It’s honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should’ve been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.
FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn’t been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn’t care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.
I mean, when games take a long time to come out and then still have serious flaws (looking at you starfield) can you blame anyone for not feeling too attached to a franchise? God I remember when veilguard was first announced after Inquisition… Announced, cancelled to be reworked into live service, cancelled again only to completely change everything that really made it a DA game.
I prefer quality over quantity. Problem is we don’t have quality, even for games that take a long time.
I think I buy this worldwide, honestly. Case in point: one of the most popular video game series for young people recently has been Five Nights at Freddy’s, and that series dropped its first four games in eleven months, and its next four games in four years. Minecraft remains one of the most popular games in the world, and it’s releasing full free content drops every few months. Pokemon is still insanely popular among kids, and there hasn’t been a year without a new Pokemon game release since 2015.
So, yeah. Hey, kids like novelty. Who knew?
The entire GTA series exists between 1997 and 2013.
They have the next one apparently coming out this year but who cares at this point?
Games from old series should be viewed the same way Hollywood reboots are. It’s just hoping a name will help with advertising.
That’s because Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest aren’t making kids games anymore.
They’re remaking old games for nostalgia value for old gamers like me who played those games as a kid.
NGL I’m still waiting on the dragon warrior monsters remakes because I’d always been a bigger fan of those than any Pokémon game. I doubt it’s coming any time soon, but a guy can hope.
That’s the whole issue though. None of these studios are putting out games for modern kids. There just rehashing their old IPs and pretending they’re new games. Kids dont want spruce up 1990’s games. They want games for them.
The graphics and “the biggest game ever” races have led to this.
No, you do not need physically accurate bubbles flowing in the shaded beer bottle that you will at best appreciate for 3 seconds while looking to get on with the game.
Or realistic horse balls. Or 4K skin textures. Or ray tracing in every game. Or 40000 side quests on a map as big as Mars.
I used to care quite a lot about graphics, but as the years have passed, I find graphically beautiful games less pleasing than a lot of the older games. It all seems too rounded and smooth now. I’ve been playing a lot of Project Diablo 2 lately, but when the new character dropped for Diablo 2 Resurrected, I figured I should give that a shot. While the graphics are definately nice, and the gameplay is smooth, I prefer the older graphics, because the griddy, slightly pixelated world adds so much to the dark and gloomy theme.
I’ve also just absolutely had it with every single Unreal Engine game looking exactly the same. Did the devs just lose all individual artistry?
Sometimes less is just more.
But also, what’s wrong with having any of those things? I’d argue it’s better to have those things with less developer crunch. We don’t need children to form “attachments” to video game franchises. That just breeds loyalty to corporations. We need games that are developed with love and care by developers who treat their employees and customers humanely. Whatever that looks like, we want that.
But also, what’s wrong with having any of those things?
Nothing. I’d take more good games instead of fewer hyperrealistic ones, if I had to choose, but those features themselves aren’t anything bad.
The compulsion that every game has to have them, that’s what’s annoying, particularly when it comes at the price of putting developers under pressure.
I’d argue it’s better to have those things with less developer crunch.
If we are to have them at all, yes, less crunch is better.
We don’t need children to form “attachments” to video game franchises. That just breeds loyalty to corporations.
The loyalty to corporations is a bad thing, absolutely, but I can also see how forming attachments can be nice. I very much enjoy my attachments to various movie or game franchises.
The shitty part is that these franchises are linked to corporations. I like Star Wars, but fuck Disney.
We need games that are developed with love and care by developers who treat their employees and customers humanely. Whatever that looks like, we want that.
Absolutely. Grand games should get the time and care they warrant. Commercial pressure is poisoning game development and has been for way too long already.
Also DQ remake characters creep me out.
Kids will abandon most pre-existing shit to find something they can call their own.
Not sure why they’d think kids are the target audience for a remake of a 29 year old game.
Surely all the kids are playing the latest mobile slop pocket money sink?
