyable experience but forgetful.
And I still NOT finish Bayonetta 3 and don't have the intention in this year.
But I do wanna turn on my PS5 fair regularly, so surprise me.
 
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I haven’t pre ordered yet because I generally don’t do so until the week of.
 
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Well, going PS only might just be a mistake after all, huh. Who would have thought? I hope SIE's money bag's making up for it. :>

Should have had at least a PC version ready at launch, me thinks. I know I (and friends of mine) would've given it a go on there around day 1. Right now we're all just in a "don't really care about FF XVI" mode.
 
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Not sure this is even a rumor? Yoshi even said it himself that they're looking at it from another long term angle. Which is basically him saying - yeah pre-orders arent doing too great, hopefully good wom and reviews will help sell the game.

PixelKnight said:
Didn’t XV sell shitloads though? Lower preorders seems predictable if the next one is on less platforms?
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It sold many copies, from the bomba bin.

Not but seriously, it didn sell all that well at launch. But did well over time thanks to digital channels and multiplat strategy and agressive pricing.
 
SpaceGodzilla said:
" which are tracking behind FFXV even accounting for the lesser number of launching platforms"
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Ah fair enough. It’ll be interesting to see whether this turns out to be indicative of anything in terms of sales. Maybe Zelda sucked a little of the air out of the room in terms of ‘put cash down for a full price, massive fantasy adventure in May’, and as people surface from it they’ll start looking around for their next big game.

It does seem a little odd for them to talk about Rebirth less than three weeks in front of the big mainline game, I would have thought the time to do that would be start of July, it’s got plenty of time.
 
rickyson33 said:
i've always been sort of confused by the thought process that going full DMC with the combat would increase the sales potential or whatever

i'm sure it'll do okay with the name and the budget etc but character action games are pretty niche not some hugely mainstream thing like the heavy combat focus of their marketing kinda implies they think they are
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This is my view as well. I like character action games (Ninja Gaiden Black is an all time great game) but they've always been pretty niche. God Of War only started selling double digit millions when it moved away from the character action format into a cinematic over the shoulder format.

As much as people complain about turn based combat, it have the classic FF games an easy to understand appeal that reached a wide and diverse audience. Young girl gamers, thirty years old guys and everyone in-between liked playing the golden age FF games, because they combined big stories and interesting worlds with combat that was simply to understand but that also had depth.

I don't think going for sick combos is going to hit the same appeal.
 
JazzPotatoes said:
This is my view as well. I like character action games (Ninja Gaiden Black is an all time great game) but they've always been pretty niche. God Of War only started selling double digit millions when it moved away from the character action format into a cinematic over the shoulder format.

As much as people complain about turn based combat, it have the classic FF games an easy to understand appeal that reached a wide and diverse audience. Young girl gamers, thirty years old guys and everyone in-between liked playing the golden age FF games, because they combined big stories and interesting worlds with combat that was simply to understand but that also had depth.

I don't think going for sick combos is going to hit the same appeal.
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To be fair, a game having combat that looks like a character action game isn’t the same as it actually being a character action game. Plenty of action RPGs have really flashy, fast combat and combos.

I think people wanting turn-based FF from Square were also well-served this year with Octopath II, which was one of the best RPGs in years IMO.
 
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TOTK/SF6/D4 definitely feel like they’ve taken up a lot of space in the hype mindshare, more than this game for sure. I doubt it will bomb or anything but I fear SE might have unrealistic expectations for it (tale old as time). With less Japanese buyers and PS5 exclusivity I don’t see how this sells anywhere near as much as 15. On the plus side unlike 15 it wasn’t in development hell for a decade.
 
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Enpsty said:
I was under the impression that although ps5 sells like hotcakes the software sales are bad
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That's mostly a Japan thing, everywhere else is doing fine I think.

JazzPotatoes said:
because they combined big stories and interesting worlds with combat that was simply to understand but that also had depth.

I don't think going for sick combos is going to hit the same appeal
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Honestly I think it's less that the gameplay of FFXVI is geared towards DMC-style action and more that the marketing's been squarely focused on that. I imagine a lot of FF fans are waiting to see more of the story and characters, which have always been one of the main draws of the franchise.

SpaceGodzilla said:
that and releasing so close to Diablo 4 also don't help
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Yeah it has some tough competition too.
 
meatbag said:
That's mostly a Japan thing, everywhere else is doing fine I think.


Honestly I think it's less that the gameplay of FFXVI is geared towards DMC-style action and more that the marketing's been squarely focused on that. I imagine a lot of FF fans are waiting to see more of the story and characters, which have always been one of the main draws of the franchise.


Yeah it has some tough competition too.
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Yeah good points
 
Not that I would have pre-ordered it myself, but gameplay changes have put me off the game and I'll wait for reviews and probably a deep discount before trying it out. I know FF is all about changing things up and I'm just a single case, but I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of other longer term fans of the series had similar thoughts which might affect the pre-orders numbers.
 
