I love FFXV but Nomura had basically no input on the game that came out beyond character designs; it spent nearly a decade in development hell and there wasn’t even anything to show for all that time besides a couple of trailers. Tabata took over and his team made it the game it is, not Nomura.
It drives me nuts when people credit Nomura for shit he had nothing to do with.
I’m sorry I just find the idea of paying for padding too artistically repugnant to rationalize in any way and I never want to do anything for money ever again. I dedicate the rest of my life to honest theft
Yeah, 100%
FF15 somehow has the same Nomura stuff about young dudes being friends and the complications that entails that has been in Kingdom Hearts for years, so even if Nomura didn’t do that, Tabata is sure a fan.
It’s always funny seeing people list off all the games he’s been involved with that they like, but somehow it’s never connected to him.
I am on record as having been part of the Nomura hate early on, but the past few years have been a total 180 for me and I love the guy. He’s been involved in a lot of games I really enjoy, so yeah, there’s something there for me.
unfortunately people keep telling us this is what they want, an activity they exist within for months, and I’m not sure what breaks it
If FFVII is Nevermind, and the 8 and 16 bit ones are like Bleach or like the Melvins’ early catalog (didn’t a racist dude work on those games afterall), then FFX is the Foo Fighters at their most Learning to Fly. No thanks.
Xenogears is Live Through This
Ff7 is more like in utero. I am willing to get in a fight about this
I can see it
I really want someone to sit me down with why FFVII’s depressed blond pretty boy with identity and memory issues who’s an amalgam of popular Japanese teen trends is less cringe then FFX’s depressed blond pretty boy with identity and memory issues who’s an amalgam of popular Japanese teen trends from five years later, because I was a latecomer to this series.
yeah, I think it’s cool that he likes to explore those themes. but the only other nomura adjacent game that actually does so thoughtfully and with good writing is crisis core, which tabata also directed. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
I will say I generally like what nomura is going for but he is a complete hack when it comes to execution. I’m not above liking something despite that, but I just have never found anything charming enough about nomura’s work to redeem the hackiness.
for my tastes I just think he’s at his best when he does not have primary creative control. he needs to be reined in. ff7r succeeds because its writing is so thoughtful, carefully planned, and executed with deliberate purpose towards the games overarching themes. this stands in such stark contrast to all the “lol nomura batshit” stuff at the end of the game, and I honestly would not have been able to stand it if the entire experience was full of all that. like it just makes me groan. it’s not good. it doesn’t fit with the tone of the rest of the game. and honestly I’d be fine with there being the same basic premise of rewriting the original canon if it was executed with even an ounce of subtlety or forethought. instead it just becomes this hamfisted excuse for advent children silliness that feels profoundly out of place with the rest of the experience, and the game is only good despite it, thanks to its other considerable strengths.
People were not ready for blitz ball
Honestly though the tropical setting really seems to turn people off. Which is why it’s so hilarious that Nintendo later doubles down on it for the high profile GameCube games, it must have been so hip in Japan at the time.
I don’t really get the extreme ffx hate either, if there’s any thing I particularly dislike about it it is the dumbed down over world map. But those parts are weirdly my favorite aspect of jrpgs which I realize is pretty idiosyncratic
after the 80s and y2k 20-year-interval waves of jpn tropicalism i am very ready to be drowned by the powerful tide once again soon
voice acting
Did the writers suddenly not write the ending of FF7R? Your ability to take “the stuff in the writing i don’t like” and pin it on one person (who, notably, is not credited as a writer here, though he was in the original game) is pretty funny.
all the boots have left the ground
flying boys with swords abound
flaming ki, the energy
one silent tear from you to me
it’s completely because cloud is way more masculine coded, he’s a pretty boy but his hair is spikier and more angular/unkempt where tidus’s hair is softer and more styled, he is carrying an enormous steel blade instead of this weird sword that looks like it’s made of water, and he’s established as this selfish, cocky, highly-skilled badass from the get-go instead of tidus who is clueless, naive, and earnestly good-natured despite himself.
beyond toxic masculinity issues or whatever, for my tastes tidus is also kind of gratingly written, which is the biggest reason I had a harder time getting into FFX. I understand that both cloud and quall have aspects to their writing could be considered grating, but it happens that I find them to be comparatively endearing as a part of their larger personality and growth over the course of the game. a good example of this is squall being so brooding and introverted, and constantly replying to people with “whatever”. it might be grating on its own, but the game never pretends that these things make him cool, ultimately it’s established that it’s all a pathetic defense mechanism that backfires and makes him the butt of the joke with his peers and superiors.
full disclosure I have never finished final fantasy X so idk if tidus gets similar treatment – the only thing I remember is that the actual love story between him and yuna is relatively well written and believable as far as those things go in final fantasy games, and that was the main pinch that kept me interested in progressing. but that alone didn’t make me particularly like tidus that much, or care about his fate, or yuna’s fate, and I definitely lost interest after the scene where it’s implied that they hook up.
Nomura hate is really funny to me because he was way more involved in ff6 (Graphic director, monster design, character design (Setzer and Shadow), SD character design) than he was in 10 or 13(Character designer for both).
smdh so much axel erasure here
I don’t think Cloud is a great character by any stretch of the imagination, and I think the broad strokes of FFX’s narrative are interesting on paper – I like the pilgrimage, I like the dream world, and I like the evil dads. it’s more that the production design of FFX is relentlessly squealing, obvious, one-note (because the way they used the budget had shifted and they couldn’t include nearly as much interesting tossed-aside stuff to obscure that they’d never been all that great at focusing the main narrative) and I can’t stop viscerally wanting all the characters with their cut rate anime line delivery to shut the fuck up because it also reminds me that the game is mechanically tedious from start to finish too, unlike 7 and 9.
(Al Bhed is fun though)
please don’t mistake my criticisms of X for nomura hate, I’m aware that it wasn’t a project he had a ton of influence over. and for what it is, I think it’s pretty good, I’ve just never been able to muster the energy to finish it.
I also don’t hate nomura, but there many things about him that I dislike. is that allowed?
It seems to be that he was responsible for overarching narrative, while the actual interpersonal dramatic direction was left to the co-directors.
(source)
and I should be clear that by “writing” I specifically am complaining about certain overall plotting and worldbuilding concepts, all the nonsense with the whispers being added to the story, and the entire ridiculous showdown with sephiroth and time demons or whatever the hell they are after the motorcycle chase.
and for what it’s worth, even when the director isn’t doing any actual writing, they are typically the one who decides on how everything is going to be executed, and my issues with the end of ff7r are much more about execution than the raw concept (though I’d probably prefer if they ditched that concept entirely), and apparently that specific concept was decided as a fundamental part of the story before any actual production or writing started happening.
when ff7r sticks to the original’s script, adapts it, revises it to make more sense and to build more nuanced relationships between its characters, it shines. even a lot of the other added stuff is generally done very well. but the additions to the lore and worldbuilding and overall concept are the worst parts of it.