Final Fantasy XVI

[Glaurung]

I don't know. Aside from dark-spiky hair I don't see much of a similarity.

 

[Lestat]

Polly more down to the grumpy git syndrome both suffer from XD

 

[Wol]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1306331111170203651

 

[Maidenofwar]

Final Fantasy XVI ... is real?

 

[Fade]

I find something really fascinating in the way that Yoshida projects seem to be sort of descended of Ivalice. It's like FF is old enough to have children, essentially. I'm already feeling like this game will land a reaction not unlike XII's in its day, for just so obviously being the product of a different creative lineage.

 

[ForceStealer]

View attachment 7704


XD

So she's also a Yuna clone as well, yeah? And Aerith?

 

[Saven]

I feel it's more that the creative work done in the MMOs is... looked down on a bit by the single-player games because it's an MMO. And so it sometimes feels like you've got people saying (or at least thinking) that the devs in Business Division III (which does both FFIX and FFXIV) aren't "real FF devs" just because they've never done an single-player FF game yet. When for a lot of the people who do play the MMOs (or even just watch the play throughs), the ideas that are coming out of that Division feel the most "Final Fantasy" the franchise has been in the last decade at least, if not longer. So to hear people people say the MMOs "don't count" towards the FF series in terms of ideas and the shape of the series over the last decade doesn't feel fair.

With letting the Business Division III do a single player main-line FF game, it's kind of like SE saying that yes, what the division has been doing in their games does matter to the series as a whole now. Just because the games they work on are MMOs, doesn't mean they're not Final Fantasy games. And now they're making a game that will "count" as an FF game for everyone who says the MMOs don't count.This is when I wonder if people even bother to research how FFXIV deals with leveling up and equipment, or if they just hear "MMO" and think it's just like WoW, that is you have to be grinding all the time. Which isn't the case at all.

The thing is that the longer and longer FFXIV has gone on, the more and more it's become possible to play it like a single-player Final Fantasy game, at least when it comes to the Main Story. Shadowbringers introduced AI controlled party members which take the place of other people for the story dungeons and you can basically play it as if you're playing a solo game since the Main Story gives you so much Exp you basicly get a free ride to the level cap for one job. And there's been talk that the FFXIV team wants to make that kind of thing available for all the other story dungeons eventually.

There is a sizable chunk of the FFXIV player base that only logs in on the week a patch hits, do the story content and then don't log in again until the next patch hits months later. Even more people just log in for the expansion every two years, finish it in a few weeks and then leave until the next expansion rolls around. FFXIV has been designed with people not having to sticking around to get through the main story ever since Yoshida took it over. He's never wanted to get people to feel like they have to grind to see the story content because for him, the point of FF is the story. And making that harder to do goes against what FF is about.

I used to be one of those people. I could never get into MMOs back in the 2000s because everytime I watched one of my friends play one they were just grinding for days on end. It looked incredibly boring and I was put off by them until this year when I finally gave both FFXI and FFXIV a chance. I'm really glad I made that decision because now I realized I was missing out on a lot of good stuff.

- older protagonist!

Yes! Once I realized that we finally are getting a Basch-like main character (with the FFXXVI MC younger version being the Vaan of the game). Something that I've desperately wanted to see in the series ever since I read about that tidbit from FFXII.

 

[Strangelove]

So she's also a Yuna clone as well, yeah? And Aerith?

and lara croft

 

[Lestat]

If the skin fits ?

 

[Strangelove]

lightning when she finds a new character to dress as

 

[Lestat]

Colour fits somewhat ?

 

[Prism]

Yeah I'm not saying this game shouldn't have had a female main character, I'm just saying "Final Fantasy never has girls" is pretty disingenuous.

A lot of the Twitter fandom is apparently based around XV, so I wonder if that’s where they’re getting it. But I mean... Remake clearly had a good gender balance and it’s been the Final Fantasy game for the past while.

