So Square-Enix released a new trailer for what has got to be the longest-in-development Final Fantasy ever, and I gotta say, it excites me tremendously.
Lots of people complain that it doesn't look like a "true" Final Fantasy game, and I can see where they're coming from but if it looks this good, I don't even care.

Getting a very strong Xenoblade X vibe from this, and the world needs more of that.

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT3dyanB3pk

HD version

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_tgs_fi...-15851_en.html

Update:

Gameplay footage (from 22:45):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGYHpvvRHUA

yea, it looks different. all that driving. are they trying to do some kind of open world jrpg? i'm talking about GTA and similar games, just in a jrpg world. i know i'll be playing it, like always.

Yeah, I think they already said it would be more open-world a very long time ago.

And it looks like they're going for somewhat of a road trip vibe as well, which I think is hilarious (in a good way!).

Well the trailer has reinforced my opinion that whether the game turns out good or bad, the soundtrack will be freaking awesome.

i wonder if you get to beat up other NPCs to 'upgrade' your ride

Shimomura for life!

The graphics are very impressive, specifically the largeness of the areas. The character design, dialogue, vocals, enemy AI (player ran up on enemy rubbing against him at 1:27) aren't to my liking at all. (Reminds me of this lame Asian film I watched recently called Commitment where the hero acts so pathetically frail yet inexplicably is an overpowered badass.) The hop over person move in battle is neat. The music in the trailer is okay.

There probably is going to be a lot of driving around in boring environments without any cop car chases. The player is going to be forced to endure hours of melodramatic banter? Will the car radio work or a skip conversation? Deadly Premonition at least had humorous banter on these long drives. Probably can't run over enemies in this game with your car... The open-world while making the world more seamless will increase the jrpg problem of large empty wandering space. Can a huge battle break out anywhere to justify the extra roaming distance? Can enemies track you down for longer distances or can you hunt enemies for longer distances?

Doesn't look better mechanically than Xenoblade or a Monster Hunter game. Will Square brave making this multi-player?

I kind of have to admit that while this game is only one of a handful current gen titles I actually have any interest in I'm still not that enthused about it.

I don't really want "to go there" but to be honest the Final Fantasy brand name just doesn't hold the same clout it did with me a few generations ago.

These feelings have also retroactively lowered my opinion of the older games as well even if they deserve the recognition they've received.

Most interesting element in the trailer to me is the character interaction and dialog during battle.  That could go a long way towards making the battles more cinematic, though there's the question of whether they start saying the same thing over and over after the twentieth battle.  The more real-time action could liven things up and it's no surprise the graphics look nice.

It feels odd to me seeing dudes driving around in a car one scene, sword-hacking dinosaurs in another, and shooting foot soldiers with pistols in the next (um just use the gun in the first place), but this juxtaposition is hardly new to the series.

I expect the characters to be cliched, juvenile and annoying, which would likely be the main thing preventing me from playing, but maybe they'll surprise me.

I really don't know how I feel about this yet...

Pros:

- Music sounds great. If this is an indication of Shimomuras work for this, I'm super excited
- Battle system: has potential. I'm unsure how well it will work but if it's like a Dynasty Warriors style hack and slash with maybe a little depth, it'll be good.

Cons:

- characters look straight out of a Kpop band. Terrible. Final Fantasy XV, not Final Fantasy iDOLM@STER. Fan service is fine in small doses but not like this. And it's definitely eastern fan service not western.
- story. What the hell is this? I don't want some sort of road trip. That sounds dumb as hell
- mixed tech: guns, swords, dinosaurs, cars and gunships. Uh, what?
- combat looks dangerously similar to Monster Hunter and I don't know how I feel about that...

Squex showed off some actual gameplay today, because they wanted to show that the recent trailer was not all CG:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGYHpvvRHUA

(Skip to 22:45 for the FFXV portion, or to 28:15 for the actual combat)

Apparently the environment in this demo is about 70% complete, so it will look even better in the final game/demo.

