Final Fantasy 15 director feared the brand 'had already peaked'
Despite a glut of sequels and several misses in recent years, director Hajime Tabata director sees light at the end of the tunnel.
Final Fantasy has never been final, but Hajime Tabata thought the series might have used its last turn years ago.
Tabata took the reins on Final Fantasy 15 as director in 2012. One of his first acts was to canvas Japanese players to get a bead on their thoughts about the health of the Final Fantasy brand. His findings did not inspire confidence.
In an interview with Game Informer, Tabata found that "at the time we were starting Final Fantasy XV, we didn't see an increase in new fans of the franchise. The brand image of Final Fantasy wasn't really clear. The reality is not that the situation is okay or in favor of us. Rather, it is more grave and serious than we had initially thought. The way we understood Final Fantasy after our analysis is that it was a dying IP that had already peaked."
Despite results indicating uncertainty bordering on disinterest, Tabata and other executives at Square Enix decided to press on—not out of stubbornness or habit, but out of a firm belief that he and his team could bring fans around on Final Fantasy. He described to Game Informer three qualities he feels encompass the brand: willingness to change the status quo; exceptional experiences; and technology that taps the full power of console hardware.
Tabata likely ruffled some feathers around the office when he admitted that 1997's Final Fantasy 7, long considered the pinnacle of the series (and arguably turn-based JRPGs), was the last to check all three boxes.
"Any Final Fantasy released after [Final Fantasy VII] lacks in one or the other. But what Final Fantasy fans desire is a new entry that encompasses all of these elements, and that is our objective with Final Fantasy XV."
You can read more from Tabata in Game Informer's 20-page cover story in the May issue, along with a video interview on the magazine's website where the director describes FF15 as "make or break" for the IP.
Source: GameSpot
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replyDavid Craddock posted a new article, Final Fantasy 15 director feared the brand 'had already peaked'
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No. Rabat wants this to be the biggest game the series has seen, and revitalize the brand.
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God, I never played because I didn't want to lose my shit but I kept buying them.
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I would love to see that happen. While I'm indifferent to FF, it's been a torchbearer in gaming for as far back as I can remember, and too many of those torches have gone out over the past few years. I hope FF15 has a few tricks up its sleeve to keep the brand going.
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u wot mate
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From what I recall reading, the name originated when Square was on the verge of collapsing as a company and put everything they had into one last game, one "Final Fantasy."
Then it was an explosive success and they turned it into a franchise with a name that made no sense, sort of like how Quake II ended up turning Quake a franchise with a name that made no sense but it was worth the name recognition.
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If shack search worked I would link you to my post where I say FFVI was the pinnacle of FF, and in fact was filled with so much awesome that it overflowed into FFVII.
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Whether the game was good, mediocre, or terrible is irrelevant. FF7 succeeded, in part, because it was a technical showpiece. The cinematics and graphics were dazzling, for the time, and the magnitude of the world spoke to just how much data developers could pack onto CDs.
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I have played the series since its inception, and played 7 at launch.
It really was that good, and IMO, is still the second-best game in the series (behind only XII).
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Yeah they've been stuck in essentially the same setting for 20 years.
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This doesn't make a lot of sense: VII, VIII, and XIII are set in a sort of sci-fi universe, but IX, X (most of it), and XII are set in a fantasy universe. The setting isn't the issue. It's the quality of the story telling (I think XII has the best story of the bunch) that has hardly budged, and their experiments with gameplay haven't really hit upon anything that feels modern.
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I feel like FF used to stand in the middle ground between eastern and western gaming cultures but slowly started slipping more and more east. By FF13 I felt like I was watching a shitty trope-filled anime that I got to play occasionally.
I enjoyed the FF15 demo, felt that combat was an improvement and I like the emphasis on open world exploration despite the fact that everybody is doing it now. FF hasn't done it yet so it still feels fresh to me in that aspect. But I do feel like I'm controlling the lead singer of a japanese visual kei band.
I think in order for FF to "peak" again, they'll have to find that middle ground again, where japanese players enjoy the game but Americans don't feel alienated by how japanese everything is. And maybe also have characters and story that aren't anime stereotypes.-
It never was. They even admit so:
A big part of teasing and presenting that "good side" has come down to completely reworking the game's development philosophy and mechanics. Previous games adhered to a Japan-centric model, in which the game was created in Japan primarily for a Japanese audience. Only when development was finished did localisation on foreign language editions begin. The result was a staggered release strategy that few appreciated, as well as a narrow cultural focus that made it difficult for the franchise to expand beyond its core fanbase.
