The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
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- TresDias
E3 predictions
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Theozilla
Kaiju Member
I can understand being really disappointed about there being no significant news/info/video update for the Remake at this year's E3, but I still don't see that warranting the assumption that something significantly to catastrophically bad has gone wrong with the game's development. Sure, the radio silence isn't encouraging by any means, but personally I don't think we're at the point where such a lack/absence of info/updates justifies such discouragement.
In fact I don't really get how anyone thought that the first part of the Remake coming out in 2017 was in in any way but a pipedream. And since the latter half of 2018 seems likely to be when Kingdom Hearts III is likely to be released, I don't see why a 2019 release for the first Remake part/entry to big that big of an issue (since as I said in the other General Gaming E3 thread earlier, I think this console generation is going to last a couple years longer, not shorter, than the previous one, with 2022 being my ETA for the PS5).
In fact I don't really get how anyone thought that the first part of the Remake coming out in 2017 was in in any way but a pipedream. And since the latter half of 2018 seems likely to be when Kingdom Hearts III is likely to be released, I don't see why a 2019 release for the first Remake part/entry to big that big of an issue (since as I said in the other General Gaming E3 thread earlier, I think this console generation is going to last a couple years longer, not shorter, than the previous one, with 2022 being my ETA for the PS5).
The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
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- TresDias
Maybe not with my dreary outlook on the matter, but I give more weight to hian's insight than my own gut feeling. He's remained (for the most part) quietly optimistic about the development pace, in part because he ostensibly knew things we didn't (note: I believe him about his contacts in the industry).
For him now to be echoing some of my own bleak expectations I think is worth being concerned about.
Theozilla said:
Did anyone ever suggest that? All I recall any of us hoping for was some new footage set further in the game than the first reactor mission, hopefully with Aerith, Tifa and Sephiroth making appearances. The most optimistic of us hoped for the announcement of a release date, but with no expectation that it would be this year.
I don't think any of us were hoping for too much to actually expect the words "Final Fantasy VII" and "remake" to come up during this year's E3, though, yet not even that happened.
Roger
He/him
- AKA
- Minato
We already knew something had gone significantly wrong given that they just took the project out of CyberConnect2's hands.
cold_spirit
he/him
- AKA
- Alex T
I also don't doubt hian's connections. However, I know I'm not entering "crisis core mode" until some playable demo is given to the general public at an event and we get some honest-to-goodness impressions of the game. I see how the case of this being a troubled project is building, but I'm also not gonna allow myself to get too invested into speculation at this point.
I don't believe this is indicative of a problem with the game's development. I honestly believe it was SE's plan to have CyberConnect2 deal with pre-production, then move development in-house and hire additional staff.
I don't believe this is indicative of a problem with the game's development. I honestly believe it was SE's plan to have CyberConnect2 deal with pre-production, then move development in-house and hire additional staff.
Theozilla
Kaiju Member
Oh I wasn't referring to people on this site in my second paragraph. It was an attitude I had seen as prevalent on other social media sites in general that I was addressing/referring to.
And like cold_spirit said as well, while I don't doubt hian's connections, I just don't see the current circumstances as justification for panic/worry yet. Now if the PlayStation Experience comes and goes this year with still effective radio silence on Square Enix's end with no explanation from them, then I am liable to start worrying, as I believe you said even FF Versus/XV had new video updates at least once every two years at max.
Channy
Bad Habit
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- Ruby Rose, Lucy
Beacause 20th Anniversary.
Theozilla
Kaiju Member
Yeah and it was the Kingdom Hearts' series 15th anniversary this year as well, but there wasn't nearly as many people (again in general not this site specifically) expecting that it would be feasible for KHIII to come out this year despite having been in development longer than the FFVII Remake.
hian
Purist
To be clear I'm by no means advocating panic nor saying the situation isn't salvageable. My point is rather that it's pretty worrisome because it suggests a delay, and by any account, a multi part game that's been in the pipeline since 2015 is not indicative of a SE having learned from FFXV. Sure the game will come out eventually. Sure the game will probably be, by recent standards "okay". But, I wanted more from this project.
Also the only reason a Christmas holiday release for episode one was a pipedream is because we know SE are likely to pull shit like this. Not because anything about the project inherently demands that much time.
Also the only reason a Christmas holiday release for episode one was a pipedream is because we know SE are likely to pull shit like this. Not because anything about the project inherently demands that much time.
