-What you see here is the culmination of a game design philosophy which ALWAYS favours the path of least resistence … Are horizontal lines too hard to draw? Better not try any corners! Music too hard to compose? We’ll have a think-tank of monkeys (also SE’s product focus group) bang together some ambient garbage!

I do agree with Lane to an extent about JRPGs needing to evolve a bit, and I think FFXIII is Square’s attempt to do just that (as I said over on Riddlethos last week, I think there’s still very much a place for traditional JRPGs, but the space is shrinking as the market gets more fragmented). Whether or not it’s successful has yet to be seen, but like you said Blitzmage, I’ll still be picking it up day one. I just can’t help myself, it’s a freaking Final Fantasy game :D.

The concerns with FFXIII are not its ‘tired and bloated JRPGness’ if I may paraphrase, but rather its complete abdication of the things that make JRPGs enjoyable. In essence, jettisoning the good parts of the JRPG genre and taking up questionable WRPG methods, or innovating even more questionable gameplay.

For example:

- Traditionally in a JRPG, all members of the party can be controlled. In action games and WRPGs this is not as generally the case. In FFXIII, only one character can be controlled at a time.

- Traditionally in a JRPG, there is a world map, and going to a town allows interaction with shoppes, save points, inns, and so on. In FFXIII, there are no towns–all such interaction is carried on at save points (a feature first present in some early WRPGs from the PC era).

- Traditionally in a JRPG, exploration of large areas is favoured over extremely linear dungeons or “monster hallways” if I may coin the phrase–these sorts of things being more like to an action game. The beginning of FFXIII is just a long straight line.

So you see, the worries have nothing to do with JRPGs being tired, or with FFXIII being a representation of what is wrong with JRPGs. Instead, the concerns stem from the development decisions to jettison everything the series has been built on and to replace it with things cobbled together from different genres. The resulting Frankenstein’s monster of a game might have very high production qualities, but I very much doubt it will be the sort of experience that most of the people who buy it were desiring.

I don’t play too many new games these days, but Age of Conan disappointed me. So much rich lore and the chance to do my favorite barbarian justice, and it was wasted on Funcom.

All my hope for the future of FF is now riding on Versus XIII.

*Sigh*

Its just… I miss Squaresoft so much. *Cries*

I’m still clinging desperately to fanboy hope for FFXIII. I keep telling myself the story will be good. I desperately want to believe…

I’d say that I was pleasantly surprised by WoW. I really had no inclination to play. I bitched and moaned and railed against the idea of our FFXI group moving to WoW. And now I am an addict.

I was disappointed with FFXII. The characters, excluding Baltier, are just … bleh. Do not care!