That, or the truth is just too horrible to face.
The game doesn't do anything particularly well at all.
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World Map and the future of Final Fantasy [Discussion]
- Thread starter Deleted member 721
- Start date
That, or the truth is just too horrible to face.
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Its a town (its said its a town) that has the main harbor of the continent where shinra cargo ship go. (that looks small compared to a real cargo ship too). A place with the biggest harbor of the continent its not just a resort thats not realist, not everything that shows in the game is only that, its a depiction. Off course they could go to non realism and keep the 2 houses only,but it doesnt look like that using midgar as reference.
Even then theres many other cities and places that are suposed to be big but are small. Wutai is just a small village that goes to war against shinra? they will need to increase the size of everything
You keep trying to convince yourself of that.
Costa Del Sol was also in Crisis Core which has the same 3rd person camera perspective as 7R does, and it wasn't any bigger than what it was in the original. Also it being a "town" there would make Galdin Quay one for the same reason since it has a harbour with the boats arrive and has an rest point which is the same thing as an inn, hotel room suite, a store to buy items, a weapon store, a resturant to buy food and take on hunts, NPCs are around, sidequests to get and some minigame with the fishing on the beach, and there is story reason for why the party goes there, it's got the same amount of things in it as Costa Del Sol has.
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I don't know how well they fare with XV in terms of open world, but I would like to see them follow the footstep of FFXII with interconnected zones with huge environment to explore. Or do it like Witcher 3 or Xenoblade 2 with multiple huge regions of different themes and culture.
Coz this isn't the thread about "why XV's open world is crap". There are plenty of points I can mention like large but empty, bland world, filled with fetch quests. But again, we're here to find what we want to see going forward. If you weren't so hung up on anyone disliking XV, you'd be able to move on to the topic at hand as well. The more you respond, the more people will talk about the shittiness of XV.
Yes, this is a great point. I've only seen a little bit of DQ8, and am really looking forward to play DQXI to see how I feel about its implementation. I think I'll be consumed by the journey just like the old days of SE RPGs. Let's see.
It really isn't becaues the locations in XV all do have meaning to the game and the story just like 7s does, and those locations in 7 are places you pass right through too. Wutai has less significance to the story of 7 than Hammerhead does to XV, Altissia has a ton of story significance because of the major events that transpite there both in the main game and in the DLC, and the whole game is about the brotherood bonding of the four that you experience over your travels which includes their bonding from travelling around to places too, since that directly correlates to the main theme of the game, so I don't know how you can honestly sit there and say "good post" in bad faith like that.
Then why make that post if you aren't going to elaborate on why? Why did you say it's on topic if you aren't actually making an actual argument pertaining to the topic of the thread, but instead just shitposting?
Fetch quests? OK? Every single mainline FF has fetchquests and XV has them the same way they have them, and it also has multiple other kinds of quests pertaining to character building, minigames, optional bosses and dungeons and so on that aren't "fetch quest", every single world map in FF is emptier than XVs open world, we've already been over this, again how does that make the open world worse than those? Even 12 with its seperated area maps is more emptier than XV. You can have the opinion that it's shit, that's fine, but I'm allowed to call out your reasoning, and that's what I have a problem with, your reasoning and you failing to actually make a valid argument based on factual evidence, if you are just going to say "it's shit bcuz it's my opinion" then you aren't willing to have a discussion, you just want to make shitposts against XV.
If your entire argument is now "it has fetch quests and the map is empty and bland" then by your own logic you are saying the older FF world maps are shit.
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I miss world maps, when I played old FFs I felt like I was traveling around a whole world/planet. In FF15 I just felt like I was exploring a very large back yard.
Even though old FFs are smaller they feel larger to me than ff15 just because of the world map
Even though old FFs are smaller they feel larger to me than ff15 just because of the world map
I'd dare say we learn more about the history and culture of Wutai (and by association, Yuffie) through our multiple *optional* visits there than we ever learn of Altissia (and by association, Lunafreya). Soooooo....
