Bunch of broken images over here. Not hotlinking, are you?

Reichu wrote:Bunch of broken images over here. Not hotlinking, are you?

Awkward, I see them fine. I'll fix it in a bit.

EDIT: Decided to be lazy and just uploaded the images to my drive. Let me know if the images are view-able.

TheFriskyIan wrote:EDIT: Decided to be lazy and just uploaded the images to my drive. Let me know if the images are view-able.

Are you aware that anyone who clicks that link will see your real full name?

Google - at the forefront of cyber security...

Monk Ed wrote:Are you aware that anyone who clicks that link will see your real full name?

Is my address, phone number, and email also visible? Because I plan on dropping my last name when I get married anyways so it doesn't mean much to me.

TheFriskyIan wrote:Is my address, phone number, and email also visible?

No, no, yes.

Monk Ed wrote:No, no, yes.

Hmm, seems good ol' Google won't let me hide my email in any of the settings. I'm not too worried, I locked the other folders just in case (Not that there was anything in there other than a bunch of wallpapers).

Anyways this is a FF thread, check out this dope ass magic attack.

https://youtu.be/PvaJf7sKJ3Q

So far FF XV has the following stats:

-84 on Metacritic - pretty much all positive reviews, 90s for Japan and Europe and 80s for North America
-Total shipped worldwide units in the first 24 hours is over 5 million, fastest selling FF game in history
-It set the record for fastest and most downloaded digital game in Japan
-It's hot on PSN, like every page has FF XV in the spotlight as the hottest game (same goes for retailers, it made the front pages of most retailers)
-It's trending on YouTube, lots of people are playing it (even guys like RadBrad who only play Western games, and he's loving it!)
-And a big 7-part season pass is in the works; more scenarios, co op, new game plus, and so on..

So is the rumor that it's shockingly lacking in content just that, by everything you've seen?

Monk Ed wrote:So is the rumor that it's shockingly lacking in content just that, by everything you've seen?

I'm taking my time with hunts and side quests. I think most of those people are intentionally burning through shit to find something to complain about, one guy in Japan skipped cutscenes and did whatever he could in his power to finish the story in ten hours and did, but at that point are you really playing AND enjoying the game?

I will say this, don't go in expecting the same amount of content as FFXII where you can put 200 hours into the game and still not see everything, it IS shorter than most FF's if I can accurately predict the second half of the story, but there's enough to satisfy people who aren't trying to intentionally clear it as fast as possible.

People said the same thing about FFX (that it was "short") and yet it became, and remains, my favorite FF of all time. So long as it's not ludicrously short, I expect I'll be just fine with it. In fact, I find myself often preferring shorter games than longer ones because it makes a replay less of an investment, something I've noted about Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and even Resident Evil (GameCube) many years before it.

Monk Ed wrote:So is the rumor that it's shockingly lacking in content just that, by everything you've seen?

It is false, the open world is enormous. plenty of secrets, dungeons, bosses, quests, hunts, weapons, and easter eggs to find. I am on ch. 2 and sitting at 17 hours. The game has 14 chapters, 15th chapter is post game "go do whatever you want".

The only issue I found with the game, and I went ahead and watched the whole story on YouTube, is that the story of the game is very different from what we've been shown in the trailers. Versus 13 trailer content has completely been removed. FF 15 trailer content we've seen from 2013 onwards is also mostly missing.
The story is fine, it's straightforward and makes sense, it just pains me to see how originally the story was much grander and how much of it was cut in the final product.

My PS4 is on its way.

To be fair, most of what we saw from Versus XIII as far as gameplay didn't really exist in a coherent form. And from what we saw of 2013 on wards did stay in the universe in some form except for Noctis and crew fighting in Insomnia. There's a petition somewhere online to have Nomura direct a "legitimate" Versus XIII, while it would be nice to see Nomura's original vision, I don't want to wait another ten years for it.

