Square Enix thinking about letting Eidos make a Final Fantasy

The answer, in brief, is that the publisher's open to the idea but has nothing to announce for the moment. "Obviously, Square Enix bought out Eidos a number of years ago, and now we have direct access to American development teams," observed Abe. "That's certainly been discussed within the company, the possibility of say, Eidos or maybe someone else to look after or maybe take on the Final Fantasy series.

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Just take the risk. Take it!

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Uh, no.

Even if they screwed up, they'd just make a new game.

A main numbered Final Fantasy? Tricky. A side game to test the waters? I wouldn't mind. Eidos makes some good games, and their track record is better than SE as of late. It would be very interesting to see what they'd do with it.

Tetsujin said:

Uh, no.

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Why not? SE certainly hasnt done the main numbered FF's much justice as of late.

Yeah it could go just as well as DmC

The Winter Soldier said:

Why not? SE certainly hasnt done the main numbered FF's much justice as of late.

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Well, I thought 10 was great and 12 was decent (I know some others really like it). It seems the consensus is that 13 was the first BAD game. If they hadn't spent so much time making sequels to 13, they may have fared much better than they have. Honestly, I think they have been less willing to invest resources in developing new IPs, which each numbered iteration basically is, as it is a whole new story and world. So, they just decided to make sequels to 13 to save costs.

Awesome sig, by the way. That trailer looks sweet.

ForceStealer said:

Yeah it could go just as well as DmC

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Or it could be as good as the new "Tomb Raider." =P

ForceStealer said:

Yeah it could go just as well as DmC

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Thats a bit unfair considering

A) Capcom
B) The guys who made heavenly sword/DmC are apparently 12.

Their track record wasnt good from the get go. Eidos on the other hand consistently makes better games then SE
To be fair in my eyes
SE=Ninja Theory (that was the DmC guys right?)
Eidos=Original team who made Devil May Cry.

When it comes to track record.

SE has just proven that they dont make great games anymore

Well, I thought 10 was great and 12 was decent (I know some others really like it). It seems the consensus is that 13 was the first BAD game. If they hadn't spent so much time making sequels to 13, they may have fared much better than they have. Honestly, I think they have been less willing to invest resources in developing new IPs, which each numbered iteration basically is, as it is a whole new story and world. So, they just decided to make sequels to 13 to save costs.

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Fair enough. I should have said in the first post "SE certainly hasnt done the FF franchise any justice as of late".

Really the only great things coming from SE lately is the godly work done to save FF14. If it wasnt for ARR , FF14 would be just another entry in a long list of games/stories SE managed to royally fuck up these last 10 years.

I agree, X , XI and XII were good games but its the ensemble screw ups of pretty much everything else that really brings SE down.

I really dont see how Eidos can do any worse then SE.

edit:

I hate to keep harping on but lets just look at the facts.

Why did we play final fantasy for pretty much the first 9 entries? The main draw certainly was not the fighting system. It was always the story!
Now SE opts for convoluted stories rather then stories with depth and puts more emphasis on the fighting system.
We didnt see pages and pages of the fighting system in magazines or just see fighting at expo's. It was always about establishing a story back then.
Now I cant read about an FF game without hearing about its fighting system.

Ive heard it time and time again "The story was pretty bad but the fight mechanics were enough of a gimmick to keep me entertained". Thats good and all for any other franchise but when your talking about Final Fantasy? Thats sad.

Sure the next FF game will look amazing and play amazing but as the trend goes I would feel very safe betting that the story will be lack luster, convoluted and over all unsatisfying. In all honesty the last FF game (heck SE game) that actually had depth in its plot and was pretty decent was FF12.


Now lets look at Eidos. They pretty much consistently write a damn good story.
Ill be honest I would be beyond glad to play a RPG with a less then stellar fight system if the story was there.
I think Eidos is more then capable of pulling off both spectrums of the original Token FF game. Im not so sure about SE they seem to have there priorities wrong when it comes to game creation.

