#and the rest of cbu3

[acursedhalo]

Stargazers & Moongazers Yours is the light by which my spirit's born - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.

[alexilulu]

GAMES I PLAYED OF THE YEAR 2023, #1

(Next: #2)

OR: How I Was Let Down By AAA Dogshit

Razzies Award for Most Baffling Game of 2023 Winner: Final Fantasy XVI (Square Enix, Creative Business Unit III)

Or: The Aristocrats, by Way of D & D (the Game of Thrones TV writers, not the tabletop roleplaying game)

Playing Final Fantasy 16 was an exercise that began as farce, then kind of morphed into tragedy, for me. This might be because of how I played it (my girlfriend played until the first Kupka fight, stopped playing when she saw the volume of sidequests that spawned after that, and I played the rest), or how thoroughly I felt that the game was doing something that was making me thoroughly depressed to see go where it did.

I think mostly I was hoping that the AAA, ultimate budget and engine that they gave CBU3 to run and play with, the indulgence from corporate masters to let them experiment and make something new that still rings with the Final Fantasy name, gave me Final Fantasy 14 with better skin shaders and shit.

I didn’t go into it expecting much on the politics; the magical underclass is ruinously powerful (they literally control the means of production with their bodies, villages are reliant on them for water because they don’t dig wells anymore) and simultaneously reviled, beaten and ultimately killed by their own power via crystallization. The world is divided by kingdoms…that all have agreed to a central banking standard that a merchant’s guild set and not a single one of them is doing wild debasement to? The planet’s dying, Cloud, but everyone’s way more focused on watching gay Bahamut cross cocks with Odin twice and then leave in the skies over another pointless battle? 

All of which is out the window by the time Titan’s dead in the ground, btw. The plight of the Branded is wholly forgotten the moment the plot really wants to be about the world-ending god who wants Clive’s body, and doing things about free will and predestination without even a look back at how those themes play into the abject chattel slavery that a significant portion of the world lives under. 

But somehow, it’s bizarre, disappointing and ultimately confused middle to final third aren’t really my biggest problem with the game, even if the finale was quarter-baked and vaguely infuriating. I can accept a fully vibes-based plot, even when it has pretensions towards a grand scale of movement and war (they really brought in a historian into the plot after the timeskip so they can pretend they have any cohesive idea of geopolitics going on outside of when you show up and the world starts ending somewhere immediately). I can even except the ‘fuck yeah humanity’ ass boring ending that’s supposed to make you feel like you read a fairy tale about the hero who saved everyone.

The combat brutally, terminally killed any semblance of care I could ever show for this game by the time I had all the eikons unlocked.

See, this is a thing that’s been a long time coming for final fantasy, ever since the first 13 game, when they introduced the idea of stagger and magic/physical damage, the idea of a high-damage state you put the enemy in and extend the duration of by applying elemental weaknesses that allows you to hammer them with physical damage. This was how FF13 worked and was designed around the 13-style turn-based ATB system, stacking up multiple moves on a bar, and it’s a little bit of how FF15 worked by way of Kingdom Hearts with a teleport button, but by FF16 the plot is lost completely.

You put enemies into stagger…by hitting them with anything. You get elemental-themed bursts you can intersperse between your sword strikes by learning a very basic one-two rhythm that speeds it up (because magic abilities do more stagger than physical damage, natch), and you have big flashy super abilities that are on a cooldown and are based on your eikons equipped. So you’ve got a pretty easy one-two of hitting them with basic combos and using your specials to tip them over the edge…

But wait. Your specials are also your biggest routes to high damage in the game. That’s where the big bad Phoenix wing swing is, one of the most simply effective damage moves in the game that isn’t Literally Gigaflare Beaming Their Ass. Do you want to use that for stagger…Or do you want to clear the fight in less than 20 minutes?

The stagger mechanic in 16 perfectly recreates the feeling of being in a DPS window in Final Fantasy 14 (for the luckily uninitiated, this is when you would all pop your party buffs at the same time, so that you all benefit maximally from damage amps and do your highest potency skills during to maximize your damage for the 20 or so seconds it happens during), to the point where it feels like they did it on purpose. 

