@@tydendurler9574 This just prove how small your pathetic brain really is that you couldn't comprehend anything. But hey, I guess it's cool to be edgy and contrarion on the net.
I love how metro exodus and a plagues tale requiem constructed these semi open spaces with a lot of freedom to really explore. Those games arent technically "open world" but opt for these smaller open spaces but everything in them is meaningful/useful.The orginal dying light was also incredible in this regard. I hope more games construct their worlds like this. These meaningful worlds are like kryptonite to the modern AAA ubisoft title.
Ubisoft and ea, it seems like all they do is try to remake other companies games but try to make them better , and they're so often terrible. I don't get how they're so successful.
I think Dishonored struck a nearly perfect balance, same with some older titles like Thief 2. Each level is sefl-contained, but each is also so intricate and has so many paths to take with unique onstacles and requirements that they feel completely open. That sort of structure is so much better than most moder AAA open world games with barren worlds filled with nothing.
I’m still worried and hope it’s properly paced, gigantic map size is no longer a wonder for me. And I would really hate it if I realize I’m spending hours fetching herbs and monster parts for a random npc.
Yep i'm worried about them just adding filler fetch quests to the open world map. The linearity of the part 1 of the remake was a breath of fresh air. I could just focus on mainlining the story with very little side quest action. Then moving over to FF16 it felt like a giant slog that I eventually ignored 90% of the side quests when Act 3 started because I was completely over it.
@@Meech_CVI hate that with games, feeling over it and rushing thru the end, and I find myself doing it more and more with games these days. I didn’t with remake so hopefully won’t with rebirth
I remeber Christmas morning 97' 5hrs in and finding out i hadn't even scratched the surface. The moment the team stands beyond the wall is still one of my greatest moments in gaming. Square manged to make these small worlds come to life, that was one of the greatest times in gaming. Xenogears ff8, chrono cross! Masterpieces
Makes me appreciate Elden Ring even more. There was always something to do on that world. It only gave you a hint of where you're supposed to go but you could always go to another direction, check your map and see something interesting and head towards there
Agree! The magical thing about elden ring was that you could see landmarks in the background, and hours later you would be scaling those landmarks that you thought were just game props.... after elden ring, open worlds seemed so dull by comparison
Yet when you got to these areas that needed a solution to get past there was never any explanation and everyone had to look up on the internet how t o get past said area. Don't tell me you didn't I know you did. ER's open world if just as barren just not as obvious because everyone thinks there's something to do because they think it's another "secret puzzle".
Hard, hard disagree. Elden Ring would be significantly better had it not been open world, it is mostly just empty and even the parts that aren't are just filled with almost identical caves and stuff that are exactly the same as 50 other caves.
@@mattyryon "empty". Lol everyone keeps saying this with every open world game and I can't for the life of me figure out what would make it not "empty". Ppl can't walk 2 feet in a game without getting bored I guess.
Pls platinumed the game but side quest were trash as fuc* stop saying bullshi* just cuz ur a fan Ff7 my favourite game all time cuz it made me start gaming jrpg but lets be honest.
side content with Remake, just like with any Square Enix title, is trash. Just mindless fetch quests over and over again, that involve flat uninteresting characters. Clearly they don't understand what a good side quest is as they have been doing this for years. They need to play The Witcher 3 to see what quality side content is. I have no doubt Rebirth won't be any different.
Wait... Why is this video a month old? How can you know how the Open World is if the game wasn't even out yet? How can it "prove" anything when we haven't seen the final product? I thought this video would be an analyzation of the final release of the game and it's open world, but I don't know what this was.
FFVII Rebirth has basically two kinds of side quests: The story quests that involve one party member other than Cloud and some choice, often with some minigame, and the Chadley exploration stuff that basically just give some extra items or provide some unique enemies to fight. The latter are extremely skippable if you don't like them, and you don't miss much other than being a bit weaker than if you had done them. There's a slight bit of story content (like area background info), but not much. The Queen's Blood card game fits here as well, as well as the summons. The former expand on the world and give some extra interactions with a party member. Still not necessary, but they can be interesting. I'd say do them unless you're just interested in the main plot and nothing else.
I feel like too much time and energy goes into designing big empty fields with a few monsters here and there. I'd prefer more of that effort to go into creating thoughtfully designed cities and dungeons where big narrative setpieces take place. I prefer the 'open world' in the original where it gives you the sense that you're traveling across the world, but it doesn't waste too much of your time with sloggish, rewardless travel.
I hope you're right. But I think it's a little too early to tell without the game in hand. That being said, I didn't dislike the side content in Remake. I always felt rewarded as a lot gave you weapons, materia and accessories and they often led to some character or story moments that I enjoyed like talking to Aerith in her garden. So, if Rebirth can do that and give me some fun side content (Queen's Blood?) it'll be a huge success in my book.
The director has said that there may be fewer side quests than there was in remake, but that they put a lot more thought into them for rebirth. Probably because a common criticism of remake was that they were pretty boring with little thought into making them deep. The director said they took a lot of inspiration from The Witcher’s side quests and have used them to encourage the player to explore the map. I hope they are much better than remake. At least they won’t be as bad as 16’s were.
@@makasete30 You have too much faith in Square lol They have improved alot, but that's super recent development. They really haven't put out a decent idea since the FFXIII era (with Crisis Core, Dissida). That was ten years ago now!! More importantly, open world game design is still yet to experience innovation. The likihood of Square transcending world traversal is impossible. Let alone making any sense of all the timeline story breakup they are trying to pull off!
@@misapheonixRebirth will be a make or break title for not only their reputation as a game publisher but also the way they publish games moving forward. Either they make the greatest JRPG in the Modern era, or they've burnt their final bridge of trust with Western fans. But then that makes me wonder: how will this affect their Japanese and European fans?
@thecosmichiroshi I wish that were the case. . . But the critics are few compared to the masses paying top dollar for this bs. It will be drawn out, non sensical plot again and make more than enough to cash cow into more partitions x. x
Side quest in the old days tended to get you the best gear or loot and even hidden companions also you had FF6 that also had open world before 7 you had realy the same formula in almost all of them that gave you a slightly open world. 6 was finding magicite, Gear side story or extra tid bits to better understand your team and yes hidden characters like sasquawatch and mog.I always hopped hey had did a remake of 6 first then 7.
the longer they wait for a proper ff6 remake the better. id say for ps6 or late stage ps5 would be the earliest. At least we have unreal engine 5 now, which is great, and that too is constantly improving. after unreal 5 was released, they massively improved the procedural tool set, raytracing, and made it possible to render a vast amount of foliage at better quality than before, and they made it much more optimised to boot. I mean orders of magnitude better. The difference between unreal 5 and 5.3 is huge, and id hope that this would be the minimum version that would be used for ff6 because of its sheer potential for games like it.
@@MartinKrol well we still have to wait for part 3 of ff7 thats at least going to be another 4 years I would think. So in that time we will most likely have PS5 pro and possibly the annoucment for PS6. I will be something like 46 by this time so I hope to see it like maybe when I am 52. and I have to agree as I hope by this time we can get both 60fp or more with raytracing at the same time.
Miss the days of verbal clues and maybe just occasional obvious stuff, rather than a map covered in stickers and a "world intel" bar so you know exactly when you've milked a zone dry... lol : | I liked the battle intel/minibosses, the rest felt like busywork and held me back from doing the main story
Nicely said. It’s exactly why Final Fantasy 16 is so mid. this is something Final Fantasy 16 attempted where I think almost every side-quest was in some way linked to the main quest and Clive’s relationship with the world. The final mission before they set off to Origin for example gathered all of his friends and acquaintances met throughout the Twins. While they are familiar faces, there’s a high chance many players gained no emotional attachment to them nor felt that big of a bond with them whether they did their sidequests or not. And it’s strange because most of the sidequests are cohesive with Clive’s values and motives, there’s plenty of valid reasons Clive has to help them out. But it’s easy for the player to not feel that way. Clive’s no Cloud, Geralt, or Kratos where they put off this “I couldn’t care less” persona when talking to NPCs in need. He actually cares. But for some reason the world just doesn’t much at all present the pillars on which Clive and Cid fight for in a dire enough light. I mean they went from rebelling against kingdoms for the liberation of dominants to destroying crystals to save mankind because of some God no one knows about, almost halfway through the game. But the open world NPCs we help are facing troubles from political corruption and discrimination from being dominants. and so a lot of the side-quests feel tacked on or inconvenient because these characters are trying to fight two battles at once. Going from epic Eikon battles to picking flowers for the blacksmith or Isabelle’s political quests where they have you do nothing but talk to people around town, disrupts the tempo by too large an amount. Vivian lectures you throughout the game about the state of the game’s world but we just never get to see those shifts and changes all that well so it’s hard to care, to feel enthralled in it, because our priority is Ultima.
Here's my take on this subject. Open world does not work with Final Fantasy, simple as that. You can't have a game that wants to tell a linear story while I also having a world that begs you to detract from that linear story to explore it. It's better to go linear anyway because these are games with a level-based progression system i.e you level up the stats of your characters with EXP earned from combat. You are going to want the structure of your game to be linear if this is the case, so you don't have instances of unbalanced gameplay like what both XV and Elden Ring are somewhat known for. If you are going to go open world, then you need to either replace that progression system with something else or scale the enemies with the player's level, which may lead to frustration. In fact, most open world games are open world just for the sake of it, especially since nowadays visual immersion has taken precedent in how a game is designed and not the actual gameplay itself. I personally never saw a valid reason for Final Fantasy XV to have an open world because it was there to immerse the player but not actually do anything of value or substance with it. I've said this time and time again, XV should've had an over world instead, that way we would've gotten so much more for some much less, and all the content that was cut would've most likely been included in the main game since developers would have actually both the time and the opportunity to develop and implement them into the game. Final Fantasy 7 Remake is practically guilty of this too but for different reasons. I'm still of the belief that FF7 Remake could have actually been one game had they just not homogenized the presentation and game design of the original game in the remake. This open world obsession is one of those cases of that homogenization, it doesn't really need to be there because what is it going to offer other than extended travel time? The Witcher 3 in honestly guilty of this too, especially since it creates ludonarrative dissonance where on one hand, you have the story of Geralt of Rivia trying to find and save his adopted daughter Ciri, but on the other hand you can basically wander around doing side quests that can give the impression that Geralt is a giant careless procrastinator. XV suffered from this too with Noctis wanting to reclaim his throne in the story and save his people, but the game allowed you to goof off and do arbitrary side quests that meant nothing in the long run. I honestly suspect 7 Rebirth will suffer from this too in Cloud's pursuit of Sephiroth. This brings me to my personal favorite Final Fantasy game, Stranger of Paradise. The game does not have open world, nor does it need one. The game is entirely about mastering both the combat mechanics and the build system, it doesn't need anything like open world or explorable towns, especially in a game where killing one enemy drops tons of gear with randomized stats, plus FF1, which SoP is a prequel to, kind of already covers that. The mission select screen it goes with instead makes it infinitely replayable as it just gets right into the meat of things with no time wasted. It remembers to be a video game first and foremost.
