Final Fantasy XIII

[Arcana]

Okay so yeah I think I know what's wrong with this game for me.

-highlight to see-

The pacing in this game is STILL pretty off. I just got to Disc 3 after you fight the Patriarch or whoever the leader guy is that's also a Fal'cie.

Before this point, your party was just kind of wandering around and all kinds of dumb events were occurring that happened to favour them. Also Cid ends up being a l'Cie as well, and while I thought it was much too convenient for an entire fleet of airships to "break off" from the government and fire on its own ships without being annihilated it turns out that this was supposedly part of the master plan as well. I guess while this is supposed to be an explanation (the bishop set it up such that none of troops would actually kill the l'cie etc), there was a lack of good foreshadowing in my opinion.

A story often foreshadows so that the player has something to look forward to. Also, the story also gives the player extra information so they can anticipate not only the events that are going to occur, but also the reactions to the characters. Without any foreshadowing that the patriarch was really a bad dude (or also that the people of Cocoon were blindly manipulated - there's no evidence that they're unhappy, after all) you don't really get any sense of "Oh my gosh what's going to happen now" in the first 22 hours of the game.

I mean, the plot layout is fine overall. This event reminds of the climax in the third act of a Shakespearean play. But, I wished now that they would have revealed in bits and pieces more of what the villains were doing, even if it's that girl with the glasses and that one PSIcomm dude with the katana, or Cid doing some internal emo angsting about what he was going to do that sets up the player to anticipate, "Oh no, something bad'll happen."

As it currently stands the plot unfortunately seems to play with tons and tons of frequent coincidences.

-highlight off-

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Well, I finally finished the game and I can say without a doubt that I'm pretty disappointed.

There were instances where I cared about the characters and their struggle, and I thought the dialogue at many parts was interesting, however once the game jumped the shark towards the end of the second disc, it slowly started to go downhill from there until the spiraling pitfall that are chapters 12 and 13. Honestly, there were CG sequences where I had no idea what was going on or why I should care.

It's disappointing because I know that the intention to craft a great narrative was there, but it seems that most of their resources were pooled into the tech. To the teams credit, the tech is wonderful and this game is easily one of if not the best looking game I've seen on this generation. That's the real sell: The game's production values are through the roof, save for a sloppy job of audio/video compression on the 360 version which was clearly the fault of SE, and not due to the limitations of the system itself.

Aesthetically, I believe that this game is the culmination of what they've been going for since FFVII, and the battle system is wonderfully crafted and fun as all hell, however, those who like me are also looking for a compelling story should look elsewhere, as while the intent and beginnings are there, there's no real follow through.

Gears of War is very cinematic, however it doesn't depend on a compelling narrative as much as it does the gameplay. Final Fantasy doesn't have that luxury. This is a series that thrives on narrative just as much as the gameplay, and that "Hollywood cinematic" style a compelling narrative does not make.

Anyway, closing the book on this one.

[prophetik music]

i found the story relatively clear throughout most of the game, with only a few 'wtf' moments. it does get a little convoluted at the end...which, as much as anything else, is a hallmark of FF games (4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 come to mind).

[Soma]

I just got to chapter 10 and I'm having a lot of problems with just the normal enemies now.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Well I actually restarted the game again when I was already 40 hours in, so I've logged in roughly 100 hours, not counting all the retries.

The first 25 hours have plenty of exposition(and yet so much of it is rushed), then there's about 20 hours of nothing(although at least the missions and wandering around is fun), and then a rushed 10 hour finale.

The least disappointing thing about the ending was listening to My Hands.

[prophetik music]

I just got to chapter 10 and I'm having a lot of problems with just the normal enemies now.

just run around a level for a while. i got my ass handed to me for a while. do you use a sentinel much? seriously, you can use a sentinel and get past half of the enemies just using Delta Attack and Mystic Tower, with a few quick switches to healer paradigms to heal up.

