Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy

[Max Payne]

I think Dacon's deal is that he wants entertainment of higher quality. The Scorsese of video game achievements, so to say. He is entitled to his opinion and there is nothing wrong with demanding great storytelling.
The downside though is that you're almost always gonna be disappointed with video games and you're *always* gonna be disappointed with Square products. That is why my expectations are so low and I can't hate Crisis Core for the way it tells its story. It is of the quality I expect it to be.
The game works but yes it could have been better.

No disrespect intended. =)

Um, no. I just don't want BAD writing and direction. Bulletstorm doesn't have the best writing but when characters died a fucked up death, you thought HEY, THAT'S FUCKED UP.

I'll list a couple game with good direction that properly captured the emotion and drama of a scene without overdoing it imo.

Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 3
Metal Gear Solid 1
Metal Gear Solid 2
Metal Gear Solid 3(admittedly this series is plagued with a lot of bad writing in certain places, but it pulls it off with such flair)
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Dead Space(main character didn't even talk in this fucking game)
Dead Space 2
Bioshock
Uncharted 1&2

Hell even the Dead Rising games. I know I'm missing more than a few from this generation too.

It's not that I'm expecting too much from these games, because my standards aren't that high. Hell plenty of SE games from the last generation satisfied me quite well in this regard. The first KH had a really good sense of drama and spectacle before second one ruined it all with the ridiculous melodrama. FFX, and FFXII were both REALLY good too imo. When something bad happened, or someone died, chances are you weren't left sitting there going, eh.

That's all I'm saying. I'm watching a fucking cutscene of Cloud/The new guys dying and all I feel is a strange sense of awkwardness and indifference. I don't fucking care because they've done such a poor job with the scene. Even with context it just doesn't make me feel anything because the scenes are so bland.

It's like they're depending on the fact that they're characters we grew to love in other games that we're going to care when they die in this one. It may just be me, but it takes more than that to make me feel something. It takes a well written story with solid direction to do that.

Not Cloud standing in front of Chaos, Chaos waves a hand, then Cloud's on the ground, says a few words, end scene. I just don't feel it, so I say it's badly directed. There's no impact from the scene at all for me, which is made all the worse by the fact that I know anything that happens in this series is of no consequence.

Also, for the record I didn't expect any quality from SE at all after the abortion the compilation pulled with everything else, but that doesn't mean I won't hold it to the same standards of quality that I do with everything else. Just because I know some will be/is bad, doesn't excuse its shittiness.

 

[Ite]

...you're almost always gonna be disappointed with video games and you're *always* gonna be disappointed with Square products.

Chrono Trigger, Tactics, Final Fantasy IV, V, VI, VII, VIII and IX consistently exceeded my expectations of what good storytelling in a video game should be. At what point did we go from being disappointed to accepting to defending Squeenix's shittiness?

 

[OneWingedDemon]

Cloud's death in Dissidia is pathetic. It gives you nothign beyond information: Cloud dies. There's nothing in there that even tries to elicit any kind of emotional response. I mean, honestly, beyond relying on your attachment as a fan to the character, what is there? Chaos stretches his hand. Cut to BLACK (ffs, black?) then Cloud on the ground. Ooooh. Well, pass the Kleenex.

Then again, I highly doubt it's what they were going for anyway. Still.

LOL. I found Zack's death sad because of its inevitability despite how much the man struggled, but SE could have trimmed the actual scene by at least 50%. They need to learn when to make their fucking characters stop talking. I think this is a recurring problem. They keep repeating everythign you see visually in the dialogue. So redudant. No, just let Cloud take the sword. We get it. Zack does not need a soliloquy.

Zack's smile at the end bugs me too. Give me the brutal death, not fluffy angst, SE

 

[Celes Chere]

Give me the brutal death, not fluffy angst, SE

THANK YOU. I still cried, but the crappy pop music and the drawn out death towards the end kind of killed the mood..

 

[Elisa Maza]

Maybe it's because I'm a total Sakurai fangirl and I love his voice, but Cloud's dying monologue and especially the "Tifa..." part in the end tugged my heartstrings.

The rest? I agree it was meh.

Cosmos seems to answer, though? After the fade-to-black she says something to a far away dead Cloud.

 

[Dashell]

It's a lot more emotion than I would have expected from Dissidia, I'll give it that. But I would have liked to have seen more than just a fade to black. Let's see some carnage plz

 

[Lily Ella]

Zack's smile at the end bugs me too.(

I found his smile disturbing. Almost as disturbing as Squall's smile at the end of FFVIII. *shivers* Nightmares...
The pop song was yick too. They couldn't just put a sad, slow strings section instead? Why a bloody pop song? Whatevz.

@ cutscenes: Tifa talks too damn much. Someone likes the sound of her own voice...

 

[Mariketsu]

Hmm, while it ergs me that a lot of this seems to be centered around Lightning, I still look forward to playing this one. I'd love to main Cloud, Terra, and Tifa . Btw (and since there are too many pages to read prior on this thread) did anyone ever confirm if the villains were playable in any form of story-mode? Sorry if I'm late to that, but I haven't kept up too well with this xD.

