Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

I kind of wonder if on the next Jimquisition, he'll do a Konami segment on the Steam port of Yu-Gi-Oh: Legacy of the Duelist - you know, the $20 game with $80+ worth of DLC.

$80? What

A game having lots of money's worth of DLC isn't inherently bad, especially if it turns out that said DLC isn't mandatory to have and really comes down to preference. Rocksmith 2014, a game selling at $40, has over $3000 worth of DLC, but because it's just songs, not all of them's going to be liked by everyone, so they could buy as little or as much as they want to.

Train Simulator, a 45$ game, infamously had 3000$ worth of DLC while on sale. The real DLC cost is over 4000$. It had 2300$'s worth of DLC on launch.

edited 10th Dec '16 10:02:55 AM by Ghilz

Jim Sterling vs. George Lucas.

It really feels like FF 15 was Christmas Rushed and the patches are mostly to put in content that was planned but they didn't have time for, rather than being OK-ish with the final product but fortifying the narrative to a point that fans can accept after the fact.

edited 12th Dec '16 2:13:16 PM by AlleyOop

I find myself thinking about Kotor 2 all of a sudden.

So singplayer games also have to deal with the patch it up, fix it later bullshit? Glad I didn't buy FF 15 and instead bought BF 1.

I don't think he's saying Final Fantasy XV is guilty of doing a Bad Thing- on the contrary, he's cautiously optimistic that they're listening to fan complaints and working out the kinks for things they're shaky about. It isn't like there's a lot of glitches or anything, they're just trying to make it so everyone who has or will have the game gets the most enjoyable experience possible.

It's more that what Final Fantasy XV is doing is on an extremely slippery slope that, if not handled properly by them or other game companies who realize they can do it, will lead to crucial story details being purposefully left out at launch or even entire game stories being rewritten and resulting in cases of Keep Circulating the Tapes for whatever it was pre-patch.

edited 13th Dec '16 6:56:20 AM by NesClassic

He also says he likes Final Fantasy XV and it's the best Final Fantasy he's played in years.

Though Squenix is hardly the first to "patch" their games' story. We all remember Mass Effect 3's expanded ending free DLC. And to a degree, the same game's Leviathan DLC was basically this, retroactively adding plot so the ending starchild didn't come out of nowhere.

edited 13th Dec '16 7:10:12 AM by Ghilz

I like the sound of new characters. We've been giving the game a pass because the premise of "All boys club, no girls allowed!" was met with nothing but scorn and derision in my household. If they add some female protagonists to the mix, we might give it a shot.

Jim's review of Final Fantasy XV

I don't mind the all-boys things under the circumstances of the game's premise (go on road trip, eat at diners, have bromance, and beat shit up) but throwing some female playable characters into the mix is hardly going to hurt anyone.

...that said, I have yet to play the game. So my idea of the premise is mostly cursory.

I'm with Jim on the game having provided a decent justification for why the team is all-male relative to lame excuses like the ones given for Ubisoft or Zelda. Having watched a lot of gameplay videos for FFXV I do think that the team dynamic might've been thrown off by the presence of a female character. There's some dick jokes and a little Gay Bravado, but otherwise the masculinity on display is not at all toxic and it's touching seeing men in platonic friendships be emotionally frank with each other like that. I'm all for queer representation and I can see how people can read certain scenes as legitimate Ho Yay, but personally I find shipping them together No Yay because of it.

Like, men and women do form True Companions in real life with the same level of bonding, and it's not impossible that they could've gotten a female castmate to work and made her One of the Boys had they considered it as a day one thing. But as enjoyable as a lot of the writing is for this game is, it's a big gamble to have from Japanese writers that I don't trust to have handled properly. Not trying to sound racist, because other Japanese writers have done it successfully in the past; I'm just pointing out there's a lot of undeniable Values Dissonance regarding how Japan regard gender roles and FF tends to play Male Might, Female Finesse dreadfully straight so while they're willing to learn they're not particularly progressive either.

Female characters do show up as guest members not unlike your other teammates (you control Noctis 100% of the time though you can perform dual techs with them) and I can imagine a bunch of them are good candidates to head their own DLC chapters, much like the other three teammates are getting.

edited 13th Dec '16 11:57:02 AM by AlleyOop

I mean, I find the "justification" kinda lacking myself. Like, I've been on road trips with guy friends before and had camaraderie and junk.

...But yeah, I agree overall. There's a charm to it I struggle to resist.

I think the key difference here is the former feels more "honest". There's an implicit admission here that they can't conceive of platonic male-female friendships that are the same same as male-male ones, which isn't cool to my Western sensibilities. But it can be chalked up to issues with the greater cultural environment the game was made in, whereas Ubisoft and Zelda's were excuses to cover up intellectual or literal laziness.

Now for something that is a little more traditionally bullshit is their trying to handwave Cid/ndey's design as about her being outgoing rather than fanservice, but they said they would not do stuff like linger on her ass and boobs, which is fine by me personally after the crap we had to put up with from Lightning. That there's a double standard at all when it comes to the male versus female costumes isn't the best (although Gladio's presentation evens it out a little), but I personally don't have a problem with Stripperiffic characters so long as there's no Male Gaze to go with it.

edited 13th Dec '16 11:58:58 AM by AlleyOop

I mean, shipping an only-mostly-complete game with a heavy focus on graphical prowess with a "release now, patch later" policy in place isn't even particularly new to Final Fantasy - it's what killed Final Fantasy XIV so thoroughly that they had to completely redo it as A Realm Reborn under new management (though that story at least has a happy ending, since FFXIV 2.0 onward is rather excellent).

Though from the sounds of things, XV isn't half the mess XIV 1.0 was.

Still keeps me from buying the game for at least three months. It sounds like the game is good and will be great...eventually. I can wait.

If they can port it over to the Switch I might get it. Especially if they have some of the patches out by then.

They've hinted a PC release as well.

I think the PC one was confirmed but that it would come out later, but the Switch is much more of an uncertainty, and people are currently looking to see if it's even possible.

Probably wouldn't be surprised if it did happen.

Maybe add support for the Cloud amiibo (that Nintendo's been rather coy about to this point...).

Eh. I can't really bring myself to care much about how well they justify the all-dude brofest because it's still yet another all-dude brofest in a genre that is over-saturated with all-dude brofests. Like, you could have an absolutely OSCAR-WINNING rationale for the all-dude brofest, but it still wouldn't change the fact that I'm beyond sick of all-dude brofests.

That SquareEnix managed to avoid being deliberately, overtly offensive while talking up their all-dude brofest isn't exactly a major selling point.

edited 13th Dec '16 3:59:21 PM by TobiasDrake

Wait, what? I can't for the life of me remember a party-based RPG, Japanese or not, that didn't have at least some significant female representation amongst their playable characters. Whether it's good representation is something worth discussing, but it's definitely not "all dudes, all the time".