Final Fantasy needs a World Map?
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- Опубликовано: 30 янв 2023
- Are overworld maps finished as far as Final Fantasy is concerned?
World maps weren't just a means to get you from A to B, they quickly gave you a sense of scale, tone, and geographical constraints. For all the technological leaps in gaming, has Final Fantasy yet proved that there's no longer a place for overworld maps in the series?
Sources:
Pexels: Video Inside A Library - Pixabay
Pexels: Macro Shot of a Book Being Opened - Kelly
The Chronicles of Narnia
Final Fantasy IV clips - aulddragon
Final Fantasy II clips - HCBailly
Final Fantasy X clips - Mike Bettencourt
Square Enix
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence 
Игры
It makes me sad that FFX and onwards got rid of the world map. People call it "dated" but man I always loved having one. I miss the world map!
I do like world maps but I think the whole ffx/xenoblade model works really well
No world map makes the airship a boring, and sometimes, pointless addition. The only time I use the airship in 12 is to go to Bhujerba for the 1st time. In 10 and 10-2, the airship is more a hub world than anything. Which at least keeps it more interesting than 12. I didn't make it to the airship in 13, and didn't even play the following 13s. 11 and 14 are mmos so I'm basically morally opposed to them. Mmos seem to spell the doom of a franchise, and go figure, the franchise has been going downhill since its 1st mmo. I'm not really sure if 15 had a purpose for the airship car. I never actually got it myself.
@@propheinx2250 you made me realize there's no airship in 13
The explorable overworld is one of the smartest pieces of game design ever made for games that tell a story that's suppose to span a journey across a full world.
Without it, you're left to imagine most of the journey with nearly no prompts to lean on. FFX sometimes makes the world feel tiny, nearly every location feels like a short jog from the next because it presents itself as built to scale only to present areas with very limited scope.
Games like FFXV or FFXII on the other hand, are so focused on scope that players have to run around for hours where little of substance happens.
The traversable world map elegantly does neither. It visually gets across the scope of the world through abstraction, serves gameplay and contextualizes the journey without bogging the player down with the chore of pointless travel nor without rendering most of the travels of the cast invisible.
The Alliance Alive has one of the best world maps imo.
That being said, world maps will probably feel a bit strange in games that have a very realistic aesthetics. They work best in highly stylized games.
"I never ended up reading those books, but I remember the maps." I love that!
Really just another great video. Well said.
I'll never forget how powerful this moment was stepping out of dark, polluted, scummy midgar and experiencing the world map for the first time. Endless fields of green and blue skies, along with that fantastic music. Unforgettable.
I guess we will just have to wait and see what they do with it. Can it be salvaged? idk :/
Great work.
Thanks Slayheim! Really appreciate you checking out the video. I am curious how they're gonna handle exploration in Rebirth, if at all. Probably won't be long until we get a sense of what they have planned. All the best.
This hits hard. I have argued for a map screen for years. The world just felt larger, more real. There was a scale that placed your small character in a much larger world. Sure, you could walk to a town in two minutes, but my mind made that journey to be days, if not weeks. Just one of the many reasons I was so disappointed with ff7 remake.
A world map should always be a Essential thing in final fantasy because it sets up the world building and the tone of the story not to mention some really good Sidequests
As much as I love FF13 that game going with a more Linear map kinda kills the world building even if it does open up the 2nd half of the Game
I love seeing videos like this from creators. It’s blatantly clear that you love the games and the series even with its flaws. I would love to see Final Fantasy return to its roots.
I remember seeing the Ragnarok shot from Esther for the first time and just being in awe of the scale of the ship and beauty of its aesthetic
Modern open-world games ironically feel so small in comparison RPGs with a world map. I love that having a world map lets the entire world be part of the plot and unlocking new places with vehicles and map changes felt great. It's a great abstraction to make your journey feel larger. I've always been disappointed that in FF12 we don't see the whole world, not even Rosaria.
