Remake Interviews: Catch-all Thread

[Flintlock]

I dunno, they still feel a bit greedy to me. Look at how much money they managed to extort charge their fans for all the super duper deluxe editions of Final Fantasy XV, which didn't even feature the game's soundtrack or all its future DLC. Look at the prices of their mobile games compared to just about any other app. Look at the half-arsed ports they pump out knowing that people will buy them anyway. Look at the complete and utter absence of Final Fantasy games from every "Square Enix sale" on Steam, Humble or anywhere else (I'm aware there are separate Final Fantasy sales, but they're few and far between and often offer only a meagre discount). Look at how much of their recent 30th anniversary presentation, which could have been a massive event, was spent on crap like $950 bottles of wine. $950.

Other companies are worse, sure, including all the ones you mentioned, but that doesn't mean that Square aren't also greedy in their own way. Greed and ineptitude aren't mutually exclusive.

And I'll say it again: as consumers, the only power we have over game publishers is the power of our wallets. I dare you all not to pre-order the remake.

 

[Lulcielid]

What greedy company tries to fix a badly received MMO and in the process spends 3 years of resources in doing so?

 

[Flintlock]

One that realises its reputation is at stake?

SE deserve credit for fixing up XIV, of course. I can't argue with that.

 

[ForceStealer]

You definitely have a point on the mobile ports of FF games, definitely charge way too much for that stuff.

And it's true that XIV did threaten their reputation. But so many of those other companies don't even seem to care about that. Capcom obviously couldn't care less about their reputation.

The $950 wine thing is exactly the bizarre decision stuff I'm talking about. That's hardly greed, if it is, it's pretty stupid greed. They would make a lot more money on a reasonably priced game then a $950 bottle.

It's pretty rare that I preorder something more than a couple days in advance for the release date shipping. VII may well be an exception, but they're gonna have to do more than a figurine to get me to shell out big bucks for it.

 

[Lex]

As someone who loves XIV I have to point out in this discussion that their reputation was at stake as well as the company financials. They rebuilt it from the ground up and gave fans what they wanted because that was the only way to make the thing profitable, I don't think it was some altruistic gesture.

That said, I err more on Force's side in this than I do Flint's, but I still think they're a bit greedy. Call me the centrist

 

[ForceStealer]

Well I didn't mean it was altruistic. They are still charging for it, after all. I just mean they seem to give a shit about the product. They could have spent less money making something else profitable than they did fixing that.

And I also acknowledge the reason is was so borked in the first place was because of cost cutting measures and outsourcing it to China. But they had the self-respect to fix it instead of just shrugging their shoulders and moving on.

They are still a company, they want to make money. But I think that they are much closer to the side of developers that care about the integrity of the product they are making even when they screw up.

 

[Lex]

I definitely think they have a focus on quality, and that's a good thing. I also think they tend to take it too far though - "polishing rocks" for example.

And my Nomura fears have returned with the way he's been speaking about the project recently. It's giving me butchered condensed experience taken over by Tabata for release in 2020 vibes

 

[Shademp]

You know how they say "you can't see the forest because of all the trees"? Well I'm pretty convinced that Tetsuya Nomura can't see Mount Everest because he's too busy polishing a rock until it's shiny enough to reflect his ego 100%. Hint: That's a lot of polish required.

This exchange from the Polygon article also gives me bad vibes.

Nomura: Yeah. So… how is it [working together again]?

Kitase: I don’t remember you being this … detailed with your instructions. [Laughs]

Nomura: Yes, yes I am.

Kitase: He’s very, very detail oriented. And he really pushes right up to that final deadline — or past it.

Nomura: That’s only when we haven’t gotten approval from the higher-ups yet.

Kitase: Oh? That’s funny, I don’t remember it being like that before. [Laughs]​

You can just taste the awkward tension between the two in that final bit.

 

[Lex]

Honestly, it was the Polygon article that got me worried again. They said outright that he's the new "SE Untouchable" and that he can therefore do what he wants, replacing Sakaguchi in that "role", if you want to call it that. The difference being that Sakaguchi was a slave-driving perfectionist that also got shit done.

 

[Ite]

Without quoting the exact voice actor, from what I hear, Versus never even started production until it became FFXV. "The story and concept were there for ten years, but Production didn't start until 2 years ago."

As I've said before, Nomura's a dreamer, not a doer. I know a lot of them, they're great people to work with! Horrible people to work for.

 

[ForceStealer]

The entire time he's working on this he should be going home at night and playing FF7. Just to make sure he doesn't lose sight of the thing.

 

[Lulcielid]

The entire time he's working on this he should be going home at night and playing FF7. Just to make sure he doesn't lose sight of the thing.

That will not change the fact that 2010's Nomura is not 97's Nomura, for better or worse he changed, learned new stuff and evolved his artistic sensibilities.

 

[ForceStealer]

Obviously. But I bet he hasn't played it much, if he ever did. Might give him good reminders of little things he forgot about. Nojima too.

 

[Theozilla]

The entire time he's working on this he should be going home at night and playing FF7. Just to make sure he doesn't lose sight of the thing.

If Nomura has issues, I don't think losing sight of the game creatively would be his main issue, it seems that it's more time/resource management is what he has challenges with. I think the fact that he has Kitase working with him and past experience with messing up with and being taken off FFXV will hopefully make him do better in that regard.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

The entire time he's working on this he should be going home at night and playing FF7. Just to make sure he doesn't lose sight of the thing.

