Square Enix at GDC: Western influence on Final Fantasy and WRPG vs JRPG

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/03/final-fantasy-gdc/

Final Fantasy’s Future Is Interactive Cut Scenes, Downloadable Content

The interactive cinematic scenes in Naughty Dog’s critically acclaimed action game seem to have inspired Toriyama to try the same thing in the Final Fantasy games, he said at his Game Developers Conference panel on Friday. “In Final Fantasy XIII, the interactivity was focused on the battle scenes,” he said. ” I think there will be more interactivity (in future Final Fantasy cut scenes) — if you have 1000 flying dragons, hopping from one dragon to the other would be great fun.”

“If you can achieve that compared with Uncharted 2, I think that Final Fantasy is going to replicate the masterpieces of film, and that is certainly one of our goals,” he said.

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Well I'll be damned, Uncharted 2 influences in Final Fantasy.

You start to question their credibility if the best example of a WRPG they could think of is Hitman and Tomb Raider instead of Oblivion, Dragon Age, or Mass Effect. Yeah I know they are using the term in a more literal sense but still they could have chosen games more relevant to Final Fantasy XIII.

One part stood out in particular for me:

The difference, he said, is that Western RPGs like those ones starring Lara Croft have camera systems that zoom in tightly on the main character because the player wants to identify closely with that single character, whereas Japanese RPG cameras are more zoomed out, because the player wants to see the entire scene from a bird’s-eye view.

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WRPG


JRPG
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I'm pretty sure I've seen WRPGs have a focus on scenery or a birds eye view and JRPGs from a third person perspective. But I guess I kind of get what Toriyama is referring too. Probably just poor translation here.

And usually isn't it the other way around? JRPGs focusing more on the character and WRPGs having a focus on the entire world.

HaiTien78 said:

You start to question their credibility if the best example of a WRPG they could think of is Hitman and Tomb Raider instead of Oblivion, Dragon Age, or Mass Effect. Yeah I know they are using the term in a more literal sense but still they could have chosen games more relevant to Final Fantasy XIII.

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I'm almost 99% certain that he's only using them as examples because they are now both SE franchises.

After having played XIII if they get inspiration from those games, I am all for it. I expected to hate XIII. But after having played it for a long while now, I am very much loving it. Sure there are things I would like to have seen more of, and some less of, but over all it is a great game.

I suspect they're not naming Bioware games because... Japan doesn't like those games at all. I think Mass Effect is the only one that got a Japanese release (at least, it's the only one that has a Japanese wiki page), and even that took two years.

If you go along with their premise that games like Hitman and Tomb Raider are RPGs (which is, I think, an appellation that no Westerner would give them), what they're saying about the focus on world vs. character makes sense.

The irony is that by making their games focus more on character and less on world, they're actually making them less like what Westerners think of as RPGs.

KouAidou said:

I suspect they're not naming Bioware games because... Japan doesn't like those games at all. I think Mass Effect is the only one that got a Japanese release (at least, it's the only one that has a Japanese wiki page), and even that took two years.

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Proof other than lack of a Jp wiki page? I mean I know the 360 doesn't do well there, but to say "Japan" doesn't like those games is pretty broad. I agree with Haitien. I find it odd they mention Tomb Raider while talking about Western RPG's.

KingRanger said:

Proof other than lack of a Jp wiki page? I mean I know the 360 doesn't do well there, but to say "Japan" doesn't like those games is pretty broad. I agree with Haitien. I find it odd they mention Tomb Raider while talking about Western RPG's.

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Maybe it's an indication of a direction they want to take the series. They haven't revealed too much about the new TR title they have in development yet.

KingRanger said:

Proof other than lack of a Jp wiki page? I mean I know the 360 doesn't do well there, but to say "Japan" doesn't like those games is pretty broad.

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Checking over GameFAQs, Mass Effect 360 is the only BioWare game that lists a JP release date. VGchartz also doesn't list JP sales figures for any BioWare game on any platform besides Mass Effect 360.

So it would appear to be true that most of BioWare's games simply have not released in Japanese. That would explain why Square-Enix's developers aren't really talking about them.

It seems fair to assume that Japan dislikes the BioWare style based on Mass Effect's Japanese sales, which VGChartz estimates at about 30,000 copies. Fallout 3 on 360 sold more than that in its first week on sale in Japan.

Now, why Square-Enix isn't talking about Bethesda is a mystery. Fallout 3 sold really well in Japan as Western imports go, about 90,000 copies. Oblivion also saw Japanese release and sold about the same amount of copies.

unmei said:

Maybe it's an indication of a direction they want to take the series. They haven't revealed too much about the new TR title they have in development yet.

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I read some info the other day. The new TR is going to be a Down loadable game, focus on puzzle solving, and have other changes.

Also, were those high selling copies of Fallout3 the ps3 or 360 version?