Remake Interviews: Catch-all Thread

Hot damn! Its about time we got 100% confirmation of switching mid-battle.

I am also pretty happy that character switching will be an integral and encouraged part of the gameplay/battle system, and not merely incidental to it.

I won't be at a computer until tomorrow so I'd appreciate it if one of our authors (etc.) could put up a new article tonight.

First of all: the battle system sounds great so far. Thank the maker that we'll be able to switch between party members.

Secondly, regarding materia: I am assuming, then, that selecting materia would lead you into a sub-menu where Steal, Sense, E. Skill, Mime, etc. would appear if you have the appropriate materia equipped. On the one hand, it's visually less obtrusive than the original FFVII --
The other hand is that you have to be more on top of who has what yellow materia, or you'll be jumping back and forth between sub-menus.

Kinda feel silly asking this.. but it makes me wonder if you switch to a different character, who's going to control and move around the other character(s)? Is it going to be like NBA style where they just run around until you switch back to them?

I imagine the party members you aren't presently controlling will run on basic AI, maybe doing basic attacks on enemies and only using magic or other tactics when you select them.

With that said, I'm concerned about Nomura's statement that there would be a section where you'll *need* to do ranged attacks only. If there's stupid Cloud AI running into the path of a stabbing robot tail, I'm going to be a little peeved at the game. It's exactly why I don't like action RPGs -- I don't like watching characters behave like idiots because they're not actual characters but a bungled heap of computer code.

I'm actually really excited for the character differentiation, in the sense of giving the characters more unique/niche combat advantages, as while I do like the flexibility of the OG battle system/character customization, I was a little disappointed that all the characters had identical end/max stats.

Action rpgs with several characters in battle at the same time is something that I've given a lot of thought over the years working with design, and I still don't like it. The strength of turn based or command based party control rpgs, is that you get to micromanage all your characters movements down to a T making the entire party an extension of the players will.
Problem with action rpgs is that this just isn't possible, with too much happening, forcing you to rely on AI. The problem with that isthat either the AI is too poorly optimized and every battle is an exercise in baby-sitting your team members, or the AI is well optimized and self-sufficient at which point your party members are redundant. They don't add to the gameplay, because there's no need to interact with them.

That's why I hold that the best action games will always be single character control games without a party, and where games have parties, such as most rpgs, will always be best when they're heavy on the command or turn elements.
I've yet to truly enjoy or be impressed by a hybrid and I hold that this trend of action rpgs we've seen the last decade or so is really unfortunate as it's only really produced half-assed gameplay that largely only appeals to this bland middle ground gamers that can't appreciate solid, fully fledged action systems (like ib say the Devil May Cry franchise) or fine tuned intricate strategy based gameplay like you find in FFX or FFT.

That's just my opinion though. I'd really prefer if devs would jusy go all in and double down on one side of the fence rather than trying so hard to merry two almost diametrically opposed gamer demographics with poorly optimized bastard systems like Type-0 or FFXV.

EDIT :
To sort of sum up my point : in command based systems with a party the gameplay is about exercising control through your party, whislt in action based party games the gameplay is about mitigating your lack of control. Personally, I find the latter frustrating and dumb, but I recognize that many people might enjoy that and not be as fanatic about control as me.

I'll take the opposite tact: In FFXIII I found the AI fairly reliable in terms of doing what I expect them to do. The only time I run into trouble is the occasional flubbed cure priority, or focusing on the wrong buffs/debuffs. In those cases, it'd be easily solved with a simple switch command.

Otherwise the whole "Scan" and the AI chooses the right attack accordingly works pretty well for me. I don't expect there to be any insanely fast, difficult battles (Outside of WEAPONS) that require precision.

Plus, y'never know. There might be multiplayer options.




I call being the Lifestream's official Aerith player if thats the case. :3

I did account for that in my post tho. The AI acting perfectly renders the rest of your characters redundant since you're no longer required to interact with them.
It's literally a lose lose design prospect since doing it well means the player is actually playing less, and doing it poorly means the player is forced to wrestle with what's supposed to be your team rather than purely with the enemy who're you're supposed to be fighting.

hian said:

I did account for that in my post tho. The AI acting perfectly renders the rest of your characters redundant since you're no longer required to interact with them.
It's literally a lose lose design prospect since doing it well means the player is actually playing less, and doing it poorly means the player is forced to wrestle with what's supposed to be your team rather than purely with the enemy who're you're supposed to be fighting.

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I think about it as win-win. If I want to play the whole night cutting up people as Cloud, I can do that. If I want to switch to Aerith and sling spells, I can seamlessly do it.

XII's gambit-AI worked pretty well for my tastes, but it got a lot of criticism ("The game is masturbating." - Penny Arcade). It also wasn't AI, it was *my* playstyle set to automated triggers. I thought it was awesome.

...Don't think that's how this is going to go though

ChipNoir said:

Plus, y'never know. There might be multiplayer options.

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Ooh, like in FF9? That might be awesome, but then I would need two friends in the room in order to play FFVII, and then how am I going to spend 20 minutes trying to get an upskirt shot immerse myself in the game world?

And online.... harrumph.

Mr. Ite said:

XII's gambit-AI worked pretty well for my tastes, but it got a lot of criticism ("The game is masturbating." - Penny Arcade). It also wasn't AI, it was *my* playstyle set to automated triggers. I thought it was awesome.

...Don't think that's how this is going to go though

ChipNoir said:

Plus, y'never know. There might be multiplayer options.

