Silly western folk, you simply don’t understand FFXIII
Oh no he di’int.
Final Fantasy XIII’s director is responding to the western reception of his game, implying, or rather outright saying, many of our critics just don’t get it.
“We think many reviewers are looking at Final Fantasy XIII from a western point of view,” Motomu Toriyama said. “When you look at most Western RPGs, they just dump you in a big open world, and let you do whatever you like… [It] becomes very difficult to tell a compelling story when you’re given that much freedom.”
But that’s kind of what Mass Effect 2 did, you know, the whole wide open thing, and I’ll be shocked if FFXIII comes even remotely close to its story telling and character development – shocked, I tell you.
As a reminder to Toriyama, Final Fantasy wasn’t always a linear experience and from everything I gather, XIII is the most extreme example yet. Hell, there aren’t even towns to roam around in.
It’s all fine and well if your vision is of one linear experience and Final Fantasy XIII might be amazing. However, don’t scoff off the entire landscape of western developed RPGs, or the western market’s capability of judging JRPGs because your game isn’t getting unanimous praise.
This is especially true because Mass Effect 2 just released slamming Toriyama’s notion of western developed titles into the ground.
And didn’t Square only just peg FFXIII’s linearity on the manpower needed to create HD games, and not of the Japanese mindset on how to create RPGs?
Comments
“I’ll be shocked if FFXIII comes even remotely close to its story telling and character development”
If it did, could you tell? With the screeching 12 year old females, anthropomorphic cats/rats/bunnies/fruit and “OMG I can’t believe they did that!” stereotypes? Most JRPGs feature non-remarkable characters that have been passed down the link from time immemorial.
No offense to whassisname, but I think it’s sour grapes. JRPGs had their time when they dominated consoles, but there comes a time when everyone has to take the training wheels of the bike and ride with the adults.
Yep, definitely hurt feelings going on here. It’s sad to see some of the pioneers of RPGs be so out of touch, or at the very least, passing it off as something much of the western market just doesn’t get.
That’s not to say linear games are bad or there’s something inherently wrong with ‘em, but that’s no excuse to condescendingly dismiss an audience because there may be something wrong with your game.
Damn Scopique, you couldn’t have said it much better than that.
BRAVO
Toriyama’s comment about player freedom seems to go hand in hand with his comments about not including towns… i.e. “[It] becomes very difficult to tell a compelling story when you’re given that much freedom, and that’s just too much work, so we kept things linear.”
[...] couldn’t be in Final Fantasy XIII because it would be too big of a task for HD and telling a story in an open world is simply impossible, so says the once elite Japanese [...]
[...] Silly western folk, you simply don't understand FFXIII [...]