Board 8 > No Final Fantasy VII remake until they make an FF that is better than FF7

(+) Yeah! (+)

http://andriasang.com/con1ny/wada_on_ffvii_remake/

"If they were to release a 7 remake right now, the FF franchise would be done" - Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix International

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But there were games both before and after VII that were better than it.

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A full FFVII remake would be a glorious note to go out on, especially compared to the whimper of spin-offs and unwanted sequels (I don't think a topic was made on this board about Toriyama's plans to continue the XIII story, was there?).

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Toriyama should be quarantined into making only FFXIII stuff so he doesn't mess with anyone else's work, so that'd be neat.

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From: HeroDelTiempo17 | #002

But there were games both before and after VII that were better than it.

Obviously this is an extremely subjective thing, but for my money, they definitely have not.

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Basically, we're not getting a FF VII remake for the next five, maybe even ten years.

And I really don't understand what Wada is saying there.

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Does anyone ever truly understand anything Wada says?

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I'd rather see FFVI get a full on 3d remake.

>_>

What?

<_<

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From: Nevest | #008

I'd rather see FFVI get a full on 3d remake.

>_>

What?

<_<

It's not like the FFVI remake thing isn't mentioned almost half as much as the FFVII thing. Nothing to be sneaky about. >_>

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If you get the feeling that this statement belittles Square Enix's current development prowess, you're pretty much spot on. Wada admitted that at present, the company is not making Final Fantasy games that exceed the quality of FFVII.

Haha, wow. I, of course, agree with him, but I do feel kind of bad for all those who genuinely liked FFXIII. This is really a kick in the face.

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Frankly, Square's problem is this:

They don't know how to develop games anymore.

There is no reason for the development times of FF13, or worse: vs 13. A 5+ year development cycle reeks of bad management and incompetence. Gaming tastes change over time and there is no way in hell a game that has taken so long can follow consumer preferences. Furthermore, SE has shown that the results produced from such long development times haven't been up to snuff. At best, you can call their recent attempts "okay", maybe "good", but not enough to justify the costs and especially manpower hours.

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"One of these days, I'm gonna find a loophole my friend." - Man in Black

I would say they also have a problem with making quality games in general these last several years, but that's, again, highly subjective.

You're spot-on about their essentially inarguable overarching problem, though, yeah. Up until around 2010 there were still people up in arms defending the lengthy Versus development schedule, but two years later? Yeah, they've shut up. Or rather, they've gotten vocal.

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From: Jeff Zero | #009

Haha, wow. I, of course, agree with him, but I do feel kind of bad for all those who genuinely liked FFXIII. This is really a kick in the face.

Yeah, I mean, I really liked ff13, but now that some japanese guy I've never heard of before (who I guess is an important guy at SquareEnix) said he thinks it's not as good at ff7, I just feel STUPID for liking it!

From: Delseban | #013

From: Jeff Zero | #009

Haha, wow. I, of course, agree with him, but I do feel kind of bad for all those who genuinely liked FFXIII. This is really a kick in the face.

Yeah, I mean, I really liked ff13, but now that some japanese guy I've never heard of before (who I guess is an important guy at SquareEnix) said he thinks it's not as good at ff7, I just feel STUPID for liking it!

That's not what I meant at all.

What I meant to say is that it's a kick in the face as in a betrayal to those such as yourself who genuinely enjoyed the game. Not that you should suddenly feel bad for liking something you enjoyed.

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And Yoichi Wada has been the CEO and overall head honco at SE for a long time now, so it's not just some random schmuck as far as the industry is concerned. It's the guy at the top of the SE totem pole, who is approving these projects and then making comments insulting the fans of recent games, and in turn insulting his devs.

It's just kind of s***ty, that's all. As someone who really disliked FFXIII, I still feel bad for the folks who made it when I read that.

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still hyped for versus

also yeah ffvi (and v) getting the ffiv treatment would have been great

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From: LordEmbok | #016

still hyped for versus

also yeah ffvi (and v) getting the ffiv treatment would have been great

IV is a lot more important over there in Japan, and as Western taste has shifted, I guess they've just gradually figured, "f*** it, when it comes to remakes we're going to focus on our native player base."

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I really don't see how it's a betrayal. So this one guy doesn't like ff13...and that's a betrayal because he worked on it and he admits it was bad?

Except, first of all, ff13 was worked on by hundreds of people, and most of the things I like about it came from people other than this guy, whoever he is. (I'm sure he's someone really important, but whatever)

And second of all, I don't see what is so anti-ff13 about that statement. Isn't he saying that he thinks NONE of the FF games made after 7 were as good as 7? So the same statement applies to 8, 9, 10, and 12.

