Final Fantasy XII / FF12 revealed [!=56K]

First person 'look around view', that's nice addition.
From that info, finally there is some notable, welcome changes to the FF.

 

Comments from any dev regarding this? Like will in what aspects it may turn out to be better, worse, or "just a change of feel". Regarding the comment about 1st-person view, I assume that means certain locations are realtime-rendered instead of pre-rendered?

 

Shadowing just might not be complete yet. They still have quite a while left in development (a year or so? [EDIT: Ok, more like six months]) so they have left old shadowing implementation in until they can hit it. (Especially since we don't know how old that one particular shot is, either.) If they ARE losing polys to go after texture and lighting, I'd certainly expect it. (But at least they're keeping emphasis where it's important, like character animation. Makes me wonder about the backdrop design, though. Hehe...)

The more what's revealed of it the more we'll know, I guess.

 

The babe is cute. The guy looks a little too feminine and that's beginning to be too much of a problem in certain RPG's. It's not that I want a tough, strong, protagonist, it's just I would like one with a pair of balls. If these sketches and renderings of the main guy character turn me off this early I don't know if I would even bother to play the game. I would sure like to learn a little more info on this first.

 

I am ok with the main characters, as long as they are not the Q-sized characters like FF9 I am ok.

From the second movie from the camera, it looks pretty sweet.

http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~nanko/movies/ff12-2.wmv

 

Truer words have ne'er been spoken!

There's plenty of "bishi" floating around, but there's also plenty of rock-hard, nitty-gritty, "good guys" who barely look the part. FF's themselves have flipped around quite a lot (FF8, for instance, wedged between the likes of Sephiroth and Vincent from 7 and the super-deformity of 9), so I'm not sure that it's some overbearing trend. As well, the younger a protagonist is, the more I expect them to have softer features. Tidus looked fine most of the time, though a few shots of him in CG had quite a bishi output. But again, he was young. The rest of the cast stretched through the "manly/burly/rough-n-tumble" spectrum, and that's likely to be the case with 12 as well.

Plus, with Amano's art and legacy to go by, I'm surprised there's not a HIGHER artistic/effeminate quotient in there.

 

Naw, he has all the male traits, he's just metrosexual and a baby face

I love FFXII's direction so far, i knew that matsuno would put a breath of fresh air in the series. The art with the ships especially is making me drool. My most anticipated RPG in 2004.

 

Probably most of the locations, just like in FFX.

 

yes, there was actually very little FMV in FFX when seen as a whole game (at 140 hours i still don't have everything, and i dont intend to spend another minute on it or i'll feel very sad as a human being)

 

My opinion about the trailer:

I had expected al little more show and spectacle!!
e.g. The MGS3 trailer left me with a feeling "WOW! Did you see that" and you see a clear evolution in graphics. With this trailer I really don't have that feeling and I even find the graphics not special. I can be wrong but it seems the characters have much less polygons on them (therefore also less refined and more angular) than FFX.

The trailer I had expected more spectacle, I'm not really impressed. I had expected more this



This scene on the artwork I'd liked to see in the the trailer for example but then in a cutscene (CGI or realtime) or in gameplay. Imagine that you fight with someone and on the background you see a beautful, large city wherea many huge ships fly around. But no they give us a quite dull trailer in wiht noting special happens and where can not even see the female protagonist!

But yes the style is, however, very beautiful, much like FF9 that for me is one of the best FF. But it is still too early to judge about the game.
I just think that it's not a good trailer...

But the screens and artwork --> wow!! Those keep me thinking how beautiful it could be.

 

Yeah! Another nice looking main character, most intereting cg time be happen for me again mwahahaha.

 

Looks pretty good. Nice to see they are focusing more on textures than Polygons this time.

Although I'm hoping it doesn't look too blocky.

 

FF X had some impressive models on main characters. They used 3 LOD models in NTSC zones and only 2 in PAL zones (they optimized). But appart from those incredible models the others were nothing incredible. I remember seeing sub-PSO models in the game and with filtered textures of the PSX era.
Square has to improve those issues and try to do a balanced game in the graphics department. That was IMO the main problem with FFX models.

 

2 LOD models in PAL vs. 3 LOD elsewhere!?! I didn't know that.
I'd thought the black borders on top and bottom of the pictures and resulting squashed characters (Tidus looked even more baby-face in PAL version, because of rounder face) would have been enough 'optimising' by those lazy Square pal programmers

The FFXII looks much better in screenshots than FFX. The lower polycount doesn't seem to have harmed the graphics. Some of the screens posted are clearly from real time graphics (first person view?) and the model detail looks very good.

 

It does sound a bit suspicious, seeing there are engines out there with much better poly counts AND better textures than FFX ever had... All with much better IQ on top of it.
I don't see how they can just balance things between polys and textures the way they're talking about... Didn't think it worked that way.
In the end the main problem with PS2 textures (memory amount) will always be there, whether u use more polys or not...
I mean, it's going to be a PS2 exclusive, so why not focusing on PS2's strengths. The machine has shown it can produce amazing graphics as long as its strengths are used.
The more textures-les polys approach sounds very PCish to me.... Underwhelming if u ask me.
Still, i'm going to buy this game on launch day, graphics are going to be awesome nevertheless since the main point of FF graphics is the art...

 

Is there any mention if FFXII will be online also?
If so, maybe that's why they're going less poly-more texture, to make it easier to convert to PC... and/or *shock* xbox!!

 

i heard rumors of this a long time ago but nothing was claimed concerning online in line with FFXI.

 

i thought they confirmed FF11 would be the only online FF on PS2, and FF12 would be offline....
but yes, this less-poly-more-textures thing smells like eventual PC/Xbox port to me too :? :?