Ffxvi Game Cutscene

english one i watched

I'll give it some credit. I'm happy that it's set in a "swords and sorcery" world. And even if it's been done to death, at least summons and crystals are staples of "Final Fantasy".

But (and this is just personal preference) that gameplay does nothing at all for me. Yes, it's fast-paced and flashy and "cool", but it looks so unsatisfying. The attacks don't interact with the enemy at all. If not for the dozens of numbers flying out in every direction, I wouldn't even know the enemy was being hit. No slowdown, no screen shaking, no meaty sound effects.

That looks like Street Fighter :o

Does anyone else think all the modernization of the JRPG genre has detracted from its enjoyability more than it's enhanced it? In the early days JRPGs had a heavy focus on the storytelling element, because when all you had were 2d sprites with limited animations a game's story and music were the only way to convey a meaningful experience to the player. Conversely, with todays rich 3D graphics engines and theatre level cinematics the focus is more on the world itself than it is about the events happening within. The cutscenes are breathtaking, and watching them is immensely satisfying in the here and now, but the memories they create aren't long lasting. The experiences are more forgettable, possibly because they're so similar to all the other media we see on a daily basis.

The trailer looks impressive as hell, but when I see it all I can I think is "This looks and feels a lot like final fantasy 14".

RPGs have somewhat lost their way since the early 2000s. With their decline in popularity(actually more of an incline on the sheer number of folks purchasing video games, leading to RPGs being a niche rather than a market definer), a lot of experimenting has happened, and not a whole lot of it has done what the companies/creators hoped.

The companies used to have the creatives at the executives' table, whereas now it's mostly divided. The video game market in general used to demand extreme creativity and style, but now that sales can cruise on names alone, and there aren't really creatives at the executives' table, then you get corporate over reach interfering with creativity, which has more or less been deemed unnecessary to facilitate sales of games. At least, you know, for large scale old stakes games. It's why a lot of indie titles are getting high praise, due to the creatives being part of the business decisions/them being passion projects.

So, of course, RPG quality has suffered. Narrative quality has suffered, as it isn't a priority(with many gamers complaining that storylines shouldn't be compulsory to experiencing a game even in an RPG).

I mean, we live in a world now where younger folks believe nothing should be exclusive(not even romantic love), but especially not entertainment. Everything should be able to be enjoyed by everyone, diluting all experiences and destroying all sense of actual community/relationship.

Plus, there's just more of everything. RPGs in the 90s were coming out just as quick, perhaps even more quickly than games these days, but they were few. They were new and the only ones of their kind at the time. The more time that passes, the more RPGs people make. Different people with different standards of quality and desired modes of storytelling. There are oh so many "spiritual successor" type RPGs trying to piggyback off of nostalgia or critical acclaim. Shallow takes, all. Broad brush strokes trying to please old turned based preference audience as well as trying to please new action oriented audience, pleases neither and gets described as clunky.

*takes a breath*

Anyway, yeah, I agree with you Melliny. XVI does reek of XIV. It's got XIV's director as a producer and creative consultant with a lot of his staff in and around it, too. I'm flexible about gameplay, so that part of it doesn't bother me too much. The spinning sword flips cutting Titan guy's arm reminds me of Tales of Symphonia with a move Lloyd can do. Hopefully it will feel more weighty when the battle sound effects aren't minimized for trailer hype themes.
I'm interested in its warring states story. The dead lands and all these royal/government figures. There's a lot of intrigue for me, more than for XV, that's for sure. (or any of the 13s).

there will be a mode for ATB you can toggle or something similar.

i don't know how people are mad about the staff of 14 half of them were originally from XI business Division 3 is still the same division i bet u half of them worked in XI or at least the seekers of adoulin we should be happy for them,its just they have to Modernize FF the age of turn based is gone no sakaguchi no Tanaka.

if you want to play the classics most of them are now remastered on steam with different versions and more to come with FF tactics and Tactics ogre and Romancing saga minstrel song they actually only missing Treasures of Rudra (which was never released outside of japan. also Live a life is not steam if we do than we have the full package of old games outside of super mario rpg.

