Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Square Enix Dev Discusses Dropping Final Fantasy's Numbers:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/square-enix-dev-discusses-dropping-final-fantasys-numbers/1100-6514430/

Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy 17, Final Fantasy 18...

Final Fantasy 44, Final Fantasy 45, Final Fantasy 46....

Final Fantasy 99, Final Fantasy 100, Final Fantasy 101....

;/

I mean to be fair they'd kinda have to drop the numbers (or at least the Roman Numerals) by the time they got to Final Fantasy 30 or else things would be getting kinda lewd.

XXVIII + II?

I randomly came home with the TV on and Ace Ventura was on towards the end... I was like oh I remember this movie, I loved it. Then I saw the entire ending and wow, some movies could never be done today lol. I'm surprised it is even shown in todays world.

All the youtubers/streamers getting early access to FFXVI. Every time I see content creators get review copies and ***like this, it makes my blood boil. A lot of them weren't actually in on the hobby of video games before they became content creators, and it just feels so irksome.

Remember games before youtube and streamers? Sometimes I hate these times.

Also @Draylo

Finkle is Einhorn! Einhorn is Finkle! She's a man! *Entire police squad starts spitting and scrubbing their tongues*

That's exactly what I thought about it a week or two ago when it came on the lobby TV in the hotel.

Oh ya that is annoying. Happens with reviewers for collectibles too. I was watching this one guy and he only reviews 6 inch figures and apparently bandai/iron studios sent him a statue. He was like "well they asked which power ranger was my favorite and sent me this for free" and they didn't even ask him to review it or do anything.. He ended up saying it was really meh and not worth it, but its part of a diorama.. and he didn't even enjoy or collect statues. I'd like free ***too!

Wow. Every tuesday this theater situation gets shittier and shittier.

*** emagine isn't opening until 6 pm, the ***!? from 20-22 they were open at 7am showing every movie a hundred times a day. Now they're doin literally 8 total showings.

What in the actual *** is that nonsense.

Tomorrow only has 6 total showings! Why even open the god damn theater for 6 total showings! 4 Fast X and zero Guardians 3, how?

Can't wait to play Final Fantasy LXIX.

Yoshida: "We're going to call this game Final Fantasy XVI even though we're trying to channel the success of Grand Theft Auto by basing its story on Game of Thrones and its gameplay is based on Devil May Cry and nothing is even remotely Final Fantasy about it because the Final Fantasy name is what will sell it!" (Paraphrased)

Also Yoshida: "We want to dissociate our game from the JRPG genre, but we're still going to title our game using a franchise that is completely synonymous with the genre." (Paraphrased)

Also-Also Yoshida: "We have to stop calling games Final Fantasy because the series has been around so long now that people are concerned they need to play all previous entries for context, not realizing that every Final Fantasy is unique!" (Paraphrased)

For a while I thought he might have been a voice of reason among the Square-Enix Board of Directors. But every time he opens his mouth, I believe more and more that he truly belongs within that loony bin.

They didn't have to call this grim action game "Final Fantasy". By calling it Final Fantasy, they've done all of the following:
1. The audience positively associating the name with the RPG genre are going to be sorely disappointed.
2. The potential audience negatively associating the name with the RPG genre are going to ignore it.
3. The potential audience thinking they have to beat 15 other games for context are going to ignore it.

And real nice of the Almighty Yoshi-P to disparage RPGs (in particular turn-based RPGs) when their other gigantic TBRPG franchise Dragon Quest has remained consistent and successful, and they've had success from other games like Octopath Traveller. Pokemon is a turn-based RPG and is one of the most consistently successful franchises of all time. Persona has exploded internationally, and that new Honkai Star Rail is doing very well.

It's almost as if - I dunno - the genre has nothing to do with it. Maybe the success of Grand Theft Auto V came from consistency, expectations, and delivery. Maybe the reason why the West spent the late '00s and early '10s rolling our eyes at the "JRPG" subgenre was because so many Japanese-published Role Playing Games were genuinely hot garbage with poorly-crafted worlds, generic writing, bad translation and voice acting, and excessively mechanically complicated not-quite-turn-based-but-also-not-quite-action combat.