"There was this really big distance and disconnect between ourselves in Japan and those players outside of Japan under the old export-focused model," Tabata laments. "We couldn't take onboard feedback or ideas from non-Japanese players as their responses to our ideas, and what we'd make for them came long after the game had been finished and sent out. It was impossible to get any feedback outside of Japan under that old model."
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When Tabata took over directing duties from famed character designer Tetsuya Nomura, a switch made public during the 2014 Tokyo Game Show, one of the first things he did was educate himself on the Final Fantasy brand outside of his native Japan. What he found was, in his words, "truly shocking." Many people had never even heard of the franchise and few outside of a "very small hardcore set of fans" even knew how many games there were in the series.
Tabata was dismayed, for instance, to see how little impact Final Fantasy-focused stories on English-language news and videogame websites were having on the audience. He uses the announcement of the much-hallowed Final Fantasy VII remake as his primary example here, with stories dedicated to its reveal staying in the "top story" rankings for only a day or two before news regarding other (typically Western-made) roleplaying games took over.-
I feel like has less to do with how they developed the games but more how they marketed the games. FF games weren't huge in the US before FF7 because they didn't have heavy advertising before FF7 and also the games before FF7 didn't really push the envelope graphically or technologically like FF7 did. And yeah, of course people didn't know how many games were in the series, look at how they named the titles in the US.
FF7 got a huge spike in popularity because it had some pretty heavy advertising on channels like MTV and also showed off some pretty epic FMV that had previously not really been seen in video games. After that, the game was on the map and I guess Square assumed we just wanted more of that. Which we did, but then they gave us FF8 and we were like "WTF?"-
Well, not to say that pre-FF7 FF games would have been huge if they had heavier advertising, but they didn't get much of a chance in the first place because of lack of advertising and also the cartridges costing $20 more than other full-priced cartridges. I heard of a few friends' dads buying FF games before I ever got into them so as a kid I originally figured they'd be boring games, lol.
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I wouldn't say it was a small franchise back then. But it's also been nearly 20 years since FF7 came out and most of what they've done since isn't particularly memorable.
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Final Fantasy was heavily advertised in the West before 7, it was the regular console advertising, commercials and mostly focused on magazines.
Remember that in 1997 the primary advertising vehicle for video games was Magazines and all console RPGs were a niche. The major RPG market was PC in the West, with games like Ultima. The reason you think it was marketed to the west is not to do with them trying that, but Sony marketing FF7 as a demonstration of their CD-ROM technology being superior to Nintendo's Cartridges. There's a good history of it here: http://xenon.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/sts145/Squaresoft%20and%20FF7.htm
It has nothing to do with Western marketing. Square didn't even bother. Sony spared no expense in marketing Final Fantasy VII in the US, allocating a budget of up to US$100 million just for marketing alone. Three 30-second commercials were made highlighting the graphics and gameplay and aired on prime-time slots on all the major networks. There were also major print campaigns in popular publications such as Rolling Stone, Spin and even Playboy, and the gaming magazines. Sony even teamed up with Pepsi for a major holiday promotion featuring the game.
Customers who bought a Playstation console in September 1997 received a disk containing a demo of the game and previews of other yet-to-be-released Squaresoft titles.-
Yeah I remember it being a pretty big franchise even then. Considering it's been nearly 20 years they've had a lot of time to allow the franchise to wander off into mediocrity.
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Well okay, so Sony marketed it instead of Square, but I never saw any TV commercials for FF before FF7, and I saw a lot of FF7 commercials on MTV back around when it came out.
I'm not really understanding the last paragraph, where you say it has nothing to do with western marketing and then go into several sentences about how heavily marketed the #1 best selling Square enix game was.-
Square never marketed it in the West nor paid attention to the feedback. I gather you're equating Sony's interests with Square, but my initial point is that FF never stood in the middle ground between cultures. It was always Eastern. They didn't even take Western feedback until FF14.
