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| Maou 850th Post
 
Red Carpet Regular Member++
    
    
    
|  "Re(2):Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a. Final" , posted Fri 12 May 00:49:
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I really miss Amano.
Understandable. The cafe talks about this every so often...Amano is one of my favorite artists, and though his whispy, art nouveau-type work can also tend to look similar (see Celes-Garnet, Klulu-Tina, and so on) in the same way that Nomura's may, I think that in the technical and stylistic areas, Amano is just more sophisticated and distinctive. Nomura's designs may be sharper than many a designer from less major RPG companies (besides Game Arts, who always comes through), Amano is on a whole different, non-anime level.
Meanwhile, I'm very excited that to hear from RPGFan that even if Uematsu isn't the main soundtrack guy, they've got Hamauzu, who was simply amazing and easily stole the show in FFX. Plus, he made me get the soundtracks for SaGa Frontier II and Unlimited SaGa, even if I fear SaGA like the plague.
I'm actually kind of intrigued whether the Square staff will keep varying for new FF's, as it has between X, XII, and XIII now compared to the relatively fixed group there was earlier. Could keep things fresh. For all the hubub about new folk on FFXII and the lack of Sakaguchi, it totally slipped my mind that replacement director Itou was co-director for VI, the best in the series.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Fri 12 May 00:49] |
| Pollyanna 1786th Post
Silver Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Executive
  
    
| "Re(6):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a. Final Fantasy" , posted Fri 12 May 03:44
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[whiney]
I said that back then (FF12 hardly being a FF anymore) and I got "bashed"! 
Finally someone who understands me!
[/whiney]
I had to finish FF12 before I realized this. Well, maybe I was partway through. Visually, it was evident from the beginning, like "this is Vagrant Story 2." I'm talking visually and thematically and stuff, though. Not gameplay.
My biggest problem with FF12 in the end is that they "fixed the wrong problem." Like...in most FF game random encounters don't take any thought. You can win the fights without even looking at the screen. So now you have gambits to do things for you. There's no reason to plug in the same command over and over, and it's fun to set up little tactics for your people.
BUT PRESSING BUTTONS ISN'T THE PROBLEM! The problem is that the fights are boring to begin with! The solution is to make more interesting fights, not make the boring fights easier to tolerate!
There's a period, about 2/3-3/4 through the game where at least 75% of the enemies start with a status buff on them and/or hit you with 4-6 status ailments at once. Is that supposed to be a good idea? Does that add depth!? Having to dispell them and yourself, then buff yourself again every 2 minutes!?
But the game ended STRONG. It had like...8 boss fights...good ones. So my final verdict was "beautiful, with wasted potential."
Speaking of beautiful, Yoshida is my king. I like Amano's designs, and I'd love to see them represented with a visually stunning new FF, but Yoshida can take his place and I'll never complain. He has no place in the new scifi FF world, though.
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| deisied 405th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a. Final Fantas" , posted Sat 13 May 07:50
I used to understand this a little when everyone was kinda worked up about Tifa/Rinoa/Garnet/Yuna all being CLEARLY TEH SAME CHARACTER because they were all brunettes. I mean, 4 leading ladies with vaguely shoulder length brown hair in a row IS a little lame, but...I can't say I really understand people's claims that Nomura's designs "all look the same". Does a clearly identifiable style and habit permeate his characters? Of course, that's what makes it a style. But, are characters anywhere near unidentifiable? I don't think so.
Tifa doesn't look like Dominique doesn't look like Lulu doesn't look like Selphie doesn't look like this girl doesn't really look like anybody. Actually, people seem to say FFXIII's girl looks like somebody else every time they say it. I'm almost convinced I have a Nomura translator implanted into my eye and everyone else who sees his work sees three crayon scribbles in slightly different degrees of closeness to each other. A few days ago I saw a thread demanding that this new female character looks exactly like Cloud and Squall. I don't understand. If anything, I'd say she looks like sort of an anime-ish Ashe that's softer in face, but harder in expression, and wears a remix of FFX-2 Yuna's outfit. But to me that's still more just the air she gives off more than her being pumped right out of the same factory or anything.
Another thing too. Whether Nomura's designs stay similar or not, they're expressed differently as per the art direction of all these games anyway. The way designs are translated to the game in FFVII are way different than Kingdom Hearts, and then this game. That puts even more distance between them. Each game's characters at least look like they come from that game.
Anyway, people sure like to yell about Nomura. Even before FFIX people were already yelling about his designs, and he'd barely had chance to sink in yet. I don't adore the guy or anything, and his influences on game design are questionable enough in being a whole 'nother reason to yell about him. But for the mere sake of "I THINK I SAW THAT CLUMP OF HAIR ON ANOTHER CHARACTER!!!!", I don't think that's good enough reason to demand he needs to fall off the planet and never apply himself to a game again.
