Final Fantasy XV (was Versus XIII)

[Lex]

I think it'll be interesting to play as a character with some innate real power for a change. It's a nice change from the usual formula IMO. If Noctis is special in some way we finally have an immediate explanation for all this power

 

[Lex]

Well, like I said, Versus-XIII was said to be RUNNING on PS3.

And figure with Direct X 11, they could port it to PC or whatever else they wanted.

I don't want it to seem like I'm jumping on you again, but it was never said that what we're seeing now was running on PS3. Wherever you got that from it's been misquoted or someone has told you porkie pies, because I've watched every interview and read everything and nothing said that.

What they've said numerous times - on their livestream, their press release and other interviews - is that they've stopped developing for a specific system, so they can create what they want. Then using DX11 they port it to whichever console, and the final product is the result of the power capability of said consoles.

They've also said that development shifted to next-gen 2 years ago. They mentioned that at the time some of their staff had played the game on PS3, and it was also at that time they decided on a name change. So the game wasn't running on the PS3 from what we see now (and honestly, do you really think this gen would be able to handle what is happening graphically in that gameplay trailer?).

You have your wires crossed somewhere. There's no chance they're porting this thing to PS3 now I'm afraid. If you meant it was running on PS3 two years ago, we could be talking about a game segment the size of Kalm. If they'd had the whole thing finished by that point they would have released it for the PS3 like they'd originally planned.

 

[Unlucky]

If Noctis is special in some way we finally have an immediate explanation for all this power

The trailer said something about "Eyes that see the light of expiring souls", plus a dialogue between Noctis and perhaps Stella:

Stella(?): Noctis, you see the light too.
Noctis: There are things I just "know", and I have no idea how.

So I guess he does have some special ability.

 

[Tetsujin]

So I saw this on neogaf:

http://www.famitsu.com/news/201306/12034847.html

Some interesting notes:

- Nomura says the final line in the FFXV trailer is not part of the game's story, it was just added as a gag for the name change reveal. (This is the line about the "fifteenth coming".)

- He acknowledge that the "A world of the VERSUS epic" tagline at the end of the trailer specifically refers to the possibility of turning the setting into a series of its own. He says the story in FFXV will reach a climax, but it is like the conclusion of a single part of a larger epic (poem). There will be room for more stories to be told.

- He is aware that for large scale console development projects, there might be a need to keep people interested in the long term with online elements rather than just offer a short term single player experience. There are no concrete plans as of yet but he's looking at all possibilities to see what fits.

- S-E is interested in expanding new FF experiences on the PS Vita, as well as smartphones and tablets. They won't be the same old FF experiences, but something new.

- There will be more of FFXV shown from now onwards, especially at big events like TGS.

- They're calling the shading technique in KH3 the "Kingdom Shader" and the shaders they use will change with each world to create more authentic visual experiences based on the Disney source material. (This was already mentioned in the S-E Radio interview on their Youtube channel earlier.)

- For FFXV and KH3, they're currently looking into using Luminous Studio as the main engine. By developing on an Overspec (PC environment I presume), it makes porting the same content to both PS4 and Xbox One easier.

- The battle footage in the trailer (I think he's talking about KH3, since that was the leading question) is a movie, because the tools they're using have difficulty outputting stuff on the actual systems right now, but he promises that runs in realtime in the dev environment and it should look the same eventually.

- The two biggest new things in KH3 which he talks about are "crazy scale action" and way better enemy AI. He confirms that there will be a 3 character party in the game, but NPCs and allies in each world will also join in battles, and there will be crazy epic aerial action blahblahbalh sound like KH. He also talks about enemy AI being more complex and being able to interact with the player, like Sora riding on a vehicle type enemy and so on.

- They are also considering online features for KH3, as well as other features which have not been in KH before. (Nomura is a very considerate person. He seems open to considering anything. )

- Nomura thinks that it would be great if they can time the release of more information on KH3 at the D23 Expo Japan in October along with TGS. KH3 is seen as a rival production for FFXV. Get hype, etc.