Being Japan, I suspect all the kids are sinking money into Gacha Impact or Honkai Gacha Rail or whatever else
Not only that, many gaming memories, including console ones, and even for ancient people like me, are tied to modern online experiences. Just one example, that you all share and know and i believe this, is minecraft. But how much of that is multiplayer servers over single player worlds? Some of my finest memories are chrono trigger, popolocrois monogatari, final fantasy, earthbound. And i still like them. But playing for the fun of it, i can probably tell that some simple multiplayer is still fine. But many young (and adult) people are probably playing gacha, and these are highly manipulative games. Dopamine and serotonine driven. I find my enjoyment of a game dropping down to zero when I have a mandatory gacha system in the way.
I will probably attempt to finish earthbound, I never got past the giant animated pile of puke. Sometimes later i found out that I needed to bring some fly honey for that*, or that i need to wait three real life minutes for a waterfall to open the path.
This last example is comical in lisa: the paniful, where you are required to wait 30 real life minutes in a test of patience. 30. Minutes. And it’s still the most normal thing in the game.
I need to finish lisa the painful too, come to think of it.
Remember the FFVII tech demo they showcased during the PS3 reveal. Good chance FF7 remake has been in development since then, but got shelved because FF15 development became a train wreck
Don’t forget that FF13’s development was a big hell, too, not to mention that the post launch reception was below what squeenix expected
I do remember it. And honestly, I was annoyed that it was only Part 1 of a trilogy.
During that time, I was already pretty sick of movies that push to be a trilogy. So I wonder how many gamers are like me who are waiting for the entire FF7 remake to be released before they play it.
I cant even tell you the last original FF that came out.
I mean…basically FFXIV’s Dawntrail expansion. But even then, a lot of their side dungeons and such have been referencing events/worlds from other Final Fantasy games via some multiverse theory.
it came out so many times in the remakes lol. plus they keep adding new lore every time.
Isn’t it true for the developers as well? If the game development lasts 5 years, you have quite a different team and ideas by the end compared to when you started.
In the age of no-new-IP, why does it take so long for new games to come out…
AAA expectations are astronomical, AAs take some extra time to keep up, and indies that actually make it take the time to do their own thing, otherwise they’re almost certainly part of the vas, unseen sea of failed indies.
Also, oldschool game dev was toxic. It had some serious crunch culture, just to start. But I think it also attracted talented devs into “sweet spot” dev team sizes; not too big or too small.
And now, if you do software and want to make any money or provide for a family… well, you don’t do game dev. And that phenomenon has gotten worse and worse.
I remember reading a story from an old Sega or Capcom dev and he basically said that the boss would lock the door of their office when they had to meet a deadline. Not only toxic but the boss doing straight up illegal shit.
I saw a meme (which could be based on a real message) that said “they” (a Japanese game company) is rewarding their devs by giving them a week to go visit their family.
I wonder if Japanese companies are paying attention to FromSoft. I absolutely love that FromSoft reuses assets and improves their base engine. You can see the evolution from DS1 to Elden Ring (and Sekiro), releasing a game every year or two.
Growing up - Dragon Quest 1-4 were built on the same engine with minor improvements. FF 4-6 wasn’t a massive leap, but a gradual jump in graphics.
Yakuza games seem to release yearly. They have built a workflow where people work on the same mini games and “slot” it in for whatever the newest release it is.
As much as I shit on Ubisoft, they really dialed in on their engine and tools to crunch out cookie cutter checklist open world games.
Thinking about it, all my examples could also have been plagued with toxic crunch culture.
1st party engine devs have been stuck in dev hell, mostly. There are some exceptions, like you said; I’d cite Decima as another success.
But think of EA’s Frostbite, Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite, Clausewitz, BGS, many more. Especially indies that try.
It’s not just that old games crunched, but making a new engine that supports modern platforms and modern hardware is just an immensely complex task. There’s just too much to worry about.
The best success seems to either come from:
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Hyperfocusinf one’s engine’s scope to one game niche. Larian’s divinity engine, for example, makes BG3-likes; that’s it, that all it does. It cannot make an FPS or even a different RPG.
