![final-fantasy-10-01b[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/F8GC1Aw.jpg "final-fantasy-10-01b[1].jpg")
Did voice acting kill final fantasy?
>>322437523
Keep reaching brah
It killed a lot of things, but not particularly Final Fantasy.
Final Fantasy lives on as Bravely Default and its voice acting is actually quite good
Yes and no. No voice acting in fully animated CGI cutscenes would just be awkward and rather weird. On the other hand, a significant amount of resources are dedicated to it which in theory could be going towards the game in general.
Along with retarded character design (Belts and blings for no fucking reason, aswell as thousand dollars haircuts for everyone including the poor people)
Along with linear level designs
Along with no more Uematsu
many more shit I don't even feel like saying them
>>322437523
t. Former Square employee
>>322437928
It's almost as if the game is in a fantasy universe.
There is nothing wrong with x's music.
Voice acting and high res character models killed FF.
Before, when you saw a sprite, low poly model, you could extrapolate what they actually looked like in a way that best suited you.. Now all the models are aping soulless boyband members and fashion trends and it's jarring.
Likewise, before you were able to provide your own voice to the characters on-screen dialogue, and in doing so would be much more engaged in the process. Now there's voice over artists employed to provide a set voice to the characters that usually ends up being terrible.
>>322438380
X's music is the only good thing about the game.
>>322438426
Whatever you say.
>>322437523
I didn't care for Tidus's voice actor and yet strangely that's the only voice I can see him having, it's like it was the perfect voice for the character but I just simply don't like the way it sounds.
I'm not saying it was the wrong voice but my personal preference is saying that his voice sounded weird.
YOU KNOW WHO HAD THE BEST FUCKING VOICE IN FINAL FANTASY X?!?!
That fucking radio announcer guy that only gets like 20 seconds of air time, it's at the very beginning of the game when you have to walk to the blitzball arena and he starts talking about Jecht and how he ran away from home and then started re-connecting with his father.
That guy should have been given a main character role, his voice was pure sex. Does anyone know who I'm talking about?
Here is a video, the voice I'm talking about starts at exactly 13:46, someone said that is Auron's voice actor but I never knew that was him talking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCZETQIowTs&list=PL23748D110122F15F
Goddamn Auron's voice actor has the voice of sex.....
>>322437753
Too bad bravely default ismediocore at best
>>322437523
Certainly was a contributing factor for why I stopped buying the games. But moreso having the characters having bad personalities and interaction.
Voice acting itslef is hard enough to do well. But in order to make it good, the writing has to be good. Which Final Fantasy consistently fails at. It got away with it in the old days because people passed it off as bad translations or 'deeper than it really is'. But when the characters talk, there's little you can do to spin the bad writing. Its not only in written form, but in your face with audible tones and emotions. Or in the case of Yuna, the lack thereof.
>>322438924
>YOU KNOW WHO HAD THE BEST FUCKING VOICE IN FINAL FANTASY X?!?!
It's lulu, anyone that says otherwise is wrong
>>322439181
But...but Auron
Fuck you Lulufag, though she had TIG OLD BITTIES, holy shit were those nice.
No. XII went on to have good voice acting and XIII had just one bad voice actor in Vanille (the rest of its problems were largely due to writing).
Games would be boring if everything was silent. Its great in some games but its so self-defeating to say "nope, can't do good voice acting so we shouldn't even try". One example of a game series who actually potentially WAS hurt by voice acting might be Fallout 4, since that inherently reduces the number of possible dialogue options which is a core mechanic of those games. There's no such branching dialogue system in the Final Fantasy series, which are linear when it comes to story.
FMVs killed Final Fantasy. They haven't stopped jacking off over keeping up appearances since, and when the gameplay graphics caught up it just got worse.
It made the shitty dialogue too noticeable. It doesn't help that the performances are often stilted, often despite the actors having credible CVs. And the characters talk in a weird way. It's like they're taking turns talking. SE really needs to step up their game wrt to cutscene direction. The new FFVIIR trailer does not inspire confidence.
>>322439327
Final Fantasy always focused on cinematics. FMVs were just a logical transition for the series. Even FFII and III had long story cutscenes and a focus on story. And Sakaguchi specifically said story was his focus in the first game.
No world map killed FF.
>>322439365
SquareEnix is a company run by people stuck in the 1990s. They still think a cheap dub and flashy graphics is all you need to sell a game.