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The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
Isn't it actually since 2014? They said development had started a year prior to the announcement.
hian
Purist
Yeah, but I like to undercut that slightly to not be too hard on the team. Just to put it into perspective, the game I'm currently working on is a project I started two years back. It didn't actual start development until a few months ago. For almost two years we were working entirely on concepts, prepping the engine, finalizing designs, building lore and writing out the scenario/script.
I'm not saying my work flow is analogous to whatever SE's teams are doing, but I wanted a complete blue print before going all in, so as to streamline most of the process. So it's reasonable to expect that the first year didn't necessarily see much, if any, development other than in terms of designers scribbling on whiteboards and tablets.
Totally unrelated, but man I'm hyped. Just had a great meeting in Tokyo with my team and things are really shaping up. Maybe we'll be able to start Alpha testing before Christmas.
I'm not saying my work flow is analogous to whatever SE's teams are doing, but I wanted a complete blue print before going all in, so as to streamline most of the process. So it's reasonable to expect that the first year didn't necessarily see much, if any, development other than in terms of designers scribbling on whiteboards and tablets.
Totally unrelated, but man I'm hyped. Just had a great meeting in Tokyo with my team and things are really shaping up. Maybe we'll be able to start Alpha testing before Christmas.
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Cthulhu
Administrator
- AKA
- Yop
My Theory is that the first E3 event was little more than an early tech demo, slapped together in a couple months, and was mainly aimed to gauge interest; I think said interest was overwhelming, hopefully causing SE to assign more resources and shit to the project.
But what do I know
. The other theory is that they had to pull off people from it to finish XV. Wouldn't be surprised if most of what is now XV was done in the year and a half or so before release.
But what do I know
. The other theory is that they had to pull off people from it to finish XV. Wouldn't be surprised if most of what is now XV was done in the year and a half or so before release.
hian
Purist
This is largely due to SE being run by corporate goons armed to the teeth with marketing/research and PR departments staffed with more corporate goons who're entirely divorced from gaming both as a culture and as a past-time, on top of which there is no one on top to strike a blow for the devs and the project's integrity. Before the merger, the work flow and strength of Squaresoft's properties were largely carried on the shoulders of Sakaguchi's work on the administrative side of things.
Fangu
Great Old One
Fucking hell story of my work life these days. Part of what defines a good agile team is enabling the team (or at least its leader) with the ability to make the decisions. When you create a system that needs approval from other departments or the top floor, you slow down the process by many hundred percents immediately. My team used to be able to make the decisions needed to get a project or a request going, but now, since being eaten by Major Corporate Fuckery, every single decision is made top floor; things take forever to get done and stuff end up in grand confusion. It's death to any process that's complex. And it's a story so old one should be learning from it by now. Big company disease indeed.
hian
Purist
It's very hard to stop with any company growing bigger and going public. The moment you open your company to outside buy ins, on top of new staffing resulting from growth, you run the risk of your company slowly being taken over by external actors who have no real concept of what made your company successful to begin with, nor have any appreciation for the services your company originally provided appart from the fact that it earns you a revenue.
That, I think is the bane of most AAA gaming companies. They all started out in a cottage industry, shaped by enthusiast, who made passion projects for their own demographics (nerds). They got to the big leagues and now its all about maintaining momentum, and the sad fact is that they can do that just as well, if not better, by releasing a bunch of freemium mobile games, trinkets, and the occasional AAA game, regardless of state as long as marketing is on point, than by doing what they used to do. Or so their market research department would have them believe obviously.
That, I think is the bane of most AAA gaming companies. They all started out in a cottage industry, shaped by enthusiast, who made passion projects for their own demographics (nerds). They got to the big leagues and now its all about maintaining momentum, and the sad fact is that they can do that just as well, if not better, by releasing a bunch of freemium mobile games, trinkets, and the occasional AAA game, regardless of state as long as marketing is on point, than by doing what they used to do. Or so their market research department would have them believe obviously.
Fangu
Great Old One
Ugh. Yeah, that's a point I tend to forget: It's all done intentionally. Companies don't do this because they're oblivious (re: my comment on 'they should know better by now'), they do it because the company no longer is about (as in this case) making great entertainment, it's about earning money for its investors. As someone who still wants to believe that what I do has some kind of worth other than sucking money out of our customers, it does bring a tear to my eye.
Theozilla
Kaiju Member
So basically FF sucked after Sakaguchi left.
