So what the hell was The Maker anyways (FF13 spoilers)

[Sagacious-T]

Pretty badass that they just call The Maker "God" in the Japanese version. Score one for the shitty politically correct west.

Can the entire game's driving motivation for the antagonists really be "Mommy issues"?

Shit this is worse than FF7.

[Prime Mover]

Shit this is worse than FF7.

Yes... yes it is. It was breathtaking bad actually. I still enjoyed the game as a whole (mostly because of the characters, visuals and gameplay). But damn, what a terrible story!

It's weird, when I look back on FFX, XII and XIII, I have major complaints about them, but all completely different reasons:

- FFX is too sacrine and the characters suck, but it has a great (for RPGs) story.
- FFXII was too impersonal, was boring, but it was one of the least pretentious games I've ever played.
- FFXIII had a terrible story, but had great characters.

It's weird, it's as if the guys at S-E are dancing around "excellent", and trying to attack it from different angles, but failing miserably each time. I can only hope that they're achieve it one of these days.

[Yggdrasil]

Final Fantasy... *sigh* just die already.

[Ashtrot]

I don't see how the characters in FF13 were good in any way, shape, or form. Sazh was okay, but everyone else was horrible.

[Eusis]

Final Fantasy... *sigh* just die already.

Nope, don't want that. See, while I can't deny that story telling has become an essential part of the series it is just one part of the whole, when looking back on every entry (yes, even XIII) I think more of how much fun I had playing than what I thought of the story. The real problem is when it gets too lopsided as the case was with Final Fantasy XIII and you sacrifice gameplay for the sake of a narrative. Even Sakaguchi learned that lesson (or using it now at least), an idea for gameplay should come first with a idea for a narrative that fits that gameplay coming second.

I don't see how the characters in FF13 were good in any way, shape, or form. Sazh was okay, but everyone else was horrible.

Man, that's what you think at first, but then you look at some other games out there, or at least hear IMPRESSIONS about those other games, and realize Square Enix may've done a better job than you give them credit for.

[Kevadu]

Nope, don't want that. See, while I can't deny that story telling has become an essential part of the series it is just one part of the whole, when looking back on every entry (yes, even XIII) I think more of how much fun I had playing than what I thought of the story.

I guess my biggest beef with FFXIII is that I didn't have fun playing it.  I found the battle system--which was supposed to be the highlight of the game--to be tedious and boring.  There was essentially no variation in the best strategy and even regular enemies had way too many hit points so battles just dragged on and on.

If that's the best thing the game has to offer then forget it.

[Archendrus]

Nope, don't want that. See, while I can't deny that story telling has become an essential part of the series it is just one part of the whole, when looking back on every entry (yes, even XIII) I think more of how much fun I had playing than what I thought of the story.

I guess my biggest beef with FFXIII is that I didn't have fun playing it.  I found the battle system--which was supposed to be the highlight of the game--to be tedious and boring.  There was essentially no variation in the best strategy and even regular enemies had way too many hit points so battles just dragged on and on.

If that's the best thing the game has to offer then forget it.

I liked the battle system, well as far as AI parties go, I'm not a fan of them gererally.  But you're right, once you figured out the best setup it was all downhill from there.  Something else I didn't like, you could only use your party leader's Eidolon.  Not that Eidolons were super useful anyway, but still.

[Lazlowe1984]

The "Maker" doesn't really exist and neither does quality in FFXIII

[Sagacious-T]

The overall plot was just so bad. I mean the Fal'cies motivations are a fucking joke. Why did they want to bring God back anyways? Wouldn't God just be pissed that they slaughtered all the humans? If the Fal'cie run everything on Cocoon, why didn't they just like cut off the life support systems or something? Why did Eidolons have to be used?

[Lazlowe1984]

The overall plot was just so bad. I mean the Fal'cies motivations are a fucking joke. Why did they want to bring God back anyways? Wouldn't God just be pissed that they slaughtered all the humans? If the Fal'cie run everything on Cocoon, why didn't they just like cut off the life support systems or something? Why did Eidolons have to be used?

Plot holes.Gotta love them.No wonder we get 400 pages of FFXIII fan fiction every week

[zendzian]

These are all pretty understandable beefs with the game. At another message board I was reading, someone was complaining about the colors. The colors. As in, "These trees are too green." And he thought he had a valid argument.

I think that with a series this old, they have the luxury of taking risk. If I remember correctly they were, I think, looking to focus more on the gameplay rather than the plot this time around, and it definitely shows. I think they were also attempting to draw a new crowd into the franchise, which is why S-E and Final Fantasy XIII were the major sponsor of this year's NBA All-Star Game. They wanted to make the game appealing to an audience that was by and large a bigger fan of action games. I'm not sure how successful they were, as I didn't follow it that closely, but I'll never understand why they thought it was a good idea. Final Fantasy has a large enough following as it is. Why, for the 13th entry in the series, did you feel the sudden need to try and tap a different niche market?

But anyway, while it was not a perfect game, it was by no means a bad game for me. I enjoyed the fast-paced gameplay and the gorgeous environments (especially the Sunleth Waterscape). The plot and the characters did indeed leave something to be desired. The only two people whose stories I really cared about were Sazh's and Hope's. Despite the fact that everyone seems to hate Hope, his character arc was one of the few that made any sense.

[Sagacious-T]

My problem is that I expect the plot and gameplay in a JRPG go hand in hand. The plot was really interesting for the first 15-20 hours of the game, which made up for the "Press X to continue" Battle system.

However, after those 15-20 hours the game switched it up entirely. The characters became paper-thin and the plot became empty and boring. Gran Pulse was a joke of a scenery change. The gameplay started evolving here, but basically summed up to a bunch of paradigm shifting and press X over and over.

I didn't feel like i was thinking to really win here, more like instinctively shifting paradigms to win.

[CDFN]

Isn't there a FFXIII thread already? Why don't you ask what the maker is in the game's thread? If I have 10 doubts about a game's plot can I create 10 different threads for each one?

[Prime Mover]

I don't follow with the "Gameplay over plot" aspect. I thought that was FFXII. I think FFXIII was quite the opposite... it was basically supposed to be an interactive movie, with a huge focus on plot and cutscenes. The battle system (which I actually really came to enjoy), was heavily automated, and if anything, would really turn off action gamers. I don't know anything about them sponsoring the NBA game, but they probably would have done that regardless of how they initially developed the game to target.

The problem with developing such large games as Final Fantasy, is that you outgrow your fanbase. If every person on the planet that called themselves a Final Fantasy fan bought the game, it still wouldn't make them enough money to break even. They have to appeal to a larger fanbase, or risk utter financial disaster. These games have huge, motion picture sized budgets. Martin Scorsese wouldn't stand a chance if he only was able to target Martin Scorsese fans, for instance. This can also be a good thing, because it encourages a producer to branch out a bit, and not just do the same thing all the time (though some do... Quentin Tarantino).

[Eusis]

Isn't there a FFXIII thread already? Why don't you ask what the maker is in the game's thread? If I have 10 doubts about a game's plot can I create 10 different threads for each one?

That thread is old, this has a more specific focus, and it's made so we can freely spew spoilers. It's fine.