lostinblue
Banned
This started on the (latest?) Xenoblade Chronicles X thread where FFXV similarities are now a recurrent theme, I do find it unavoidable for both games and it doesn't bother me, but I somehow felt this didn't fit into either existing topics.
I don't usually start threads, but I usually don't lose as much time on a post as I did here so I think it warrants a thread. I also don't want to post right in the middle of a FFXV thread because I know some people can see everything as a massive attack of sorts.
Anyhow in that thread I've said I did find Xenoblade X on the Wii U to be more impressive than FFXV on the XBone and PS4 to which someone shown me a GIF from the latest Final Fantasy XV tech demo with a closed off cave (it'll be featured later on, but this is context I guess) and was deemed as impressive from a technological standpoint.
I disagree and wanted to discuss this, I also want to poke some things that I'm finding to be common misconceptions.
This is not a anti-FFXV thread (and I don't want it to be a Xenoblade Chronicle X thread either), but you know where it's coming from.
Part 1 - Actual Xenoblade influence on the FFXV overworld
A lot of people seem to be too proud to admit Xenoblade has sole handedly changed JRPG's, when it came out I thought it was the most influential JRPG since FFVII and I still do. Console RPG's last gen all but omitted overworld and often exploration as well, Xenoblade being the game that said no to all of that.
A lot of people counter it as Xenoblade being influenced by western games and/or FFXII, but while the first is probably spot on I find the last one to be insulting.
See, FFXII was one of the most fragmented games in history. Thinking about it instantly triggers Giza Plains memories, that area who seemed vast:
But actually navigated like this:
Creating lots of going through a door moments. Understand is a lot of senses this is what's at stake here.
Seamless my ass. So it's really not a fair comparison to the Xenoblade experience if you ask me, even if you look at screenshots and feel Xenoblade is some poor man's FFXII - if you're in that club though, you're doing yourself a disservice by not playing it.
I first got it when in Xenoblade one went to Fiora's/Dunban house expecting a loading screen and I got nothing. Seamless, too bad the game didn't have more of those, but it was a realization moment and something once you experience you want more of. I do feel this is a normal realization for gamers and let's just assume any good game developer is a gamer too on it's spare time.
Let's be fair though, whatever goes the way of the openworld after Xenoblade is not copying it and that's not what's being claimed at all, influenced? Yes, why not? I think Nintendo's own new Zelda is Xenoblade influenced at this point.
After seeing Xenoblade it's easier to see what can and should be done towards that result, that's the same as saying before Mario 64 doing a 3D game with freedom of movement was very hard and entailed a lot of trial and error, it just became easier after you've seen it.
Xenoblade was such proof of concept, and it probably was more powerful of a manifest due to it being in the less powerful console last gen. Everyone suddenly realized they could be doing something better looking elsewhere, but didn't, because they didn't build their games frameworks and assets towards something like this. Fact is that without designing from the ground for this they couldn't, Final Fantasy versus XIII on the PS3 was no different.
With FFXV (formely FF versus XIII) there is seemingly a lot of pride because it had been in development for several years then (since 2006) and so people just claim whatever we're getting was the original plan, I really don't think so and think that's obvious.
The original plan was more ambitious than most HD JRPG's of that era that simply did away with the world map; yes - world map was always in, but what most people don't understand is that the graphic leap hasn't been so big (from the PS3 to the XBO/PS4) as to allow for the execution we're seeing now to be even remotely achieved on the PS3. Or rather, it's the extra muscle now that's enabling it to be possible. Confused?
Anyway:
The game evolved, claiming it didn't is silly, and while Nomura was reiterating this in a interview, Xenoblade had already shipped.
Had FF versus XIII been completed it would be a very different game than what FFXV will ultimately be.