(edit: I admit I'm being a little hyperbolic, but my point is there's a lot more to the locations you visit in other FF's than just main character development)
You can say that but you'd be wrong, just listening to NPC conversations tells you more about Altissia than anything you find out about Wutai, and the Cindy, Cid and Takka sidequest all reveal more about Hammerhead and of Cid and Cindy than you learn about Wutai and Yuffie. Luna isn't from Altissia so I don't know why you are associating her with Altissia, she's from Tenebrae and we learn about Tenebrae from the Cosmogony and the NPCs and being there too, and Yuffie is literally an optional side character who is by definition irrelevant to the main story, Luna is the main reason why Noctis can get anything done by the end and also why the Glaives can too and she's as central to the game as your average Zelda is to a Zelda game.
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crisis core is unrealist too
a cargo ship only is bigger than galdin quay, and a harbor for that kind of ship is not a marina with a small resort in the middle of nowhere
but idk they could keep this nonsense thing, or to reduce the size of the boat
but its already confirmed they want to increase the scale to the rest of the world, not only to midgar even if costa remains the same
It's a tough issue for sure.
If you do the 'traditional' world map thing, it's less immersive than a realistically sized world. A realistically sized world means either it's barren and boring, or it's small and unbelievable. I still think Dragon Quest VIII did it better than anything else (not played XI yet).
I guess something like the open world 'hubs' of FFXV, but in a more XII style of progression.
It depends on art direction really. If FFXVI looks like Ni no Kuni, sure, a traditional world map is fine, if it's like XV/VII R, then it needs to be correctly proportioned to me.
If you do the 'traditional' world map thing, it's less immersive than a realistically sized world. A realistically sized world means either it's barren and boring, or it's small and unbelievable. I still think Dragon Quest VIII did it better than anything else (not played XI yet).
I guess something like the open world 'hubs' of FFXV, but in a more XII style of progression.
It depends on art direction really. If FFXVI looks like Ni no Kuni, sure, a traditional world map is fine, if it's like XV/VII R, then it needs to be correctly proportioned to me.
The ship is not part of Costa Del Sol, it's a seperate thing and it goes between Junon and Costa Del Sol, not sure why you are bringing up a ship when talking about the resort itself, a ship dock is a ship dock all the same. Costa Del Sol itself still has the same amount of things to it as Galdin Quay has, and Crisis Core isn't using Chibi proportions like 7 is, it uses the same scale proportions for characters and environment as 7R depicts proportion as. Whether they will make Costa Del Sol bigger or not in the remake is yet to be seen, but that is besides the point.
This is where Final Fantasy's heightened pursuit of realistic scale gets a bit wonky when applied to an open world. Games like FFXII and FFXIV circumvent this with zones, with transitions between them done by passing through loading screens. It isn't seamless and bears its own disadvantages, but it effectively gets the job done in presenting a sufficient enough illusion to the player that their character has traversed a vast distance. Perhaps the local wildlife has now dramatically changed, as has the biomes and geographical features.
FFXV's open world certainly shares some similarities with the overworld maps of older Final Fantasy games in that you as the player really have to work on that suspension of disbelief. With the old world maps, the sight of your giant avatar crossing vast plateaus and landmasses in minutes is this simplified abstraction of the long journey in between places you actually want to get to. In your imagination, perhaps there are far more landmarks and settlements here and there that just aren't visually represented in the game, because they're probably not noteworthy. For FFXV however, its seemingly more realistic open map and how much more immersive it is brings its own set of issues regarding scale and plausibility. You have to presume that the in-universe continent of Lucis is actually far larger than the half-dozen miles across it actually feels like in-game. Those petrol stations that seem to pop up every five minutes? Presume from the characters' POV it's every half an hour. That boat ride across to Altissia that feels like 10 minutes? Presume it's half a day or something. It's necessary because otherwise the continent of Lucis feels laughably and implausibly small for what should be a major portion of the planet Eos. So you're left with a strange, paradoxical situation where the game world itself feels realistic and properly scaled to the actual size of Noctis and his retinue...but then you realise it cannot actually be to that scale as otherwise your entire road trip feels like it's solely confined to a small portion of Insomnia's backyard.