You hit one something I'm always ranting about to friends. So many open world games are open world as a selling point, but then the devs have to figure out what to fill them with. The answer is usually a bunch of side objectives or fetch quests which I feel adds very little in most cases. The golden age of FF was filled with games that were linear at the start and opened up with sidequests towards the end. Modern FF games have to have sidequests throughout, start to finish, and it doesn't really work. FF7R is bloated with them to pad out what was several hours of content in the original into a full game. FF16 has you traversing the same few areas over and over in quests straight out of an FF14, but why? Imagine playing FF6 and you get to Figaro for the first time only to be presented with 4-5 sidequests where you run out and kill rabbits or pick herbs or something. It just doesn't work. It isn't necessary.
@@narkona1084 Thank you. I didn't get the chance to finish my original comment, so I'll continue here. To me a good open world makes it so that the open world has mechanical relevance to the gameplay, a great example of this is Death Stranding. It's open world seems empty and barren at first until you start delivering packages and traversing it, that's when you realize it's not empty and barren without a purpose. The game's traversal, balancing, enemies, and degradation mechanics make it so that you have to carefully plan out your delivery routes, otherwise things could go wrong. Crossing a river, climbing a mountain, or any other form of traversal in Death Stranding is not the same as in other open world games, where those things usually require little to no effort. In Death Stranding, every step you take, every direction you go, every piece of equipment you carry on you, the orders you pick up, all of it is a calculated risk, and you are punished if you don't plan out against those risks accordingly. XV did have potential ideas with something like this with the daemons that come out at night, but because of the combat being so easy, the rest spots and pit stops being so frequent, and the fast travel mechanic, the daemons were very easy to avoid can became trivial. XV is an amalgamation of ideas that didn't fully get realized to their true potential. I'm studying game design and am currently hoping to become a game developer one day, and one thing I've come to understand is that developing a game is like cooking, you want to the right amount of the right ingredients to create the best dish possible. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to good. My current project is a classic Final Fantasy inspired game that uses an overworld. One might think I'm using an overworld because I don't have the tools or resources to make an open world, but even if I did I would still choose to use an overworld because it makes more sense in the context of the game design that's borrowing a lot from classic Final Fantasy games.
Ah yes, Stranger of Paradise...Nomura's...Doomguy. 3/18/2022 wasn't it. 3/20/2020 was Eternal. 3/3/2020 was Remake's original release date. 4/29/2024 - Leap Day, originally a holiday for the Roman god of boundaries Welcome to the crossover of century.
I’ve come around to the same opinion: FF doesn’t need to be open world and it isn’t working. XII had a really fantastic mix-the maps were big enough and open to allow exploration, and at any point the player was free to go off the rails and explore regions that were optional or way beyond their level, but there was also enough restriction to keep you within bounds of the story and force you to keep it progressing. I’m sure the only reason each map was split into smaller segments was because of the ps2 limitations. And yes, I know people still have plenty of gripes with XIIs story (or lack thereof,) I’m just saying the actual formula of their world worked really great for an rpg.
@@narkona1084 You clearly never even play FF6 when the game literally has side/optional quests to recruit optional characters, magicites, hidden espers as well as characters' stories. By the time World of Ruin, a lot of the characters are completely optional to recruit and can be ignored entirely.
I am not too worried about the open world as explorative as long as it feels immersive. I'm more interested in how cinematic the story will feel in the same way remake did.
fully agree that the reward that side contents should service are relationships. a vast majority of FFXVI's quests miss the mark because they don't do this.. and also because it feels too MMOish.
Hot take: FF7 Rebirth's open world is mostly just the Ubisoft formula/checkmarking map icons. Majority handholding, very little true exploration and at least half the content being (bad to mediocre with a couple exceptions) minigames. Not something the industry should take as an example for a rich open world. What I'm looking for is a challenging open world with things to discover on my own and subtle pointers to quests and events. Like Elden Ring. Because that's an actual adventure. Rebirth itself feels so theme park, that the gold saucer seems like a parody of the world itself.
The reason why Original FF7 was so immersive on the PS be because it didn’t have that annoying “Command menu” on the bottom left. In rebirth it just follows you everywhere. It made the original more immersive.
I generally don’t like open word games with very few exceptions, like red dead redemption 1. The main reason I’m actually excited about exploring this open world is because it’ll be done alongside my favourite characters, and I just wanna see their relationships develop.
I’m the same way. I loved all Zelda games up until BOTW and TOTK because they are just generic open world games imo. I strongly believe SE will deliver with the open world part of this game.
This video is sadly ironic considering 90% of Rebirth's content is just wasted space. Go fight this group, go check that tower, go analyse this... pure Ubisoft bs. Remake's sidequests weren't the best, but they easily beat this absurdity.
I think Open world games do need a purpose. If it doesn't have a purpose then it's just open world digital sandbox. It's not a game. Just a digital sandbox you doodle and screw around. That's how I feel about it.
best 8min on the internet right now - I played Fenyx and (...sigh...) assassins creed and it was huge but everything felt like busy work (if you loved those games, I'm happy you enjoyed it). RD2 and the Witcher gave us a world that interacted with us. I liked the "zones" in Tales of Arise and even FFXVI (even though you couldn't really interact with it). I think you nailed a thought that a lot of fans have. good work on this.
I think Sucker Punch gave us some of the best side quests gaming has ever seen with ghosts of sushima in open World Games anyway. Ghost of tsushima is one of my favorite open world games. Red Dead Redemption 2 is absolutely incredible and on another level compared to most games. There's just not that many games that can bring to the table what rockstar got done with that game. I don't know if they can ever repeat something is good as that
I think this is true for UX in general terms and for the RPG genre-- it needs to provide you with feedback and auditory signals, or a story that provides with a goal or give you clues sbout something However -- what if, and I mean strongly, what if-- an open world was created whose sole purpose was for you to get out of the Amazon, basically a simulation of finding your way back home. No story. Just a huge empty open world like in real life making you feel as empty as the nameless gameplay character (basically you)?
@@DerekMckean I’d check out your hypothetical game, for sure! I think that’s an interesting concept, personally. Can’t speak for others’ opinions, though 🙃
I think the PS1 FF games had a better design in terms of open world. They said once that it would take too much to remake a full open world FF game like the old ones. I think that making a small character in open world like it was in the past is better than to have an empty world like what happened with Forspoken for example.
Yes..and that is why I applaud FF13. It gave you only necessay openworld. Final fantasy for me was about insane super bosses with crazy hp. My first was FF8 and had nothing to compare it or spoilers. So meeting stuff like Ultima weapon and learning how to beat them kept me coming back.
I think you definitely make some good points here. I consider my favorite open world games to be ones where the world isn't big so much as dense and filled with content. I'll take Yakuza/Like A Dragon's small city districts packed with stuff to do and goofy activities over a massive sprawling map any day, and FF7 Remake seemingly took that in particular as inspiration (right down to taking a break to play darts in the bar, or Wall Market's obvious Kabuki-cho vibes). This was always going to be the challenge, properly opening up the map for Rebirth just like the original game did, but while still making it contained enough that you're making meaningful progress and always getting something out of the exploration.
As I've gotten older, I've found myself disliking open world stuff more and more. I think it was the worst part of Elden Ring personally, I much rather have carefully curated and hand-crafted linear stuff
Shenmue 1 open world was the most immersive open world I ever played and it was one of the first open world, to made a great open world you have to make it feel "alive", Shenmue had day/time system, weather based on real Japan weather at the time you play the game, every npc had programed daily schedule (you would see them getting out of their home and walk all the way to their work and open shop then close the shop and go back to their home at night)(other npcs would hand around different stores based on day and time.) , every NPC dialog changed everytime you progressed in the game, telling you a change in their current life etc, you could interact with items in your hand in the shop before buying them, could take a bus and you even had a daily work time with salary. The world was not huge just 3 towns and a harbor section yet this made it better since it felt homely like you know the people in the game and felt part of the community instead of being a stranger thrown into a unknown town etc since you knew personally some of the characters and they knew you since you were a child and knew about your family etc.
yeah, but, at the same time, shenmue was not for everyone. lots of people actually really disliked it. and it being "alive" did nothing for them. on the other side shadow of hte collossus is a complete dead world. completely devoid of life. and just like shenmue, it worked amazingly well for some, while others hated it.
FF7 rebirth will just cover the flashback portion in Kalm. Nomura felt that in order to fully capture their vision and scope for the game they want to make, that this was necessary
Lol. And the fate ghosts make an appearance in memory to try and force cloud to tell the story right. The ending is cloud and sephiroth fighting sephiroth. While that’s supposed to be absurd, I truly believe square’s gonna pull some nonsense fan service like having cloud, Zack, and sephiroth team up against genesis.
@@Healthy_Toki feels like by the time ff7 remake is done it'll be a bigger gap between remake part 1 and part 3 than there was for the og ff7 and remake lmao
I really appreciated this, you have novel insights that aren't retreading visited ground. I learned multiple new important things from this video and I'm grateful for that.
I'm truly excited for Rebirth next month, I recently finished remake along with the DLC and enjoyed it immensely. The remake project is truly allowing Final Fantasy 7 to be, well, reborn to a new generation while still allowing the original Final Fantasy 7 to remain available everywhere. That's contrary to what many other companies do, delist the original product unnecessarily.
@@sel1015 if you’re asking then I would say no. All of the story is non-essential and can be summarized in like 2 sentences. If you’re a diehard ff7 compilation fan, then it’s worth buying, if not I wouldn’t worry about it.
This game was the first time I felt like actually exploring and felt rewarded for doing so. By far the most fun Ive had in a tripple a single player game in a very long time. Not to mention it’s just beautiful and story/characters are so memorable.
2020 midgar looked amazing, but was extremely boring to play though exactly because of pacing. the intro to the story never needed a 30+ hour game dedicated to it.
You're making a great point here about how Final Fantasy games are all linear. People complain all the time about some of these titles being "too linear" but they're really all quite linear; they just create an illusion of openness.
After I finished FF VII Remake and Rebirth, a friend recommended XV to me. And I have to say that the 15 has grown on me even more than any other part I've played. I love open world, the battle system (I don't use the waitmode) and I don't even need to start with the Regalia. And the OST gave me chills. Especially “Apocalypse Noctis” When I think of FFVII's graphics, the wall jpg of Midgar is always the first thing that comes to mind. In the 15th, everything is "alive" up to the horizon and the day-night cycle also brings in dynamism. And I also particularly like the little things, such as Noctis getting dirty from fighting and fishing, or his hairstyle no longer being neat due to the rain. I also like the dynamic between the guys more. In the 7, I'm particularly bothered by the whining and pushy nature of Tifa's character. The story of 15 is a bit confusing, I don't want to contradict that, but since I know or have all the media around, I can figure out the connections. The story of 7 is largely known, but now the changes make the story more complicated for players who know the original. As far as linear the chapters go after leaving Altissia before arriving Insomnia, FF VII Rebirth is no different. And I thought it was really good that it had the chance to travel back into the past again, for example to take a deep breath before the journey with the bros came to an end. And I actually enjoyed doing that again. Since I've found Zack to be my favorite FFVII character since Crisis Core, I'm naturally very excited to see how he fits into the whole story. All in all, I'm really looking forward to the third part of the 7. But the 15 will probably remain number one for me for the time being.