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Ooh, like in FF9? That might be awesome, but then I would need two friends in the room in order to play FFVII, and then how am I going to spend 20 minutes trying to get an upskirt shot immerse myself in the game world?

And online.... harrumph.

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._. You're on a forum full of FFVII fans. Y'know, willing to probably all play together?

But you're still running the risk that while playing ad Cloud you have to spend a lot of time and energy babysitting a retarded Aerith. And even if you don't you'll have a character running around interfering with your field of vision and battle tactics even if it doesn't get you killed. You could easily have character swapping without having the other characters be active in combat when not controlled. That being said, you could sidestep that entire issue by just making it command based. Which is presumably why most jrpgs have remained command based through the history of the medium despite how action combat was introduced as early as on the SNES.

hian said:

But you're still running the risk that while playing ad Cloud you have to spend a lot of time and energy babysitting a retarded Aerith. And even if you don't you'll have a character running around interfering with your field of vision and battle tactics even if it doesn't get you killed. You could easily have character swapping without having the other characters be active in combat when not controlled. That being said, you could sidestep that entire issue by just making it command based. Which is presumably why most jrpgs have remained command based through the history of the medium despite how action combat was introduced as early as on the SNES.

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Across all the AI-party games I've played, never really had that big a problem. The occasional Mitsuru leading a conga-line of admirers, sure but nothing game breaking.

I'm sure there'll be some tweaking options. XIII-2 and XV are increasingly improving AI.

Yeah, my point is simply that improving the AI isn't really an answer to my criticism when the second part of my criticism is questioning the point of having additional characters on screen at all if they're entirely self-sufficient. It's a question I rutinely asked myself playing KH. Like what does the presence of Donald and Goofey add to combat? Well, nothing really. I'm doing all the work anyways and they're just kinda there.

hian said:

Yeah, my point is simply that improving the AI isn't really an answer to my criticism when the second part of my criticism is questioning the point of having additional characters on screen at all if they're entirely self-sufficient. It's a question I rutinely asked myself playing KH. Like what does the presence of Donald and Goofey add to combat? Well, nothing really. I'm doing all the work anyways and they're just kinda there.

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Chip damage, and canon fodder, basically. Plus again, this is still using the materia system. As good as AI can get, there's going to be a lot of commands that you really need to step in. You won't need them all the time, but if I get an enemy down to a certain health, I'd want to step in with someone else equipped with Morph and finish the job. Something similar to the Cross system and the Paradigm system, where I can dictate the tenacity of the attacks to generally weaken enemies, and then step into each character for the particulars of their materia set ups. Not to mention their unique ATB finishers and Limit Breaks, if I'm judging the content so far.

I can like all three (command/turns, action, middle ground). XII certainly gave you the control, if you feel like running a computer programming class (and WHY do you have to buy your command lines?!). I also really liked XIII's high-level take on it. You were really controlling the whole party simultaneously, almost like a really reactive RTS. I of course maintain that X-2 has, hands down, the best version of ATB ever. Giving you speed and timing bonuses within a still-full menu system.

Tales of Xillia was an enjoyable action system because of the way you "link" with other party members as the battle situation changes. In this way rather than AI party members, they were actually like equipment swapping in DMC3 or something, which is interesting.

Basically, I can enjoy anything done well. And yeah, assuming every one in the cast has a unique feel, I could really enjoy switching both according to my whim and based on the situation, to exploit strategic openings, almost like Xillia but you're changing characters entirely.

It would also be cool if they could implement some kind of Dissidia-esque command mode.

I got a hold of the Dengeki magazine. It seems that the only pages pertaining to the remake where the ones already scanned on the site. The rest is just an info dump on the history of the game and the compilation, with a character guide, and a bunch of screenshots. In terms of information, it's just reiterations of stuff that's been stated elsewhere.

There was a comment from the Mobius creator regarding the remake resources, stating that "Cloud and the Midgar Reactor among other things" were taken from the remake. It doesn't confirm what resources specifically, but does seem to imply this might hold true for the other stuff, like the Nibelheim reactor too, especially given non of those assets have been used in any other titles like Dissidia.

Gotta say "Before Crisis" looks really nice. I'd like to play that game if I could.

There are playthrough videos on YouTube, if you haven't already seen them. It's, uh, pretty bad, to be quite honest. Good for its time in a lot of ways (the same ways it's still good now -- namely, it's gorgeous to look at, and there was that materia creation feature), but still bad in more ways (ways in which it was probably bad even for its time as well).

It was the first "3d" cell phone game, coming out in Japan just as I was leaving high school and "snake" was pretty much the best thing the middle-class white Canadian kid had on their phone (I didn't have a cell phone yet. That's the early aughts for ya). It was very impressive for its time, and from a distance. Never played it. Google really came into its own around the same time and looking up spoilers really became a thing. I think it was the first video game that I knew beginning-to-end without ever playing it, although at the time, a cell phone game really wasn't considered an actual game... how wrong we were...

I'm 75% convinced BC will be a short anime series or a CGI movie, regardless of the last batch of interviews.

ChipNoir said:

I'm 75% convinced BC will be a short anime series or a CGI movie, regardless of the last batch of interviews.

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I'd rather a CGI movie of Before Crisis than anime series, because CGI suits the Final Fantasy VII characters better in my opinion. A CGI movie of Before Crisis would be really awesome!

Tashasaurous said:

I'd rather a CGI movie of Before Crisis than anime series, because CGI suits the Final Fantasy VII characters better in my opinion. A CGI movie of Before Crisis would be really awesome!

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It could go either way for me. The character designs were originally anime style to begin with in the original game.