I don't think it looks anything like Monster Hunter, but it doesn't look anything like Dynasty Warriors either.
It looks similar to Crisis Core and Type 0, with a dash of Kingdom Hearts, which should come as no surprise, since it has the same directors.

I watched the new trailer, and I just can't get down with the character designs. They're the same "let's appeal to teenage girls" Nomura overdesign nonsense we've been seeing since he got free reign, and are a total turnoff for me. Layered spiky hair and zippered clothing may have been cool in 1997, but it's 2014 and Final Fantasy needs to upgrade its fashion sense.

The music sounds good, and I have no particular feelings either way towards the gameplay at this point, but I can't get past the character designs and the little they've shown of the plot points to the same brooding melodramas I wish this series could grow out of. Nomura may no longer be directing FFXV, but he spent eight years on it, and it shows. Hopefully someone I know will get Final Fantasy Type-0 so I can try the FFXV demo for myself, but right now I plan to skip this one.

Heh, reading this just reminds me of Star Ocean 2's battles.

My takeaway from seeing this game in action is that its not going to do much to inspire people about the future of JRPG's.

"That's around 40 points!"

Edit:

However, I think the game got more annoying when they added VA to the ENTIRE game on the PSP.

Man, never realized how bratty SO2 cast was until then....

I was watching the new trailer and yeah... based on looks am I really supposed to care about these clowns? I mean it's like they're rejects from an emo convention. I know I shouldn't judge a book by its cover but come on...

Well, that's just Asian pop culture. I'm not a big fan of it either but I wouldn't expect a crazy shift any time soon. To create more western friendly characters would alienate the Asian markets, too.

The extended demo they showed seemed a little better to me. I'll continue to look forward to seeing how it plays out but this game is probably the only game that could get me to outright purchase a PS4 (at the moment).

Actually, speaking of FFXV have you heard some people are upset that [the player's party] was supposedly announced to be a total sausage fest?

That I don't get... I mean we had Final Fantasy X: Charlie's Angels Edition dripping with estrogen with X-2, we can't have a bromance with FFXV?

Yeah, there's lots of series this criticism can be aimed at, but no numbered FF title (and very VERY few of the non-numbered ones) has ever been a sausage fest, and female characters in the series actually get treated as proper people to boot (except for X-2), so I don't think there's anything wrong with them doing an all-guys cast for once, since it fits the road trip theme.

It has been (and still is) such a frustrating wait for this game - I mean, what could they really have been doing with it all these years? - but I like what's been shown. The car could be a really nice touch, and takes me back to FFVIII somehow... memories of renting a car from Deling City and running out of petrol somewhere in the desert

Dude, this is Square Enix we're talking about. Asking those kinds of questions is dangerous. Your brain might explode trying to contemplate it.

But seriously, I doubt they'll ever be able to give us (or anyone) a satisfying answer to that question.

This pretty much. I would say KHIII as well but I'm never going to get around to playing I or II anyway.

Haven't they said repeatedly at this point that the game has been on hiatus for MOST of its "development" due to moving the developers onto FFXIII and then the reboot of XIV?  Recent interviews with Tabata indicate that full-scale work on it as a focused project has been going on for under 2 years.

Not to act like a kid that wants his candy now (I'm not really that interested in the game because I've really had enough of SE's antics over the years) but... you consider that explanation satisfying? Not saying what you said is false, but maybe they should learn to not bite off more than they can chew or completely botch an ENTIRE game.

I think the only really unwise thing they did was to show off/announce the game so soon (back in 2006, was it?).
If you don't have anything else to show but a CG concept trailer, you should probably not show anything at all.

Shit happens though, and sometimes projects don't go the way you expect/want them to.
Can't really blame them for that.

Pretty much what I was trying to say before going off on a tangent... but really, I think the only reason this game was renamed was to renew interest in it. If it was still going by Final Fantasy Versus XIII people would still be convinced it was vaporware.

