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All-New Press Previews of Final Fantasy XV's First 5 Chapters

AngryNeox

Neo Member
Just noticed that gameswelt uploaded a longer 6m preview video with a few more german dub scenes:
http://www.gameswelt.tv/final-fantasy-xv/video-preview,54819

Cidney sounds a bit too old to me? Anyways, the german version going with the original name Cidney instead of Cindy just shows once again that they didn't care what the US localization was doing. Good.
Ohhh noooo... I think that's the german Bart Simpson voice actor. Or at least she sounds quite similiar. Me no like.
 
I just like wandering around and seeing what's out there, mainly. And being hilariously over-leveled for story bits. Critical-pathing is for chumps.

So If you eat plain Toast you levels go down right?
Does that confirm , the "special" item Tabata confirmed to control you from over leveling?
 
I'd really like a detailed explanation on EXACTLY how summoning works. One of the recent bits of information could possibly imply that you can't summon Astrals outside of their region.
 

benzy

Member
I just like wandering around and seeing what's out there, mainly. And being hilariously over-leveled for story bits. Critical-pathing is for chumps.

Have the environments been interesting to explore? I see all of these trees in the distance and just want to run through all of it looking for weapons and see what monsters lurk.

zpxakl.gif
 

Geg

Member
I'd really like a detailed explanation on EXACTLY how summoning works. One of the recent bits of information could possibly imply that you can't summon Astrals outside of their region.

From what I read it said you can but they just have different attacks & don't physically appear near Noctis
 

xion4360

Member
Have the environments been interesting to explore? I see all of these trees in the distance and just want to run through all of it looking for weapons and see what monsters lurk.

zpxakl.gif

Its not a completely seamless open world, technically its still large segmented areas connected by the roadways. Thats why you cant get off the road while driving, theres tons of bridges and guard railed parts and you can only land or take off from roads. There are large gates that block off progression to new areas.

Im okay with this because it still gives the sense of a big open world but you still have a sense of progress. Best of both worlds I think.
 

benzy

Member
Its not a completely seamless open world, technically its still large segmented areas connected by the roadways. Thats why you cant get off the road while driving, theres tons of bridges and guard railed parts and you can only land or take off from roads. There are large gates that block off progression to new areas.

Im okay with this because it still gives the sense of a big open world but you still have a sense of progress. Best of both worlds I think.

It's actually all seamless and more parts of the world open up as you go through the story. You can jump the rails and go battle enemies below. The car isn't able to go everywhere off road since you'll probably end up getting it stuck somewhere, but on foot you can go anywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMRuQMJ8OPs&t=43m28s
 

xion4360

Member
It's actually all seamless and more parts of the world open up as you go through the story. You can jump the rails and go battle enemies below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMRuQMJ8OPs&t=43m28s

umm no its not? there are clearly large walls, barriers, mountains whatever that work to segment each area. Its not like the witcher where you can run from one end of the map to the other unobstructed or having to funnel you through a trench.

And I mean the individual maps of the witcher, in FFXV its like those all connected in one world by bridges and gates.
 

benzy

Member
umm no its not? there are clearly large walls, barriers, mountains whatever that work to segment each area. Its not like the witcher where you can run from one end of the map to the other unobstructed or having to funnel you through a trench.

Tabata has already said the whole game is seamless. My link even says you can freely explore everywhere that's physically possible.
 
Part 3 of Jeremy Parish's FFXV preview just went up! Add it to the OP!

Final Fantasy XV Travel Diary, Day Three: Authentic Road Trip

Very good write up and echoes my own feelings. There is a believability in this game, particularly the connection of places to landscape, which I haven't seen in many games.

umm no its not? there are clearly large walls, barriers, mountains whatever that work to segment each area. Its not like the witcher where you can run from one end of the map to the other unobstructed or having to funnel you through a trench.