So, you get them in stagger, and the dance of holding R2 and cycling through your special abilities begins. You can have 6 of them at a time, so there’s a real flair to chaining them together, and it can feel great to just go through your rotation perfectly and end the stagger window with some light chain comboing for good measure. It even pops your damage up at the end so you can be like yeah! I did that much damage! I’ll only need to do that 3 more times to finish fighting this interminably slow dragon!

It’s fucking boring. It has the feeling of feeling good. It’s a little dopamine hit for you to just optimally nail things down, but there’s literally nothing to it. It doesn’t feel like anything. The rhythm to hit so that you get a full 8 hit combo of sword and burst attacks numbs the senses. The extraordinarily forgiving dodge that rewards precision with bonus stagger damage on your next hit feels like a single Skittle thrown into my mouth for doing a trick right. 

I think that might be where I’ve landed on the game. Final Fantasy 16 doesn’t feel like anything. A moodboard of a video game, designed to death by a team that didn’t know any other way to make a game than to make more of what they made before (CBU3 are the primary minds behind Final Fantasy 14 before they split to work on 16 around 2020, with various parts of the team cycling in and out of Final Fantasy 14 in the ensuing years). Final Fantasy 16 is Final Fantasy 14 wearing Game of Thrones’ skin. 

I do mean that somewhat literally; Non-primary cutscenes are shot and directed in the precise manner that Final Fantasy 14 non-voiced cutscenes are produced, down to the angle of the camera above the player model and the semi-canned animations that you will see a hundred times throughout the story. It feels uncanny, especially after they stated directly that during development that they specifically abandoned plans for a PS4 version that would ‘not limit the team’s ambitions’. It feels like the scope was crushed down to something they could complete in the 3-4 years they had afforded themselves for development. 

Ultimately, it feels like a game that was built inside a box. I keep seeing all the ways they wanted to produce something grand, but I can feel how shoddy the set the actors are standing on really is. Final Fantasy 16: the off-Broadway production, coming soon to your Playstation Five Home Entertainment Console.

[bladeoftruths]

ok so while im at it i guess i'll just share my thoughts on ff16's story overall since i have a fair share of yays, nays and other abt it. SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!

the yays:

- the prologue is still a banger no matter how many times u watch it. it was such a solid opening.

- cid's arc is a banger, even tho im sad that he died halfway thru the story but this is final fantasy. your cid can either live or die so that mid could run, or vice versa.

- jill's arc is my favourite. killing your abuser is ok but again, i have a bias with her.

- i like that they give each of the main cast a time to spend with clive in respective arcs.

- kaiju battles. yes i am a sucker for that. i grew up watching tokusatsu so this is nothing new to me. titan fight is my favourite among all, bahamut second.

- clive and jill's slowburn romance is just AUGHENSKSKDKS I FRICKIN LOVE IT. the mutual pining, the slowburn and the payoff just feels... AUGHHHHHH GRAAAAHHHHH SO EFFING GOOD I CANT DESCRIBE IT IN WORDS *eats a brick everytime i see them hold hands, hug or kiss*

- the worldbuilding is also good especially in the sidequests.

- i like how they portrayed dion and terence's relationship. its not everyday u get to see a well written gay relationship that didnt feel fetishized. we need more of this. also they are both childhood pals to lovers so it hits a soft spot on me.

- the side characters are also loveable in their own right!! enough to be in the top 10 even.

- i think im lowkey glad that they decided to go for an all white/white passing cast for the game bcos god some parts of the game is super fucked up esp wrt the bearers and how the ppl of valisthea treated them. i cannot imagine the sheer backlash yoshiP and his team will get if they have a brown/black/asian character in especially if they are bearers/dominants :')

nays:

- i didnt like how benedikta just comes and goes at the same arc. like i really wish we get to know her more or at least, after she went berserk she could at least be saved so that cid could take her in and we get to know her more. GIVE US A DLC, CBU3!!!

- waloed arc to me is my biggest downer. i want to know more abt waloed. i want to know more about barnabas and how did he get influenced by ultima. the part after jill gives away shiva's power to clive at the shadow coast just... drops and until they arrived at drake's spine it just feels... eh to me. kinda like the idyllshire/hinterlands arc in HW (given that ff16 story is written by the same guy who wrote HW in FFXIV, i am not even surprised).

