Final Fantasy XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase has said that he doesn't view his game as a J-RPG (Japanese RPG).
Odd, considering the Final Fantasy series basically defined what a J-RPG is - usually very different in style to the average western RPG like Oblivion, Mass Effect and Fallout 3.
But Kitase has reasons for his view. "There's a trend these days to strictly categorize games as western RPGs or Japanese RPGs, but Final Fantasy is something that we don't try to categorize as either/or," he explained to Edge.
I wonder if they'll find some decent voice actors in that time? Who am I kidding? It's Square Enix, they don't DO good voice actors!
Seems like a dangerous tactic though. Changing the style might get some new people on board, but the risk of p**sing off dedicated followers of the franchise is high.
Its curious how Wada seems absolutely determined to destroy Square Enix.Lets see :
-360 exclusives . -DQX in the casual friendly Wii. -Buyout of Eidos -Upsetting the majority (PS fans) of their fans of the last 14 years by neglecting the PS3. -Now FFXIII is said not to be a J-RPG .
Whats next Wada ?Putting fire to the offices and slaughtering the employees as they flee ?
you could call a piece of cheese "cedric the omnipotent unicycling gopher force destroyer" it would still remain to be a piece of cheese it will still be a japanese in probably everyway, mainly because the japanese way is to take ellements of other cultures and make them theyre own then build on them i mean elfs and goblins arnt exactly a japanese thing huh? and theres more than a few in jrpgs whole genres gone a bit stale, the biggest problem for me personally is lack of choice you can still have a strong narrative and freedom of choice to make the story progress according to your actions, that is true roleplaying jrpgs are kinda like reading an animated story book with a fighting minigame built in modern jrpgs battles are so long winded now with all the nice graphics and animations spells and summons, battles take forever which can make leveling a chore the tactics involved are no different than the old 16 bit games but the long but pretty animations just make it so bloated
knights of the old republic is the game that jrpg devellopers really need to learn from, it has heavy tabletop rpg influence as well as a nod to jrpgs and is development, which is something jrpgs lack since most follow the formula of ff7 with all the cutscenes and flash presentation only generally more over the top(which is what they seem to see as progression) or they fall into the more traditional ff6 style like wild arms and tales of symphonia still with lots of cutscenes etc but with a more traditional feel, back to the freedom of choice thing though, how many damn jrpgs give you a yes or no question only for one of them to be the right answer and if you say no they repeat the question ad infinitum? some games throw you a curveball and give you a game over but theres NEVER any free choice i like jrps and have a lot of them, but they need to make big changes while keeping things the same, which is never easy
knights of the old republic is the game that jrpg devellopers really need to learn from, it has heavy tabletop rpg influence as well as a nod to jrpgs and is development, which is something jrpgs lack since most follow the formula of ff7 with all the cutscenes and flash presentation only generally more over the top(which is what they seem to see as progression) or they fall into the more traditional ff6 style like wild arms and tales of symphonia still with lots of cutscenes etc but with a more traditional feel, back to the freedom of choice thing though, how many damn jrpgs give you a yes or no question only for one of them to be the right answer and if you say no they repeat the question ad infinitum? some games throw you a curveball and give you a game over but theres NEVER any free choice i like jrps and have a lot of them, but they need to make big changes while keeping things the same, which is never easy
Wow, Kitase is sure odd but I think he might be talking more about appeal than style.
Of course FF has become more western over the years, DQ is the epitome of JRPG still though.
Chainsawgerbil, you may actually like The Last Remnant. Whilst still more restricted than WRPGs it's a lot more free than most JRPGs. It's pretty nonlinear with loads of sidequests and whilst you may not have big grand choices it does give you some choice. But in one chain of occasions it is a case of a right answer and a wrong one.
Why? They make good turn based JRPGs which I like on the other hand I hated their attempts at real time in FFXII, FFX-2 and Children of Mana (though it was fun for a few hours) the only real time they got semi right was FFVII Crisis Core and Infinite Undiscovery. Even their active time was under par for their older games. Seriously SE make goot traditional JRPGs so I don't know maybe they should... make some!