 

[Drax]

Watched the gameplay trailer. That is one tenacious behemoth.


As for Noctus being overpowered, I'm not worried about it. This will essentially be Advent Children: The Game, where everybody flies like Crouching Tiger. There's one part where he's running along a piece of debris suspended miles above the city, but acts like he's running on the sidewalk.

 

[Dana Scully]

god fucking damn it

i'm actually a bit excited

that wasn't supposed to happen

it's like SE is that close friend of yours from grade school who never really got their shit together after graduation and you drifted apart but one day they send you a message on facebook and you discover they actually have a proper job and potential for a future

or maybe that's just me idk all i know is a release date would be nice

 

[laurence]

@Unlucky yep you got it. Seemingly Noctis' special power is sensing people's death, with his eyes.

Spoiler

Jump this week has the first character descriptions for the newly revealed Final Fantasy XV. Detailed below are Noctis, Prompto, Ignis, Gladiolus, and Cole.

Noctis Lucis Caelum
JP: ノクティス・ルシス・チェラム
CV: Tatsuhisa Suzuki

The Prince of the Lucis Kingdom with eyes that can sense people’s death. Noctis is a free-spirited guy whose friends call him “Noct.”

Gladiolus Amicitia
JP: グラディオラス・アミシティア
CV: Kenta Miyake

The first-born child of a distinguished family protecting the royal family for generations. He is Noctis’ best friend and like a brother to him.

Ignis Stupeo Scientia
JP: イグニス・ストゥペオ・スキエンティア
CV: Mamoru Miyano

Noctis’ childhood friend raised as an educated staff officer. He is Noctis’ confidential / trustworthy adviser.

Prompto Argentum
JP: プロンプト・アージェンタム
CV: Tetsuya Kakihara

A bad influence and friend from Noctis’ student days. He tends to push his luck, but does wants to help his friends? He boasts a courageous exterior.

Cole Leones
JP: コル・リオニス
CV: Hiroki Touchi

One of the top three commanding officers of the elite imperial guards. He is strict with Noctis and his friends, but is an honorable and righteous man who has sworn his allegiance to the king and country.

Note: The official English surnames of Prompto, Ignis, and Gladiolus, and the given and surnames of Cole are not confirmed. Published above are romanizations based on the Latin words that sound closest to their reading.

Source: Gematsu

 

[Unlucky]

So the whole party is basically composed of Noctis' bitches. Ok.

The Prince of the Lucis Kingdom with eyes that can sense people’s death.

Dialogue from the trailer:

Noctis: My heart won't let go.
Stella: Don't worry about me. Live your own life.

So I take it she's going to die?

I wonder what happened to his ability to change hair and eye color depending on his emotions. I seriously hope they ditched that, it's too stupid

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Seeing as his eyes are red in those pictures from the Gematsu article laurence linked a couple posts back but blue in the trailer, my guess is his eyes at the least are still mood rings. Which might not be terrible if it happens when he sees dead people and shit, but if his hair does it too and it's just because he's sad/hungry/horny, then it will be utterly fucktarded.

 

[Blade]

@Unlucky: Posse is more like it.

@Prince Lex: I'm not sure. I read the interviews just as you did. People were coming out of E3 with the same impression of it being on PS3...I just don't know. There's a lot of potential there. The Graphics (not including FMVs which can be compressed in events) could still work on PS3 if you ask me (heck, if Agito/Type Zero's action sequences were any indication of the potential AND that's on PSP!). It might have frame-rate slowdown, likely, but I've seen close-ups of FFXIII and FFXIII-2 Models in-game and there is nothing to indicate PS3 couldn't handle it (pushed to the limits though, yes).

About Noctis... I think part of the whole aspect about him HAVING powers is part of the story. Learning how he obtained those abilities (kind of like a reverse-telling of the story leading up to that point).

His whole 'sword-auto-guard' thing doesn't seem like much of an overpower-ment. It probably doesn't work well against Magic spells... Just low-level attacks...might even be upgradeable.

