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[RedZaraki]

Ooof.

This is exactly what I expected. There's no world in which this lives up to some people's hype. It's going to be a middle-of-the-pack game in today's landscape.

I'm going to take a wait and see approach, personally.

 

[Mifec]

FUUUUUUCK, THIS WAS MY BIGGEST CONCERN

Xenoblade had you take as many as possible, why is it so hard Square?

Someone needs to communicate to SE that if we want to do mindless collectathons/kill 20 boars quests then they should at least let us do them all at once. Because this really sounds annoying.

 

[ironcreed]

My excitement for this game has turned into a bit of a red flag. I'll probably hold off and check it out down the road one day.

 

[Itchy//Tasty]

I don't mean to open a heaving can of worms, but I don't really agree entirely with people's offended reactions towards Cindy, and this comes from someone who believes strongly in gender equality. I'll try and bullet point it:

1. Character-wise she's confident, positive, independant and clearly owning her sexuality. They've presented her SO FAR as someone who isn't desperate for attention, isn't portrayed as weak, and is simply dressing that way because she wants to. A woman expressing her sexuality shouldn't be taboo and confused with objectification all the time. In this case, I think the cynical, knee-jerk approach to her outfit is the easy one to make, but not necessarily right.

2. The main guys are clearly attracted to her and give themselves away on that, but she shows no visible interest, keeping her in control. She's not reliant on any guys, and is instead providing for her dad and seems capable and good at her job.

3. The guys are sexualised as much as the girls. This is a sexy cast. Gladio has his abs out constantly. They're all pretty boys. They all fulfill popular attractive archetypes; the tough guy, the smart guy, the funny guy. Everyone's attractive, so how is having an equally hot girl an example of gender inequality? In Japanese games they have a tendency to sexualise the guys just as much as the girls, a fact that is often glazed over.

4. She's in the burning desert, in hot garages, fixing cars and greeting customers for a living. Her outfit isn't exactly at odds with the situation and climate.


So that's what I think. I think there's a time and place for outrage towards treatment of game women (like the porn-esque Quiet scenes in MGSV), but in this case I don't see much of a cause besides generic outrage towards tits being there. Please don't get mad GAF, this is just IMO.

 

[artsi]

Someone needs to communicate to SE that if we want to do mindless collectathons/kill 20 boars quests then they should at least let us do them all at once. Because this really sounds annoying.

If they're like in XII then hunts are a bit more than that (track and kill legendary monster X) but yeah, no sense in limiting them to one at a time.

 

[RPGCrazied]

Hopefully in this two months they can get image quality up. At least apply some AA to the game... The PS4 can handle it.

 

[Piers]

I've played Duscae and Platinum, too. They had similar problems but I'd figured they would fix it. The visual sluggishness in combat is a problem, and the button prompts really felt like band-aids meant to hold over until root problems are fixed.

You must let your cynicism guide you to the One Truth, young Sith,
For what it's worth, I think Tabata originally cited as wanting to make FFXV's combat super simple because he's an old man now and can't pick up these scary, sophisticated mechanics that quickly.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

I don't mean to open a heaving can of worms, but I don't really agree entirely with people's offended reactions towards Cindy, and this comes from someone who believes strongly in gender equality. I'll try and bullet point it:

1. Character-wise she's confident, positive, independant and clearly owning her sexuality. They've presented her SO FAR as someone who isn't desperate for attention, isn't reliant on guys, and is simply dressing that way because she wants to. A woman expressing her sexuality shouldn't be taboo and confused with objectification all the time. In this case, I think the cynical, knee-jerk approach to her outfit is the easy one to make, but not necessarily right.

2. The main guys are clearly attracted to her and give themselves away on that, but she shows no visible interest, keeping her in control. She's not reliant on any guys, and is instead providing for her dad and seems capable and good at her job.

3. The guys are sexualised as much as the girls. This is a sexy cast. Gladio has his abs out constantly. They're all pretty boys. They all fulfill popular attractive archetypes; the tough guy, the smart guy, the funny guy. Everyone's attractive, so how is having an equally hot girl an example of gender inequality? In Japanese games they have a tendency to sexualise the guys just as much as the girls, a fact that is often glazed over.