Given FF7R will be 3 parts, the next game will probably have to cover all 3 continents and about a dozen cities. That's too large for an open world game, especially with the level of detail FF7R1 had. But if it's just selecting points on a map or worse, navigating zones through linear chapters, it's going to feel awful.
So I'm hoping they modernerize the world map in some way. FF7R would be the perfect game to experiment with what world maps could be in the modern era. I recognize that world maps would feel goofy in a more realistic game, and I like seamless loading into cities and places that the open world provides. So, let's hope square comes up with something good.
I wonder what FF16 will do. Seems like the scale of the story will cross the whole world. They've mentioned it's not an open-world game, but rather with large zones. I highly doubt we'll see a world map or have vehicles.
I feel like final fantasy could be open world, but the amount of time and money that would need to be invested to actually make it good, is more than what squarenix is willing to spend. Would a over world work in modern games with modern graphics? idk... but id be interested to see them try.
Yet they waste their time and money for game like flopspoken.
Coming in 1 year later, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2 Rebirth has the best open world/worldmap in a Final Fantasy. There's Tons of fully fleshed out unique towns and plenty to do in the open world. Almost limitless amounts of things to find, activities to do, hidden objects for chocobos to sniff out, unparalleled amounts of enemy monster varieties to fight, minigames to play and open world activities to do. There's as much or as little as you'd like. If you start getting fatigued by the mass amount of things to do then you can go back to the main story. Also there's tons of great sidequests and Protorelic Quests that improve the characterizations of everyone.
My friend. Sincerely.
My congratulations for this video.
I thought I was the only person to have had all these thoughts and feelings on the world map.
Thank you.
It may be just me, but I have hopes that one day an open world Final Fantasy can be handled right, it just needs proper care put into it, both narratively and mechanically.
Imagine seeing how the people of small towns take measures to deal with possible monsters that are just outside, how do the monsters themselves react to eachother, do they fight for territory? How does the culture of locations change based on where they are geographically, how do NPCs act differently based on that? These stuff should never be said out loud, just subtly communicated through good world design. Yes, it's easier said than done, but certainly doable.
I'm glad this came up in my recommendations. I always loved walkable world maps. From Secret of Mana to FFIX, I absolutely LOVED them. FFX comes out and I'm like "where the hell is the world map?". It was so boring without one, and contributed to me never finishing FFX, FFXIII, and never even playing FFXII or FFXV. There were too many moves away from game elements that I always felt added so much to the overall experience. I never understood why people called world maps dated when there are still tons of old school elements in RPG's that have been there since day 1, things like stories where you have to save the world, levels and XP, weapon/armor progression etc. It seemed like such an arbitrary and pointless choice to ditch world maps.
Anyway, good video Orion. You got a new subscriber.
Thank you!! Always nice to hear YT is serving up my videos in recommendations now and then.
Im a big fan of world maps
Final Fantasy 7 was my first JRPG ever and i had no idea how thi type of game works and after 4-6 hours of midgar (or more) i was blowen away when i saw that world map and realized that a small portion of the game i only played up ubtil this point.
I love world maps in JRPGs
but i think we will never see them coming back, ever....
It broke my heart when i realized that.
The world map is what gave these games a sense of exploration; the anticipation for going to the next continent is something that you don't get without that visual representation, or flying an airship around and then noticing a strange island not shown on the map or other such hidden locations is the thing that an over world map gives you that you can't get just picking a location off a list.
I think what I really like about the world maps is that it literally makes you feel like you're traversing the entire planet.
Each game after IX has felt smaller in scope to me because of that, but to varying degrees. In X and XII, it still feels like you're covering large portions of the worlds in those games, but a lot of the world still kind of feels cut off. They still feel like a journey, though.
XV took this to a whole new level. Despite the larger play area its open world provides, in scope and scale it feels way tinier than its predecessors because it only covers a fraction of the world. XV has a very interesting universe, but you unfortunately barely get to see or explore any of it. Rendering large and realistic landscapes ironically enough compromises how *big* they were able to make games feel with smart and abstract game design before.