He seemed like he was having trouble with Leviathan's 'water essence' chasing him through the building, so his swords probably couldn't deal with that.

Also you gotta consider that he suffers from 'Gilgamesh-itis' in that he could probably get hit with a status effect that randomizes his sword-rotation or disable certain weapons to prevent some combos. Plus there's 'swing-speed' and 'cancelling' and 'dodge cooldown time' to consider as well (figure he can only dodge so many times between attacks).

His friends seem like assist QTEs for special types of enemies, so he can call on them when he's in trouble.

I should also mention that in some frames of the gameplay trailer, his sword model goes right through the floor, indicating the sword is only a 'partially physical' 3D object. In other games with realistic physics/details you'd expect large swords to get dragged along the ground... So I can't say this is using top-notch graphics here.

 

[Hisako]

incoming grouch go go go take cover

You know as excited as I am for a new Final Fantasy game, let alone Versus, I'm starting to feel a tad iffy about the appearance of the general direction this game seems to be taking. When they released the original trailers for Versus, they said right out that "this is a fantasy based on reality" or somesuch and the visual theme was so incredibly focused that I instantly had an idea of what it could look like and what to expect.

I didn't get the same feeling this time around with the E3 reveal.
They incorporated quite a few bits of the original trailer(s?) that I remember from yonks back, they kept that "fantasy based on reality" line there, but now there's less of that dark, grimy city based off Tokyo, and instead there's some goofy fantasy architecture I'd more expect to see on something like Lightning Returns, and imo stylistically it's taken away some of the visual focus the original game concept seemed to have.

I also found a lot of the action itself to be utterly incomprehensible. What was being controlled by a player? What was cutscene? How are we fighting those soldiers over there and why are we doing it? Why did that dude interrupt the fight with his gun thing? What is that... thing in the distance, and why is Noctis running towards it? How is Noctis fighting on the side of that building? Why are we suddenly floating amongst wreckage with that giant thing circling us? I guess what I'm saying that there wasn't any continuity to the action that was being shown - it was just all, like, "he's in the air! Now he's inside a mansion! He's in the hallway! There's a staircase! He's back outside! He's standing sideways on a wall! Now he's in mid-air! Now he's sort of up-side down!"

tl;dr, What the fuck is going on with the gameplay? Maybe I'm just a colossal idiot, but I had no idea about any of the action gameplay going on besides the fact that Noctis was running away from things, running towards things and attacking things. There was something about crystals. There's some sort of family mafia-like feud. It was all very cool, certainly, and what I assume to be the new Luminous Studio engine is looking fabulous, but unlike a lot of the other trailers on show in E3 this one for FFXV was incredibly abstract and nonspecific about what the game was about, and I'm just a little fearful that this happened because they were so focused on announcing Versus/XV that they didn't aim to do anything except show off its presence and all the shiny new particle effects that came with it.

 

[Ghost X]

I'm sure all the gameplay will make sense when you learn to play it, or it will be a confusing colossal failure. I'm guessing it'll be the former though.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Now that it's been mentioned, I have to agree that the architecture we saw in that trailer is, for the most part, inconsistent with what we've come to expect from Versus.

 

[Tetsujin]

Looks the same to me. The palace area at least always had this style in the first CG trailer iirc.
The Tokyoesque cityscape can briefly be seen in the beginning of the latest trailer.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Maybe wthat we see in the trailer is all palace area then.

 

[Tetsujin]

That's what I figured.

 

[Hisako]

To be honest, I don't actually mind having a variation in setting and scene throughout what they claim to be a huge universe or whatever, and there certainly were elements of the stuff we saw in the first trailers (like the stained-glass building with the gothic architecture, etc). It's just that there seemed to be very little of it (especially compared to that city surrounded by water, idk what the hell was that), and without any sort of indication of where or what these locations are, it seemed to be such a big tonal shift from the desaturated palette and modern, industrial-like scenery we got from the original Versus stuff we saw.