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The first time I laid my eyes on Final Fantasy XVI I knew this was going to be one of these games that will be a huge success yet somehow still not meet Square Enix' sales expectations. It's just how they roll.
 
This is what Japanese made for shit posting sometime ago. says that FF aren't really cultivated a new fans in Japan.

NijDua2.png

Showa 62 (1986)
Heisei 9 (1997)
Heisei 21 (2009)
Reiwa 5 (2023)
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Speaking personally, I'm interested in FFXVI but a combination of having other stuff to play (slow burning TOTK which will be followed by Xenoblade 3 DLC), combined with its high day 1 price tag, combined with me being a bit lukewarm about the setting and big pivot to action over RPG, means that this is firmly in the 'I'll play later' pile.

I think SquareEnix are a bit stuck with FF in general because it's their premier franchise with a lot of fans, but it's in a genre that just doesn't really do huge numbers anymore, and they're pivoting it into a genre where there is heaps more competition. They've mishandled the series their fair share sure, but if they're genuinely expecting the game to do 10m+...I mean that would be a tough ask even if they knocked it out the park.
 
PixelKnight said:
To be fair, a game having combat that looks like a character action game isn’t the same as it actually being a character action game. Plenty of action RPGs have really flashy, fast combat and combos.
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Sure, but when people talk about the heyday of Final Fantasy, flashy fast combat and combos has never been part of the discussion.

Even within the turn based realm, there are games that have combined combos and turn based combat... And FF was never one of those. The combat was always easy to understand: here's a party of characters, here's a list of commands, pick out the ones you want to use, off you go. No complex button presses required.

Square are basically trying to pivot the FF fan base from enjoying essentially a Pokemon-esque battle system to something akin to Bayonetta, and it shouldn't be surprising that for at least a portion of the fan base that holds no appeal at all. The same thing would happen if Gamefreak announced that the next mainline Pokemon game is going to have real time Monster Hunter style combat.
PixelKnight said:
I think people wanting turn-based FF from Square were also well-served this year with Octopath II, which was one of the best RPGs in years IMO.
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Octopath is a different franchise though.
 
I’ll probably get it when it’s 5 dollars.

In the end the deep discounts ruined ff’s prestige in a way, it ain’t a game that’s going to sell like crazy at a $70 as we’ve seen with seven remake at least is that even with all that hype they couldn’t do so much, this game will defintly have to be soemthing different and great, or it will reach middling success. I hope it’s good, being a ff fan has sucked this past decade.
 
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To add to my point above: Pokemon is probably the main alternative example of a JRPG that got massively popular in the west in the 90s.

The difference between the two franchises is that Final Fantasy started getting really funky with it's combat system and game structure post X, and has been struggling to maintain the same level of popularity since. It's still popular, sure, but nowhere near the juggernaut it was in it's PS1/PS2 heyday.

Pokemon on the other hand has kept iterating on the same combat system as the original games, and is still monstrously popular with old and new fans to this day.

Someone at Square Enix is telling the higher ups that turn based combat isn't popular and they need to keep going action focused for FF to be really popular again, and it's just not true.
 
JazzPotatoes said:
To add to my point above: Pokemon is probably the main alternative example of a JRPG that got massively popular in the west in the 90s.

The difference between the two franchises is that Final Fantasy started getting really funky with it's combat system and game structure post X, and has been struggling to maintain the same level of popularity since. It's still popular, sure, but nowhere near the juggernaut it was in it's PS1/PS2 heyday.

Pokemon on the other hand has kept iterating on the same combat system as the original games, and is still monstrously popular with old and new fans to this day.

Someone at Square Enix is telling the higher ups that turn based combat isn't popular and they need to keep going action focused for FF to be really popular again, and it's just not true.
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I wouldn't even say that the problem is exclusive to the battle system, but that the battle system issue is a symptom of larger problems. In my eyes, it's that Final Fantasy has a kind of identity crisis on a larger scale, of which the gameplay mechanics are again a partial aspect. The games have simply lost their general focus over the last almost two decades, becoming a weird mix of different ideas, settings, and mechanics that are really only connected by a common name and relatively similar-seeming fantasy basics, but apart from that lack a clear lineage.
Experiments and innovation are all well and good (and necessary), but they shouldn't destroy the actual identity of a series right away, but at most soften it and then gradually reshape it. In this respect, Final Fantasy has completely failed in my opinion, whoever was responsible for managing the brand did not do a good job.

I mean, Pokémon is a great example of the opposite, because despite all that's changed there, it still revolves around a handful of basic core characteristics. People feel 'at home' with Pokémon games.
What's there to cling to with Final Fantasy? What defines the series nowadays? Chocobos?
 
XV had many years of hype and marketing behind it. Versus XIII to XV and all the promos and the aesthetics being closer to PS1 era FF (7 and 8 really) probably appealed more than medieval dark fantasy setting. Plus, it's launching in a busy time with other big releases and at £70 over here (with a bit knocked off in certain places) but yeah, I'm waiting for price drops for it.

Plus, I'm busy playing Metroid Prime Remastered and Tears of the Kingdom, so...XVI ain't getting priority for me even if I get it day 1.
 