Well we knew that
Work and development efficiency dropping and more bearuacratic inertia sure, but I think it's unfair to say that entirety of SE products/games suck (in addition to that aspect of quality being far more dependent on subjective preference) without him, especially considering that Sakaguchi was the one that nearly killed the series with the Spirits Within movie. In fact it's arguably because of the movie's massive bomb that SE started its trend of announcing projects (too) early in development, since promising a full future portfolio to investors was one of the main ways they were able to save the company and merger after the box office bomb.
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The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
Well said.
Lex
Administrator
Indeed, but it's hard not to feel that sense of longing for the Golden Age (IIRC Square acknowledges VII-X as the "golden age" themselves), and since we have evidence that confirms years of what we already knew (Sakaguchi's departure had this impact on the franchise), I think it's difficult not to attribute blame to SE. Human nature and all that.
Sakaguchi had all that power, and from the same interviews was both a thrill and total nightmare to work for, but what we got was masterpiece entertainment, and quite a lot of it in an intense timeframe by today's standards. But having that power is what cost him (and all of us) in the end, so I find it hard to blame them too much for that change. It's just a shame some middle ground couldn't have been struck. I'd love to see Sakaguchi back at the helm of another FF. I know we all would. But for it to work, SE would have to give complete control back to him for one project, and I doubt they'd do that these days.
Having said that, I feel like they've given Nomura that power these days and perhaps it's that power mixed with the red tape that clashes so horribly and leaves us with the nothingness we've been experiencing since Versus XIII was announced.
Sakaguchi had all that power, and from the same interviews was both a thrill and total nightmare to work for, but what we got was masterpiece entertainment, and quite a lot of it in an intense timeframe by today's standards. But having that power is what cost him (and all of us) in the end, so I find it hard to blame them too much for that change. It's just a shame some middle ground couldn't have been struck. I'd love to see Sakaguchi back at the helm of another FF. I know we all would. But for it to work, SE would have to give complete control back to him for one project, and I doubt they'd do that these days.
Having said that, I feel like they've given Nomura that power these days and perhaps it's that power mixed with the red tape that clashes so horribly and leaves us with the nothingness we've been experiencing since Versus XIII was announced.
hian
Purist
I think the issue has some nuance that most people miss, but on the other hand I also think a lot of that nuance is mostly red herring when it comes to questions on why SE is the way it is today.
Sure, if we grant that the Square side of things took a nose-dive after Sakaguchi left, there's little use denying that Sakaguchi being pushed into leaving is something "he brought on himself" I.E even if Square's development cycles and practices have suffered in his absence, the absence itself could be laid at his feet.
That being said though - Sakaguchi being absent cannot absolve SE of some of their more atrocious actions after his leaving, nor what they were doing up until the point he left - you can't have the quality function of a company rest on a single person.
More to the point though - I think it's possible, and indeed prudent to question the events and necessity surrounding Sakaguchi being made to leave to begin with.
After all, Sakaguchi's business management and creative output is part of the reason Squaresoft made it to the point it could pursue a full feature film to begin with. You'd think that it's unreaslistic to expect a person to always succeed with every project, and that given his track record, the remaining company heads would be more lenient to his failings.
In reality, Sakaguchi was not pushed out because of his failure, nor due to the losses from The Spirits Within - rather it was facilitated as a reaction to Sakaguchi not playing ball with the rest of the company heads as they started kicking the ball around on merging with Enix, and aggressively exploiting the FF IPs with spin-offs.
The fact of the matter is that Sakaguchi was reshuffled out of his leadership position prior to the release of TSW.
In fact, he also registered the trademark for Mistwalker prior to the release of TSW.
Sakaguchi's reshufflement happened shortly after talks of the merger, and the first red Squaresoft financial report prior to the release of FFX.
FFX-2 was proposed as a means to recuperate losses incurred by FFX's expensive development cycle, as a means of enticing Enix back into talks of merging, which at one point, they backed out of due to Squaresoft's financial situation.
Simply put - Sakaguchi did not get reshuffled, nor quit due to TWS. He was already on that path prior to this.
Mandatory reading. Everything here is sourced.
Also, prepare to grow to hate Wada and SE as a result of reading. You have been Chrono Trigger Warned.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=744184
Long story short though - yes, Sakaguchi is partly to blame for putting himself in the spot where Squaresoft had no choice but to force him out.
Point is though, who could blame him?
Squaresoft's remaining leadership showed undue lack of gratitude for his service up until that point, and essentially aggressively started to pursue a company direction and policy that was contrary to everything he believed in regarding the future of the FF franchies, and the future direction of the company.