The irony is they basically paved he way for making games that imitate movies. But don't care about actually meeting the standards of quality that even a low budget horror film would still meet. Hell, Dragon Quest has surpassed Final Fantasy in story and cutscene quality. Though that's not hard to do. Even an in game cutscene from Ocarina of Time has better direction than anything in FFXIII.
>>322439294
Its honestly a coin toss, I like lulu a tiny bit more because she is muh waifu
Not really. A lot of X's voice acting was just bad, or was stilted as a result of timing problems. XII had fantastic voice acting, and XIII's would've mostly been fine if the script didn't suck dicks.
And with the way FF games are designed, voice acting doesn't really affect what content can be in the game at all. It's not like, say, Dragon Age, where the decision to go for a voiced protagonist actively downgraded the games by restricting what they could do with dialogue.
>>322437523
As bad as the voice acting was in 10 it's a only a very small reason why the game was shit.. As for the other voiced entries, it certainly didn't help, but the real problem was that the stories of the games never stopped being childish subpar anime plots with very little depth.Squares story complexity peaked with Final Fantasy Tactics, and they never aimed for anything with substance again.
Even with that though the problem isn't just that they're bad or childish. The Dragon Quest games never really got into that much depth either but those are at least entertaining and enjoyable the real problem is that everything post seven got hit with a bland ray, they feared alienating any kind of audience so they tried incorporating a bunch of mainstream ideas of whats cool that the series just gradually got blander and blander. To the point that now they have to try and incorporate every other rpgs gameplay, traits and tropes and cannibalize their own past successes in the hope that XV will be a hit.
>>322440965
I actually like the greater narrative, even if the comparison to anime is apt. Reading a synposis or a wiki of the FF titles and KH titles, it honestly doesn't sound that bad, and I do enjoy discussing their lore when given the opportunity.
But the presentation is just harrible. I'd argue that it'd be perfect if they could direct scenes with elegant character interactions and vary their modes of storytelling. Aside from textual and animated cutscenes, I can't recall how else they tell story. XII suffered immensely from this, as there were long lapses of silence without any progression in the story. Meanwhile, KH titles rape you with cutscene after cutscene.
>>322438924
>That fucking radio announcer guy
You are absolutely correct. Fucking Zanar. He's my favorite too. I think he was an actual real life radio persona, but it's been years since I heard that and never verified. And maybe it was the Blitzball announcers instead.
>>322437523
Why did it seem like the series got way stupider designs after IX?
>>322443612
Sakaguchi left, Kitase no longer had creative control and Nomura had total freedom. Also, they were pandering directly to the Fujo audience.
>>322437523
Motomu Toriyama killed Final Fantasy.
>>322439830
Bullshit, if they were stuck in the 1990s FF13's series of games would be good.
You sound like you don't know what you're talking about, like you're stuck in the aughts.
>>322440965
What was childish about FFXII?
>>322437523
>final fantasy is dead meme
When will this end?
>>322437523
No.
>>322445624
When XV comes out and shitposters cry about how it isn't turn based anymore.
>>322445803
Oh yeah the vocal minority of spergs whom nobody gives a shit about.
>>322445514
That one was more about the blandness, but it had it's fair share of childish bullshit.
>>322446501
Such as?
>>322446501
>XII
>Bland
>If a bunch of explosions and shit aren't happening at literally every second of a game, it's bland.
XII has some of the most interesting characters and scenes in the series, and some of the most interesting monster and boss designs.
Soundtrack was pretty baller too.
>>322446914
How interesting.
I can see how interesting it is now that you said that it was interesting rather than bland.
Really changed my perspective there anon.
>>322445434
You can be stuck in a previous era in terms of how you look at a business, but make radical decisions in content and style trying to appeal to the current market. Blizzard is doing the same thing.
>>322445624
Final Fantasy isn't dead. But it is dying. A very slow death. But its sales are dropping consistently. Both main series and side games have seen a decline in sales since the PS2 era.
You can blame it on platforms or whatever you want. But SquareEnix is a company who only cares about number of units sold. And FF games are no longer system sellers like on PS1 and PS2. Especially not FFXV, which has taken almost two gens to come out. A lot of people bought a PS3 just for FFVersus. And now are bitter about it being on a whole new system.
>>322447019
>make vague statement
>get vague contradiction
Wow!
>>322446914
>
I'll admit it was better than say 10 or 13 easily but compared to other other final fantasy's or more importantly contemporary RPGS it just wasn't that compelling or interesting enough for me.