This was evidently not the open world map it's happening now:
[click for video portion]
(mountains act as frontiers, and I don't think behind Noctis if a road and the car segment parked, too much for the PS3)
Nor was this:
But there was a overworld map, with limitations:
[click for video portion]
Vehicle was in (road et all), other characters during exploration were not (like with FFVIII and general PSone overworld map presentation), enemies were aparently out too at that phase. They might have wanted to put them in, yes - but fact is that unwilling to do compromises on the level of detail they certainly couldn't dream of it on the PS3. What we have now would be impossible on the PS3 without LOD getting hit, and they weren't willing to do so, not to mention it would entail retooling the whole game, which they did now. Without the downgrade.
One could focus on a more lightweight note of "had the PS3 been a PS4, this was always the plan" and that's probably right (still wouldn't materialize before 2012/2013 though, so it would be influenced by Xenoblade anyway) - but it wasn't and thus the PS3 was compromising a lot of what would be doable or not. It's still a miscalculation though.
This means we had a very fragmented game at this point. It probably just wasn't working, anyway and identifying these standalone parts I don't believe for a second this game wasn't going through development hell... this game was pretty much a bunch of unfinished parts that were probably not coming together, someday when we have the final game perhaps we'll learn more by seeing where the remains of them fall into... or not.
Anyway, these experiences were happening in the end of 2010 and throughout 2011, by 2009 (when they've shown that dining restaurant+girl+amano painting scene) I reckon them saying they didn't have a lot more done but were hoping to enter full production now, hence they probably hadn't explored much. Xenoblade launched in Summer 2010 (June) so can we please accept that at this point the team had every reason to be influenced by it? It's no big deal.
This game didn't start as the open world experience that serves as a selling point now. Fact. And on the PS3 with the graphics they were unwilling to compromise it never would. So it's a good thing they've changed platform as it solved some problems for them (and they clearly needed that).
Part 2 - Current Final Fantasy XV tech
Due to the aforementioned Final Fantasy Versus XIII heritage and despite a platform and engine change, I feel this game is not really next gen (the game is certainly way past last gen grasp in performance capacity though due to the newfound enabled scope sans-compromises, but the tech is not following) and I'm finding not a lot of people agree with me because graphics are no horrible therefore they're awesome and oh so praisable so I'll write a bit about this subject.
The tech seems to be deep rooted in the DirectX 9 realm. (alternatively read: sub OpenGL 4.3/DirectX 11 tech)
The DOF:
[click me to see the video portion intact]
Is very pixelated, notice the shimmering pixels/edge artifacts on the roof, the implementation is not unlike this:
This is a Direct X 9 (at best) Depth of Field:
(and this last DX9 implementation manages to look better)
Text that goes with it:
Suffices to be said there's nothing next gen or impressive about this implementation, and albeit I don't think the game looks ugly by any means as a whole (due to good artistic direction) I don't thing this Luminous Engine and it's tech demos are impressive in the slightest. In fact I do think they reveal just why this engine has been such a pain in the butt so far. It can't be versatile if the stuff it's doing is deep rooted that far back. They can script around it all they want but doing it that way they're just having tenfold the work, or faking they are doing what they should be doing for real, since the beginning.
I don't even get why they bothered to do a DirectX 9-level tech demo for a PS4 game.
The kicker is that compute shaders can be cheaper than the DirectX 9 way due to allowing less memory reads/writes compared to generating successive results and the architecture's it's running on were designed for that too. Their tech is just deeply old rooted and yet they're building games on it like a castle of cards.
Also, for a tech demo (and for a game might I add), it has a lot of pop-up going on, visible in that open area but also in this frickin' cave:
Focus on the stalagmites to the right. (I've noticed this all the first time I've seen it, btw)
That's another kicker, S-E is doing this the ancient way, having work twice, they create a lower quality mesh for everything and a better quality one and then switch them creating pop-up in the process. Modern games are not supposed to be done like that.
This would be the modern way to do it, adaptive Tesselation:
-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkKtY2G3FbU#t=22s
Nothing adaptive to it, just pop up.
