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Hajime Tabata: "Currently no plans to reveal more info about Versus XIII"

Ydelnae

Member
I'm sure we will learn about it in the future once XV has been released and a certain time has passed. We can all agree that talking about Versus right now is not the best thing to do, so I rather enjoy XV and wait for the details to be shared in an Ultimania on whatever Square plans to do.
 

Twiforce

Member
While this comment was very inappropiate and moronic, Akio Ofuji is not part of the development team, he's just the marketing manager and one of the producers (iirc). I pretty much doubt his views on female characters on gaming are shared within the team developing XV.

Yeah, there is no way a bunch of straight, cisgender middle-aged men working for a large corporation within a male-dominated industry would have sexist views about women. It's unthinkable.
Who do you think created Cindy in fhe first place?

This isn't to say that the entire team is comprised of people who hold such views; I'm sure there are some women and people with more forward-thinking views on the team. Only that it should not be surprising or far-fetched at all if the team is dominated by people who do fit the description I just gave, especially considering some of the garbage we've already seen from this game.
 
I don't really care if the scenes from a 2006 and 2008 trailer won't make it to the final game. I'm not sure what's so different between Luna and Stella either besides that one scene in the 2008 trailer where they duel towards the end. Prompto being changed is more annoying as his new design really reeks.

As for the Yakuza family being swapped for royalty, I guess that's one thing that I wish wasn't changed. But even in the original, it was about two kingdoms fighting for a crystal no? These sound more like ascetically changes from a game that barely even existed.

I just want to play the game already. I don't really care about what if's, as long as the game in hand is good. The demo from early last year was good, albeit pretty anemic, so I'm hoping the full game is build off of that 100x more. 10 years of waiting, can't expect everything to remain the same.

Will say, I'm glad Noctis isn't uber emo anymore. I mean yeah, he displays angst, but the Versus trailers made him look like he cuts himself to sleep.

Best wishes.
 

Cardon

Member
Out of all the changes that were made from the project going from versus XIII to becoming FFXV I just wish the Alan Rickman looking model for the King stayed. Goddamn was that one awesome character model.
 
Just watched the long Versus XIII trailer again. Man, I love the grim look of that game and I hope that XV can capture that type of atmosphere. It feels very serious, but the body language conveys it convincingly.

That brooding, dark, atmosphere in an FF game, Nomura's flair for the theatrical, coupled by gameplay similar to Kingdom Hearts were all reasons why I found Versus XIII so attractive. Even if we barely saw any PS3 footage and most of the trailers were CG , the little we knew about it just oozed with an irrisistable style.

Plus Nomura is a master at taking a bunch of random nonsense pre release footage and somehow managing to put it into future game. Like the Secret Ending of KH. He eventually recreates it in a later game, when it felt like a bunch of random concept shots. He doesnt always get everything 100% but he sure as hell tries. Or maybe he planned it out all along. Regardless I miss is work. KHIII and FF7re, Nomura deliver!
 

Taruranto

Member
Rest in Peace, random video game character I've seen a couple images of and have no reason whatsoever to feel a connection to. We'll never forget.

But all the fanfictions I wrote about her! Now I'll have to replace the name "Stella" with "Luna" in every instance!
 

True Fire

Member
Versus XIII was literally just a series of unrelated scenes with zero context. I am absolutely certain that we've already seen everything of substance, besides maybe some concept art and storyboards.
 
I think it all depends on how well XV does. The last thing they'd want to do is layout the original framework for Versus XIII if their revision ends up being mediocre.

Still, learning about all of that stuff is interesting as hell. One thing that seems pretty evident in the revision is the darker tone. They even changed that emblem with the grim reaper if I remember correctly.
 

Frumix

Suffering From Success
As for the Yakuza family being swapped for royalty, I guess that's one thing that I wish wasn't changed. But even in the original, it was about two kingdoms fighting for a crystal no? These sound more like ascetically changes from a game that barely even existed.

Was that ever a thing? In the 2nd trailer for Versus ever we can see Regis and his counselors, but the only difference is that they wear suits instead of ceremonial robes - but here's the thing though, there's 12 of them, to parallel the Knights of the Round theme that's only recently been revealed as kind of a thing. Isn't it possible that much less has changed about Lucis than we think did?
 

Noctis3

Member
This stuff happens all the time during normal game development AFAIK we just don't hear it happen. There are hundreds of games we hear about but never see release.
 

Ceravic

Member
I don't blame them. With the way people romanticize Versus based on 10 minutes of footage and a few articles, who knows what they'd do with more to go on.
 

Whompa02

Member
Good. Bury this already. A few concept videos and some fake gameplay is all we got for YEARS until Square finally went into production to turn this into a real product.

Just move on.
 

Nikokuno

Member
Dat OP gif straight into my poor heart... Stella, you were the chosen one... I don't know what Nomura is planning after KHIII but please let him develop the fuck he wants after that Versus XIII hiatus mess.
 

Koozek

Member
Dat OP gif straight into my poor heart... Stella, you were the chosen one... I don't know what Nomura is planning after KHIII but please let him develop the fuck he wants after that Versus XIII hiatus mess.

He's directing another, small game right now. I think it's called Final Fantasy VII Remake or something like that.
 

MattKeil

BIGTIME TV MOGUL #2
One of my biggest pet peeves as a gamer is developers unveiling their upcoming projects to the public way too early. FFvsXIII is like the most ridiculously overblown example. It was unveiled at E3 2006 purely to drum up hype for the PS3. Pure cynical marketing on behalf of Sony.