Personally I would go for the FFXII/XIV approach of zones that all together constitute an overall world, but obviously expand on what these previous games did. Keep FFXV's feature of seamless transitions into dungeons though. They're easily the best part of the game for me, because there are few things that feel more rewarding to a wanderlust than to accidentally stumble across a dungeon because you were nosy enough to take a quick gander behind some cliff face.
FFXV's open world certainly shares some similarities with the overworld maps of older Final Fantasy games in that you as the player really have to work on that suspension of disbelief. With the old world maps, the sight of your giant avatar crossing vast plateaus and landmasses in minutes is this simplified abstraction of the long journey in between places you actually want to get to. In your imagination, perhaps there are far more landmarks and settlements here and there that just aren't visually represented in the game, because they're probably not noteworthy. For FFXV however, its seemingly more realistic open map and how much more immersive it is brings its own set of issues regarding scale and plausibility. You have to presume that the in-universe continent of Lucis is actually far larger than the half-dozen miles across it actually feels like in-game. Those petrol stations that seem to pop up every five minutes? Presume from the characters' POV it's every half an hour. That boat ride across to Altissia that feels like 10 minutes? Presume it's half a day or something. It's necessary because otherwise the continent of Lucis feels laughably and implausibly small for what should be a major portion of the planet Eos. So you're left with a strange, paradoxical situation where the game world itself feels realistic and properly scaled to the actual size of Noctis and his retinue...but then you realise it cannot actually be to that scale as otherwise your entire road trip feels like it's solely confined to a small portion of Insomnia's backyard.
Personally I would go for the FFXII/XIV approach of zones that all together constitute an overall world, but obviously expand on what these previous games did. Keep FFXV's feature of seamless transitions into dungeons though. They're easily the best part of the game for me, because there are few things that feel more rewarding to a wanderlust than to accidentally stumble across a dungeon because you were nosy enough to take a quick gander behind some cliff face.
You're right, Luna is from Tenebrae but I don't think most people associate her with that city. We meet her and lose her in Altissia. And don't even get me started on how disappointed I was when the beautiful Tenebrae was unexplorable. Made me so sad, but was not surprised by the time I got there.
I do understand your main points, but I think you're not taking into account that the game does very little to expand on its *world.* The bros do have quite a bit of development and they did a good job on the bros. Agreed. But you could have slapped those guys into any location and it would have been the same story for most of the game. The only exceptions being Altissia and Niflheim (which is another good example; that whole chapter was really just a boring set of metallic hallways, but in our time spent there I learned more about those hallways than I ever learned about the city of Lestallum or its people, not to mention actually getting background lore and plot twists and everything else... if all the care put into the story and lore of that chapter was spent on the rest of the game, we wouldn't be having this conversation).
From what I've heard, DQXI is more zone-by-zone, but still giving the impression, or "illusion" that it is one big connecting world. Actually, it handles exploration EXACTLY like how I described my preferred method in my first post, ground exploration (in DQXI, it's on foot and horseback) is scale to your character and the areas per zone are big enough to give the illusion of a big world (there are also monsters wandering around), but other methods, like flying and ship travel, take place in a different mode where the entire make is scaled down, looking like a classic world map but nicely detailed. You ONLY explore this map while flying or via ship and once you land, you go back to the character proportioned map. THIS is what I want for the FF series.
But yeah, "illusion" is key. That can also be applied to cities. Take for example FFXII, which I felt did the illusion of making "big looking cities that were actually rather small" right. Rabnastre looked like a big, sprawling city, but this is basically the map:
I'm not including Lowtown because this is meant to show the illusion of the topside as a massive city opposed to the actual areas you can explore. I don't mind more things like this. I don't want a big city that I can fully explore, because I KNOW that is impossible, but give me a big looking city and the illusion that I can explore it while keeping that actual area of exploration small. Basically, do that old movie magic, make the majority of the city a facade. Give the illusion you are seeing more than it actually is programmed to be.
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This is honestly true of any open world game. Los Santos in GTA V is like, what, 1/30th the size of Los Angeles? (Probably even tinier, honestly). I don't think it's really possible to get around this scale problem since there's a point where you just can't make more and more content/assets for the world, barring some heavy use of procedural generation (which would probably be a good thing for natural landscapes like plains and mountains, but is harder to use for cities and towns, and obviously can't be used for dungeons).
