The Very Big Final Fantasy XIII Thread

[Bells]

As predicted, as soon as FF13 came out, Youtube got filled with "Let's play" videos and similar stuff.

Sure the game is in Japanese and only a very few handfull of people translate stuff while they play, but the videos are out there.

Anybody happened to catch up with those? What are your impressions of the game in motion?

[ZAKtheGeek]

Wow, really? I guess it is officially the future now.

[Regulus Tera]

Originally Posted by Regulus Tera

I hate all the animations. They seem too floaty. Attacks need more weight.
The storyline seems retarded so far. There are a lot of coinkydinkies and stuff happens just for the sake of it. I cannot decide whether Hope or Vanille is the most annoying, however.
The music is awful apart from the main battle and boss battle themes.
The two-hour long tutorial is... wow. I just hope the difficulty ramps up soon because it seems to be the slowest and easiest Final Fantasy in a while.
Also, every single fucking stream I've watched has the camera going all figure-skating at the slightest touch. I cannot say whether this is the player's fault or the game's.

I need some cheese for my whine. So far it's everything I thought it was going to be.

EDIT: I especially hate battle transitions. It seems like such a step backwards from FFXII in how you have to go to a different screen despite having every enemy visible on the world map. They break the flow of the game, look corny, and there's absolutely no reason they couldn't have been done Chrono Trigger style.

[Bells]

well, the transition they tried to explain, if i'm not mistaken it was because of memory issues or something on that area... i do recall hearing a technical explanation for that.

I felt everything i saw so far, to be a tad Linear. Like FFX, i remember some criticism for that.

But the animations... i dunno, not a big gripe about it.

The characters on the other hand, they are your typical Stereotype. But i wouldn't judge them yet. It's hard to call Vanille "Yuffie 2.0" right now.

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaPwE3CNla0

Odin Fight, no Spoilers. I dunno, felt a lot like "Classic" FF Battle system, but with just one character and Dynamic "Job change". 3 minutes isn't much of a drag for a Boss fight...

[Regulus Tera]

Originally Posted by Bells

well, the transition they tried to explain, if i'm not mistaken it was because of memory issues or something on that area... i do recall hearing a technical explanation for that.

It's a fucking PS3; there should be no memory issues.Also, FFXII did it before.

Originally Posted by Bells

I felt everything i saw so far, to be a tad Linear. Like FFX, i remember some criticism for that.

I think you've nailed my complaints. It's like FFX-3. I hated FFX.

I do have to say I like the fast pace of the battles and how there's shit going on everywhere. If only the camera weren't so fucking spastic...

[Bells]

Also, just to notice, there is a British dude doing a Full walktrough with comments on Youtube uploading it as he goes, right now.

Things to notice

1- He speaks some japanese, so he translates a ton of stuff
2- He seems to not know a lot about FF13, he didn't know who Vanille and Hope were. Also... found FF6 to be Boring and FF9 to be crap.... so be aware.

Here it goes. Part 1, there are 19 out now (so, about 2 hours of Gameplay)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STwQ7...eature=channel

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Regulus Tera

It's a fucking PS3; there should be no memory issues.Also, FFXII did it before.

The PS3 is still a piece of hardware, you know. Everything has limits. Everything it does takes memory. The thing only has half a Gig of RAM, and half of that is devoted exclusively to graphics. That's like Win98 with a Fatal1ty video card.

Also, 12 didn't have such large environments with so much going on in them, from what I've seen to compare. True, the playable area might be roughly the same, but 12 didn't render out as far outside of it. From a programmer's standpoint, the thing is more like Oblivion than FF12 in terms of resources and how they're being used, and have you ever TRIED the CM Partners mods? Your computer, unless you have some sort of alien technology, is guaranteed to become unstable at any more than 2-3 NPC partners, and will invariably crash at 7. And that's working with at least 8 times the PS3's main memory. Also, you have to consider that Oblivion really has very little going on in the background, so factor in a bunch of mods like Alive Waters, only also for a bunch of stuff on land. These additions alone will make even top-of-the-line computers scream. Now combine both of them and you'll find yourself with a burning box.

Please, RT. I know you feel like this is a step backwards. I wish the transitions were a bit more seamless, myself. But there are reasons for why it is the way it is, and why they had to scale it back that way.

[Regulus Tera]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

Also, 12 didn't have such large environments with so much going on in them, from what I've seen to compare.

Uh this is not true. This is not true at all.

I mean I don't know shit about gaming programming or whatever but my complaints stem from the fact that despite being in more powerful hardware FFXIII is cutting back on stuff that should have become standard with the last iteration. And even if there's a reason for the lack of seamless battles, in my opinion they should have cut out on the superfluous stuff that doesn't allow for seamless battles.

