Ugh, this looks bad in nearly every way and why’d they give him a spree shooter bowl cut?

And if I wanted to play a 16-year-old (or any) MMO I would look into that, but I’m specifically talking about a single-player narrative-driven RPG.

There’s more to player agency than moral ambiguity, so even if the game setting was as black-and-white as the fiction (which you’re overstating), that doesn’t mean that there’s no choices to be made or interesting stories to tell.

Okay but it’s not like a Gollum stealth game was the only way to take the LotR license and turn it into a game. I mean, maybe “Gollum stealth game” was the only pitch that interested the rights holders, but in that case the only difference is instead of me asking the developers “why did you think this would be a good…

...Did you not at least see the movies?

Putting aside the issues with the execution of this idea, I can’t help but question why anybody thought this was a good concept in the first place. Who the heck wants to play as Gollum in a big-budget AAA stealth game??

We want an RPG set in a relatively faithful adaptation of Middle Earth, with a compelling narrative and player choice. Why we keep not getting that is beyond me. FFS.

The game never looked good. The developers could never come up with an exciting way to describe the gameplay: “You’re Gollum, and you do... Gollum things. Like crawling around caves in a loin cloth.” The graphics looked dated four years ago, when they first announced the game, and since then the graphics somehow got…

Not the Polygon quote I’d have picked, when they also wrote:

Because the other pillar of WB’s strategy is still “throw ip at the wall”, until they either collapse or publish Space Jam: Every Character is the Joker.

idk why everyone’s so down on the Game of Thrones influence. Some of the best games out there were made by Japanese studios riffing on Stephen King, George Romero, John Carpenter, and so forth. GRRM’s style through a bonkers anime lens sounds pretty damn fun to me.

The difference is that Triangle Strategy had a pretty easy to follow plot and that the in-game glossary was only for those that wanted some additional clarity and worldbuilding. You didn’t need the glossary to be sucked into the story and understand what was going in, the characters got that covered.

I’ve seen a lot of people dunking on this (and the messaging about the devs being confused doesn’t help lol), but Triangle Strategy had something very similar and it absolutely ruled. We’ll see if XVI uses it as more of a supplement vs a crutch, but I want to see this become the norm for RPGs going forward.

I’m sure I’ll get dumped on here, but as a fan since the original, I have not fully understood what was going on in a Final Fantasy game without outside sources since FFVII.

Part of it is because I played FFVIII-X in a communal environment that kept me from just playing through and finishing it, and part of it is…

Wow, a lot of edgy takes in these comments. Square Enix isn’t turning their flagship franchise into a torture and softcore porn sim, Jesus Christ people. Yoshida is obviously referencing the political maneuvering and house rivalry stuff in GoT. It sounds like he wants an FF Tactics-esque story. I get that people…

Wonder if the game ends the same way GoT did...

Considering Final Fantasy Tactics and Game of Thrones were both based on the same war, and XVI seems closer in design to FFT than anything in a while, it’s not that surprising or weird.

I mean, you could argue series vets have had a hard time adjusting ever since the got rid of turned based combat *looks at notes* 22 years ago?

Jesus. I’m going to be dead soon.

Here’s the thing... from the previews, this seems like an Ivalice game in the vein of Vagrant Story. With the arguable exception of FFVII: Remake, I haven’t really enjoyed a new final fantasy since XII, which was 17 years ago. So I’m kind of willing to let the franchise change drastically if there’s hope to create…

Everyone talks about XIII like it’s the only one that’s linear and corridor-y. X is revered and it’s exactly the same. And most of the FF games are pretty linear, they just give a vague illusion of freedom until they kind of open up toward the end. They mostly just have wider corridors.

Also, is the combat that…