- i understand that they want to make waloed and origin arc the time where clive and joshua finally gets to bond together but damn i wish they didnt just leave out jill like that in the last two arcs. poor girl, let her fight even tho she can no longer use her eikon power anymore.

- i know i have beef with waloed arc but god, odin fight is so underwhelming. no kaiju battle??? i sleep.

- i want to know more abt the rest of the dominants apart from the rosfield bros!! jill's life before she was sent to rosaria, dion in general, kupka's backstory and his relationship with benedikta, cid in general, benedikta again and again, barnabas. hell, i also wanna know more abt leviathan. GIVE US THE DLC OR FIT IN THEIR LORE IN THE ULTIMANIA!!!

- i think most of us agree that the sidequests were better at telling the worldbuilding and character insight more than the msq itself. the msq focused a little too much on clive over how he and the comrades react to the world around them.

- i think we also agree that we need more characters bantering over each other especially the dominants. im sad that dion didnt get to interact with clive and jill more, nor even we get to see the rosaria trio bantering and reminiscing the good times together at the hideaway.

other thoughts:

- i'm very mixed abt the ending tbh. i like the ambiguity and open endedness a la FF tactics but at the same time WTF??? i was high on copium when i first see thru the ending but now that i looked back my brain is just on hopium. im just gonna cling to the subtle hints that were mentioned in the game where they point out clive, dion and joshua SOMEHOW survived.

- i dont get people saying that ff16 didnt feel like final fantasy... like all FFs are different in its own right?? ff15 is like contemporary modern meets fantasy, ff6 is steampunk fantasy, ff4 is fantasy with airship... the settings are different sure but as long as you have crystals being the core part of the story, as well as anime fights with giant monsters and summons plus its own unique FF-schtick its still a final fantasy.

- i also dont get the hate on 16 for being more game of thrones-ish... like this is not the first FF to have gone this route. you have effing FF tactics being the first one to do that. the only difference is how they present it. i personally feel that 16 deserves the M-rating so much bcos of how technological advances gives you more creative freedom on how u want to tell the story. back in the day you could only work with what u have so yasumi matsuno really had to restrict with how he want to write the story for tactics. also his writing inspired the ff16 writing team a lot if u notice. and while this is not the first final fantasy game to get an M-rating (FFO did it first) it is the first mainline to get one.

overall i think the game isnt bad nor is it perfect. it manages to hit the right spot but at the same time i have my fair share of nitpicks. i just hope that it makes enough sales on ps5 and wait for the announcement of a pc release bcos god i would still love to play this game even if i probably suck at action rpg games.

----

omake: my favourites among the cast overall:

boys (top 5):

- dion, clive, cid, joshua, gav (bonus: byron)

girls (top 5):

- jill, mid, tarja, martha, isabelle 'the dame' (im so sorry benedikta u deserved better :'))

all (top 5)

- jill, dion, clive, cid, joshua

i have a soft spot for jill bcos she is very much reminded me of ysayle and im weak to ice coded ladies, and dion is just aymeric but a dragoon and bahamut fucker. i know what u did there CBU3

and this comes to no surprise but i fucking love clive/jill. i am weak to childhood pals to lovers with a mix of mutual pining and angsty slowburn romance, and they just hit the right spot for me. im so glad they managed to pull off an adult slowburn romance for them so well auuughhhhhh

[sunnythanalan]

Acshully, *pushes glasses up my nose* in the Unending Codex it says, ahem ahem, "Zenos viator Galvus now rests at the edge of the firmament, and none but the Warrior of Light can attest to his final moments."

Says nowhere that he's dead, and final moments is a very ambiguous way to put it rather than, say, Warrior of Light killed him or Warrior of Light laid waste to him. It merely states: "with Zenos' aid the threat to all life was laid low, and when the dust had settled the Warrior of Light at last granted his wish." The wish was for a fight, which he got.