Open world games pose such a challenge in so many ways. It's so difficult to make the exploration feel both rewarding and novel. Open world collectibles often wind up feeling so repetitive and burdensome for those of us who feel compelled to go after all of them. I'm not 100% confident the perfect balance CAN be struck, but I do enjoy these games a lot and agree with everything said here.
Now I understand why I feel certain open world game is too much for me while FF7 feels like its just the right amount to keep me wanting to play more. Such great video man!
after the crapshow the first episode was I really hope they put their shit together and got to work on something actually interesting.. and can't say that I welcome the whole open world thing with confidence.. The first episode was basically long tunnel/sewer with boring over extended fights to make you feel like you didn't finish the whole game in 5 hours (like what the midgard section of the original game was) and adding boring fetch/kill side quest to add more meaningless things to do in the game.. so turning this 180° with an open world seems far fetched to me.. but hey I'd be delighted to be proven wrong and we finally get an actual full game this time despite having to wait for a third installment though.. My prediction though is that this "open world" part will just replace those long stretch of tunnels we had to face in the first episode, giving us more kill quest in this "open world" and overall stretch what should be a 5 hour gameplay/story into a 30 hours of emptyness like the first one.. guess we'll see soon enough
This was probably best game I have ever played 115hrs and I never felt overwhelmed and always wanted more. Most open world games have to much openness. I loved that it would give you time to explore then suck you right into the story.
I loved the game overall but didn't care for much of the side quests in the open world. Too repetitive and mundane. The towers and springs especially being at the top of that list. Canon and game otherwise was still excellent.
@@tj1486 I can see that. I think its at your leisure i just played everything. The queensblood quests were awesome and good story. I couldnt beat shadowblood queen yet.
@@alf21124 I loved queens blood but I think I only beat like 22 players so didn't ever get to her. But now I'm curious lol. I would honestly play queens blood in real life, that was fun.
Rebirth's open world is a failure. Yoshinori Kitase copied the Ubisoft formula and made it even worse. Most of the open world side content are boring chores and IQ tests for braindead kids. But then again, even most of the minigames are worse than the IQ test from Idiocracy.
Gotta say - most games with open world turn out to fluff. Open world is also problematic and break story line because you will have some urgent task you need to take care of and then can spend the next X hours doing side quests that have nothing to do with helping that urgent item.
100%, if they are slice of life, they should really be embedded into the story. BUT the problem there is balance. While maybe not exactly open world, I’ve always enjoyed Tales of games. Or even OG FF7. In rebirth, the reward was limited and superficial character growth, a dating sim mechanic, and mid rewards. Most people would be happen with more weapons, or items the increased Materia slots or links. Even more glams, glams really get gamers. Like if the party members got Chocobo suits for completing those stupid air trails, we’d cry blood for uwu chocobo Aerith.
Well said! I really hope they go with quality over quantity in Rebirth. The majority of side quests in XV were terrible. XVI was better, but still a lot of filler. Nier Automata did open world side quests the best IMO.
From what I have seen of rebirth, I really hope there's a lot more to see. There are several modes of transportation, but i hope there's actual worthwhile places to even go to. Combat and fetch quests only go so far. With so much ground to cover, i hope there are activities to keep the player engaged. in XV, the novelty of the open world wore off quickly because it became extremely formulaic and repetitive. Thus I hope Rebirth can actually fill the world with stuff to do.
If you played the OG FF7 game then you know there will be a fuckload of worthwhile places to go. Gold Saucer being one of them and one of my personal favorites.
The music collecting and driving around listening to the tunes from past games in XV was a lot of fun, the fact the whole game was pretty much a road trip with friends was fun I actually quite enjoyed that one.
Having just finished Rebirth I can say (for me) the open world aspect didn’t work. Its repetitive map objectives and (mainly) fetch quest side missions really hurt the pacing of the game. Baring in mind some of the main missions are like downtime in the story anyway. I’ve never played the original, but I just bought it on steam for £3.99 so I can play it even though I hate turn based combat. I wanna see the original story, paced as it should be and see the ending coz right now I’m not sure I even wanna play part 3, certainly not at £70.
The cinematic way the camera moves in the orginal ff7 will make it tolerant for you. As you progress you will learn to to appriectate its art and colorful visuals and ablities. However you were never on the train in 97 so you will probably won't have the same eyes as wow this is amazing. Because there was no other game at the time. Also the reward system is much better. Things actually pay off whether its a side quest or a simple find. Chadley by far completly destroys the reward system and takes away from the party screen time. Each second chadey got paid could of been a dollar paid to barret tifa yuffie vincent cid etc For more dialouge content.
FF7 rebirth is amazing. its big, but not TOO big. It's action packed, level design and gameplay packed. THIS is how I want FF games to be. FF16 was amazing also in many ways, but still a touch too safe, too barebone. Yes. It was filled with lots of things, but for a Final Fantasy it was not enough. FF7 Rebirth is exactly what I want from a FF. It's so crazy filled with incredible things. This is a RPG, but when you look at the environments for the majority and then also the characters then this production is of crazy high quality. As I wander in Cosmo Canyon thinking, is this an RPG? This feels like a Resident evil 8/4 remake content level graphics but better looking, but the biggest difference is that FF7 is a huge world and Resident evil is tiny. This is the level of quality of FF7 rebirth. It's beyond outstanding. Many mini games are fun, but for 1st prize sometimes tedious. Then the Queensblood card game is actually really fun! and Im the last person to play card games and yet im loving it. The sound is amazing. The story is just amazing amazing.
@@crowevil4658 they were not boring or empty. If you played the game you’d know. They’re universally praised for not being boring or empty while almost every open world is. Durability is a fantastic mechanic. Anybody who thinks otherwise has played under 10 hours, if they played it at all.
Hello, I'm from the future. Square Enix made a Ubisoft -style world with scans, useless battles and annoying collectibles. Also, relationships now depend on completed quests, but you don’t know in advance which ones. The game punishes you if you try to complete its content in full in one playthrough without guides. It's still good and fun game, but it openworld is afterthought.
You do know which ones, you can accept a quest and not complete it. The party member who talks with you during said side quest is the one who will level up at the end. There are also certain actions you can take during certain side quests to increase the amount of bond points gained.
Scan 10 points of interest each region, activate 6 towers, find x chest in a map marker, dig up items in a map marker, fight enemies with conditions in a map marker. All mindless busy work.
@@Mohgenstein yeah, but Chadley is cool 😎 also not sure what you’re expecting from open world in these games. Og ff7 didn’t have anything besides random encounters. So at least they added something into the game without interfering with the story too much.
@ChazUBCS nah, I've heard that before and I don't believe it. FFXV TRE is a massive game with a huge map, musical score, voice acting in about eight languages, tons of content, and 120+ hours of gameplay. It's all on one disc. FFVII Remake is a 40-50 hour game at the most. Sizewise, it's like comparing Texas to Vermont.
@@thosetwodudes Trails in the Sky did it and it was amazing. And the changes were much smaller than what Remake is doing (gameplay wise). And come on, Remake turned 5 hours in to 40-50 hours. Your comparison is not fair.
Very well spoken and you're definitely correct but I think this kind of mindset only applies to games where the narrative and flow of the story is a key element, like this game. I don't think this logic should apply to ALL open world games. Some open world games are purely about discovery and freedom. And that's totally fine because for every gamer who values an amazing story above all else, there's a gamer who values rewarded exploration and interactive gameplay above all else. It's okay to provide players with the choice to unlock lore and narrative via where they choose to explore and take the character rather than guiding them along a set narrative path within the world. That said, FFVII definitely does need to follow the design philosophy you're talking about here and I think it totally will. We're not just gonna be able to go straight to Junon right off the bat so in that sense its absolutely going to remain true to the original game in that regard. We won't see a true open world until the third game. But I think having a to scale, seamless world is what's important to the remake project because it allows the devs to realize their original vision; being able to truly travel across a globe. Like you said, its something that FFXV tried to realize but ultimately wasn't able to completely. Here's to hoping that the FFVIIR project can make that vision a reality!
When I tell you that linear final fantasy 7 is the best version for that game it’s a serious understatement. The linear aspect allows you to seriously take a look at the world rather than consuming everything in one go with limited scenery. Honestly in terms of scenery and art obviously ff7 remake is better. If it had ff7 rebirth character model optimisation then yes I’ll still say ff7 remake is the better game. To me I can’t stop playing rebirth but it just comes to the point where i think about the linear aspect of the game. I miss it😔 Edit: ofc it’s there in rebirth but there isn’t enough.
oh of course thats true. but that part is where the CONTENT is for open world games. the CONTENT im talking about is the "missions" and reasons why you have to keep going. you could do that with writing stories which eventually ends, or create a GAMEPLAY MECHANIC that puts you in a real OPEN WORLD mechanism where anybody can be your mission goals. this is where many open world games havent been able to achieve. with the todays AI inclusions in gaming developments. missions could be GENERATED IN THE FLY by AI mechanics in game. something you do in the open world could create you new enemies for example. and those enemies could grow, and it build you new reason to thrive. like how the US govt do things. create new enemies to ensure their weapon industry keep going. the same thing. - i have a example that many people probably dont really know or like, the space game X4 foundation. thats how an open world game should be in terms of MECHANIC. where the game never ended. anything could happen, one wrong incident like destroying accidently a wrong ships in game could make one of the many factions in the game become your new enemies and dynamics shifts. changes everything you have built. alliances etc. thats how open world game should be. new "goals" should be generated in game IN THE FLY. so it never ends. i learned that aspect from observing how the US does things int he world. and i figure, this is great mechincs for open wrold games. the US is basically PLAYING AN OPEN WORLD GAME ON THE PLANET. story making can only get the game so far. do it the way US govt/intelligence/military do the world.
Hard disagree. The environments and worlds of Xenoblade is so barren and empty too. It may look visually and conceptually cool… but its pretty bland with its environments and plot progression. Also they didn’t add a single traversion system until the THIRD GAME
@@Mohgenstein If you seriously think Yellow Paint is a problem in games… go get yourself checked out buddy. Also last I checked, fast travel wasn’t instant, you didn’t have a horse or car to go faster, environments are still extremely boring.
@@Mohgenstein Bro I never said the game never had fast travel… I’m just saying it wasn’t seamless or instant. You have to wait like 20-30 seconds. Also its clear your a fanboy that can’t accept another viewpoint because “muh RPG is better than yours”
Nice upload and though I am a much bigger fan of OG ff7 than remake I am very curious how they are gonna handle the open world aspect. So many open world games get it wrong imo (vast majority in fact) and so heres hoping ff7 rebirth is not filled with....well.....filler.
