Final Fantasy XVI

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
One thing I really wanted while playing FF7R was to be able to freely change party members while exploring the map.
I can forgive the omission in part 1 since there aren't that many areas where it would be worth having such a feature, but once the party is more consistently together in part 2 I would love to be able to do this. Maybe have side quests only certain members can do. This isn't the thread for this speculation though lol.
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Xenosaga let you mark anyone in the party as "leader" and you would walk around the map with them. And more than that, they all had unique animations for destroying obstacles and such found in the world that evoked their personality and style of attack. That was a lot of fun to play with.

Obviously I will hope for and welcome that in VIIR as well, but Cloud is much more a "main character" in ways that Tidus and Vaan are not. At least Tidus is still important to the plot, even though Yuna is the most important. XII's story isn't even really told through Vaan's eyes once you leave Rabanastre, he basically disappears, lol.
 

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
If we're strictly going through experiencing an FF story from a main woman character's lens that leaves us still with Yuna, Lightning, Serah, Terra, and Reynn from WoFF.

In fact, the XIII saga it the only FF series where the leads for all it's games are women.
 

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
Regardless of if they’re the main leads or not, FF has had very iconic and well-written female characters (well, on par with the men at a minimum) in most of the entries. Looney makes a good point that it’s still through the lens of the protagonist, though.
I think what some of us are saying is that the stories are not told through the lens of the protagonist. But that they are told through the lens of a side-character who is more tangentially related to the main conflict of the story.

And a lot of the time, it's because if they were told through the lens of the protagonist, those stories would have more of the problem that FFXIII has at the start of the game: the protagonist already knows the world they live in, so there's not a lot of logical reasons for them to explain it to the player. Think about how FFX would start out if you were playing as Yuna who already knows her own history and the history of Sin and Yu Yevon, why she is a summoner on a pilgrimage, etc. and how it wouldn't be until later in her own story that she would tell Tidus that info. Instead the player is playing as Tidus, someone who has no idea about the world he is now in and so the player can more naturally have the other characters tell him about the world they have grown up in.

FFXII is the FF I bring up the most often here because if the director, Matsuno, had gotten his way, it's very likely Vaan would never have been made a character in the first place. The "lead character" was shuffled around a bit between Baltheir, Ashe and Bash with SE executives doing so much executive meddling with the project that Matsuno left it. And eventually the executives got their way and Vaan was set to be the "main character" that you see in the marketing. Only there's enough left of Matsuno's original story that the roll Vaan fits the best could be considered "the pov of the common people" instead of "the character who the story is about". There's reasons people wonder what Vaan is doing in the game: he basicly serves as a way to get the player to meet Ashe and then the actual story starts, which is... "Get Ashe's kingdom back and see if she'll take revenge on Arcadia or not".

What I do have to wonder though, is how much meddling SE's marketing department has over the different creative decisions. Because like... If you get told your game has to follow "x" criteria... then it kind of has to if you want to make it in the first place...
 

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
Honestly? You can swap Vaan out, you know.

I totally forgot until I looked at my Trading Arts mini figures... You can literally switch any character you like as the lead character in XII. It's a freely ensemble cast. If you put Ashe at the front of the party, then the game matches tonally completely as her story. I literally remember doing that upon entering the Tomb of Raithwall. So....
 
in any world, real or imagined, where the human population is under constant threat (as in, "There aren't enough of us"), men will inevitably be regarded as the more disposable sex, the sex that any given human group can afford to lose in a war. This isn't about gender, it's about biology. It is easier for a group to rebuild from a few men and plenty of women than from few women and plenty of men. For most of its history humanity was chronically short of person-power - partly because it's so fond of fighting wars, partly because so many children died in infancy. Things are different now: we have more people than we know what to do with. This has facilitated our liberation from the tyranny of biology. I'd add that while there will always be a percentage of women who like nothing better than a battlefield, the vast majority of all human beings, men and women, go to war unwillingly, and would get out of it if they could.

The Swiss army has allowed women to do military service for quite a while now. Remember, this is a country that has practically no professional soldiers, and which provides excellent education and employment opportunities for its young people. In Switzerland you wouldn't go into the army because you're poor and are looking for training and career. I see a lot of Swiss soldiers around. I see a few women soldiers. I don't see many.