4. She's in the burning desert, in hot garages, fixing cars and greeting customers for a living. Her outfit isn't exactly at odds with the situation and climate.


So that's what I think. I think there's a time and place for outrage towards treatment of game women (like the porn-esque Quiet scenes in MGSV), but in this case I don't see much of a cause besides generic outrage towards tits being there. Please don't get mad GAF, this is just IMO.

 

[mrmickfran]

Someone needs to communicate to SE that if we want to do mindless collectathons/kill 20 boars quests then they should at least let us do them all at once. Because this really sounds annoying.

Not going to lie, this is a big hype killer for me. The main thing I was looking forward to was the hunts, but now they had to make it tedious.

 

[kurahador]

Hopefully in this two months they can get image quality up. At least apply some AA to the game... The PS4 can handle it.

Someone should tell SE it's ok to have the game hit 20 fps at worse.

 

[ironcreed]

Even with cuties like Cindy in the game, I still am thinking that this will end up being a bloated sausage-fest. My hype has pretty much dried up.

 

[Koozek]

I don't mean to open a heaving can of worms, but I don't really agree entirely with people's offended reactions towards Cindy, and this comes from someone who believes strongly in gender equality. I'll try and bullet point it:

1. Character-wise she's confident, positive, independant and clearly owning her sexuality. They've presented her SO FAR as someone who isn't desperate for attention, isn't reliant on guys, and is simply dressing that way because she wants to. A woman expressing her sexuality shouldn't be taboo and confused with objectification all the time. In this case, I think the cynical, knee-jerk approach to her outfit is the easy one to make, but not necessarily right.

2. The main guys are clearly attracted to her and give themselves away on that, but she shows no visible interest, keeping her in control. She's not reliant on any guys, and is instead providing for her dad and seems capable and good at her job.

3. The guys are sexualised as much as the girls. This is a sexy cast. Gladio has his abs out constantly. They're all pretty boys. They all fulfill popular attractive archetypes; the tough guy, the smart guy, the funny guy. Everyone's attractive, so how is having an equally hot girl an example of gender inequality? In Japanese games they have a tendency to sexualise the guys just as much as the girls, a fact that is often glazed over.

4. She's in the burning desert, in hot garages fixing cars for a living. Her outfit isn't exactly at odds with the situation and climate.


So that's what I think. I think there's a time and place for outrage towards treatment of game women (like the porn-esque Quiet scenes in MGSV), but in this case I don't see much of a cause besides generic outrage towards tits being there. Please don't get mad GAF, this is just IMO.

Actually not a bad point and I've been torn on this matter too everytime I criticized Cidney. But her design is still just bad. You can do "sexy" in a cooler way. Like, this fan-made redesign is pretty cute while being less skimpy:

 

[Mifec]

If they're like in XII then hunts are a bit more than that (track and kill legendary monster X) but yeah, no sense in limiting them to one at a time.

The mutated horn thingy and deadeye with special mechanics in the demo were great because they were treated as bosses/minibosses. The "varmints" and the rest of the stuff they fast forwarded through looked pretty mindless though and would annoy me to have to port back then walk around from the dinner at hamerhead to the next hunt location.

 

[bunkitz]

I don't mean to open a heaving can of worms, but I don't really agree entirely with people's offended reactions towards Cindy, and this comes from someone who believes strongly in gender equality. I'll try and bullet point it:

1. Character-wise she's confident, positive, independant and clearly owning her sexuality. They've presented her SO FAR as someone who isn't desperate for attention, isn't reliant on guys, and is simply dressing that way because she wants to. A woman expressing her sexuality shouldn't be taboo and confused with objectification all the time. In this case, I think the cynical, knee-jerk approach to her outfit is the easy one to make, but not necessarily right.

2. The main guys are clearly attracted to her and give themselves away on that, but she shows no visible interest, keeping her in control. She's not reliant on any guys, and is instead providing for her dad and seems capable and good at her job.

3. The guys are sexualised as much as the girls. This is a sexy cast. Gladio has his abs out constantly. They're all pretty boys. They all fulfill popular attractive archetypes; the tough guy, the smart guy, the funny guy. Everyone's attractive, so how is having an equally hot girl an example of gender inequality? In Japanese games they have a tendency to sexualise the guys just as much as the girls, a fact that is often glazed over.