It's also not exactly a huge insult. "Not as good as 7" doesn't mean "bad", it just means that 7 is better. So I don't see why you are taking this as an indication that he thinks 13 was a big mistake or that it was a bad game. He's just saying it wasn't as good as 7, and you know what, he's probably right, because no game since 7 has ever gotten the kind of reaction that 7 did. There is nothing wrong with admitting that. It's not an insult to the games that came after it, because it's pretty obvious that they were all missing a special something that 7 got right and nothing since then has.

Ok, so he's the CEO. That means he probably didn't do ANYTHING to make ff13, other than approve it. That's how it works, right? Each game gets its own director who is in charge of everything? And they supervise the making of the game, and this guy, being the head of ALL of SquareEnix, supervises that guy who is supervising the creation of the game? So he probably had very little to do with the creation of ff13 or the creative decisions involved. So why should I care if he didn't like it? (Which of course he never said, he just said it, and also 8 to 12, weren't as good as 7)

I really don't see how it's a betrayal. So this one guy doesn't like ff13...and that's a betrayal because he worked on it and he admits it was bad?

No. He's the bigwig. He's the President of the Company, and he's saying, "we don't make good games anymore, yeah, I know." It's like Obama coming out and saying, "America sucks now, yeah, and every single politician under me is just patently inferior to previous generations." I mean, I realize it's a little extreme comparing an entertainment company to a first-world superpower, but this isn't Tetsuya Nomura we're talking about. Wada doesn't make the games, he oversees the entire company, and he's saying that what his employees do now is not as good as it used to be.

Except, first of all, ff13 was worked on by hundreds of people, and most of the things I like about it came from people other than this guy, whoever he is. (I'm sure he's someone really important, but whatever)

And second of all, I don't see what is so anti-ff13 about that statement. Isn't he saying that he thinks NONE of the FF games made after 7 were as good as 7? So the same statement applies to 8, 9, 10, and 12.

It's also not exactly a huge insult. "Not as good as 7" doesn't mean "bad", it just means that 7 is better. So I don't see why you are taking this as an indication that he thinks 13 was a big mistake or that it was a bad game. He's just saying it wasn't as good as 7, and you know what, he's probably right, because no game since 7 has ever gotten the kind of reaction that 7 did. There is nothing wrong with admitting that. It's not an insult to the games that came after it, because it's pretty obvious that they were all missing a special something that 7 got right and nothing since then has.

Alright, so we took this pretty differently. That's cool. You're right that "not as good as VII" means "VIII, IX, X, were not as good as VII". I can certainly see where you'd arrive at your conclusion! However, in recent years SE has been getting much, much more negative publicity than it ever did back then, so to me I'm reading it as more of an up-to-date thing, where he takes the opportunity to subtly, and very Japanese-business-like, admit that the company has suffered in many ways since that era.

I'm looking at it after the past few years of history in particular. You're looking at it as more of an actual FFVII thing than I think it's really about. Mind you, I've read what this guy has said in media outlets for like a decade; I do feel qualified to gauge real Wada-speak from what it sounds like he's saying. When it comes to Japanese execs, he excels at that corporate double-speak, and I feel like I have him pegged.

But again with that 'subjective' word -- I can't escape it tonight. It's open to lots of interpretation. Let's just agree to disagree?

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Don't really feel like responding to that second post since I feel like we're looking at the relevance of Wada's position from two completely separate perspectives, anyway.

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Well, that's not too strange. Nintendo still doesn't believe it has made a better Zelda game than Ocarina of Time.

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well if they're looking at majora's mask as an expansion rather than as an entirely new game i guess that makes sense

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Is it really that hard for them to bring back what was used to creat FF VII? Has all the good talent left the company? If so, it would certainly in their best interest to pay a premium to hire the best talent out there so they can have the competitive edge.

FF X was just as good as VII if not better, and XII had awesome gameplay, so it's interesting Wada thinks VII is their best FF.

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Long live Saint Seiya!!

Wada likely believes that because most fans of FF believe that. FFVII hasn't been topped for people since it released, same with Ocarina of Time. Those are groundbreaking, influential games that helped shape their era. FFVIII and FFIX have their fans, but they still live in the shadow of FFVII for most people.

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Like ZFS said, he's mostly just going with public perception. Delsaban and I have taken our discussion to AIM, and we're both in agreement that it's all about 'dat perception. No game in the series catalog has shaped gaming like VII did, regardless of what one personally thinks about it.

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I'm not too sure why him saying they haven't made a game that exceeds FF7's quality is suddenly a slap in the face to people that like FF13. That sounds like he's saying he thinks none of the recent games have been better than 7... Not that the recent games have sucked.