Kitase - for some mindblowing reason - actually believes that FFVII fans are in it for the minigames. Perhaps in 1997 it was interesting having this variety in gameplay. These days it is an insult to players' IQ and time.
Man I just wana hop on a chocobo and go exploring the vast landscapes for materia,grinding,rare enemy skills and weapons and armor collecting just like in the original game.
Ive really enjoyed both i bought a PS5 in February and just bought Remake and preordered rebirth. Ive played both over last couple months and its been amazing. Ff7 used to be my third favorite as a kid (9 and 10 were my favorites) but after rebirth it has become my favorite RPG story by far. I really hope we get a fleshed out open world version of FF9 one day. Rebirth is one of the best games iv ever played and ive played a lot of games
I liked Dying Light (the first one) not because it was massive (it was actually quite small) and "open world" but it was filled out enough and had a great atmosphere.
Having played through it in full, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth isn't truly open world. Or at least, isn't open world like we usually use the term. I would say that Rebirth is more akin to a seamless open region design similar to Xenoblade, where the game isn't truly open for much of the game and you have to progress through the story in order to get the full world. That's at least how Hamaguchi put it.
I sadly don't feel like there'll be mystery of the unknown in Rebirth, simply because the last two bosses fought in Remake. How can I take a random monster or machine boss seriously, if I've literally killed an eldritch godhead of time and space?
@@taxfree4603 Narratives with winding paths and plot twists, different outcomes depending on your choices, different ways to solve them, quests that actually effect the game later on.
the best "open world" game for me is fallout 1 and 2 from the late 90s each town has distinct factions, quest lines and things to do- you can visit them in any order, every action has consequences travelling outside the towns has zany moments aplenty botw was also a suprising success for me- way better than any other zelda game- although it peaked in the first 2 hours honestly
I hope they give us costume options! Cloud looks sick asf but I’m tired of his weird ass single shoulder armor piece with rusty bolts coming out of it. Let me dress my team!
You make a lot of bold statements about what the game will be, but none of that is supported by the evidence. It's doubly hard to do so, for something that we cannot even get our hands on yet, at least nothing you mentioned in this video. You don't have insight, you have hopeful speculation. And that's a fine thing, but you don't seem to make the distinction in your presentation. I don't think we can lean so hard on side content quests from part 1, which was an aspect of that game near universally panned. I can't think of a positive review of that aspect of the game, in fact. So, I'm a bit puzzled. Do not mistake ambitions advertised in promotional material for actuality. As others have remarked, this isn't a lesson from a game that hasn't released, it's a lesson repeated over and over., of which your target audience is probably very familiar with. In fact, t's a lesson and a popular article headline I'm certain I've seen recently, discussing 2022's game of the year, Elden Ring. A game that has in fact released, played by millions of people, and has in fact been cited as 'proving positively open worlds need of purpose, due to it's acclaimed purposeful open world'.. Good, glad we understand that Open Worlds need purpose. I hope FFVII Rebirth: remake part 2: HD ( Heart's Darkness) delivers on that.. Jokes aside, going off CBU1's recent history I'm not so confident they will pull of the whole package. There were a lot of really great things about the first part of Remake, but there are also a lot of really not so great things: threadbare and uninteresting side content a case in point. They're not doing much to substantiate your claims about any positive lesson Rebirth proves. Taking the lessons from Part 1, which was a relatively linear game that did quite well in those focused areas, and poorly in adding additional things on the side and then expanding that out to a full open world for Rebirth ala FFXV which has a lot of open world problems... it's not easy to accept what you're trying to say here. As far as a Critical Writing 101 goes, this was a C- paper for me. Articulate, but shallow: there's no substance. You need a stronger thesis, and you need to be able to make strong arguments to support your thesis. It's a weak core, and a weak argument.
Worry not. Rebirths world is jam packed with things to do, and see. Things to explore and fight. People to encounter and stories to discover. They fucking cooked.
Lol at Horizon Forbidden West's open world design being alluded to as a negative. It was the main reason I bought a PS5 and the main reason I ended up feeling burnt out on open world mechanics since playing it. I hope Rebirth innovates enough to make exploration feel worthwhile again, I'm done with the meaningless busywork.
Personally, I thought FF7R's pacing and main-path padding was horrendous, at least in the mid-game. It's definitely one of those games whose mandatory content could've had anywhere between 2 and 5 hours of it shaved off with MAYBE a little value lost, but much more gained in the improved pacing and tone.
Lmao, the open world sucked. You do the exact same things in each region. Climb towers, fight variants of local enemies, scan springs, scan info on the summon, catch a few mooglets. Only things that change are the protorelics minigames, and occasionally the minigame to catch chocobo. Took me like 4 regions but I got sick of. Same busywork in each region.
Unpopular opinion: I played the original FF7 to death, and call it rose tinted glasses, but found everything was really better in the "old days" when you didn't have the chance for DLC or updates, so I guess developers had that "one shot" mentality, do or die and get it right the 1st time. I'm appreciative for today's tech, but open worlds have no "magic" unlike back in the original FF7. Simply put, we were constrained by pre-rendered backgrounds and could only access the 3D open world later, unlike remake where everything feels the same. I played this remake and was excited yet bored, especially with the silly fetch quests, which felt like they HAD to be put in.. instead of the original, where side quests really made you feel happy doing them cause you knew you'd be getting something rare or useful. But back to the main issue, 3D open worlds feel passé nowadays, everything feels the same despite it being in a different area (am I the only one who think so?) Maybe they could have done it like RE1Remake, pre-rendered for Midgard and towns, and full 3D for the open world.. I really do hope the next episode releases somehow create the magic... Thanks for the video.
I think it proves that open world needs VARIETY. It needs several different regions with different concepts. What we had so far (The witcher, Read Dead, Horizon) are homogeneous open worlds. Final Fantasy always had heterogeneous open worlds.
If you want to get really technical both FF 1 and FF 2 are technically open world with linear sub segments the same way that FF 7 was. I'd argue that FF 2 was more open world than 7 in fact.
I've just finished the game yesterday, and can say they did everything perfectly. In my personal experience, the world exploration and side quests were just as rewarding as the main story, bringing me closer to the characters and the world they reside in. You can really tell how the extra content was really made with love, and the purpose to drive you deeper into the fantasy, and not just provide for more playtime or shallow content. I'll make sure to revisit previous chapters and go for a 100% exploration, as I know now that it will be well worth it!
Originally wrote this in response to someone else's comment, but I think I wrote more than enough to justify making this more standalone, lol Anyway, Eh, a barren game can be fun, and a game with loads of content can be unfun. Beyond the career/whatever modes that nobody even played (let's be real, everyone played Free Skate), ye olde Tony Hawk Pro Skater was basically nothing but skating and doing tricks, and those games got a bajillion sequels because they were just fun to play. Shadow the Hedgehog has 326 possible paths, and... it's Shadow the Hedgehog. The issue with modern open world games is that they're so focused on making sure there's something just over the hill ahead that they forget to make the act of climbing the hill fun. Did anyone play Breath of the Wild and think "man, walking/climbing/swimming is SO FUN"? The truth is, the moment to moment gameplay in that game (and its sequel, since they're the same game) sucks ass. The sense of mystery and discovery really carried that game, and that's great, until the mystery and discovery wears off. Then you're stuck with a game you know top to bottom where you move around inconceivably slowly and your only way of attacking enemies is either a three hit combo or something you would only ever do for a video because it's not actually practical. It's a game that's fun to experience, not fun to play. (it has fun parts, though.) On the flip side of that, you've got Spider-Man 2 (the real one, not the slop game that released last year). About the only major quality to that game's favor is the web-swinging, but they did that so damn well that it's fun to just swing around the city, even if you're not being rewarded for it. It makes the act of getting around fun, and there's fun to be had in trying to master the mechanic. Elden Ring was mindful of this sort of thing, but failed to actually stick the landing in its execution. FF7 Rebirth's transition to open world is a curious development to be sure, but I'm not exactly optimistic they'll stick the landing when virtually everyone else is failing. Hoping I'm wrong, though. And it's not like the overall game can't be good in spite of a shitty open world.
I don't think it takes an upcoming FF7 game to prove that games should avoid being barren.
There's no way FF7 Rebirth looks Barren.
@@tydendurler9574 This just prove how small your pathetic brain really is that you couldn't comprehend anything. But hey, I guess it's cool to be edgy and contrarion on the net.
who knows? @@Yusei255
Shadow of the Colossus uses a barren landscape as an atmospheric and narrative tool.
Exactly
I love how metro exodus and a plagues tale requiem constructed these semi open spaces with a lot of freedom to really explore. Those games arent technically "open world" but opt for these smaller open spaces but everything in them is meaningful/useful.The orginal dying light was also incredible in this regard. I hope more games construct their worlds like this. These meaningful worlds are like kryptonite to the modern AAA ubisoft title.
Yakuza does this really well too
Ubisoft and ea, it seems like all they do is try to remake other companies games but try to make them better , and they're so often terrible. I don't get how they're so successful.
I think Dishonored struck a nearly perfect balance, same with some older titles like Thief 2. Each level is sefl-contained, but each is also so intricate and has so many paths to take with unique onstacles and requirements that they feel completely open. That sort of structure is so much better than most moder AAA open world games with barren worlds filled with nothing.
exodus is pure garbage though. Terrible example
Yup, that's my favourite type of game now. Some exploration but the open spaces seem deliberately designed and reward exploration
I’m still worried and hope it’s properly paced, gigantic map size is no longer a wonder for me. And I would really hate it if I realize I’m spending hours fetching herbs and monster parts for a random npc.
Yeah.... Suckking mako was not fun
@AB-ho1cr that one wasn’t open world.
Yep i'm worried about them just adding filler fetch quests to the open world map. The linearity of the part 1 of the remake was a breath of fresh air. I could just focus on mainlining the story with very little side quest action.
Then moving over to FF16 it felt like a giant slog that I eventually ignored 90% of the side quests when Act 3 started because I was completely over it.
So like Tears of the Kingdom? Nah this will be waay better. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
@@Meech_CVI hate that with games, feeling over it and rushing thru the end, and I find myself doing it more and more with games these days. I didn’t with remake so hopefully won’t with rebirth
I remeber Christmas morning 97' 5hrs in and finding out i hadn't even scratched the surface. The moment the team stands beyond the wall is still one of my greatest moments in gaming. Square manged to make these small worlds come to life, that was one of the greatest times in gaming. Xenogears ff8, chrono cross! Masterpieces
I still remember that feeling
Makes me appreciate Elden Ring even more. There was always something to do on that world. It only gave you a hint of where you're supposed to go but you could always go to another direction, check your map and see something interesting and head towards there
Agree! The magical thing about elden ring was that you could see landmarks in the background, and hours later you would be scaling those landmarks that you thought were just game props.... after elden ring, open worlds seemed so dull by comparison
Yet when you got to these areas that needed a solution to get past there was never any explanation and everyone had to look up on the internet how t o get past said area. Don't tell me you didn't I know you did. ER's open world if just as barren just not as obvious because everyone thinks there's something to do because they think it's another "secret puzzle".