[Bells]

I can survive with the transition, even if it was just an Esthetic choice. But the first part of the game seems littered with Linear maps and dungeons and that's what bugs me.

Ok, to be honest, i can't recall any Final Fantasy that gave you a ton of freedom before the 5~10 hours mark. Usually you're trapped in a city or navigating from one room to the next room... and sure, some FF's would give you a limited world map early on and this one doesn't seem to do that...

I just hope that after the training wheels come off, the game opens up more than this.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Regulus Tera

Uh this is not true. This is not true at all.

I mean I don't know shit about gaming programming or whatever but my complaints stem from the fact that despite being in more powerful hardware FFXIII is cutting back on stuff that should have become standard with the last iteration. And even if there's a reason for the lack of seamless battles, in my opinion they should have cut out on the superfluous stuff that doesn't allow for seamless battles.

You know, RT, the argument could be made that they cut seamless battle transitions as a superfluous feature to make way for other things. Because it's pretty apparent they did, what with the early stuff showing near-seamless transitions with the final product not having them. That means they put in work to take them OUT, when they would have been easier to leave in if there had been room for them.

You really have to take a step back and look at mechanics. They wanted a fast-paced battle system. They actually increased the speed of battle over development by frankly quite a lot. In FF12, you had a pretty slow battle system. Things took time to execute, you had to wait for your turn to come up, and rounds were generally pretty darn long. They didn't want that for this. From what I'm seeing, you're basically racing to input commands and there's next to no cooldown in comparison. As soon as you act, your turn is up again.

That kind of speed applied to an MMO-like system COULD work, but it could quickly turn unforgiving depending on how much is on the field. An MMO-style system works best when numbers are roughly even in battles, or at least if the levels add up to about the same. Granted, from what we've seen, in certain areas, it might have been possible.

But then you have range to consider, too. For normal summoning, an MMO-style system could work, because, as you'll likely point out, it did in FF12. On the other hand, FF13 has Driving/Gestalt Mode, which makes battles much more action-oriented and not only removes the rest of the party from play, but also takes up the player character's full attention. Many of the Gestalt Mode abilities have a limited range best served by an enclosed area, because they're physical attacks. Wide, sweeping physical attacks, but they still require physical contact, which the enclosed area helps ensure. Without it, one could easily be "in battle" with several enemies, yet not be close enough to hit them. Given that Gestalt Mode essentially puts the summon's HP as its time, and the attacks also pull from that time, it makes sense to make sure none of the effort is wasted, because you have to win that time from battles and you can't cancel in the middle of it.

You also have to consider buyer feedback. I don't have numbers on this one, but I personally DISLIKED the MMO setup in 12, and I know others who did, too. It felt, at the time, like they were trying to cheaply capitalize on the popularity of MMOs. Maybe they were. I'm not going to argue this one, because, as I said, I don't have numbers on it, but I will point out that FF had ten titles out that used a battle screen, and all but three of those were on hardware known to be capable of putting battles right where you stood. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a battle screen, and just because one game didn't do it that way does not make the practice obsolete.




Frankly, as a programmer with vague hopes of doing games as a living and concrete hopes of doing games as a hobby, with several projects in various stages of planning and completion, I know what has to be considered, because I have to consider it. I'm not saying any of this stuff to be rotten, RT. I'm trying to explain it to you, so you can have a better idea of what goes into this stuff. Programming isn't at all black and white. There are many ways of doing things and you often have to consider what's best for an individual situation. When dealing with content, you have to weigh everything against everything else and make tough decisions on what to include, what to cut, and what to scale up or scale back so everything fits into your resources.

One last thing, remember that this is coming to the 360, too, which has its own specs and quirks. Maybe the PS3 COULD handle an MMO battle system like 12's but maybe the 360 couldn't. I know jack about the 360's specs and capabilities, but you have to consider that it's going to be the same game for both systems. Very few games currently do different versions between the two, with the only one I can think of being NIER. When coding for multiple configurations, you have to cater to the greatest common factor in every aspect, which means the lowest factor in each area on each system hampers the final product.




Edit: Wasn't going to do this originally, but I think people deserve a TL;DR for this. So I'll do bullet points:

• An enclosed battle area can help with resources including disk space, RAM usage, and CPU load.
• Mechanics must be considered. An enclosed area benefits wide-angle physical attacks as in Gestalt Mode.
• Just because open-style battle was done once does not make it the standard; it makes it the exception that may become a new standard if it continues.
• The PS3 is not the only system this is being made for, and thus it must cater to the greatest common factor in every area, in which the lowest capability in every area drags down the ultimate quality.