It's well possible that Xenoblade is using it for terrain, just not for folliage, but it's too soon to assume either way. Suffices to be say though, not using it not only gives worse results but it's also not next gen at all. By how bad of a problem it looks here though, FFXV is not using it for sure. And the way it's being built and engine limitations don't entail it to be a late inclusion.
I don't think the actual FFXV looks all that much better (ingame cutscenes aside, although some model changes don't appear like improvements to me) than the original FF versus XIII on the PS3 did, this is because the assets were kept largely the same and were very good from the get go (we've gotten to the point were said models simply look good and will for many years to come), doubling detail doesn't make it 2 times better (but ingame I don't know if they even did) - it still doesn't feel like a generational leap though, or it feels less like it than it could because tech-wise it's behaving like an overclocked to no end PS3 would. Tech is not next gen at all, even if it "feels like it's good enough", good enough is not impressive and that's what I'm taking aim at, tech demo's for Luminous were not impressive at all.
For the record, I think tech is secondary, I also think every Crytek game made to sell their engine's sucked balls and feel most glorified tech demos usually do. But their tech was praise-worthy, this is not. Those recent tech demo's they've shown are laughable and I'm surprised nobody's pointing it out. They show just how far behind S-E Japan is. Speaking of Tesselation the XBone/PS4 version of Tomb Raider (published by S-E) used it despite it being technically a last gen game with a good PC port.
Yes, it looks good, but technically I argue it doesn't and I don't get why I seem to be the only one pointing it out.
People argue it's because it's unfinished, claiming this is Luminious Engine 1.4 and final game will be Luminous Engine 2.0. That's silly, engine revisions won't change base problems this engine has that keep it from being "good" or up to date for current gen standards. It's a shame too.
But what bothers me the most is the animation system
Animation is only as good as it is scripted (I actually find it to be over-animated sometimes, and Noctis runs like a frickin girl) but it heavily relies on a classic animation system not different from that from FFX, just with animations way more complex (that take more RAM but are completely scripted from A to B) but equally limited, characters hit a tree with their face and they just keep running against it as if it's nothing.
When something doesn't go right it goes wrong, it looks... 2/3 tech generations behind. And if you ask me... it frickin is.
It's like you had a PS2 tech being supercharged in that area, when I think some PS2 games actually did better animation base tech. (Shadow of the Colossus for instance)
What I'm saying is that they have no procedural animation whatsoever going on.
I could elaborate further on a few other things but let me say I also liked some things I've seen (particles and rain) and I do think S-E clearly has some very good artists regardless, but they're fighting an uphill battle here and seeing they recently switched to this pile of shit they might have switched for UE4 as well.
I do think the game looks good, issue is that this engine will only hold it back, it needs help, massive retooling.
Also, seeing I've talked freely about stuff I didn't like, I know they showed their terrain creation tool in order to show how powerful it is:
But it seems more in line with how to create 5 generic Kilometers in 10 minutes. Originally when I've seen the new FFXV I thought it was an afterthought late addition and thus, likely would be smaller than Xenoblade, now I think it might actually be bigger, but more soulless solely due to the fact such tool exists and works that way. The word "afterthought" being in still.
That tool reminds me of random terrain generators in WRPG's (Oblivion for one). And then I realised staff has been saying a lot that you can explore but you really should use the car (and I've never seen a JRPG dev saying something like that) and then it hit me, nobody would say it's worth exploring if they did put lots of differentiating detail into every nook and cranny and from that I've seen, they didn't. I hate that tool.
Plot, cities and event places should still have that memorable geometry typical of JRPG's, but the rest of the game (at least this area) on foot might be something akin to "have I been here 30 minutes ago? everything looks so similar" kind of experience.
Automating stuff too much is never the way to do it.
FINAL NOTE: Sorry for the crappy GIF's I've made via browser, I know they suck in regards to others I employed, but I'm not used to doing them and didn't have the appropriate software installed to boot. I hope we can have a discussion about this with constructive comments, if you're just gonna be dismissive (and short) you're free to be due to freedom of speech et all but I don't think that adds much.