4. She's in the burning desert, in hot garages fixing cars for a living. Her outfit isn't exactly at odds with the situation and climate.


So that's what I think. I think there's a time and place for outrage towards treatment of game women (like the porn-esque Quiet scenes in MGSV), but in this case I don't see much of a cause besides generic outrage towards tits being there. Please don't get mad GAF, this is just IMO.

Okay, this is fair. I still loathe her design, as it's straight up unpleasant to look at for me, as opposed to just being a sexist/perverted thing, but yeah, those are pretty good points. #4 especially... Can't believe I didn't consider that before. Although, I still believe her outfit is the result of a perverted design decision since they could still have done much better designs, such as the fan art posted above. They could've done something similar to Sunny (Metal Gear Rising) or the women in some of those Fallout 4 DLC promo art.

 

[lowhighkang_LHK]

That's what you get with these consoles we have.

No, it's really not. When you consider the litany of other open world games that look a metric ton better. MGS5 also runs at 60 fps for example. Infamous is well above 30 fps as well.

Renmyra, you're taking horribly compressed screens of the most seemingly boring as fuck places in The Witcher 3 to try to prove some point. Many other open world games look better than what's going on with FFXV right now. You can go through the console screenshot thread and look at every other open world game and they all look better than FFXV. Fuck even Mad Max has got a better image quality.

And this doesn't begin to mention other games but I think I've put up enough screens.

I'm really looking forward to FFXV, and I understand that the screens to those games aren't perfect either (MGS5 runs at 60 fps mind you), but Square Enix build an engine and a game concept that was just too much too chew. And really, as you see now - they done fucked up. Look at the bush behind the car, that's terrible. I know those are xbox one screens, so maybe the ps4 version looks better by simple virtue of running 1080p, I certainly remember episode Duscae looking a lot better, but I just really think Square thought they could optimize their original graphical settings, and are realizing they can't, and are just lowering settings by the day. A delay would do wonders.

 

[RPGCrazied]

Someone should tell SE it's ok to have the game hit 20 fps at worse.

I'd rather play a game in sub 20's, then have it look jaggy and ugly. That is the greater eyesore.

 

[Insane Metal]

Graphics and Performance

• Loading times varied from standard fare for an open world game on PS4, to between 1-2 minutes. These longer ones seemed to only happen between chapters, and when loading the game up from scratch.
• After around 2 hours and 40 minutes the game crashed. Just the one and only back to the dashboard.
• The game does not look good. I was sitting fairly close to a pretty big TV, but even forgetting that there's intense shadow dithering, aliasing to the high heavens (you've all seen the hair), texture and vegetation pop-in and on top of that the frame rate was incredibly inconsistent. I kinda just got used to the combat being a bit of a mess visually. It was often hard to tell what in the hell was happening.
• Moving the camera around somehow makes things worse.
• It's perhaps not the best way to explain this due to the size of this shot but I'd like to draw your attention to the shrubs in the upper left corner of this screen. When blown up to a decently sized TV, even at this close distance, those shrubs looked like sprites from Minecraft/Stardew Valley, and I swear I'm not being hyperbolic.
• Also I tried driving in 1st person and there was some bug (I can only assume) where everything looked pixellated and low-res when looking through the windscreen. Needless to say I refrained from using 1st person after that.

.

Ewww.

 

[WhiteWaterM00se]

Is there any impressions using the turn based combat?

 

[robinsxe]

great impressions, thanks OP. Not buying this until it's released on PC, the performance suggested is really the dealbreaker for me. godamn it SE

 

[Servbot24]

Ooof.

This is exactly what I expected. There's no world in which this lives up to some people's hype. It's going to be a middle-of-the-pack game in today's landscape.

Ism't this what everyone expects though? A 7-9 range game? I'm not sure why it's claimed this game has enormous expectations when everyone knows development has been troubled.

 

[enzo_gt]

All of the driving stuff sounds like it's going to hit all of my pet peeves about driving in non-racing games all at once

 

[ironcreed]

It's not uncharted 4 but from what I've seen I would hardly call this game "ugly"

I thought the same before, but these mountains and dithered bushes disagree:

 

[Gbraga]

You must let your cynicism guide you to the One Truth, young Sith,
For what it's worth, I think Tabata originally cited as wanting to make FFXV's combat super simple because he's an old man now and can't pick up these scary, sophisticated mechanics that quickly.

