Tag Archives: Final Fantasy

Nintendo enters the digital age with ‘Nintendo Network’

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Nintendo has finally decided to catch up with the competition by introducing Nintendo Network. Nintendo Network is practically everything fans have dreamed of. It allows users to set up separate accounts on the 3DS and Wii U to purchase downloadable content, communicate with other users, and perhaps even buy digitally distributed software. Theatrhythm Final Fantasy will be the first game to implement this system by providing downloadable songs from the Final Fantasy series.

This is something Nintendo should have did a long time ago, but doing this after so long puts into question if Nintendo really knows what it’s doing anymore. I feel as if Nintendo is that old guy on the block who’s doing this just to be cool with the kids.  Nintendo is never like that though, they always try to be different from everyone else so I’m sure there will be some feature that will set Nintendo Network apart from Xbox Live, Playastion Network, and Steam. Also, how will this work on the 3DS with the already established friend codes? Iwata says that it is already “built into the design of the Nintendo 3DS”, so I’m guessing they’ll exist simultaneously somehow.

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Final Fantasy Versus XIII lives and has cutscenes galore

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In an interview with Famitsu, Tetsuya Nomura confirms that Final Fantasy Versus XIII is still in the works. Apparently it’s looking pretty damn good too, better than the trailer shown at last year’s conference due to advances in real time rendering. Nomura goes on to say that Versus will have a mix of real time and pre-rendered cutscenes. Square Enix loves to make pre-rendered cutscenes, but so far Versus has twice as many real time cutscenes than pre-rendered ones. Specifically, the ratio of real time to pre-rendered cutscenes is 7:3. Don’t worry about the few pre-rendered cutscenes that there will be though, according to Nomura they won’t interrupt gameplay.

While we still lack a release date, it is noted that the next time we see Final Fantasy Versus XIII we’ll see the game itself running on a genuine console. All of this is definitely good news, but all of the focus on graphics sounds like Final Fantasy XIII all over again. Sure the game will be better looking than child birth but will it be, dare I say it, fun? Will it live up the the hype that has built up since its announcement in 2006? Who knows, we’ll …

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After pressing start: Final Fantasy VI and VII

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(After Pressing Start is a new series running on Nightmare Mode every Friday by resident narrative guru Tom Auxier. It focuses on beginning, on the stories that happen directly after pressing start, and how those stories influence the arcs of video games. A variety of games he’s totally never talked about before will be featured. This might be sarcasm.)

Leaving Dragon Age: Origins, I felt I’d go to a couple classic titles I’ve played more times than I can count: the “core” Final Fantasies (since I haven’t written enough about the series this week!). By the core titles, I mean VI and VII, the two widely agreed on classics of the series.

Both games begin in eerily similar ways, with one player character leading an assault on a difficult area followed by a lower intensity denouement. What they do with them, though, is decidedly different. Final Fantasy VI sets up its world and ensemble cast quickly and efficiently, while Final Fantasy VII drives home its own central point: Cloud. While the structure is similar, both games accomplish different goals.

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Final Fantasy XIII-2 Demo Impressions

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Although I ultimately could not finish Final Fantasy XIII, I saw a lot of potential in its world and characters who I was actually starting to like right when the game became too frustrating for me. That’s why I was actually excited to try out the sequel for myself to see if the improvements were enough for me to revisit Cocoon and its surrounding territories.

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Faith in Final Fantasy

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Let me tell you why the recently released soundtrack to Final Fantasy XIII-2, featuring an incredibly awkward not quite death metal cover of the Chocobo song and an even more awkward rap song than Iwatodai Station from Persona 3, worse than the Will Smith classic “Parents Just Don’t Understand”, gives me faith in the game.

Yes, I didn’t get lost in that sentence.

Final Fantasy XIII had, conservatively, a boatload of problems (editor’s note: stay tuned next month as this very editor gives it another chance!). There were two biggest problems, though. The first was that it took itself way too seriously. The second was that it was a game made for both the Japanese stereotype of “Western fans” and Final Fantasy traditionalists, two groups who couldn’t be more opposed, and did enough to alienate all of them.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 seems like it corrects these two egregious flaws. And the music told me this. No, I’m not listening to different songs than you have, perhaps, listened to. I’m just listening differently. What they’re telling me is this is a game that isn’t being made by focus groups, like the original seemed to be at times, but …

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Possibility of a Final Fantasy first-person shooter

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In Destructoid’s interview with Yoshinori Kitase and Motomu Toriyama, two of the most influential figures behind the Final Fantasy series, an unexpected possibility was brought up. Final Fantasy XIII was supposedly inspired by first-person shooters, so Kitase was questioned if he has ever considered developing another Final Fantasy shooter similar to Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII.