Also, I’m glad some of you are excited because of XIV’s aesthetic getting into a mainline game, but that was one of the things I did not really want. I still stand by that I’ve warmed up to the game considerably since my initial impressions, however.
Here’s hoping for a gender balanced party still...

 

[ForceStealer]

Exactly. I want a good diverse party in this too, but in my opinion, FF has a very strong track record with realized female characters, especially among Japanese games. So to accuse it of otherwise because of one entry is disengenuous, as Ody said.

And I'm still not convinced that we can't customize Generic McGeneric hero, possibly even make him a woman.

Would still need a party though.

 

[Prism]

Twitter memes definitely aren’t offering substantive opinions, unfortunately. People defend them as just jokes, but that’s missing the influence they have on people’s opinions.

Is there any evidence pointing to potential customization? I don’t know how that would work with the time skip business.

We definitely need a party.

 

[Maidenofwar]

If we get to play as summons I want to be a Carbuncle~

 

[Lestat]

Diablos would be cool asf to play as

 

[Odysseus]

I wanna be the phat chonkobo

 

[Wol]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1306611284377505792

This fucking couerl has an armor and two lances instead of whiskers. I absolutely love the design but I hate him already.

 

[Torrie]

This made me laugh A LOT:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1306462209451589637

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I relish good women characters as much as the next person, but I'm not going to write off a game because it lacks diversity. I realise that for other people, diversity is a priority. Fair enough.

@ that picture - 10,000 years in the future, Rufus is reincarnated....
No wonder he looks so furious.

 

[Lex]

Hi I've now seen this trailer about 8 times and I have a serious analysis of it because I want to discuss some of these aspects and theorise, but also firstly let me say anybody who is not 100% excited for this game and on the hype train with me should die in a fire. Like if you even have a mild thought at the back of your mind that is negative please feel free to take yourself into a small room and have a word with yourself

haha jk people are allowed their opinions :3

Anyway, sequentially:

"Shiva's Dominant" - I'm going to assume that this is the person who is either capable of summoning or transforming into Shiva. The crew at the beginning (of which our probably-main-protag is a part, and seemingly later on in his story than what is shown afterwards in the trailer) are hunting her dominant, which I assume at this stage means they're after a person rather than the group to which she belongs. "Only the dominant", the man says. It seems clear that there are disparate groups, or kingdoms or something and each seems to have a representative Eikon (presumably, with a dominant).

Based on what happens later in the trailer, I speculate that our protagonist has joined a crew of Eikon hunters, even though our protag might be able to summon/become one himself.

-Backwards timeskip-

"Our foe will not relinquish their mothercrystal easily" - slight XV plot vibes I guess (though I'm loathe to make the comparison, because every other person in the world has gone "it looks like XV" when it does NOT look like XV), the implication here being that there is more than one mothercrystal. Who knows what purpose they serve in this universe at the moment.

Cut to a child and wealthy looking mother. This child is the only one we have a (first) name for - "Joshua" - and we know from later in the trailer that Joshua is able to transform into/ summon Ifrit OR Phoenix (this is unclear). This probably makes Joshua "Ifrit/ Phoenix's Dominant". The wealthy looking mother is chiding the child for being outdoors. My hypothesis is that this is because Joshua is known to have the power/ be an eikon, but has not yet transformed. This makes him a target for other groups/ kingdoms.

We then see Joshua either healing or transferring power with our younger protag via hands. "Get in the house you little shit" says mummy.

Protag: "I am Joshua's shield, I'm sworn to protect him" - ok so this is obvious, protag is sworn to protect Joshua.