For me, it doesn't have to be turn-based to be a good RPG, but it has to have meaningful RPG elements to it. I want level-ups to feel good, I want to customize my characters to my play-style, I want layers upon layers of strategy.

What disappoints me about the gameplay shown in the trailer (in addition to the lack of impact of the PC's strikes) is that it doesn't showcase any of that. Even the numbered franchise has games that span each turn-based, ATB, and real-time gameplay. But what separates the ones I like from the ones I don't are how much strategy they employ.

And that isn't to say there won't be meaningful choices upon the full release of the game. But my gut is telling me it's going to be pretty simple to make way for the flashy combos.

This again is a byproduct of the era of games we play in. Because the graphics are so integral to any modern game's design many systems have moved from menue based to real time, and the result is a more forgettable experience.

How many hours could you spend customizing your characters equipment and abilities in games like final fantasy tactics, ogre battle, or the like. How much of chrono trigger, secret of mana, or final fantasy 6's gameplay relied on the battle mechanics developed around the limited graphics for the time. In Chrono trigger we got the dual and triple tech system, which was an ingenious battle mechanic that has never bene replicated since. Although in Chrono cross the element system with the grid was pretty satisfying too. In secret of mana you had the item and weapons wheels, which fit into the real time action style of the game. In Final fantasy 6 you had the esper system, which was really just an elaborate way of letting any character gain magic experience to learn spells...but the way they implemented it was pretty satisfying.

Compare the memorable characters of yesteryear with those of today. Think of Locke, Terra, and Celes, or Chrono, Lucca, and Marle, or the mana knight, sprite child, and the girl (isn't it funny how her official name was just that.... "the girl"). How do they differ from the characters of today? Compare them with Vaaan, Balthier, and Penelo, or with Lightning, or Lucis, Gladiolus, and Ignis. The personification of the latter group is done with an avatar that's meant to look and feel "real", as opposed to the sprites used in the former group. But which group is more memorable, relatable, and likeable? I think most would agree that trophy goes to the earlier cast.

The difference is in the storytelling, the systems, and the mechanics. Worldbuilding is fantastic, but it's all theatrical and akin to watching a really long movie. How often do you go to the movie theater and experience a great movie, even to the point of being blown away by it while you watch, only to leave the theatre and think back on the experience later that week and think "that movie was great, but it was a lot like a dozen other titles I've seen recently". The relatability and memorability of the cast is overshadowed by the modernization. I understand why they need to use the technology available to them, but in the process I think some of the player experience is lost.

Action combat can work well in an rpg, one of the best examples being Nier Automata. Which is great.

However the combat in that looks and is really fun, the combat in ff16 does not look good at all.

Exactly. Look at how satisfying that looks. You feel every hit. The sounds and cinematography make the impacts meaty, and the speed of the weapon and inertia of every strike give weight to it all.

I don't care how fast and flashy your gameplay is. If it doesn't have the proper impact, it gets stale really quickly.

You meant jrpg? Rpg as a genre is still pretty alive to me. But classic jrpg formula is getting niche, precisely because their target audience's taste is niche.

I always feel jrpg takes entirely too long to finish. In an era that most gamer has a LONGGGG list of games waiting to be played on steam, the idea of having to invest 50 hours of my time to finish ONE game sounds daunting. Since games are cheap anyways, I'd rather play ten 5hr games or five 10 hr games than one game that takes 50hr to complete.

For the devs, creating a 50hr game also means they'll either 1) spend 5-10 times more development time on one game and lose money or 2) use recycled content, slow pacing, back tracking to drag on the play time.

They frequently has to do 2), which lowers the quality of the playing experience. But they have to, since any game that's 20hr long or less will be bombarded with negative reviews for being "too short". So we have this one target audience that wants something drastically different from other group.

