FF:Enhanced_Reality
Member
Let me clear up before reading the rest of the post. I love Final Fantasy VIII, the series to me was at it's peak from VII to X and I spent months playing this game when it originally came out. I also plan on buying this port, despite my thoughts about the quality of the remaster and it isn't simply a hate post. Cool with that? A'ight.
Onto the main post.
Having been pretty hyped for the remaster of Final Fantasy VIII, I watched over the continued speculation about the improvements that were being made for the port. Added voice acting, higher fidelity visuals, a physical release. A lot being made of the fact that this port was a difficult job because the original source code wasn't archived. Sounds reasonable right? Well, now we know exactly what we're getting, I'm not so sure and honestly I'd rather they spent another year or so perfecting the remaster.
My first issue with the increase in visual fidelity is that it doesn't apply to everything. We've seen on GAF how a recent piece of software has allowed for an artificially intelligent system can 'predict' so to speak, the gap that should be present when up-scaling 2D content from 360p to 1080p and some of it is really exciting stuff. But this isn't happening in the port as I've read, so the technique leaves a very soft looking image with a blurry look, akin to the problem with Agito XIII where some of it's content was very high quality compared to other content, leaving a PS4-esque look for certain characters on screen and others looking exactly like a PSP model. Texture quality, poly count and all. I feel like we will see far more throughout the game how some content has been touched up and other content hasn't. I'd rather all the content had a proper remaster rather than some of it. The quality of textures in the vidoes shown is distracting when I'm looking at a battle scene with models that have a much higher visual fidelity compared to the floor and models that look blurry and stretched. The same goes for the FMV sequences which I believe will still run in a 4:3 format.
Secondly comes down to audio. Now the steam port I had wasn't ideal when it came to the fact that it used my PC's onboard sound chip to render music and I ended up using a popular mod to add in the PS1 soundtrack. But whilst fans have had opposing views as to the quality of the new music of the FFX/X-2 and FFXII remasters, I do believe that this title would be one that would highly benefit from a remastered soundtrack. Even if it added more clarity and depth to the compressed PS1 soundtrack. There is a great album I found on YouTube called 'Successor: The Final Fantasy VIII Score Remixed' and it's an excellent piece of work. Dance with the Balamb Fish as a song is absolutely brilliant and it really made me want an updated score that was faithful to the original but increased in quality.
Finally some of the features of the port really do make me think that the mechanics being introduced almost make playing the game redundant. Having a god mode so to speak with options to turn off random encounters (even though this is a GF ability if memory serves... I'm sure I had this on disc 1..) adding in 99 of a magic, having 9999 health etc. Game speed I can kind of understand cause it did take a while for the game running sometimes, more-so for us in Europe where the game ran slightly lower because of the 50hz format. I already know the outcome to this thought process, which is 'if you don't like it, you don't have to use it.' - and fine, you can say that. But I'd rather the team focus on remastering the title in better ways than this.
For example, what about a choice of font's? Colour-blind mode for gamers like me who have this condition? Why not allow us to change the text box from that horrible gray colour? Perhaps voice acting could have been considered? Perhaps a way to have Seifer and Edea as a part of the party in battle, outside of the two occasions I remember where they're in your party? How about getting those cut scene's into 16:9 format? Or even better, add more visual quality and effects to Tetra Master to make it interesting, Hell, why not add in a way to buy items you had to card-Mod for so that you can keep your cards or buy packs of cards in the game?
The point I am trying to make is that without the source code, this port was going to be a lot of work and a lot of work has already gone into this title. I'm very happy that this has been done and I can't wait to play it but equally I can't get my head around how this could have been more. Consistent visual quality increase across the whole game and not just select parts. It's remasters like Resident Evil 4 for example that are great to have but then you question why a 1080p PlayStation 4 version of the title has really blurry textures and some models just do not correlate in visual quality which frankly, for me, affects the immersion, when compared to say a remaster the quality of Gravity Rush by BluePoint which is quite honestly one of the pinnacles of remastered games in my opinion. All in all, I'm happy for the product, but it does feel like half a job.