That will not change the fact that 2010's Nomura is not 97's Nomura, for better or worse he changed, learned new stuff and evolved his artistic sensibilities.

Non-sensible sensibilities?

 

[Tashasaurous]

The problem with the Company these days is that they worry more about quality and market than anything else, instead of focusing on other importances like the gameplay, the characters, the music, and especially the stories in story-games like Final Fantasy VII for example.

They won't even do anymore Compilation titles, because they were concerned that making more would, and I quote,

Their reasoning was that releasing any more would saturate the market.

which is, in my opinion, stupid.

I think they really should do something more than just spend years talking or dreaming.

I hate to complain, but this is starting to be more like roadworkers around my neighborhood who spent almost 10 months in just fixing up a pothole in the road.

 

[lithiumkatana17]

I'll probably get wheedled for this, but I'm not too fudged about the progress of the remake at the moment. FFXV was released like 3 months ago, and it was an enormous project for the company. They need to get their ducks back in a row and reevaluate things before they dive in on the remake, which is undoubtedly going to be under more scrutiny than Versus/XV ever was.

If it takes them a few years to push out a masterpiece, I'm willing to wait. I don't want a botched/rehashed game.

 

[Tashasaurous]

I'll probably get wheedled for this, but I'm not too fudged about the progress of the remake at the moment. FFXV was released like 3 months ago, and it was an enormous project for the company. They need to get their ducks back in a row and reevaluate things before they dive in on the remake, which is undoubtedly going to be under more scrutiny than Versus/XV ever was.

If it takes them a few years to push out a masterpiece, I'm willing to wait. I don't want a botched/rehashed game.

I'm more focused on KH3 at the moment myself, so the Remake is the last thing to expect on my mind.

 

[Ite]

I'd hope the core team would play the game or at least the segment they're redoing. But my rage has settled, the event just felt to me like a bit of a bait and switch, but in the end there's nothing to blame it on but my own expectations.

 

[paleofan]

There was a lot of messages since my last post and I don't have the time to read them all, but to be clear: I'm not the type that complains about prices and want games for free. I've myself backed quite a few kickstarter projects and I'd be ready to pay 200+$ for 07th Expansion's next installment in the When They Cry series for example. What I despise about Square Enix is it's philosophy and practices. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm saying that I, personally, am strongly against it. It's ok if you don't mind the corporate attitude. If you like having fan service shoved in your face all the time for marketing purposes, like playing spin-offs games to explain plot holes, like seeing the Final Fantasy name and characters slapped on everything, like having games that have less efforts put into it while you're waiting for the next "main" game or like having content cut from your game for future updates, DLCs, sequels, spin-offs, animes, movies... then Square Enix is just the company for you. Meanwhile, I don't subscribe to these practices. I'm going to repeat myself but I think the Remake will be pretty good, and I'll take it because I've always wanted it, BUT I really don't like the company's philosophy and I've had no regret boycotting them for the past few years. FF7 remake will the exception because of my fanboyism for this particular installment but that'll be it.

 

[ForceStealer]

But I'm saying its rare that these other games feel devoid of effort. It would seem that you would consider World of Final Fantasy to be an example of this, it is fan service with the FF name and characters "slapped" on it. But it's an excellent game featuring old school RPG combat with depth, strategy and variety and a plot that really surprised me with how well-formed it is.

I haven't played many of the KH spinoffs, so I can't speak for them, but the one I did play - Birth By Sleep, might be a BETTER game than the main ones.

It's not a matter of "liking the corporate philosophy," as you condescendingly put it, it's that I'm not seeing what you're saying.

 

[paleofan]

It's ok if we have different point of views I could totally make a huge post explaining why I think the way I think about Square Enix but that would be a waste of time with no real point. My goal wasn't to convince anyone to not like Square Enix, I was merely expressing my reaction to the latest interview.

 

[Theozilla]

Final Fantasy VII Remake might not take 10 years in development, but don't expect it to be out anytime soon

Not much new information, but it's interesting to hear some thoughts on the process from Hashimoto. Seems like they're dedicated to avoiding the development issues Versus XIII/XV had with the Remake, but they also don't want to do a rush job either. (personally my guestimation is still the same it was from 2015, I think the first part of the Remake is most likely coming out around winter holidays 2018, with early 2019 being the next most likely date range)

 

[Tashasaurous]

Personally, my thoughts would be finish off KH3 first since that's been in development longer than the Remake, and I don't care what anyone else says, because it seems unfair and stupid to just leave a more developed project for a decade just to work on another that needs a hellva more work than the other that's already nearing completion.

I mean, Disney made the right choice to switch the release dates of Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2;

For example: Toy Story 4 was meant to come out in 2018 while the Sequel to Incredibles was sceduled to be released in 2019, but because that the latter had more work done than the former, the release dates had been switched.

So since we've seen more of KH3, the latest we're getting the remake is no later than either 2019 or 2020. So I'm not surprised when they said to not be expecting this game anytime soon, because there's still heaps of work to be done.

 

[Ite]

Tash, I personally hate Kingdom Hearts and could care less when they release the next title in that series. We have other threads for that fandom. Thanks for understanding.

Theo, that article's decent, although they called the "key image" a "screenshot." If that's a screenshot of the game, I will likely skip it lol.