Most magical/fantasy fictional worlds have a tendency to glorify war and those who fight it, and I'd argue that that in itself is a patriarchal way of looking at the world. War is so shitty and awful in reality, it has to be glorified in fantasy, otherwise all the young men who go off to fight in it (imagining they're off to some big adventure) would "shoot their officers and go home" instead.
 

Glaurung

Forgot the cutesy in my other pants. Sorry.
AKA
Mama Dragon
you see the comment that anime characters and the like all 'look white' which i think is maybe not the best way to look at it. sailor moon lives in japan and has a japanese name and is japanese (but also she's a moon princess), but she has big blue eyes and long blonde hair. but that doesn't mean she's white nor meant to look so. do white people have pink or blue hair, like anime characters do? you can look at characters who are pointedly made to look like white westerns to differentiate them from the japanese cast, and they will be drawn with a long pronounced nose or something and not the small nose associated with characters that 'look white'

manga and derivative media use stylised iconography that's not meant to represent a specific race or nationality (i've seen it called 無国籍/mukokuseki or stateless but idk if that's a common term for it). idk if some of this is seeing a stylised face and unconsciously associating that with the race you're more familiar with, unless it's drawn with exaggerated racial features. if the image isn't sufficiently 'othered' you can associate to it more easily.

i tend to judge characters' 'nationalities' by things like setting and character name/profile. 'tsukino usagi' is japanese. but i'm going to assume a pasty-looking guy called 'harold anderson' is going to be white (i couldn't actually think of a white anime character in a real world setting because i'm not a filthy weeb or something) what are you talking about, hito you filthy weeb. 'joseph joestar', son of johnathan and erina joestar from england, is probably meant to be white. i tried to avoid strictly fictional settings like fantasy and sci-fi so far, where i think 'mukokuseki' would really come in. but looking at an edward elric, i think it's a safe assumption he's at very least based on a white person. i base that on name as well tbh.

i get why you'd take the ffxvi characters for being white, since they're pale-skinned people in a setting that stylistically resembles popular depictions of a fantasy medieval europe, commonly thought of and portrayed as being very white. i know there's contentions around the idea that there were no people of colour (some of who can be pale-skinned too) in europe at that time, but here's the great thing. it's actually not medieval europe. it's a fictional setting and they can put whoever they want in there. which would be nice to see, because i thought the npcs in ff7r had a good variety to them.

anyway i forgot the point i was trying to make now


That was what I was getting at, in respect to what Ito said. I've been consuming Japanese media for decades, and I've always seen exactly what you describe, and FFXVI is no different. MC is Japanese but with blue eyes, because japanese like big, blue eyes. But again, you write it better, lol.
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
To further out myself as a degenerate, I distincly remember while I was watching the K-ON movie where they go to London that all the actual white people looked pretty different from our Japanese protagonists, despite them also having the anime "white" appearance.
 
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Wol

None Shall Remember Those Who Do Not Fight
AKA
Rosarian Shield
I get it that they wanted to give the the perspective of two regular orphans finding themselves inside a big war. Its just that they don't become more relevant as the story progressess, we don't see their past hatred for losing their families, so they remain.. nobodies.
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
I think the last thing I remember Vaan ever doing was the “I’m Captain Basch!” jog, then I don’t think I ever had him in the party, so I’d always be like “oh yeahhhh” when I entered a town lol. I’m sure if he was mandatory in the field I’d be more attached to him, but the rest of the cast is just so awesome that I’m glad they did that.

Seeing as the other characters in 7R do have unique chest opening animations (during Ch. 9, 13, and 17) switching leaders out of combat might have been something they tried and didn’t like or else couldn’t implement by launch. For my part, I wasn’t surprised that we were Cloud out of combat, as he’s the lead so hard it hurts. Everyone and everything funnels into his character, making sure we’re with him is vital for the story. I‘m reminded of how unaffected my wife was by Aeris’s death (she never used her) and what a shame it would be if that was the reaction to Cloud leaving the party...

...wait a minute, this is the XVI thread?? Oops. Uh, I’d like a party in this game plz (the more we say it the more likely it becomes right?)
 