Going from essentially mock-ups to high-definition has expanded the amount of dead space. For example, in the original FF7, you could go from wall market to aerith’s house in about a minute, maybe run from a couple battles. In the remake, the plot goes at a snails pace as you wonder between destinations. Even the world map, when you really look at it, is deceiving. You can probably get from kalm to chocobo stables in a couple minutes. In fact, you could even cross the swamp without a chocobo and go straight to Junon if you timed it right. In rebirth, I expect it’ll take an hour with the plot barely moving along and some obligatory side quest before you can get a chocobo. Then another hour to junon. Let’s see what happens, but I can’t imagine open fields between destinations being that interesting. I mean, the point of a video game is to live in that world and do things you can’t do in this one. I can go walk in a field for an hour in this world, already.
It made sense in the remake to put some space between the slums and Aerith's house. In the original her huge nice house with a garden was right next to the hood.
Simplest way around it is to use optical illusions and dynamic map scaling to stretch or contract the map for seamless transitions between zones and locations.
Think games like Superliminal or Antichamber only applied to a world map. Take advantage of the fact that distant locations appear smaller, so actually make them smaller, and larger as you approach them, that way you can make the map feel much bigger than it is without areas being more empty than they have to be.
Merge the idea of a world map and an open world.
A major advantage of world maps is that you can have vast parts of world that are there that you don't go to because you have no reason to. This helps with sides quests and DLC where they can just put a new place on the world map without having to add a whole new continent to have anything of significant size.
I never ended reading those books, but I remember the maps. - What a epic way to end this video. Well said
Dragon quest XI has done it so well, when i got the boat 2 move about the traditional world map and journeyin along the giant open world prior 2 gettin access 2 said world map wuz amazing... Cant say enough gr8 things about DQXI...
The world map made the world in each FF game feel like a real place not a series of disembodied corridors.
Games today focus more on the aesthetic and developers neglected the gameplay experience and the world map was unfortunately sacrificed to make space for graphics.
To one Orion from another: Great script and delivery, interesting subject. I wish you all the best with developing your channel.
Cain't wait for Rebirth's world map! It's looks like they're going for a perfect balance of good size without being too big and things to do and explore. It's what I've always dreamed the remake would do with the FF7 map since 1997 🥰
I think you summed up my biggest peeve with FF15 - the world is so homogeneous. I think outside of 1 or 2 towns, everywhere you go just doesn’t feel exciting or distinct. The same diners, campers, overall aesthetics. Ff9 was also where I would say there was last a feeling of real exploration for me and it was because of so many memorable and unique locations. Yes, there was a steampunk through line, but so many of the cities had standout sights or cultures to them.
Hard disagree, but you’re entitled to feel that way
FF15 did have Altissa, the Venice like city.
Which was my favourite segment of the game probably in part because of its uniqueness.
Oi. Welcome back! You're currently on 906 subs. Hope you reach 1k soon. 👌
Hi Adjei. Thanks for the support. I hope to get there one day!
I feel like one of my favorite “open-world” games was Dragon Quest VIII. It may not be Skyrim/Elden Ring levels of open-world, but it was beautiful to navigate and explore. VII R needs to feel like that.
Great vid. Really looking forward to what take they put on rebirth regarding the world map. What's the background music please at 10:50?
Thank you! That's 'Time for a rest' from FFXII.
I just think it's partially nostalgia to be honest. But I think the other aspect is that to fill up the massive worlds, it would take unheard of resources with the technology today. Maybe procedurally generated content is the way to go for minor things. I don't play a ton of games these days, but I really like how FFXVI is doing it, despite not having a world map!
Yeah, i highly doubt the remake will have the same impact the og did when you left Midgar. If it will even have a map. And the FFXII Phon Coast soundtrack is so damn good btw.
They can fill the world maps with small towns and new locations... not vital to the story, but the party old have charater moments o build friendships.
Or maybe even play as a different party member to get their perspective on things.
