Final Fantasy XV: Thoughts on the Development

[NemesisSP]

Now, before anyone jumps me on this, saying I'm just repeating what so many others have, this isn't the point of this thread. This thread isn't a thread about how FFXV betrayed us, along with Nomura or Tabata, but instead is just a look at the long development time of the game and why it's been so polarizing. And it has been, all of the FNC games have in some way had a polarizing reaction to something, XIII is just the most polarizing because it came first and it was initially the only main series game of the three.

I wrote in another forum that FFXV has always been a bit of a mess, but I want to expand on it more because I've been reading fan reactions and professional reviews, re-reading interviews for the game and explain more on why I can safely say that I think FFXV has had probably the most uneven and troubled production in the entire series. And it's a problem that has affected XIII and Type-0 as well.

And a lot of that blame seems to be placed on Tetsuya Nomura himself. After all, he was the director and the guy who came up with the concept of the story and characters. His position as such does make it easy to pin the blame on him for how long the game has been in production and why it hasn't been shown off as much. But a lot of people seem to have forgotten that Nomura doesn't run the company himself, thus he has no way of deciding when the game could make an appearance. After all, it's the company itself that makes the final decisions concerning when games are shown and released and to be honest, it doesn't seem like the heads cared about the game enough to show it off as much as the other games in the subseries. Now don't get me wrong, I do not mean they didn't care in the sense that they wrote off the game, since that's obviously not true. I mean that they seem to have considered it the lesser of the three projects, thus why when it was Versus XIII it didn't have as much of a focus as it does as XV. This is also because Tetsuya Nomura is an important figure of the Final Fantasy series and the Kingdom Hearts series. He was in charge of a lot of projects and it seems as though that also contributed to the delays in the game. We also know that people had to be taken from the development team to help with FFXIII and FFXIV. Though I think the latter is a much bigger factor than the former.

A lot of this is also because the Crystal Tools engine had to be built and it was a difficult time doing so. But it's also because the game itself seems to have gotten delayed a lot. Something that Square Enix kept promising wouldn't happen again and then they went dark on it.

I have a lot of points I want to make, but I also want to ask you guys if you think there's broken promises that I might have missed. And that means something other than Stella. I do have a point about her, and I am interested in hearing your points, but at the same time, I think there's a lot more that we don't talk about currently than just her.

Anything you can think of. I don't think of this as general FFXV stuff because it's not a discussion about the news for it, but more of what we know so far and what has been changed. And if these changes are good or not or if they are just more broken promises of a company with a large line of them already?

 

[NemesisSP]

Indeed, that is much of the problem with having announced it so soon and then keeping in the dark about it. Things do change, but I do think a lot of the points people make about it are still very valid if you look at the development history and the promises that Nomura and SE did make and such.

Again, this is really only to examine them and determine if they really do have validity. Nothing more than that.

 

[Crystal Power]

" XIII is just the most polarizing because it came first and it was initially the only main series game of the three." Honestly FFXIII seem to be well accepted in Japan, with Lighting constantly topping polls in Japan. Even with Dissidia 2015, she was most played with Cloud.

I mention this because Japan is their homeland. The XIII sequels we received could be because the game was likable, and the western fan base that seems to whine is just loud, I see that now. People are upset over Stella and we barely knew anything about her.

Versus XIII was concept. The mistake Square Enix made was announcing it far to early. Things are finally on track now and the game is making actual development after being re-branded as FFXV. As I said all before that was concept. Hardly 'Betrayal'.

Can you believe this image is FFX? The thing is the public did not know...

 

[NemesisSP]

Actually, we did know quite a bit more about Stella than we do currently about Luna. And that's what I mean about validity.

After all, we knew her role in the story, we were shown footage of her and Noctis talking to each other. Nomura also gave plenty of information about her that made it clear she was an important character. So while stuff like gameplay changes are pretty much accepted, I don't think it was going to be quite the same with Stella.

With Stella, it's not that we didn't know anything about her. It's that what we knew about her was repeated stressed on us and made clear that she was going to be the main heroine of the game and that the conflict between her and Noctis was one of the central story elements.

It's not much like what those images and concepts not being in the game that's the problem, it's the problem that removing Stella and replacing her meant that a game that had already been written needed to be rewritten again. Things do change, but just look at the difference between the TGS 2011 trailer and this current build This is far more than what those games were like. It's more in line with FFVII's change in story, but the difference is that the story is fairly the same, but without Stella.