Where are you getting this from? In terms of size the game world already feels bigger than Witcher 3, albeit with less density of stuff to do. Haven't seen aspects of the game closed off in footage. Yeah, the video Benzy posted basically reiterates that you can explore where you want...
 

xion4360

Member
Tabata has already said the whole game is seamless. My link even says you can freely explore everywhere that's physically possible.

seamless because you can travel from one spot to another without having to load a new area or warp or something. This game has every trick in the book to segment the world. gates, mountains, trenches, bridges....water.

There is clearly plenty of land that you dont physically travel over. like all that forested area on the side of those hills. They did a great job of naturally doing it so you dont notice you cant just walk over to duscae or to golden quay without taking the same road every time.

Its smart game design dont blame me for seeing it though. Some of you might be disappointed when the game comes out. Its an open world game and seamless in that you can traverse it without backing out into load screens maybe, but its not a seamless open world like in GTA where you can freely travel every inch of the complete map as soon as you are let lose in it. Theres going to be progression based unlocks to open up new areas and natural blocks keeping you contained to certain regions.. thats what Im saying.
 

Sagely

Member
Woohoo more footage! Thanks for posting and bringing the thread back :) I could honestly watch it all. Can't wait for the reviews to hit, even though it's still a few weeks yet.
 
Part 3 of Jeremy Parish's FFXV preview just went up! Add it to the OP!

Final Fantasy XV Travel Diary, Day Three: Authentic Road Trip

"Even though battles take place seamlessly in the game world, even though there's no victory fanfare when battles can flow one into the other, even though you're battling monsters in real-time with minimal use of menus, it still captures a certain ineffable sense of Final Fantasy."

Just what I want to hear!
 

ToastyFrog

Inexplicable Treasure Hate
Huh, so its easy to get over leveled?
How's the difficulty of the main quest and side material, if i can ask?
I've steamrolled some of the main quest stuff, some has been tough. And with side quests and random wilderness encounters, there's ample opportunity to get totally trashed by something way above your level. It's about as well-balanced so far as you could expect for any open-world stat-driven RPG.
 

Gbraga

Member
Part 3 of Jeremy Parish's FFXV preview just went up! Add it to the OP!

Final Fantasy XV Travel Diary, Day Three: Authentic Road Trip

That was an amazing read, thanks for the link. So excited for this. This idea of an open world that doesn't really exist solely to be your personal amusement park, with new attractions every three steps, is something that really captured me since they started to talk about it.

I find it amazing that they're not just adding a billion points of interest on your minimap, you'll explore it if you want to, if you don't, that's fine, hop on the car, enjoy the view and the dialogues, and go to your next quest. There might not be a huge amount of well written and developed sidequests, but I'm completely ok with this.

As long as they can keep up the amount of unique dialogue they've shown throughout the whole game, it's as if the generic sidequests are actually building on top of the main story itself. It won't have this super unique storyline for you to follow, but it'll go more in depth into these characters, and in a road trip story, it really is all about the journey.

I remember watching that wonderful Eurogamer preview, and when they camped and were looking at the pictures, they started to talk about those moments again as they went through them. Isn't that amazing? You go through your own little storyline, your journey becomes your story, as it's the case for most good open world RPGs, but the game is going out of its way to make these personal adventures feel like part of the actual story, with party banter and these little touches like the photographs and the camping as a whole.

By making the game essentially about their journey and exploring, they're able to capture what is a fun consequence of open world games and make it the core of the game's design. I'm also really excited about it turning more linear as the story demands it. If it's done well and it's not just "budget running short, everything is a straight line now", this will be actually quite a ballsy move.

My hype for this game is kind of stupid, actually, there's no way it'll live up to my expectations.
 

benzy

Member
I think you'll be disappointed. To me at least tha doesn't look explorable.