Imitatio said:
I wouldn't even say that the problem is exclusive to the battle system, but that the battle system issue is a symptom of larger problems
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Great post. Yeah, I think the battle system is only one of many reasons for why FFXVI might not sell all that well. Another huge factor is that it's PS5 console exclusive, which is really going to hurt it in Japan, where in comparison FF7R sold around 30% of its sales. That and again, the marketing has been focused on the combat so far, when Final Fantasy has always attracted people with its fantasy stories and colorful characters, and people can't see that with FFXVI's marketing.
 
Imitatio said:
I wouldn't even say that the problem is exclusive to the battle system, but that the battle system issue is a symptom of larger problems. In my eyes, it's that Final Fantasy has a kind of identity crisis on a larger scale, of which the gameplay mechanics are again a partial aspect. The games have simply lost their general focus over the last almost two decades, becoming a weird mix of different ideas, settings, and mechanics that are really only connected by a common name and relatively similar-seeming fantasy basics, but apart from that lack a clear lineage.
Experiments and innovation are all well and good (and necessary), but they shouldn't destroy the actual identity of a series right away, but at most soften it and then gradually reshape it. In this respect, Final Fantasy has completely failed in my opinion, whoever was responsible for managing the brand did not do a good job.

I mean, Pokémon is a great example of the opposite, because despite all that's changed there, it still revolves around a handful of basic core characteristics. People feel 'at home' with Pokémon games.
What's there to cling to with Final Fantasy? What defines the series nowadays? Chocobos?
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I agree with this.

It's often popularly said that FF reinvented itself with each new game, but if you look at the series from I to X that's kind of not really true. Sure, each game introduced a new world and characters, and mechanics got iterated on our developed between instalments, but they all still followed a general trend of simple to understand turn based combat in a fantasy world. Things like ATB or the Jobs system developed on that, they didn't reinvent them. The only real outlier is VIII which admittedly did go for a fucking weird combat system.

Post-X, the series has been in a weird place of jettisoning gameplay mechanics but not being sure what to replace them with.

ATB? Eh, let's have a sort of MMO-esque equivalent. No, wait! Paradigm shifts! Hang on, no, let's go for real time one button combos! No, scral that. DMC combat.

Towns? Towns are hard, we don't want towns. No wait! We love towns, let's bring towns back!

Exploration? No exploration, you follow the path we lay out! No, we didn't mean that. We're open world now. Actually, open worlds are boring, let's go hub based instead.

It's just such a weird and constant mish mash of going forward and backward on ideas since XI. I find it's similar to the funk 343 have found themselves in with the Halo franchise, where they know they don't want it to be like the old games, but have no idea what they actually do want.
 
Even if I had a PS5 I would definitely wait on a deep discount on this. I have no way to know what the game will be like or how good it will be and I’m not gonna take a risk like that after pouring over 100 hours into TOTK. FF as a brand is so diluted at this point it might as well be meaningless.
 
I find these AAA PS5 square Enix games somewhat ugly to me for some reason. their 2dhd games are much more visually appealing.
 
JazzPotatoes said:
Sure, but when people talk about the heyday of Final Fantasy, flashy fast combat and combos has never been part of the discussion.

Even within the turn based realm, there are games that have combined combos and turn based combat... And FF was never one of those. The combat was always easy to understand: here's a party of characters, here's a list of commands, pick out the ones you want to use, off you go. No complex button presses required.

Square are basically trying to pivot the FF fan base from enjoying essentially a Pokemon-esque battle system to something akin to Bayonetta, and it shouldn't be surprising that for at least a portion of the fan base that holds no appeal at all. The same thing would happen if Gamefreak announced that the next mainline Pokemon game is going to have real time Monster Hunter style combat.

Octopath is a different franchise though.
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Doesn’t that hold up for XIII and XV too though? I mean, they’ve been on this track for such a long time now. I don’t think it’s just the experimental action combat systems that are the core of the issue with the franchise, FFVIII’s combat system was turn based and that turned me off at the time too. I think it’s more the series has a wider identity crisis at this point, scattered across so many sub-series and ideas, but you’ve also got this AAA game trend of big series all wanting to be a big action game with rpg elements, no matter whether it started as an rpg or an action game. So it’s kinda torn between FF being all over the place (when the series has a history of experimentation, which is cool), but also the money being at a particular junction point between so many genres. I don’t know if that makes any sense. Sorry if not. I’m kinda having trouble getting my head around my own point 😅

I brought up Octopath as sure, it’s a different IP. But as someone who loved the older FF games it’s exactly what I want out of FF, lots of wonderful characters, scenarios, crazy steampunk vehicles and cities side-by-side with raw fantasy, the melodrama alongside the humour and the camraderie. I just don’t really need FF any more when Octopath II is the older FF games with a great battle system in all but name. I guess that’s why 2DHD exists, to serve people like me who just find that’s exactly what they want as a mix of the old and the new, rather than whatever the latest game with the FF branding on the box is.
 
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