The only way you could have read any sexual tension between Apollo and Trucy was the fact that they were male and female leads in the same story. That's IT! No need to get creeped out, cuz it didn't exist, as far as I understood it.

Phoenix/May,a on the other hand, were obviously close and the plot became incredibly romantic at times. Also, Pearl's insistence at them being a couple came across less as "naive child figuring that boy and girl were romantic," but "wise, outside party who knew more about their relationship than they themselves did." And the fact that both of them freaked every time she said something to that effect pretty much confirms it. Their relationship was very sweet. Why Maya suddenly disappeared from Phoenix's life is beyond me, I'm hoping she makes some sort of return in 5.

In someways, Maya's absence is probably the thing that made me the saddest about Apollo Justice. Phoenix receives his redemption (to a degree), and in fact, you could possibly assume that he had actually been secretly working with the system for quite some time... his loser bar life being simply a cover. Ema Skye's transformation is disappointing, and though you get the feeling she's improved a bit by the end, she's no longer the passionate, young genius she used to be. If the writers are able to redeem and re-unite these characters in the next game, I'll be able to look back on Apollo Justice as the "dark middle period" of a saga, and it won't seem so bad. That said, it doesn't fix the fact that Apollo himself is boring and clueless, and Trucy is just ridiculous. Great prosecutor though.

I'm cool with that. it's a good reason. Also, Hayter is a BUSY MAN. He just finished shooting the lead roll in Devil's Mile, and is currently in pre-production as director for another upcoming feature film. Not to mention, if he isn't chosen to do the screenplay for the upcoming MGS movie, it would be a bizarre and unforgivable twist. With two superb X-Men movies, Watchmen, and a MGS prototype screenplay already under his belt, I don't think anyone else is near qualified to do the job. I also hope they give him the chance to at the very least, audition for the part of Snake.

Great news, and I'm liking everything I see so far. Too bad Maya isn't around, but the new girl (aside from the hair) strikes me as a bit more mature and professional, possibly a proper legal intern, so no complaints. At first when I heard people moaning about 3D graphics, I was worried, but seriously guys, those graphics perfectly capture the Ace Attorney feel, I don't think we have anything to worry about. It'll be interesting to see how they rectify the whole "7 years as a pathetic loser" plot that they introduced in Apollo Justice. AJ wasn't the worst game in the series (that honor goes to the infinitely-annoying "Justice for All") but what they did to Phoenix was nothing short of criminal. The man may now be back on track, but he's now in his 30s and his reputation has been forever marred by years of bad piano playing and being a grape juice lush. The days of "young upstart hero" and vague sexual tension between Pheonix and assistant (even if it takes a 5-year-old to notice it) are clearly over.

But one thing is clear. The Ace Attorney games would not be complete without Miles Edgeworth. The Wright and Edgeworth duo is what ultimately makes the series what it is. The games are at their best when the two are in full swing, walking the line between nemesis and bromance.

Or, think of it like this: S-E has a brand that they're forced to live with. When faced with poor opinion, instead of abandoning the brand, they have to work extra hard to fix it. Thankfully, I think FFXIII-2 went a long way to saving the name.

I think I've got one on ya, I always love to tell this one.

Final boss in FF9, Necron, the stat ailment dick. I got him about half to 2/3rds down, and then had Vivi petrified, Garnet dead, Freya frozen, with Zydane berserked. Anyway, I put the controller down and watched as berserk Zydane single-handedly beat the ever-loving shit out of Necron and won the game for me. I didn't know whether to be happy or pissed off!

Yeah, one thing that's been made very clear, and makes a lot of sense, is that to be a Smash Bros character, at the very least a character needs to have appeared on a Nintendo console in a major release. The reason that Snake appeared was that A) Metal Gear 1, 2 and Twin Snakes were all Nintendo games, and B) Sakurai (the creator of Smash Bros) and Kojima are close friends, and specifically wanted to collaborate. Also, this is just speculation, but for non-first-party games, I would expect that they would choose games that were big enough to appear overseas... acting as the flagship characters for their series. They're not going to pick obscure characters that never made it out of Japan to act as emissaries for a non-Nintendo developed title, so I wouldn't count on Innocence being a promising pick, especially since it recently lost it's Nintendo-exclusivity in a recent remake for Vita.

