Daisuke Watanabe has never been lead writer on a script that wasn’t insipid.

Nomura can be a bit of a worry, but when he’s working with Hajime Tabata as co-director (Crisis Core, Type-0) and Kazushige Nojima as scenarist (FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, KH2, Crisis Core), then I have a little more confidence.

I’m sure that certain lines will still come across as tone-deaf because this is Square Enix we are talking about, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the dialogue will be of a much higher standard that XIII – if not from a stand point of elegance, then certainly from the standpoint of substance.

Also, I made this post because the previous post had a typo that was not intentional and makes me wish this comment section had edit buttons.

Though, I have reiterate the primary problem that I have had with Final Fantasy VII onward (with the exception of 9). And it all stems from two words:

Tetsuya Nomura.

The man and his incessant belt buckle fetish has taken the series in a direction I was not sure I liked at first and nowadays, I can state easily that I do not like it in the least. The problem I have seems that he’s trying to make it cool and stylish (Evidenced by, in my opinion, the worst iteration of the series; VIII. Look at Squall Leonhart and you’ll see my point.).

However, in his rush to try and make it ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’, he seems to keep leaving out such vital aspects of a good game like a good story (I’m looking at you, Kingdom Hearts!) and likable characters. Cloud’s a wanker that’s just… there. (Why they decided to give Lightning his costume as preorder DLC for FFXIII-3 is beyond me.) Squall, along with the rest of the primary cast, has all the personality of a rock. Were it not for Laguna’s storyline, I’d have not bothered to finish it at all. And I will barely give Tidus a pass because as much as an insufferable twerp he was, at least he had a personality that you could actively dislike.

As much as I would hope they’d simply fire Nomura and get someone that knows that fashion is not vital to a good game, I’m not holding my breath.

Anyway, I certainly hope Tim Schafer’s and Double Fine’s apparent inability to hold to a budget does not ruin the Kickstarter movement. It’d been a long held opinion of mine that we need to move past the need for ‘publishers’, since they seem to be more and more of a nuisance with each generation, attempting to maintain an archaic business model when technology has easily rendered that and them as obsolete. And with other methods of funding for development appearing, it can only get better, so long as the publishers stop trying to delay their (hopefully) inevitable demise.

Miiverse is perhaps the best thing going for it.

Other than that, there really isn’t much to recommend the console other than it is comfortable to play.

1) Nintendo’s software policies (insane)
2) The Price (about $100! too high)
3) The piss-poor battery life of the game pad (2hrs!?)

So, I wouldn’t say that we like Nintendo. We like their system (with some significant reservations), but we think it is being HORRIBLY SQUANDERED by a bunch of idiots in suits who seem entirely disconnected from the realities of their predicament.

Nintendo stands to offer the best ‘alternative’ to the ‘hardcore’ box offered by Sony. As in this generation, Microsoft does not offer an *alternative* to Sony (no matter what a bunch of fucktards on the internet may parrot about ‘Xbox being viable is a choice, and choice is good for the consumer hurrrrr!’). Sony v. Microsoft is not a ‘choice’. The systems get effectively the same games and effectively the same presentation.

With Nintendo, however, consumers actually do get different games–both in the most basic terms (there are first-party games on the Wii U which are not anything found anywhere else), and in terms of the design approach (there are approaches used on the Wii U which are not anywhere else). And THAT kind of choice is good for gamers and for developers. What is a shame is the way that the Wii U isn’t being handled in any sensible way, which effectively destroys the viability of the system, and leaves gamers with a handful of could-have-beens and should-have-beens, but little else.

I think that a set-up like Kickstarter can be good and beneficial when it is used to fund unknown three-man bedroom developers who require 10-20k in order to polish up their projects before release – but until Kickstarter bans the participation of established studios and celebrity developers then the little guys are going to continue being starved of oxygen.

@Wolfe: thanks for not leaving and thanks for that article. I’m not quite as opposed it Kickstarter as the rest of the company but what Double Fine is doing is definitely not fine! They get eight times their goal and suddenly have tons of awesome ideas to make the game way “bigger.” That is either a horrible business decision or a big fat lie. I am inclined to believe the latter. They had a campaign countdown celebration which could only mean, ,Yay! We have tons of money and our game will be a success.” It does not mean Yay! Now we have nowhere near enough money to finish this game because of all the extra stuff we’re gonna add! Have they finished any of their previously crowd-funded games?