 

[Crystal Power]

Those are not just concept images, the character shown is Tidus. The women in the first pic is supposedly an older version of 'Yuna' or preferably the main heroine. As I said this was not all released to the public before Final Fantasy X released, but many games if not all go through what is happening to XV. There have been many Stella's. The thing is we were shown the concept of it all, and now people are upset over it. When it's a natural process, but its usually all behind closed doors.

I'm sure if people seen black haired 'Yuna', that looks arguably much more strong than the one we got, people would rage knowing it was changed if it was all released before the games actual release.

 

[yeah_93]

Sweet dreams, party scene.

 

[NemesisSP]

It's still quite sloppy to change something like that. The difference is that while those were concepts, they still (mostly) didn't get shown to the public till afterwards. Stella was intended to be in the game long after I'm sure her initial concepts were done. Also, the reason many were upset was because Tabata was the one to remove her, not Nomura. When Nomura was director, she still was. Now, Nomura probably did sign off on it, but we don't know. And that's another point that I want to make.

That despite promising more information, we still don't know a lot about this game. So it is still frustrating getting over these changes because we aren't being shown why Luna is going to be better than Stella. Keep in mind, we have only seen three 3 shots of Luna and still don't know her personality and role in the game. Luna most likely still has a lot of her older versions personality traits, but at the same time, it's Tabata admitting that she does not have the same role in the game that's most upsetting, because it means uprooting the game yet again to fit this new character into it and condense the story further.

Also, I forgot to mention, but yes, the 13 games do seem far better received in Japan than anywhere else. I do think a lot of US players probably weren't willing to look past the initial impressions and allow themselves to go along with the story. But that's my own opinion and I certainly don't plan on saying it's an absolute fact.

 

[NemesisSP]

And that's what I'm trying to gauge with this thread. Just what holds validity and what doesn't.

Look, no matter what, perception on the games development and the decisions behind it are all subject to criticism. No one is exempt from critique and for better or worse Tabata has been shown to be a polarizing director in this case. The story did change, yes, but it's what he said about it that is telling. "We considered just rewriting Stella's character, but in the end decided to leave her out." That's a paraphrased quote of course, but that is what he said. And that is something that is ripe for both praise and criticism. On the one hand, it's fine to remove stuff that you don't know how to fit in and on the other it is rather short sighted to remove a character who has been around for a while and replace her with someone similar. Luna isn't just a different version of Stella, she's intended to be a complete replacement of her because they didn't want to rewrite the character to fit with the story.

This is a valid point of criticism, because Tabata has still entered into someone else's game and changed a lot of it. And it is telling that a lot of the changes only became known once it was announced that he was the sole director of the game.

 

[Lulcielid]

Also, the reason many were upset was because Tabata was the one to remove her, not Nomura. When Nomura was director, she still was. Now, Nomura probably did sign off on it, but we don't know. And that's another point that I want to make.

I would say (from my perspective) that Nomura was more the one in making the desicion in removing her,Tabata just gave the reasons to Nomura to actually do so (coherent, making sense story in a standalone game)

I'd say this changes happened before the re-reveal, just lets look at the E32013 re-reveal trailer, at the begining we are shown a boy and a girl running. The boy we can presume is Noctis and the girl is (imo) Luna, why did a say Luna instead of Stella ? If that girl was indeed Stella, that would outright contradict what we previously knew about Noctis and Stella meeting for the first time at the Lucis party, this was shown when Nomura was still the main director.

 

[NemesisSP]

Nomura said it was indeed Stella and that her relationship with Noctis had been slightly tweaked.

But that's my other criticism. Condensing a story that's meant to take place over several games is always going to be just as risky as that approach. I think that if Nomura had been more in charge, he probably would have figured out a way to fit Stella in. And I certainly don't think he would have just replaced this character he seemed in his interviews to be really excited about.

 

[Lulcielid]

Nomura said it was indeed Stella and that her relationship with Noctis had been slightly tweaked..

What if Nomura lied in the same way Tabata did with "the plot hasn't changed" ?

 

[NemesisSP]

What if Tabata is also lying so people will stop asking him about Stella? Because sometimes I can't shake the feeling that he might be.

Hahaha, look guys, I do appreciate you writing in this thread, but are we only going to talk about Stella? I really didn't write this thread in mind for just her, after all.

 

[Lulcielid]

What if Tabata is also lying so people will stop asking him about Stella? Because sometimes I can't shake the feeling that he might be.

Hahaha, look guys, I do appreciate you writing in this thread, but are we only going to talk about Stella? I really didn't write this thread in mind for just her, after all.

Botton line is too many behind the scenes stuff happened and we can just only speculate.