[Soma]

just run around a level for a while. i got my ass handed to me for a while. do you use a sentinel much? seriously, you can use a sentinel and get past half of the enemies just using Delta Attack and Mystic Tower, with a few quick switches to healer paradigms to heal up.

I started switching things up and using rav/rav/rav combo to stagger enemies and it started going faster. I'm passed the first boss in chapter 10 now. I'm really close to getting out of the linear part of the game as I understand it and that makes me happy.

[prophetik music]

fyi, you're going to get your ass handed to you later on. there's a reason it's called tri-disaster

[Zombie]

I just got to chapter 10 and I'm having a lot of problems with just the normal enemies now.

I started switching things up and using rav/rav/rav combo to stagger enemies and it started going faster. I'm passed the first boss in chapter 10 now. I'm really close to getting out of the linear part of the game as I understand it and that makes me happy.

I just beat the 2nd Barthandelus, and i must say, that boss was hard. The game really does get more difficult towards the end i find, though if you really put some thought into your party and paradigms, you can fare okay. I enjoy having both a saboteur and a synergist out - you can just rape once your buffs and whatnot are up.

As for the first final fantasy game i'll be completing ever, it's pretty fantastic. I'm almost motivated enough to play through my copies of 7 and 8 and actually complete them this time.

[prophetik music]

some rpgs don't age well.

[Fishy]

If you're dying: Medic-Synergist-Saboteur is your friend.

Switch to that to heal, it keeps up whatever chain you had going, buffs the party and heals their wounds. Deshell and Deprotect OWN. Against some enemies it actually has more effect then stagger in my experience.

[The Derrit]

i can't wait until my insurance claim comes through and i can buy this game and my xbox back

i'm ok with playing through the first disc a second time now

[prophetik music]

did anything come of the police investigation? i'm assuming no.

[The Derrit]

did anything come of the police investigation? i'm assuming no.

nope they were supposed to watch the security cameras from the hotel but to my knowledge they haven't gotten around to that yet aka it most likely isn't coming back

on the bright side most of my games for xbox aren't long adventures with really important save files so whatever i've lost i can get back. it'll just take some time on task for things like SF4 and whatnot

on the not-so-bright side it might take awhile for my claim to get filled. we'll see

[Arek the Absolute]

i can't wait until my insurance claim comes through and i can buy this game and my xbox back

i'm ok with playing through the first disc a second time now

Tell me when you get your 360 again! We need to jam on some SSF4!

[The Derrit]

Tell me when you get your 360 again! We need to jam on some SSF4!

will do good sir. i'll finally have a good reason to keep a live gold account

[Arcana]

I was really confused in the presentation of elements of the story especially related to Vanille and Fang.

-highlight to read-

I never, ever got the feeling that Vanille ever presented herself as having become Ragnarok.

The only reason I learned about this was because I read about it in the Datalog. Then, somehow Fang finds out that she was actually Ragnarok. I don't understand where she got the prerequisite knowledge to make this deduction.

It's possible that I might have missed a cutscene or two, when I got to Chapter 11 I went straight for Oerba and am exploring Oberba now, instead of going backwards to explore missions.

Did I miss something here?

-end highlight-

[eternal Zero]

Yes. You definitely skipped a cutscene somewhere.

Spoilers.

Fang became Ragnarok. That's why her brand is all messed up and she lost her memory. Vanille just remembers it all and says she doesn't.

[Arcana]

No, I got that cutscene:

-spoilers-

I know that Vanille remembered what happened whereas Fang does not (you see it when she's kidnapped with Sazh and she tells him about her past). However, in the Datalog it clearly says that "Vanille became Ragnarok". Later you get a cutscene (when Vanille gets her summon) about how Fang figures out that she was actually Ragnarok (though there's no reason given as to how she figured it out) and calls Vanille out on it.

My confusion is: (1) why'd the datalog ever say Vanille was Ragnarok? and (2) How did Fang figure out?

-end-

[prophetik music]

spoiler

fang got her memory back. she'll explain in a bit. basically, she figured out why her brand was messed up - because she'd actually fulfilled her focus, to a point, even if it was to save vanille. vanille's brand is still there because while her focus was fulfilled, she didn't do it.

i think.