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| Pollyanna 1792th Post
Silver Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Executive
| "Re(3):Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a. Final" , posted Sat 13 May 15:12:
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My thought is more that while Nomura's designs are good anime-styled works, more distinctive artists like Amano (and now, Yoshida) give a classier feel than the average RPG production. Final Fantasy deserves something than leaves a deeper impression.
I totally agree.
And I don't dislike Nomura as a character designer/director (I think he does a -mostly- good job with KH, and I haven't especially disliked his designs in anything), but he's a shoddy illustrator and his stuff just satisfies. It doesn't challenge anything and it doesn't impress.
All his characters in FF7 had like...the same face, but that didn't show in the game and their designs have been updated now, so no harm done. I do feel that the characters in his illustrations, even if their designs are solid, are lacking life and distinguishing/interesting facial characteristics. This isn't a Nomura thing as much as a general "anime art" problem with many artists.
As for his stuff looking the same across games...since every FF has such a drastically different visual style, and he didn't work on 9 and 12, are people just comparing his 7, 8 and 10 stuff? I think the issue here is that the main guy and girl in all the recent FFs (regardless of if Nomura worked on them or not) have a sort of similar look. Not that they look ALIKE, but they're the same TYPE of character. So you get "another prettyboy with stylish, longish hair."
edit:spelling.
[this message was edited by Pollyanna on Sat 13 May 19:37] |
| Time Mage 2385th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
 
| "Re(5):Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a. Final" , posted Sat 13 May 19:35
The problem with Nomura isn't, in my opinion, tht his designs are similar. They are similar in a way, as deisied said, mostly because they share the same style. However, that's no to blame, because most artists have a very distinguishable style.
What I think makes Nomura's desings worse than others is because they reek JPop from all their angles. And personally, the JPop look may look curious once, maybe twice, but having the entire JPop population adapted to his designs is horrible and vulgar, thus lacking the style Pollyanna mentioned.
~~~Knowledge is power~~~
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| Pollyanna 1793th Post
Silver Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Executive
| "Re(9):Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a. Final" , posted Sun 14 May 20:29
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Well, look at the PSX FFVI cinemas: They're done with Amano style, andd quite successfully, in my opinion. And since the new generation of consoles can make graphics of that quality or even better, returning to Amano wouldn't be so impossible.
I dunno, I found those to be quite hideous. They were OK for the time, I guess. It shows that it's theoretically possible, but the overall look was too "glossy". I don't know that Amano style agrees with FMV unless it has crazy filters and effects on it.
If they were to try to flesh out Amano's designs in a game, Amano would have to flesh out his designs first. His FF work is good from a design perspective, but as far as his art goes, many of his illustrations are rendered in much more detail. I think if he were to design characters with the intent of having them turned into renders, they could create something that looked really outstanding.
Of course, the game would have to be RICH with textures. Textures textures textures. It couldn't just be "Amano" in terms of characters. If they wanted to make a good product, they'd have to make the world and monsters look "Amano", too (that was one of the best things about the 2D FFs, to me...as there's no "Nomura World" look).
Since Amano's a fancy pants fine artist now, I don't know if he'd be up for it. I still think his best work is from Gatchaman.
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| deisied 409th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(4):Re(10):Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a." , posted Mon 15 May 19:51:
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It's quite possible to have a style without characters looking almost exactly the same.
What characters look almost exactly the same?
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Also, why does Nomura have so many shoulder length, brunette dark eyed female leads?
In a way I almost think it's more interesting to prove how different characters can be within the bounds of realistic similarity than it is to make every new character have a new, different pastel color of hair just to set them apart right from the get go. Instant anime candy-coated recognizability isn't an immediately more respectable way to go. I mean, maybe he has so many of those characters because there are like 2 billion of them in existence, and it's actually not that weird. Either way, the most notable similarity left at this point is FFVII:AC Tifa and Rinoa. None of the rest of them actually look particularly similar at all. If anything though, FFVII:AC gave Tifa a realistic enough face that you could probably distinguish her easily enough from someone else with the same damn outfit if you had to. When you're working with FFVII's copy-paste faces and in-game pixellation, that's kind of a different story.
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And seeing a FFXIII demo with yet ANOTHER character fitting this description...it's a bit much.
She doesn't fit the description. She has reddish hair and blue eyes, mirroring the Final Fantasy Versus XIII lead's blue hair and red eyes. That, and her hair doesn't really even go past her ears.