Developers should never show us anything that isn't going to make it into our hands on release day. They can take all the time they want and make all of the brutal butcher job changes they want, as long as it's done behind closed doors where I never get to see it. It's knowing what was cut that causes the static. Developers need to learn to keep their big mouths shut until they know for a fact that the game is within a year from release. I actually think 6 months is even more reasonable. Nobody needs more time than that to mount a marketing/hype campaign. Nobody.

This is complete drivel. You can't know what will make it and not make it until much closer to gold than that. You're literally asking for no pre-release marketing or PR, ever. How about just learning to keep expectations in check, like every other informed consumer?
 

cordy

Banned
Tbh...

I wouldn't mind FFXV-2 being what Versus was going to be. Just change stuff around, introduce characters, whatever. It could work. I mean if they came out with the X series and the XIII series go ahead and sell us on this one.
 

Zero-ELEC

Banned
While this comment was very inappropiate and moronic, Akio Ofuji is not part of the development team, he's just the marketing manager and one of the producers (iirc). I pretty much doubt his views on female characters on gaming are shared within the team developing XV.

latest

Yep, not at all.
 

Muffdraul

Member
This is complete drivel. You can't know what will make it and not make it until much closer to gold than that. You're literally asking for no pre-release marketing or PR, ever. How about just learning to keep expectations in check, like every other informed consumer?

Six months to a year of pre-release marketing/PR is "literally nothing"? The fuck?
 

atbigelow

Member
Good. No real reason to keep talking about a game that was a trainwreck of development and ideas.

So many games have design changes during their production. That's totally normal. What wasn't normal was Nomura's awful time at keeping actual development going on his game. He honestly sounded more like kids making and hyping their RPG Maker games.
 

Ishida

Banned
Jesus Christ. If FF XV disappoints, we will never hear the end of fanboys fantasizing about how much better Versus XIII was going to be.

We don't even have to wait. We've been hearing them for years now. Because vaporware game was obviously going to be so much better than real-yet-unreleased game.
 

post-S

Member
The E3 2013 trailer was the last one that still got the atmosphere of Versus 13. idk what happened to the game after that, but everything they show has become very uninspiring.
 

Nikokuno

Member
Good. No real reason to keep talking about a game that was a trainwreck of development and ideas.

So many games have design changes during their production. That's totally normal. What wasn't normal was Nomura's awful time at keeping actual development going on his game. He honestly sounded more like kids making and hyping their RPG Maker games.

Was not his fault if SquEnix messed everything with their Crystal Tool, Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XIII. He was waiting for some staff to actually work on his game 😒 but instead we got A Realm Reborn (pretty good) and two more XIII games ...
 

Phaezyk

Member
Well if you want another way to look at it, Nomura is tasked with creating KH3 and FF7 Remake due to overwhelming fan demand for those two games. Since the people so enamored with Versus XIII also tend to be fans of KH and FF7, it stands to reason that the only people they have to blame are themselves! Or God.
 
Well if you want another way to look at it, Nomura is tasked with creating KH3 and FF7 Remake due to overwhelming fan demand for those two games. Since the people so enamored with Versus XIII also tend to be fans of KH and FF7, it stands to reason that the only people they have to blame are themselves! Or God.

Hasn't Nomura taken a lesser role in kh3. Thought he had less leadership on the team this time around. Think he's just got ff7 remake on his immediate focus at the moment.
 

No_Style

Member
Was not his fault if SquEnix messed everything with their Crystal Tool, Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XIII. He was waiting for some staff to actually work on his game 😒 but instead we got A Realm Reborn (pretty good) and two more XIII games ...

Was it Square Enix's fault? Was there an interview or are fans just trying to absolve their favorited director of any blame? It doesn't make sense for him to be jettisoned from the project and have the remains of the Versus XIII given to another director. He sounds like an ideas man who is awful at steering a game to completion.
 

Koozek

Member
HWaQd6Z.png


Can we please make another thread at release in addition to the separate performance thread just for the "Versus XV" discussion? :D
 

AHK_Hero

Member
Noctis' family were basically the fucking Yakuza

Now it's just generic royalty

Godamnit I wanted Versus so bad

I didn't know that's the direction they were going with it at first. That's sounds kind of cool. I wasn't as invested in that version of the game as I am with the current FFXV though.

ステラれた? 諦めルナ!
It'd be wise to not let your headcanon get into the way of your enjoyment of the game coming out.

Glad to see my Japanese studies have not been completely in vain. I can confirm there is some top notch punnage going on here.
 
Jesus Christ. If FF XV disappoints, we will never hear the end of fanboys fantasizing about how much better Versus XIII was going to be.

I don't think anyone should give a shit about those complaints. Versus XIII was never coming out. Their narrative that "Tabata came in and changed everything!!!" is really unconvincing when you hold up FFXV's development in comparison with the rest of the industry. There's tons of games that spend a really long time in pre-production and end up changing wildly over the course of development. The difference here is that the pre-production stage was very transparent to us and Squeenix was inexplicably pitching pre-production trailers to consumers as if it were a game in active development. But considering that there's many other projects in the gaming industry that change even more than Versus did in its transition to FFXV, FFXV actually doesn't deviate that much from the original vision relatively speaking.

Same. But at least we'll actually get to play XV.

Well, it's like an optical illusion (or rather, mental illusion). There was just enough Versus XIII shown for us to fill in what was missing with our own imaginations of what the "perfect" game was going to look like. With FFXV we've had demos and hours of actual gameplay footage which is never going to match what we would've imagined it to be.

XIII Versus looked like an amazing game, but I make no qualms about admitting that the game was basically nothing and was going nowhere, had no feasible path to completion, and was never going to get realized. And honestly, despite nearly 95% of every Versus XIII trailer being a story trailer, we still only got an extremely vague notion of what was going to be and that everything about it was in constant flux.
 
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