This is what I want out of FF7's world map.
Is it too much to ask?
Man, everytime I look at these screenshots, I keep wishing they have stuck with the overworld of the first one.
I don't think it looks that bad, but the first one was just beautiful.
As for FF world map, Something like Witcher 3 or even smaller scaled like Dragon Age Inqusition would do.
That plus the fact that most of our real world is vast expanses of nothing meaningful to people who don't live there. I'd liken it to exploring the national parks in America, all of which are beautiful destinations that could totally fit in a Final Fantasy game. To really get a good sense of traveling far without the boring 5+ hour stretch of driving between locations in real life, you need to break from reality and show a passage of time and space. Traditional world maps do that quite well, in that you are now a smaller character moving through a large area in a short time. Moving a long distance, exploring a bigger world of which the boring unimportant details are best left to the imagination, or just not shown at all.
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because the ship appears at the harbor and the scale is not 1:1 the airplane looks bigger than the ship, and look at the lighthouse smaller than the yacht
in crisis core you never see the harbor because that would giver the weird perspective this place has, a cargo ship would be massive the harbor bigger the place bigger with only 2 houses and a beach? its not thats the scale in crisis core is not realist, but thats unrealist to what the place has
While sure Luna's "moment" takes place in Altissia, the first scene of Luna we see in the game takes place in Tenebrae, as does most of her scenes in the game, most of which are flashbacks which is how we learn about her from, in addition to how the party talk about her and how the NPCs and radio reports talk about her, and one of the music themes associated with her is also the theme of Tenebrae.
We learn a whole bunch about Lestallum just from listening to NPCs who are always talking about stuff going on and give insight to it, plus from the sidequests you do there and from Iris's on tour too, it serves as a hub for refugees from Insomnia until Niflheim comes to town, there is a whole bunch of background lore given through the sidequests like Vyv's quest, Cindy's quest etc, as well as radio reports and NPC dialog the entire game, which change every chapter.
And party dialog when going to new places always has them talk about it and you get the background info, like Ignis mentions that when Titan caught the Meteor shards landed nearby, and the town of Lestallum was built over it and extracts energy from it, and they revere Titan as their protector as he's holding up the Meteor, you can also see the manhole covers and symbol in Lestallum even have a symbol of Titan holding it up. Like, that's not even hidden dialog, it's straight up mentioned in the main story quest when they're talking about Titan. And not just places like that, even just the area outside the first royal tomb has Cor mentioning it's where the old war took place and you can see a bunch of old rusted Niflheim airships around the entire area.
You even learn of a certain healer who saved the world in the Cosmogony texts you read far earlier than the twist regarding that is learned, same as hinted as to the true nature of what Daemons are early on when you encounter some that talk. Or one where Vyv asks you to go take photos of some Solheim era ruins, which is how you can first learn of it glowing red at night, which leads directly into you then knowing that Costlemark, Steyliff and Pitioss are all Solheim era ruins because they all have the same architecture, and him also having you take pictures of places to do with the Astral war, one of which ties into Ep Gladio with Taelpar Crag having Gilgamesh inside, being the shielf of the Founder King, which gives him that connection in directly to the main twist later on.
Like there is a whole bunch of lore that explains the history and backdrop of the world, it's there, and the DLC episodes give a lot more timeline date specific history lore too because there is the documents Ignis find in Altissia and Verstael's research notes Prompto finds in Niflheim.
Ok dude that still doesn't change that the ship is not part of Costa Del Sol as the ship is its own thing, it's a seperate thing. It's like trying to say Kalm is Midgar because they're next to each other.because the ship appears at the harbor and the scale is not 1:1 the airplane looks bigger than the ship, and look at the lighthouse smaller than the yacht
in crisis core you never see the harbor because that would giver the weird perspective this place has, a cargo ship would be massive the harbor bigger the place bigger with only 2 houses and a beach? its not thats the scale in crisis core is not realist, but thats unrealist to what the place has
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Bioware has it right with Inquisition and Andromeda; large, open zones with towns and cities would work better than single, open maps.