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From: StealThisSheen | #027

I'm not too sure why him saying they haven't made a game that exceeds FF7's quality is suddenly a slap in the face to people that like FF13. That sounds like he's saying he thinks none of the recent games have been better than 7... Not that the recent games have sucked.

Which was basically Delsaban's argument, yeah, and I totally get that. I just think it's not really kosher to the recent games' devs to go around telling people (allegedly; Delsaban pointed out how biased that article is presented...) "yeah, man, VII was the peak," given the negative press in the West that more recent SE (and Japanese RPG in general) efforts have gotten.

To me that's ultimately the issue here, is that in the wake of the weaker response to games like FFXIII, he'd make a comment like that. It just seems vaguely like a d*** move, mostly to the devs, not the fans. The fans aren't gonna suddenly go, "oh, this schmuck thinks XIII wasn't as good, I should care!" so much as the devs themselves might be like, "s***, man, we did our best."

Do I think their best was for me? Nope, it surely wasn't! But a lot of folks did like it, so it wasn't a total bust or anything.

But yeah, I'm probably reading wayyy too much into this, if the FFXIII fans are coming out and telling me it's chill, then it's probably chill!

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That happened when IX came out.

It happened again when X came out.

Get over yourselves, SE.

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From: HeroicSomaCruz | #029

That happened when IX came out.

It happened again when X came out.

Get over yourselves, SE.

I thought it happened when Xenogears came out, actually, if we're not limiting ourselves to just the series. But certainly not when IX and X came out, although they're both 9-or-higher excellent titles for sure!

Anyway, I'm picking some friends up from the bar. Wish me luck.

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ZFS posted...

Well, that's not too strange. Nintendo still doesn't believe it has made a better Zelda game than Ocarina of Time.

That's because there is no Zelda game better than Ocarina of Time, although The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess got extremely close.

barreldragon88 posted...

FF X was just as good as VII if not better, and XII had awesome gameplay, so it's interesting Wada thinks VII is their best FF.

A lot of the YouTube guys I like to watch LPs from either dislike FFX or view it to be overrated (one of them prefers FFXIII to FFX, although FFIV is his favorite game of all time...). Although one of those YouTubers considers FFX to be his 2nd favorite game behind Secret of Mana...

Though most of the YouTubers I follow consider FFVI to be the best FF, or at least better than all later FFs.

well it's a good thing lms was here to clear everything up for us

youtubers

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square is awful now so I guess this means no FFVII remake ever

other genres have evolved a lot more than jrpgs. Jrpgs used to be the only genre on consoles that actually told good stories. Thats changed. Wrpgs found a home on consoles, and even the basic action-adventure and sandbox games have found ways to add story without sacrificing downtime of gameplay.

Basically, in order for square to make a comeback in the usa, they need to change up the genre. Stuff like that doesn't fly in japan though.

Square would be better off creating a high production turn-based RPG rather than trying to change the genre into another but not as good. People still love old RPGs, and even the people wanting a FFVII remake aren't clamoring for an action-based battle system, so if they stayed with what they know, created a fun and interesting world with good characters, they would end up with a much more well received game. They don't need to make JRPGs something they aren't, they just need to make them enjoyable again.

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Back. Ugh, one of my friends threw up in the car. Good think it's not my car.

Ahem, anyway. I agree with ZFS! Too bad they don't agree with ZFS. >_>

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i think most of gamefaqs would agree with that. well, i definitely do, at least.

The problem with FF is from the beginning they had a reputation of radically redefining the genre and they got so far away from what people want.

Furthermore, almost all of their veteran talent has left. Sakaguchi and Matsuo (and with him, Sakimoto and Yoshida) were catastrophic blows. They've disbanded their music department, now hiring their composers freelance style. I think of the old guard, they only have Kawazu and Itoh and god knows what they have been doing for the last 6+ years. Now they have to rely on hacks like Toriyama to make things right.

On the Enix side of things well... Enix was never a developer. They were only a publisher. All of their games were made by other people and most of the studios that made their games are now defunct for the most part. Quintet is especially a grievous blow on that side of the company. The developers that handled Dragon Quest, let's see:

Chun Soft: Pretty much only makes Mystery Dungeons games now.
Heartbeat: Went defunct after making DQIV for PSX
Level 5: They have a lot on their plate these days and make their own IPs, such as the beautiful Ni No Kuni games.

DQX is going to be the first DQ to be developed In-House.

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Erugios speaks the truth regarding the talent exodus. I know I'm a broken record about that, so I actually have improved in that I only post in like half these inevitable topics now! But yeah, so true. When Sakaguchi, Matsuno, Takahashi, Kato, Sakimoto, Yoshida, Mitsuda... when they walked, the company really went down the drain for me.