For Tales games, that leaves Phantasia, Symphonia, and Abyss. Since Symphonia and Abyss are far more well known, I'd put my money on thems. Hence, Lloyd, Luke, and possibly Tear. It's hard to imagine anyone else having a serious chance.

Edit: If they do use Luke, I can totally see them doing an Ashe swapout sort of like Zelda/Sheik. We could use more characters like that anyway.

Abyss just saw a 3DS release, so I'd say Luke is DEFINITELY on the table. Asbel and Yuri have no chance though. Remember that Symphonia is only a Nintendo exclusive in the US. Maybe they'll put Luke on the 3DS version, and Lloyd on the WiiU version.

The first FF game I ever saw was FFIV, back when I was in 6th grade. My buddy rented it from blockbuster, and he came over to spend the night a few days later. I watched him play the entire Lunar Subterain and beat the game (or get killed Zeromus, I can't remember). Then he had me start my own game from the beginning and I played the first few hours. Loved the airships!

Later, in middle school, another friend got FFVI. I wasn't as interested in that at the time, because it was darker, and didn't have airships at the beginning.

Funny, since, much later, I played all the games in the series (didn't beat 1-3, never played 2), and now think that FFVI is VASTLY superior to FFIV, which I now find pretty obnoxious. Still, good memories.

They've updated that article to include a quote that the game is still in development. It appears the trademark abandonment was for purely legal reasons, and there's no plans to cancel the game.

Still... it's taking forever.

It's abyss, and always has been abyss. However, I'm currently playing through Tales of Graces now, with my girlfriend, and though I'm only about 10 hours in, I'm stunned by how good it is, and could become a real competitor for Abyss in my mind. I also enjoyed Symphonia, though it got a little ridiculous at times. Vesperia was a low point, as far as I'm concerned. A few really amazing characters, but the rest were some of the most obnoxious I've ever seen, the battle system was broken, and the pacing was piss poor. Too bad, Yuri, Flynn, and Judy were amazing characters, but the rest and the plot destroyed it.

Can't wait to play Xillia when it comes out.

Xenoblade, no contest. The combat system was more refined, the locales were far more impressive (and more vertical, which I really love), and the story was just so much more engaging.

Look, I didn't hate FF12, and actually I thought it was a good exercise for S-E at the time, to try and break free of melodrama, but what was left was a game that was very impersonal and kind of empty. Unfortunately, it failed as an exercise, as FF13 went berserk in the bad-melodrama territory. Also, FF12 was the most uninteresting soundtrack in the series, hands down. Not a fan of the music. Xenoblade may have not had a Uematsu or Hamouzu-level soundtrack, but at least it did more than conservative, uninspired, orchestral background music (grrr!).

For the time I played Xenogears, it took center stage in my life. It also happened to be one of those few games like Okami that I ended up pausing for a few weeks to play other games (in Okami's case, ironically, FF12!) but came back to as if I'd never left. Many times, when I stop playing a game for another game, I never end up coming back. But after my brief interlude with Skyward Sword, I couldn't wait to come back! And re-entered the game world without any problems at all.

Yuri is awesome, so is Judith, and Yuri's friend/rival (forgot-his-name). Unfortunately, the rest of the team is a wash of obnoxious tweens who seem to have to prove their tweeniehood every 30 seconds by saying something really immature. The female "lead" is a complete waste of a human being, and even as cool as Yuri is, as someone pointed out, his appeal is cut short by the fact that he is not only willing to hang with all of these idiots, but let them actually make important decisions! Add to that Vesparia's bizarrely random battle system, and you have a pretty flawed game.

Abyss is ugly as sin, but a wonderful experience that no one here will regret.

Currently playing Graces (on me new PS3). It's kiddy, but at least it aims to be kiddy, unlike Vesparia that acts like it's going to be mature, only to become "Tales of Babysitting"

Abyss. Though, unlike the others, I think the gameplay is solid. I actually consider the gameplay in Vesparia to be a HUGE step down, I felt like it was trying too hard. Haven't played Graces though (I will soon, because I'm getting a PS3). However, Abyss looks terrible, I'll warn ya. It's practically PS1 level graphics. After Symphonia, it's kinda sad. Vesparia's pretty, has a few really good characters, but is kinda vacant.