>>322438407
I'd say the high res character models made it less fun for me, because let's be honest the franchise is more popular than ever therefore it hasn't been killed. Voice acting is generally detrimental to RPGs though
>>322447281
13 had the fourth highest sales in the company.
I just finished FFXII like 20 minutes ago and the finale was amazing. Vaan and Penelo were the only two characters I thought were poorly voiced. It's a shame, because it just compounds their weak stories; maybe they would have been at least a little more compelling if they weren't annoying to listen to. I could listen to Fran and Balthier banter forever though.
>I'd say you're in more of a supporting role.
>Fran, please.
>>322447281
I like that they're finally getting scared enough to ask people what they like more Persona or their modern bullshit, but I think they kind of missed the mark of who the real Japanese competitor to Final Fantasy is. From already made the game they want to make years ago with XV and they did the shit without losing what made their previous games unique. Take away the fact that XV is set in modern times and is going full Bethesda and you realize other Japanese video game makers already beat Square at their own shit.
>>322446914
More than half the game is the same recycled desert landscape.
A third is jungle/forest.
Disregarding the environments, the plot also has zero advancement for the "middle 80%" of the game, and neither do the characters. Nobody grows, changes, or accomplishes anything before the last few dungeons.
It is overwhelmingly padded. It could've been a pleasant five-hour experience, but the devs tried to make it 60+ because I don't know why.
>>322447628
Yet its development budget was higher than FFVII and X. And its marketing budget was the second highest in the series. So in the long run, it made less profit.
>>322447840
>>I'd say you're in more of a supporting role.
>>Fran, please.
Always makes me smile.
Balthier just nails it there.
>>322437523
No, this did.
>>322447982
>More than half the game is the same recycled desert landscape.
That's fucking bullshit.
You have the westersand, the eastersand, and the sand sea. That's it. And it makes sense, because the games setting is basically in the fantasy middle east
But you also get plains, beaches, jungles, forests, mines, snowy mountains, foggy swamps, various dungeons, and airships.
Don't be a fucking faggot dude.
>>322448194
There's a special feature on the DVD that lets you combine scenes in whatever way you want to help you understand what is happening in the moving.
This is the shittiest movie
>>322448741
I agree that "most of the game is desert" is overstatement, but I did get really bored of the "generic plains" setting. Even after 100 hours I had to stop a second to avoid getting Tchita, Ozmone, and Cerobi mixed up. You don't do anything interesting in any of the 3.
>>322448959
But at least the weather effects change it up. I remember them mostly from the different enemies that you fight.
Also how can we forget the great crystal.
>>322448741
He probably has a lopsided view of desert because you spend half the game (and most of the end game hunts) going into the desert outside the starting town.
FFXII has a major repetitive zone problem. Even if all objectives and quests were evenly distributed, you'd still find each area repetitive. I know I sure hated those sewers.
>>322449251
Yeah but once you get past the initial low level hunts it really feels like an adventure killing the mid to high tier ones.
>>322449154
>Also how can we forget the great crystal.
Navigational problems aside, yeah, the Great Crystal and Giruvegan in general were pretty excellent setpieces. I loved the Gate of Flame (?) leading up to the waystone inside the crystal, and how the lighting changed the further you moved up or down its interior.
The game does have some really nice setpieces/ level designs. Barheim and the electricity gimmick felt pretty tense my first time through, and the later portions with the underground lake felt strangely serene. Lhusu mines and the sky bridges are unforgettable. Personally, I loved the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea and navigating the abandoned refineries and platforms. And the Pharos, again, a bit of really annoying design in the navigation sense but pretty amazing setpiece when you stop and look around.
>>322449251
>I know I sure hated those sewers.
God the sluice gate shit was annoying. I actually really enjoyed doing the Hunt Club stuff and having a reason to go back and revisit all the different areas, but the Garamsythe shit I wanted to be done with as quick as possible.
>>322449251
>>322449838
Man I'll get shit on for this opinion, but I kinda liked those sewers, as they were fairly realistic in their design.
>>322450130
I guess I can't fault it for that.
I hear it wasn't the voice acting that was bad per se, just the editing.
>>322451534
Even without the editing, Yuna, Seymour and many NPCs had horrible voice acting.
