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Hajime Tabata: "Currently no plans to reveal more info about Versus XIII"
- Thread starter Ydelnae
- Start date
KZXcellent
Member
If this happens, and we have a disaster anywhere close to the the decade-long hell that has been Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy XV then I'll of course put blame on him, and it would obviously make the claims that Nomura was the problem with Versus more legitimate. I'm a fan of Nomura's work, I LOVE the KH series and he's the reason I even cared about Versus back when I first heard about it in 2008.
Given the little information we have about Versus development, and the state of Square-Enix and their decisions last generation I don't think it's fair to throw the majority of the blame onto Nomura. Obviously if he's leading on the project then some blame should go to him, but unless we see this kind of thing continue and there's a trend of titles that Nomura is Directing that fall apart I'm confident it wasn't just him twiddling his thumbs and failing to execute on the game.
So far the development for KH3 looks okay. Luckily they've shown KH3 very sparingly so whatever they end up showing doesn't make me worry the way 90% of any FFXV marketing has since Episode Duscae. Luckily we'll see more of the game in the Winter and that'll give us a better idea of how far along they are and if this starting to really take shape yet. Even if it's my most anticipated game ever I will look at it with a critical eye. Especially because the game I was most anticipating before KH3 was Versus XIII and look how that ended up.
But yeah, if KH3 or FFVII:R for that matter have horrible issues getting released like Versus/XV then I'll put blame on Nomura. Absolutely.
To be honest, its not like Versus fans made things any better in the past. In every discussion about XV someone would always bring up Versus (not just here in other places too) and would shit on Tabata and XV entirely based on what Versus could have been in their imagination. I am not saying people are not allowed to dislike anything about XV, I myself don't like certain things too, but the fact that they are basing their dislikes on something that pretty much never existed outside of mere concepts would probably get a few XV fans triggered.
Take Stella vs Luna discussion for example, there is a lot of back and forth in there, but in reality we don't know much about these two characters and their roles in game. Stella could have been a strong character but there is also a solid possibility that she could have ended up being a weak or even a mediocre character. Just because she can fight doesn't mean much honestly in light on the other FF female characters who can also fight but don't have impressive personalities (e.g Serah). So a discussion based on mere speculations with not much facts to support it other than the ones envisioned in their minds makes the whole thing just annoying to deal with, no one has enough evidence to prove anything (Versus and XV) as we haven't experienced the two games yet. At least when XV comes out we will know for sure if Luna is strong or weak, but until then the discussion is pretty much pointless.
Now take that example and apply it to every aspect that people didn't like about XV and compared it to Versus, its an endless loop of discussion that wouldn't satisfy or convince anyone honestly and it definitely ran its course for way too long. Versus is gone, and we have XV now, its just as simple as that.
And if people arent liking what they see of course correction, you cant really stop them from complaining.
I say this as someone genuinely hyped for xv.
Thats up to the general populous
I think KH3 will be fine.
VII:R seems to be in a weird place right now considering part 1 would likely release during the twilight of the this generation and the next 2 parts might release during the next generation.
KZXcellent
Member
To be honest I have confidence in both titles until they give me a reason not to. Hopefully by the end of Winter we'll have new trailers for both games and be able to see how they're progressing. VII:R is the toughest one since they need to make each "part" quickly. They can't do a "one every two years" thing with that in my opinion.
I'm assuming he'll get a good chunk of the KH3 staff onto VII:R once KH3 releases(fingers crossed for 2017).
Game took a dive once it started delving too deeply into clone stuff,Angeal,Genesis etc
Its an incomprehensible mess.
Even as someone who was also incredibly hyped for Versus XIII back then. It's incredibly annoying to see the constant complaints / whining.
I mean seriously... We see them in every single FFXV thread.
Ganon Dragmire
Member
Bleh, Genesis. He'll appear in the Remake.
And make the theme song for all the episodes too.
I understand your point,but at the same time, but there's a difference between comparing concepts of game premises/characters/designs and differences people may or may not like,and trashing the director and talking about his competency to make a game.
If someone wants to say "i liked a lot of the individual points that we saw of Versus versus what we're actually getting in 15" or "i like what we're getting in 15 over what we saw of Versus" that's a perfectly legitimate thing to say. And it will continue to be legitimate after 15 is out and we see the final product to even more dissect the journey of this game.
If someone says "stop talking about versus ,Nomura was a hack who could not complete games on time and had shitty work ethic so they fired him, plus all that other junk you liked or were attracted to in the game for the past 10 years was just nonsense anyway", that's irritating, triggers Versus fans, and leads to more back and forth.