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I don't think it matters when they took western feedback, because I'm talking about the feel of the games. Not the amount of input from audiences regarding development. I'm saying that starting with FF7 and on, FF games started having a more distinctly japanese feel to them. I think we're talking about different things.
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though they say that, i still feel like there was more of a dialogue between japanese game designers and game designers elsewhere in the 80s and early/mid 90s though, which I think was part of what really made the game have any sort of appeal outside of japan. even if they weren't explicitly making decisions to appeal to gamers worldwide, perhaps by virtue of embracing new technology and having to reach far and wide for ways to make compelling experiences with that technology they were more open to drawing influence from and reacting to a larger variety of game experiences (for example there is some theory/speculation on how much influence early ultima games had on early ff/dragon quest games)
in the past 10-20 years they've listened to a very very tiny core audience of japanese gamers to the detriment of the brand.-
Do you have any examples of that? My understanding from interviews Sony and the few Square devs who have spoken have all indicated that the Japanese companies did not even let their developers talk to other Japanese developers (at other companies) let alone Western developers.
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I don't mean literal dialogue, I mean there were almost certainly Japanese devs paying a lot more attention to what western devs were putting in games at the time and visa versa -- at the very least out of sheer business necessity. Though I mean also I'm sure there was some back and forth at the business level as well.
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I sort of assume tabletop RPGs like D&D had an influence as well.
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I tend to think there is a lot of pressure from publishers to stay inside the box. Even if developers wanted to do something different I don't think they really are given the chance to. I'd honestly say that seems to reflect in most other Japanese media. I think they had a lot more room to really experiment in the 80s-90s.
But over time things got way more conservative in terms of what could and could not be done. To me JRPGs have become largely stagnant while western developers have been more able to try different approaches to gameplay and storytelling.
To me the biggest bright spot in the Japanese gaming industry is FromSoftware and Demon/Dark Souls. That franchise is such a success particularly because they were able to do an RPG that was out of the mold. Plus a complete move away from anything remotely turn based. It's carved out a pretty unique space.-
I think that's probably true, but there are also a lot of examples of Japanese developers attempting to make stuff that has a wider appeal, and it's obvious that the creativity and enthusiasm just isn't there, even when essentially given a blank check by publishers. The only conclusion you can come to is that they've been too isolated on the dev end for too long as well.
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I have to admit that the eastern focus is a bit of a sticking point for me, too. I'm ambivalent toward anime; I watch some occasionally, but I'm certainly not entrenched in the culture. I take one look at FF's overtly anime-inspired characters and immediately feel silly for even getting that far.
I have nothing against Japanese culture or anime. I just feel like, as you said, Square has done a poor job of making the games appealing to people like me who don't dye their hair purple and run around shouting "SENPAAAAAAAAAAI!" at the top of their lungs. -
I can't wrap my head around this, as FF is probably the *least* Japanese/anime of the major JRPG series.
Hell, that's half of what I like about it. When most other JRPGs are literally anime-looking characters and designs now (and for quite some time), FF characters and worlds don't follow that formula and tend to do their own thing (which works or doesn't, depending on the game and who you ask).-
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Odd. I thought XIII was perhaps the most like actual people FF characters have ever seemed. Obviously the plot and world are ridiculous fantasy stuff, but the characters felt realized and realistic in a way that I don't think they'd pulled off previously, and definitely didn't remind me of anime.
I've got nothing against anime, mind you, but I just don't see it.-
I think XII had the most natural story and characters: it was political intrigue with a dose of adventure and revenge seeking and the characters, though doing the usual "beat the empire and save the world" thing, felt natural and grounded. The plot in XIII by contrast felt like sci-fi mad libs, and the characters (what I saw of them - I stopped after about 6 hours) were the typical exaggerated archetypes: e.g. Vaan and Penelo in XII were written as kids, and, if annoying, are at least natural in being so, while Oerba in XIII was written as some quasi-tween thing that doesn't exist except perhaps at anime conventions.
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I love XII. I feel like the characters in that one remind me more of literary characters (especially compared to most JRPGs) than they do actual people. I'll admit, Vanille is not the character I think of when I think of what I liked about XIII. In particular, I thought Lightning and Sazh were well done in the first game, and that over the trilogy, Lightning became my favorite character in the series, though I do waffle back and forth between her and Ashe.
