Final Fantasy XV (previously Versus XIII)

The game is stated to be 40 hours long without side quests.

Also, nomura wanted to do multiple parts, but tabata changed that.

I hope that by "one button combat" they mean something like Batman Arkham Asylum's "Press X to kick ass" combat system.

No, but when you press the button something awesome will happen!

edited 26th Sep '14 7:28:42 AM by Lionheart0

Good Guy SE cares, XV's demo will have English audio.

1 interwebz says Troy Baker is voicing one of the bros.

edited 26th Sep '14 12:28:12 PM by TheAirman

Well, he might as well be in all the games I'm actually somewhat interested in.

100$ says it's the blonde guy.

Prompto strikes me more as a Quinton Flynn. I'm pegging Baker for Gladiolus(sp?). Noctis and Ignis are the hard predictions for me; I can see Matthew Mercer as either of them, but he's already in Type-0, and SE doesn't seem to reuse V As very often for different characters.

edited 26th Sep '14 4:38:26 PM by TheAirman

I'm so sick of Troy Baker being in every game.

Eh, give it another year or two. He's a solid actor and gaming's current leading man, but so was Nolan North a few years back. Sooner or later new talent will pop up and have their turn, just like Troy Baker did.

edited 26th Sep '14 11:27:53 PM by Renewal

"Casual gamers don't play Final Fantasy anyway..."

• delurk* Isn't Final Fantasy a Gateway Series for many people?

I mean, I know my gateway was another JRPG (Lunar Silver Star Story).

Also, he recently voiced Snow, I don't think he'd return in the next game. At least I hope.

He's fine when he actually tries, but most of the time he's just on "grizzled 30-something action hero" autopilot and it's just boring.

People are seriously throwing such a hissy fit out of none of the four characters being a woman? Eesh. What I hear about the combat is more worrisome, but I'll withhold judgment till the demo.

The power of a Broken Base.

Yeah, it is pretty ridiculous. At least it shows how much people truly want/love their female chars. :D

Refreshing change of pace from the norm these days I might say, gameplay is easily the more concerning part.

I mean, if fans don't push for female characters, no one will, and by sheer force of inertia we'll just continue to see the same old generic protagonists over and over again. I mean, just look at the Assassin's Creed: Unity debacle. Especially after how female-driven the FFXIII trilogy was.

But yeah, gameplay is the more pressing concern right now.

I don't really think that's true. Its not like Square has a thing for not including Female characters. I mean we got a game where the entire cast was female and that didn't make all the games after it have a completely female cast.

I think it's just the fear of backsliding. X-2 gets overlooked since it's just a sequel, but the last mainline title (even if it was released four years ago) was half female, and the plot arguably revolved around the women, Lightning being the face of the party and Fang and Vanille being at the heart of the main plot because of Ragnarok.

Don't get me wrong, Square Enix is better than most, but that might be the very reason fans are pushing so hard. Like, when you know a developer is capable of being "better"—for whatever value of better you assign to a gender-balanced cast—even a slight loss can be all the more painful, especially since such developers are so rare.

X-2 and XIII are both Toriyama's work, and I really hated his brand of fanservice. XV seems to be following KH's footsteps with the gender ratio and relationships. I am so not looking forward to the Yaoi Fangirl bait again.

...What brand of fanservice was that? I haven't played through the entire trilogy yet (still on the first game), but I thought Lightning Returns was the only one of the game that could feasibly be considered "fanservice-bait"... And that's really only because the developers outright admitted that they changed Lightning's appearance to be more "appealing" more or less.^note And to be honest, I haven't noticed said changes.

And regarding XV, although I also brought up the "step backwards" thing too when compared to XIII, now that I think about it, XV wasn't really being developed as a mainline Final Fantasy title at first. It was supposed to be somewhat of a Gaiden Game to the XIII saga, until Square-Enix decided to change that for some reason. Because of this, I feel like the casts of both games were probably meant to compare and contrast off each other when they both appeared to be "on the same level", so to speak.

Maybe if XV was developed as a mainline title from the get-go, the gender ratio would probably be more "balanced", but that would depend on a lot of factors (such as whether or not Nomura would still be directing it).

As it is, I'm not terribly broken up about it, but I can see why people are bothered. I'm mostly bugged by the gameplay changes I'm hearing, but will wait until the game's release to judge.

edited 29th Sep '14 10:13:49 AM by Customer

The reason XV is the way it is is because it started out with them letting Nomura do what he wants. Nomura only makes characters female when their role in plot demands it

I'm also very upset about zero female characters and overall lack of diversity. I mean, they all look pretty similar and are already acquainted before the start of the story... For me, the initial meeting and the resulting clash of views/getting to know each other are important milestones of many stories, FF games included. I'm not a big fan of XIII, but at least the cast was varied and characters had a distinct look/personality and different backgrounds.

And about girls - I'm female, I relate to female characters much easier, and I'm used to main FF titles having a few girls each. I don't understand this sudden change, and to be blunt, I don't have much interest in a bro-y road trip (hey, I don't even watch Supernatural). And yes, the actionized/simplified gameplay sounds really off-putting, but the last main title with a battle system I really enjoyed was X, so my expectations weren't that high. I don't have a PS 4 yet, but with all the news about XV I'm not sure I'll buy it anytime soon (most of other games I'm interested in will probably be out on PC anyway).

I've been thinking about the lack of female characters in this game, and I've come to the conclusion that, while there may not be any female party members, that doesn't mean that there won't be any important female characters at all in the story. It also doesn't mean that the main FF games will only have male party members from here on out, if that really bothers you.

Personally, I don't have much of a problem relating to male characters, so that's a non-issue to me. I'd rather have a new FF game with a bunch of dudes than no new FF at all, even if a lack of prominent female characters is irksome on principle.

However:

Agreed, agreed, agreed.

Hmm... This is actually making me wonder about gender diversity in the characters that I draw and write. I'd like to do a thread about that where other tropers discuss the gender spread in their works.

edited 9th Oct '14 5:18:32 PM by BearyScary

Is that Yuri Lowenthal I hear?