People who care about 15 can defend what we're getting in FF15 without resorting to that.
By that same token, tabata should not be blamed for anything that he changed from Versus in the name of shipping this title, but he can be criticized for elements of 15 people may not like.
you would be shocked to learn that much like final fantasy vii remake, final fantasy xv has an executive producer, a writer, and a full team of staff.
kitase was also listed as a producer on versus
KH3 is the one game I'm not assuming SE will screw up. They have a gameplay formula. They have a huge amount of IPs they to draw from. They know how to put an absurd overarching story to loosely connect it. As long as they do what they did for every other KH game with a budget it'll be decent.
The Last One
Member
I love everything about Crisis Core, the last battle where
is incredible.
Zack dies while you have to fight the soldiers
He will also be a secret boss in the Church at the end of Part 1.
Roto Prime
Banned
Tabata better stay away from Final Fantasy VII remake if he knows what is good for him! I am still hurt about versus XIII....wish someday it would leak, but that will never happen.
YEAH! And then they have price of freedom playing with activating combat mode flashbacks to all the characters going full blast. My god what a rush
The game...because I wonder how much there actually is of the PS3 build.
Replace Elena with Cissnei, since Elena was kind of worthless IMO.
Just have them both in. Cissnei's more interesting though.
Roto Prime
Banned
YES! Like the second Chrono Trigger game, One day it will happen, we have to believe!
That's right Nomura, do you want to disappoint us? Do it, do it for Cissnei.
THen we can finally find out who the hell she actually is, since her presence left more questions than answers
Dark_castle
Junior Member
Crisis Core's ending is both good and bad.
It's good because it had a lot of impact on player as it's a slow, agonising experience of watching the main character that you've been playing the role of slowly dying while trying to protect a friend. And well-directed cutscenes which shows his last minute dying flashback of people dearest to him, ending with Aerith, the love of his life. It's a battle that shows the struggle of Zack fighting against a never-ending amount of enemy soldiers really, really well, like how eventually Zack's movement becomes so sluggish, with weak sword swings as he's reaching his physical and mental limit.
It's bad because despite everything that made it good, Zack's death was essentially glorified, when in the original game, his death was a lot more realistically portrayed, it was much quicker, more swift, shocking brutal kill in front of Cloud's eyes as they were ambushed by hidden Shinra soldiers. There was no heroic speech, no time for long, flowery flashback cutscenes, it was all business.
All in all, I'm gonna say I liked the ending regardless just because of how well the cinematography, the music and the flashback is. Sure it's glorified, but in this case, I think because Zack is the protagonist and not just some guy who serves as the backstory of the actual main character in FFVII, it's justified.
It's good because it had a lot of impact on player as it's a slow, agonising experience of watching the main character that you've been playing the role of slowly dying while trying to protect a friend. And well-directed cutscenes which shows his last minute dying flashback of people dearest to him, ending with Aerith, the love of his life. It's a battle that shows the struggle of Zack fighting against a never-ending amount of enemy soldiers really, really well, like how eventually Zack's movement becomes so sluggish, with weak sword swings as he's reaching his physical and mental limit.
It's bad because despite everything that made it good, Zack's death was essentially glorified, when in the original game, his death was a lot more realistically portrayed, it was much quicker, more swift, shocking brutal kill in front of Cloud's eyes as they were ambushed by hidden Shinra soldiers. There was no heroic speech, no time for long, flowery flashback cutscenes, it was all business.
All in all, I'm gonna say I liked the ending regardless just because of how well the cinematography, the music and the flashback is. Sure it's glorified, but in this case, I think because Zack is the protagonist and not just some guy who serves as the backstory of the actual main character in FFVII, it's justified.
Roto Prime
Banned
Who knows, I'm sure they love Chrono so much they would come back and work on it.
I don't like trashing Nomura nor do I think there is a legitimate reason to, but I don't think he is entirely innocent in the whole development hell Versus went through. However, I wouldn't blame the Nomura entirely for that, as SE was just as fault or maybe even more regarding Versus messy development cycle. This is coming from someone who really enjoys Nomura's work and can't wait to see what he has in store for us with FFVIIR as I like his bold direction.
