BTW I found a few months ago what is possibly the origin point of many JRPG designers having a very complicated relationship with the term. Daniel Erickson claiming FF13 is not an RPG at all when interviewed about the Star Wars MMO.

His quote infuriated Nomura at the time. If you want the Nomura answer, he basically had an entire 5 minutes angry rant after being told about this, and the translator probably realized he shouldn't even try to translate it and just said "yeah he said his games should just be called RPGs"

Here's a simple comparison to showcase the difference in coverage with FF16 and Horizon FW released with the same critical reception.

This is how Kotaku headlined Horizon's gay romance, and this is how it headlined FFXVI's.

What's even more interesting is the content ⬇️ The writer, the same for both articles, highlighted the romance in Horizon FW and takes it as a victory, despite the romance being optional, despite Aloy herself having flirtatious dialogue with male characters, despite being only in a DLC.

It is a defense of Aloy's queerness.

You understand a lot about how FFXIV was salvaged when you read that Yoshi-P traced over the work of Matsuno during his studies to learn from him. We know that ARR was rebooted with an extremely thorough design document for development that convinced the staff to stick around Staff didn't believe or wanted to stick around for FF14 anymore, they were working on the project since 2006, and Yoshi-P was an unknown at this point. He had to prove he was serious, and Matsuno's style of perfectionism and thoroughness was a style that would bring confidence.

Yoshi-P talks about how he always admired Yasumi Matsuno and was too intimidated to ask Hiroshi Minagawa and Akihiko Yoshida, who were part of Matsuno's team before, to connect them.

Matsuno ended up inviting him for a drink as he wanted to know what kind of person Yoshi-P was. Yoshi-P says Matsuno was the first time he was aware of feeling a "creator" behind the work. He says Matsuno games have a human touch and felt that they reflected Matsuno's thoughts and feelings of the time.

The interviewer says it is a similar feeling as Tomino with Gundam

Yoshi-P was present in Ultima Online during the infamous assassination of Lord British.

Richard Garriott, the creator of Ultima, was controlling the invincible Lord British NPC for an in-game event, but ended up being assassinated by a random player in front of a crowd. This event is called one of the most famous events in MMORPG history and even has its own wikipedia segment. It happened in August 9, 1997. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Brit…

Naoki Yoshida, who is in charge of Final Fantasy XIV and XVI, had a column giving advice to new game devs on how complexity gives a false sense of security and how creating data in a simple way is the more effective challenge to tackle. blog.kouhi.me/translation-ff… He wants to emphasize that a game dev can bring a level of uniqueness and personality through a restrained set of parameters for things like characters or monsters rather than a large one.

Both characters from FF16 and Vagrant Story are named Joshua, are the son of a duke, and have an older brother who is an important character in the story.

Having a reference to Vagrant Story in a 2023 FF game feels surreal. Also Clive Rosfield is totally a Matsuno-ass name like Ashley Riot and Sydney Losstarot when you think about it.

Sometimes I surprise myself at how clever I can be in Zelda TotK, and then most of the time this happens #Zelda TotK has consistently told me to get bent every time I go off the beaten path it's kinda funny #Zelda

Once again I am three hours deep into a place I'm not supposed to be in this early in Zelda TotK and my god we are so fucking back In BOTW I beelined for Hyrule Castle and it was one of the greatest experience in my life and now my head is spinning that I get to have more moments like that at any turn

Call me crazy but Zelda's 30 FPS feel smoother than 30 FPS on other games. It genuinely feels more responsive and snappy, I don't know how they do it Turns out Zelda uses double buffering vsync instead of triple buffering, so TotK genuinely feels more responsive as a result.

They took this risk knowing that the framerate would tank to 15/20 FPS if the game isn't hitting a steady 30FPS

This is most likely the physical diorama that Grasshopper Manufacture is using for the open world of their next action game.

This is the world of the "Deadburgh" game

https://twitter.com/Grasshopper_EN/status/1572601796039741440

This is what they're using as reference with the staff, and what Suda has said they're paying proper attention this time because they want to nail the open world part this time.