Some others like Wakka, Lulu and Rikku are trained voice actors with many roles outside of video games. And yes, they sound bad in some scenes because of the editing. But they sound fine in other scenes. Yuna on the other hand...
>>322451787
>hating on Seymour's acting
>>322452154
>image and greentext
You sure told him.
>>322452546
>no image and greentext
You sure showed him.
Voice acting more often than not hampers the writing by adding an additional barrier to the understanding of the message conveyed. You no longer purely take into account what is being said, instead you have to filter it through the WAY it is being said, The divergence between the voice acting and the way you yourself would mentally read the sentenceis a big problem with it.
That said, however, good voice acting can make for some truly impressive scenes. I always refer to Final Fantasy XII as a game that has some of the best voice acting I've ever seen during the entire sequence at the top of the Pharos scene, and outside of the franchise, Persona 3's ending has left me absolutely destroyed just because of how damn perfectly Aigis' voice actress did her job.
>>322452546
>. at the end
you sure showed him
>>322439817
fuckin THIS
The world map was what made FF so fucking fun in the first place.
Also moving away from ATB and turn-based to whatever FF 15's shitty battle system is
>>322439817
>>322453657
It certainly killed the sense of scale and the obstruction of linearity.
How to not make the player aware that he's being herded down a particular corridor path? Make it so said corridor is the geography of the entire freaking planet.
How to make the player aware of how hifgh the stakes are and how the world is being affected? Have the story events reflect on the goddamn overworld.
FFVII did this masterfully, the meteor and the roaming weapons made you very clear what was going to happen. IX also tried it with the Mist, but it was far less successful and impactful.
Imagine if X had an overworld where you could SEE Sin roaming in the distance like the freaking Emerald Weapon staring right at you the first time you hop into the submarine in VII and turns around?
>>322453657
>The world map was what made FF so fucking fun in the first place.
I guess. Tons of other series have more exploration and interaction on the overworld. Final Fantasy is the one series I can think of where linear zones aren't bad. Since the 'overworld' was just empty space between destinations even on the older games.
The problem is, when they switched to zones, they didn't use them well. And you had the same problems, just minus an overworld.
>>322453929
I dunno senpai, an overworld would have been goofy as shit to look at in X, and in XII it would have conflicted somewhat with the design choice of no random encounters and battles happening in real time, but it could have worked for XIII. However if they can XV work like the demo implies it will, I wouldn't mind JRPGs never returning to having an overworld ever again.
>>322439326
Vanille's VA was literally forced to play her role that way by the directors. No her fault.
>>322451787
When talking about the quality of voice acting, don't forget to mention the language.
But the thread is about the addition of voice acting in general.
>Final Fantasy X had voice acting
>It was shit except Auron and Rikku's voice
>Final Fantasy XI didn't have voice acting
>Felt like classic FF again
>Final Fantasy XII had voice acting
>Sound quality is pretty crappy in some parts
>Final Fantasy XIII had few good voices
>Final Fantasy XIV
> COME HITHER FOR SUCCOR
What went wrong?
>>322437523
nah just memefags like you did.
ff4 ds had quite good voice acting
>>322454864
It looks goofy at first glance, but I feel that it's one of those abstractions of gaming that becomes background noise and after a while you don't even notice and feel like it's absolutely natural.
It's true that everyone will have an opinion in the matter, but for me particularly I had an extremely hard time gauging the scale of the world, and as a result everything felt very limiting.
>>322454864
>However if they can XV work like the demo implies it will, I wouldn't mind JRPGs never returning to having an overworld ever again.
Final Fantasy trying to copy Skyrim doesn't mean all JRPGs have to do away with a good mechanic. A Dragon Quest game without an overworld is not a Dragon Quest game.
No it wasn't only voice acting.
It was cinematics that take 10 minutes to get through, that popped up every 10 to 20 minutes.
Cinematics should never be longer than 5 minutes unless it is a VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY IMPORTANT part, as in, the very beginning to establish things, the penultimate climax, and then the very end.
There is no good reason for a cinematic to last longer than 5 minutes.
>>322454929
It's sad that vanille's voice actress is a native australian who's accent was shittier than fang's VA who was putting on a fake accent.
>WAA WAA I DON'T LIKE HOW XIII IMPROVES ON ATB, DELETE THIS
>end up with XV as action adventure with one playable character instead
Tumbling down.
>>322437523
Linearity and lack of inspiration killed Final Fantasy. A shit game is a shit game whether the lines of shitty text are written or read aloud.