But it doesn't matter. Yoshida's name and Sony's marketing money are going to turn it into a success anyway. Stupidity gets to go unpunished because the world isn't fair. You approve one good idea back in the summer of 2020 and suddenly your word is law.

EDIT: I know this post isn't going to make me any friends, but it's been bothering me for a while and it just keeps getting worse. I apologize knowing that this is probably going to start an argument.

Based take and +1. Yoshi-P's done some objectively good things, but his direction with XIV has largely made me stop playing it, and I don't expect much from XVI or CBUIII.

Or maybe it'll be successful because it'll be a good game. /shrug

I hate to be a downer, but that's almost never the case. Success in the games industry (indeed, in a lot of industries) is based on exclusively on psychology. The success of premium titles is largely based on goodwill and marketing, while the success of free-to-play titles is largely based on psychological warfare.

Good games can fail, bad games can succeed. A quality indie title is guaranteed to lose in sales to a mediocre AAA game. Hell, a quality indie title can even lose to a bad indie title if word-of-mouth entices enough people to hate-buy it.

FFXVI might be good. It might be great, even. My problem is that Square-Enix has made so many mistakes that they don't deserve to see this game succeed. They've had to sell their Western developers, cut their losses on half a dozen Live Service titles, and slash the budgets of all three of their MMOs in the last couple of years just to stay afloat because they're so invested in their stupid Blockchain and Metaverse aspirations. Yet because they let Sony buy them out (which is awful, awful news the future of the gaming industry) they had the budget the market the everloving crap out of this game. And even though almost every game they've released in the last 20 years has ranged from smoldering garbage to mediocre at best, and the company has had awful allegations, their goodwill somehow still holds up. In part because of the diehard fans (who are being told they don't mean anything to them), and in part because of the name Yoshi-P (whom is the person telling the fans they can go fly a kite).

since we were talking about long run movies recently....

"Oppenheimer" run time to push 3 hours

Now I am become death, destroyer of bladders.

time to update the bhagavad gita^^

The last decent (non online) title was x-2 anyway, and mostly for the gameplay, story was meh. 15 is hot garbage and xiii is just dumb.

* xii seemed weird to me, but honestly keep forgetting it exists.

They should just drop the name entirely. Them trying to disassociate with the JRPG genre is exactly why they're failing.

^ XII remains the only console FF title I've purchased but just got too bored with to finish. I've heard great things about it, I really enjoyed several aspects of the gameplay....but the story just never grabbed me.

They're failing due to bad management and lack of direction. Make no mistake despite what the purists who need final fantasy to be exactly what they think it should be, games like XII, XV, and the XIII franchise sold gangbusters. Compare sales numbers of XV to things like Octopath some time.

I'm not going to bother picking and responding and everything else to each point that has been made on this, frankly I don't have the energy and I really don't care whether people deprive themselves of a game just because of their own zealotry. I will say that moving FF in a new direction is what it has always done. We wouldn't have had things like the FFX combat system if they had kept ***same old same old ATB forever.

and Justin Bieber sold over 38 million albums, popular =/= good.

Trying new things is fine, doubling down on blatantly bad ideas is another. This is what they've been doing for 2 *** decades.

This right here alone says it all.

Good =/= your arbitrary standard of what good is. It appeals to more people, that's why they do it. Get over it.

On the contrary. If a game like XIII can do well, it's proof that the name is leagues more important than the quality.

If someone walked up to you and offered you a game with awful worldbuilding, even worse storytelling, one-button gameplay, no exploration, and bland-as-paper characters, but it gets slightly tolerable after 40 hours for the low, low cost of $70 USD, you would probably back away slowly.

But if someone walked up to you and said "Hey the latest Final Fantasy game came out. It takes 40 hours to get good. But hey when has Final Fantasy ever steered you wrong?" you'd probably consider it.

And look at how many people have been playing it just because they're going through a journey from 1 thru 15 in preparation of 16's launch. They don't even like it, but it's getting sold out of literal obligation.

