Strangelove
AI Researcher
- AKA
- hitoshura
is that something best watched after playing the game?
....Why the fuck did they cancel the DLCs if they were gonna keep the XV torch alive and merchandise this shit to a damn mobile game?
This is ridiculous and fucked up. The cancellation of the promised DLCs now makes even less sense, since it's apparent they intend to keep burning through XV and have more stories to tell with it. It now looks like they only wanted a more blatant, profitable games-as-service cash grab and simply didn't feel like investing resources and time to develop for consoles, which was what was the intended vision of the developers.
So, at least they're now somewhat honest with wanting to crap on XV, and just shove their blood-funnel into our faces for cash
I mean functionally, what were the gameplay/realization differences between Versus XIII or XV? One example I know of, is Versus XIII having urban combat and exploration of Insomnia which was mostly lacking in XV. At least until the Royal Edition.
Unless you inquire about this to enployees of Square-Enix at the time who were working on the game's battle machanics and/or Nomura himself it's hard to accuratly say. Although, with the little Versus XIII footage that we have, we could closely analize and make hypothesis on what he was aiming for rouphly considering it was still in development when that footage was presented to us.
So you could do that or seek out the one's who were there making it. Best answer i can come up with, someone else with more knowledge may have an answer more fitting than mine. Mine's more of an observational reply than an answer
Well from what I remember of the trailers and gameplay, the final product of Final Fantasy XV is pretty similar to Versus XIII circa 2013, minus some dynamic camera angles, cut-away shots of awesomeness, and I suppose, more freedom for aerial combat? Noctis can warp and hang freely anywhere it would seem, but who knows how real that is.
With that in mind, that doesn't seem substantive enough to have Nomura wish to rehash the entire damn game and re-do it from scratch, only transplanting Noctis with Yozora and the setting with Kingdom Heart's.
Going way back to when Versus XIII was in development for the PS3, the gameplay looked more heavily influenced by Kingdom Hearts but that was back in 2011. Why would he be focused on that? Literally everything he's done in Kingdom Hearts since then, has surpassed what was shown back then. The Toy Box world's Gigas combat that let you enter them and fight, is clearly inspired by the Versus XIII gameplay mechanic of hijacking Nifelheim Magitek Armors, and using them to fight back with.
It just simply makes no sense why he has this much of an obsession with this setting/aesthetic/idea. Is it about Noctis himself? Does Nomura feel like he was stolen from him? If that's the case, take him back. Tabata's gone. He could easily include Noctis in Kingdom Hearts as his own iteration of the character, and no one would care. I just, don't see the logic at all.
This doesn't make sense when both developers used the phrase both before the game released and after and his comment was more like a tongue in cheek joke because the Dissidia staff decided to put the Versus Noctis outfit in Dissidia.Things didn't seem to be that much better company-wide, as evidenced by Nomura himself, who claimed Versus XIII was at some point a taboo phrase internally during a Dissidia stream late last year.
I can't speak for Nomura, but I can speak as someone who followed Versus for a long time. Trying to learn more about the project than someone probably should and reading a multitude of interviews, it doesn't seem that hard to understand his headspace.
First off, is it not surprising that someone would in any way be disappointed if a project they had a significant role in forming was handed off to someone else? Even if most of the details were the same, it's still something that was taken away from you. And that's just if the project went through minimal changes. I think it's fair to say the shift from Nomura to Tabata was at least a little more drastic than that. It's clear that the change in directors wasn't as amicable as Square want you to believe it was. Some of his earliest comments on the subject were non-answers and stressing that it was the company's decision. During the Kingdom Hearts 2.5 launch event in December of 2014 (One year after Tabata officially becoming director internally; three months after the public announcement and re-re-reveal) he explained that there had been a lot going on in his life during that past year and he had gotten pet cats to help him out of the slump caused by it. Not really hard to figure out what he was referring to. Things didn't seem to be that much better company-wide, as evidenced by Nomura himself, who claimed Versus XIII was at some point a taboo phrase internally during a Dissidia stream late last year.
You might find it silly, but if you're in that position where you spend a great deal of time working hard on something you're probably bound to form a kind of attachment. In this case it seemed to have been rather strong. Even if your interpretation of the ordeal is that he was too wishy-washy and unfocused to get things done properly, you can't really deny that it must have been many years of stressful work regardless. It was his only other project that he was purely the director of aside from the Kingdom Hearts series, and he actually considered Sora and Noctis to be sons of his, in a way.
KH and Versus go hand in hand, actually. During the days of Dream Drop Distance development he was keen to discuss the kind of relationship the two had. Ideas that didn't work in one went in to the other, and there was a sense of friendly rivalry between the teams. It's not really surprising that it ultimately ended up feeding back into KH this way. Had things gone differently, you'd probably see Noctis in a KH game now. But that's the thing. Noctis isn't really his character anymore. It's out of his hands. The first time he made any illustration and significant mention of Noctis post-removal was Dissidia Arcade/NT, not something he could really avoid. He's probably far removed from Noctis as a character at this point.
Even though there is a lot I think I could say, this post is getting a little too lengthy for my liking. Not to mention my sleep is lacking atm and a lot of the things I'm pulling out from my dusty mental closet have been slowly escaping my brain as I wrote this. So I don't really feel capable of doing a closer examination that would be structured and read well. Maybe another time. What's most important to keep in mind is that Yozora isn't really Noctis, and no matter how blatantly Nomura alludes to Versus/XV, the final application will be themes and concepts applied in a way that works with the Kingdom Hearts universe and the direction Nomura wishes to take it in.
I couldn't really tell you if it was a purely a joke or not, but it did come off as a little strange in the stream itself lol. It might have been different for how/when Tabata and some others were allowed to discuss it with the public, or perhaps it was just a passive aggressive move by Nomura. But I think it's still worth considering that there was some kind of tension within SE about it.
Yes, I remember watching that unfold in real time on his Facebook. It's a shame that in the end he nuked all the posts, because he was being very open and insightful. It was copied online obviously, but I have trouble remembering now whether all of it made it or not. That was the moment someone posted a leaked design for Human Umbra, much to the surprise of Ferrari. To my knowledge that leak was never traced. Officially released images of him exist now, but that specific design art is still a mystery.I swear I would pay good money to have a documentary of this mess.
When FFXV dropped, I saw some posts on Roberto Ferrari's page where he vaguely voiced some displeasure at how the new team had dealt with the previous one, though he was very diplomatic about it and all "congratulations for delivering the game!". I imagine it was much worse for Nomura and I can't blame him, though I don't really blame Tabata either.
Ha, so he did delete some posts! I vaguely remembered there being more, but when I went looking for those recently I basically found only one post about the postgame credits (it was mostly in Italian, so I guess he figured no one would care anyway). He hasn't posted much the last few years, hopefully we'll get a few insights when the remake releases.