Happy for the folks who feel otherwise, of course, but yeah. 'Tis a shame, but nothing good lasts forever.

If Itou ever releases anything again, it might be good. That I stand by. It depends on who he gets to work with, but yeah. There have been rumors that he's secretly spearheading "FFXV" for a long-ass time now -- years -- because he hasn't been mentioned for a long time but we keep getting bi-yearly (lol Japan) confirmation that he's still on the payroll.

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Itoh is one of the senior-most employees in the company. The last game he's worked on as a director was FFXII, which he was pulled in to finish up for Matsuo, due to his nervous breakdown.

I refuse to believe he hasn't been working on a serious project since then.

As for Kawazu, whom I mentioned earlier. What the hell has he been working on? The last major game listed for him was The Last Remnant, which despite technical problems (and let's be honest, his games tend to have those in spades) was a pretty awesome game. What the hell is HE doing.


Ito is an A-list designer for sure. Kawazu... probably B or maybe C list. But god do I love how off the wall his designs are. Some really crazy ****.

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Yeah, I completely agree about both of them. It doesn't make much sense.

Even with FFXII, in terms of PR, I always hear about Daisuke Watanabe's contributions over Itou's, but I guess that's because Watanabe was directly handling rewrites and new scenes and stuff, whereas Itou was the overall secondary director. But still, Itou is like... what is he, a complete black hole of zero charisma or something? I don't think I've really ever heard much from him directly, even by Square standards of hush-hushery.

Kawazu... even worse in that regard, but I guess he isn't quite as 'high-profile' (even though apart from technical problems, I'd definitely give him a golden ticket of pure stellar radness when comparing him to, say, Toriyama.)

Ah, it's so nice to be able to talk with someone about these individuals; even among nerddom, most people on the net are like, "XMFD, Jeff Zero is talking about these Japanese dudes, who the f*** cares, it's all Square Enix." It's like, no way, man! There's a mountain of difference between the quality of the titles Itou has dropped and the quality of the titles Toriyama has dropped, IMO! And of course there's a joke to be made about the quality of the title Matsuno literally dropped, but I'll refrain.

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Square would be better off creating a high production turn-based RPG rather than trying to change the genre into another but not as good. People still love old RPGs, and even the people wanting a FFVII remake aren't clamoring for an action-based battle system, so if they stayed with what they know, created a fun and interesting world with good characters, they would end up with a much more well received game. They don't need to make JRPGs something they aren't, they just need to make them enjoyable again.

there will always be a market for turn based rpgs even in the US, sure. But they are very slow paced, especially with menu load times, random battle load times, etc. The market for them isn't as large as it used to be, back when FF7, FF8, Tactics, etc were all among the highest selling games each year. Sad, but true.

If square would have a good story combined with an effective way to tell it, then yes menu based and turn based gameplay could work. But most gamers these days don't want the downtime that many jrpgs have, especially since the thing jrpgs excel at (stories) are becoming better on other genres.

I really do feel that final fantasy needs to have some more changes and not "go back" if they want to improve

I mean most of us here love the DS dragon quest games because of how basic they are, but those games haven't sold for **** in the USA.

Those are not issues that come with turn-based gameplay. Load times in general can be removed, and random encounters aren't a necessity anymore. You can still streamline and optimize a turn-based battle system for modern times, be inventive with how it plays. There's a hole there that Final Fantasy can easily fill. If people want Skyrim, they'll play Skyrim. If they want Final Fantasy, they want something different.

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Those are not issues that come with turn-based gameplay. Load times in general can be removed, and random encounters aren't a necessity anymore. You can still streamline and optimize a turn-based battle system for modern times, be inventive with how it plays. There's a hole there that Final Fantasy can easily fill. If people want Skyrim, they'll play Skyrim. If they want Final Fantasy, they want something different.

fair enough, but thats still changing the game design, which is what i am saying that the FF series needs to do....

I haven't played Final Fantasy XIII, but I believe both Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy X were both better than Final Fantasy VII. I also feel most modern jRPGs are lacking compared to the SNES/PS/PS2 eras. The last jRPG that blew me away was Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne, that game was nearly perfect.

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It's... probably not good for the CEO to admit that.

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Seems to me that FF is such a divisive series these days, there's just no way square is going to live up to all the expectations on the next one. There will be disappointed people regardless.

Maybe the best thing for square to do is to just take a break from FF development for a while. That way they can put the FF people on smaller projects where they aren't expected to make the game that square apparently failed to make for 15 years. And who knows, without the FF pressure on them, maybe they can actually make an interesting game.

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Rad Link 5 posted...

It's... probably not good for the CEO to admit that.

Eh, that is how Japanese gaming companies CEOs act nowadays

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