Hard, hard disagree. Elden Ring would be significantly better had it not been open world, it is mostly just empty and even the parts that aren't are just filled with almost identical caves and stuff that are exactly the same as 50 other caves.
Dumbass opinion of he day@@mattyryon
@@mattyryon "empty". Lol everyone keeps saying this with every open world game and I can't for the life of me figure out what would make it not "empty". Ppl can't walk 2 feet in a game without getting bored I guess.
with Remake they used side quests to deepen Cloud's personal growth so I can only expect the side content in Rebirth will be as meaningful
a man can dream...
Side content was trash in remake...
@@davso91 Really courageous of you to be so wrong.
Pls platinumed the game but side quest were trash as fuc* stop saying bullshi* just cuz ur a fan
Ff7 my favourite game all time cuz it made me start gaming jrpg but lets be honest.
side content with Remake, just like with any Square Enix title, is trash. Just mindless fetch quests over and over again, that involve flat uninteresting characters. Clearly they don't understand what a good side quest is as they have been doing this for years. They need to play The Witcher 3 to see what quality side content is. I have no doubt Rebirth won't be any different.
As a decades long games/level/systems designer in the industry, this video was both true, and inspiring. Keep at it 🙂
Thank you so much for saying that!
brainrot
Wait... Why is this video a month old? How can you know how the Open World is if the game wasn't even out yet? How can it "prove" anything when we haven't seen the final product?
I thought this video would be an analyzation of the final release of the game and it's open world, but I don't know what this was.
FFVII Rebirth has basically two kinds of side quests: The story quests that involve one party member other than Cloud and some choice, often with some minigame, and the Chadley exploration stuff that basically just give some extra items or provide some unique enemies to fight.
The latter are extremely skippable if you don't like them, and you don't miss much other than being a bit weaker than if you had done them. There's a slight bit of story content (like area background info), but not much. The Queen's Blood card game fits here as well, as well as the summons.
The former expand on the world and give some extra interactions with a party member. Still not necessary, but they can be interesting. I'd say do them unless you're just interested in the main plot and nothing else.
I feel like too much time and energy goes into designing big empty fields with a few monsters here and there. I'd prefer more of that effort to go into creating thoughtfully designed cities and dungeons where big narrative setpieces take place. I prefer the 'open world' in the original where it gives you the sense that you're traveling across the world, but it doesn't waste too much of your time with sloggish, rewardless travel.
I hope you're right. But I think it's a little too early to tell without the game in hand. That being said, I didn't dislike the side content in Remake. I always felt rewarded as a lot gave you weapons, materia and accessories and they often led to some character or story moments that I enjoyed like talking to Aerith in her garden. So, if Rebirth can do that and give me some fun side content (Queen's Blood?) it'll be a huge success in my book.
That's gunna be as impossible as Starfield promising good content on a thousand worlds :/
The director has said that there may be fewer side quests than there was in remake, but that they put a lot more thought into them for rebirth. Probably because a common criticism of remake was that they were pretty boring with little thought into making them deep.
The director said they took a lot of inspiration from The Witcher’s side quests and have used them to encourage the player to explore the map.
I hope they are much better than remake. At least they won’t be as bad as 16’s were.
@@makasete30 You have too much faith in Square lol They have improved alot, but that's super recent development. They really haven't put out a decent idea since the FFXIII era (with Crisis Core, Dissida). That was ten years ago now!!
More importantly, open world game design is still yet to experience innovation. The likihood of Square transcending world traversal is impossible. Let alone making any sense of all the timeline story breakup they are trying to pull off!
@@misapheonixRebirth will be a make or break title for not only their reputation as a game publisher but also the way they publish games moving forward. Either they make the greatest JRPG in the Modern era, or they've burnt their final bridge of trust with Western fans.
But then that makes me wonder: how will this affect their Japanese and European fans?
@thecosmichiroshi I wish that were the case. . . But the critics are few compared to the masses paying top dollar for this bs. It will be drawn out, non sensical plot again and make more than enough to cash cow into more partitions x. x
Side quest in the old days tended to get you the best gear or loot and even hidden companions also you had FF6 that also had open world before 7 you had realy the same formula in almost all of them that gave you a slightly open world. 6 was finding magicite, Gear side story or extra tid bits to better understand your team and yes hidden characters like sasquawatch and mog.I always hopped hey had did a remake of 6 first then 7.
the longer they wait for a proper ff6 remake the better. id say for ps6 or late stage ps5 would be the earliest. At least we have unreal engine 5 now, which is great, and that too is constantly improving. after unreal 5 was released, they massively improved the procedural tool set, raytracing, and made it possible to render a vast amount of foliage at better quality than before, and they made it much more optimised to boot. I mean orders of magnitude better. The difference between unreal 5 and 5.3 is huge, and id hope that this would be the minimum version that would be used for ff6 because of its sheer potential for games like it.
@@MartinKrol well we still have to wait for part 3 of ff7 thats at least going to be another 4 years I would think. So in that time we will most likely have PS5 pro and possibly the annoucment for PS6. I will be something like 46 by this time so I hope to see it like maybe when I am 52. and I have to agree as I hope by this time we can get both 60fp or more with raytracing at the same time.
Miss the days of verbal clues and maybe just occasional obvious stuff, rather than a map covered in stickers and a "world intel" bar so you know exactly when you've milked a zone dry... lol : |
I liked the battle intel/minibosses, the rest felt like busywork and held me back from doing the main story
Nicely said. It’s exactly why Final Fantasy 16 is so mid. this is something Final Fantasy 16 attempted where I think almost every side-quest was in some way linked to the main quest and Clive’s relationship with the world. The final mission before they set off to Origin for example gathered all of his friends and acquaintances met throughout the Twins. While they are familiar faces, there’s a high chance many players gained no emotional attachment to them nor felt that big of a bond with them whether they did their sidequests or not. And it’s strange because most of the sidequests are cohesive with Clive’s values and motives, there’s plenty of valid reasons Clive has to help them out. But it’s easy for the player to not feel that way. Clive’s no Cloud, Geralt, or Kratos where they put off this “I couldn’t care less” persona when talking to NPCs in need. He actually cares. But for some reason the world just doesn’t much at all present the pillars on which Clive and Cid fight for in a dire enough light. I mean they went from rebelling against kingdoms for the liberation of dominants to destroying crystals to save mankind because of some God no one knows about, almost halfway through the game. But the open world NPCs we help are facing troubles from political corruption and discrimination from being dominants. and so a lot of the side-quests feel tacked on or inconvenient because these characters are trying to fight two battles at once. Going from epic Eikon battles to picking flowers for the blacksmith or Isabelle’s political quests where they have you do nothing but talk to people around town, disrupts the tempo by too large an amount. Vivian lectures you throughout the game about the state of the game’s world but we just never get to see those shifts and changes all that well so it’s hard to care, to feel enthralled in it, because our priority is Ultima.
Learn to use paragraphs.
I could read it just fine.
Beautifully written and spoken.
*speaken
Here's my take on this subject.
Open world does not work with Final Fantasy, simple as that. You can't have a game that wants to tell a linear story while I also having a world that begs you to detract from that linear story to explore it.
It's better to go linear anyway because these are games with a level-based progression system i.e you level up the stats of your characters with EXP earned from combat. You are going to want the structure of your game to be linear if this is the case, so you don't have instances of unbalanced gameplay like what both XV and Elden Ring are somewhat known for. If you are going to go open world, then you need to either replace that progression system with something else or scale the enemies with the player's level, which may lead to frustration.
In fact, most open world games are open world just for the sake of it, especially since nowadays visual immersion has taken precedent in how a game is designed and not the actual gameplay itself. I personally never saw a valid reason for Final Fantasy XV to have an open world because it was there to immerse the player but not actually do anything of value or substance with it.
I've said this time and time again, XV should've had an over world instead, that way we would've gotten so much more for some much less, and all the content that was cut would've most likely been included in the main game since developers would have actually both the time and the opportunity to develop and implement them into the game.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake is practically guilty of this too but for different reasons. I'm still of the belief that FF7 Remake could have actually been one game had they just not homogenized the presentation and game design of the original game in the remake. This open world obsession is one of those cases of that homogenization, it doesn't really need to be there because what is it going to offer other than extended travel time?
The Witcher 3 in honestly guilty of this too, especially since it creates ludonarrative dissonance where on one hand, you have the story of Geralt of Rivia trying to find and save his adopted daughter Ciri, but on the other hand you can basically wander around doing side quests that can give the impression that Geralt is a giant careless procrastinator. XV suffered from this too with Noctis wanting to reclaim his throne in the story and save his people, but the game allowed you to goof off and do arbitrary side quests that meant nothing in the long run. I honestly suspect 7 Rebirth will suffer from this too in Cloud's pursuit of Sephiroth.
This brings me to my personal favorite Final Fantasy game, Stranger of Paradise. The game does not have open world, nor does it need one. The game is entirely about mastering both the combat mechanics and the build system, it doesn't need anything like open world or explorable towns, especially in a game where killing one enemy drops tons of gear with randomized stats, plus FF1, which SoP is a prequel to, kind of already covers that. The mission select screen it goes with instead makes it infinitely replayable as it just gets right into the meat of things with no time wasted. It remembers to be a video game first and foremost.
You hit one something I'm always ranting about to friends. So many open world games are open world as a selling point, but then the devs have to figure out what to fill them with. The answer is usually a bunch of side objectives or fetch quests which I feel adds very little in most cases.
The golden age of FF was filled with games that were linear at the start and opened up with sidequests towards the end. Modern FF games have to have sidequests throughout, start to finish, and it doesn't really work. FF7R is bloated with them to pad out what was several hours of content in the original into a full game. FF16 has you traversing the same few areas over and over in quests straight out of an FF14, but why?
Imagine playing FF6 and you get to Figaro for the first time only to be presented with 4-5 sidequests where you run out and kill rabbits or pick herbs or something. It just doesn't work. It isn't necessary.
@@narkona1084 Thank you. I didn't get the chance to finish my original comment, so I'll continue here.
To me a good open world makes it so that the open world has mechanical relevance to the gameplay, a great example of this is Death Stranding. It's open world seems empty and barren at first until you start delivering packages and traversing it, that's when you realize it's not empty and barren without a purpose. The game's traversal, balancing, enemies, and degradation mechanics make it so that you have to carefully plan out your delivery routes, otherwise things could go wrong.
Crossing a river, climbing a mountain, or any other form of traversal in Death Stranding is not the same as in other open world games, where those things usually require little to no effort. In Death Stranding, every step you take, every direction you go, every piece of equipment you carry on you, the orders you pick up, all of it is a calculated risk, and you are punished if you don't plan out against those risks accordingly.