And that's a perfectly valid point to talk about if we actually had substance to digest. The thing is, people don't talk FNC or anything we know that has already been confirmed by Nomura. What people talk about it and debate is their personal expectations of the story, the dark and edgy themes they feel Versus is surrounded with even though Nomura stated that the atmosphere in the beginning of the trailer isn't going to be representative of the game. I too like things in Versus that unfortunately didn't make it in XV, like death worshiping and Etro. But I am not gonna throw a fit every time something small changes or occurs in XV, after all XV has its own identity and Tabata deserves the benefit of the doubt before people call him out on what a failure he is compared to Nomura. What baffles me, is that despite the little information we got regarding Versus people were so quick to assume that its going to have the best story ever. However, when it comes to XV, despite that everything we saw was literally from the first 3 chapters, people still claim that XV will not even have a story lol.
As I said I don't support trashing anyone (Tabata or Nomura) but they are open to constructive criticism and they both can use them in the respective work. I honestly like reading about things that people think about XV (positive or negative) if they are worded in such constructive manner.
I hear the TMNT team is free.
Roto Prime
Banned
I knew Tabata could not keep his dirty hands off Final Fantasy VII Remake! ROAR!!
DangerMouse
Member
That's right Nomura, do you want to disappoint us? Do it, do it for Cissnei.
THen we can finally find out who the hell she actually is, since her presence left more questions than answers
Haha
That would be cool.Man looking at the trailer the first time Versus got reannounced into XV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDucrHWAFdk
I wonder how many of these action scenes are gonna be in XV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDucrHWAFdk
I wonder how many of these action scenes are gonna be in XV
KZXcellent
Member
Man looking at the trailer the first time Versus got reannounced into XV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDucrHWAFdk
I wonder how many of these action scenes are gonna be in XV
None of it. They turned this trailer into the movie, Kingsglaive. The Leviathan stuff will be the game just in a different location.
None of that action was Insomnia. It's a totally different setpiece that isn't related to Kingsglaive. The Insomnia stuff in the trailer are in Kingsglaive though.
The final mission can be the Turks slaughtering Deepground before they could ever see the light of day.
Now how to retcon Genesis out of the VII's existence.....
*snaps fingers*
A dark chapter in Cissnei's past where she is forced to take out a certain crimson fanatic who was raising too many red flags for Shinra.
Crisis Core is the only good thing Tabata has done in his career. There, I said it. And even that game has some very huge NOPES that everybody and their mothers has mentioned.
PS: That bit about Nomura finding out that he was the director by pure chance is hilarious and it happens more than you would think in the workplace. A couple of times I have found myself in charge of projects I had absolutely no fucking idea they were tasked to me, for example.
PS: That bit about Nomura finding out that he was the director by pure chance is hilarious and it happens more than you would think in the workplace. A couple of times I have found myself in charge of projects I had absolutely no fucking idea they were tasked to me, for example.
I wouldn't make that conclusion. But when we know so little about what went on, defaulting to clearing Nomura from all blame is a little strange, isn't it? The one dimension to all this that is kinda clear is that there were problems outside the context of Versus XIII, and that these problems disrupted development. But we don't know what "development" means. We don't know to what extent the game was neglected, how much work was put into it and when, what role Nomura was given, and how it is that SE came to the conclusion that it should be so low on the list of priorities for so long. Nothing about the little we know indicates that development on the game was ever smooth. How this reflects on Nomura as a director, we couldn't say with any precision at all, but to assume the answer is "it doesn't even a little bit"...like I said, seems like a stretch.
I suspect Nomura has his strengths and weaknesses as a director, and that these weren't suited to dealing with the Versus XIII situation. But I don't think this means he's a bad director in general. I'm excited he's directing the FFVII remake, since this time he'll have the development tools and know-how to execute his vision (we shouldn't forget that Versus XIII was announced during a time when no one at SE knew what they were doing), and the game is important enough that I see him being given just enough free rein.
Anyway, we have diverging opinions on this. That's cool. It's a speculative topic, and it's not like our disagreement has huge implications (I mean, we seem to agree that Nomura does good stuff, and will continue to do good stuff
). I just don't see how people can assume that Nomura had no role in Versus XIII's failure. That seems a little too generous.Really? Not a fan of Monster Rancher?