XIII didn't do well on its own, the franchise did, which I very clearly made sure to state. The reason for that? They iterated on each release instead of keeping it the same.

I get it, people don't like change. But that's how the world works. That said, spinning things with bias and lack of research isn't the best way to go about it. You should try to read more into why they're moving away from the JRPG stigma, for example, because it isn't just "unga bunga SE hate turn base, SE hate fans". There is a deep rooted cultural reason in Japanese development studios as to why they want to move away from that label.

Call of duty appeals to more people, objectively it's a ***game.

Absolutely the *** not.

Y'know, out of curiosity (because the last source here was something I saw earlier today) I clicked your other two links to see how your paraphrasing associated to the source... and honestly, if "paraphrasing" means "I feel some type of way about this game so I'm going to make ***up" then you definitely paraphrased those articles.

Regardless of your feelings on action v. turn-based RPGs, Yoshida hasn't disparaged RPGs nor is he "channeling GTA" in these quotes. Dude just wants to lead development in a certain way, as is his right as producer, and the teams are on board.

Did this game have to be a numbered title? Perhaps not. Surely they could've just named it something else and Final Fantasy could've been a subtitle, a la Stranger of Paradise.
They could've made an offshoot that follows the universe conventions like RGG does with Judgment and Yakuza/LAD.

But they didn't, and it's fine.

Being a turn-based RPG purist and crying out how you don't like how they've slanted towards RTA? You have every right to do that. But games evolve. People's tastes change over time. And "people" as a collective, not "you and your niche".

In short, it's what Proth's saying. You can, indeed, not like something, but popular is popular—regardless of your feelings on the matter.

I'm interested in seeing if the game's done well, but if it ain't, then oh well. They'll learn their lesson. It's not the first time they've *** up a game.

It truly isn't just as simple as "people don't like change"....let's all be honest and admit that line is used as a copout when one group can't identify the anger in another. Change simply for the sake of change is never valuable or worth lauding.

perhaps its just MILDLY possible that many of us older FF fans simply view the direction SE has taken FF in the past decade as just a sad loss. There are plenty! of games styled like what SE seems to want with XVI- a gamer can find that style anywhere. But when it came to turn-based full party RPGs, that market is almost completely gone. And if the king of that genre gives up on it, its a pretty safe bet that genre is dead or close.

This isn't what "objectively" means. Objectively, you're wrong. Subjectively, Call of Duty is a fine FPS game. It also appeals to millions of people and makes money hand over fist and you're mad about it for some reason.



There are also several turn based games out there that you can buy and play (including several banger indie titles like Crystal Project that no one ever talks about). They just aren't called Final Fantasy. Go figure they aren't trying to appeal solely to a shrinking demographic that is historically volatile.

I get it. Games evolve, and usually a company will evolve the parts that are no longer doing well. After Warcraft 3, the franchise went into the MMO market (though they didn't call it "Warcraft 4"). And Yoshida himself has been saying that turn-based RPGs are a thing of the past.

My issue is that Yoshida is wrong. That's been my point this whole time. Yoshida isn't even just wrong, he's insulting an entire genre, including those within his own company.

The people who bullied JRPGs in the late '00s and early '10s were wrong to take it to the extent they took it. But the quality of RPGs coming out of Japanese publishers did take a nose-dive and it did just so happen to coincide with games like Oblivion and Mass Effect entering the scene.

My issue is that Yoshida doesn't understand why those people were so mean in the first place. He seems to have it in his head that people hate "JRPGs" because they're turn-based, but that isn't the problem nor ever has been. And now by saying that the genre is antiquated and that he wants to dissociate from the genre, he's implying that older Final Fantasy games (including the Pixel Remasters) and indeed modern Dragon Quest games - not to mention the still-successful Pokemon and now-successful Persona games are all only good because of nostalgia.

He's not only conceded to the Western bullies, he himself has become one. And rather than try to produce a proper JRPG to prove that the Final Fantasy series still has what it takes, he's just running away.