I don't usually start threads, but I usually don't lose as much time on a post as I did here so I think it warrants a thread. I also don't want to post right in the middle of a FFXV thread because I know some people can see everything as a massive attack of sorts.
Anyhow in that thread I've said I did find Xenoblade X on the Wii U to be more impressive than FFXV on the XBone and PS4 to which someone shown me a GIF from the latest Final Fantasy XV tech demo with a closed off cave (it'll be featured later on, but this is context I guess) and was deemed as impressive from a technological standpoint.
I disagree and wanted to discuss this, I also want to poke some things that I'm finding to be common misconceptions.
This is not a anti-FFXV thread (and I don't want it to be a Xenoblade Chronicle X thread either), but you know where it's coming from.
Part 1 - Actual Xenoblade influence on the FFXV overworld
A lot of people seem to be too proud to admit Xenoblade has sole handedly changed JRPG's, when it came out I thought it was the most influential JRPG since FFVII and I still do. Console RPG's last gen all but omitted overworld and often exploration as well, Xenoblade being the game that said no to all of that.
A lot of people counter it as Xenoblade being influenced by western games and/or FFXII, but while the first is probably spot on I find the last one to be insulting.
See, FFXII was one of the most fragmented games in history. Thinking about it instantly triggers Giza Plains memories, that area who seemed vast:
But actually navigated like this:
Creating lots of going through a door moments. Understand is a lot of senses this is what's at stake here.
Seamless my ass. So it's really not a fair comparison to the Xenoblade experience if you ask me, even if you look at screenshots and feel Xenoblade is some poor man's FFXII - if you're in that club though, you're doing yourself a disservice by not playing it.
I first got it when in Xenoblade one went to Fiora's/Dunban house expecting a loading screen and I got nothing. Seamless, too bad the game didn't have more of those, but it was a realization moment and something once you experience you want more of. I do feel this is a normal realization for gamers and let's just assume any good game developer is a gamer too on it's spare time.
Let's be fair though, whatever goes the way of the openworld after Xenoblade is not copying it and that's not what's being claimed at all, influenced? Yes, why not? I think Nintendo's own new Zelda is Xenoblade influenced at this point.
After seeing Xenoblade it's easier to see what can and should be done towards that result, that's the same as saying before Mario 64 doing a 3D game with freedom of movement was very hard and entailed a lot of trial and error, it just became easier after you've seen it.
Xenoblade was such proof of concept, and it probably was more powerful of a manifest due to it being in the less powerful console last gen. Everyone suddenly realized they could be doing something better looking elsewhere, but didn't, because they didn't build their games frameworks and assets towards something like this. Fact is that without designing from the ground for this they couldn't, Final Fantasy versus XIII on the PS3 was no different.
With FFXV (formely FF versus XIII) there is seemingly a lot of pride because it had been in development for several years then (since 2006) and so people just claim whatever we're getting was the original plan, I really don't think so and think that's obvious.
The original plan was more ambitious than most HD JRPG's of that era that simply did away with the world map; yes - world map was always in, but what most people don't understand is that the graphic leap hasn't been so big (from the PS3 to the XBO/PS4) as to allow for the execution we're seeing now to be even remotely achieved on the PS3. Or rather, it's the extra muscle now that's enabling it to be possible. Confused?
Anyway:
Source: http://www.siliconera.com/2010/08/0...-world-map-feels-like-2d-final-fantasy-in-hd/
The game evolved, claiming it didn't is silly, and while Nomura was reiterating this in a interview, Xenoblade had already shipped.
Had FF versus XIII been completed it would be a very different game than what FFXV will ultimately be.
