Final Fantasy XVI (FF16) [PS5]

[vspectra]

dang, poor lumi team.

maybe in the future its better for them to be "helper" studio for other FF projects?

like how Activision got lots and lots of studios helping other titles.

I think they're already a helper studio to FF, they helped out on VII-Remake as well, wouldn't be surprised to see their staff on Rebirth too. Lumi is still SE's most technically proficient team with the most competent proprietary engine within SE. I'd like for them to get a chance to make another game themselves without losing a director or half of the staff members during development; I enjoyed Forspoken and XV game design more than XVI.

I'm still a bit baffled they didn't even let you explore even just one of the major cities in XVI despite those being at the forefront of the artwork ads and even trailers teasing them, it's either a very short highly linear dungeon level design with the city as a backdrop or the quest is basically go to this city but you stop at the entrance to talk to npc and then return to hideout.

I went back to XV after finishing XVI and it's just insane how much more ambitious XV was in a game design and technology sense compared to Remake or XVI, and it only had half the development time XVI had while needing to split optimization for a multiplatform release.

https://imgur.com/DYTxzjK

https://imgur.com/NOjC2zy

 

[orangpelupa]

I think they're already a helper studio to FF, they helped out on VII-Remake as well, wouldn't be surprised to see their staff on Rebirth too. Lumi is still SE's most technically proficient team with the most competent proprietary engine within SE. I'd like for them to get a chance to make another game themselves without losing a director or half of the staff members during development; I enjoyed Forspoken and XV game design more than XVI.

I'm still a bit baffled they didn't even let you explore even just one of the major cities in XVI despite those being at the forefront of the artwork ads and even trailers teasing them, it's either a very short highly linear dungeon level design with the city as a backdrop or the quest is basically go to this city but you stop at the entrance to talk to npc and then return to hideout.

I went back to XV after finishing XVI and it's just insane how much more ambitious XV was in a game design and technology sense compared to Remake or XVI, and it only had half the development time XVI had while needing to split optimization for a multiplatform release.

https://imgur.com/DYTxzjK

https://imgur.com/NOjC2zy

Yeah even nowadays, some parts of ffxv is still insane (and it's still a beautiful looking game).

I wonder why SQEX didn't assign tabata-san to work with that team again for Forspoken.

FFXV is so good, I bought it multiple times. Although not as many times as titanfall 2 lol.

Hopefully ff16 pc will learn from Forspoken and ffxv : do not release the game broken

 

[vspectra]

Yeah even nowadays, some parts of ffxv is still insane (and it's still a beautiful looking game).

I wonder why SQEX didn't assign tabata-san to work with that team again for Forspoken.

FFXV is so good, I bought it multiple times. Although not as many times as titanfall 2 lol.

Hopefully ff16 pc will learn from Forspoken and ffxv : do not release the game broken

Forspoken was actually Tabata's game, at least in the conceptual phase. He was the head of Luminous Productions and leading that team to make a new IP for SE. Something happened between him and SE though and he left at the end of 2018 right before Forspoken entered full production and half of the Lumi staff left with him to form JPGames. The remaining staff at Lumi was basically just left obligated to finish the game, making a bunch of design and concept changes in the process, and SE wanted to use that experience to build up some new leaders. No one talks about it publicly, but Tabata leaving Lumi Productions had a huge effect on the morale of the team based on a former XV dev I spoke with.

 

[Nesh]

I think they're already a helper studio to FF, they helped out on VII-Remake as well, wouldn't be surprised to see their staff on Rebirth too. Lumi is still SE's most technically proficient team with the most competent proprietary engine within SE. I'd like for them to get a chance to make another game themselves without losing a director or half of the staff members during development; I enjoyed Forspoken and XV game design more than XVI.

I'm still a bit baffled they didn't even let you explore even just one of the major cities in XVI despite those being at the forefront of the artwork ads and even trailers teasing them, it's either a very short highly linear dungeon level design with the city as a backdrop or the quest is basically go to this city but you stop at the entrance to talk to npc and then return to hideout.

I went back to XV after finishing XVI and it's just insane how much more ambitious XV was in a game design and technology sense compared to Remake or XVI, and it only had half the development time XVI had while needing to split optimization for a multiplatform release.

https://imgur.com/DYTxzjK

https://imgur.com/NOjC2zy

What do you mean 15 had half development time? The game was in development since PS3 as Final Fantasy Versus 13.

 

[vspectra]

What do you mean 15 had half development time? The game was in development since PS3 as Final Fantasy Versus 13.

