Heftige review heb je daar gepost Kevf.
Deze review is veel en veel te lang. De reviewer blijft veel te langdradig doorgaan over bepaalde onderwerpen,maar... hij schijft geniaal. Ik begrijp, nee voel bijna hoe wanhopig hij zich heeft gevoeld tijdens het spelen van dit spel. Het sijpelt overal door de review heen. Wat snippits uit de review:
=========================================
"We have an idea where Final Fantasy XIII came from. It came not from videogame designers; it came from businessmen and artists. We respect the inclusion of businessmen and artists into any videogame development team — usually. The “usually” means we respect businessmen and artists if they are included not at the expense of game designers and level designers. Without art, a game isn’t a game. With great art and no game design, a game is a lifeless husk. Final Fantasy XIII is, by virtue of the hard work of many businessmen, at least the most entertaining lifeless husk of the year. It is by no means a worthwhile entertainment experience for any real human person we can imagine."
=========================================
Alles wat ik zie en lees vertelt mij dat deze FF gericht is op zo'n groot mogelijk publiek (daar heeft "the businessman" voor gezorgd). Daarnaast is de meest over-the-top cgi eroverheen gegooid, compleet met krankzinnige art en graphics om ons te laten vergeten dat er een stuk minder valt te beleven (lees: zelf spelen en ontdekken) in deze game.
=========================================
"A recent story on Kotaku.com supports our hypothesis. You don’t have to click: we’ll explain it. A producer of Final Fantasy XIII explains that there was “enough discarded content” from Final Fantasy XIII to make a whole other game. The “content” in question is mainly levels — game-play areas. That’s a real, huge red flag, right there. Seeing as the “levels” or “areas” in Final Fantasy XIII are first and foremost venues for monsters to appear, and seeing as how monsters are selected for how niftily they clash against the background graphics — seeing as how the majority of the minor in-game cut-scene dialogue consists of main characters discussing things no more detailed than “What are we going to do?” “We have to survive.” “We have to fight.” “We have to fight . . . them.” it’s quite pitifully obvious that none of the scripted dialogue or level events had anything to do with the player characters’ current location.
This is the kind of thing that we, as a marketing / PR person, always tell game companies to never, ever, ever say in interviews. Like, there’s enough levels to make another game? That means that they spent huge amounts of time making levels that they weren’t going to use. That’s because (believe us on this one) the overall arc / scope of the story wasn’t fixed early enough in the development: the areas that were eventually actualized as levels by artists (judging by our complete playthrough of the game, we’re going to say there weren’t actually any “level designers”) were originally conceived by checklists drawn up during regularly scheduled brainstorming meetings. “Fire level”, “Ice level”, et cetera."
"In short: they had no idea what the game was about. Tetsuya Nomura designed characters, some other artists designed some other characters, some other artists still designed huge amounts of enemy-like robot-ish machine-things, some other artists flung together lavish architecture inspired by lifetimes of playing Final Fantasy VII and longing desperately to work on a Final Fantasy game — though, of course, if they did, they’d do something kind of different. Then someone came in and was like “btw dudes, the game is about this”. Then someone was like, “Oh, i guess we don’t need that dinosaur island part, or that part on the moon.” Owning up to “enough cut-out levels to make another game” is pretty much admitting “yeah, we lacked focus from the very start; we had close to no idea what we were doing.”
=========================================
Dit komt aan als een donderslag, maar niet onverwacht. Ik had al zo'n gevoel dat het verhaal van FFXIII om ideeën heen was gebouwd, ipv dat eerst een goed verhaal werd bedacht en daarna alle elementen er omheen werden geplaatst. Het is nu als een 2009 summer hit CD, met alle "coole" en "interessante" stuff bij elkaar gegooid. Ook die opmerking over de conversaties komen mij bekend voor. Eternal Sonata iemand? Karakters die overloos praten over totaal niets nuttigs in dialogen (hier CGI) om... tja, om je tijd te vullen eigenlijk. Na tien minuten luisteren concludeer je dat het totaal nergens over ging.
=========================================
"You spend nearly thirty hours walking a tightrope littered with tutorials. At one point, the game literally tells you via a pop-up menu that “You have to kill both of the enemies in this enclosed area in order for the laser fence to be deactivated”. At one point, you come across some monsters; a tutorial window says, “These monsters are very powerful. You should avoid them.” The characters are constantly talking to another another in the field screen; they only ever say things like “Oh, this way” or “I’m getting tired” or “Let’s keep going!” Why can’t they say “These guys look tough! We’d better avoid them!” and “Yeah, I don’t think we should fight these guys”? It’s frustrating to see so many missed opportunities. Here is a game where the experience of playing it and the goals of its creators exist in two very different, obsessed compartments. We shudder to think of what actual game-design tweaking would have entailed. Cleaning the bullshit out of this game would have been as mindless, tedious, and exciting as brushing your teeth eight hours a day. (Without the bleeding gums. (Or maybe not. (You know, breathing the same air as Tetsuya Nomura, etc.)))"
=========================================
Dit is erg. Onbegrijpelijk dat deze game, zo gesimplificeerd als het nu is, ook nog eens je hand probeert vast te houden. Bijna beledigend eigenlijk.
=========================================
"By putting numbers on the end of the titles of these games you are inviting people to go back and play them years after they’re sequeled. How is this one going to look? We’re pretty sure that it’s possible to make a game that looks as good as Final Fantasy XIII: the proof is that they made Final Fantasy XIII. Here it is. Here’s hoping that another game — maybe even a Final Fantasy — will come along that bests it the way Final Fantasy VI did Final Fantasy. It is with hope that we give this game the score we are giving it: hope that, someday, we’ll be able to look back and laugh at it. Right now, today, however, it’s not quite hilarious."
=========================================
Nagel in de doodskist: Square Enix, wat ben je met je reputatie aan het doen? Of geef je daar niks meer om? Misschien ook niet, want ik durf te wedden dat miljoenen FFXIII's als warme broodjes over de toonbank zullen gaan. Op basis van de ervaringen van gamers die ze in het verleden met FF hebben gehad en op basis van de goede naam van SE die men in het verleden heeft opgebouwd. Casual gamers / RPG spelers zullen denken dat dit spel het genre en de serie voorstelt...
De reviewer vindt de muziek trouwens wel goed. En de filmpjes zien er ook mooi uit.
Dit is inmiddels een must buy voor mij geworden. Ik begin FFXIII steeds meer te zien als het voorbeeld voor de downfall van moderne gaming (gamer afstompen met zo mooi mogelijke beelden en zo weinig mogelijk inhoud, om hem daarna zo snel mogelijk een nieuwe game te laten kopen) en de teloorgang van een gigant in de industrie. Een mooi bewijsstuk, waarover ik straks interessante discussies kan openen (als die er al niet zijn) op verschillende fora. Al heb ik het nog steeds graag, heel graag mis.
Laatst bewerkt: 9 feb 2010
