Jason Schreier confirms FFXVI has been in development for at least 4 years in some capacity. Will come out sooner than what people think.

[Afrocious]

The MSQ for ARR and the 2.X quests has been reduced timewise, but I'll say using that video from Mr. Happy might not be a good comparison point. Though he made a fresh character, he still knows how to play efficiently and knows what not to be caught up by. If you're experienced with the game, you already know how to be laser focused through the MSQ.

Also take into account what jobs you're using as well. Tanks and healers are going to have the fastest time through the MSQ by nature of queues I believe.

sure, and they do help, flying especially, but there is still a lot of stuff that feels very superfluous. Unless the pre titan fetch quest chain is going to be super important in later expansions, I really wish that was cut a lot more as an example.

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The titan questline was awful. I heard it got reduced, but I don't know by how much. I also do hear a bit of things could be cut still.

 

[StayHandsome]

I agree that the graphics aren't looking very polished for a game that's supposedly been in production for a while. In fact, I thought it was an MMO based on their fidelity, so I was surprised to see it's single player. I'm hoping it's simply a matter of scheduling core gameplay elements before graphical polish, and that we'll get worthy visuals later in development. It's possible they just chose not to blow the whole budget on a reveal trailer, which we know are almost always just smoke and mirrors, and require a lot of resources to make.

There are also some games come to mind that had rather underwhelming reveals, but later turned out to be milestone achievements in graphics, such as God of War 3.

Tldr; it doesn't look great, but I don't think that dooms it forever.

 

[Dalik]

The MSQ for ARR and the 2.X quests has been reduced timewise, but I'll say using that video from Mr. Happy might not be a good comparison point. Though he made a fresh character, he still knows how to play efficiently and knows what not to be caught up by. If you're experienced with the game, you already know how to be laser focused through the MSQ.

Also take into account what jobs you're using as well. Tanks and healers are going to have the fastest time through the MSQ by nature of queues I believe.

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Most people still gonna take 50 hours, it's not like 1-50 jobs have , unfortunately, any deep gameplay that you have to learn, they are incredibly basic. There really is nothing to optimize at that level, even during heavenswards tbh.

 

[Afrocious]

Most people still gonna take 50 hours, it's not like 1-50 jobs have , unfortunately, any deep gameplay that you have to learn, they are incredibly basic. There really is nothing to optimize at that level, even during heavenswards tbh.

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It's not so much gameplay of ARR that I'd see being a barrier because it is simplistic compared to 3.0 onward, but take into account sidequests, getting pulled into doing stuff that's both fun and distracting (Gold Saucer for example), and again jobs. I know new folks who never continued the MSQ because they were constantly being pulled away by side stuff. I've had more than one friend want to raid back in 4.0, but they were level 60 and wanted to do EX trials and unlock floors of Alexander. It's sort of like a 'good' problem that there's so much stuff to do as you're leveling.

And regarding queues, it does stack up when you're DPS and are in a queue for 10+ minutes.

 

[Dalik]

It's not so much gameplay of ARR that I'd see being a barrier because it is simplistic compared to 3.0 onward, but take into account sidequests, getting pulled into doing stuff that's both fun and distracting (Gold Saucer for example), and again jobs. I know new folks who never continued the MSQ because they were constantly being pulled away by side stuff. I've had more than one friend want to raid back in 4.0, but they were level 60 and wanted to do EX trials and unlock floors of Alexander. It's sort of like a 'good' problem that there's so much stuff to do as you're leveling.

And regarding queues, it does stack up when you're DPS and are in a queue for 10+ minutes.

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Well yeah, that is what I was referring to when saying "playing wrong". You can do side content at your pace but I wouldn't take that into account as how long it takes to do the story.
The big variable is queue times, and that's also what is being the real difference here between low and high 40 hours, if we exclusively speaking about someone only playing the MSQ.

 

[More Human than Human]

I agree that the graphics aren't looking very polished for a game that's supposedly been in production for a while. In fact, I thought it was an MMO based on their fidelity, so I was surprised to see it's single player. I'm hoping it's simply a matter of scheduling core gameplay elements before graphical polish, and that we'll get worthy visuals later in development. It's possible they just chose not to blow the whole budget on a reveal trailer, which we know are almost always just smoke and mirrors, and require a lot of resources to make.