XV did have potential ideas with something like this with the daemons that come out at night, but because of the combat being so easy, the rest spots and pit stops being so frequent, and the fast travel mechanic, the daemons were very easy to avoid can became trivial. XV is an amalgamation of ideas that didn't fully get realized to their true potential.
I'm studying game design and am currently hoping to become a game developer one day, and one thing I've come to understand is that developing a game is like cooking, you want to the right amount of the right ingredients to create the best dish possible. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to good.
My current project is a classic Final Fantasy inspired game that uses an overworld. One might think I'm using an overworld because I don't have the tools or resources to make an open world, but even if I did I would still choose to use an overworld because it makes more sense in the context of the game design that's borrowing a lot from classic Final Fantasy games.
Ah yes, Stranger of Paradise...Nomura's...Doomguy.
3/18/2022 wasn't it.
3/20/2020 was Eternal.
3/3/2020 was Remake's original release date.
4/29/2024 - Leap Day, originally a holiday for the Roman god of boundaries
Welcome to the crossover of century.
I’ve come around to the same opinion: FF doesn’t need to be open world and it isn’t working. XII had a really fantastic mix-the maps were big enough and open to allow exploration, and at any point the player was free to go off the rails and explore regions that were optional or way beyond their level, but there was also enough restriction to keep you within bounds of the story and force you to keep it progressing. I’m sure the only reason each map was split into smaller segments was because of the ps2 limitations.
And yes, I know people still have plenty of gripes with XIIs story (or lack thereof,) I’m just saying the actual formula of their world worked really great for an rpg.
@@narkona1084 You clearly never even play FF6 when the game literally has side/optional quests to recruit optional characters, magicites, hidden espers as well as characters' stories. By the time World of Ruin, a lot of the characters are completely optional to recruit and can be ignored entirely.
We haven’t even played the game yet lol. Nobody knows how the implementation will be. It could be super underwhelming, we don’t know yet.
People love speculation content..
I am not too worried about the open world as explorative as long as it feels immersive.
I'm more interested in how cinematic the story will feel in the same way remake did.
fully agree that the reward that side contents should service are relationships. a vast majority of FFXVI's quests miss the mark because they don't do this.. and also because it feels too MMOish.
Hot take: FF7 Rebirth's open world is mostly just the Ubisoft formula/checkmarking map icons. Majority handholding, very little true exploration and at least half the content being (bad to mediocre with a couple exceptions) minigames. Not something the industry should take as an example for a rich open world.
What I'm looking for is a challenging open world with things to discover on my own and subtle pointers to quests and events. Like Elden Ring. Because that's an actual adventure. Rebirth itself feels so theme park, that the gold saucer seems like a parody of the world itself.
absolutely true
The reason why Original FF7 was so immersive on the PS be because it didn’t have that annoying “Command menu” on the bottom left. In rebirth it just follows you everywhere. It made the original more immersive.
What...?
I generally don’t like open word games with very few exceptions, like red dead redemption 1. The main reason I’m actually excited about exploring this open world is because it’ll be done alongside my favourite characters, and I just wanna see their relationships develop.
I’m the same way. I loved all Zelda games up until BOTW and TOTK because they are just generic open world games imo. I strongly believe SE will deliver with the open world part of this game.
This video is sadly ironic considering 90% of Rebirth's content is just wasted space.
Go fight this group, go check that tower, go analyse this... pure Ubisoft bs.
Remake's sidequests weren't the best, but they easily beat this absurdity.
Well then go play the original and spend those same hours just endlessly grinding monsters until you reach level 99
I think Open world games do need a purpose. If it doesn't have a purpose then it's just open world digital sandbox. It's not a game. Just a digital sandbox you doodle and screw around. That's how I feel about it.
best 8min on the internet right now - I played Fenyx and (...sigh...) assassins creed and it was huge but everything felt like busy work (if you loved those games, I'm happy you enjoyed it). RD2 and the Witcher gave us a world that interacted with us. I liked the "zones" in Tales of Arise and even FFXVI (even though you couldn't really interact with it). I think you nailed a thought that a lot of fans have. good work on this.
At least Fenyx was funny and story was interesting. Assassin's Creed games on the otherhand, they don't offer much.
@@somaelselino7627 True, Fenyx had a lot of witty moments. The banter between the gods was a nice touch.
I think Sucker Punch gave us some of the best side quests gaming has ever seen with ghosts of sushima in open World Games anyway. Ghost of tsushima is one of my favorite open world games. Red Dead Redemption 2 is absolutely incredible and on another level compared to most games. There's just not that many games that can bring to the table what rockstar got done with that game. I don't know if they can ever repeat something is good as that
I think this is true for UX in general terms and for the RPG genre-- it needs to provide you with feedback and auditory signals, or a story that provides with a goal or give you clues sbout something
However -- what if, and I mean strongly, what if-- an open world was created whose sole purpose was for you to get out of the Amazon, basically a simulation of finding your way back home. No story. Just a huge empty open world like in real life making you feel as empty as the nameless gameplay character (basically you)?
I would check that out! Kinda reminds me of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, though that does have quite a bit story
@kylehiller9181 what game are you going to check out? My hypothetical scenario became true?
Closest to that (non-story element excluded) is probably Death Stranding.
@@DerekMckean I’d check out your hypothetical game, for sure! I think that’s an interesting concept, personally. Can’t speak for others’ opinions, though 🙃
I think the PS1 FF games had a better design in terms of open world. They said once that it would take too much to remake a full open world FF game like the old ones.
I think that making a small character in open world like it was in the past is better than to have an empty world like what happened with Forspoken for example.
Yes..and that is why I applaud FF13. It gave you only necessay openworld.
Final fantasy for me was about insane super bosses with crazy hp.
My first was FF8 and had nothing to compare it or spoilers. So meeting stuff like Ultima weapon and learning how to beat them kept me coming back.
I think you definitely make some good points here. I consider my favorite open world games to be ones where the world isn't big so much as dense and filled with content. I'll take Yakuza/Like A Dragon's small city districts packed with stuff to do and goofy activities over a massive sprawling map any day, and FF7 Remake seemingly took that in particular as inspiration (right down to taking a break to play darts in the bar, or Wall Market's obvious Kabuki-cho vibes). This was always going to be the challenge, properly opening up the map for Rebirth just like the original game did, but while still making it contained enough that you're making meaningful progress and always getting something out of the exploration.
Have you played Elden Ring?
I remember when I was a kid, after Midgar seeing the world map for the first time and being blown away. We thought Midgar *was* the game!
As I've gotten older, I've found myself disliking open world stuff more and more. I think it was the worst part of Elden Ring personally, I much rather have carefully curated and hand-crafted linear stuff
The last open world i enjoyed was skyrim back in 2011, because you actually found new dungeons and stuff worth exploring!
Shenmue 1 open world was the most immersive open world I ever played and it was one of the first open world, to made a great open world you have to make it feel "alive", Shenmue had day/time system, weather based on real Japan weather at the time you play the game, every npc had programed daily schedule (you would see them getting out of their home and walk all the way to their work and open shop then close the shop and go back to their home at night)(other npcs would hand around different stores based on day and time.) , every NPC dialog changed everytime you progressed in the game, telling you a change in their current life etc, you could interact with items in your hand in the shop before buying them, could take a bus and you even had a daily work time with salary.
The world was not huge just 3 towns and a harbor section yet this made it better since it felt homely like you know the people in the game and felt part of the community instead of being a stranger thrown into a unknown town etc since you knew personally some of the characters and they knew you since you were a child and knew about your family etc.
yeah, but, at the same time, shenmue was not for everyone. lots of people actually really disliked it. and it being "alive" did nothing for them. on the other side shadow of hte collossus is a complete dead world. completely devoid of life. and just like shenmue, it worked amazingly well for some, while others hated it.
FF7 rebirth will just cover the flashback portion in Kalm. Nomura felt that in order to fully capture their vision and scope for the game they want to make, that this was necessary
when we're waiting for the finale in 2035...
Lol. And the fate ghosts make an appearance in memory to try and force cloud to tell the story right. The ending is cloud and sephiroth fighting sephiroth.
While that’s supposed to be absurd, I truly believe square’s gonna pull some nonsense fan service like having cloud, Zack, and sephiroth team up against genesis.
@@Healthy_Toki feels like by the time ff7 remake is done it'll be a bigger gap between remake part 1 and part 3 than there was for the og ff7 and remake lmao
As long as we get good recreated world and a flyable Highwind thats all I want.
I really appreciated this, you have novel insights that aren't retreading visited ground. I learned multiple new important things from this video and I'm grateful for that.
Really appreciate you for saying that, thank you.
I'm truly excited for Rebirth next month, I recently finished remake along with the DLC and enjoyed it immensely. The remake project is truly allowing Final Fantasy 7 to be, well, reborn to a new generation while still allowing the original Final Fantasy 7 to remain available everywhere. That's contrary to what many other companies do, delist the original product unnecessarily.
Is the Yuffie DLC worth it?
@@sel1015 I do think you should get ff7 remake intergrade and play it.
@@sel1015 either that or if you have the base game, get the upgrade to intergrade
@@sel1015 if you’re asking then I would say no. All of the story is non-essential and can be summarized in like 2 sentences. If you’re a diehard ff7 compilation fan, then it’s worth buying, if not I wouldn’t worry about it.
@@maninblack3410 thanks for the feedback 🤙
This game was the first time I felt like actually exploring and felt rewarded for doing so. By far the most fun Ive had in a tripple a single player game in a very long time. Not to mention it’s just beautiful and story/characters are so memorable.
2020 midgar looked amazing, but was extremely boring to play though exactly because of pacing. the intro to the story never needed a 30+ hour game dedicated to it.
You're making a great point here about how Final Fantasy games are all linear. People complain all the time about some of these titles being "too linear" but they're really all quite linear; they just create an illusion of openness.
After I finished FF VII Remake and Rebirth, a friend recommended XV to me.
And I have to say that the 15 has grown on me even more than any other part I've played.
I love open world, the battle system (I don't use the waitmode) and I don't even need to start with the Regalia.
And the OST gave me chills. Especially “Apocalypse Noctis”
When I think of FFVII's graphics, the wall jpg of Midgar is always the first thing that comes to mind.
In the 15th, everything is "alive" up to the horizon and the day-night cycle also brings in dynamism.
And I also particularly like the little things, such as Noctis getting dirty from fighting and fishing, or his hairstyle no longer being neat due to the rain.
I also like the dynamic between the guys more.
In the 7, I'm particularly bothered by the whining and pushy nature of Tifa's character.
The story of 15 is a bit confusing, I don't want to contradict that, but since I know or have all the media around, I can figure out the connections.
The story of 7 is largely known, but now the changes make the story more complicated for players who know the original.
As far as linear the chapters go after leaving Altissia before arriving Insomnia, FF VII Rebirth is no different.
And I thought it was really good that it had the chance to travel back into the past again, for example to take a deep breath before the journey with the bros came to an end.
And I actually enjoyed doing that again.