Well, he kind of failed at it, though. The game is indeed very simple to get into, but it has a lot of depth to the mechanics. Sure, maybe all he meant was the simple to get into part, but when you have auto-mode in games like Bayonetta, I can't see which game actually forces you to pick up sophisticated mechanics in order to enjoy at a basic level.

 

[RPGCrazied]

I thought the same before, but these mountains and dithered bushes disagree:

Don't forget about the hair. SE really needs to work on its hair tech.

 

[Renmyra]

Renmyra, you're taking horribly compressed screens of the most seemingly boring as fuck places in The Witcher 3 to try to prove some point.

I'm just quoting screenshots from the DF comparison thread.

 

[Dark_castle]

Now THIS is the kind of impression I like to read about, very neutral stance, no sugarcoating or underselling things. Thanks, OP.

Considering that this was the master build that was supposed to come out on September 30th, it seems really wise that SE decided to pull the plug and delay it to a latter date. I have a gut feeling that it might even get a second delay to 2017, that would cause a lot of drama for sure haha.

 

[nelsonroyale]

Thanks for the write up. I do feel you are being somewhat selective in some areas, particularly in relation to the visuals - however, it does seem to have suffered compared to the demos, which is pretty damning. I think Duscae clearly has better lighting than say Witcher 4...In fact better lighting than other open world games I have played, so it is annoying that they seem to have toned it down...

Yeah, that Horizon gif...in terms of upcoming RPGs, it seems quite a bit ahead of the bunch.

 

[CGwizz]

FF15 this year:


2 ATR before the big Aphril showcase : OMFG looks AMAZING , so much better than duscae !!!

Aphril showcase: It looks... looks ok? That bad AA will be fixed right ? They still have time to polish right ?

A couple hours after people playing plat demo : WTF was that framerate, game looks bad, terrible AA. This is just a demo i am sure game will be great wait and see guys they have plenty of time !!!

E3 : man this does not have the improvements i was looking for BUT i still believe in them, plenty of time to polish right? RIGHT?

Gamescom: : Shiiiiiit game looks bad, what are those ps3 textures, bad AA and that pop in ... BUT I STILL BELIEVE ,they delay it boys , it will looks amazing !!! i am sure i am sure !!!

Believe boys

 

[ironcreed]

This game is going to be a mess. Just a hunch, but I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Geg]

Thanks for the writeup. I know lots of people have problems with the visuals but so far I really haven't seen anything that would be a big issue for me.

That said, I wouldn't mind additional delays if they resulted in improvements lol

 

[sappyday]

FF15 this year:


2 ATR before the big Aphril showcase : OMFG looks AMAZING , so much better than duscae !!!

Aphril showcase: It looks... looks ok? That bad AA will be fixed right ? They still have time to polish right ?

A couple hours after people playing plat demo : WTF was that framerate, game looks bad, terrible AA. This is just a demo i am sure game will be great wait and see guys they have plenty of time !!!

E3 : man this does not have the improvements i was looking for BUT i still believe in them, plenty of time to polish right? RIGHT?

Gamescom: : Shiiiiiit game looks bad, what are those ps3 textures, bad AA and that pop in ... BUT I STILL BELIEVE ,they delay it boys , it will looks amazing !!! i am sure i am sure !!!

Believe boys

I still believe!!!

Spoiler

That the graphics ain't the most important thing.

 

[Sanctuary]

Wow, it looks like the Flans have greatly evolved.

From:

To:

Combat reminded me of Dragon's Dogma but also of action adventure games like Bayonetta etc. I'm not saying it was as good as either of those games, just that it's similar fundamentally. Combat could be confusing though, the warp strike wouldn't always lock on to where I wanted it to, which was possibly something I was doing wrong. Targetting in general felt a bit iffy.

It's funny to see you name drop Dragon's Dogma twice. I said that I thought it vaguely looked like Dragon's Dogma in both the way the world is laid out as well as the combat, although that I was unsure that it would have be even half as good regarding the combat.
Also, anyone who played a Vanguard in Mass Effect 2 should be used to warp bugs.

