Listen, I know that many fans like the changes being made to Final Fantasy XIII-2. I just don't care for this game. Now I have tried so damn hard to like XIII, I really did, but there was just so many things wrong with the game that I couldn't bare finishing the game. Not so much the gameplay as I know Square Enix likes to change it up with every Final Fantasy. That's just how it is with this series. As a matter of fact I kind of liked the gameplay in XIII. The problem I had was the story and its characters. I felt absolutely no attachment or could careless about how their stories ended.
And that's the problem.
Final Fantasy always transported me to a place where I could care about characters and made me become attached to the world and care about saving it. Final Fantasy XIII didn't do that for me. Hope was an annoying, winey kid. Snow obviously had ego problems. Lightning was an A**hole. And listening to Vinnel will get to anyone after a few hours. I felt no connection to the story and had a hard time following why the characters were doing what their doing ( how did we get on this ship in the sky? And uh why are we here again? What's the point in being in this theme park?)
A bland story and uninspired characters with no real villain will kill a Final Fantasy for me any day of the week.
This is the reason why so many people (including myself) don't give two shakes about XIII-2. Why risk spending money on a game that's precursor wasn't that good? Now I understand why so many fans are trying to defend XIII-2, I get it. I understand that fans want to believe that Square really took in all the input from gamers and crafted something good. I just don't believe they did. For Square to say "Fans demanded a sequel and that's what we're giving them." is almost borderline stupid. Who on Gods green Earth ask for a sequel. I remember fans saying that Square made a total dud and they should scrap and rethink Final Fantasy XIII, but never did fans "demand" for a sequel. Understand that if you are thinking that picking up XIII-2, that's fine. Really. If XIII-2 is the Final Fantasy that you have always wanted than why should anyone stop you from having fun. That's why were all on here right?
I just want people to see from my perspective. And hopefully the reasons I gave will make many of you understand why I don't care for XIII-2 and why I have glowing hope for Versus XIII and not for XIII-2. Hopefully this will have you understand why I comment the way I do on the news articles for XIII-2 and Versus XIII.
On the subject of Final Fantasy Versus XIII, as many of you can tell, I can't wait for this game. I have always wanted a game where Final Fantasy meets Kingdom Hearts' battle system and for it to have a darker story and characters we can actually care about. In many trailers you can already see the emotions in all the characters and all the messed up situations that they are in. Betrayal. Friendship. The Last Crystal. Love. These are the main words and ideas behind Versus XIII. Tetsuya Nomura is one of my favorite directors in Square too. He made some of my favorite games (Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII) and one of the best movies to come out of Square (Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children). I have a lot of faith in Nomura and his team to create a Final Fantasy that will go down as one of the best in the series and quite frankly its sad that it has to share the name with XIII and is dubbed a "spin-off" when it really shouldn't be.
As a matter of fact, Square should rename Final Fantasy Versus XII. For the sake of making more money this would be a wise move for Square.
Think about it: A lot of gamers were burned by Final Fantasy XIII and will probably not pick up XIII-2 because of it. While Square has addressed many of the problems of XIII there is still a stigma that the game wasnt great or for that matter good.
So Joe Shmo who has only played XIII or just heard about how bad XIII was will probably not pick up XIII-2, Versus XIII or (for that matter) anything associated with Final Fantasy XIII. I understand they both have the same mythos but they are two completely different Universes. As a matter of fact there is only one fal'cie in Versus and that is Ethos (goddess of death) and you dont really see her or anything (like any god like figure).
So in gamers, Squares and everyone's best interest they should rename the game to Final Fantasy Versus or Final Fantasy XV. They can do it smart way too if they're that worried about confusing people about the name of the game. In the next trailer they release at the end where they show the name they can show "Final Fantasy Versus XIII" and then they could make the title glow brightly to where you cant see it anymore and when the light dims you see "Final Fantasy XV" or "Final Fantasy Versus".
I'll let everyone ponder that while I write my long a** paper that is due in a few hours. Oh and here for your enjoyment here is a video showcasing who is making this game and why it will be awesome.(try to ignore the annoying guy at the begining, he stops talking after a few seconds)
Joe 'Three Sheets' Neate (Executive Producer): "As I’m sure you can imagine, when it comes to Sea of Thieves my days are full of numbers. Development costs, active servers, days until the next update… Sometimes, though, a truly extraordinary number stands out – a number like 40 million, which I’m incredibly pleased to say is the number of pirates who’ve now set sail in Sea of Thieves!"
Garrr... more people to walk the plank and send to Davey Jones locker.
would have been funny to release this on talk like a pirate day.
Devstream 178 was filled with so many cool announcements for the game's community, and were able to ask a lot of questions about Warframe: 1999 and more!
From The Growing Stones and Valkyrie Interactive comes The Mildew Children on Xbox and PC. Ready for the fairy tales and horror it brings?
I would love to hear from the N4G community and see your guys thoughts on this subject too. Thanks in advance!
FFXIII just didn't feel final fantasy enough for me... It wasn't a bad game, but I don't want future FF games to continue down that road. That is why I don't want to see a XII-2. I think this game (out of all the previous FF games) is the least deserving of a sequel.
Now, when I think about versus XIII, I see a single shining beam of hope for the future of the franchise. They have an open world, vehicles, a world map and maybe even a story I give a crap about...
FF Versus really looks like it's gonna be the best FF yet. the characters look amazing and attachable, the battle system looks great, the game will have world map and spaceships, it looks epic(literally, it will be epic) etc.
just thinking about all that gives me goosebumps.
Honestly the story wasn't horrible in FF13 to say, as it was just a huge assortment of pieces that they expected the players to already know the big picture that they're putting together, which honestly you don't really know until near the late end of the game.
I get from a lot of people that they ended around chapter 10, where you FINALLY start the exploration. This also ties into an issue I feel that people had more so of FF13 than the story, which was the linear aspect of how the game progressed you along.
Sure many RPGs have a linear type aspect to the story, but for some reason in that game, with the way how they designed it, it's like they just dragged you along, instead of encouraging the player to move ahead.
As far as the characters, for me I felt Sazh was one that honestly stood out over the rest. You have one who is a father, and you actually tend to sympathize what he's going through, and to me it tends to brake away from the traditional "generic rpg heroes" standard. Where as the others are like "We're going to fight such and such", he's somewhat in the back assessing the situation of what he wants to go through, and more so of an understandable reason as to why he's fighting.
On a side note I feel that people are pinning too much hope on VS13. Honestly I would gladly accept the game when it comes out, but I dunno if I would say that's an epitome of a FF game.
At this point I have no confidence in Square. Even with Versus and Nomura. There's just been too much promotion and promises, then excuses. I'll give Versus a chance, unlike XIII-2, but I refuse to get excited for it.
Sqaure likely hit their stride on the SNES where they found a balance between story and cinematic presentation, but since then they've become too focuses on cinematic scenes. To the point they aren't even looking at character and story.