Just a thought, remakes like this tend to appeal to people in the PC crowd. We’ve all moved to PC for various different reasons. Better games, better prices, better hardware? Emulation and software preservation is the name of the game for a lot of people. Those people are working everyday to make things like the steam deck the dream game console they always wanted. That’s the kind of person who will go back and replay Final Fantasy 7 four or five times.
Maybe they can stop changing the story of beloved remakes. That might help too. I didn’t buy rebirth, and I won’t buy it unless it’s used. The only way I can voice my disapproval of what they’ve done with the ff7 remake and the bait and switch they did with part 1 is to not give them my money.
My issue is less around changing the story, more around incompleteness.
They’re making the turnout of certain events hazy and mysterious to allow for multiple future turnouts, and let them keep merchandising certain characters. And, they’re letting the conclusion keep going for multiple games.
It’s more of a monetary strategy than a storytelling one. Notably, FFXIV sells each of its expansions, but each one has an ending that feels like a victory and a satisfying conclusion to a story even when it sets new things up.
For what it’s worth, Rebirth is an amazing game that I would honestly consider to be the gold star of anyone making a AAA experience today. If the goal is truly quality, I don’t think it’s feasible to try to make every game better than Rebirth given the breadth of content in it and its overall production quality.
Really what this announcement boils down to is that they won’t be making more games like Harvestella, Valkyrie Elysium, Diofield Chronicle, and Foamstars, and they aren’t keen on keeping things platform-exclusive anymore. And maybe they’ll also be a bit more mindful of the budgets of their AAA games like Rebirth instead of taking the “spared no expense” mindset like they have been, which could come at the cost of quality, but I hope that’s not the case.
FF16 to me is paper thin in every regard. I would rank it last among all the FF games I’ve played. The combat is especially bad. You can basically button mash your way through all of it. Dodge a lot, that’s it.
Fr. Calling FF7R a “remake” of FF7 with its significant story changes and shift from perfect turn-based combat to the most mind-numbing half-measure “action RPG” combat is like saying you’re going to remake Tetris but now it’s a first-person shooter
I can only speak to my experience. I love the depth of FF7’s turn-based strategic combat, meanwhile I literally haven’t finish the first FF7R entry yet because I keep literally falling asleep during combat. I’m not being hyperbolic, I’m not being facetious, I literally have fallen asleep dozens of times during combat trying to finish that damn game.
If the combat speaks to you and you enjoy it, that’s awesome and I’m glad it can deliver to you what you need. But for me, I think it’s even worse than the combat in Tales of Berseria and I hate the combat in the Tales of series.
I love action games and I love RPGs, I just personally rarely find half-measure crossover gameplay styles satisfying.
That’s so fascinating, tbh. I mean, different strokes, so I can’t judge, but it’s the impressively deep strategy they’ve baked into Remake’s combat that I am particularly impressed by. That said, it makes sense though that if you dislike Tales combat, you’d dislike Remake’s combat. They’re not the same persay, but they’re cut from the same cloth imo.
I was fine with the change from turn based combat. I fully expected that even with them trying to hook in newer fans of the series with modern mechanics.
But there really was no reason to change the story. It was obvious they did it as a business decision when they turned the first 5 hours of the game into 40 hours of fluff.
I wasn’t even upset with the story additions for the extra character. It was kinda nice even to get some background on the characters before we leave Midgar without them.
It’s the fundamental changes to the story that really bothered me, that they made for really no reason.
I agree with all of that. My personal biggest issue is the combat, but it isn’t the only issue and it isn’t the biggest issue with the idea of the game as a concept.
But unfortunately SqEnix recognized FF7 for the cash cow that it is, and seem fully-devoted to milking it for every last drop it can offer
I mean, you do you, but for anyone else reading this who is on the fence, I adore the 1997 original (and am in fact replaying it right now), and I loved Rebirth. Solid 9.75/10 game for me, with the only detractions being constant interruptions by Chadley if you're doing a 100% run.