If it isn't it's more likely due to it being an area where the devs didn't polish up and meant for you to explore. You can run to and over all of the mountains when breaking out of the barrier in Episode Duscae, and we've already seen you're able to seamlessly fly over areas where you can't travel by foot, such as over waters and large cliffs/craters.

giphy.gif


giphy.gif
 

Gbraga

Member
If it isn't it's more likely due to it being an area where the devs didn't polish up and meant for you to explore. You can run to and over all of the mountains when breaking out of the barrier in Episode Duscae, and we've already seen you're able to seamlessly fly over areas where you can't travel by foot, such as over waters and large cliffs/craters.

giphy.gif


giphy.gif

When they were talking about the tech needed to create airships, talking to the Just Cause team and the possibility of it being post-release DLC, it sounded like bullshit. But now that we know a little more about the size and variety of the explorable land, these gifs do look like quite a technical achievement.
 

DeSolos

Member
They're so adorable :3

iuX3XIf.gif

I hope they add swimming back in a patch. If chocobos can do it, there's no reason Noctis shouldn't be able to do it too.

If they really want to disinsentivize you from swimming without a Chocobo they should make swimming as Noctis really slow. Invisible walls feel bad, especially in open world games.
 
We still don't know if a white chocobo is any different from a normal yellow one, do we? Apart from the colour, of course. :D
Need black flying chocobo. :)

Ohhh noooo... I think that's the german Bart Simpson voice actor. Or at least she sounds quite similiar. Me no like.
Damn, that really sounds like her. A google search with her name (Sandra Schwittau) and Final Fantasy/Cidney didn't give me any result. We need the german cast list.
 

Register

Banned
I'm actually getting somewhat excited again. After being toritued by the sheer infinite hype I had for versus13, FF 15 - ever since its re-reveal - had me bummed out a bit. I would buy the game day 1 either way, but I actually feel a bit of hype reemerging again, and I didn't even watch footage, I just read impressions.
 

Joqu

Member
I hope they add swimming back in a patch. If chocobos can do it, there's no reason Noctis shouldn't be able to do it too.

If they really want to disinsentivize you from swimming without a Chocobo they should make swimming as Noctis really slow. Invisible walls feel bad, especially in open world games.

Yeah. I'm glad you can swim using chocobos but it doesn't fix the main issue for me, if anything it makes it stand out more. I just really hate the invisible walls. Make those limitations feel natural. Not being able to swim like that doesn't feel natural in the slightest

Like you say, the swimming can feel annoyingly slow. Or it could be limited by stamina. It could also be way too dangerous, with some incredibly high level sea creatures hanging around in water they don't want you to get through yet. But just give me the feeling I could potentially swim over there, even if it's not a great idea
 
Part 3 of Jeremy Parish's FFXV preview just went up! Add it to the OP!

Final Fantasy XV Travel Diary, Day Three: Authentic Road Trip

And I've still only seen a small percentage of the overall game world, and completed an even smaller fraction of its quests and story. And that's OK by me. I haven't been hooked by a game world like this in a long, long time, and I'm more than happy to take this experience slowly and savor it.

Hype levels continue to increase. This guy sounds like he is really really enjoying this game.
 

Skulldead

Member
I've steamrolled some of the main quest stuff, some has been tough. And with side quests and random wilderness encounters, there's ample opportunity to get totally trashed by something way above your level. It's about as well-balanced so far as you could expect for any open-world stat-driven RPG.

I really like what i'm hearing right here !
 

LordKasual

Banned
When they were talking about the tech needed to create airships, talking to the Just Cause team and the possibility of it being post-release DLC, it sounded like bullshit. But now that we know a little more about the size and variety of the explorable land, these gifs do look like quite a technical achievement.

This is where i really started to believe in this game. When i heard they were "looking into" talking to other devs for tech advice, not only was I severely concerned for the state of the game, but I was expecting some kind of really half-assed approach to implementation.

But the fact they actually got it into the game is amazing. Especially considering this is the first open world engine Square has worked with.
 

theofficefan99

Junior Member
There's at least CG in the Intro (before you have a chance to customize anything) Im guessing they wont feature the party for any CG after that except the ending. Or have some time cut to assume they just changed.

I'd like to add that they might simply not really care, like in Tales of games. You could have your whole party wearing swimsuits and then a minute later having the party witnessing explosions in their regular outfits.
 
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