Because it is not necessary and this isn't the thread for it. I just said so.
FFXV's world is empty and bland. It is filled with fetch quests. These are factually true.
Lol, that's your logic, not mine. If you think a miniature world map is the same thing as a fully 3D world like XV, then I don't know what to say.
So you're going to just keep flip flopping between saying you aren't on topic and that you somehow are on topic?
Ok and this is a thread regarding all FF world maps so how is this supposed to be a valid argument against XV specifically when you can literally say that against FF1-9s world maps because the world maps of 1-9 are objectively emptier than XVs open world, and they all have fetch quests in them too, and that 12 despite being sections is even emptier than XV too, and 13 is just empty coridoors. You are trying to bring up evidence specifically against XV yet the very thing you are saying can be used against the other FFs, thus your argument is not compelling enough.
If you think the literal empty overworlds of FF1-9 are somehow more full than XVs open world then you have already forfeit, you absolutely do not know what you are trying to argue and you keep flip flopping these pathetic excuses just to try and distract from the fact that all you've done here is shitpost against XV specifically without any valid reason, as the very thing you are trying to say applies more so to the older FFs. If you want to say XV is shit then just say that, stop trying to hide behind this weak reasoning that fell appart the minute you tried to use it.
I commend you for your in depth responses. Yes, some lore is "there," somewhere. If I had somehow experienced the majority of those examples you gave in my 120+ hr playthrough it would have been nice, although still not nearly enough lore to match what earlier Final Fantasies give you just in the main storyline alone. I wish some of it was actually given to me, or useful to the plot at some point other than a simple reason to move from point A to point B. Oh right, that's another point... ok so those ruins are connected because of the red light, but why does that matter? Why does Titan matter? Hidden lore without any connection to the story is the standard for XV.
The same reason why mako energy is green matters?
Because he's one of the 6 Astrals and Noctis must gain his favour in order to be granted the abilitiy to use the Light of Providence to rid the Starscourge, which is why Luna is waking up the Astrals for the Covenants. None of that stuff about Titan I mentioned is hidden lore, Ignis mentions it during chapter 4 and you learn about the reason for getting the summons favour during the main story, and that stuff about the Solheim era stuff gives you more insight into the history of the world, which is directly related to the main enemy force you are fighting who's main means of power comes from that ancient civilization through the Magitek, which Ardyn gave to Niflheim the knowhow in how to use. You really are overstating what the older FFs were doing storywise. You literally just said you wanted more history and lore, and now you are trying to act like history and lore doesn't matter. It's like saying why does Jenova matter in VII, why does Mako matter, even though that is answered in the game, and the same way why Magitek and the Astrals matter in XV is answered.
As others have said, having played modern FF's and adapting to and liking them I see no point in a world map anymore. Many old fans are having a hard time adjusting to newer FF's but not me. I feel like the world map is more a representation of technical limits than anything else. Like they wanted to convey the sense of a big world, but could never actually render every single thing or it would take up too much space and development time. I don't doubt for an instant that games like FFIX and VI would have much more to do and see in their world maps if the technology at the time allowed.
Regarding future FF's, I personally hope for hub-style open worlds. Like Tomb Raider (Where the loading between areas is hidden by slowing Lara down) or FFXIV (where the loading is like a 5 second black screen). If they go full open world again like FFXV, I hope it's not until next gen and I hope they can maybe bump up the sense of scale and life. I really did like FFXV but at times it just feels so barren and lifeless.
Regarding future FF's, I personally hope for hub-style open worlds. Like Tomb Raider (Where the loading between areas is hidden by slowing Lara down) or FFXIV (where the loading is like a 5 second black screen). If they go full open world again like FFXV, I hope it's not until next gen and I hope they can maybe bump up the sense of scale and life. I really did like FFXV but at times it just feels so barren and lifeless.
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i beieve that for a FFXVI they should remain in the Open World idea like FFXV, but with more cities and all the world. I really liked FFXV, but i would love to explore isomnia, and the empire for example it would be amazing, as other places.
ffxv is good, but could be amazing
ffxv is good, but could be amazing
Not like you're going to get it anyway, so doesn't matter.