Speaking of Shimomura, man, she's going to have her hands full if she's composing for this and KHIII.

However, I do find the idea of a Shimomura scored FF alluring. If we can get something as great (IMO) as Legend of Mana...

I'd say Parasite Eve as well but that score has really lost a step or two with me in recent years.

I wouldn't say KHIII would be that much work, a lot of Kingdom Hearts music, and particularly Kingdom Hearts music over the years, is recycled or already previously composed pieces.  It's not Dragon Quest in terms of recycled melodies but it's not going to require as much work as FFXV will, that's for sure.

There was a lot more revealed on this game on other sites. Essentially the director wants the game to be (i.e. one button) while maintaining a certain flow of movement. They even are copyrighting this system. I haven't played the FF13-Type 0 or whatever its written as, but I read that it is very close to that style of combat.

It will be tough for Japan to make this game. Do people in Japan like to take road trips to draw from this experience? There doesn't seem to be much space in Japan for that type of escapism. It seems more like an American thing.

source and regular updates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XV

Any thoughts on the latest developments? I see the scalpers had a field day with the ultimate collectors' editions.

I have to say I was disappointed by the Stand By Me theme song reveal. It's a golden oldie of course, but I think such a monumental (in theory) game with the Square sound team at its disposal should have had something original and a bit more interesting. I can do without 'Florence' and her obnoxious vibrato.

It's the first vocal song I've liked in like 15 years. General vgm vocal songs are garbage. Everything about it looks incredible, SQEX is killing it lately.

True, if you live in Tokyo, you probably stick to the big metropolitan area the way New Yorkers hardly ever leave NYC.

Might have been inspired by a trip to the U.S., who knows?

The Galbadian desert in FFVIII had to have been inspired by the Nevada Desert; there really isn't any other place in the world that looks like that.

Otherwise, Japan's still a relatively small enough country to be able to drive from one end of the country to the other in a few days time.

This.
I'm SUPER pumped for this game, and I actually felt they made great use of Stand By Me in the trailer. It was cool to hear the Prelude in there as well.

And yeah, as soon as they announced the ultimate edition, my first reaction was "Scalpers are gonna have a field day with this one."
Not gonna plonk down the money for that, but I am severely tempted by the Deluxe edition.

Somehow, I missed this point of the discussion earlier.

I will say the J-Pop theme for FFXIII was forgettable, and Leona Lewis in FFXIII sounded out-of-place, and the ending song by Charice for FFXIII-2 was just like "Are they even trying anymore?"

I dislike "Golden Oldies" - maybe this's just me, but I think they have such a weepy, depressing sound to them, just like old timers who bemoan that things were better back-in-the-day; I DON'T WANT THEM IN MY FINAL FANTASY.

Otherwise, still actually looking forward to FFXV, but I probably won't be getting a PS4 for another few years yet. I hear they're coming out with a PS4.5 or something like that? An upgraded PS4 ALREADY, 3 years after the thing was first released? This would be why I don't buy consoles when they're first released.

It doesn't help that the shit retail store I was working at the time was loud and obnoxious about making us push the new consoles (both the PS4 and XBone) when they first came out.

Everyone ruins everything for me.

There is some irony here.

So it's out. It actually finally happened. And judging from the handful reviews I've read it's not the train wreck I was expecting.

General consensus seems to be that the characters are likeable (despite those designs), the action gameplay non-monotonous and interesting, and the world fun to explore, though the story as a whole and latter segments in general are apparently "a bit of a mess".

I found the EGM reviewer's perspective on the series most similar to my own so that's the one I'm linking
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/reviews/ … xv-review/

I've heard that SE is going to amend the game free of charge down the line to address this. On one hand that's a good thing, it will give the game a second life as you'll probably have to play again to see the changes, but on the bad side it does set up a negative precedent [sp?] that patches may become more than bug fixes in the future.