But you explicitly claimed that the Star Wars elements were used as a managing element for an out-of-control narrative. I can’t tell if my responses are poorly worded, because you responded to my request for evidence of your claim about the development process by citing ostensible parallels between the game and Star Wars (parallels which, it should be noted (and which seems to have not been noted, judging by a couple of subsequent posts), I never denied; I simply said that they are insubstantial*).
I also don’t think anyone has yet delivered an adequate response about what the game’s narrative otherwise would’ve been before it got mishandled, especially when all of the plots of Matsuno-involved games I’ve played have been fairly hard to follow, bordering on incoherent at times. XII simply is the largest game of them all (I say this as a neutral observation, knowing that it can be made into a negative), meaning that the plot density is diffuse compared to a game like Vagrant Story.
You realize that the judge designs are from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, right? And that the judges’ voices are “distorted” only in the sense that their voices are muffled (as they should be, since the judges are wearing helmets)?
This has been a plot point since the second game. It is entirely possible that it was then culled from Star Wars, but by now the FF series has gone on long enough that the anti-imperialist trope can be seen as series-separate.
This is a generic narrative trope. The donning of enemy uniforms itself was a trope used in several prior FFs.
*I’m willing to concede the other points, but again I would reiterate that the parallels exist only inasmuch as establishing principles. Once the initial observations are made, everything diverges. Fran’s arc has nothing to do with Chewbacca’s (Chewbacca really has no arc), nor does Ashe’s with Leia’s. Etc.
I think that FFXII succeeds as a sensual object. I’m not trying to shield it from criticism, but I get the sense that I approached it from a different angle than a lot of other people here. If you don’t dig stuff like the menu design, the sound of equipping a piece of armor, the wolves’ designs, if you don’t like reading the bestiary for its mannered tone, if you aren’t crazy about the soundtrack, if you don’t really care about polychromatic voussoirs, you are probably not going to like it and be inclined to call it a bad game. It felt very different for me to play than the other Final Fantasy games – in none of the others did I ever make a point of wandering around the world for the sake of it – and it ended up being the one I spent the most time with.
I’m virtually certain that (as I said in my first big response above) that FFTA only exists in the world it does as what was intended to be the first part of a large IVALICE ALLIANCE branding effort after they gave the main franchise to matsuno, but then XII shipped a year and a half later than planned and wasn’t very popular anyway. I don’t think anything can be meaningfully said to be “from” FFTA in this context; it was all the same planning meetings.
also,
I don’t think this is remotely true, though it seems to be somewhat contentious in this thread – as rye and I both pointed out, there are times when FFXII tries to use FFT-style storytelling (e.g. to show the judges operating on their own), but it’s so weird and clipped in light of Matsuno’s earlier work that to say that it’s “simply the largest game of them all” and not “profoundly, dissatisfyingly fumbled” is really bizarre to me.
like, there’s almost a total absence of character development of anyone, no vormav talking to delita, no reed flute, no feuding goltana and larg, etc. even if your memory is of FFT being somewhat overcomplicated it’s not even in the same ballpark.
I agree that the menu design and the sound design and the bestiary are all fantastic though!
No no, I get you. I’m just disagreeing with you in a couple ways: One, who needs evidence? It’s speculation based on the finished game. Could be wrong, but it’s a reasonable inference. Two, I happen to think that the parallels are, in the case of this particular game, significant. Distasteful even. Like, eye-rolley.
But I do like it! As a sensual object! I like all the stuff you listed! Honest!
That might be because it’s not something possible for any of us to know, because none of us are Yasumi Matsuno. I think the general lament is that based on his past material we knew that he could do better. (I do not agree that the plots of his games are hard things to follow.) Until the day Matsuno talks about this himself no one is going to know what his original ideas were.
I should really finish my FFT script patch at some point but it was getting way too in-jokey
I made “bart rudvich” into “art vandelay” because he was an importer/exporter, and turned kletien into “chretien” and made him obsessed with free trade agreements
then, thankfully, I created some kind of memory leak in the first battle of act 3 that I couldn’t fix, and had to stop
Question, what is actually different in this game from the original gameplay wise? FFXII is my personal favorite of the series and I was not gonna bother with this because I thought it was just a HD graphics update or what ever.
Even with the job system the game is breezy, you think it would make things a bit harder.
I suppose the higher-level hunts will provide something more of a challenge later on.
I don’t hate the job system as much now that you can select two.
so far the updates to the art assets seem nice and pretty respectful of the source material. it is fun to play this game on a large television again.
I appreciate how much effort this game goes to give you a sense of place in the world. I just realized you can see Nalbina from the over the cliffs of the Estersand.
yeah the license grid is pretty OK in general, certainly compared to the sphere grid, but the gating of equipment in this game (particularly with how little it affects your overall attack power) seems like a bad compromise, I’m not convinced that was the original plan.
Definitely this. Although, at the time, I found it amusing and refreshing that these serious, highly political events were happening in the world stage with this intracate web of characters and factions. Meanwhile you and the other kids were doing dumb rpg stuff looking for crystals in dungeons
The summons are associated with a zodiac sign each.
I have to say that while the job system still seems like a poorly applied patch on top of the original game whose benefits escape me, the fact that you can now have 2 jobs per character makes it 1000% more interesting. Still not as good as the ability to respec your jobs at any time, but pretty decent nonetheless.
i kind of appreciate that vaan/penelo are homeless orphan poors scraping together a hand-to-mouth living who accidentally stumble into geopolitics and stay the course not because they’re at all invested in it beyond what limited insight on world affairs their life station would give them, but because it’s clearly a better living than being a homeless orphan poor
or at least it’s not any different in practice. see opening tutorial
the cast of ffxii is pretty cleanly divided along class lines, i think that’s interesting
I will read the rest of the thread later, but to whoever says that upscaling a PS2 version of the game in PCSX2 is comparable to the HD remaster… nu-uh
That UI never looked so gorgeous
Also, @parker as they mention in the video, the remaster was done by the same studio that did the (pretty excellent) FFX/X-2 remaster, so I’d expect a PC version in 1 or 2 years. This was ultimately what made me decide to wait for the PC version, because I’m really itching to play this again and I would have jumped on the PS4 version day one, but I prefer to have it on PC.
Played the early tutorial parts. Love that fast forward button. Every turn-based jrpg should have that feature. Hell, every game should have this feature.
I did the Rogue Tomato hunt and was on my way back to the city but they had the gate blocked off. Kyte was like “They’re sealing the gate for the next 182m29s! Why so specific, you ask? Beats me!” and I was like why is the gate sealed for 182 minutes and-oh it’s because the game is still downloading. Duh.
So I stopped for the night but I feel like I could still go grind up some levels for a couple hours and kill that dinosaur a few times while I wait for the gate to open.
Haha. That’s kind of an awesome place to put the ‘still downloading’ cutoff point. Probably a cool potentially unintended side effect is to show the player that they can stay out there and explore if they want, too. I wish I had done more of that in the early parts.