There are also some games come to mind that had rather underwhelming reveals, but later turned out to be milestone achievements in graphics, such as God of War 3.

Tldr; it doesn't look great, but I don't think that dooms it forever.

Click to shrink...

I'm actually glad the graphics are not cutting edge because it means it probably wasn't a priority for the team. Trying to be a visual benchmark was the downfall of the latest games and it resulted in a bunch of problems, canceled projects and bad engines. FF focused in story and gameplay first is what SIE needs right now imo.

 

[twistedbasis]

I'm actually glad the graphics are not cutting edge because it means it probably wasn't a priority for the team. Trying to be a visual benchmark was the downfall of the latest games and it resulted in a bunch of problems, canceled projects and bad engines. FF focused in story and gameplay first is what SIE needs right now imo.

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There's a difference between "cutting edge" and "table stakes" for what will be a 2022 game. I also don't need cutting edge, but I would like to see that the MMO team can even play their next hand at the table at least. Their modelers, animators, and texture artists should all be able to output high quality assets in reasonable time nowadays if they've continued to hone their craft over the years. They're teetering on the cusp of being a little underwhelming compared to titles 6+ years old at the time they ship (cross-gen D-Dog from MGSV looks better than that atrocity in the reveal as do the choco's from XV :))

 

[King Kingo]

So it's cross-gen then?

Imagine the meltdowns.

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If it's made with the same graphical engine as Final Fantasy XV then it's completely feasible. They'd want to make as big of a return on investment as possible so I'm expecting a cross-gen release.

 

[mrchowderclam]

If it's made with the same graphical engine as Final Fantasy XV then it's completely feasible. They'd want to make as big of a return on investment as possible so I'm expecting a cross-gen release.

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I suspect it's actually the FF14 engine with significant modifications to the rendering pipeline. It makes sense operationally, as the team working on this seems to be folks who worked on Heavensward who are familiar with the engine constraints. Certain things like character animations, hair rendering, grass rendering and lighting seem similar to FF14, albeit with more modern shader effects.

I assume FF14 will also move to support the PS5 and drop PS4 support at some point so rather than using two separate engines, it makes sense to develop a next-gen focused rendering pipeline in modules and then just import them to FF14 when that game is expected to shift over. It makes the overall projects of the division easier to manage since you don't have to train engineers to work with an entirely new toolset just so they can work on a different project, which means that resource allocation can be a little more dynamic. I just see too many wins from building on the ff14/crystal tools engine versus using luminous or UE4.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

If it's made with the same graphical engine as Final Fantasy XV then it's completely feasible. They'd want to make as big of a return on investment as possible so I'm expecting a cross-gen release.

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It's definitely not Luminous, i'd be absolutely shocked if it wasn't a modified version of the XIV engine.

 

[King Kingo]

It's definitely not Luminous, i'd be absolutely shocked if it wasn't a modified version of the XIV engine.

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I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't Luminous as the team who are experts with the engine are occupied with Project Athia.

Regardless, if it's in a familar engine and pipeline, I'm sure it can be modified to take better advantage of next generation hardware.

 

[platocplx]

I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't Luminous as the team who are experts with the engine are occupied with Project Athia.

Regardless, if it's in a familar engine and pipeline, I'm sure it can be modified to take better advantage of next generation hardware.

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I cant wait to see what they do with Project Athia.

 

[RustyNails]

I am 99.9% sure its FF14 engine. Like, at first I thought it was a new expansion.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

If it's the XIV engine then it has been modified to the point to where it's not even the same thing.

It went from early PS3 visuals to high end PS4 visuals. That's basically 1.5 gens of a graphical difference. I don't think the XVI team wants to even attempt to compete with Athia or FF7R2s visuals, because those are going to be insanely high end, expensive, time consuming, and probably cause a whole host of headaches for the dev teams.

 

[King Kingo]

I cant wait to see what they do with Project Athia.

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Project Athia is clearly going to be Square Enix's graphical breakthrough game, I can't wait either.