Versus was just a concept that never fully formed and eventually canceled in 2012. XV is a different game that borrowed some base concepts, added new ones, and restarted development completely from scratch with a new team, new writers, new assets, new engine, new director.

 

[Nesh]

Versus was just a concept that never fully formed and eventually canceled in 2012. XV is a different game that borrowed some base concepts, added new ones, and restarted development completely from scratch with a new team, new writers, new assets, new engine, new director.

The game was released in 2018 if I recall. Some of the work was transfered to the re-develoment. It's not like everything was redone from zero. FF 16 was released in 2023. I don't see how that equals half the time of 16.

 

[orangpelupa]

Versus was just a concept that never fully formed and eventually canceled in 2012. XV is a different game that borrowed some base concepts, added new ones, and restarted development completely from scratch with a new team, new writers, new assets, new engine, new director.

Some parts of versus do carry over to 15. So I'm kinda curious how versus condition before it was changed to 15. Iirc you can find these in 15:

- Stella nox fleuret
- the ballroom where noctis and Stella dance in the no-voice video

Hmm. Has anyone dug into ff16 files and see what are the stuff left in the cutting room floor?

Maybe the small city was originally planned to be larger?

 

[vspectra]

The game was released in 2018 if I recall. Some of the work was transfered to the re-develoment. It's not like everything was redone from zero. FF 16 was released in 2023. I don't see how that equals half the time of 16.

XV came out in 2016. If you watch the Versus trailers, literally none of what we see in those Versus footage is in XV, whether it’s the in-game cinematics nor any of the interactions between the characters were remade, the dialogue, the different battle system that looked more like Kingdom Hearts with party switching, the level designs, the playable Tokyo Insomnia invasion sequence, not even the pre-rendered CG scenes from Versus were used in the XV game. None of what they already developed for Versus was used. The idea that Versus was in development for 10 years was a joke that started online anyway, it was in pre-production hell for so long that most of that staff was pulled to help out on XIII and then on XIV 2.0.

Wada and Tabata said they started the XV project from scratch for next-gen when Tabata was called in to take over in mid 2012, but they reused the core concepts, some character art designs and the general story. XVI released in 2023 but Yoshi-P said SE gave him the project in 2015. Yoshi-p, writer Maehiro, and the director started pre-production during that year, and in 2016 gradually increased production. The core people from XIV Heavensword which released in 2015 moved over to XVI project.

Some parts of versus do carry over to 15. So I'm kinda curious how versus condition before it was changed to 15. Iirc you can find these in 15:

- Stella nox fleuret
- the ballroom where noctis and Stella dance in the no-voice video

I didn’t see any of the Ballroom assets in XV when looking at the game files using Flagrum. Are you thinking of Luna’s room? The Ballroom scene with Noctis and Stella from Versus was reworked for the XV Kingsglaive CG movie, but instead it was with Nix and Luna and pretty much was a different scene thematically and plot-wise with similar interior environment art.

 

[orangpelupa]

XV came out in 2016. If you watch the Versus trailers, literally none of what we see in those Versus footage is in XV, whether it’s the in-game cinematics nor any of the interactions between the characters were remade, the dialogue, the different battle system that looked more like Kingdom Hearts with party switching, the level designs, the playable Tokyo Insomnia invasion sequence, not even the pre-rendered CG scenes from Versus were used in the XV game. None of what they already developed for Versus was used. The idea that Versus was in development for 10 years was a joke that started online anyway, it was in pre-production hell for so long that most of that staff was pulled to help out on XIII and then on XIV 2.0.

Wada and Tabata said they started the XV project from scratch for next-gen when Tabata was called in to take over in mid 2012, but they reused the core concepts, some character art designs and the general story. XVI released in 2023 but Yoshi-P said SE gave him the project in 2015. Yoshi-p, writer Maehiro, and the director started pre-production during that year, and in 2016 gradually increased production. The core people from XIV Heavensword which released in 2015 moved over to XVI project.



I didn’t see any of the Ballroom assets in XV when looking at the game files using Flagrum. Are you thinking of Luna’s room? The Ballroom scene with Noctis and Stella from Versus was reworked for the XV Kingsglaive CG movie, but instead it was with Nix and Luna and pretty much was a different scene thematically and plot-wise with similar interior environment art.