Speaking for myself, what originally sold me on Versus XIII were the trailers and, yes, the tone and presentation of the whole thing. I'm not a fan of Nomura's work in KH nor TWEWY so I have no attachment to the guy, and if the current FF XV was being directed by him I would actually be more disappointed in it since he would've sold me on a concept (brooding tone and presentation, bigger focus on Insomnia, KHesque combat) and then delivered another (brotastic roadtrip with little of the style that made me interested in the first place, Insomnia being relegated to a movie, hold button combat). As it is, I can at least understand Tabata wanting to put his own vision in the project so I'm staying optimistic despite all the changes and, quite frankly, having little reason to be excited about the story. I'm still excited about the other aspects of the game though, which is why I'll buy it day 1.
As you said, yeah, we have little of VsXIII to go on, which is why people romanticize it so much. Maybe Insomnia's sequence would've been just as disappointing and shallow as The World That Never Was, the story a convoluted mess and Tabata's product may genuinelly end up being better than anything Nomura could realistically deliver, but judging them solely on a surface level with the information we have Vs XIII seemed like the more interesting game to me. Maybe Tabata just isn't as good at selling his product.
But you can still present a more concise game while keeping the general tone and presentation of the VS XIII trailers. And maybe I'm being naive but at the very least I doubt Nomura's XV would have something like Cindy in his game.
At any rate, I'd rather take the current XV as it is (which is still looking good, all things considered) than another needlessly bloated trilogy. FF games are at their best when it's a one and done deal so I can appreciate Tabata just getting it out there as fast as he can.
Munba
Member
Great post as always man.
I haven't played that game but I'm betting it's better than Type-0.
How much was spent on Versus, though? I thought it wasn't actually that costly at all to Square because people were so regularly pulled off the project to work on other games that had issues and took a while (XIII, XIV, and Type-0 still wasn't released until 5 years after announcement I think) and since it already had a relatively small team before that? I could have sworn I read that (it didn't cost them buckets) here from Kagari or someone else in the know but now I'm doubting myself.
P.S. Screw you I liked Type-0, at least the PSP version. I'll find you too, all of you!
They didn't even enter "full production" on Versus 13 until mid 2012 and that's what Nomura had said at the time, right as Kotaku was saying it was canceled, which we now know was correct when it was made into 15. Before that was just off an on bursts of the project being put on the back burner while the rest of SE tried to sort their shit out.
So no, i don't really understand what would exactly be super costly about the project considering it was not being actively developed for anywhere near the time since its announcement to renaming as 15, similar to Last Guardian in that way.
What i think happend was, Nomura thought he could continue Versus 13 as 15 with certain changes as a numbered entree, without understanding that the higher ups had different plans, and weren't in favor of the big scale project he had in mind. So he got the boot and Tabata was in charge of remolding everything until it resembled a single game, so they could put it out and put that saga behind the company.
It does make perfect sense business wise after the money pit that was SE's investments last gen
The CG they made for visualization, pre-production, and trailer purposes certainly wasn't cheap. What we already see in the trailers clearly already cost quite a bit, but there's likely more than we never saw, since Square is notorious for having a weirdass production pipeline where they approve the production of tons of Visualworks stuff before the game development catches up. I've heard horror stories about how all the FMVs for FFIX was completely like a year before the game was content locked, resulting in the game design having to make sure it fits around the completed FMV so they don't waste that money.
Considering all the CG for Versus has been canned, well, that's money down the drain. To be fair, ultimately we're still talking about probably just ten million or so. But that's a lot of money for a Japanese game!
True, none of that stuff was cheap...but its obviously far less expensive than the implication that they were constantly throwing money and development staff into the project for 10 years straight with nothing to show for it.
I don't even think SE would let Nomura back in the building if that was the case, and they would definitely be right on that account
It's a miracle the game turned out awesome. And that partially explains why CD1 and 2 have such a clear focus and then CD3 sort of... happens.
ULTROS!
People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
My issue with FFIX is that
a lot of areas have been closed off in Disc 3, no idea why. :/
Well that's also true of FFVIII and FFXII. Meanwhile FFVII and FFX are mostly free of that problem. Hmmmm. Ito designed the battle system for FFVIII, and directed both IX and XII. He didn't work on FFVII or FFX. Coincidence? Or is he cursed?
It's probably the same reason they were closed in CD4: lack of space. CD3 and specially 4 are packed with CGs so they had to cut some stuff to fit the rest of the assets in the disc.
In CD1 and 2 there is no feeling that any area is closed off because you are travelling in more or less small areas (specially CD1), but in CD3 and 4 the whole world is open so you can see the cuts.
I found the cuts in VIII worse, CD4 is a joke. The castle and the finale are pretty, but everything is surrounded with these weird energy barriers. EVERYTHING.
I don't miss the CD era lol