Final Fantasy XVI demo impressions -- tl;dr Game of Self-Owns

So I know we have a generic 'what else are you playing' thread, but I figure this is high profile enough to warrant a separate discussion.

I wasn't excited for this, not the way I was for SFVI or DIV. I played a fair bit of the director's magnum opus, Final Fantasy XIV, and found it a weird mix of traditional FF and Western-influenced writing. I blame the latter part on one individual: Christopher Koji Fox, their translator and 'lore writer'. Dude hasn't met a bad pun he doesn't love and it's such a bad fit for FF. And that's coming from a seriously odious pun lover. Anyway, we'll get back to that.

Initial impression? Gosh that was a bad LOTR ripoff of an opening. I hoped it was just an homage of sorts but honestly when you're copying the entire feel of a certain scene, right down to its climactic long-range shot, you're just ripping off. And that's when I was like, oh no, Yoshi P (the director of FFXVI) is such a hopeless Westaboo (Japanese fan of Western culture) that he doesn't realise this shit isn't cool anymore. It's been done to death. You want to do well with pop fantasy now, you need to embrace its inherently silly and fun nature and make self-aware but genuine and heartfelt romps like Honour Among Thieves. Entertain us, don't drag us through the mud again. And my god, don't reference a movie or tv show that infinitely better than your own work.



And this carried over into the LOOOOONG cinematics that followed. The names like the Iron Kingdom and Wyvern, the stilted English writing and voice acting, even the music all evoked a Game of Thrones wannabe. What it lacked was Martin's ability to combine crass and profound, to turn otherwise stale fantasy politics inspired by the War of the Roses into something fresh and exciting. It's all been done before and been done better.

The combat tutorial was nothing new and yet acted like it was some grand introduction to original characters we've never seen before.

The lip sync is BAD. In any language. Final Fantasy VII Remake puts this game to shame visually. Janky animal animation. Overall visuals feel less like a main FF and more like a well-made spinoff.

The writing is BAD. I touched on it but I want to give two specific examples: one is a scene in which a sultry seductress is gushing over her hulking lover, and shit like 'you're a lion. you're MY lion' is meant to do anything but elicit a wince...and then there's the name of the first flashback chapter: 'Sunrise, Sunset'. This is a prime example of why Koji Fox needs to fucking stop; don't name a chapter in a Final Fantasy game aiming for hardnosed fantasy after a fucking song from a well-known Hollywood musical very often used at funerals, my grandmother's included.

Weird to say but Diablo IV's writing is SO good at every level, it sets the bar far higher than Square Enix could have anticipated.

The music is 'fine'. Soken Masayoshi is a genius, as proven by his insane body of work with Final Fantasy XIV, but here his talents are being wasted on a tonally stiff, up-its-own-arse tryhard epic that simply doesn't land.

As for the mature content stuff -- the blood, the violence, the usage of summons as weapons of war -- Final Fantasy Type-0 did it FAR better, ten years ago.

I deleted the demo half an hour in after a whole two minutes of gameplay and roughly 28 minutes of cinematics that were nowhere near as amazing as they should have been.

I hope this game flops to send Squeenix a message but it probably won't.

I skipped through asmon's video of it and saw nothing worth my time either.

D4 is pretty good, if you don't mind just sitting through the bla-bla-bla, i'll give you that. Which is how i started until i got sick of it, because i just wana play a game, not read a book.

Interesting...Perhaps I will wait on this. Plenty of other things to occupy my time. D4 did not disappoint.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Interesting...Perhaps I will wait on this. Plenty of other things to occupy my time. D4 did not disappoint.

Nice to be right, isn't it? :)

As for FFXVI, thats just my take. I am absolutely gonna be in the minority. Its already being praised for its storytelling and voice acting so eh. And that is even after people acknowledge the GoT influence.

So the guy admits he didn't even play the demo and spent most of his time typing out verbal vomit about how he doesn't like Koji Fox's diction.

I did play the entire demo and enjoyed it. I played the whole thing. If there were problems with the lip sync or the writing I couldn't notice them. I'll admit they make use of some interesting dialectical choices in the character dialogue, as they did in FFXIV, but they are self consistent in it so you get used to it. The reviewer's bias and vitriol is laid bare as he comes to a boiling point over a chapter name potentially referencing a song that was played at his grandma's funeral.

As far as the music, the ACTUAL music in the game is world class. They have definitely spared no expense as far as quality and fidelity goes. The music is pretty integral to the game as it seems the intersection they're going for is basically interactive opera (if you've played FF6 then you know they've been lovers of operas for a long time), not musical, opera. Its all (well, most of the stuff that was showcased in the demo) was very operatic.

The game has ~11 hours of cutscenses apparently. It also has interactive parts not dissimilar to Wrath of Asura.

I think most people's primary complaint that I've saw is that its performance mode legitimately maxes out the capabilities of the PS5. Just outright redlines it. Which is why I set it to prioritize framerate. Its good that this is an option.

Anyway, I'll split the target audience into two distinct groups. Those that played FFXIV and liked the story and those that haven't played FFXIV. If you played FFXIV and enjoyed what they were producing (especially Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringer, Endwalker), then there is a very high chance you will enjoy what they produced. For those of you that haven't played FFXIV, they've spent 10 years putting together a world class team to make a world class game, and everything I've seen indicates they've succeeded, I'm a long time JRPG veteran and I have to admit the inclusion of the lore button is big for me, the combat is accessible, and the story goes places, you get a free demo you can download and play through to see if you like it.

You missed one: those that have played XIV and didn't like it.

Which includes both me and the wife. We got up to mid HW and were like...this writing is awful. Improved from ARR? Sure. But not by much.

