I get the impression that many of you have this sort of distorted view of what the world maps in the older FF games were really like. Boot up FF7-9 again and actually play them. They're large expanses of nothing to slowly trod along, with random battles to slow you down. They have an abstract sense of scale and an abstract sense of time. Going the wrong way and having to walk back to a town/car/chocobo in FF8 was just as frustrating as it was in FFXV when you had to get somewhere without your car or your chocobo license ran out. The only real difference here is the amount of time it actually takes to traverse from point A to B in a world like FFXV -- it can take an extremely long time without a car or chocobo.
But to everyone arguing that the world is empty, i'm going to have to disagree with you -- FFXV's map was far from empty, in fact it's probably the most content-riddled world map of any FF game i've played in the last nearly 2 decades. There is alot of random shit to do in FFXV's world map that you'd never bother with if you just went from Objective A to Objective B. And I mean actual things to do like dungeons or optional bosses, not just people to talk to or fetch quests.
I think the main issue with FFXV is that its missing optional STORY locations and landmarks. There's no Wutai, Ancient Forest, Deep Sea Research, Chocobo Forest, or Daguerreo in FFXV. If you find an optional area in XV, despite how intricate it is, 99% of the time you're going to be going through a dungeon or fighting a boss....except for that 1% time where you don't (Pitioss Ruins) which pretty much everyone can agree is the best dungeon in the game, me personally I think it was the best dungeon in the series.
The problem with FFXV's world map isn't that it's contentless, but that it's content predictable....but this has nothing to do with the fact the game is open world. We could have had many little locations as engaging as the Temple of the Ancients or Ancient Forest from FF7.
Pitioss Ruins proves that FFXV could have had DRASTICALLY different content than what the main game provided to us. Probably not as crazy as Pitioss, but at least something less streamlined -- asking the player to make a few jumps, avoid obstacles, suffer heights and long drops, ect. This stuff likely would have failed spectacularly if combined with combat (probably why Pitioss has none) but Final Fantasy has never mixed combat with platforming anyway....hell Kingdom Hearts doesn't even really mix those two and that's a game where you can double jump and fly.
Midgar wasn't very expansive at all -- the reason it feels like it was though is because although you're technically doing the same things gameplay wise in most of the locations, from a story aspect, you're constantly doing varied things. Escaping Shinra, escorting Aeris, going through the markets, infiltrating the don's place, passing through trains, sewers, ect ect.
All of that was possible in FFXV...it just wasn't designed that way. XV was the first Open World FF game, but no FF game has been designed that way for years -- X and XIII were extremely linear A-to-B games, and while XII had TONS of stuff to do, it was designed just like FFXV in the sense that you're either doing a story dungeon, or fighting something optional -- nothing inbetween.
Ironically, the only recent Final Fantasy game that puts as much effort into optional story building and varied content as the SNES/PSX era FF games is Final Fantasy XIV.
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But I wouldn't really count FFXV out on that note, because although the main game was pretty streamlined as far as content variety, the DLC has been surprisingly varied in its approaches, and has the kind of things I haven't seen in FF since FF6-FF9.
Alot people rag on FFXV for its random gameplay deviations (Leviathian sequence, Titan sequence, Train sequences, Ignis babysitting, Chapter 13 ring gimmick) but those are the sorts of things that used to make Final Fantasy exciting to experience. It's a catch 22 though. Because now that it's less common to see throughout the game, it's more jarring when it finally happens...but it's less likely to happen more frequently because fans constantly bitch about it.
But to everyone arguing that the world is empty, i'm going to have to disagree with you -- FFXV's map was far from empty, in fact it's probably the most content-riddled world map of any FF game i've played in the last nearly 2 decades. There is alot of random shit to do in FFXV's world map that you'd never bother with if you just went from Objective A to Objective B. And I mean actual things to do like dungeons or optional bosses, not just people to talk to or fetch quests.
I think the main issue with FFXV is that its missing optional STORY locations and landmarks. There's no Wutai, Ancient Forest, Deep Sea Research, Chocobo Forest, or Daguerreo in FFXV. If you find an optional area in XV, despite how intricate it is, 99% of the time you're going to be going through a dungeon or fighting a boss....except for that 1% time where you don't (Pitioss Ruins) which pretty much everyone can agree is the best dungeon in the game, me personally I think it was the best dungeon in the series.
The problem with FFXV's world map isn't that it's contentless, but that it's content predictable....but this has nothing to do with the fact the game is open world. We could have had many little locations as engaging as the Temple of the Ancients or Ancient Forest from FF7.
Pitioss Ruins proves that FFXV could have had DRASTICALLY different content than what the main game provided to us. Probably not as crazy as Pitioss, but at least something less streamlined -- asking the player to make a few jumps, avoid obstacles, suffer heights and long drops, ect. This stuff likely would have failed spectacularly if combined with combat (probably why Pitioss has none) but Final Fantasy has never mixed combat with platforming anyway....hell Kingdom Hearts doesn't even really mix those two and that's a game where you can double jump and fly.
Midgar wasn't very expansive at all -- the reason it feels like it was though is because although you're technically doing the same things gameplay wise in most of the locations, from a story aspect, you're constantly doing varied things. Escaping Shinra, escorting Aeris, going through the markets, infiltrating the don's place, passing through trains, sewers, ect ect.
All of that was possible in FFXV...it just wasn't designed that way. XV was the first Open World FF game, but no FF game has been designed that way for years -- X and XIII were extremely linear A-to-B games, and while XII had TONS of stuff to do, it was designed just like FFXV in the sense that you're either doing a story dungeon, or fighting something optional -- nothing inbetween.
Ironically, the only recent Final Fantasy game that puts as much effort into optional story building and varied content as the SNES/PSX era FF games is Final Fantasy XIV.
Edit:
But I wouldn't really count FFXV out on that note, because although the main game was pretty streamlined as far as content variety, the DLC has been surprisingly varied in its approaches, and has the kind of things I haven't seen in FF since FF6-FF9.
Alot people rag on FFXV for its random gameplay deviations (Leviathian sequence, Titan sequence, Train sequences, Ignis babysitting, Chapter 13 ring gimmick) but those are the sorts of things that used to make Final Fantasy exciting to experience. It's a catch 22 though. Because now that it's less common to see throughout the game, it's more jarring when it finally happens...but it's less likely to happen more frequently because fans constantly bitch about it.
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