Xenogears, Final Fantasy 7, these were amazing RPGs put out on the Playstation 1 by Square-Enix, formerly SquareSoft. Even further back than the PSX on the Super Nintendo (SNES) we saw great RPGs, Secret of Mana, and Super Mario RPG. What’s in common? (Besides the obvious that they are made by Square) They were great sellers and used the classic turn-based combat that defined the genre as well as created a world full of characters with their very own back-stories. (Or like in Jade Empire, different languages as some characters speak Chinese with subtitles.) When did it become acceptable for the industry to put out games with graphics that look like reality with movie quality soundtracks to still be stomped by the classics like Xenogears and Final Fantasy 7 and 8? Because of time, money and laziness. In 1997 it was acceptable for a Final Fantasy game to take 2-3 years to build because of the depth of the world and writing. Now it takes 2-3 years for any game because of the textures and to appease weirdoes like me that like to zoom in and stare at a tree on Halo… Seriously, it happened often with Halo 1’s impressive graphics. But Final Fantasy 13 took 5 years to release and yet I have it on both PS3 and 360 and still don’t know much about the characters. Its like they made a few cool models or great outfits for the characters, like Lightning who’s all around cool, or Hope, but Vanille is a cool character with the goofiest outfit ever and nobody realized she’s from Pulse until…. Oh Noes! Fang reveals it in like chapter 5 and she looks like a mage but uses no magic and a spear, when neither outfit nor spears seem to be acceptable when you look at the characters and how they are dressed. None of this is elaborated on, it seems when you reach Oerba that there is nobody there and Fang and Vanille realize something happened. WHY IS THIS NOT ELABORATED ON!? Instead Dysley, or Bartandulous (or however it is spelled. {Crappy name anyhow}) Show up and has his whole “I’m the bad guy, will look like your sister that’s frozen in crystal than attack and give you a ship when you win, to go and destroy my home with. K?” This is a prime example of all of this. Final Fantasy 13 took a long time to build and kept being pushed back, then all of these unanswered questions and most of the game is cutscenes and running down tunnels… Pretty tunnels, but look at the map and its like an anthill. What happened to Xenogears and its explorable world but some things are blocked like in Final Fantasy 7 until you get a ship good enough to reach it. Great story, characters and they left nearly nothing unanswered other than Zack, whom they elaborated on in Crisis Core for the PSP. The next one is money. Games now have pricey tags because they cost a lot of money. Games like Final Fantasy 7 may have (hypothetically) been made on a budget of $5 million dollars. (Remember it was originally to be on SNES) Games now take the kinds of budgets of Hollywood films, sometimes really famous actors in the games and then instead of a few PCs and someone composing music for the games, we have real orchestras full of amazing musicians (ex. Look at the making of in Heavy Rain) this is common now. Then in order for a game to come out in just a few years so that much capital is not tied up and sitting in a project for too long; (payrolls people) they will use entire teams of people to compile graphics and just to make them move realistically like hair and clothes. This takes time, no matter how good you are. Each person gets paid and it is costly. Finally its laziness. Recently Square-Enix has stated that they may look into a Final Fantasy 7 remake for the PS3. Then they said it would never happen, this is because it will take a long time. Let’s say this, people have petitioned for this game for years, and Square-Enix brought it on themselves by releasing a Tech Demo for Final Fantasy 13 PS3 project back in 2005. Square said they wouldn’t but people kept going until they said they would look into it. That shows that enough people will buy this game that they can see a profit, but they choose not to attempt. (Or they say, they’ll change their minds again soon ^_^) The reason for this is laziness, they have no reason to try it and it will be costly. They’ll have to start back at the beginning and redo everything from the ground up. We’re talking another 5 year project like Final Fantasy 13, but much bigger. Look at Final Fantasy 7’s world compared to Final Fantasy 13’s pretty tunnels. Just ball parking, we may be looking at a 10-12 year project and a an investment that would make James Cameron blush to build this world with all its citizens and their clothes move with wind and movement, voice acting. Maybe even tripping and falling in a puddle, (ha-ha) Or at least ripples when you walk through one. Sadly with that said, I think you can agree with me when I say that Final Fantasy 7, 8, tactics and Xenogears will always hold a place in both gaming history and our own personal hearts forever. Now in closing I’d like to say thanks for reading this, this started as a rant because I was bored and felt like typing, maybe I’ll try and do things like these more often. If anyone disagrees with what they read, then you can check various sources that I won’t name here in case I’m not supposed to, but will gladly tell you in a message. Finally, last thing, I promise, if games like Final Fantasy 7, 8 and Xenogears are to good and need to be brought into the new generation, do like I did with Xenogears and purchase a digital copy on Playstation Store and put it on your PSP memory card, or on your PS3.
I mentioned Xenogears (currently playing) 6 times lol, just sayin ^_^
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