Bullets on FFXII, 3 hours in
--I bought the limited edition which comes with a bonus DVD in a tin case. It looks pretty, except for the fact that the disc holders are the kind that refuse to let the fucking thing out. I'm terrified I'm going to crack a disc while taking it out. And then I'll write to Square for a new copy.
--There is a featurette on the History of Final Fantasy on the DVD. I personally dont' like the narrator. It's kind of ironic: the narrator has a very deep and soulful voice, very masculine, and yet the heroes of Final Fantasy games are traditionally very twinky guys. I'm actually surprised that they didn't get one of the FF voice actors to do it--the guy who plays Tidus or Vaan would have been natural choices for it.
--As far as the featurette itself, it's oddly cursory in many places. In so many ways it's made for the fans of the series--they go into very brief explanations to the effect of, "Magic and espers are controlled using Magicite," and that's the entire explanation. If you don't know anything about the game, it won't make any sense to you. And yet they skip over so many things that fans would have loved to have seen. They talk about FFVII without even so much as touching on Sephiroth. His name isn't even mentioned.
--There's a series of developer interviews. An old PR trick for interviews is "answer the question you'd like to be asked"--if you've got a crisis you're trying to cover up, what you need to do is not ignore the question but ask a slightly different version of the question so you don't *exactly* admit to a mistake or whatever. But this isn't a nuclear power leak; this is questions about a videogame. Most of the people they interview don't answer the question they're asked. "Tell me what you like best about Final Fantasy XII" is an easy question to answer, and yet several of the people say things like, "Final Fantasy XII is a new game that we made, and we spent a lot of time working on it." One guy in particular didn't even touch on anything remotely related to the questions he was asked. Granted, the interviews were translated, and it's possible that there's a language issue here. Still, it was funny.
--The starting city, which I get the sense I might be spending a lot of time in, is huge. Too huge. Square has not realized that games can be made without load times, and if I'm on one end and I have t do something at the other end, I've got a long walk and 2-3 loads ahead of me. Granted, they're only a couple of seconds, but that's more than what needs to exist. Even pulling up the map takes an extra second or so to load, and since you use it a lot, it's extremely annoying to have to wait so much.
--I was about to get annoyed at the fact that about half of the cast has British accents and half has regular American accents, and my initial reaction to that was, "Can't they keep it consistent?" I mean, what is it about fantasy fare that screams "British accent"? It wouldn't be as bad if they got genuinely British voice actors, but they always seem to grab Americans that can't fake the accent convincingly. I was about to get annoyed, but I'm realizing that the American accents are from one country and the British from another. That's actually a really nice touch. If only they didn't make the actors playing the soldiers try to butcher a Cockney accent I'd like it more.
--There is a featurette on the History of Final Fantasy on the DVD. I personally dont' like the narrator. It's kind of ironic: the narrator has a very deep and soulful voice, very masculine, and yet the heroes of Final Fantasy games are traditionally very twinky guys. I'm actually surprised that they didn't get one of the FF voice actors to do it--the guy who plays Tidus or Vaan would have been natural choices for it.
--As far as the featurette itself, it's oddly cursory in many places. In so many ways it's made for the fans of the series--they go into very brief explanations to the effect of, "Magic and espers are controlled using Magicite," and that's the entire explanation. If you don't know anything about the game, it won't make any sense to you. And yet they skip over so many things that fans would have loved to have seen. They talk about FFVII without even so much as touching on Sephiroth. His name isn't even mentioned.
--There's a series of developer interviews. An old PR trick for interviews is "answer the question you'd like to be asked"--if you've got a crisis you're trying to cover up, what you need to do is not ignore the question but ask a slightly different version of the question so you don't *exactly* admit to a mistake or whatever. But this isn't a nuclear power leak; this is questions about a videogame. Most of the people they interview don't answer the question they're asked. "Tell me what you like best about Final Fantasy XII" is an easy question to answer, and yet several of the people say things like, "Final Fantasy XII is a new game that we made, and we spent a lot of time working on it." One guy in particular didn't even touch on anything remotely related to the questions he was asked. Granted, the interviews were translated, and it's possible that there's a language issue here. Still, it was funny.
--The starting city, which I get the sense I might be spending a lot of time in, is huge. Too huge. Square has not realized that games can be made without load times, and if I'm on one end and I have t do something at the other end, I've got a long walk and 2-3 loads ahead of me. Granted, they're only a couple of seconds, but that's more than what needs to exist. Even pulling up the map takes an extra second or so to load, and since you use it a lot, it's extremely annoying to have to wait so much.
--I was about to get annoyed at the fact that about half of the cast has British accents and half has regular American accents, and my initial reaction to that was, "Can't they keep it consistent?" I mean, what is it about fantasy fare that screams "British accent"? It wouldn't be as bad if they got genuinely British voice actors, but they always seem to grab Americans that can't fake the accent convincingly. I was about to get annoyed, but I'm realizing that the American accents are from one country and the British from another. That's actually a really nice touch. If only they didn't make the actors playing the soldiers try to butcher a Cockney accent I'd like it more.
posted by R. Goodness at 9:45 AM
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