Project W, Fortress, and a Western AAA Final Fantasy

[looneymoon]

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Fortress

I remember seeing stuff about Fortress on this forum way back when, but I've only recently heard about Project W. I couldn't find a thread for it and I thought it deserved its own.

It makes me think about what a Western developed FF would be like. I'm not sure if Eidos is the ideal studio I would trust with that kind of project. The Project W story pitch sounds a little..... dumb to me. Maybe it's just the idea of it being a Final Fantasy that's making me read it that way though. Whatever the case, the way they were imagining locations in space looked pretty sweet.

Anyways, I'm not sold on the idea of a western developer attempting a mainline FF game. I think I would be more intrigued at a spin off title, like Fortress was supposed to be.

 

[Blade]

It's the same old story, and not exclusive to big companies like Square Enix.

There's a lot of "Japanese Pride" that gets flaunted in game development like it's supposed to mean something, i.e. when a developer says they're making a game that is supposed to "represent the Japanese game".

From my observed experience, the games that get more success in the West tend to be games that ignore that Nationalist pride and just set aside culture differences and share ideas.

I'd argue that smaller companies seem to be more receptive to this notion, as opposed to Corporations full of tradition. Even Nintendo has weird traditions within their company (like having Developers be isolated from other people so they aren't distracted by outside ideas).

There's some really weird logic floating around in Japan, and it's evident that there needs to be a lot of corporate reform.

If you're heard of the phrase "Crunching" then you know what I mean, though that isn't exclusive to Japanese developers, it's an epidemic with many studios.

Usually the most Artistically "free" developers have to shake a lot of hands before they can make what they want in games, and it's a struggle just to make progress in a lot of areas because of the mindsets people have.

Mainstream opinions on how games should be don't help either, as they usually also stick with more traditional ideas with games too. And that's unfortunately what sells the most.

TLDR: If people started ignoring tradition and actually taking risky ideas and bring those to the table more, we might see better more original works. But there's risk involved, and it's not easy to take.

 

[ForceStealer]

DmC effectively killed any interest I might have had in Western developers working on a Japanese franchise.

I would be interested in Western devs experimenting with games in the JRPG genre, though.

 

[Blade]

@ForceStealer... please, sir, do yourself a favor and keep an eye on ARC System Works. They're a Japanese developer that is taking great strides to reach out to American soil (other parts of Asia too). If they produce even better games in the future with Western talents, your concerns might become null and void.

And actually, there has been a recent trend of ex-Japan devs jumping ship to come to America for work because of the freedom it entails.

 

[lithiumkatana17]

Just now perusing this thread.

While I was never sold on the story of Fortress, I'd be interested in seeing what western developers can bring to the table if there were any collaborations on future projects.

Fortress was just... ugh. The concept art was fantastic, but what details we had on the story made me thankful that never came to fruition.