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And let's not forget the guy's lack of range of emotion. It's a little difficult to describe, but his character's tend to be happy or pissed. Nowhere in between, and nowhere outside that range either.
Eh. That's more on the fault of immature writing than his designs themselves.
[this message was edited by deisied on Mon 15 May 20:06] |
| Iron D 2691th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Re(10):Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a." , posted Tue 16 May 16:32
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What characters look almost exactly the same?
Well geez, how about all of his human males and females? For the most part, all you have is differences in eye color, hair color, and hair length. There's not much differences in the bodies even. I'm no professional artist or anything, but I've seen artists who can actually make their characters distinctive. Unfortunately, such a thing seems to be rare.
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I mean, maybe he has so many of those characters because there are like 2 billion of them in existence, and it's actually not that weird.
Too bad FF isn't set in the real world. Besides, you'd think that when somebody works on the same videogame franchise, they would try to actually make the characters in each game very distinctive from characters in past games. Especially when, for the most part, the FF games are each in a seperate reality.
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She doesn't fit the description. She has reddish hair and blue eyes, mirroring the Final Fantasy Versus XIII lead's blue hair and red eyes. That, and her hair doesn't really even go past her ears.
See? The only differences are the hair color, length, and eye color. And despite these differences I still got that deja vu feeling.
Zelkin. Pimped.
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| Yotsuba
0th Post
New Customer
| "Re(6):Re(10):Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a." , posted Tue 16 May 17:20
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Well geez, how about all of his human males and females? For the most part, all you have is differences in eye color, hair color, and hair length.
Don't you think it's normal? It's the same guy drawing those characters. How many different manga-ka, for example, draw completely different characters in their different stories? Similarities without being exactly the same from one character to another are kinda their signature. An artist does have similarities in his work especially when drawing human characters.
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See? The only differences are the hair color, length, and eye color. And despite these differences I still got that deja vu feeling.
Of course, we all have that deja vu feeling. Like I said, you open a manga of one manga-ka and then you open another manga with a different title of the very same manga-ka, you know what kind of drawings will be in there. But you aren't disappointed, right? Because the story is different and that's what we want from the same manga-ka.
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| deisied 411th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(6):Re(10):Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a." , posted Tue 16 May 17:42
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Well geez, how about all of his human males and females?
Awesome, buddy. Would've been cool if you managed to give an example instead of just basically saying "I WAS RIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE. LOL." At least respond if you're gonna waste time responding.
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Besides, you'd think that when somebody works on the same videogame franchise, they would try to actually make the characters in each game very distinctive from characters in past games.
You didn't listen too much to what I said. If more effort is put into just making sure whatever they're doing now is as different as possible to what they were doing before, they probably won't be paying too much attention to what they're doing right now. That's certainly not immediately the best way to go. Making a design just fit the idea of the character isn't really the worst thing that can happen, whether that character idea manages to fit within the concept of another human with brown hair or not.
I mean, I'm not really sure what you want here. Rinoa's a human female with brown hair. That doesn't make her a clone. Was she supposed to have antlers? Was she supposed to be 8 feet tall? There's only so much you can do within context and style before you're just trying to effing hard. Then again, according to you, you couldn't pick Quistis out of a line-up of eight Rinoas. I guess it doesn't matter much what they did.
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See? The only differences are the hair color, length, and eye color. And despite these differences I still got that deja vu feeling.
No...those aren't the only differences. I only listed the differeces regarding your standard of similarity. Thing is, I don't think you're even trying very hard here. It seems to me more like you just like having this opinion and will go ahead and say whatever thing fits easily into that idea and leave it at that. Have fun with that, I guess.
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| Iron D 2694th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(7):Re(10):Re(10):Final Fantasy XIII a.k.a." , posted Wed 17 May 12:21:
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Awesome, buddy. Would've been cool if you managed to give an example instead of just basically saying "I WAS RIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE. LOL."
What do you want me to do, Deisied? Go hunt down Nomura pictures and put them up for pic by pic comparisons? I'm too lazy for that. Besides, you've made it clear that you've seen the art, so you should know what I'm talking about.
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At least respond if you're gonna waste time responding.
Er...what?
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You didn't listen too much to what I said. If more effort is put into just making sure whatever they're doing now is as different as possible to what they were doing before, they probably won't be paying too much attention to what they're doing right now. That's certainly not immediately the best way to go. Making a design just fit the idea of the character isn't really the worst thing that can happen, whether that character idea manages to fit within the concept of another human with brown hair or not.