Further more, I think the fact that jrpg is supposed to have "narrative" and "strategy" makes them hard to excel in any aspect.

It's hard to create a top tier narrative, and creating a top tier strategic gameplay is equally hard. In today's gaming market a lot of successful devs only focus on one aspect and excel at it. You have narrative only games like Telltale games or Quantic dream games. For strategic players there are many roguelike deck building which requires extreme level of min-maxing without having to read endless dialogues to play the game.

So if I want a good narrative game I can just spend 10hr of my time on a narrative focused game, if I want to test my min maxing skill I can play games that focused on that too. I don't need to play a 50hr long jrpg that tries to do both but not top tier at either aspect for such experience.

In terms of narrative, I often feel jrpg story suffers too much because the gameplay creates a lot of limitations. Your MC always starts weak but ended strong because of progression system. Your MC always has different class companion that can fight, only because the battle system needs multiple characters in battles. Why can't we have companions that can't fight at all? All the conflict ends with a fight so battle system can be used.

that makes story predictable and boring tbh. But narrative only games never suffers from any of these problem and has a lot more flexibility on story telling.

Overall, I feel the 90s jrpg target audience is divided in today's gaming market. On one hand you have this group of people who wants 50hr long classic adventure that has both story and gameplay, on another hand you have people like me, who used to play jrpg but eventually stay away because I want a faster, more focused entertainment experience.

And unfortunately, what classic jrpg player wants is exactly what people like me don't want and vice versa. This is why this genre is declining, as some series either disappear or forced to change. Except maybe really classic series like DQ.

Anyways, just my 2 cents on this topic.

And I'm over here feeling cheated if I can 100% the game in less than 100 hours

My patience has gone down the drain in recent years, maybe just too much to do. It feels quite overwhelming now to see a RPG that takes over 50+ hours to platinum or max out. Might just be us getting older? But then you look at Gen Z and they are all ADHD and bopping from game to game if it takes more than 5m. Maybe we as a society are just getting too used to fast paced 24/7.

I just feel like that trailers did nothing for me in term of me wanting to get FF16. The world looks pretty and interesting even if its derivative of game of throne but the characters in it isn't. We don't know what the conflict is aside from, it seems like, empire doing empire thing. Like they haven't made me connect with any character or hate anyone, so whose side should I root for? Its like House Bracken vs House Blackwood, they are gonna fight, why do I care?

I feel like the protagonist is supposed to be the little Phoenix Dominant kid? whose's father? brother? nephew? cousin? former roomate? just died in front of him? But what injustice has been done here? As far as I can tell, if the situation is flipped around, the guy that died wouldn't hesitate to kill the other side either.

Even if the world seems super duper interesting, if you can't get me to care about any single character then its meh. This is like their 2nd trailer now? But its still all spectacles, like yeah we know SE makes very pretty game (although the graphic in this one seems a downgrade from FFVIIRE), but we know nothing of the story, empire empiring, dominating dominant to use in battlefield, very generic and more of a setting than a story.

What drive the conflict here? We don't know. The voice acting is pretty meh as well and does anyone remember any specific lines any of the characters were saying? Did we get a feel for any of their personality? The villain seem cartoonishly villainy, goes on a monologue about how the peasants are very replaceable, I find him more amusing than abominable.

The latest jrpg I played was Xenoblade 3. I wasn't actually planning to play it, heck I didn't even know it was coming out until it was already out for over a week, I really like Xenoblade 1 but watching X's trailer didn't made me want to play it either. And Xenoblade 2 just feel too animey in the wrong kind of anime that made me feel cringe even if I wanna know the story. So I thought I'd do the same thing with 3 that I did for 2, just watch some of the cutscene on youtube to learn the story but skip the cringy parts.

But one of the first cutscenes I watch was this one



And after that I know I have to play the game. Cause even if I already know how their story ends, I wanna know their journey to get here, to spend more time with them cause I care about them already.