>>322455167
>A Dragon Quest game without an overworld is not a Dragon Quest game.
Does DQ8 count?
>>322455442
Then it should have died with FFIV. Clearly the fans can overlook bad writing and linearity. If anything, FF fans want those things.
Something else is hurting the series. And I surmise is them trying too hard to appeal to the west in design and gameplay.
>>322455637
You mean the game with the biggest and most detailed overworld in the series? The game the introduced treasure chests, NPCs, side quests and monsters on the overworld?
>>322455342
Srs. I'm expecting short film quality when these cutscenes get past the eight minute mark. I'd honestly have no problem with a two hour cutscene if it was a work of art.
>>322455709
I mean it doesn't work like the other ones.
>>322455848
Yeah, but it still has an overworld. In fact it set a new standard for what an overworld could be in a JRPG.
Sorry, I don't really understand what we're talking about.
>>322453657
>ATB is good
I wish this meme would end. At its best, it was virtually identical to a turn based game, because you wouldn't get your shit slapped for taking too long on casting spells. For all of FF XIII's faults, it at least did something with ATB and the battle system in general by putting a huge focus on buffs/debuffs and proper management of the ATB bar, rather than a DPS race.
>>322455996
>anything I dislike is a meme
I wish THIS meme would end
>>322455996
>>322456070
I wish meme was a blocked word on 4chan.
>>322455996
FFXII had the best ATB system, in my humble opinion. I disliked what XIII did to it.
>>322454864
It wouldn't have worked at all in FF 13 without some massive changes to the game as a whole. That doesn't mean the areas had to be as horribly linear as they were, but it wouldn't work with an overworld unless it was extremely limited anyways.
>>322456070
>not liking that meme
>>322455932
Oh, desu when people say "overworld" i think of having a normal sized character walking around a miniature version of the map from location to location and having random encounters in the mean time. The way 8 did it, with the boat and the flying, it felt more like a fast travel system in an open world game.
>>322437523
Nomura did
>>322456159
Haven't played XII yet but XIII did introduce its own problems, most of them having to do with the lack of freedom you get. Even when your party is available for switching, you still aren't given the possibility to tweak your AI for individual battles (like you could do in XII apparently) so that they don't do stupid shit like apply bad buffs first.
>>322456452
I like that, I like that a lot. But that's not who killed Final Fantasy, tooriyamabe honest.
The first thing that needs to be done to fix ATB is remove the battle speed option.
>battle speed can be tweaked
>movement speed is fixed
>animation speed is fixed
>(de)buff duration is fixed
>battle ranks in FFXIII are based on battle time
>demon wall in FFXII always moves at the same speed
>etc.
Who thought this was a good idea and why is it still a thing?
>play the games in original Japanese voices
>perfect voice acting
>enjoy them thoroughly
You niggas are missing out
>>322457446
SquareEnix fault for not having a dual audio option. Which fans going as far back as FFX were calling them out on.
Square actually claimed they couldn't have voice acting on FFX because there wasn't enough room on the disk.
>voice acting takes up 123 mb of compressed space
>full game is only 2.1GB
>DVD disk is 4.7 Gigs
Yeah...sure SE. We're all idiots.
>>322457617
>the Steam version of Final Fantasy XIII has like 50 gbs of uncompressed audio and cutscenes.
To be fair Anon, I'm not exactly certain that they themselves know how audio is supposed to work.
>>322457864
What. Did they make everything into WAV and uncompressed MPEG formats?
>>322445386
This.
>>322457960
I'm not quite sure, to be honest.
>>322458181
Maybe its literally just a .ISO of the blu ray disk. Which is fucking stupid.
>>322437523
Nope.
FF12 has one of the best VA i've seen in video games.
>>322457446
Vaan an Penelo in Japanese actually sound like the complete plebs they are. And I'm pretty sure that was intentional.
>>322437523
They hire good voice actors so no problem, the dialogue might be cheesy but the actors are as good as what they're paid for. Don't even try to use Tidus's HA HA as an argument, because that's the whole point of the scene, a forced fake laughter which was meant to be so bad that it's funny.
>>322457446
>FFXIII-2 Japanese voice
>8 seeders
>download at 30 KB/s
>FFXIII-2 English voice
>150 seeders
>download at 2 MB/s
Fuck me. If only I downloaded it when it came out.
>>322437928
>Uematsu is a bad thing
fuck right off