The game is also running on Unreal Engine if I'm not mistaken.

More info is coming out about Suda51's next game with a countdown for Grasshopper's 25th anniversary in 71 days.

This new game would be a NMH3/TSA action game but on an even larger scale & in a natural backdrop.

https://twitter.com/famitsu/status/1641092943502249984

https://twitter.com/TravisDiesAgain/status/1641095793363804160

it always goes like this: an article gets posted on twitter, 90% reacts only on the headline, the other 10% are left having to explain to the 90% that they're over-reacting and should read the fucking thing.

when will the NPC behavior ever stop? they're fucking moths to a flame it's so upsetting how dumb this website is, their attention span is so shot they think it's a better use of their time to post their takes on something they haven't read than to actually fucking read the thing and save themselves some time about it.

so many silent hill fans are actually demented that they're shitting on shattered memories now. do they even like any SH games except 1 & 2 the sh fanbase tore Hulett a new one every single day during the PS360 era and now we're moving on to shit on Barlow because...?

Naoki Yoshida is not shitting on FFXV as much as he is stating the reality that he has to convince people burned by it to try FF16.

Yoshi-P said he sees people who won't even watch the FF16 trailer because FF15 was bad. So FFXV is obviously his problem now. And he specifically said base FF15 without its DLCs. So he knows FF15 is a much better game now, but Yoshi-P is very minded by the reputation of the series.

He's a long-term businessman, he understands that reputation is a fundamental part of sales.

I will put in this thread different snippets from the various Final Fantasy XVI interviews done with Naoki Yoshida just so it is easier for me to handle

LOTS of good stuff⬇️ Yoshi-P says one of the main themes in FFXVI will be the clash of values and ideals, and how the dominants think about the state of the world considering the power they wield.

source: gamespot.com/articles/final…

Mitsuto Suzuki is really a genius. No wonder why he was also a part of FF7 Remake. That man is utterly unchained in terms of vibes
If you ever wondered why this track was in FF7 Remake and feels so different. It's because it's the GOAT Suzuki himself who made it.

You can't have him on a project and not expect him to bring the vibes

Reading any critique pf FFXII just reveals that for how much they criticize cinemasins, they utterly revel in it when it serves their purpose. It's much easier to scream nonsensical than trying to make sense of it.

The media literacy ends at "it needs to make sense NOW" Even if we are opposed to our interpretation and analysis of FFXII, it is necessary for a critique through long-form analysis to at least take the time to dive into what a scene could mean even if they don't understand it. None of that, the lack of meaning is seen as granted.

Now that more of Final Fantasy XVI's staff has been revealed, I will show you why this game has the potential to be the most unique single-player FF in 15 years

Some of the best minds at Square have been given a shot at this game to carve a new path ⬇️ First of all, Final Fantasy XVI comes from a different lineage of FF than you are probably used to.

These are the people that worked on games like FF Tactics, Vagrant Story, FF12, and the MMOs like the hugely acclaimed FF14.

But their last single-player FF was....FF12!

Masato Kato has always been unfairly maligned for his work on Chrono Cross, blamed for "hating" on Chrono Trigger and ruining a classic with his selfishly-made sequel.

Here is some info about the man, and how his work was a fundamental piece of Square's SNES/PS1 era ⬇️ First of all, Kato already had experience in the industry before joining Square, being involved on the Ninja Gaiden 1, 2 and 3 and then working with Gainax on Nadia and Princess Maker 2.

Vagrant Story's dev team were deeply inspired by Metal Gear Solid & wanted to push the limits of the PS1.

One area they wanted to improve on was the face of characters, because MGS1 didn't have eyes or facial expressions.

Vagrant Story featured moving eyes, lips and hair. The way they were able to make faces so detailed on the PS1 has allowed them to become much more sophisticated in terms of cutscene direction, giving it a more dramatic scale.

Few people have played Vagrant Story, even fewer to completion, but the story stands among the best.