Since I've found Zack to be my favorite FFVII character since Crisis Core, I'm naturally very excited to see how he fits into the whole story.
All in all, I'm really looking forward to the third part of the 7. But the 15 will probably remain number one for me for the time being.
Open world games pose such a challenge in so many ways. It's so difficult to make the exploration feel both rewarding and novel. Open world collectibles often wind up feeling so repetitive and burdensome for those of us who feel compelled to go after all of them. I'm not 100% confident the perfect balance CAN be struck, but I do enjoy these games a lot and agree with everything said here.
Now I understand why I feel certain open world game is too much for me while FF7 feels like its just the right amount to keep me wanting to play more. Such great video man!
Just adding that you could also have a scene with yuffie in gold saucer, apart from tifa/aerith/barret/ (very hard to get though)
after the crapshow the first episode was I really hope they put their shit together and got to work on something actually interesting.. and can't say that I welcome the whole open world thing with confidence..
The first episode was basically long tunnel/sewer with boring over extended fights to make you feel like you didn't finish the whole game in 5 hours (like what the midgard section of the original game was) and adding boring fetch/kill side quest to add more meaningless things to do in the game.. so turning this 180° with an open world seems far fetched to me..
but hey I'd be delighted to be proven wrong and we finally get an actual full game this time despite having to wait for a third installment though..
My prediction though is that this "open world" part will just replace those long stretch of tunnels we had to face in the first episode, giving us more kill quest in this "open world" and overall stretch what should be a 5 hour gameplay/story into a 30 hours of emptyness like the first one.. guess we'll see soon enough
This was probably best game I have ever played 115hrs and I never felt overwhelmed and always wanted more. Most open world games have to much openness. I loved that it would give you time to explore then suck you right into the story.
I loved the game overall but didn't care for much of the side quests in the open world. Too repetitive and mundane. The towers and springs especially being at the top of that list. Canon and game otherwise was still excellent.
@@tj1486 I can see that. I think its at your leisure i just played everything. The queensblood quests were awesome and good story. I couldnt beat shadowblood queen yet.
@@alf21124 I loved queens blood but I think I only beat like 22 players so didn't ever get to her. But now I'm curious lol. I would honestly play queens blood in real life, that was fun.
Rebirth's open world is a failure. Yoshinori Kitase copied the Ubisoft formula and made it even worse. Most of the open world side content are boring chores and IQ tests for braindead kids. But then again, even most of the minigames are worse than the IQ test from Idiocracy.
Gotta say - most games with open world turn out to fluff. Open world is also problematic and break story line because you will have some urgent task you need to take care of and then can spend the next X hours doing side quests that have nothing to do with helping that urgent item.
100%, if they are slice of life, they should really be embedded into the story. BUT the problem there is balance.
While maybe not exactly open world, I’ve always enjoyed Tales of games. Or even OG FF7.
In rebirth, the reward was limited and superficial character growth, a dating sim mechanic, and mid rewards.
Most people would be happen with more weapons, or items the increased Materia slots or links. Even more glams, glams really get gamers. Like if the party members got Chocobo suits for completing those stupid air trails, we’d cry blood for uwu chocobo Aerith.
Well said! I really hope they go with quality over quantity in Rebirth.
The majority of side quests in XV were terrible. XVI was better, but still a lot of filler. Nier Automata did open world side quests the best IMO.
Well said, truly
From what I have seen of rebirth, I really hope there's a lot more to see. There are several modes of transportation, but i hope there's actual worthwhile places to even go to. Combat and fetch quests only go so far. With so much ground to cover, i hope there are activities to keep the player engaged. in XV, the novelty of the open world wore off quickly because it became extremely formulaic and repetitive. Thus I hope Rebirth can actually fill the world with stuff to do.
If you played the OG FF7 game then you know there will be a fuckload of worthwhile places to go. Gold Saucer being one of them and one of my personal favorites.
The music collecting and driving around listening to the tunes from past games in XV was a lot of fun, the fact the whole game was pretty much a road trip with friends was fun I actually quite enjoyed that one.
"Open worlds need purpose"
*Starfield leaves the chat*
Create the world around the content rather the content around the world. BG3 did this extremely well.
Having just finished Rebirth I can say (for me) the open world aspect didn’t work. Its repetitive map objectives and (mainly) fetch quest side missions really hurt the pacing of the game. Baring in mind some of the main missions are like downtime in the story anyway. I’ve never played the original, but I just bought it on steam for £3.99 so I can play it even though I hate turn based combat. I wanna see the original story, paced as it should be and see the ending coz right now I’m not sure I even wanna play part 3, certainly not at £70.
The cinematic way the camera moves in the orginal ff7 will make it tolerant for you. As you progress you will learn to to appriectate its art and colorful visuals and ablities. However you were never on the train in 97 so you will probably won't have the same eyes as wow this is amazing.
Because there was no other game at the time. Also the reward system is much better. Things actually pay off whether its a side quest or a simple find.
Chadley by far completly destroys the reward system and takes away from the party screen time.
Each second chadey got paid could of been a dollar paid to barret tifa yuffie vincent cid etc
For more dialouge content.
Great video bro, you did amazing and the narrative was spot on. Thank you!!
How can the game prove something when it hasn't come out yet? It can't.
FF7 rebirth is amazing. its big, but not TOO big. It's action packed, level design and gameplay packed. THIS is how I want FF games to be. FF16 was amazing also in many ways, but still a touch too safe, too barebone. Yes. It was filled with lots of things, but for a Final Fantasy it was not enough. FF7 Rebirth is exactly what I want from a FF. It's so crazy filled with incredible things. This is a RPG, but when you look at the environments for the majority and then also the characters then this production is of crazy high quality. As I wander in Cosmo Canyon thinking, is this an RPG? This feels like a Resident evil 8/4 remake content level graphics but better looking, but the biggest difference is that FF7 is a huge world and Resident evil is tiny. This is the level of quality of FF7 rebirth. It's beyond outstanding. Many mini games are fun, but for 1st prize sometimes tedious. Then the Queensblood card game is actually really fun! and Im the last person to play card games and yet im loving it. The sound is amazing. The story is just amazing amazing.
Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom really set a standard no other game can copy when it comes to open worlds
False. Both were boring and empty. And durability is still n ass mechanic.
@@crowevil4658 they were not boring or empty. If you played the game you’d know.
They’re universally praised for not being boring or empty while almost every open world is.
Durability is a fantastic mechanic. Anybody who thinks otherwise has played under 10 hours, if they played it at all.
@@jakedematteo2172 completely boring. I did finish the first one and about “40%” of the second.
@@crowevil4658 cool. Irrelevant though.
@@jakedematteo2172 so is LoZ.
No wonder why they made it into parts, they needed the space and $$$ to make this game even bigger! Can't wait to play this game!
Hello, I'm from the future.
Square Enix made a Ubisoft -style world with scans, useless battles and annoying collectibles.
Also, relationships now depend on completed quests, but you don’t know in advance which ones. The game punishes you if you try to complete its content in full in one playthrough without guides.
It's still good and fun game, but it openworld is afterthought.
You do know which ones, you can accept a quest and not complete it. The party member who talks with you during said side quest is the one who will level up at the end. There are also certain actions you can take during certain side quests to increase the amount of bond points gained.
Scan 10 points of interest each region, activate 6 towers, find x chest in a map marker, dig up items in a map marker, fight enemies with conditions in a map marker. All mindless busy work.
@@Mohgenstein yeah, but Chadley is cool 😎 also not sure what you’re expecting from open world in these games. Og ff7 didn’t have anything besides random encounters. So at least they added something into the game without interfering with the story too much.
@@Mohgenstein I have a bias though ff7 is my favorite game of all time and I like the remakes so far
I just wish it was one game, not three games spread across 7-8 years of us waiting
Nah
It’s far too big in this style to have one game bro
@ChazUBCS nah, I've heard that before and I don't believe it. FFXV TRE is a massive game with a huge map, musical score, voice acting in about eight languages, tons of content, and 120+ hours of gameplay. It's all on one disc. FFVII Remake is a 40-50 hour game at the most. Sizewise, it's like comparing Texas to Vermont.
@@thosetwodudes Trails in the Sky did it and it was amazing. And the changes were much smaller than what Remake is doing (gameplay wise).
And come on, Remake turned 5 hours in to 40-50 hours. Your comparison is not fair.
Very well spoken and you're definitely correct but I think this kind of mindset only applies to games where the narrative and flow of the story is a key element, like this game.
I don't think this logic should apply to ALL open world games. Some open world games are purely about discovery and freedom. And that's totally fine because for every gamer who values an amazing story above all else, there's a gamer who values rewarded exploration and interactive gameplay above all else. It's okay to provide players with the choice to unlock lore and narrative via where they choose to explore and take the character rather than guiding them along a set narrative path within the world.
That said, FFVII definitely does need to follow the design philosophy you're talking about here and I think it totally will. We're not just gonna be able to go straight to Junon right off the bat so in that sense its absolutely going to remain true to the original game in that regard. We won't see a true open world until the third game. But I think having a to scale, seamless world is what's important to the remake project because it allows the devs to realize their original vision; being able to truly travel across a globe. Like you said, its something that FFXV tried to realize but ultimately wasn't able to completely. Here's to hoping that the FFVIIR project can make that vision a reality!
How can a game that hasn't been released "prove" anything?
When I tell you that linear final fantasy 7 is the best version for that game it’s a serious understatement. The linear aspect allows you to seriously take a look at the world rather than consuming everything in one go with limited scenery. Honestly in terms of scenery and art obviously ff7 remake is better. If it had ff7 rebirth character model optimisation then yes I’ll still say ff7 remake is the better game. To me I can’t stop playing rebirth but it just comes to the point where i think about the linear aspect of the game. I miss it😔
Edit: ofc it’s there in rebirth but there isn’t enough.
Just found your channel. Simply commenting to say I really enjoyed this video.
I can confirm, this game is phenomenal
oh of course thats true. but that part is where the CONTENT is for open world games. the CONTENT im talking about is the "missions" and reasons why you have to keep going. you could do that with writing stories which eventually ends, or create a GAMEPLAY MECHANIC that puts you in a real OPEN WORLD mechanism where anybody can be your mission goals. this is where many open world games havent been able to achieve. with the todays AI inclusions in gaming developments. missions could be GENERATED IN THE FLY by AI mechanics in game. something you do in the open world could create you new enemies for example. and those enemies could grow, and it build you new reason to thrive. like how the US govt do things. create new enemies to ensure their weapon industry keep going. the same thing.
- i have a example that many people probably dont really know or like, the space game X4 foundation. thats how an open world game should be in terms of MECHANIC. where the game never ended. anything could happen, one wrong incident like destroying accidently a wrong ships in game could make one of the many factions in the game become your new enemies and dynamics shifts. changes everything you have built. alliances etc. thats how open world game should be. new "goals" should be generated in game IN THE FLY. so it never ends.
i learned that aspect from observing how the US does things int he world. and i figure, this is great mechincs for open wrold games. the US is basically PLAYING AN OPEN WORLD GAME ON THE PLANET. story making can only get the game so far. do it the way US govt/intelligence/military do the world.