Maybe that's the one for kongsglaive then. It's located inside one of the buildings in the night city (I forgot the city name)

 

[orangpelupa]

Okay 2 days playing this

- the visuals are inconsistent. Sometimes the lights looks flat. Seems due to bad shadows implementation. As it always looks great, complete with hair that casts shadows to face, when in certain cutscenes that was using "cutscene quality setting" instead of some other cutscenes where it use "gameplay quality setting".

Basically on its worse parts, it looks worse than Forspoken. At its best parts, it looks better than Forspoken.

- the animation quality is also very inconsistent. And not just the facial animation but also the character movements.

This includes the main characters and npcs.

- good granular difficulty settings via equipments

- still got the usual sqex confusing English terms but the game quickly explained those thru context and environment / gameplay. Although sometimes still use long monologue

- the game design and visuals at times feels crossgen. Including the usual forced small gaps scene, forced slow walk, forced doors, etc that usually used to hide loading

- dualsense HD vibration design is very inconsistent. It varies a lot from one cutscene to the other. It seems they manually craft each cutscene's HD vibration instead of going lazy by funneling all sound + LFE - voice to the dualsense + touched up with mixing/equalizer/filter /volume curve and then sent to the HD vibrator

Edit

Uh turns out lots and lots of "shadows/AO/lights" are actually baked / not baked with enough variations. Maybe that's why the game looks very flat the characters looks out of place

 

[orangpelupa]

Hmm, I got bothered with the flat lighting and lack of proper shadows and AO, I took a look at pre release screenshot and trailers...

Yikes.

Turns out they where downgraded indeed. Pre release it got better shadows and AO, and the "sheen" on hair and armor also much more pronounced (this one could be art direction change tho).

The weird thing is that, sometimes the exact same scene as prerelease would have its shadows and AO removed in the final release, and some other times the final release still have proper shadows and AO.

Very easily noticeable on character face/head/neck.

 

[Nesh]

Can you post screenshots? That would be interesting to see

 

[Karamazov]

there were some rough spots and some last gen roots, but overall it was a very good looking game, with great lighting and good geometric density.

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/C7f4sF.jpeg

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/C7fOVD.jpeg

https://i1.lensdump.com/i/C7fHvq.jpeg

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/C7flGA.jpeg

https://i1.lensdump.com/i/C7feHQ.jpeg

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/C7fLge.jpeg

https://i3.lensdump.com/i/C7fYDx.jpeg

https://i.lensdump.com/i/C7fD91.jpeg

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/C7fPGK.jpeg

https://i.lensdump.com/i/C7fFkZ.jpeg

https://i1.lensdump.com/i/C7fcXm.jpeg

https://i.lensdump.com/i/C7fw3o.jpeg

https://i.lensdump.com/i/C7fG9v.jpeg

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/C7F8kz.jpeg

https://i.lensdump.com/i/C7FWXb.jpeg

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/C7F04r.jpeg

https://i.lensdump.com/i/C7Frd0.jpeg

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/C7FtLD.jpeg

https://i1.lensdump.com/i/C7FT6A.jpeg

https://i.lensdump.com/i/C7FkbQ.jpeg

https://i3.lensdump.com/i/C7FCra.jpeg

https://i.lensdump.com/i/C7FQPk.jpeg

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/C7FqM1.jpeg

https://i1.lensdump.com/i/C7F3zZ.jpeg

 

[tuna]

Petting Torgal is the best part of the game!

 

[Karamazov]

i've started the new DLC, it's nice to get back to normal lighting conditions, i hated the violet tone of the second half of the main story.

 

[tuna]

Finished it (base game + all the DLCs). Really liked the story, but the game was too long and the mechanics and technology where not that interesting. It would have been more interesting if you could explore more.

 

[techuse]

Finished it (base game + all the DLCs). Really liked the story, but the game was too long and the mechanics and technology where not that interesting. It would have been more interesting if you could explore more.

Was it an FF13 type of ultra linear experience?

 

[orangpelupa]

Was it an FF13 type of ultra linear experience?

Yes

 

[tuna]

It felt like "Yakuza: Final Fantasy 16". Which is both good and bad. FF13 would probably feel fresher today.

 

[Seanspeed]

Was it an FF13 type of ultra linear experience?

It's not quite that bad. But it is certainly closer to that sort of linearity versus something like FFXV.

FFXIII is like the most linear you can possibly make an RPG, it's crazy. The feeling of linearity is the big issue, cuz there's almost nothing else to do(at least not until quite a bit later in the game). Even FFX had some sidequests, backtracking, towns, that could all break up the pacing a bit.

FFXVI also has enough pacing breaks and whatnot to not feel as linear as it is underneath, which is important.