Stan wrote:The only issue I found with the game, and I went ahead and watched the whole story on YouTube, is that the story of the game is very different from what we've been shown in the trailers. Versus 13 trailer content has completely been removed. FF 15 trailer content we've seen from 2013 onwards is also mostly missing.
The story is fine, it's straightforward and makes sense, it just pains me to see how originally the story was much grander and how much of it was cut in the final product.

I never bought into the hype until the game got its first really serious release date of September 30th, so I don't expect to notice much missing. Most of my impressions of the game have been formed by a Game Informer article on it, of all things.

But as to the notion of a "legitimate Versus XIII" or the "original vision", does anyone ITT even know why the original vision changed? It could be that the entire reason they scrapped what they did is because it, well... sucked in practice.

Monk Ed wrote:But as to the notion of a "legitimate Versus XIII" or the "original vision", does anyone ITT even know why the original vision changed? It could be that the entire reason they scrapped what they did is because it, well... sucked in practice.

Various reasons, Nomura didn't have the resources and man power needed to make a full game because SE was focused on churning out sequels to XIII and fixing XIV after the disastrous 1.0 launch. They eventually moved him to KH3 a VIIR while giving the game to Tabata cause Nomura was just taking too long even before XIII and XIV came into the picture.

It's hard to say if the story sucked because chances are the original story was never completed.

Monk Ed wrote:But as to the notion of a "legitimate Versus XIII" or the "original vision", does anyone ITT even know why the original vision changed? It could be that the entire reason they scrapped what they did is because it, well... sucked in practice.

Versus XIII was announced at E3 2006. However, SE had multiple other projects going on at the time, so actual work done on Versus XIII was minimal for the years to come. As such, we didn't hear about the game at all. In 2011 we got a first gameplay trailer, apparently actual work on the game was just beginning to start. Then in 2012 we got rumors that it was cancelled. People speculated that Nomura was working on too many side projects and portable games, SE was pumping out FF XIII sequels and FF XIV remedies - and as such the game just kinda got killed off.

Then in 2013, we learned that indeed, Versus XIII was dead, but instead it got re-branded as FF XV. The story and ideas in Versus XIII were too grand, so rather than keeping it as a spin-off, they ported it to next gen and decided to allocate resources into making the game a numbered entry. Nomura is horrible at multi-tasking, he kept always being distracted with side projects, so they put Tabata as the new director of the game. In that sense, actual development began in 2013, everything prior to that was just ideas and visions that never manifested.

Afterwards things started to get cut. The story changed to make it work better as a numbered entry, other elements got re-envisioned (such as Stella becoming Luna), story chunks got changed and removed from the game (Noctis escaping Insomnia during the Empire attack got replaced with Noctis being out of the city and Nyx fighting off the invasion during the movie), and so on. There are numerous trailers dating back to the mid 2000s online, if you watch them all, you'll get a better idea of how the beginning of the game got changed and which story elements never made the final cut.

^
No point in bringing back something that never materialized. If there are things that were changed for the final product, then for good reason. I'm pretty sure there're myriads of FFXV (FFVXIII), all born out from the idea of a "Fantasy created from Reality" and Nomura's aesthetic vision. That's how creative endeavors work, especially on such a large scale product.

I've just finished it.

I abused the leveling system in the game and now I'm way over-leveled. I'm only on chapter 5 because I've just been doing all the side content and I'm level 47. If you craft magic spells using coins, you get expericast and the amount of exp gets multiplied the more coins you add to the potency, and then I ate a Fat Chocobo Decker at Wiz Chocobo post for a 50% exp gain. One fight using all three spells netted me about 100k exp, then went to Qualidin Quay at stayed at the 10k/5k inn room to double my exp tally.

Should probably work on the story now since I've basically removed all the challenge from the game until the final boss....

I love the overall story too, just wish they filled in the gaps and provided more narrative and character development from side characters (especially the bad guys)