Given time and resources, what changes or additions would you have wanted to see?
Onto the main post.
Having been pretty hyped for the remaster of Final Fantasy VIII, I watched over the continued speculation about the improvements that were being made for the port. Added voice acting, higher fidelity visuals, a physical release. A lot being made of the fact that this port was a difficult job because the original source code wasn't archived. Sounds reasonable right? Well, now we know exactly what we're getting, I'm not so sure and honestly I'd rather they spent another year or so perfecting the remaster.
My first issue with the increase in visual fidelity is that it doesn't apply to everything. We've seen on GAF how a recent piece of software has allowed for an artificially intelligent system can 'predict' so to speak, the gap that should be present when up-scaling 2D content from 360p to 1080p and some of it is really exciting stuff. But this isn't happening in the port as I've read, so the technique leaves a very soft looking image with a blurry look, akin to the problem with Agito XIII where some of it's content was very high quality compared to other content, leaving a PS4-esque look for certain characters on screen and others looking exactly like a PSP model. Texture quality, poly count and all. I feel like we will see far more throughout the game how some content has been touched up and other content hasn't. I'd rather all the content had a proper remaster rather than some of it. The quality of textures in the vidoes shown is distracting when I'm looking at a battle scene with models that have a much higher visual fidelity compared to the floor and models that look blurry and stretched. The same goes for the FMV sequences which I believe will still run in a 4:3 format.
Secondly comes down to audio. Now the steam port I had wasn't ideal when it came to the fact that it used my PC's onboard sound chip to render music and I ended up using a popular mod to add in the PS1 soundtrack. But whilst fans have had opposing views as to the quality of the new music of the FFX/X-2 and FFXII remasters, I do believe that this title would be one that would highly benefit from a remastered soundtrack. Even if it added more clarity and depth to the compressed PS1 soundtrack. There is a great album I found on YouTube called 'Successor: The Final Fantasy VIII Score Remixed' and it's an excellent piece of work. Dance with the Balamb Fish as a song is absolutely brilliant and it really made me want an updated score that was faithful to the original but increased in quality.
Finally some of the features of the port really do make me think that the mechanics being introduced almost make playing the game redundant. Having a god mode so to speak with options to turn off random encounters (even though this is a GF ability if memory serves... I'm sure I had this on disc 1..) adding in 99 of a magic, having 9999 health etc. Game speed I can kind of understand cause it did take a while for the game running sometimes, more-so for us in Europe where the game ran slightly lower because of the 50hz format. I already know the outcome to this thought process, which is 'if you don't like it, you don't have to use it.' - and fine, you can say that. But I'd rather the team focus on remastering the title in better ways than this.
For example, what about a choice of font's? Colour-blind mode for gamers like me who have this condition? Why not allow us to change the text box from that horrible gray colour? Perhaps voice acting could have been considered? Perhaps a way to have Seifer and Edea as a part of the party in battle, outside of the two occasions I remember where they're in your party? How about getting those cut scene's into 16:9 format? Or even better, add more visual quality and effects to Tetra Master to make it interesting, Hell, why not add in a way to buy items you had to card-Mod for so that you can keep your cards or buy packs of cards in the game?
The point I am trying to make is that without the source code, this port was going to be a lot of work and a lot of work has already gone into this title. I'm very happy that this has been done and I can't wait to play it but equally I can't get my head around how this could have been more. Consistent visual quality increase across the whole game and not just select parts. It's remasters like Resident Evil 4 for example that are great to have but then you question why a 1080p PlayStation 4 version of the title has really blurry textures and some models just do not correlate in visual quality which frankly, for me, affects the immersion, when compared to say a remaster the quality of Gravity Rush by BluePoint which is quite honestly one of the pinnacles of remastered games in my opinion. All in all, I'm happy for the product, but it does feel like half a job.
Given time and resources, what changes or additions would you have wanted to see?