You're making it sound like it takes a college degree to design characters who aren't similar. I'm no artist, but I've seen it done before. It's a little thing called "innovation". You can create characters who are unique from each other, or you can keep spitting out what is essentially the same characters. I feel that Nomura is doing the latter.
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I mean, I'm not really sure what you want here. Rinoa's a human female with brown hair. That doesn't make her a clone. Was she supposed to have antlers? Was she supposed to be 8 feet tall?
How about making different facial structures? Different brows? Cheeks? Jaws? Noses? Do you get the point?
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There's only so much you can do within context and style before you're just trying to effing hard. Then again, according to you, you couldn't pick Quistis out of a line-up of eight Rinoas. I guess it doesn't matter much what they did.
Picking Quistis out of a bunch of Rinoas wouldn't be a problem. Just pick the blonde. Now, picking Quistis (without her glasses) out of a bunch of Aya Breas on the other hand...
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No...those aren't the only differences. I only listed the differeces regarding your standard of similarity. Thing is, I don't think you're even trying very hard here. It seems to me more like you just like having this opinion and will go ahead and say whatever thing fits easily into that idea and leave it at that. Have fun with that, I guess.
I could easily say the same about you, with your "it's Nomura's style!" excuse. But I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe having characters who look nearly identical is just that much more common in manga and anime. I don't honestly have too much experience with either, but the name "Akira Toriyama" does come to mind...
Edit: Scratch that. I can think of an anime style artist who can make their characters look distinct: the person who did the art for the first two SF3s and the Capcom art for CvS and CvS2. I can't even remember the name right now, but this artist made Hibiki and Mai and Yuri not look like triplets, and they're all Asians with long hair. Even Ken and Ryo looked different. So being anime style wouldn't be a valid excuse for Nomura's character designs either...
Zelkin. Pimped.
[this message was edited by Iron D on Wed 17 May 12:38] |
| deisied 420th Post
Gold Customer
| "Re(8):My God. Take a quick glance at this." , posted Fri 26 May 04:51:
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The smae thing that stops Capcom from doing more fighting games, SNK fro giving a sequel to Last Blade, Taito from creating a sequel to G-Darius or Sega from creating anymore good games : the fact they don't do everything the rumors say they do.
It's Square though. And I'm not even usually heading up the Cynic's Bandwagon. This isn't MotW2, it's Final Fantasy VII.
Anyway, like I said, I don't even want the remake.
Edit: Another thing: Capcom, SNK, Taito, and Sega don't really have the staff to be making any of those games you mentioned. Pretty much all those guys got abandoned. Square still has its precious Nomura, and a boner for FFVII to match the one the fans have.
Side Note: MotW2 probably wasn't the best example on my part. Falcoon revealed the game to have been completed to about 80% in an interview a while back. It just wasn't wrapped up and released.
[this message was edited by deisied on Fri 26 May 04:57] |
| Maese Spt
239th Post
Frequent Customer
| "remake or not remake?" , posted Fri 26 May 09:13
You know, if you really think about it, FF VII is one of those games who SCREAMS for a remake. One of those games you remember with certain degree of tenderness and nostalgy, but you wouldn't dare to touch again, because you know for sure such a reckless action would ruin that good old memories.
FFVII has not aged well...I for one would be delighted to play a FFVII version whose character models wouldn't look as colored bricks, the music wouldn't sound as friggin' NES midis and, hopefully, with a deeper development of certain characters and a clearer exposition of certain events. Oh, and with an intelligible translation, of course. But maybe it's just me...
MATSUKEN SAMBA!!!
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| Sensenic 1506th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(2):remake or not remake?" , posted Fri 26 May 15:21:
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It's not that an ideal prospect of a remake doesn't appeal to me, it's that a realistic prospect of a remake doesn't.
-deisied-
'Nuff said.
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Now, a question: Since I don't really care about FFXIII, for now, should I believe IGN's version of the news, where FF7 was brought up only as an example of what they're planning to do with 13, or TMB's version, where FF7 (or rather, "FF Compilation") was also being worked on?
I know IGN's more reliable, but I just wanna make sure...
EDIT:
Teh chart
So it seems it's definitely IGN's version...
What I can gather, from the one up in the right and counter-clockwise:
- Game for PSP takes place 6 years before: Crisis Core
- Character goods (meh)
- Game for cell-phones that takes place from 6 years before to FF7: Before Crisis
- Game for PS2, 3 years after: Dirge of Cerberus
- Movie that takes place 2 years after: Advent Children
- ?
- More character goods (more meh)
Time for some long due Samus Aran love...
"It's you know like when you die and you can't quite believe it"
An undead friend.
[this message was edited by Sensenic on Fri 26 May 16:49] |
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