 

[ZmillA]

Surprise launch game, give it to me

 

[Quinton]

Project Athia is clearly going to be Square Enix's graphical breakthrough game, I can't wait either.

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I'm sure it's going to be breathtaking. But with a visual target like that, I'm going to keep my expectations super-low in terms of story delivery. I'd love to be wrong and I'm interested in picking it up either way but a little voice inside my head keeps whispering, "Out-of-this-world gorgeous game with a ten-hour narrative." lol

 

[Kientin]

It's not a huge looker, but it does look good. I much rather the team use the tools that they are comfortable with to provide a polished, well developed game. If the engine is holding them back from delivering the kind of experience they want to deliver, that's a different story.

 

[Chumunga64]

people talk crap about FFXV's voice acting but this is one of the best scenes this generation imo, first time in a while where I felt genuine emotions in a FF game

 

[ASilentProtagonist]

Project Athia is clearly going to be Square Enix's graphical breakthrough game, I can't wait either.

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Looks quite nice, but I'm not optimistic at all on Athia releasing in by the end of 2023. FFXVI I'm sure can likely make 2021.

 

[Dust]

Athia felt like vertical slice rather than actual game. FFXVI actually looks far in dev (and I don't mind graphics, I think they look fine).

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

XVIs been in development like 3 years longer than Athia, so it makes sense.

 

[OmegaDL50]

We only got a pre-rendered teaser with barely any info for the reveal of FFVIIR though. We only saw the back of the characters with some narration. By that time the project had barely started. Not to mention it's a Nomura game that's notorious for being in development forever.

It's completely different from this one where we got a meaty trailer running in real-time in engine and a pretty good look at the combat. The reveal trailer already looks like it's a real game you can play right now. It's also led by Yoshida who is like the opposite of Nomura when it came to managing development time. His team made an MMO in 2.5 years. It's also in full-production for more than a year now before they annouced it.

Not comparable at all.

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Not only that but also that but a lot of the development scrapped nearly a year and half in changing from an outsourcing studio to internally developed.

There isn't going to be case of Creative Business Unit III having this sort of issue considering the turn around from FFXIV 1.0 turnaround into A Realm Reborn taking 3 years from 2010 to 2013.

 

[Mifec]

people talk crap about FFXV's voice acting but this is one of the best scenes this generation imo, first time in a while where I felt genuine emotions in a FF game

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Hard disagree, nothing here is earned or set up well in the story. Ray Chase is better wailing as Eve in Nier:A or the funny MoM scenes in Kingdom Hearts.

 

[Deleted member 4494]

I would like to get a sense of the scale of this game. Like, if the scale is something along FF15, then the visual target here seems good. If on the other hand the scale of it is closer to FF7R, then yeah, visually it doesn't match. You can't forget that scale dictates quite a bit with regards to detail in a game.

 

[Mifec]

I'm sure it's going to be breathtaking. But with a visual target like that, I'm going to keep my expectations super-low in terms of story delivery. I'd love to be wrong and I'm interested in picking it up either way but a little voice inside my head keeps whispering, "Out-of-this-world gorgeous game with a ten-hour narrative." lol

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I just don't trust anyone at S-E not Natusko Ishikawa or Maehiro to put out a good story. Matsuno doesn't seem to be doing full game scope stuff anymore. So yeah that's a given.

 

[Philippo]

I just don't trust anyone at S-E not Natusko Ishikawa or Maehiro to put out a good story. Matsuno doesn't seem to be doing full game scope stuff anymore. So yeah that's a given.

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Isn't Athia being written by externals such as Gary Whitta?

 

[Chumunga64]

Hard disagree, nothing here is earned or set up well in the story. Ray Chase is better wailing as Eve in Nier:A or the funny MoM scenes in Kingdom Hearts.

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I could give ya Eve (I was gonna write that XV was the gen's best english dub of a japanese game before I remembered Nier) but everyone in kingdom hearts 3sounded so fucking bad. legit, felt like a 90's dub of a game. I guess when compared to this



he sounded good

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

people talk crap about FFXV's voice acting but this is one of the best scenes this generation imo, first time in a while where I felt genuine emotions in a FF game

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Such an overrated scene

 

[Jinfash]

Don't worry, they will change engines mid-dev before they relocate their entire dev-team to Australia because a witch told them it would bring good luck.