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I'd like to give XIII another go sometime, and I do appreciate how much they experimented with the sequels (the last seems particularly interesting). Did you find that the third game closed out the series well?
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I mean, I liked it, but I liked the whole trilogy, and I know that's not the consensus. The ending itself is pretty fucking weird, but I liked the arc of the final game, with Lightning basically being Jesus to a dying world.
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The director is a little full of himself. I'd argue that 10 (and 10-2), and 12 definitely hit all three boxes. I think it is a matter of perspective and 7 gets a lot of its love from nostalgia. It was the first of its kind, and they did a great job with it. In going back recently and playing 7, 8, 10, and 12 - I'd say they all hold up about the same. You hate the same things you hate about them all, and love the same things.
It peaked at 6 in my opinion. 7 ushered in a period of uncertainty that 12 ended.
While I like the 13 series, I don't think it is fair to call them final fantasy games really. It's like the american super mario 2. They basically painted final fantasy names and tropes onto a game series that really should have been called something else with its own identity. (I like SMB2, but I think I would have liked it more as what ever it was originally called in Japan).
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I get where he's coming from. FF7 was, like Ocarina of Time a year later, a revolution. It was everywhere. I'm someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes the industry, and I don't recall Final Fantasy ever being that big in the mainstream.
I think that's what FF15's director wants to shoot for: if not to capture, then to create a zeitgeist the way FF7 did on PS1.
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I'd be way more interested at this point if they essentially rebooted the franchise story wise. The settings don't interest me at all currently. Plus I honestly don't care for the character design right now.
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Yeah the setting doesn't do anything for me right now. Honestly it would be cool to tie back to the first one. Bring back the red, white, and black mages.
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Can honestly say that I've never been a fan. There are some great JRPG games out there, but I always found the turn based mechanics with random encounters and silly story lines filled with child heroes were a universe I could never immerse myself in.
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They all sell millions. He just wants it to sell more millions than all the recent titles.
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I was out when they added voice acting. Their characters became so much more annoying with voice acting.
FF12 didn't really do much for me due to the combat system and terrible camera.
FFX ran out of steam 2/3 through making you have to defeat the same guy multiple times until the end. I put it down the 2nd or 3rd time I had to fight Seymore.
FF13 was just not fun to play and the characters outside of the black guy were all super serious emo whiners.-
The voice acting isn't the issue so much as the writing. When real people have to say the inane shit they write, it sounds all the more ridiculous and unnatural. And let's not forget that we've all grown up and our taste for good (or passable) writing has developed: I was 14 when I played FFVII and 14 year olds love some dumb shit.
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The character who wanted to kill himself is the one you describe as not emo? He was miserable.
The only character I actively liked in that game was Snow.-
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I actually managed to make it all the way through out of stubbornness. Sazh and Vanille were the worst.
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I think it's more a problem with their characters. Western audiences largely seek a strong adult male or female protagonist, whereas Japan is still obsessed with the teenager to young adult protagonist, which may or may not be desperately whiny or annoying. A lot of people have traced it to the salary-man culture there, where becoming an adult means you're trapped in an 80 hour a week, soul-sucking job for the rest of your life and dreaming about your teenage/young adult years before you started working is your primary form of escapism.
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Plus they're usually dressed like a bunch of assholes.
http://assets.vg247.com/current//2015/10/final_fantasy_15.jpg-
And these are the least offensive outfits in as long as I can remember. I don't get why all the characters need to look like they're walking down an alt-fashion runway in Paris.
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I definitely prefer character customization and stuff like armor having an appearance rather than being essentially invisible.
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Hell I think that's one thing that's great about Dark Souls. You can really mold the character to how you want to play them.
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FF games are far more varied from title to title than basically any other series.
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FF12 wasn't about saving the world, it was a political conflict with the goal to restore power to one of the characters. You could argue that the plan to save the world in 6 fails, and what follows is kind of a redemption story.
FF10 all the characters were protectors of the summoner.
FF8 all the characters were members of SEED, a military org.
FF10-2 - sphere hunters on the same funded team.
FF2 (4) - all characters were heirs or the current monarch of their land or their direct subordinate. I guess though this is still technically "rag-tag".
So only 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 13.
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It peaked with 6 and 7, but 9 and 10 were the last "acceptable" entries.
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