Claymore

3x3 Eyes
Took a couple of days out before attempting to rewatch the trailer, because honestly, some people's reaction here by jumping down the throat's of anyone who criticised any aspect of the trailer was actively making me hate the trailer even more. Now that I've had time away from those comments and looked at it afresh ... subsequent impressions are notably improved. Specifically, the potential within the story and where they could go with these Eikons and their 'avatars'. The overall style is growing on me as well, with the overlapping plates on their chain-mail (resembling the Chocobo scales,) with the curved swords and medieval attire ... the sense of style is actually clicking now that I look at them in more detail. Oh and the music with the choir is stunning (I did think that the first time) and hearing someone rip the piano melody is even more beautiful. FF does piano extremely well.

The fact that this isn't pushing the boat out graphically is a godsend. If it means they won't spend 4 months polishing a rock and actually make this a living breathing world full of content - there is no contest there.

However. The generic main male sword-wielding character hasn't improved on further views and that remains a serious concern, as does the seemingly single-player party / combat. If it turns out that you won't have a party within this game, I don't know if that's a hurdle I could personally overcome - especially whilst overcoming those over hurdles that I have with what's been presented in the trailer.

We shall see.
 

Wol

None Shall Remember Those Who Do Not Fight
AKA
Rosarian Shield
So that implies there's a price to be paid for this protection, maybe the crystals lend their power only if ushumans offer something in return. Potentially this could lead to dark and unexpected places, as crystals are usually depicted as benign entities.

I wonder if wanting to end the crystal's influence over the world makes the mc a kind of anti-hero.
 
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Fangu

Great Old One
So MC is basically Cid in XII. X)

Ugh, the 'Vaan was not the original protagonist' wound will never fully heal for me. I really wish the corporates hadn't put their greasy fingers into the project. Look at the legacy of games like Vagrant Story and Tactics, I believe people would be talking about XII a lot differently, and not as being the black sheep of the series as is the case now.

Also... XII opening music in that trailer. Which I hadn't seen before btw. IT IS SO GOOD.
 

Fade

SHR
So MC is basically Cid in XII. X)

Ugh, the 'Vaan was not the original protagonist' wound will never fully heal for me. I really wish the corporates hadn't put their greasy fingers into the project. Look at the legacy of games like Vagrant Story and Tactics, I believe people would be talking about XII a lot differently, and not as being the black sheep of the series as is the case now.

Also... XII opening music in that trailer. Which I hadn't seen before btw. IT IS SO GOOD.

XII has received a lot of positive press in hindsight, especially in Zodiac Age form - its place as a cult classic of the main series really isn't so different from Vagrant Story, which is probably one of the best games nobody played* on the Playstation.

*Relative to Playstation's meteroic popularity, and Squaresoft's with it.
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
Uh, I’d like a party in this game plz (the more we say it the more likely it becomes right?)
Outside of VIIR basically having to account for the original having a party, the series as a whole has been somewhat trending away from it in the most recent titles. in XIII the party is AI controlled, and by Lightning returns you're only playing as her (right?) XV was the same way until an update that came years after launch too. Do you think they'd make a mainline FF game where you only play as one character and there isn't even an AI party?
 

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
okay okay but

i thought ffxii revenant wings was cute

mom covering her mouth while speaking
i thought this was her covering her nose, like she couldn't stand the smell of these filthy peasants like the rich mother from parasite

pfD1UwO.jpg


The fact that this isn't pushing the boat out graphically is a godsend. If it means they won't spend 4 months polishing a rock and actually make this a living breathing world full of content - there is no contest there.
when i was looking for images after hearing they showed a trailer, i saw a comment being like 'square what's with these ps3 graphics' and honestly, yeah it's not the most technically impressive game i've ever seen. i think it looks good but i'm not stunned or anything. it is nice to see developers try to make their games stand out with unique art direction, rather than having everyone try to go for photorealistic. which is fine, i get impressed by those too and i'm not saying games need to avoid that or that there's no art direction involved in a game with realistic graphics. i am really like the art design in death stranding and like every character in that is just a real actor's actual face.

basically what i'm saying is, shin megami tensei 3 is getting a hd remaster this october and it is my most anticipated game of the year
 
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