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Please tell me this is entirely a joke and there no basis to superstition among SE or any other dev for that matter lol.

 

[Chasing]

There isn't going to be case of Creative Business Unit III having this sort of issue considering the turn around from FFXIV 1.0 turnaround into A Realm Reborn taking 3 years from 2010 to 2013.

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Plus they're supposedly building off the existing XIV engine that they are using, so there should be a smoother development transition.

 

[Soriku]

Isn't Athia being written by externals such as Gary Whitta?

Click to shrink...

Yes

 

[Chumunga64]

Isn't Athia being written by externals such as Gary Whitta?

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eh, not a fan of his works

but then again, videogame storytelling tends to be worse than mediocre movies

 

[Quinton]

I just don't trust anyone at S-E not Natusko Ishikawa or Maehiro to put out a good story. Matsuno doesn't seem to be doing full game scope stuff anymore. So yeah that's a given.

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I hear ya, though as folks further down pointed out, Whitta is helping pen Athia's story. I do think that will help. I just don't want to tell myself the length of the critical path will be all that impressive until proven otherwise, if that makes sense. I don't want to trick myself into hoping it's an epic if it might not be.

It's admittedly a somewhat silly thing to be thinking about at this stage. And regardless, the game is gonna be a real stunner!

 

[Mifec]

I hear ya, though as folks further down pointed out, Whitta is helping pen Athia's story. I do think that will help. I just don't want to tell myself the length of the critical path will be all that impressive until proven otherwise, if that makes sense. I don't want to trick myself into hoping it's an epic if it might not be.

It's admittedly a somewhat silly thing to be thinking about at this stage. And regardless, the game is gonna be a real stunner!

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I genuinely forgot that tbh.

They should go to writers more like how FROM went to Martin, even if he did just write the backstory and some characters for Elden Ring.

Would love to see a medieval game written by Joe Abercrombie.

 

[entrydenied]

Not only that but also that but a lot of the development scrapped nearly a year and half in changing from an outsourcing studio to internally developed.

There isn't going to be case of Creative Business Unit III having this sort of issue considering the turn around from FFXIV 1.0 turnaround into A Realm Reborn taking 3 years from 2010 to 2013.

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The whole "dev was scrapped" was unverified information , by someone who was said to have bad track record. There was a thread on Gamefaqs talking about the dev that so called worked at SE, who has said contradictory about when exactly was he in Japanese and who did he worked for.

You can read it here.

VII Remake -Destroying the "SE restarted development" rumor- - Final Fantasy VII Remake

For Final Fantasy VII Remake on the PlayStation 4, a GameFAQs message board topic titled "VII Remake -Destroying the "SE restarted development" rumor-".

gamefaqs.gamespot.com

I think SE never even said that CC did bad work. Just that they had finished their portion of the work needed and ended the contract.

 

[Quinton]

I genuinely forgot that tbh.

They should go to writers more like how FROM went to Martin, even if he did just write the backstory and some characters for Elden Ring.

Would love to see a medieval game written by Joe Abercrombie.

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Oh yesss, that would rock.

 

[benzy]

The whole "dev was scrapped" was unverified information , by someone who was said to have bad track record. There was a thread on Gamefaqs talking about the dev that so called worked at SE, who has said contradictory about when exactly was he in Japanese and who did he worked for.

You can read it here.

VII Remake -Destroying the "SE restarted development" rumor- - Final Fantasy VII Remake

For Final Fantasy VII Remake on the PlayStation 4, a GameFAQs message board topic titled "VII Remake -Destroying the "SE restarted development" rumor-".

gamefaqs.gamespot.com

I think SE never even said that CC did bad work. Just that they had finished their portion of the work needed and ended the contract.

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Yeah, that rumor about VIIR scrapping CyberConnect's work was all BS started by that dan guy on reddit, who also said these things below which is verifiably false from the kh3 dev interviews as well as Tabata interviews. Plus CyberConnect was still listed as a dev on the project in the VIIR credits.