The same thing actually made me want to play FFVIIRE, Zack survives. I guess FFVIIRE have an easier time than FF16 since I already care about the characters from the original game but knowing the story is different this time (and the theory that the original game is just a vision Aerith have in Midgar at the start of the game), made me want to play so I know what happens to these characters.

The last Real Classical JRPG was Lost odyessy and it flopd because it was an XBOX Only Game, even though u can access it now through XBOX store but its too late, i think there will never be a real Sakaguchi game After Lost odyessy and the Last story (action Rpg),
everyone just had a ps2 or a ps3, and there was a fight between the CEO of PS and Sakaguchi, or something like that its our fault that we did not support Mistwalker game, Sure blue dragon was average but god damn lost odyessy is even better than playing FF7 during the Ps1` Era, its a better story than FF6 too. no one cared and that rpg style is over now we have the classics on steam atleast.

I am sure when there will be a technology to Emulate lost odyssey everyone and their moms will talk about it.

Combat aside, and just from a story perspective it's really hard to make a JRPG (or any story driven game really) today.

Twitter and social media ruined entertainment honestly, and it's gotten SO much worse over the past 4-5 years. Writers and the companies employing them are afraid of outrage over anything now, it's so bad they have to hire people to pre-screen their products for outrage before they move to each step. Activists / journalists nitpick everything on twitter and everyone is ready to jump on anything at a moments notice, outrage is now one of the easiest and most profitable things to write about in relations to games too.

If you have a romance in the game, it's picked apart in every way possible, if you have a male character saving a female character it's outrage farmed as sexist, if you add a female character she is outrage scanned for her appearance and personality, if you have different races and one race is good at one thing or has more INT or something that's incredibly unacceptable now, if you have an evil race in a game you have to show they aren't all evil or you get people making real life comparisons between groups of humans irl and orcs / fish people / whatever, if you add an antagonist you can't make them anything but a straight white male and they can't have any quirks or scars or disabilities or you trigger activists for all those things. "oh are you saying people with scars irl from accidents are evil now Square Enix?? is that the message you're giving people hmmm??!"

This is why remakes are so popular, people don't really complain if you just retell an old story where a knight saves a princess in a castle from an crocodile, or update old characters with big boobs and revealing clothing (actually they do but it's way less aggressive).

I feel sorry for JP developers, they have to sell their games to our clown world countries to make their games profitable. You see JRPGs with low budgets or that are made for the JP market are still true to what they used to be, anything that is intended to be sold in the west though is sanitized with bleach at every step. Any new AAA FF game surely is, this is why we can't have great stories anymore. There are too many limitations put on the writers, to not offend anyone.

No, I mean all RPGs. At least ones with narrative focus. The term JRPG is largely a pejorative codifier. Western RPGs aren't any shorter or significantly better by any stretch of the imagination. They just have better marketing here with less localization BS, and more mainstream appeal due to being in line with other western fantasy media. I guess you could also say that the battle systems in them are varied, but that would not be from any design wonder bread, and more because they got into the game market during the, "all gameplay is transitional and varied" phase of RPG making, anyway.

Eastern RPGs really suffer from a lot of them not being made with localization in mind, even if they're 100% expected to ship overseas. It stems from the culture, but also them being a dominant market force for the 90s and early 2000s. Why change or limit length when you don't have to? And as you can see, they aren't too good at changing with the times, which is one of the reasons why action RPGs that were already focused on gameplay over story outsell them (though it's more to do with modern tastes). It's pretty much what you said, but the reasons for why are different, actually.

Definitely also sorta see it how Draylo briefly described. There's a huge swathe of gaming that revolves around speedy completion now, with entire events for speedy completion(speedrunning AGDQ etc) being mainstream now. In general, long grindy games don't fit in that mold very well, and are put down by that entire community if there isn't an exploit that allows them be shortened to a few scant hours. Or if cutscenes aren't skippable. Narrative is more or less devalued at every turn, and left to be disseminated by video essayists with nice accents, rather than thought about or enjoyed by the actual players.

