Great podcast, sorry for not offering to be on (not that any of you need me, but showing interest is helpful) been super busy with school / invading Canada. Should be a good listen while I finish my schoolwork.

The car/airship thing does look really dumb, but like Nick said, I'm all for having an airship in any capacity compared to...not.

I also love the idea that we'll be using different methods of transportation in an open-world game. I'm hoping this leads to a huge variety of levels to flesh out the world, maybe giving us exploration akin to the PS1-era Final Fantasy games.

I don't have much else to discuss.

Re-listening while doing stupid assignments. I'll post this in groups:

I don't really see an issue with there being an anime being released. I can understand the HEAVY tone of skepticism, but only to a certain extent. Plenty of video game companies have done weird spinoff side projects, or varying types of media to compliment or add to a game/expansion being released. I get that some people don't want money/time going to an anime, instead they want those things to be put into the game, but you cannot know if that would be utilized in the best way possible. The way I see it is if these devs/people on the team(s) think that making an anime would be a cool thing to do, then more power to them. I HIGHLY doubt that it will leech off of the game's resources too heavily (or the story for that matter).

Also side note, you guys keep implying that some things being in an anime/movie would mean that it CAN'T also be in the game as well. That's not correct at all. I am sure you all are aware of this, I just recommend not drinking too much of that skepticism kool-aid. I feel like a lot of judgement is being cast down onto this game solely because its taken God knows how long to be released, which while it is understandable, that doesn't mean that every choice they make is to compensate for that waiting period. Maybe while working on the game they said to themselves "hey this sounds like a good idea" and went from there, instead of making all of these things as a way to not "anger the fans". If this is how people are looking at this game, anime, movie, etc before it is even out, I don't expect it to get any semblance of a fair rating.

I also think people are playing up the 10 year wait thing a little much. Don't get me wrong, when a game gets announced and then it either doesn't come out or takes a long time to come out, then that sucks. However, unless all of you literally do nothing with your lives (which I know to be not true) then the "wait" isn't as bad as you may think. That time was filled with other things, not only other media/games by square but just real life stuff. I don't expect this game to do well if we keep weighing every choice made by the devs against the "10 years". The only relevant factor when it comes to game development time is the actual time spent waiting. As we have seen in the past, certain games that have taken 5-10 years to come out can very well be just the worst thing ever. Hell this is half the reason I never expect Half Life 3 to come out, because no matter what game valve puts out with that name, the fans are never going to be satisfied because they either judge it unrealistically, or expect some form of crazy compensation for their "waiting time".

I agree 100% about Nick's frame rate point. While I am concerned that there are graphical "issues" AND weird frame rate, I am more than willing to settle for 30 instead of 60, but only if it is stable. Don't know if their optimization is just god awful, or it is the consoles "less than stellar" hardware, but I hope they at least get a stable frame rate as that is generally more important than crazy good graphics.

This is something I always find myself disagreeing with. I've been a Half-Life fan since a few years after Half-Life 2 came out (probably 2007 or so) and I don't think at all I have unrealistic expectations for a good sequel if I'm still able to hold excitement out for Final Fantasy XV. There will always be fans who will always get disappointed, but I simply expect a really good sci-fi FPS game with well-designed levels and puzzles, not the second coming.

I also have a monetary bet with a friend that Half-Life 3 will release in some form by 2025.

This is implying that the rest of the people who want Half-Life 3 are as rational as you. Trust me, I understand people like that are out there, but they seem to be in the minority.

Of course many companies have done that; namely Japanese companies because the business model of releasing a bunch of merch alongside something (be it a video game or anime or whatever) is fairly common and fairly profitable because it gets money from the rather large super-fan base that these things tend to generate. I don't think the anime or movie are actually taking resources away from the game itself; there are separate companies/people making them that aren't anywhere near the development team. I do think it's okay to be skeptical of how it ties into the game's story though given how they've been advertising the anime and movie. In particular to the anime, I highly doubt much of it will be in the game outside of being mentioned in passing during dialogue/cutscenes as the anime takes place as they've billed it as a mini-series that will tie directly into the opening of the game because they felt that game would be unable to give context what Noctis's view point of the world is (whatever that actually means). But the anime is only 5 10-minute episodes so it's not a huge deal, it's more of an annoyance than anything else.

Of course it is possible that aspects of the anime/movie could still be in the game; be it partially or only referenced or fully implemented. We have very little to go off of but given they have billed the movie as running parallel to Noctis's journey and a side of the story that Noctis himself won't experience, I think it's fine to be skeptical of what eventually makes it 'into the game'. Again, it is likely that if anything major happens in the movie (which I think is safe to say it will) it will eventually be communicated to Noctis in some way. But from a personal standpoint, I feel like that is a bad way to build a world within the game. I've mentioned it in the FFXV topic we have here on the site but taking FFXII as an example, it'd be the equivalent of taking all the political dealings and backstabbings that were happening in Archadia removing those cutscenes and instead have a character such as Larsa communicate "hey some serious **** just went down in the Empire's government." It gets the point across and the player (as well as the characters) are now aware that events took place but it robs the game of a chance of building up characters like Vayne, The Judges, as well as giving the player insight as to what political turmoil is taking place in Archadia. But again I have no final judgement until the game is out and we found out what is in and how it is in it, it could turn out that we do have those moments of the player getting insight as to what happened in Lucis! But the development team have seemed very keen on keeping the player's knowledge and point of view lined up with Noctis's knowledge and point of view which, just personal opinion, I don't like very much.

Also I would like to note that my skepticism isn't actually coming from the fact the game has been in development so long. It's more that a new director was brought on and there have been significant script changes that they have said publicly (entire opening of the game scrapped for something else, character roles significantly changes, characters were written out of the story, etc.). I'd actually be less skeptical of the game if Nomura was still at the helm. Bringing in a new director and changes just adds a significant new variable in regards to how the game's story is handled.

As mentioned above, the '10 year wait' is actually a very minor thing fueling my skepticism, it's more of the development staff changes, story changes, and tone changes that actually fuel my skepticism. I mean, I think is fairly normal to be cautious when you hear that everyone that was working on a game is now all gone and replaced with new people (outside of a small handful) lol.

As I mentioned in the podcast, I do hope that the game is great because just about everything about it look amazing. There is really only that big question of the story that obviously won't be known until the game is out. Under normal circumstances I'd be optimistic about it and not be too worried about the story, but with the game undergoing director changes and story changes and all that stuff my optimism about the game's story becomes a bit murkier as now Tabata has to not just direct a great game, he also needs to be able to elegantly mesh elements of the old game with the new changes he has brought to it. Something that I feel is a more difficult task than just starting a game from scratch.

Oh, I perfectly understand that, but I just don't like the implication that all fans of the series are being as irrational as you had put it. And I'd argue the notion that I'm in the minority but I don't think anyone cares to put it to a study including myself, so eh, it's all up to speculation and experiences with the many different kinds of fans.

You will rarely (if ever) see me say that "100% of the people act like this or that", most of the time in these posts, as well as the spamzones ones if I am talking about a group it is generally about the majority opinion. In the past I have specified, but that ended up making my already stupidly long posts take even longer to type out, and I know that some people can't be arsed to read them in their entirety as it is.

Feel free to assume that I am speaking about the majority, and if not by all means ask. I cannot speak for the entirety of any group, nor have I ever wanted to do so.

I guess I'm just used to people being less intellectual about their generalizations is all. I'm just specific about words is all, my bad.

No worries, in person I am super specific with how I talk, I just know that speaking with me when I am like that is more of an "acquired taste" so I generally avoid being crazy specific while on forums, but hey if people prefer it I'll do it.