Am I the only one who hopes that this isn't true? Not that it would make a bad game, per say, but it totally swings the opposite direction of the recent games. I think that's FFs biggest problem these days, every game tries to re-construct the genre in a totally different direction, sort of apologizing for last installment. While none of the recent games have been perfect, I think it would be more constructive to slow down and improve on the ideas of the last, instead of completely switching paradigms. The FF series has been a crazy pendulum swinging wildly between extremes. And none of them get it "right". Curiously, each game falters in completely different ways from the others, which is actually kind of hopeful, because you could imagine them putting all the right elements together in one game... but it never happens, because by virtue of their development, they can never have a chance to really build on, and learn from their previous outtings.

- FFIX was a fun, open world romp with lots of fun characters
- FFX was a dark, melodramatic epic that was entirely linear, had a great story and boring characters and locales
- FFXII was an open world game of emotionless political intrigue, no emphasis on characters
- FFXIII was dark, linear, and melodramatic, with an idiotic story and pretty good characters

Jesus... I don't know a series with more extremes! It's bizarre, usually when a game series is flawed, the games make the same mistakes over and over again. Square doesn't, but they can never escape having some huge negatives that change each time.

As much as FFXIII got wrong, they got a lot right, and it would be really helpful if they fine tuned that style for a while. That's why FFXIII-2 is probably the best game since FFX, and my personal favorite since FFIX, it was able to learn from it's predecessor's mistakes.

FFXII seems like a dead-end. It was a good exercise in exorcising the melodrama from the series (which they didn't learn from, obviously). However, even with a strong cast, it de-emphasized them so much that the game was completely void of feeling. I'm concerned that if they try to build on that direction, it will be more of the same empty storytelling, another extreme in reaction to FFXIII. FF needs to stop going to extremes, but find some good solid middle ground.

Spot on. Director's should be given credit/criticism more than they do. Sure, actors/voice actors are the people you see and hear, but every decision is the director's to make. Even the best actors blow many takes, it's the director's job to coax the best performance out of the actor, either by doing it enough times to get a really good take, coaching them, or finding them coaches (nothing to be ashamed of, different rolls take different unique acting research and practice). Part of my job is to do voiceovers or direct voiceovers for my commercials. If I don't like the way someone delivers something, I have them do it over... and over... and over, if necessary. I force them to identify and modify their inflection, stress, and style. At the end of the day, it's my responsibility, and I take the criticism/credit for the overall quality of the piece.

Yuna's voice is a great example. For all we know, the voice actress could be very talented. She certainly has no problems with her voice, itself. But she was given the impression, for whatever reason, to voice the character in an incredibly stilted manner. Also, you can tell that sometimes she just wasn't able to get into the roll, and it sounds forced. I think the localization has something to do with it too (also the director's responsibility). For the most part, Tidus's script wasn't bad, but i think they struggled with Yuna's. It's largely cultural: Yuna's personality is that of a stereotypical demure Japanese lady, for which there is no real western counterpart. The truth is, the localizers should have probably taken a bit more liberty in slightly re-defining Yuna's personality for western audiences. I believe that localizers have a duty to try to make the audiences feel as close to how the original language's audiences did. To a Japanese audience, Yuna's character is recognizable, and probably fairly comfortable. But to western audiences, it becomes awkward and calls more attention to itself than it probably should. Then put it in English, and it becomes even more bizarre. It's then the localizers' job to ratchet down the personality aspects that would make western audiences respond differently to the character than Japanese audiences. Again... director's responsibility. By the time it got to the voice actress, there wasn't a whole lot she could do to smooth out the character. And probably the director was still not thinking so much about western audience's different response to the character, and was pushing the voice actress to be as demure as possible. That was their decision, and I believe it was a bad one. Of course, localization teams have to answer to home base, and it may have been that the Japanese office is to blame for forcing these awkward cultural aspects on the localization project.

That said, I hear that the English voice acting is miles ahead of the Japanese, in this case. I gather they used the motion capture actors to do the voice acting, with very poor results. Many people claim that it's one of the worst Japanese voice acting jobs in video games.