Because XV's world map isn't a miniature world, and isn't comparable to old FFs. Going from one town to another takes like 30 secs in old FFs, but in XV, it's a massive empty world and it takes forever to get anywhere. And that empty space is filled with bland and boring fetch quests. It's just terribly designed by Tabata.
This is getting farther and farther from the main topic so I'll drop it for now. Thanks for the in depth responses though, I have a few more things to look out for if I do another playthrough.
I do. I hate feel like I'm stuck in the past. I'm supposed to be the biggest FF fan, but never had enough dough to get all the games I wanted to play.
Okay lol. There are many complaints you can level at XV, but that it "takes forever to get anywhere" is not one of them. Hop in the car and you can get from one side to other in 8-9 minutes flat, less time if you upgrade the car. Unlimited sprinting is pretty easy if you watch Noctis and his animations with any sense of timing.
And let's not pretend fetch quests are new/unique to XV. Every FF has had them.
FFXV's world map is still a world map. You are traversing an open map of the world for the vast majority of the game. That it isn't scaled such that a giant Notis is walking amidst tiny trees and mountains doesn't make it any less of a world map. And it circumvents the "empty open world" problem by giving you a transportation option right off the bat in the car. You can skip right by the relatively empty space, or you can get out and explore at your leisure. This isn't any different than using an airship to bypass stretches of empty terrain in Final Fantasy IV, V, VI, or VII.
Yep. This is a key point that people who say "IT'S JUST LIKE OLD FF GAMES" like to ignore. You spend significantly less time on the world map in older Final Fantasy games than you do in XV. In XV, if you're looking to enjoy most of the game, you'll spend most of it in the flat fields outside of Lucis and a lot of that time is spent moving from one point to another. The 80% game time is a pretty fair estimate. This is not the case in older Final Fantasy games, and it's why XV's "world map" isn't comparable to them in this way for being empty.
8-9 minutes is a lot when you spend a great deal of the game traveling from place to place to do these quests. The fact that you have to play some kind of monotonous timing game to get Noctis to go at a slightly less unbearably slow speed really tells you everything you need to know about XV's traversal options.
Can you stop? Seriously. You're not going to change anyone's viewpoint on their experience. "XV's open world just didn't give me a sense of a journey as nearly as well as previous FF's." "You're wrong." Like that's pretty much what your posts are. You're not going to change how people felt about their experiences.
You write essays for literally every post you come across that doesn't praise XV and I wish I was exaggerating. You're accusing other people of denying reality but you're the one spending an exorbitant amount of time and effort replying to every non-glowing XV post. Thou doth protest too much, methinks.
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Something hilarious about watching a poster with a FFXV avatar try desperately to defend FFXV's honor with post after post of essay length stuff that has nothing to do with the topic. Especially when everyone else is trying to move on and telling him that they're not really that interested in talking about FFXV. Lmao.
Anyway, with regards to world maps in FF, or even in JRPGs in general, I feel that it really depends on the type of FF game we're talking about. A FFV remake? I absolutely want a "world map". Something like Bravely Default? Yes please. But a big modern AAA numbered FF with all the expectations of RPGs competing on that level today? It's not possible. FF has always been a series that leaned on the side of realism when it comes to presentation. Not realism in the sense of being grounded, but realism in the sense of things being more proportion, more to scale, and simply feeling more detailed and less stylized. This is at odds with world maps, and I think the best outcome is not to be too hung up on the idea of a "world map" so much as there being a really good game world in the first place. Having areas that feel distinctive, having a mix of open air areas and interiors which form dungeons, having distinctive settlements and cities. If as you travel across the world, you feel you can divide areas up clearly in your head with each segment of the adventure having something memorable that can be linked to it, that is a success.