TWS was just a convenient and happy coincidence that allowed to company to appear justified in cutting off the "dead weight", when in reality the money grubbing, corporatist SE you know today, was already in the making before TWS launched in theaters.
EDIT:
Also, no Lex - Nomura has little to no power in SE. He's not even on SE board of directors. He's constantly being kicked around, loaded with projects he didn't ask for, nor has the power to decline, because he's the face of SE's character designs and has been for ages.
Nomura is not the reason Versus XIII took a long time, nor is he the reason KHIII took a long time. The reason these projects are taking a long time, and the red tape of SE, is, like it always has been, the result of the suits at the top.
Nomura is not one of them.
Sure, if we grant that the Square side of things took a nose-dive after Sakaguchi left, there's little use denying that Sakaguchi being pushed into leaving is something "he brought on himself" I.E even if Square's development cycles and practices have suffered in his absence, the absence itself could be laid at his feet.
That being said though - Sakaguchi being absent cannot absolve SE of some of their more atrocious actions after his leaving, nor what they were doing up until the point he left - you can't have the quality function of a company rest on a single person.
More to the point though - I think it's possible, and indeed prudent to question the events and necessity surrounding Sakaguchi being made to leave to begin with.
After all, Sakaguchi's business management and creative output is part of the reason Squaresoft made it to the point it could pursue a full feature film to begin with. You'd think that it's unreaslistic to expect a person to always succeed with every project, and that given his track record, the remaining company heads would be more lenient to his failings.
In reality, Sakaguchi was not pushed out because of his failure, nor due to the losses from The Spirits Within - rather it was facilitated as a reaction to Sakaguchi not playing ball with the rest of the company heads as they started kicking the ball around on merging with Enix, and aggressively exploiting the FF IPs with spin-offs.
The fact of the matter is that Sakaguchi was reshuffled out of his leadership position prior to the release of TSW.
In fact, he also registered the trademark for Mistwalker prior to the release of TSW.
Sakaguchi's reshufflement happened shortly after talks of the merger, and the first red Squaresoft financial report prior to the release of FFX.
FFX-2 was proposed as a means to recuperate losses incurred by FFX's expensive development cycle, as a means of enticing Enix back into talks of merging, which at one point, they backed out of due to Squaresoft's financial situation.
Simply put - Sakaguchi did not get reshuffled, nor quit due to TWS. He was already on that path prior to this.
Mandatory reading. Everything here is sourced.
Also, prepare to grow to hate Wada and SE as a result of reading. You have been Chrono Trigger Warned.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=744184
Long story short though - yes, Sakaguchi is partly to blame for putting himself in the spot where Squaresoft had no choice but to force him out.
Point is though, who could blame him?
Squaresoft's remaining leadership showed undue lack of gratitude for his service up until that point, and essentially aggressively started to pursue a company direction and policy that was contrary to everything he believed in regarding the future of the FF franchies, and the future direction of the company.
TWS was just a convenient and happy coincidence that allowed to company to appear justified in cutting off the "dead weight", when in reality the money grubbing, corporatist SE you know today, was already in the making before TWS launched in theaters.
EDIT:
Also, no Lex - Nomura has little to no power in SE. He's not even on SE board of directors. He's constantly being kicked around, loaded with projects he didn't ask for, nor has the power to decline, because he's the face of SE's character designs and has been for ages.
Nomura is not the reason Versus XIII took a long time, nor is he the reason KHIII took a long time. The reason these projects are taking a long time, and the red tape of SE, is, like it always has been, the result of the suits at the top.
Nomura is not one of them.
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Channy
Bad Habit
- AKA
- Ruby Rose, Lucy
Whether Sakaguchi was involved much in TSW or not, can you deny that the progress of Square and the products were far superior when he was at the helm? They were pumping out a (main stream) game nearly every year.. since his departure, the last good game we had was X.. 12 took 5 years, 13 took another 6 years and 15 took a whopping 9-10, all while receiving a sprinkling of number-titled (whyyyyy) online games with expansions. And the mobile games, don't forget the mobile games.
Without a strong dedicated leader at the front like Sakaguchi, they've fallen flat and split their commitment and motivation, leaving fans oft' times wondering "Will I ever see this game?"
Without a strong dedicated leader at the front like Sakaguchi, they've fallen flat and split their commitment and motivation, leaving fans oft' times wondering "Will I ever see this game?"