Square-Enix Final Fantasy XV [the game formerly known as Versus XIII]

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Necessary? Most definitely not. But at the very least it will give me the opportunity to enjoy another Final Fantasy film like I did with Spirits Within and Advent Children Complete.

And this is probably Square's way of saying "sorry for the long wait, here's a little something extra." I mean, come on, the game is getting it's own anime series, albeit 5 (episode 6 doesn't count) 11-minute episodes, but still, it's something.

 

You're missing my point of confusion, though. Yes, this movie will be enjoyed by people like you: fans of FF and people buying and playing FFXV. That's it. And that's not necessarily a limited audience, but it is limited for a feature length CGI movie with big name VAs. Making a movie this like won't be cheap; it went disastrously for Square before (Spirits Within). Advent Children had the benefit of continuing off of one of the most popular and well-regarded games even today. But FFXV is a game that isn't even out yet, whose fan-following is very niche right now, and whose development has even without a movie flown wildly off the rails and costed Square hundreds of millions of dollars. Lumping a movie into that -- again, before the game even came out -- seems insane from a budgetary perspective and probably just exacerbated a development cycle that is a huge public embarrassment to Square.

Even for a gesture of good will to fans, this seems incredibly far to me. I don't understand their motive or reasoning. I suppose @libregkd could be right in his point about creating a FFXV "universe" with many games & other stuff involved, but we saw how that went with FFXIII (not good). Square put the cart before the horse and planned an entire FFXIII universe, only to have its premiere game have mediocre reception; their resulting plans had to be changed (Type 0, Versus -> FFXV) and it ended up being a PR and financial disaster for Square. You would think they would have learned their lesson with XV and just put the game out, then, if/when it was successful, looked into spin-offs. In my eyes they have already re-established some good will with those dissatisfied by XV's development hell with the demoes, ATRs, emphasis on fan feedback, and generally just assigning Tabata to the project to get it done and get it finished. It just feels like Square is repeating past (and very recent) mistakes and it concerns me for their future and the future of the FF series.

 

Well, I can't say I know what they're thinking, but maybe they had already planned this a ways back, and had gotten so far in it they couldn't stop, and after all the changes in the recent years, maybe they just thought to put it out anyways. I'm not one to talk about marketing, considering I'm at a 79 in my Distribution Channels class, but that's the best idea I can come up with right now. Or maybe they just really want to get a movie out because they had the idea and they wanted to do it, even if the VA's couldn't stick with it afterwards. Or, maybe they're just going with the cards they're dealt with, even if doesn't seem like a good move to the rest of the world (I don't know, I'm picking a straws right now)

 

I think they said during the event that the movie has been in development for three years (so we'll say it started in early 2013). Things that also happened in 2013:

• FFXIV hadn't been re-released yet (and so they were millions in the hole on it)
• Lightning Returns would come out later that year (but FFXIII-2 didn't exactly bode well for the series's future)
• We don't know when Versus was internally rebranded to XV, but it was publicly announced at E3 in 2013

I think it's fair to say that XV in its current state/vision existed at the very least in the planning stages in 2013. But in 2013, things looked pretty grim for Square. Deciding to make a movie for a game that they really just needed to get out is a weird choice now and it was an even weirder choice given their state of affairs at the time. The only reasonable explanation I can see for the movie is @libregkd 's point that maybe it's pretty much Versus (or parts of Versus) turned into a movie. It's still a very bizarre decision... and all this supplementary story stuff has me questioning what's going to be in the actual game.

Making a movie isn't necessarily the weirdest thing, but bloating the budget to cast big VAs is just... what. Nobody who doesn't know what FF is or only knows it by name & nothing else is going to sit at home and be like "hey I love Breaking Bad and Jesse Pinkman so I definitely need to pay money to see this Japanese video game movie that I otherwise know nothing about."

 

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I didn't anticipate a FFXV movie, but It has seemed likely that they were going to reestablish the movie branch of the company. I mean with Agni's Philosophy and Witch: Chapter 0 it was clear that they had the tech and the teams in place on some level. And once you've got the infrastructure you might as well use it. Plus it has been 15 years since Spirits Within, with better tools at their disposal it should cut the costs enough that it's no longer that insane a proposition.

 

Okay, well aside from deleting the video I had of Platinum Demo, I made a new one that showed more gameplay than the last, like the Fire spell, counters, and some more. If it's like this in the actual game, I'm looking forward to it. Having the weapons set to the arrow keys is really nice and it seems much better than what they did before with them all set in as a combo for different attack types. It was a nice try, but it seems a little too much like micro-managing.

It makes me wonder how they're going to use magic though, if it's an actual amount like in the demo, or if they just did that in the demo so you didn't kill the giant off too quickly. I'm not too sure I'd be interested in them having those plates in the full game

 

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I'm sorry, did that car actually unfold wings that were able to hold it up in the air? Seriously? Now I need to know how they implement that into the game just to see how.

I really want to play the game because we know there's a war going on between the two cities, but with Final Fantasy's history, there is always a world-destroying enemy in the background, so I want to know what it is. Also, I realized that the car is named Leviathan, and the DLC for Deluxe and Collector's edition let's you recolor the car and from the looks of it the eidolon, so does that mean that the car has something to do with the giant sea-serpent?

 

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My God, I haven't even played the demo yet but that looks terrible. Really thinking about holding out for the PC port at this point if they don't do far better. The textures on his sword are pathetic.

 

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I think a PC port is even more likely given Tabata's recent comments on it (all but confirming it) and that ridiculous 10 million sales goal. There is still time before release to polish the frame rate and some IQ issues but I agree that the demo casts some serious doubt on just how good looking and functional the game will be on consoles. (Of course, it may be better on PS4K and whatever the Xbox equivalent is.)

It's even more worrisome when they've said Platinum is meant to demo the graphics and tech more than gameplay or anything (and that's how it feels playing through). They have said they will work on the frame rate and getting it to a stable 30fps is a goal, but nothing to my knowledge about polishing anything else.

I'm glad they're abandoning Lumionous as an engine if this is what it produced. Wish the game had made the jump to Unreal like KH3.