Anyway, with regards to world maps in FF, or even in JRPGs in general, I feel that it really depends on the type of FF game we're talking about. A FFV remake? I absolutely want a "world map". Something like Bravely Default? Yes please. But a big modern AAA numbered FF with all the expectations of RPGs competing on that level today? It's not possible. FF has always been a series that leaned on the side of realism when it comes to presentation. Not realism in the sense of being grounded, but realism in the sense of things being more proportion, more to scale, and simply feeling more detailed and less stylized. This is at odds with world maps, and I think the best outcome is not to be too hung up on the idea of a "world map" so much as there being a really good game world in the first place. Having areas that feel distinctive, having a mix of open air areas and interiors which form dungeons, having distinctive settlements and cities. If as you travel across the world, you feel you can divide areas up clearly in your head with each segment of the adventure having something memorable that can be linked to it, that is a success.
In my experience it definitely felt like it took forever to get anywhere. Like that poster said, it didn't take much time to go to a unique specific location in previous FF's. In XV, if it's a new story location it'll probably be a 6-10 minute boring drive. Or you can use a chocobo for like 10-12 minutes. Hunts are usually like 0.6+ miles away from wherever you accepted the hunt which means either: suffer through boring 45 second loading screen, use the boring car, or spend a few minutes on the chocobo. It felt like a giant pain in the ass to go anywhere because you either have to suffer on-foot, suffer with the car, or suffer through a lengthy loading sequence. At least in my experience I never had anxiety over going from Point A to Point B in previous games.
The problem with XV is this: it sacrificed a meaty and polished main story with super high production values, for this open world. So, yes, other FF's have fetch quests too. But other FF's don't have a main story that's as pathetic and short as XV's and other FF's have more variety in locations and have a better sense of an actual journey. So it is a problem when the meat of XV is a bland, empty open world (that's only the backwater part of one country) with a vast majority of side content consisting of fetch quests or hunts, with a few cool optional dungeons here and there.
I can definitely agree with all of the points here. The format being decided upon in advance is definitely far less important than the game itself being good and justifying whatever style is ultimately chosen. I think as you say, modern FF games would feel really odd having a chibi styled world map. You don't see that sort of abstraction in other big AAA RPGs that Final Fantasy is competing against, and you know the Final Fantasy teams have these competitors deeply in mind after all the comments on Skyrim from Tabata. I also don't think the general audience Final Fantasy needs to court will be as welcoming of old style world maps as the franchise diehards that are speaking up in here. I really like your point! It's not what you have, it's how you use it.
Less responding to you and more my own meandering thoughts, though I really like the direction XV's format COULD go in if it's improved, I also think Final Fantasy could benefit a lot from going in the direction XV's E3 2013 trailer suggested it might go. Tightly designed levels with action and spectacle like Uncharted. Heavy scripting. The sort of cinematic flair that made VII such an eye-catcher at the time. I don't know how feasible this is since in the time since XV's re-reveal at E3 they didn't bother implementing any of that, but I don't think it would be a terrible way to go if they were thinking of turning focus away from an open format.
Well, I think it's your opinion, of course, is not it?
(Because if I thought it was an "objective" truth, you'd be wrong)
Because Final Fantasy XV has a crazy and incredible OST. (probably the best of the generation)
And to say the opposite, or to minimize it to the limit of non-existence, seems to me something absolutely wrong for me.
I agree.
In fact, it would be great if they could make Final Fantasy XVI like an Open World in the style of Final Fantasy XV. (Maybe creating more explorable continents, this time)
For this reason, for me, Final Fantasy XV is a good place to start.
While I know many people on the actual Final Fantasy staff felt this way too, I still don't really agree with it. To me it's similar to these same people talking about their battle systems. They want the presentation of their combat to look grand and dynamic, and at one point this could be best achieved with turn-based systems. As the visual fidelity increased, the abstraction of the static turn-based battles was no longer cutting it, and they slowly started moving away from it. I definitely get trying to move past their their previous limitations and getting closer to their vision, but as a consumer who got to sample the products of these old limitations, I think I preferred what I had to what they want to move towards, and still see its value. It's the same for world maps. I'm aware of what they wish to do, and they have valid reasons for it, but I still think these advantages might not be worth their inherent trade-offs.
I guess the big disconnect between me and the developers is that we probably interpreted those old games differently. I saw the design and direction of the old games as a destination, while the Kitase produced era of games made it clear they were mere stop-gaps to them.