Sounds good.

Sounds mixed.

Wow that is terrible news - Performance and graphics wise ;/ will wait for PC version.

That's what I was thinking as well, but it will probably take at least a year to see it on PC. I'm getting a Neo anyway, so maybe it will give a more acceptable version.

 

[kurahador]

If GTAV on PS3/360 can get away with sub 20 fps, I'm sure FF can.

 

[cackhyena]

Reviews will be interesting. Combat better hold up throughout or I kind of have zero reason to play this. Such a Frankenstein of a game. Yeesh.

 

[Frumix]

Someone should tell SE it's ok to have the game hit 20 fps at worse.

Uh... No it is not.

 

[Lunafreya Nox Fleuret]

This game is going to be a mess. Just a hunch, but I hope I'm wrong.

I'm sure if you keep saying that, it will come true.

 

[Piers]

Well, he kind of failed at it, though. The game is indeed very simple to get into, but it has a lot of depth to the mechanics. Sure, maybe all he meant was the simple to get into part, but when you have auto-mode in games like Bayonetta, I can't see which game actually forces you to pick up sophisticated mechanics in order to enjoy at a basic level.

You're right. I assumed (and possibly as others had) that when originally directed by Nomura, the combat would of had the same degree of action as his Kingdom Hearts series. There was also that big stink of supposedly holding one button to win, and Tabata denied that being the case.

 

[RedZaraki]

Maybe I'm imagining this, but at one point in time didn't they hint at an old-school style world map? With a Noctis walking around between points of interest?

At this point I think it would have saved them a lot of time and trouble to have gone that route, and maybe the final product would have been more accepted too.

 

[sappyday]

Maybe I'm imagining this, but at one point in time didn't they hint at an old-school style world map? With a Noctis walking around between points of interest?

At this point I think it would have saved them a lot of time and trouble to have gone that route, and maybe the final product would have been more accepted too.

This was like way in the early ass days of Versus. The graphics would definitely look a lot better but not sure what else.

 

[cackhyena]

So I've never followed the game that closely, but I still feel like I've seen a lot over the years. But it almost always feels like they keep us in the desert for anything substantial when it comes to game play. I'm curious how much of the actual game they are holding back. Would be nice to have some super crazy scenery...I'd have figured something would be revealed on that front by now. Like I said, though, I haven't followed too closely. maybe there has been, idk.

 

[Mifec]

Wow, it looks like the Flans have greatly evolved.

From:

To:





It's funny to see you name drop Dragon's Dogma twice. I said that I thought it vaguely looked like Dragon's Dogma in both the way the world is laid out as well as the combat, although that I was unsure that it would have be even half as good regarding the combat.
Also, anyone who played a Vanguard in Mass Effect 2 should be used to warp bugs.



Sounds mixed.

lmao I know you're joking but that's just some of the party members scanning a flan, the enemy type he is fighting is called Ronin.

 

[Rad-]

Prompto uses the phrase "totes adorbs" at one point.

The guys find out about the invasion of Insomnia by reading the morning newspaper.

Oh SE.

 

[ironcreed]

I'm sure if you keep saying that, it will come true.

Look, that has just become my general impression. And again, I hope I am wrong. Sorry if my opinion ruffles your feathers.

 

[StereoVsn]

For what it's worth, I didn't have any of those problems at all when playing Duscae demo and Platinum Demo. It will takes some time to cope, but, unless they made some drastic changes, you will easily get used to the combat and the flow over time. It felt pretty natural to me. The only thing is that you just need to get in-sync with the flow of the animations. You will find that holding the button isn't necessary- you can cue up attacks in different ways.

Doesn't sound bad to me either and I like the pause feature. It's an RPG and one in which all the previous entrees had fairly slow combat system. It's a good thing that they give options to folks like myself who do not want to have full on character action game here.

I got DMC, Revengence and Ninja Gaiden for those amongst others.

 

[TheTux]

FF15 this year:


2 ATR before the big Aphril showcase : OMFG looks AMAZING , so much better than duscae !!!

Aphril showcase: It looks... looks ok? That bad AA will be fixed right ? They still have time to polish right ?

A couple hours after people playing plat demo : WTF was that framerate, game looks bad, terrible AA. This is just a demo i am sure game will be great wait and see guys they have plenty of time !!!