-end-

don't forget that the datalog changes based on information revealed in the game.

[Arcana]

Yes, I realise the Datalog does update - the info I posted above about Vanille disappears after a few scenes.

If there's something else I am disappointed about in the game it's how the text in the Datalog seems incongruent with the cutscenes that you've been shown, like the example I listed above. There are a few other cases as well where the event synopsis reveals more than what the cutscenes show.

-spoilers-

Like how they decided why they went to Oerba isn't explained well in cutscenes and is explained better in the Datalog. Also, another instance where Vanille "decided" to go onto the train to Pulse is explained in the Event Datalog for Day 11, but never presented. Also, how Vanille and Fang found Serah is also described in the Datalog but no flashback scene was given (though I am expecting one to come soon, so maybe it'll still happen). There are a few other small incidents. Anyway, they're small but it kind of makes you as a player wonder "did I miss something", even though you probably didn't because the game is so linear.

-end spoilers-

[prophetik music]

it's meant to encourage you to visit the datalog constantly. they put so much info in there, you're meant to read it.

it's a western thing - look at, say, the codex entries in Dragon Age, as one limited example. it fleshes out the story without killing the cinematic feel of the cutscenes. just another one of the many outsider things they integrated in a way that i think is good for the series.

[Necrotic]

it's meant to encourage you to visit the datalog constantly. they put so much info in there, you're meant to read it.

it's a western thing - look at, say, the codex entries in Dragon Age, as one limited example. it fleshes out the story without killing the cinematic feel of the cutscenes. just another one of the many outsider things they integrated in a way that i think is good for the series.

I like the Datalog, but I agree with Arcana in that ends up being TOO necessary to read it and make sense of what's going on and it probably shouldn't be.

Things like that are generally for people who want more insight into the stuff that's going on behind the scenes, not an explanation of what just happened because the cutscenes themselves didn't do the job properly.

But yeah, I'm not really playing the game for an amazing plot anyways. Unless there's some super spectacular plot twist or something I don't really think I'm gonna be wowed by any of the writing by the time I'm finished. Plus FF has never really been the shining example of good writing like pretty much ever.

[Arcana]

it's meant to encourage you to visit the datalog constantly. they put so much info in there, you're meant to read it.

it's a western thing - look at, say, the codex entries in Dragon Age, as one limited example. it fleshes out the story without killing the cinematic feel of the cutscenes. just another one of the many outsider things they integrated in a way that i think is good for the series.

But my statement is that the datalog provides information that the cutscenes should have provided. It's not like, "This is background about the neighbourhoods of Cocoon's cities" or "Here are the technical specifications of the various vehicles you can fly in Cocoon" or other complimentary information.

I agree with Necrotic, there's information in there about the main storyline that either deserved some cutscene time, or shouldn't have been listed in the Datalog because it makes the Datalog appear inconsistent.

I don't really believe so much that Datalogs are a specifically Western thing though. It was used extensively in Xenosaga for example, as well as Ogre Battle/Tactics ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics.

[Arcana]

spoilers

I just finished the game. It's 1:30 AM and I supposedly gotta get up in four hours so I'll write back when I get home after the weekend. There's a pretty large laundry list of issues I have with the story in this game but I'll go through a few highlights.

-begin spoilers-

I had a bunch of "general story pacing" issues with Disks 1 and 2, but overall they're not really big issues. I'm going to deal with elements of the story itself.

First, I was extremely annoyed that everything in the game was revealed by Bartandalus. Everything - from the fal'Cie's purpose to the nature of the l'Cie to the reasons why the stormtroopers... I mean PSIComm could never hit Lightning or Snow or any other one of our heroes with their billions of bullets.