"There was no 'transfer' to a new engine, square was using UE4 for KHIII from day 1, the same way it was being used for FFVII from day 1, it was being tested for KHIII well before assets were made, its not like they made assets then started testing the engine, the engine is always the first thing to be decided in a games production. Plus square already had a lot of experience with the engine due to Dragon Quest XI."​

​

"All i can say is, that during my 4 months working at square, my understanding of the situation was office politics, Nomura was shifted out when the company head changed, the only head liked Nomura, and the new head liked Tabata."​

 

[entrydenied]

Yeah, that rumor about VIIR scrapping CyberConnect's work was all BS started by that dan guy on reddit, who also said these things below which is verifiably false from the kh3 dev interviews as well as Tabata interviews. Plus CyberConnect was still listed as a dev on the project in the VIIR credits.

"There was no 'transfer' to a new engine, square was using UE4 for KHIII from day 1, the same way it was being used for FFVII from day 1, it was being tested for KHIII well before assets were made, its not like they made assets then started testing the engine, the engine is always the first thing to be decided in a games production. Plus square already had a lot of experience with the engine due to Dragon Quest XI."​

​

"All i can say is, that during my 4 months working at square, my understanding of the situation was office politics, Nomura was shifted out when the company head changed, the only head liked Nomura, and the new head liked Tabata."​

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Yeah there's just too much crap. That DQXI is crap too since most of the dev work was outsourced.

 

[OmegaDL50]

The whole "dev was scrapped" was unverified information , by someone who was said to have bad track record. There was a thread on Gamefaqs talking about the dev that so called worked at SE, who has said contradictory about when exactly was he in Japanese and who did he worked for.

You can read it here.

VII Remake -Destroying the "SE restarted development" rumor- - Final Fantasy VII Remake

For Final Fantasy VII Remake on the PlayStation 4, a GameFAQs message board topic titled "VII Remake -Destroying the "SE restarted development" rumor-".

gamefaqs.gamespot.com

I think SE never even said that CC did bad work. Just that they had finished their portion of the work needed and ended the contract.

Click to shrink...

What we do know however at some point FFVII had outsourcing work considered for the project and development shifted internally

Final Fantasy VII Remake Development Shifts to 'Internal Setup' at Square Enix - IGN

Square Enix is moving development internally "to control everything, including quality, on a stable schedule."

www.ign.com

Also for folks that continue to push that Square can't keep a consistent deadline for anything related Final Fantasy. Look at the timing of this article. https://www.siliconera.com/expect-f...gdom-hearts-iii-release-sometime-three-years/ And roughly 3 years after after this FFVII Remake released, exactly as they said it would.

 

[Ewaan]

 

[asd202]

Zero surprise about this being M-rated. They are going for The Witcher and GoT crowd.

 

[King Kingo]

Square has been doing much better when he took over from Wada. Those were some dark ages.

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He sold off IO Interactive and the Hitman IP just because it underperformed, he has his fair share of questionable business practices.

 

[Carmelozi]

He sold off IO Interactive and the Hitman IP just because it underperformed, he has his fair share of questionable business practices.

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No, they still have Hitman IP and they license it to IOI.

 

[Phoney McRingRing]

No, they still have Hitman IP and they license it to IOI.

Click to shrink...

No, IOI is independent with Square Enix owning a small stake.

"It's not Hitman without IO": Why Square Enix set the franchise free

It was one of the biggest shock news stories the games industry has seen all year: Square Enix planned to sell IO Inter…

www.gamesindustry.biz

 

[Carmelozi]

No, IOI is independent with Square Enix owning a small stake.

"It's not Hitman without IO": Why Square Enix set the franchise free

It was one of the biggest shock news stories the games industry has seen all year: Square Enix planned to sell IO Inter…

www.gamesindustry.biz

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Hmm yes, I know that IOI are independant. But they don't own Hitman, they're licencing it from Square Enix. Thus Square Enix is the sole owner of the IP. You can search on WIPO, you'll find it.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

He sold off IO Interactive and the Hitman IP just because it underperformed, he has his fair share of questionable business practices.

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If by underperformed you mean lost tens of millions of dollars then yes, it underperformed.