Xenoblade does open world REALLY well. It sucks that the series is so underrated globally
Hard disagree. The environments and worlds of Xenoblade is so barren and empty too. It may look visually and conceptually cool… but its pretty bland with its environments and plot progression.
Also they didn’t add a single traversion system until the THIRD GAME
@@cloudshines812Xenoblade has no yellow paint, not trash traversal that boils down to “walk hoping your character jumps”
@@Mohgenstein If you seriously think Yellow Paint is a problem in games… go get yourself checked out buddy.
Also last I checked, fast travel wasn’t instant, you didn’t have a horse or car to go faster, environments are still extremely boring.
@@cloudshines812 you can literally open the map and instantly teleport anywhere. You haven’t played any of the games. L bozo.
@@Mohgenstein Bro I never said the game never had fast travel… I’m just saying it wasn’t seamless or instant. You have to wait like 20-30 seconds.
Also its clear your a fanboy that can’t accept another viewpoint because “muh RPG is better than yours”
Nice upload and though I am a much bigger fan of OG ff7 than remake I am very curious how they are gonna handle the open world aspect. So many open world games get it wrong imo (vast majority in fact) and so heres hoping ff7 rebirth is not filled with....well.....filler.
It needs purpose but not millions of mini games.
Kitase - for some mindblowing reason - actually believes that FFVII fans are in it for the minigames. Perhaps in 1997 it was interesting having this variety in gameplay. These days it is an insult to players' IQ and time.
It better have a whole bunch of dungeons to explore on the big open world map
Man I just wana hop on a chocobo and go exploring the vast landscapes for materia,grinding,rare enemy skills and weapons and armor collecting just like in the original game.
Nomura the dumb ass
"we dont do that here"
Ive really enjoyed both i bought a PS5 in February and just bought Remake and preordered rebirth. Ive played both over last couple months and its been amazing.
Ff7 used to be my third favorite as a kid (9 and 10 were my favorites) but after rebirth it has become my favorite RPG story by far.
I really hope we get a fleshed out open world version of FF9 one day.
Rebirth is one of the best games iv ever played and ive played a lot of games
BoTW n ToTK as a world with volcano n snow mountains being so close does justify the messed up weather
I liked Dying Light (the first one) not because it was massive (it was actually quite small) and "open world" but it was filled out enough and had a great atmosphere.
Having played through it in full, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth isn't truly open world. Or at least, isn't open world like we usually use the term. I would say that Rebirth is more akin to a seamless open region design similar to Xenoblade, where the game isn't truly open for much of the game and you have to progress through the story in order to get the full world. That's at least how Hamaguchi put it.
Open world games already peaked in 2002 with 'Morrowind'.
I sadly don't feel like there'll be mystery of the unknown in Rebirth, simply because the last two bosses fought in Remake. How can I take a random monster or machine boss seriously, if I've literally killed an eldritch godhead of time and space?
This is the first time I feel like a game will actually deliver on the promise of side quests being on par with or better than the Witcher 3
i thought about it too, Rebirth is gonna be this game
that's a high bar. i hope it ends up being that good
I doubt it’ll be that good but I do think this will be some of the better side quest from square
Why do you feel that?
@@thomasjensen3403 You talking to me?
All the side quests are fetch quests and defeat random mob quests. Over....and over. That's not innovative
I mean what else can a quest be about?
@@taxfree4603 Narratives with winding paths and plot twists, different outcomes depending on your choices, different ways to solve them, quests that actually effect the game later on.
the best "open world" game for me is fallout 1 and 2 from the late 90s
each town has distinct factions, quest lines and things to do- you can visit them in any order, every action has consequences
travelling outside the towns has zany moments aplenty
botw was also a suprising success for me- way better than any other zelda game- although it peaked in the first 2 hours honestly
Final Fantasy being open world is the best thing in my eyes. XV did it perfect, hope Rebirth does it perfectly as well
Nintendo should take notes - THIS is how you do open world - with actual objectives and detail throughout the world map, unlike Tears of the Kingdom.
Can’t wait to hear how a game that’s not out yet is gonna prove something
I hope they give us costume options! Cloud looks sick asf but I’m tired of his weird ass single shoulder armor piece with rusty bolts coming out of it. Let me dress my team!
You make a lot of bold statements about what the game will be, but none of that is supported by the evidence. It's doubly hard to do so, for something that we cannot even get our hands on yet, at least nothing you mentioned in this video. You don't have insight, you have hopeful speculation. And that's a fine thing, but you don't seem to make the distinction in your presentation.
I don't think we can lean so hard on side content quests from part 1, which was an aspect of that game near universally panned. I can't think of a positive review of that aspect of the game, in fact. So, I'm a bit puzzled. Do not mistake ambitions advertised in promotional material for actuality. As others have remarked, this isn't a lesson from a game that hasn't released, it's a lesson repeated over and over., of which your target audience is probably very familiar with.
In fact, t's a lesson and a popular article headline I'm certain I've seen recently, discussing 2022's game of the year, Elden Ring. A game that has in fact released, played by millions of people, and has in fact been cited as 'proving positively open worlds need of purpose, due to it's acclaimed purposeful open world'.. Good, glad we understand that Open Worlds need purpose. I hope FFVII Rebirth: remake part 2: HD ( Heart's Darkness) delivers on that..
Jokes aside, going off CBU1's recent history I'm not so confident they will pull of the whole package. There were a lot of really great things about the first part of Remake, but there are also a lot of really not so great things: threadbare and uninteresting side content a case in point. They're not doing much to substantiate your claims about any positive lesson Rebirth proves. Taking the lessons from Part 1, which was a relatively linear game that did quite well in those focused areas, and poorly in adding additional things on the side and then expanding that out to a full open world for Rebirth ala FFXV which has a lot of open world problems... it's not easy to accept what you're trying to say here.
As far as a Critical Writing 101 goes, this was a C- paper for me. Articulate, but shallow: there's no substance. You need a stronger thesis, and you need to be able to make strong arguments to support your thesis. It's a weak core, and a weak argument.
My hope is they took notes from Witcher 3 amazing side quests and contracts
W3 side quests were glorified fetch quests and boring.
Worry not. Rebirths world is jam packed with things to do, and see. Things to explore and fight. People to encounter and stories to discover. They fucking cooked.
Solid video, keep up the good work!
Lol at Horizon Forbidden West's open world design being alluded to as a negative. It was the main reason I bought a PS5 and the main reason I ended up feeling burnt out on open world mechanics since playing it. I hope Rebirth innovates enough to make exploration feel worthwhile again, I'm done with the meaningless busywork.
Personally, I thought FF7R's pacing and main-path padding was horrendous, at least in the mid-game. It's definitely one of those games whose mandatory content could've had anywhere between 2 and 5 hours of it shaved off with MAYBE a little value lost, but much more gained in the improved pacing and tone.
Lmao, the open world sucked. You do the exact same things in each region. Climb towers, fight variants of local enemies, scan springs, scan info on the summon, catch a few mooglets. Only things that change are the protorelics minigames, and occasionally the minigame to catch chocobo. Took me like 4 regions but I got sick of. Same busywork in each region.
This was basically poetry to my ears.
This was the best song in remake it was very 80s teen romancey
The game is okay. The mini games and redundant tower activation bs is really getting to me though.
So what I'm hearing is you wouldn't like the original game.
Unpopular opinion:
I played the original FF7 to death, and call it rose tinted glasses, but found everything was really better in the "old days" when you didn't have the chance for DLC or updates, so I guess developers had that "one shot" mentality, do or die and get it right the 1st time.
I'm appreciative for today's tech, but open worlds have no "magic" unlike back in the original FF7.
Simply put, we were constrained by pre-rendered backgrounds and could only access the 3D open world later, unlike remake where everything feels the same.
I played this remake and was excited yet bored, especially with the silly fetch quests, which felt like they HAD to be put in.. instead of the original, where side quests really made you feel happy doing them cause you knew you'd be getting something rare or useful.
But back to the main issue, 3D open worlds feel passé nowadays, everything feels the same despite it being in a different area (am I the only one who think so?) Maybe they could have done it like RE1Remake, pre-rendered for Midgard and towns, and full 3D for the open world..
I really do hope the next episode releases somehow create the magic...
Thanks for the video.
Nothing in Rebirth’s open world had anything to do with FF7 besides wrangling a chocobo. Pure filler fluff. Fail.
I think it proves that open world needs VARIETY. It needs several different regions with different concepts. What we had so far (The witcher, Read Dead, Horizon) are homogeneous open worlds. Final Fantasy always had heterogeneous open worlds.
If you want to get really technical both FF 1 and FF 2 are technically open world with linear sub segments the same way that FF 7 was. I'd argue that FF 2 was more open world than 7 in fact.
I've just finished the game yesterday, and can say they did everything perfectly. In my personal experience, the world exploration and side quests were just as rewarding as the main story, bringing me closer to the characters and the world they reside in. You can really tell how the extra content was really made with love, and the purpose to drive you deeper into the fantasy, and not just provide for more playtime or shallow content. I'll make sure to revisit previous chapters and go for a 100% exploration, as I know now that it will be well worth it!
*Starfield has left the chat*
Originally wrote this in response to someone else's comment, but I think I wrote more than enough to justify making this more standalone, lol
Anyway,
Eh, a barren game can be fun, and a game with loads of content can be unfun. Beyond the career/whatever modes that nobody even played (let's be real, everyone played Free Skate), ye olde Tony Hawk Pro Skater was basically nothing but skating and doing tricks, and those games got a bajillion sequels because they were just fun to play. Shadow the Hedgehog has 326 possible paths, and... it's Shadow the Hedgehog.
The issue with modern open world games is that they're so focused on making sure there's something just over the hill ahead that they forget to make the act of climbing the hill fun. Did anyone play Breath of the Wild and think "man, walking/climbing/swimming is SO FUN"? The truth is, the moment to moment gameplay in that game (and its sequel, since they're the same game) sucks ass. The sense of mystery and discovery really carried that game, and that's great, until the mystery and discovery wears off. Then you're stuck with a game you know top to bottom where you move around inconceivably slowly and your only way of attacking enemies is either a three hit combo or something you would only ever do for a video because it's not actually practical. It's a game that's fun to experience, not fun to play. (it has fun parts, though.)
On the flip side of that, you've got Spider-Man 2 (the real one, not the slop game that released last year). About the only major quality to that game's favor is the web-swinging, but they did that so damn well that it's fun to just swing around the city, even if you're not being rewarded for it. It makes the act of getting around fun, and there's fun to be had in trying to master the mechanic. Elden Ring was mindful of this sort of thing, but failed to actually stick the landing in its execution.
FF7 Rebirth's transition to open world is a curious development to be sure, but I'm not exactly optimistic they'll stick the landing when virtually everyone else is failing. Hoping I'm wrong, though. And it's not like the overall game can't be good in spite of a shitty open world.