E3 : man this does not have the improvements i was looking for BUT i still believe in them, plenty of time to polish right? RIGHT?

Gamescom: : Shiiiiiit game looks bad, what are those ps3 textures, bad AA and that pop in ... BUT I STILL BELIEVE ,they delay it boys , it will looks amazing !!! i am sure i am sure !!!

Believe boys

You joke about it but what you described was literally me this year lol.

Still believing!

 

[Perfo]

About the car not going fast that could have to do with future upgrades available later in the game making it faster.

 

[Koozek]

Wow, it looks like the Flans have greatly evolved.

From:

To:

LOL. Those aren't Flans. The Flan that was analyzed through Ignis' Libra spell is standing somewhere else. Those samurai monsters are "Numb Blades" from FFV:

Flans in FFXV look like this:

EDIT: Wait, were you joking? I don't know anymore in FFXV threads

Spoiler

and I'm probably partly responsible for that too

 

[Dmax3901]

I don't mean to open a heaving can of worms, but I don't really agree entirely with people's offended reactions towards Cindy, and this comes from someone who believes strongly in gender equality. I'll try and bullet point it:

1. Character-wise she's confident, positive, independant and clearly owning her sexuality. They've presented her SO FAR as someone who isn't desperate for attention, isn't portrayed as weak, and is simply dressing that way because she wants to. A woman expressing her sexuality shouldn't be taboo and confused with objectification all the time. In this case, I think the cynical, knee-jerk approach to her outfit is the easy one to make, but not necessarily right.

2. The main guys are clearly attracted to her and give themselves away on that, but she shows no visible interest, keeping her in control. She's not reliant on any guys, and is instead providing for her dad and seems capable and good at her job.

3. The guys are sexualised as much as the girls. This is a sexy cast. Gladio has his abs out constantly. They're all pretty boys. They all fulfill popular attractive archetypes; the tough guy, the smart guy, the funny guy. Everyone's attractive, so how is having an equally hot girl an example of gender inequality? In Japanese games they have a tendency to sexualise the guys just as much as the girls, a fact that is often glazed over.

4. She's in the burning desert, in hot garages, fixing cars and greeting customers for a living. Her outfit isn't exactly at odds with the situation and climate.


So that's what I think. I think there's a time and place for outrage towards treatment of game women (like the porn-esque Quiet scenes in MGSV), but in this case I don't see much of a cause besides generic outrage towards tits being there. Please don't get mad GAF, this is just IMO.

Some fair points but I disagree. The biggest issue I had is with her thong being visible over her shorts. A man, I think, made that design decision lol.

Actually not a bad point and I've been torn on this matter too everytime I criticized Cidney. But her design is still just bad. You can do "sexy" in a cooler way. Like, this fan-made redesign is pretty cute while being less skimpy:

Love these.

Thanks for the write up. I do feel you are being somewhat selective in some areas, particularly in relation to the visuals - however, it does seem to have suffered compared to the demos, which is pretty damning. I think Duscae clearly has better lighting than say Witcher 4...In fact better lighting than other open world games I have played, so it is annoying that they seem to have toned it down...

Yeah, that Horizon gif...in terms of upcoming RPGs, it seems quite a bit ahead of the bunch.

If you wanna ask me any specific questions about the visuals (it's midnight here so won't be able to answer for a while), go ahead.

It's funny to see you name drop Dragon's Dogma twice. I said that I thought it vaguely looked like Dragon's Dogma in both the way the world is laid out as well as the combat, although that I was unsure that it would have be even half as good regarding the combat.
Also, anyone who played a Vanguard in Mass Effect 2 should be used to warp bugs.

Seriously Xenoblade and Dragon's Dogma are the closest open-world comparisons. And maybe MGS5?

 

[YankeeDonB]

The sense of adventure and camaraderie is what I've been most worried about with this game. That's what I've typically enjoyed most about FF, and the series has been largely missing since X.

From previews, even folks who aren't keen on the combat (which I liked in the demos) and the graphics (which yeah, downgrades never sit well) seem tentatively positive on the road trip/characters. So I'm still hopeful!

 

[SomedayTheFire]

.

christ. that is ridiculous.