This was evidently not the open world map it's happening now:
[click for video portion](mountains act as frontiers, and I don't think behind Noctis if a road and the car segment parked, too much for the PS3)
Nor was this:
But there was a overworld map, with limitations:
[click for video portion]Vehicle was in (road et all), other characters during exploration were not (like with FFVIII and general PSone overworld map presentation), enemies were aparently out too at that phase. They might have wanted to put them in, yes - but fact is that unwilling to do compromises on the level of detail they certainly couldn't dream of it on the PS3. What we have now would be impossible on the PS3 without LOD getting hit, and they weren't willing to do so, not to mention it would entail retooling the whole game, which they did now. Without the downgrade.
One could focus on a more lightweight note of "had the PS3 been a PS4, this was always the plan" and that's probably right (still wouldn't materialize before 2012/2013 though, so it would be influenced by Xenoblade anyway) - but it wasn't and thus the PS3 was compromising a lot of what would be doable or not. It's still a miscalculation though.
This means we had a very fragmented game at this point. It probably just wasn't working, anyway and identifying these standalone parts I don't believe for a second this game wasn't going through development hell... this game was pretty much a bunch of unfinished parts that were probably not coming together, someday when we have the final game perhaps we'll learn more by seeing where the remains of them fall into... or not.
Anyway, these experiences were happening in the end of 2010 and throughout 2011, by 2009 (when they've shown that dining restaurant+girl+amano painting scene) I reckon them saying they didn't have a lot more done but were hoping to enter full production now, hence they probably hadn't explored much. Xenoblade launched in Summer 2010 (June) so can we please accept that at this point the team had every reason to be influenced by it? It's no big deal.
This game didn't start as the open world experience that serves as a selling point now. Fact. And on the PS3 with the graphics they were unwilling to compromise it never would. So it's a good thing they've changed platform as it solved some problems for them (and they clearly needed that).
Part 2 - Current Final Fantasy XV tech
Due to the aforementioned Final Fantasy Versus XIII heritage and despite a platform and engine change, I feel this game is not really next gen (the game is certainly way past last gen grasp in performance capacity though due to the newfound enabled scope sans-compromises, but the tech is not following) and I'm finding not a lot of people agree with me because graphics are no horrible therefore they're awesome and oh so praisable so I'll write a bit about this subject.
The tech seems to be deep rooted in the DirectX 9 realm. (alternatively read: sub OpenGL 4.3/DirectX 11 tech)
The DOF:
[click me to see the video portion intact]
Is very pixelated, notice the shimmering pixels/edge artifacts on the roof, the implementation is not unlike this:
This is a Direct X 9 (at best) Depth of Field:
(and this last DX9 implementation manages to look better)
Text that goes with it:
Suffices to be said there's nothing next gen or impressive about this implementation, and albeit I don't think the game looks ugly by any means as a whole (due to good artistic direction) I don't thing this Luminous Engine and it's tech demos are impressive in the slightest. In fact I do think they reveal just why this engine has been such a pain in the butt so far. It can't be versatile if the stuff it's doing is deep rooted that far back. They can script around it all they want but doing it that way they're just having tenfold the work, or faking they are doing what they should be doing for real, since the beginning.
I don't even get why they bothered to do a DirectX 9-level tech demo for a PS4 game.
The kicker is that compute shaders can be cheaper than the DirectX 9 way due to allowing less memory reads/writes compared to generating successive results and the architecture's it's running on were designed for that too. Their tech is just deeply old rooted and yet they're building games on it like a castle of cards.
Also, for a tech demo (and for a game might I add), it has a lot of pop-up going on, visible in that open area but also in this frickin' cave:
Focus on the stalagmites to the right. (I've noticed this all the first time I've seen it, btw)
That's another kicker, S-E is doing this the ancient way, having work twice, they create a lower quality mesh for everything and a better quality one and then switch them creating pop-up in the process. Modern games are not supposed to be done like that.
This would be the modern way to do it, adaptive Tesselation:
-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkKtY2G3FbU#t=22s
Nothing adaptive to it, just pop up.