-Combat etc-

-Cut to random dude in house-

Random dude to new blonde woman (or maybe the protag, the cut makes it ambiguous): "What do you mean you refuse!? Did you not pledge your sword to our cause?" - impossible to know what this is about because we don't really know who he's talking to, but if it's the blonde woman who responds "it was the Dhalmeks who drew back the crusaders in the battle of the twin realms was it not?" it sounds like she's having a lil mic drop "fuck u" moment and I live

Other dude with black hair, sitting at the table also: "Without the blessing of the Mother Crystal, we cannot defend our realm from the spread of the blight". Oooooo ok I'm into this. Love a medieval blight storyline, Dragon Age eat your heart out (before the blight does ahahaha)

Cool looking DRG shows up and the characters refer to "Imperial vipers" and the imperials invading them. Our protag is young here. I posit that this is the story of how our protag came to be on his glorious path of bloody vengeance. He served as "Joshua's shield" - presumably what we see in the trailer is the destruction of whichever house or kingdom Joshua was the dominant for (probably by the imperials).

Unknown voice: "It's the archduke's son"
Unknown voice 2: "The Phoenix"

We then see Joshua either summon or start transforming while someone shouts at him to "stop this", THEN we see a Phoenix flying in (this seems to be a different scene from the same part of the story), then a man made of fire turns into Ifrit. This seems to point to Joshua being Phoenix, and our protag seems to be able to use Phoenix based attacks (probably by a transfer of power from Joshua as seen earlier in the trailer). Initially I thought our protagonist was Phoenix and Joshua was Ifrit, but the more I watch the trailer I realise that's probably not right.

While Ifrit is appearing, someone (knocked back) says "A second Eikon of fire! But, that's impossible!" Implying that there is one Eikon for each element (probably). This blonde dude is also wearing red colours, so I'm assuming he's on the side of the Joshua folk who are currently being invaded/ gruesomely murdered.

As Ifrit is preparing an attack, someone (I think our protag?) screams "Please Joshua, wake up!" - I speculate that Joshua transforms, dies, and then maybe the power to summon Phoenix is transferred to our protag who spends a good chunk of the next ten years hunting Ifrit, joining a dubious group in the process.

Also nummy



The tattoos seem to be related to the group he's joined shown at the start of the trailer. I also like that they kept his hair asymmetric as he got older, even though they (thankfully) cast away the karen who wants to speak to a manager haircut he has when he's younger.

Anyway, I'm fully on board

Concerns:

- I want a party
- I want prominent female characters

I think that's it tbh. Everything else looks/ sounds great so far. I'm not too worried about not getting either of the things I'm "concerned" about at the moment, because I'm almost certain that the vast majority of what we've seen is the prologue or a flashback.

 

[Prism]

I relish good women characters as much as the next person, but I'm not going to write off a game because it lacks diversity. I realise that for other people, diversity is a priority. Fair enough.

@ that picture - 10,000 years in the future, Rufus is reincarnated....
No wonder he looks so furious.

IMO, it’s not only more just to have a varied gender cast, but I’d argue that it makes the cast better. During XV, I kept feeling that something was just bugging me throughout the game when compared to VII, X or XIII. The lack of women made the cast more boring than it otherwise would have been. The character interactions were still fantastic, though.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I'd be surprised if 'new blonde woman' didn't turn out to be a main character (with an axe to grind; maybe a real axe).

edited to add: I wouldn't want every game to be four-buddies-on-a-road-trip game, but I sure did enjoy it once.
FFXV has been incredibly popular with women fans. Make of that what you will.

I never played FFX-2 because I hated FFX, but wasn't that three girl-friends on a road trip, or something?

 

[Odysseus]

Yeah I also think it's too early to assume there's only the one male character and nobody else. We barely saw a few minutes of footage after all. If the gimick is that the characters can transform into the summons, I assume we'll get a whole cast of different ones, like Shiva girl from the trailer.

 

[Wol]

I'd be surprised if 'new blonde woman' didn't turn out to be a main character (with an axe to grind; maybe a real axe).

edited to add: I wouldn't want every game to be four-buddies-on-a-road-trip game, but I sure did enjoy it once.
FFXV has been incredibly popular with women fans. Make of that what you will.

I never played FFX-2 because I hated FFX, but wasn't that three girl-friends on a road trip, or something?

It would be cool if that woman played the mage of the party.