It's understandable that you'd be tired of the old format, you played it for decades after all. It's just the new generations disparage it because that's part of streamer/video essayist culture now, rather than them having experienced it firsthand.

Anyway, I'm getting rambley windbaggy. It's interesting to think about though and ruminate on.

I just realized another thing that irks me about the trailer.

In Devil May Cry, the world, plot, and protagonist are all kinda weird in a cool way. Dante's entire character revolves around style and his gameplay reflects that. When you see Dante flipping around performing 99-hit stylish combos, it makes sense.

But here? They spend so much time making this epic-sounding world founded in realism but with hints of magic. All these scenes of kingdoms and armies, showing people cut down in a single swipe with a sword. Even the protagonist seems like this big hero guy... And then all of a sudden he's flipping around and shooting lasers like he's in an Anime.

It's like if they used the serious story of Final Fantasy Tactics, but then the gameplay itself played like Disgaea.

He's a supernatural being who channels primal spirits through his body. I'll take "cutting down normal soldiers in a single blow" as a given.

I don't disagree with that, but that also has nothing to do with what I said. My point is the disparity between the world established in the trailer and the gameplay established in the trailer.

And he's not even "cutting down normal soldiers in a single blow", at least not in that trailer (I haven't seen much else). He's not being practical and reserved with his powers, he's styling on enemies like a goofball.

Persona 5, which is a turn based game has sold over 7 million copies and is a fairly unimpressive looking game to boot.

https://www.gamesradar.com/persona-5-makes-up-almost-half-of-the-series-lifetime-sales/

Why does Square think turn based games are bad again.

Because 7 million in 6 years isn't good enough for them? (I meant it's good, but not good enough for FF)

With the budget of FF they definitely want more sales.

Elden ring sold 16.6m 4 months after release. Cyberpunk 2077 sold 20 million 2 years after release. Witcher 3 is a 2015 game and sold 40m copies so far. Breath of the wild sold 27m in 5 years. All of them are arpg or action adventure with rpg element.

Which market is bigger in AAA scene is quite obvious>.>

Sure hope by "unimpressive looking game" you mean graphically because persona 5 is one of the best rpgs released in the last 10 years. The length of some of these games along with the genre make them sell less. Not to mention, long narrative driven turn based rpgs are not as marketable on social media.

Yeah I just meant graphics, since that's what eats up the budgets.



Elden Ring sold so well because George R. R. Martin was attached to it as a meme writer, and the LOTR franchise has a massive audience that will buy anything linked to him (I would bet most of the people who bought it can't even play it). Cyberpunk sold so well because a) they released it on everything, even on things that can't run it b) the marketing was incredibly good and c) Witcher 3 built in customer loyalty. Witcher 3 sold so well because it's on perma sale and has good word of mouth.

FF7 remake has sold 5 million copies (and cost way more than persona5 to make) only after it was ported to lots of platforms and they still bloated those numbers in some way no doubt, and many of the people who did buy it are not happy with it. FF7R is visually amazing, but not a classic at all in the way the original is and barely worth playing more than once or twice at most. This means the sales of future installments are not going to be good, which means they are going to lose money overall. The story has been butchered, the action combat is annoying and actually a reason to not play it again, the MASSIVE padding to turn the game into a installment game is infuriating, the installment system is just pure greed and destroys the game as a serious product. Tetsuya Nomura ruined a classic game.

FF7R is a prime example of everything that is wrong with modern Square Enix honestly, they are also completely incompetent at production since they spend way too much on making these games and have lost touch with their fanbase.

FF15 only managed to get high sales numbers because they cut the price by 1/3 permanently, spent a ton of money on adding content after launch (including modding tools) and had the game on sales often, I picked it up for £12. They were practically throwing it away to get the high sales number meme out. I would bet ff15 made little to no money in real terms, and was a flop.