It's well possible that Xenoblade is using it for terrain, just not for folliage, but it's too soon to assume either way. Suffices to be say though, not using it not only gives worse results but it's also not next gen at all. By how bad of a problem it looks here though, FFXV is not using it for sure. And the way it's being built and engine limitations don't entail it to be a late inclusion.
I don't think the actual FFXV looks all that much better (ingame cutscenes aside, although some model changes don't appear like improvements to me) than the original FF versus XIII on the PS3 did, this is because the assets were kept largely the same and were very good from the get go (we've gotten to the point were said models simply look good and will for many years to come), doubling detail doesn't make it 2 times better (but ingame I don't know if they even did) - it still doesn't feel like a generational leap though, or it feels less like it than it could because tech-wise it's behaving like an overclocked to no end PS3 would. Tech is not next gen at all, even if it "feels like it's good enough", good enough is not impressive and that's what I'm taking aim at, tech demo's for Luminous were not impressive at all.
For the record, I think tech is secondary, I also think every Crytek game made to sell their engine's sucked balls and feel most glorified tech demos usually do. But their tech was praise-worthy, this is not. Those recent tech demo's they've shown are laughable and I'm surprised nobody's pointing it out. They show just how far behind S-E Japan is. Speaking of Tesselation the XBone/PS4 version of Tomb Raider (published by S-E) used it despite it being technically a last gen game with a good PC port.
Yes, it looks good, but technically I argue it doesn't and I don't get why I seem to be the only one pointing it out.
People argue it's because it's unfinished, claiming this is Luminious Engine 1.4 and final game will be Luminous Engine 2.0. That's silly, engine revisions won't change base problems this engine has that keep it from being "good" or up to date for current gen standards. It's a shame too.
But what bothers me the most is the animation system
Animation is only as good as it is scripted (I actually find it to be over-animated sometimes, and Noctis runs like a frickin girl) but it heavily relies on a classic animation system not different from that from FFX, just with animations way more complex (that take more RAM but are completely scripted from A to B) but equally limited, characters hit a tree with their face and they just keep running against it as if it's nothing.
When something doesn't go right it goes wrong, it looks... 2/3 tech generations behind. And if you ask me... it frickin is.
It's like you had a PS2 tech being supercharged in that area, when I think some PS2 games actually did better animation base tech. (Shadow of the Colossus for instance)
What I'm saying is that they have no procedural animation whatsoever going on.
I could elaborate further on a few other things but let me say I also liked some things I've seen (particles and rain) and I do think S-E clearly has some very good artists regardless, but they're fighting an uphill battle here and seeing they recently switched to this pile of shit they might have switched for UE4 as well.
I do think the game looks good, issue is that this engine will only hold it back, it needs help, massive retooling.
Also, seeing I've talked freely about stuff I didn't like, I know they showed their terrain creation tool in order to show how powerful it is:
But it seems more in line with how to create 5 generic Kilometers in 10 minutes. Originally when I've seen the new FFXV I thought it was an afterthought late addition and thus, likely would be smaller than Xenoblade, now I think it might actually be bigger, but more soulless solely due to the fact such tool exists and works that way. The word "afterthought" being in still.
That tool reminds me of random terrain generators in WRPG's (Oblivion for one). And then I realised staff has been saying a lot that you can explore but you really should use the car (and I've never seen a JRPG dev saying something like that) and then it hit me, nobody would say it's worth exploring if they did put lots of differentiating detail into every nook and cranny and from that I've seen, they didn't. I hate that tool.
Plot, cities and event places should still have that memorable geometry typical of JRPG's, but the rest of the game (at least this area) on foot might be something akin to "have I been here 30 minutes ago? everything looks so similar" kind of experience.
Automating stuff too much is never the way to do it.
FINAL NOTE: Sorry for the crappy GIF's I've made via browser, I know they suck in regards to others I employed, but I'm not used to doing them and didn't have the appropriate software installed to boot. I hope we can have a discussion about this with constructive comments, if you're just gonna be dismissive (and short) you're free to be due to freedom of speech et all but I don't think that adds much.