Yoshi-P might have said that Zenos is dead, but he's also said that when a character's story is completed, we get a minion of them. Well, I'm still waiting for my tiny Zenos cutting at Tahn's calves! CBU3 knows to leave tiny little crumbs for guys like us to sniff out and get our hopes up way out of proportion.

If you didn't know the events behind Zenos leading up to EW I have to sound like the most insane person ever being like YEAH I BELIEVE THAT ZENOS WILL RETURN.

Wait ignore that we clearly see him take what would have to be his last breath on screen. He does that. It's not the first time.

Yes ignore that the writers have pointed out that he's dead, there are other hints as to why he could return.

...And that the text in the game tells you that he's dead and that all the characters who speak about him insist on him being dead.

........ Stop looking at me like that.

[cyber-sleuth]

Oh lordy it has escaped and reached my girlfriend.

Okay, context and explanation is in order for non-FFXIV folks.

So, the idiots of this FC (guild) has bought billboard space to advertise their in-game event. Several billboard space, in fact. Four in total, one of which is an electronic billboard, so you know... yikes on the cost.

This is the billboard in question:

In-game clubbing event is very common, especially in the RP server, Balmung, to which this clown car also hail from. So you think, “well, that’s their money, they can spend it however they like!” which is true if not for several elements of this billboard.

1) The bunnygirl (Viera) on the left, has been modded. This is after we had the whole “mod but don’t show it in public like in a stream” discussion a month or so back. So, big yikes. (The hair and face has been modded, and the pose is from a posing program which is also against TOS technically).

2) The Viera outfit is datamined. It’s not out yet for several weeks for a seasonal event. The Director and Producer made it very clear last time this was brought up as illegal and there might be legal ramification. Like you know... we’re now on Yikes.

3) They put their website and Discord link in the billboard, both of which have clearly unhidden NSFW channels/pages. And yes, they proudly tout of “VIP service” in-game, which is, in general, ERP (Erotic Roleplay). As you can see, the advertisement isn’t tagged as +18, which is in general what other in-game event will tag as so such, just in case. So... YIKES.

4) They put the game logo and SE’s tag line in the advertisement. The logo is just bottom of the Viera on the left and tag line is bottom right of the advertisement. If you can’t tell... they do not have permission for using them like this. This is not an officially sponsored event and yet.... YIKES.

Finally, 5) They certainly didn’t endear themselves to the rest of the community when they were reached out to at first politely to ask them not do that. God knows the rammification on the modding community because of this stupidity. But their response had been to call everyone else an idiot, banning anyone who asks, generally being rude and unpleasant to any concerned members, and oh!

Joining their Discord will give Windows Defender a warning of some form (it’s a false positive, one of their emoji was coded with it).

So naturally... the whole community blew up on them in return. Their in-game mansion has been under siege since.

Names censored for protection, a visit on my Balmung alt.

The drama of course, didn’t stay just in-game. Twitter has also blown up, with them calling anyone concerned idiots and generally be insulting. Then they start privating their Twitter, no doubt because some people got threatening as things tend to be on Twitter. They closed down their website for now, and I’m not sure if you can still join the Discord (again, it will throw you an false positive on Windows Defender if you try).

The above is a message from the guild during the madness, when people had turned from concern to clowning them. And yes, after all they did, they decide this is the best way to response to concern/criticism.

As to why the community react this way: modding is not allowed in TOS. We have always been operating under a “don’t show it, don’t talk about it, do not draw attention to it”. So what they did is not just break that unspoken rule (everytime you install a mod program, it tells you it’s against TOS and to keep it hush-hush if you don’t wanna get in trouble), they broke it via placing it on a four fucking billboard, two in Texas and two in California.

The billboards has since been taken down. The FC/Guild now only has 12 people in it last I checked (when I took the screenshot of their house) and we’re all anticipating how SE / CBU3 will react to all this... If they felt we have pushed too far on their lenient rule, they might go scorch-earth and make it so we can no longer mod at all.

So that’s what that screenshot was about.

PS: What those people around the mansion is doing CAN BE considered harassment and get you in trouble. I suggest you stay far far away from it until it blows over, just in case.

This is from that ffxiv erp house that paid money for multiple irl billboards btw