The gripes about the story being changed and stuff just don't hold up to me. The remakes are actually, by and large, very faithful to the original with a ton of fan service. They have some some new stuff with the remakes that I'm personally enjoying, and keeps me on my toes.
If I wanted the exact same story, I'd play the original, which, I am lol.
These new games actually make me like the OG FF7 more, if that’s possible. Or, at the very least, make me like the world and characters more since they aren’t just cuboid freaks. 7 was never my favorite of the bunch even though it’s the most popular, but I sure as heck spent 100 hours in Rebirth doing most of the side content.
It’s a very good game hindered only by the fact they there’s not a minigame Square said “No” to.
My partner was watching me play through Rebirth and commented on the number of mini games, and I said "honestly, that's pretty faithful to the original too" lol
Yeah there's definitely more, but the original has tons.
I can’t get over just how much better Remake is compared to the original, so you do you, I guess. I was incredibly pleasantly surprised to see the ways they’re engaging with telling a different story and taking the name “remake” very literally. I was seriously concerned they were just going to sell the original story again in three seperate parts as full-price titles.
That’s why it’s called an opinion. I think the story pacing is garbage compared to the original. Introducing Sephiroth into the beginning of the game made zero sense, and then fighting him as one of the bosses really took away from the mystery of what made the original reveal of him as the real villain all that much better.
And the whispers were an absolute stupid choice to put into the game.
The endgame Sephiroth fight was definitely forced. It reeked of “well, he’s been the secret antagonist all game, so we can’t just disclude him from the finale” kind of thinking.
I liked the more persistent villain lurking in Cloud’s broken mind, but they shouldn’t have felt the need to try and put a pseudo capstone on that story thread.
You hear that PCMR? They’re not coming to us because it’s the obvious and right things to do. They’re using us as a fallback! Do you wanna be the side piece? Buy games from real developers who aren’t licking publisher boots!
So, uhhh… Buy Stardew Valley like 4 more times I guess.
It's a good time to be a PC gamer, this is a good move for Square Enix. I really like how even games from decades ago are still playable and very affordable. There's a big market for quality single player RPGs as evidenced by the success of Baldurs Gate 3 and Persona 5 Royal.
Who would've thought that making your product more readily available would increase sales? That's so much more counterintuitive than "double down on NFTs and release schedules that require knowledge of calculus to figure out."
SE releases have been all over the place recently. Sometimes it’s PS exclusives, sometimes Nintendo exclusives, sometimes console exclusives, sometimes they release on PS and Nintendo but not Xbox…
I was an XOne user a few years back and it was exhausting. PC side it’s a bit better, except that their flagship series is locked on PS for who knows how long, and then locked on Epic Store for one more year.
As a potential customer, I didn’t feel exactly welcomed. I was interested in FFXVI, but didn’t have a PS5 (I still don’t). Now I don’t have the time to play long-ass games anymore, which means that by the time it will finally be released on PC, I won’t probably buy it.
I was someone who was willing to give them money, and they refused it time and time again. I’m sorry for their difficult situation, as Square has created some great games from my childhood that I will forever cherish (both as Square Soft and Square Enix), but let’s be honest, this is their fault.
I hope they follow through with this decision, though. I doubt I’ll be a customer, but maybe they’ll make some kids as happy as I was when I was their age and playing those old FF titles. People deserve to play those games without being told to buy two different consoles and/or wait an eternity and a half for exclusive deals to expire.
This is very true. And it’s interesting in that generally Ubisoft has been fine across all platforms. And yet Japanese companies seem to CRAVE exclusivity. Have they not seen franchises like Assasins creed and Far cry and thought. Yeah I want that money too?
Meanwhile Larian studio reminding everyone that a good way to make money and avoid layoffs is to be nimble and make good games.
Big Corps sees nimble and good studio making a good game, starts layoffs immediately.