As for admitting I didn't play the XVI demo -- dude, half an hour and it was all shitty cut scenes but for one lameduck tutorial fight. Half. An
Hour.

If you are gonna sit there and tell me that half an hour of wannabe GoT writing and misuse of Squeenix talent is somehow a poor representation of the game, then I respond it's a bad demo. But from what I have read, that first half hour is not a poor representation of the game in terms of tone and cliched gravitas. And I didn't enjoy any of that so off my HDD it went. You aren't going to change my mind (I didn't even read most of your post after you thoughtfully made it clear as one of abject defence) so don't bother. :)

But as I said, it's going to be a big hit and I am happy for those that enjoy it. No shortage of YoshiP fans out there. :)

As for me, I will wait for the sequel to the game that was doing this style years before XIV got its shit together: Dragon's Dogma 2. ^_^

PS that's not what "dialectical" means.

ITT people flexing that they're the cool crowd who don't like Yoshida.

It's Devil May Cry 6. Final Fantasy died after FFX.

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grozar wrote:

It's Devil May Cry 6. Final Fantasy died after FFX.

I think this is too early a cut-off. FFXII was great. Crisis Core and Type-0 are both excellent games. Dissidia and Dissidia 012 kicked all sorts of arse on the psp.l XI was an interesting experiment almost ahead of its time. XIII sort of lost me. XIV is its own thing and absolutely a worthy FF product but obvioisly its MMO nature is divisive and older FF fans bristle at it. XV was a misfire.

X was just as contentious too. The first FF with no world map, full voicework for the main cast, and a sequel that was all sorts of special with its girl power vibe. Sure put Koda Kumi on the map though...

For a lot of people VII was their last great FF, which is why Squeenix kept its remake/do-over ready as an energency button for years. Those people found VIII too angsty and realistic in its design approach, too lacking in the Super Deformed whimsy that IV, V, VI and VII all bore (by necessity).

My favourite numbered FF remains VIII, but only because neither VI nor IV have gotten the remake treatment.

My favourite FF period is SOPFFO and no this isn't up for debate either.

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As for XVI, Yoshida has read the room correctly by taking it realtime. The doomed VP elysium did the same thing and had it received the development love XVI has it might have been something great. XV already paved the way with Noctis' hyper kinetic style and VIIR is pretty damn close to realtime as well. I don't like it but it is what it is. Turn based is a relic and if they want FF to seem modern and up to date, it would come across as stodgy. That and it is absolutely a hallmark of the JRPG, a term Yoshida truly hates.

And that is a shame because it's a fine way to make a game. I don't dislike him at all but I feel some of his odd hang-ups regarding FF's legacy affect his approach to it. But after what miracles he pulled with XIV, his receiving control of the IP was inevitable. And he did give Soken a chance to prove he was much more than just a back up dancer to Uematsu so there's that too.

I played XIV with Japanese voice, English subs. As expected, the subs were of course dubtitles. Common enough method these days but what really stood out was that the subs weren't just weird -- they were flat-out wrong. When you can understand enough Japanese to use subs to fill the blanks, this is incredibly jarring. That was how we found out Koji Fox isn't content to be a translator but instead sees himself as a rewriter, a localiser happy to impose his own language over the original. YoshiP has called him out publicly in the past on this, pointing out that excessive puns and pop culture references weren't really his intention. But since Westerners were all over it, Koji Fox went from trans/loc to co-writing and lore massaging, as it were. YoshiP, being the westaboo that he is, relies on Koji Fox to...well, translate his vision. Still.

What annoys me about this is if I can pick up Koji Fox's dramatic changes just from what little is voiced, how different in tone is all that text? I took a little peek and..yeah, really different. XIV is much less on the nose in Japanese. Alphinaud is still a dipshit and the major plot beats remain but quest to quest, momemt to moment, FFXIV in Japanese takes itself much more seriously. And that is why YoshiP's main FF wants to be Game of Thrones in tone, Devil May Cry in gameplay.

And the game is still written primarily in Japanese -- Koji Fox isn't credited as the writer of FFXVI; Kazutoyo Maehiro is. I have no doubt that Fox worked very closely with him but the dude is a translator and localiser. He isn't a writer and it shows.

And XVI's tonal dissonance is the result of all of this. But as with XIV, you only really see it if you can see both sides. The vast majority of XIV players won't, and now that YoshiP's anglophilia has come full circle with an original English voice track, it'll be almost impossible to tell where Koji Fox has overstepped his bounds with Kazetoyo's script.

But as I said, once I saw that stupid song reference chapter name, and having heard Koji Fox himself say the game will be full of "groaners", I am content that I only wasted 30 minutes finding out and reminding myself why I so dislike XIV despite enjoying its core gameplay a LOT.

PS I am not a kid and I certainly wasn't cool when I was. No one of this forum is or was.

FF XII was great?^^it was a cheap starwars ripoff with no story to any of the characters outside the first 10 hours... the battlesystem was boring and the questing system horrible. I never understood why they took the worst parts of western rpgs and inserted them there. Also Bot programming is not fun.
No X was the last solid one, i even liked the spin off which had, (outside of the best combat system in a long time) still a better story than XII. And the best was definitly IX. Zidane as a hero, was finally again worth being called that. The characters were, even as being grossly overdrawn, finally again interesting and story while simple was consistent and didn't scream edgelord on every second sentence like VII and VIII did (VIII a lot more, I mean a lot... also the cheesiness oh god...)

I never understood why square chose to halfass their way in realtime battle systems anyway. rpgs with those are seldom deep or good battlers. (see DAO or baldursgate, NWN etc.) Either you are pausing like crazy, or you bot program or you have an autobattler, or you have an action RPG with tactics solely made for it...
Maybe it would have been better to improve the roundbased combat system or deepens its tactics etc (Like Legend of heroes etc.)