 

[NemesisSP]

Yes, too very true, but I wanted to talk about the management behind the game and why it was delayed and such. I think those are worth look at more of. If only because it does seem like a huge issue in gaming since this isn't the only game to have gone through a development time like this.

 

[LeonBlade]

Who cares? The game has and is still in development. They are not promises, they clearly are subject to change. Anyone that gets invested into details and gets annoyed is on their own for their emotions towards it.

 

[NemesisSP]

Who cares? The game has and is still in development. They are not promises, they clearly are subject to change. Anyone that gets invested into details and gets annoyed is on their own for their emotions towards it.

If you don't care, that's fine, I'm not gonna argue with you. But some people do and they've made that clear already. Even if the game is in development, it does not prevent Hajime Tabata, Tetsuya Nomura and every other person related to it from receiving criticism about it. This is a thread about whether or not thought someone does feel there are broken promises and how much they've disliked how they've handled the game. This is not a thread where you bash someone for caring about something even if you think it is stupid. I'm not saying that to anyone in particular, but I'm making it clear.

We do have a right to our opinions, my opinion is that Nomura and Tabata can be criticized for how they've handled the game. If you want to just give them a pass because the game is still in development even though the latter is asking for it, you may go right ahead.

 

[Fin]

For me it has less to do with characters like Stella specifically being removed (though it was def. disappointing... I was more interested in her than any other character) and more with how it seems like... well, it's been this long in development and it seems like they had a LOT of trouble putting the story together into something that works. Even though whatever form the game is in when it's released should be complete, we can see them floundering over the years not really knowing where to go with the game and that's what lowers confidence. Until the game is released it doesn't really matter if the game is ultimately a better product because of it; like why should I watch a trailer and be excited for something that I can't trust will actually make it into the actual game.

They showed all these trailers with all this flashy cool stuff to get people excited without actually having a realized/concrete story behind it. Removing the main heroine and replacing her with what is apparently (??) a completely different character is just the most obvious sign of this. Showing FFX concept art isn't the same thing because it was just artwork and clearly used in conceptual stages; it's not like they officially introduced Lulu as the main heroine years before the game came out.

I always used to believe they at least had a more definite vision of what they wanted to make (concept art stage) before spending millions of dollars, somewhat disillusioning >_>

 

[Lulcielid]

We should blame Nomura for creating fancy vidoes, where he trew ideas and concepts in-between with probably no actual plan set in stone from the get go before starting development.

 

[Rin]

Since we're not privy to SE Japan's internal affairs, none of us can really say for sure just what exactly has been happening with XV's development. Unless one of you is secretly an insider. lol

I don't know if SE gave Nomura the permission to say at E3 2013 that XV's story would not change from Versus XIII's (something to that effect) or what. Perhaps it was the exact opposite: SE needed Nomura to reassure fans. However, Tabata had been designated co-director by that time already. Now I'm not trying to imply that replacing Stella with Luna is solely Tabata's decision (I highly doubt it'd be that easy to cut a major character based on personal whim), but clearly SE have not been particularly honest with XV's advertising.

Also, something that's been on my mind: in a 2010 interview with Famitsu, Nomura had announced that Versus XIII's scenario had been completed. We assume that would've meant plot, script, and story were not only finished but also checked and given the OK, correct?

Why, then, would the team need to make any changes at all to XV's story? Technological advancement means XV should be able to tell Versus XIII's story more effectively, not less. I don't want to speculate too wildly, but the change from Versus XIII to the more mainstream XV may indeed have resulted in other necessary changes, not just a simple platform transition. Whether these changes will turn out for better or worse remains to be seen, but clearly one person on the Internet is showing a lot of enthusiasm for this game, haha.

I baleee

 

[Lulcielid]

Also, something that's been on my mind: in a 2010 interview with Famitsu, Nomura had announced that Versus XIII's scenario had been completed. We assume that would've meant plot, script, and story were not only finished but also checked and given the OK, correct?

Why, then, would the team need to make any changes at all to XV's story? Technological advancement means XV should be able to tell Versus XIII's story more effectively, not less. I don't want to speculate too wildly, but the change from Versus XIII to the more mainstream XV may indeed have resulted in other necessary changes, not just a simple platform transition. Whether these changes will turn out for better or worse remains to be seen, but clearly one person on the Internet is showing a lot of enthusiasm for this game, haha.

I baleee

Well a completed story usually means it has a begining, middle and an ending, but on the other hand it =/= complete, coherent, self conteined plot in a single game, it could be very possible that it originally had buch of plot threads/questions hanging unresolved, which could let to more sequels/spin offs for that game; at least thats my take on why changes to XV´s plot were done.