The real murderers are the people that sell their studio to a big publisher. They immediately seal the fate of their teams. They will have layoffs eventually…
I love Larian and am ride or die with Swen et al. Have been ever since Divine Divinity was “we have Diablo at home” but ended up being a shockingly good (for its time) hybrid ARPG/CRPG.
But Larian are very much not the example of “how to do business”. Like Digital Extremes, they are a “legacy” studio that is INCREDIBLY lucky to have survived. Larian themselves had to deal with really shitty publisher deals (Beyond Divinity and I think also Divinity 2?) and games so bad it almost killed the studio (even Mortismal himself will acknowledge that Divinity 2 was a trash fire before the DLC… and was still a mess after). It was mostly “lucking out” and embracing Kickstarter before everyone hated it that saved them. And… Dragon Commander still got close.
And you know what has REALLY made them stable? That’s right. A deal with a major company to work on one of the most famous IPs in gaming (tabletop and video) history.
Larian are smart to try to maintain their size and not overly grow. But, like countless game devs have said and gotten shouted down for, they are far from “typical” and got REALLY lucky. Hell, Swen himself has mentioned the same in between the blurbs that outlets love to reference.
You forgot to mention they sold 30% stake of the company to the world‘s largest game conglomerate Tencent. They‘re also working on a supposedly much larger game than BG3 now and plan to release it within the next 4 years which means they will have to at least double their staff. Honestly, judging a developer entirely by a recent success isn‘t a good practice even when it‘s as massive as BG3. Most people who talk about Larian have a very warped impression. Even when their games are great recently, the tides can change rapidly in this industry.
Yeah did someone just run or interpret reports incorrectly? If a person subscribes to Game Pass and plays Hi Fi Rush for X months, I’d consider that a sale.
If they play it exclusively, sure. But people play tons of games on Gamepass. HiFi Rush and a dozen other games splitting that $15/month/account is a lot less rosy.
I’ve had Gamepass since the beginning, and since it was launched it I’ve bought maybe 1 or 2 Xbox games that weren’t on gamepass, whereas I used to average 2-3 a month. My overall spending on games has dropped massively since getting gamepass - especially on Xbox.
Just the fact that they played some minimum amount should tell them the game contributed to the subscriber’s enjoyment of Game Pass. Otherwise if they are both selling a game and giving it to Game Pass subscribers for free I’m not sure what they are expecting. Can’t have your cake and eat it too, but I’m sure they would like that.
Maybe they are hoping that Game Pass is like extended demos and will lead to more game sales. But there are too many new games all the time for most to hold my interest.
I think they expected more casual gamers to sign up for game pass while the more dedicated among us would still be buying new products.
Honestly, they’d probably be doing better if they didn’t put games on there day 1. Sony doesn’t put their biggest titles on PS+ at launch for a reason.
Halo and starfield had shit sales because we didn’t have to buy them. If they required people to buy the triple-A in-house titles at launch, the double-A stuff like HiFi Rush could still be released on gamepass day 1 as an incentive for people to subscribe.
As it stands, Starfield and Forza burned the money that should be used for HiFi Rush and Ori.
Absolutely agree, just recently instead of buying Manor Lords I just found a good deal on a month of Game Pass. I played it as much as I wanted (for now) for less than $10.
Hmmm it’s almost like Jim Ryan was on to something when he said gamepass wasn’t good for the industry and publishers didn’t like it during the antitrust trial with Microsoft.
It blows my fucking mind how stupid some people are just to be able to play the next rehashed bullshit CoD on gamepass instead of paying $70 a year for the same garbage.
If you ever wonder why gamers buy Playstation and not Xbox, here is your reason.
MS have no idea what they’re doing with gaming. There will be no The Last of Us or God of War coming from them. They don’t want to sell you games. They want to sell you GamePass. They don’t want you to have a great time. They want you to have a time that is just about acceptable enough to keep paying for it.