~ Raz

 

[Roger]

Report 1 is a Kuja based storyline that goes cutscene>text>cutscene> 3 battles>text. There'll be severals other like that to show what the old crew, both good and bad is doing in the 12th war.

 

[Shademp]

Dacon: I apologize for misunderstanding your character. Good points, you made.

Chrono Trigger, Tactics, Final Fantasy IV, V, VI, VII, VIII and IX consistently exceeded my expectations of what good storytelling in a video game should be. At what point did we go from being disappointed to accepting to defending Squeenix's shittiness?

I should have specified that I meant Square's products as of late, not their work in the 90's and early 00's. Back then Square was awesome.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

So, the more I learn about 012's story, the more my opinion of it mirrors Dacon's. I'm realizing that while some complaints -- such as bitching about Kain's behavior -- aren't legitimate, plenty are, such as the shit directing.

Just look at that scene with Cloud. It really does lack emotional impact, and not just because of the directing issues that Dacon already pointed out. There's also the matter of narrative arcs, which falls more to the writing.

While the first Dissidia didn't exactly have gripping stories for its characters, it did walk them through a properly constructed tale each time, and you knew what each had taken from their experiences by the time they got to the end -- even amongst the villains.

Hell, the CG opening was even part of the story rather than just a mashup of cool-looking shit.

012 just gave up on trying that with anyone but the new characters -- which, I'll admit, is understandable to a point given how they're only around for this one game. But if you're going to try to sell us on a scene like

Spoiler

Cloud's death

-- which they were obviously trying to, given the half-hearted attempt -- you have to do more with him in this particular narrative than rely on our knowledge of his past ones to make us feel something.

Even the Cloud/Tifa interaction that is here -- which seems to be the selling point of the aforementioned scene -- doesn't really do much for the character or add to

Spoiler

his dying prayer

in any meaningful way.

I do appreciate the attempts to explain certain lingering questions from the first game (e.g. why certain warriors died permanently in the past), as well as the characterization of most of the new characters. Yuna is the only one who doesn't feel like she benefitted to me; Tifa and Vaan needed this (I might actually like him now), and Laguna is wonderful. I'll even acknowledge that they improved Terra over her previous Dissidia characterization.

But there are some serious competency issues at work, not the least of which is the structure of the narrative relegates half of the story to what might as well be the "deleted scenes" section of a DVD (or a Blu-Ray if you're fancy and have ascended beyond the realm of mortals). Yeah, it is an improvement over the Datalog of FFXIII, but it's still no substitute for pacing and transitions that include all the vital elements (several of which are, indeed, just in the Reports).


Anyway, enough ranting about that. Here are some plot-related quandries for everyone to mull over -- not that I expect these things were thought through well enough to have answers:

Spoiler

1) What was Kain going to do if his effort to kill all his comrades had succeeded? Did Golbez tell him where the manikins were spawning from, or was Laguna the only one to learn this and so Kain just going to leave things to the next round since Golbez and Cosmos had a plan?

2) Why is Cloud on Chaos' side in the first place if he's been in the cycles of Dissidia longer than Sephiroth -- as seems to be the case since he has more memories of his homeworld than either Seph or Tifa? Did Seph just use the JENOVA cells in Cloud to control him and bring him over when he finally showed up in the war? But would he have known he could do that if he didn't have his original memories?

3) Why are there new additions to the cycles at all? What prompts the need for this? How does summoning more warriors fit into the established metaphysics of Dissidia's world being a Katamari ball of all the FF worlds already? Why do the new additions have amnesia?

4) Why do people killed by manikins stay dead? Is it because they weren't part of the deal Cid made with Shinryu?

Come to think of it, 012 didn't make the story more coherent at all. =(

 

[Elisa Maza]

I don't think that

Spoiler

Cloud's death

was supposed to be this big shocking event, anyway. Logic dictated that he would die, so he would be in the next cycle. Not to mention that the focus was on the other characters. But, yeah, it was a half-assed scene, albeit I still believe it wasn't supposed to be so tragic, since we knew it.

As for the story, like I said so many pages ago... Hello, Dissidia Unodecim (11)!! Since when SE had not milked a cash cow?

 

[Splintered]

Dissidia story was always shit. And this is coming from someone who loved both XII and XIII. And really enjoyed Dissidia.

The plot was contrived, poorly told, and all in all completely and utterly stupid. The directing is terrible, no scenes had any emotional impact, and the dialogue was forced. I actually never beat all of storymode, I hated it so much. I spent most of the cutscenes going, "What am I watching?" Then I left (I think I beat maybe half of storymode) and have since stayed in quick battle mode.

I think what was the worst offender to me was the way it handled the characters. I can handle bad story, I actually expected it. But the selling point of Dissidia was the characters in it. This game was about fanservice, and I left the game with a bad taste in my mouth. I guess the most famous example of this is Terra, her handling was absolutely atrocious, she was one of my favorite characters, and I actually disliked her after playing this. I have to go back and play VI to remind myself why I like her.