Final Fantasy is not in the same league as Breath of the Wild cause they don't know what they are doing anymore and don't understand the franchise. FF16 will be the exact same thing as ff15 and ff7r (but not as pretty), it will most likely sell poorly, get a massive price cut in a month before being ported to everything. They will also no doubt try to guilt trip FF14 players into buying it or have some kind of deal to try leverage them with some ingame earring giving some boost if you buy 16 or something.

The problem with Square is they are so fixated with graphics and fail at near everything else, including story, music and gameplay lately. They seem to be fixated with the western audience, that they don't really understand and so are moving away from what people want from these games. If the change to action combat and sanitized story telling actually worked nobody would be complaining but it's not working and they are still doing it.

They recently came out in a financial report and said Japan is no longer a good market for game sales, and they have to now make the western market their primary focus to be successful. Meanwhile Splatoon 3 sold 3 million copies in 3 days in japan alone and looks like a Jet Set Radio. Splatoon 2 sold well over 12 million copies worldwide since launch and cost a tiny fraction of what FF games cost to make.

CEO needs to be fired, and some of the people in leadership roles need a reality check.

Ff16 looks legit bad, and everyone can see the fail coming and they don't seem to know how to fix it. Every PR release is a massive L where they end up making excuses why it sucks instead of giving people reasons to be excited about it. muh budget, muh zoomer audience, muh time.

You have a lot of opinions about the market, but honestly it feels like you are using your own genre preference to make assumptions. None of your "analysis" is data driven, only personal preference based.

Just FYI, SE has been doing global publishing for years. I am pretty sure they have plenty of sales data to backup their decision making, with a marketing department and professionals. I am also pretty sure they understand the market better than me, you, players and smaller dev/publishers, with all the sales data that only they have access to.

Of course, knowing the market is not the same as making a game that sells. But the idea of RadialArcana knows best but SE doesn't just sounds mind blowing lol.



Wait what, 16m people buy a game only because George R. R. Martin was attached to it??? Hohoho. If it's that easy Why don't every game dev hire him to write something meme-ish in their game and sell 16m too?

Pretty sure Elden Ring sells well because "Hidetaka Miyazaki".


That's not how you compare sales, you need to consider the time it takes to reach that number.

FF7 remake, released in April 2020, sold over 5m copies by August 2020.

Persona 5, released in September 2016, sold 7.22m copies as of Sept 2022.

If you want to compare the sales more fairly, you need to compare FF7RE sales in 2026 v.s Persona 5's sales now.

Also based on the 2020 data I think by the time FF7re is released for 6 years it should surpass 7.22m sales.

Also I am not sure what do you mean by FF7RE is on a lot of platforms. It's only on PS4/PS5/PC but Persona 5 is on switch/PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox series X/S/PS3/PC. If your argument was being available on many platform is why people buys FF7RE then the same applies to Persona 5 too.

Overall I think whenever you interpret sales data you insert way too much of your personal preference and read data incorrectly as a result.

You LIKE turn-based RPG, I get it. That doesn't mean if SE make their next AAA title into turn based RPG it'll automatically become the next Elden Ring.

Turn based RPG has not die. Plenty of AA studios or mobile company still makes them. It's just the devs don't want to spend AAA budget on them because the return of their investment is lower. If they want to make turn based games they use lower budget for higher ROI.

I fail to understand why FF needs to be turn based since plenty of other SE titles already are.


FOR WHAT lol. Because they didn't make turn based FF games? Last time I checked SE has been doing fairly well from 2019-2022 financially. If I am a share holder I see zero reason to fire them based on performance. You need to come up with a better reason before making such demand.

Elden ring sold well because of the game of thrones guy?!? Lolololololol



It's a freakin souls game. It's good. It sells.

A multiplatform Souls game to boot. Persona 5 was exclusive for years and years. Of course multiplats have a higher sales potential.