The only one of their games I’ve heard people get excited about is Hi-Fi Rush, and you can see here what they think of that. Clearly it didn’t maintain enough Monthly Active Users, or have a short enough Time To Purchase or whatever other bullshit mobile-era metric determines whether a studio lives or dies.
And this is WHY the smaller studios are on the chopping block and not core Bethesda.
Because smaller games that are incredibly solid don’t matter. What matters are AAA tentpoles. And Tango’s A/AA games were “lukewarm” at best. They had an AMAZING B/A game but fuck 'em. Same with Arkane Austin
And… probably same with Obsidian this fall (?) when their Elder Pillars game comes out and people decide it isn’t Skyrim so it is bad. Ignore that Pentiment was amazing or their long legacy as one of the best studios in CRPGs. People will just talk doom and gloom because it isn’t The Last Of Us.
Which will lead to MS continuing to try to be Sony rather than take advantage of the studios they actually have. And people will continue to talk about how they can’t compete with Sony because they don’t have a Horizon Zero Dawn.
I’ve been saying it ever since MS started buying every studio they could. They have an AMAZING roster and can basically dominate the market by “flooding” it with high production value “indie” games. But… people want their AAA tentpoles.
This is such a fanboy opinion. Sony killed basically their entire Japanese Development, had 13 GaaS in development at the same time and actively are holding back the standard of Cross Save. They give plenty of reasons to not be the ‘gamer’ console. Especially now when they are also beginning to drop games on gamepass.
Ironically we still know of more single player games coming to Xbox then games coming to Sony outside of Spider-Man Leaks.
Fallout is currently the hottest game on the market thanks to the Show on top of this.
This really fucking sucks but damn stop trying to use this as a way to promote your team
If anything, Nintendo is likely the company about to make lightning strike twice with the Switch successor due to be announced this year. Will be interesting to see what it’s like, but no matter the case, it is going to sell like hotcakes.
Sony’s Japan studio’s own library was always gimmicky games that were basically tech demos- Ape Escape was for the Dual Analog controller, LocoRoco for the PSP, Gravity Rush for the Vita, Knack to be a pack-in for the PS4, and games for VR, Move Eye toy, etc. In fact it’s kind of hard to find games they did on their own because they’ve always been mostly a support studio even going back to the PS1’s launch lineup, and they are continuing that. There have been several studios that make original games that started as part of Sony Japan that have been spun off into separate teams too.
I’m struggling to think of many studios Sony has closed. Sony London studios was similar to Japan- mostly just games to go with hardware gimmicks like the EyeToy, SingStar, and Wonderbook. It’s even harder to find studios that Sony has purchased and then closed or turned into a support studio- I guess you could count that Psygnosis was purchased and merged into London studios back in the 90’s, but considering they went 20 years between that merger and closing I doubt there were many Psygnosis devs left there.
A quick search pulls up PixelOpus, a tiny studio Sony formed from 9 college grads with a couple of industry veterans to lead them They released 2 small games and were closed last year.
I don’t mean to be too defensive of Sony- they did close one of their own studios and laid off ~900 people this year. But it’s not really a comparison to Microsoft who now has a long history of buying 3rd party studios, mismanaging them, and closing them.
I’m also confused about your comment about Xbox making more single player games than Sony. First of all… I would expect that to generally be true. It looks like Sony owns 21 studios while Microsoft had 40 as of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition. And while a lot hasn’t been announcedwith release dates, we know of a handful of single player games Sony has in the works- Horizon 3, TLOU3, Ghosts of Tsushima 2, and new IP’s from Bend, Housemarq, and BluePoint. Plus Wolverine, and you could argue whether Physint should count or not since that’s a partnership between Kojima and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures. If you’re trying to imply that Sony is abandoning single-player games or something that’s pretty far from the truth.
Yes, I know that, but they haven’t done anything egregious in quite some time. Microsoft, Sony, Take-two, Embracer and Activision have been been making a lot worse headlines for the last few years now.
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