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Engine shop very, very carefully. For instance, KCD2 leaned into CryEngine’s strengths hard, especially that dense, well-lit European foilage.
And either case needs a lucky roll of the dice anyway. See: Cyberpunk 2077 in utter dev hell (even if they eventually pulled out) from wrangling their engine. Or the latest Borderlands being a technical wreck even though they basically invented Unreal Engine alongside Epic.
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I’d be fine with Square Enix going away. In my opinion, they got greedy and way too full of themselves. Nintendo as well, for that matter.
FFXIV funds everything else and now everything sucks. They don’t make fun games anymore. Remake took so long I don’t even care to play anymore. First one had me hyped. Second one I haven’t even touched.
Remake took so long I don’t even care to play anymore.
I was going to buy the remake until I found out it was only partly done. Now that it has been six years and it still isn’t out, I’m pretty sure I’m just not going to bother.
I skipped on remake too since I figured wait for everything to come out would take yeara and years.
Are the FF7 remakes really considered that bad?
I thought they were pretty good.
Seemingly good, just massively padded. We’re talking about what was a ~30 hour PS1 RPG being milked for three entire games. One of which, still isn’t released nearly 6 years later. Squeenix basically got away with selling parts of a game.
I actually own Remake and Rebirth, but I just can’t get into them because… why bother? Not like I can finish it.
They seem like pretty good games to me, but so much of them seems so, SO far removed from my nostalgia of the original. There’s some comparison videos out there in how they deliver certain scenes, force some cameos too early, mismanage the music, tweak plot that didn’t need tweaking, and so on.
Are the FF7 remakes really considered that bad?
They’re really not, but different people have different tastes. And the fact that’s it’s broken up and is taking about 15 years to finish pissed off a bunch of the general public.
I personally was not interested in them at all. I was much more a fan of 6 than 7. As such, no idea on the quality.
Because you can suplex a train?
The real reason is probably more that I was not a fan of early 3d stuff in general. The camera was kinda crap, the controls didn’t feel great when walking around, etc. Not just an FF thing, either; this was for games as a whole except for racing games. I hated Starfox as well (coming from the Amiga world, some stuff felt like going backwards).
Being able to suplex a train, though, was a nice bonus.
Yep but somehow you’ve people arguing that kids should just play those ITT. They’ve aged like fine wine. Like resident evil fixed camera was so fantastic.
I mean I grew up with these moon logic puzzles and I still get very frustrated as an adult.
There’s no way I would be doing this to myself if I had alternatives, and no nostalgia.
I actually wanted to play one of their games but you had to create a wholeass account with authentication (I think a phone number). Yeah, too much effort to entertain so this decline is a positive for me.
Which one required an account?
Only one I know are mobile garbage or the literal MMO
The online Final Fantasy. 14 I think? The one where people hype up the story. XD
I thought ff7re (the second part of the remake) sucked ass compared to ff7r (the first part.) The first one felt like a cool modernization of ff7 that still felt like the same game at its core, but the second one felt like complete focus-grouped buzzword filled nonsense. And the most annoying fucking element ive ever seen in a video game, birds that would constantly fly around your screen squawking and generally just being a nuisance until you went and completed their little meaningless side objective. Even the combat aspect felt like a bad monster hunter clone rather than a final fantasy game
i also loved the first one, despite being cut way too short.
i’m playing through the second one, and it feels like a ubisoft game with the climbing tower bullshit and pointless collectible kinda stuff scattered around.
i get that they needed to fill up the open world since the old one was empty but what a shitty way to endlessly stretch just a little bit of gameplay. might as well have given us the full story already.
if i wanted assassin’s creed i would be playing assassin’s creed instead.
Big agree on the ubisoft and assasins creed points. I’m also “playing through the second one” right now, though I’ve been on the Junon area for a month or two now, and I also haven’t opened up the game in a month or two. I just don’t think I’m ever finishing that game, which feels wild to me given the absurd amount of time I’ve spent playing and replaying the ps1 original. I’m just about as much of a simp for that story/those characters as a person can be