But Kuja is another poor handling, if not even worse. He went from theatrical bad ass to a whiny, grumpy, douchebag with absolutely no finesse and completely looked down on by other villains.

That said

Yuna is the only one who doesn't feel like she benefitted to me; Tifa and Vaan needed this (I might actually like him now), and Laguna is wonderful. I'll even acknowledge that they improved Terra over her previous Dissidia characterization.

Characterization is so much better this time around. It was a simplification yeah, but Tifa's character was still likeable, Vaan is actually better OUTSIDE of the XII's context (I hold the opinion that he is like this in his game, but it's presented in an odd way, and usually muddled in with huge politics of what's going on). Lightning as well. I don't know enough about Kain to say either way.

Laguna and Kefka are downright amazing in this game. Aside from fart jokes, I like this Kefka almost as much as I like VI's Kefka. So, Bravo I guess.

I also like the fact that they are trying with a more cohesive story this time. Even if it's a poorly handled mishmash of shit. At least I know what's going on. Unlike Dissidia 1, where there was something about crystals, and oh, Terra's whining again about something.

THANK YOU. I still cried, but the crappy pop music and the drawn out death towards the end kind of killed the mood..

I loved Crisis Core. The final stand in Zack's story was pretty amazing, one of the few Final Fantasy games that actually mixes gameplay and story, with the breakdown of the DMW cycle that I used faithfully for HOURS, and it being stuck on Aerith's face, the music, and a very haunted Cloud. One of the better dramatic sequences imo.

Then that fucking song came on. And I wanted throw my psp across the room.

 

[OneWingedDemon]

Ugh, the song. The instrumental would have worked so much better.

I wasn't a fan of the Angael hand reach either. Unnecessary. Lessens the impact of his death, imo.

 

[Roger]

I really don't think Lightning and Kain are better handled here then in FFIV and FFXIII, I am glad for what Duodecim does for Vaan, Laguna, Kuja and Kefka. Laguna is like Balthier except with all the manliness sucked out of him so Vaan actually gets to shine by comparison.

Unlike Dissidia 1, where there was something about crystals,

You do know that the new characters whine about how they need to obtain the crystals too right? And they just never even get close to achieving this.

 

[Splintered]

You do know that the new characters whine about how they need to obtain the crystals too right? And they just never even get close to achieving this.

I think what ties it all together is a decently cohesive threat. I mean, dissidia 1 has Chaos and all the bad guys wanting to kill them, but other than that, it seemed like; meh, going by the fly of their pants. I didn't feel like anything was really happening, other than an occasional Chaos rep talking about how futile everything is.

This game things were actually happening that was forcing at least some of the storylines to move (Yuna, imo, seemed the most separate). People complain about Kain, but then again he was the only character really moving the very pale semblance of a plot. There was an actually a beginning middle and end I could point out. With the manikin army being the objective everyone was moving forward too.

I really don't think Lightning and Kain are better handled here then in FFIV and FFXIII

Lightning doesn't have the anger issues she did in FFXIII. She didn't even get to punch Tidus or anybody, I am disappoint.

 

[Strifegirl]

OMG!! I just saw the cutscene from the report 5 *O*

Awwww man!! It's even better than I'd imagined it!! It has Cloti written all over it!! x3 I know maybe it wasn't supposed to have that purpose u.u but WHO CARES D: hahaha xDDD I'm soo happy!! x3

take a look ;3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPQA4_vPZc8

 

[Roger]

During that whole sene Cloud was like "Look away, don't risk geting caught checking out her rack. look away, anywhere but at the girl."

 

[Strifegirl]

During that whole sene Cloud was like "Look away, don't risk geting caught checking out her rack. look away, anywhere but at the girl."

hahahahaha xDDD

 

[OneWingedDemon]

LOL oh look at that, all forbidden romance and shit
Cloud's trying to look all tough. What's with the characters never looking at each other? Cloud looks like he's hiding something. NO! I don't remember a thing! A thing!

Or is this just a C/S/T thing?

 

[Eerie]

Haha, I agree that Cloud is hiding that he remembers her XD

I really wish they'd show why the good characters actually were on the bad side -__- guess it's asking too much from SE

The hero touch is a really nice one for cloti fans

 

[Splintered]

I always figured that Cloud was on Chaos' side because the whole "you are a puppet" from Sephiroth.

But if Sephiroth doesn't remember, and Cloud has some of his memories, why would Cloud be with him? :/

 

[Strifegirl]

Haha, I agree that Cloud is hiding that he remembers her XD

Judging from what Cloud said in the end, I'd think he did.

The hero touch is a really nice one for cloti fans

yay!!

 

[Roger]

I always figured that Cloud was on Chaos' side because the whole "you are a puppet" from Sephiroth.

But if Sephiroth doesn't remember, and Cloud has some of his memories, why would Cloud be with him? :/

SE probably doesn't want to commit to not having Cloud in any of the trailer cutscenes should they decide to make a Dissidia 11. Thus he can't be a newbie to the war.

 

[Max Payne]

During that whole sene Cloud was like "Look away, don't risk geting caught checking out her rack. look away, anywhere but at the girl."

Bah, he was just being a queer again.