“No one can be that certain of the future of any game or IP, so there is always a possibility that we may end up with a first-person shooter FF. Having said that, XIII and XIII-2 are much faster action-adventure-inspired games. RPG elements, such as strategical actions, still need to be there, so we’d need to create a good fusion between these opposite elements. We can’t predict how the FF experience will seek out such a fusion in the future. I can’t visualize it being completely an FPS shooting game. The strategic element needs to be maintained in any future project, because otherwise, it wouldn’t be FF anymore.”

It seems like a shooter is possible, but Kitase doesn’t want fork over the soul of the Final Fantasy series in the process. A shooter would be a nice change of pace for the series, but …

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Square Enix wants to increase turnaround for Final Fantasy Games

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Does this mean we'll get Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy Versus XIII in this decade?

Yoshinori Kitase of Square Enix has expressed the desire to get more Final Fantasy games out faster than their current pace, citing Final Fantasy XIII’s sequel as the beginning of this new direction.

“The current generation console, Final Fantasy XIII, was obviously the first game, and personally I think we took a little too long getting it out,” Kitase said. “When you think of Western triple A titles like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Assassin’s Creed, they seem to work with a lot shorter turnaround–they make a new game in 1-2 years.”

One’s first reaction to news like this is generally to cry ‘Madden’ and throw an internet tantrum, but I think gamers often forget how well the yearly release model has worked for more than one great series. Remember Ratchet and Clank? Those were pumped out once a year and were fantastic. Ever since Ubisoft adapted this practice to the Assassin’s Creed series, we’ve got three great games that have continued to deliver an interesting story in a timely manner. Can you imagine if we had to wait four or five years between …

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To retro is not enough

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When I was in eighth grade in 2000, I had a lot of trouble with school. It’s a familiar story. I had been popular as a younger kid because, while I was a good student, I cursed before the other kids knew what the word “fuck” sounded like and had a lot of video games. As I got older and the currency of popularity switched from shock and comedy to attractiveness and suavity, my stock plummeted. I became the awkward kid who played weird Japanese games to escape from reality.

Compound this with a teacher who absolutely did not like me. It’s always an absolute shock going from being a smart kid who’s been on the good side of every teacher to being the one she hates for no good reason. Every day became a quagmire of dreading being called out because I wasn’t perfect while other kids got away with everything.

I developed stress illnesses. I got sick nearly every other week, and the weeks I wasn’t sick I was plagued by crippling pains caused by perpetual nervousness. I missed about a month of school that year.

But I still played video games. It had been a rough year for them, though. …

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A Portable Hole in the heart

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I miss when fantasy could be just that: fantasy. I miss optimistic worlds, where things might get rough but the player characters could pull through in the end. I miss the sense of wonder at what’s different, and the appreciation of what’s the same. I miss the light, and I’m sick of the darkness.

I blame Game of Thrones, and I blame Dragon Age: they made everything dark. Cruel worlds no better than our own became the key concept purveyed by fantasy. I blame Call of Duty and the new need for every game to be accessible to everyone, even people who hate fantasy. The bright, brilliant worlds of Arcanum and early Final Fantasy’s have been replaced by overwhelming, omnipresent darkness. Sure, things got bad in the old days (Arcanum had racism, Final Fantasy VII had a world ending meteor and a character who was a different character) but the world was never oppressive. Things were complex and difficult within the world of fantasy, but they were never dire. We were never doomed just for being born; we were doomed because something bad was going to happen, and we were going to …

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Final Fantasy XIII-2′s Time Travel

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Square Enix has revealed two stunning trailers showcasing the highly anticipated Final Fantasy XIII-2, allowing fans of the series to catch a glimpse of what they can expect to find in January 2012. The story will take place three years after the events of Final Fantasy XIII and will follow Serah and newcomer Noel in a quest to find the missing warrior Lighting. Players will be reintroduced to the familiar faces of Snow, Vanille (no longer a 9,000 foot crystal), and a much older Hope. Missing from the videos are Fang, Sazh, and the tiny Chocobo that lives in his afro.

Whether or not you shed a tear during the heartfelt footage set to Charice’s song New World, fans of XIII will find an abundance of clues in these trailers revealing the fates of their favorite characters. Snow will finally take off his winter hat, Hope becomes the first Final Fantasy character to wear a tie clip, Lightning gets some sweet new armor, and Noel continues the long tradition of somebody being unnecessarily mad at Snow.

Loyal fans of the series were somewhat dismayed at the linear approach Square Enix choose to implement in the first half of XIII and it seems …

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