Hmmmm, honestly I'd be interested to see what theyd do with it. Would they be developing it entirely? I'd like to see a FF that wasn't full of haircuts and buckles and teenagers -which is pretty much what the series has been since VIII. But would it still be final fantasy?

I think the FF tag is a double edged sword, it guarantees sales but it also comes with certain high expectations for players that often go unfulfilled. I think they should be brave and make a non Ff rpg.

The Winter Soldier and Hawkeye in the same thread?!

Octo said:

Hmmmm, honestly I'd be interested to see what theyd do with it. Would they be developing it entirely? I'd like to see a FF that wasn't full of haircuts and buckles and teenagers -which is pretty much what the series has been since VIII. But would it still be final fantasy?

I think the FF tag is a double edged sword, it guarantees sales but it also comes with certain high expectations for players that often go unfulfilled. I think they should be brave and make a non Ff rpg.

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That might help, but that non FF RPG would still need to be a good game to succeed. Really, all the fans want is a good story with interesting and believable characters, fun combat mechanics, exploration, side quests, etc. Basically, all the stuff FF used to have. It doesn't have to be revolutionary or different, it just has to be well made.

Man, I just want a new Final Fantasy game. Gimme a turn-based or ATB battle system with menu-based character progression, a great, deep, long, epic story with a party of fun/complex characters and an original world to explore.

Nowadays that seems like a tall order, but in 2000 that was par for the course.

edit: I may have groaned my way through FFX but at least it qualified. I think we collectively agree that XI and XIV "don't count" even if we enjoyed them. I loved XII but it shouldn't have been a numbered title, the system was more Kingdom Hearts or Vagrant Story than FF. XIII missed almost every beat.

The Winter Soldier said:

Why not? SE certainly hasnt done the main numbered FF's much justice as of late.

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I don't like Japanese devs tendencies to just go "well, we can't do it, let's go western" as if that is the solution to all problems.

I want them to get their fucking shit together and not hand the steaming pile to someone else to clean it up.

I'm of the opinion that all FF games have been good bar XIII. I don't think SE are bad developers, I just think XIII was terrible, I don't play online games, and I don't play nor care about their mobile and portable games.

So FFIX was released in 2001 in Europe. Since then, nearly 13 years, I've had two games that I enjoyed- X and XII. I mean, X-2 and XIII-2 were alright but they built on something that already existed and had terrible stories. And even then, XII was 2007 so I've seen little of interest in nearly seven years.

I don't think handing FF to Eidos will be fixing any problems. I just want more games that are good.

I'd probably be better off looking for other jRPGs but I don't often buy games anymore, so if I do it's usually in a series I'm already invested in.

Frankly, I can think of much worse directions for the series than letting Eidos develop a game for it. Eidos' recent track record impresses me a lot more than SE's.

I can't lie, I don't think Eidos has released a game I haven't enjoyed recently. Among them Deus Ex: Human Revolution is undoubtedly at the top of the list.

But a FF game? Who am I to say they can't do it. I don't want action/adventure and/or FPS from Final Fantasy though.

The problem for SE is that what causes Westerners to be interested in FF is that FF were not "Western" games to begin with. And recently, SE has been trying to make FF games more "Western" to appeal to a wider audience... or so they think. Handing FF to a Western dev team? That makes it look like they don't even know what gave them a wide audience in the first place. If anything, they should be trying to make FF less "mainstream" then it already is...

Victims of their own success.

Please do it. I haven't played a final fantasy game which I've fell in love with since 7. What's the worst that could happen? Another shallow, hollow, boring piece of garbage with a story line they make up as they go along?

Well, to be fair, they made up VII's story as they went along too (e.g. Kitase said he didn't know about Zack until development was nearly over with, and was making the event scenes without knowing ahead of time how Nojima would solve the mysteries going on with Cloud).

I think a big part of the problem we have now comes from something else Kitase mentioned: It was easier to go back and edit earlier scenes to benefit the overall narrative in those days, whereas now, once the graphics are established, it's considered too time-consuming to make changes for the sake of the story.