Why does this annoy me? Because so much of the game is based on what he says. He's a villain. And villains lie in order to get people to do things. When you're reading a book, it's not really essential to know what the "truth" is, but I think for a story as long as this one, and especially where you have to get motivation to play as a consequence of the story (or, alternatively, as a motivator to get more story), it's important for the player to know what the "truth" is. It's simply not enough for the director of the game to presume that the player is invested enough in the characters to support their quest of "running away for a bit of a vacation", and then to presume that the player will believe the primary villain long enough to think that yes, in fact Orphan dies in order to destroy the world.

I mean, in the end it turns out to be true (phew), but then there's like at least three or four Deus Ex Machina elements that happen at the very end of the game that really make me scratch my head. The whole "hey we turned into Cieth but hey-look-we-decided-not-to-be" was really really cheesy.

Besides the ending, the other issues I had with the story generally amounted to the following:

1) The world wasn't developed enough. It's strange to say of a 50+ hour game, but I think the biggest problem I had with the entire game was that I really didn't give a damn about Cocoon and would have been pretty damn happy to pitch a tent, settle down, and start a farm on Gran Pulse.

The reason is that Cocoon really isn't shown in a flattering light for most of the game. The citizens are sheep. They're all antagonistic toward our heroes. There's maybe six minor characters from Cocoon who are important enough for us to care about, but we really don't learn more about them other than their names. For a couple of foreigners who've barely lived in the society for two weeks (Vanille in particular), they're awfully attached to it - at least Fang had an attitude that I would have seen as more realistic - "I'll follow them because they can help me, not because I really care that much about the world". I suppose it might just be a personality thing but it could have come out better, especially if there were more scenes in the backstory part of the game (which, unfortunately consisted almost primarily of the 13 days leading up to the main events).

2) The "goal" isn't clear, from a global view. As I mentioned, the only antagonist (other than their supposedly-timed fates) is Bartandalus, and the entire story is delivered by the main villain. Maybe I missed a cutscene, or maybe it would be more interesting if I had unlocked all of the "legend" datalogs, but it would have been great to actually learn about the world through what could be considered a less subjective source. This is pretty critical because virtually the entire game is supposed to be based on preconceptions and biases of the population, and this gets turned on its head at the end (the reason why people turn into Cieth for example).

3) The pacing is off for almost the entire game.

Too slow at the beginning, then it gets super-rushed, then it slows to a crawl as it opens up to the exploration-allowed part. Then the last ten hours or so are delivered in another huge rush of events.

I think I had issues with how character interactions pretty much stopped after you got to Gran Pulse. There were two or three cutscenes, but they were pretty much extra fluff and didn't reveal (what I would have thought) to be important information about the character's motivations. Of particular importance, now that I've seen the end of the game, would have been Vanille and Fang's previous relationship before they were turned to crystal especially since it seems like they're pretty damn important in the grand thick of things.

I think the "trial" of the character Fang at the end was interesting, but as I watched it I felt that I should have watched this cutscene 20 hours ago, and that this classic "test of the hero" should have been done earlier. I don't know if this is like some kind of RPG convention, but lately I've been finding that most RPGs tend to have a story structure in which you get a clear "calm before the storm" - that is, where you are very, very clear who the end boss is, where he's located, and how to kill him. Your characters are comfortable, they like each other, and they're ready to kill him. In the meantime, the game quietly also hands you a "go explore these extra bonus areas" card. I really didn't get this from FF XIII - because the main conflict (the fact that the characters are going to turn into Cieth) isn't resolved when you get down to Gran Pulse. In addition, though the characters were supposed to have faced their trial when they got their Eidolon, it was pretty clear that some of them had it easier than others - Lightning got a free card for example, Vanille's was virtually out of nowhere, whereas Sazh's was extremely intriguing.

There's other stuff I'm sure but, well, it's late and I'm going to go to bed. I mean I enjoyed the game and I think the combat system is pretty awesome, but the story progression leaves a bit to be desired. I think that this extremely linear storyline actually works pretty poorly for a game like Final Fantasy. I dunno, I guess I finish the game and I have pretty mixed feelings.

-end spoilers-

okay done