…actually, that’s a really good point. Hah, it just gets worse and worse! He wants to (or is being told to) make a shitty RPG-lite game but he doesn’t even like the idea of it. The solution is actually to make a better game and he refuses!

“Nah, I think the answer is to just make it even shittier.”

It’s really concerning that SE hasn’t learned the lesson that even Nintendo had to begrudgingly accept, casuals are a terrible target audience. It is almost as if SE believes the real reason that FFXIII didn’t sell as well as the previous entries(according to numbers on VGChartz) is because the battle system was still too complex for non-gamers. If that is the case, then it is time to put a nail in the series so that SE can free up resources for their mobile games.

This is true, AND it made me laugh.

Because XIII was stretched out across three parts, if you didn’t like the XIII style you’ve been stuck waiting until now for another entry (admittedly not terribly long, only four years which for a Japanese AAA title is no time at all).

I’d much prefer the days where we got two or more dramatically different FF games on the same console. You’re bound to like at least one of them.

At the very least, it will be a treat for the eyes, but then, cinema already does that splendidly. Games should be games. —Wolfe

but still, the ability to enter commands manually if the player didn’t wish to use them —Lusi

But NOW it appears that the ultimate move is simply towards a movie where the ‘player’ is required to press a button every so often to keep it moving. It’s no longer about a ‘game’ or a ‘battle system’ at all. It doesn’t even have the APPEARANCE of depth. Control is taken away from the player and nothing is given in return, except for some sort of moronic platitude that equates to, “I don’t like playing video games, so I’ve done my best to disappoint everyone who was expecting a video game.”

Good job, you fucking twaddle peddler. You’ve made the digital equivalent of one of those bird feeders from an operant conditioning experiment. Press the button, get a seed. Press the button, get a seed. Press the button, get a seed. What a load of infantilising, lowest-common-denominator bullshit.

Why not just turn XV into a movie and he can be in charge of the special features menus? It offers a minimal level of interaction (you have to push a button!) but the rest just falls into place for you!

This isn’t true at all. They’ve always promised a ’40 hour story’, and I can’t think of a single Final Fantasy game that even requires the promised 40 hours to finish. My timer for FFX HD was around 38ish hours, and that was with a huge amount of dicking about. Most of the other games in the series took even less time. I recall that my timer for my very first playthrough of FF9 sat at around 30 hours, for example. FF7 is about 30-35 hours, too. Same for XIII and VIII–so I’m not sure where you’re getting the ’60 hour’ average from, but it’s not Final Fantasy. Along with most (but not all) other JRPGs, they’ve been a ’40 hour’ experience since the beginning of the PS era (prior to which, they were less, not more).

“We do not currently plan on releasing in segments.”

That’s a relief.

“It’ll basically be a one-button action, and the AI intuitively outputs an action that kind of satisfies, gives you that instant gratification, and it connects with the simple touch of a button.”

This is fucking horrendous. Seriously, I cannot tell you how angry this section of the interview makes me. It’s as if they looked at All the Bravest and said, “You know, the reason people didn’t like it is that it wasn’t $60 and didn’t take ten years to develop. Luckily, we can put that sort of depth into FFXV and REALLY satisfy people.

Seriously a PRESS-ONE-BUTTON-AND-THE-COMPUTER-DOES-IT-ALL-FOR-YOU battle system? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE GIBBERING ASSHEADS!?!?

“I myself am not getting any younger. I don’t want to be frantically pushing buttons.”

Translation: “I’ve decided that all gamers are as uninterested in actually playing the game as I am.”

YOU ARE AN IMBECILE.

It is one’s fervent hope that by this he means that players will be able to pause the battle in order to issue commands

It seems pretty clear from the interview that he’s speaking about party AI, as you suggest, and not the ability to issue a manual command, as in FFXII. This is genuinely the worst interview I’ve ever heard about a main series FF game. And, if it pans out as promised, I am considering simply not buying it. They deserve to fail. They have learned NOTHING.

THEY ARE CHASING THE CASUALS in 2015!!!! Are they BLIND!?

this is a figure that the PS4 obviously bests by an order of magnitude.
Well, no, it’s a bit less than 3:1. An order of magnitude would be 10:1 (a power of ten).

I cannot tell you how furious I am about XV.

Destiny is just something that I can’t find a care towards. I’m sure it’s a fine FPS/loot game but I mean, how many times can you shoot up the same foes across the same handful of maps. Bungie’s argument for a richer, more immersive experience based on continuous play could be made of anything. I played Dark Souls into the ground for two years straight, and it became more and more a personal experience as I battled more experienced invaders and unraveled the mythology. But the game itself did not change one bit (outside of patches to fix exploits). It’s a weak argument at best.

And man is it nice to see the Xbox getting it’s back panel handed to it. MS spend the past decade screwing it’s consumers with shoddy hardware. I like to think that the consumers haven’t forgotten.