It's as if a early concept trailer for Final Fantasy VII was several minutes of gameplay around Midgar, and then the trailer following that several years later most of the footage consists of Junon and the Gold Saucer or something equally wacky, idk.

edit: Official E3 trailer felt much more consistent with the original vision compared to the PS4 announce trailer. Felt less fantastical and more industrial-like.

 

[Blade]

Regarding the environment, I'm thinking they're trying to be more consistent with Type-Zero's world...I can't say exactly how (since I'm not familiar with it) but they mentioned Niflelheim (or however you spell it) was taking over quite a few familiar-sounding kingdoms besides theirs.

Regarding the action, it makes more logical sense if you watch the clips 1 frame at a time (I suggest playing an mp4 of it in your PS3 and do single-frame views).

In the story trailer, Noctis is running away from what I assume to be Leviathan's 'familiar' a water form, and he's running around in the palace (I assume it's one of many dining halls, since the dining table looked familiar from the first cutscene when he was a kid).

He seems to be able to do something like a Spider-man thing by throwing a weapon and teleporting to where it was thrown.

In the major scene when you exit what I think is the main royal court, those guys start shooting at you and dropping from above, so you either have the option of taking the guys in front of you out, or taking the guys hanging along the walls nearby.

If you decide to take on the guys hanging from the walls, you throw your sword up there and teleport (like I said, similar mechanic to Spider-man), and you have a few seconds to slash at them before you have to use the move again to teleport (I assume if you take too long you fall to the ground and could possibly take damage from a long fall).

I assume that for the first section of the story, Noctis is being attacked directly as an assassination attempt... Then they learn that his dad's chasing after the guys who stole the Crystal... So they decide to follow them and possibly meet up with his old man....and based on the confrontation the King (Regis) has with the old guy...it may not turn out good (based on my instincts from watching Mafia movies).

 

[Unlucky]

and based on the confrontation the King (Regis) has with the old guy...it may not turn out good (based on my instincts from watching Mafia movies).

He made him an offer he can't refuse?

While I very much like the Venetian-like setting of the kingdom, I felt Noctis and friends look so out of place. Their appearance and the place just doesn't jibe well to me. But we'll see.

 

[Ghost X]

I haven't an issue with visual appearance of the environments shown. I'm just hoping it is a numbered title of Final Fantasy for a reason, in regards to the kind of gameplay. If SE wants to move away from that style of gameplay, they should come up with a different title.

 

[Hisako]

The actual gameplay trailer (with some UI to at least inform me as to what's going on) excites me a lot. There aren't a bajillion quick-cuts in the editing of the trailer, so I could actually see what was coherently going on. It looks like very solid ARPG gameplay. God knows how they're going to handle level design with all that teleporting, but the core combat looks fun and engaging.

I do have some reservations that a core Final Fantasy game appears to be a solely action-oriented roleplaying game, but as long as Square Enix don't forget the things that made the older games so great in gameplay, I'd be happy with XV. I'd only hope that later Final Fantasy iterations step back a bit and try and explore more traditional forms of combat with a twist.

I still find the reveal trailer stylistically jarring, though.

 

[Blade]

From what I understand of the original description of the mechanics, Noct won't be the only playable character. Though he'll be the omni-present base character...you can switch to others who have their own unique styles.

Ignis > Katana/Throwing Knives
Prompto > Guns/(Grenades?)/Magic?
Gladiolus > Heavy Sword/Defense/Other

So you don't just swap weapons... You can swap characters or have them 'assist'.

I also think Stella might be playable too in her own route if that's the way stuff is going.

 

[Ghost X]

Well, I like that each character seems to have different skills, like some sort of job system.

 

[PhantomSephiroth]

A little more of a delay and I'm gonna start calling it Final Fantasy Forever.

 

[laurence]

About world environments, I've read that Nomura's preference is to start the game in a less imaginary, more modern based world, as he believes such settings will lend to the emotional involvement at the beginning of a story. He then likes to expand into a more medieval fantasy based world as the story progresses. He verifies this approach is taken with XV.

Here's the NBC Interview