Games aren't made with unlimited resources. That's why all game design styles have their strengths and weaknesses, because compromises have to be made. As of right now, with Open World design it is simply impossible to have a great variety of locations, with main story content that's as meaty as one would expect from a JRPG, with the level of polish and production values one would expect from a mainline FF, and without a crazy amount of copy/pasted assets everywhere. Even BotW, the game seen as having the greatest Open World to date, reaaaalllyy doesn't have much in the way of environment variety, with a vast majority of the optional shrines looking exactly the same, low enemy variety, and the story is incredibly basic and short (5 main dungeons, 4 of which are really short and reuse assets).
At least in my eyes, that is the antithesis of FF. FF is all about cinematic flair. Going on a journey with a wide variety of distinct, memorable locations and events. A meaty main story. You can't have that with an OW. You'd have to omit 2-3 of those 3 things.
User Banned (1 week): Repeated hostility towards others after previous warnings and bans, bringing in off-site drama.
Ok so you are flip flopping.
The older FFs being "miniature" is irrelevant when they're still emptier than XV on the overworld and in dungeons, and 12 is emptier too despite being seperated area maps with a 1:1 scale presentation, your logic literally falls appart on the premise of you trying to act like what you're saying applies only to XV. Go and count how long it takes to walk from Midgar all the way to Junon, guess what, you can go from Hammerhead to Lestallum in around the same time, and those dungeons in older FFs are literally empty maps, XVs has actual living creatures inside that feels lived in and the same goes for the field. You have absolutely no valid argument trying to single out XV for these reasons here when you are trying to shit on Tabata for XV having an open world that's "empty" and has "fetch quests" when literally every other FF is emptier and has fetch quests too, your logic literally means you're calling all of them shit if you're trying to shit on XV for those reasons.
Can you stop with your desperate attempts to shit on XV with your flawed understanding of anything regarding the game or FF at all? You literally are denying reality because earlier in this thread you literally tried to act as if FF13 has more cities and towns than XV despite FF13 having no cities or towns that function as cities or towns. Stop backpedaling from what you're doing, all you're doing is trying to shitpost against XV, then backpedaling and shifting the goalposts to just being about your "opinion", saying "XV didn't give me the same sense of journey" is a farcry from the "XV is shit because of Tabata because the world is empty and has fetch quests!" that Exentryk iz spouting and that you're defending him only because he's trying to shit on XV with his flawed arguments, completely ignoring the older FFs are all emptier than XV and they all have fetch quests, so to try and single out XV for those reasons is a flawed argument on the entire foundation of what's being discussed here. You have never once tried to argue in good faith and you can stop pretending you're some neutral 3rd party all the time when you are the biggest troll on the FFXV gamefaqs board and here too in any XV thread, you even had an entire article written up about you because of how much you troll so forgive me if I don't ever take anything you say seriously.
First of all you spend most of your time on the overworld or in dungeons in older FFs which are all emptier than XV is, secondly it is not any quicker to walk from location to location than it is to use the car/fast travel in XV to get to places. It is fully comparable and that's what you people hiding behind nostalgia need to get.
It takes longer to walk from Chocobo ranch to Junon there than it does from getting to Wiz Chocobo Post from Hammerhead, and seeing as you're a self proclaimed expert on XV then surely you know there is outfit you can wear for infinite sprint, or a buff, or you can drive your car which you have from the get go, or you can use a chocobo which you have from ch3 onward, or you can free warp to get around too. But apparently these options don't exist just because you can infinite sprint normally by timing a button press.
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Well, the fact that it is difficult does not make it impossible anyway.
In the end, everyone has a "vision of Final Fantasy", but the actual reality is that Final Fantasy is much more than one can even imagine.
Today we are speculating on what we know from the present and from the past, but Final Fantasy is sometimes reinvented (many more than once has already done it over the years).
So, by hypothesis, it could also adopt a new and novel scheme.
(then, whether it's something effective or not, we'll just have to find out about it for years)
For the rest, there remain only hypotheses and desires on what is known to us today.
(for this perhaps one prefers the linearity of the X or the open world of the XV, but the point is that there is no right or wrong in the choices made, because we can not know how this can best blend into the project that it will come)