Final Fantasy doesnt need to cost $100+ million to make; especially when your only big idea is just to make it look expensive. Execs like to blame their own hubris on market changes but like… treat your workers better and give them creative freedom and they could do great things. Instead its all on the backs of money-grubbing trend-chasers who get to keep their jobs when their inevitable failures lead to mass layoffs.
Ya’ll spent 50 mil on marketing? I barely even noticed ffxvi came out. How much did Dunkey spend on marketing Animal Well and that shit was inescapable for weeks.
I was excited for Persona 5, but not FFXVI. I think they’ve headed a bit too far down the road of Western imitation - going full medieval look, action combat (which I’m sorry, they’re not good at and it’s still confusing), etc.
The main thing I’ve expected from JRPGs is having a story and world that surprises me. There was something signature about the look of a guy with an oversized sword in a steampunk grungy city that pulled me into those games.
I know they poured a lot of budget into FFXVI, but it feels unplanned and vision-less. Like they could have been making the eikon fights in one team before writing the rest of the story, like how studios will film a car chase in one country and then work it into their action movie’s plot however they want.
Maybe don’t break up what was one massive and awesome game into 3 games over the course of like 8+ years. You don’t even get to keep levels and abilities across each game. I know they have made them quite a bit different from the original game, but I still know I’m only getting to have 1/3 of a story at a time, now. I don’t want to read half a book and know I can’t finish the other half for another 5 years. Let alone that it may have to be on a different game system.
I’ve started feeling this way about anime too, so it’s obviously a pervasive problem in Japanese markets.
Got a series that’s interesting? You can have some curious character developments and mysteries in the twelve episodes you get, but its REAL reason for existing is the hope of selling merchandise and concluding its story arc across 100 manga releases and 80 episodes (which almost never happens)
US animation existed for the sole purpose of merchandising and advertisements. Back in the 80s when transformers were all the rage (the cartoon existed for the almost sole purpose of selling the action figures) they released a movie that killed off most of the transformers (children cried) and they did this so they could bring in all new transformers to carry on the battle, so that kids would have to go out and buy more new toys.
Fun fact to add onto this. Before Reagan repealed the law, it was illegal to make a show purely to advertise to kids. Once it was repealed we got the transformers and GI Joe and so on but before Reagan every single one of those would’ve been illegal to show.
Hot Rod is still one of my favorites.
It’s a shame we never got to see him in the live action movies.
Oh. He’s there. It’s just the movie that bombed harder than Hiroshima. Transformers: the last knight.
I watched that one and I do not remember him being in it at all. Tbh it was probably the most forgettable one.
I think it was a pretty minor part. They also way changed his colors.
Yes, but did you play the extra fluff they added to the games to fluff them out? Surely that’s worth paying for the game 3 times.
I was going to re-buy the OG ff7 just to play on my steam deck using all the awesome mods that it has to balance things and improve the looks.
Well I nixed that idea. Fucking square requires an active internet to play their 28 year old single player RPG. I may just pirate the thing, but then I can’t use all the mods that have been made.
Paraphrasing : those expectations are not too high, they’re the direct result of the games’ budget.
Yeah, okay, let’s admit that for a second. It’s not like they have no control over the scale and budget of their own games. Seems to me this still counts as unrealistic expectations…
They seem to have things backwards.
You don’t set expected sales based on the cost of development. You set the cost of development based on the expected sales.