I can honestly can say I hope Infinite Undiscovery becomes lost and forgotten. One of the worst games I have every played and the only one I threw down within 20 minutes and left in disgust. Not the kind of Square-Enix level RPG I expected. Looking forward to FFXIII though, seems to me the fighting is a bit similar to the recently released Star Ocean, without the freedom of running around.
i quite enjoyed last remnant for a while, lots to do and explore which i really liked, the fighting was a bit long winded tho, played it for ages loving it, then all of a sudden i just couldnt be bothered the fights later on just seem to drag on for too long and require too much effort, its not that its hard, its like when you have to beat the 7 or however many there are camps around the tower those battles are like an hour long or something if i remember and theres like 7 or however many there are of them, i got a bit further after that and id done all the sidequests available before that too but i just got fed up with the repetition and like i said i loved it up till then, only 2 rpgs ive abandoned in 7 years and they are last remnant and valkyrie profile 2 and ive played a hell of a lot of them might go back to last remnant, but we shall see
and the beggining isnt good on last remnant but its not that bad, if anything i actually really liked the fact it was very different and i liked it more and more untill all of a sudden i had a forest gump ive had enough running now moment
infinite undiscovery was ok, fully finished it and that was before they released the downloadable shop items, which wouldve saved me a hell of a lot of time it was an 8/10 for me which pretty much all the rpgs on 360 so far fall into apart from enchanted arms which for me is about a 6,last remnant which is a 7 and lost oddysey which is in 8-9/10 territory depending on my mood theres just so few jrpgs this generation ive played all of them, so the more they release the better itd be nice to just be able to just buy the good ones than just being thankfull to get one full stop
Ha, my sentiments exactly. But if it is the truth then I may give it a rent, if I can remember that much in 2 years. Depending on how much it isn't like a Jrpg.
People are talking like the JRPG genre is sort of taboo now. If you don't like the genre, then don't play it. There are millions out there who do enjoy playing these games. I'm not really one of them, apart from enjoying FFXII alot.
XII had the best voice work. Are you mad. IT had the most annoying cast ever. actually scratch that. 2nd worst. Infinite undiscovery takes the crown for having a whiny bitch for a main character and most of the other characters being stilted as f**k.
In my mind X had the best voice cast in final fantasy land. Mainly for john dimaggio. Bender can do no wrong in my eyes.
FFXII had brilliant voice work! FFX had the best? Tidus was annoying as all hell. Vaan was a hellavalot more upbeat compared to other Final Fantasy lead male characters - people seem to forget this. Square-Enix even said they wanted to depart from the older games and make a more upbeat character.
The only dodgy voice in FFXII was Penelo. Balthier has one of the best English voices for any character ever - superbly done.
I'm guessing by that comment that you're not english. What englishman actually sounds like that retarded Bondalike. Worst english voicework ever.
Only topped by his vapid bunnygirl assisstant. Then again XII is my least liked Final Fantasy, anyway. A complete lack of battle system pointless Monster hunteresque side quests and a return to FF tactics setting with none of the charm or characters from it.
It was just a mishmash of ideas taken from other games and mixed together in a bath. Its moonshine i tell ya. moonshine and not the kind that gets you hammered and then wake up surprisingly hangover free. No this ain't no pachine. Its the kind of eastern european swill that makes perfectly reasonable people wake up to find they've slept with thier sister. Such is my dislike for this game. You'll play it then realise that its not going to end well.
I'm sorry MONKEY but if you think that X had the best voice acting you must've just drank a bathfull of that moonshine of yours, it was terrible, the two who played tidus and yuna were embarrassing at times, even bender couldn't save it!.
So do you think theat the return to turn based combats a step backwards then?
Seeing as i'm guessing you liked the real time system in XII.
I'm not a big fan of turn-based combat. I loved how the combat system was set up in FFXII personally.
I read that XIII was going to have a mix of the two. You can more or less choose who you want to engage. Seen various videos of the combat in XIII, and I don't mind the look of it so far.
I've been itching for a decent RPG/JRPG (whatever) since completing FFXII - so hopefully it'll quench my thirst.
its funny how people say that jap rpgs are stale and stilted then as soon as they do anything different people whinge like hell about the change, i really liked ff12, 10 was ok 9 was ok , ff8 put me off of playing any rpgs gor about 5 years until i played knights of the old republic, ff7 was awesome (but implemented many features that have benn magnified by other games that i really dont like) 6 was awesome and so was 4, didnt play 5 till a long while after it came out on ps1 so its very hard to judge, but i thought it was crap ff12 is a take it or leave it game marmite game, and err its a made up world they can have any accents they want. and i actually know someone that talks almost exactly like balthier, at least he wasnt a mock c**kney guvnor, cor bloimey best thing about 12 is you can kind of choose who you want as the main char, i went for brachus or whatever his name was, as i could relate to him better than a squeeky lil mallrat aladin wannabe
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