But all ppl care about is ridiculous spectical in fights (ya jump 500ft in the air and cut a building in half....but you get stopped by rubble or a 12-foot barrier round asecurity desk... I guess they need to force Tifa to do something, but it slowed the pace to a hault. Literally, barret could boost cloud or Tifa up... and boom key acquired. It just seemed stupid like so much extra effort to do it the hard way)
It's an rpg... I know most ppl just care about the fights, sephiroth, and cloud being with Tifa, but they really could do a lot with the map... and add some character building. I mean if they wanna milk it for every last drop... build a huge world to get lost in. Especially if we only get 1 milestone at a time. Plus it'd be skipable....so ppl wanting to just do tory stuff can do that and ppl waned a full experience have things to do too.
I think the world map back in the day peaked with FFVIII. It's not perfect by any means, but it feels the most real to me. There's a degree of thought put into it which there isn't with FVII, which in a lot of ways is still very 16 bit. Just the fact that someone actually bothered to think about transport systems adds a lot.
As I've said before, I think the worldbuilding in FFVII is one the weakest aspects of the original game. It's very rule of cool which can be, well, cool, but it's not very convincing a lot of the time. And I've never thought that what we see on the map can be all there is, and I'm not even sure the game expects that of you. The atmosphere you get on the world map, even from the music is of scale and the likes of the Chocobo Sage's house etc imply a lot of small, disparate locations.
I love FFIX as a game but I sort of hate its map. It feels very constricted and very linear. You can feel stirrings of FFX. I mean I understand that there's in-universe reasons for why it's the way it is, but I really just do not like the whole 'Civilisation is on this continent. And the mystery is on this continent. And this continent.... well, it's a continent' thing. It's far too compartmentalised.
Considering that traditional world maps have been gone from Dragon Quest for the past 20 years, it's a wrap. Even if you look at other JRPGs from the SNES through PS2 traditional world maps were never that common. Shin Megami Tensei,Persona,Romancing SaGa,SaGa Frontier,Mana,The Legend of Dragoon,Parasite Eve,Grandia,Ys,Trails,Star Ocean 1 on SNES and Star Ocean 3,Dragon Quest VIII,Baten Kaitos etc
We need a world map and we need an airship. I hate that FFX took away the airship and made it just select locations to load. Let us walk around. Even if the world map is different from in town/landscape areas
JRPG#s should have a world map and an open world gameplay, if you know what i mean? Think of it like Xenoblade Chronicles X world map. Full ass open planet game but with a world map you can see too in realtime. Xenoblade Chronicles X has the best world map/ open world of any game to date.
Remembering the world map is the best feeling you can have in any video game, you really appreciate every nook and cranny they've done in it. I'm not a big fan of FF13 story, but damn when the map opens I felt like it was home.
I sure hope rebirth brings the world map back ...
I'm 99% sure it won't
It's one of the reasons why I initially hated FFX, the lost of the world map. The World Map communicates a larger scale than open worlds do which is important when you when you want to tell a grand story but I'm not sure how'd you portray them using realistic character models. I guess that is the primary challenge.
at least FF10 did the absence of a world map the right way. The world feels still feels very large and coherent.
@@armorvil I think FF12 did an even better job but yeah FF10 did it better than REMAKE for sure.
Ni no Kuni brought back the World Map fun for me!
Great video. Maps are a fascinating concept no matter the medium
Nice to see Prince of Thorns pop up 😀
Wow! I'm a big fan of your work, sir. Thank you for the comment.
its cool see your video and then see the stuff you miss being added in ff16 they just showed half the world map for the game
they will prob make something like a ragnarok map or something
Final fantasy always had a world what have they done I hope they go back to what it used to be
FFVII Rebirth will have an open world of some sort as it would be a major travesty not to do so. The issue is that applying OGs map to what we'd see in a modern AAA title is simply not feasible with current hardware.
Therefore, I expect to see a patchwork of large open zones that can be traversed by foot, chocobo, land vehicle, or the Highwind. This would still be quite massive , but doable.
How 'open' the world is however remains to be seen. Because FFVII is a classic (16-bit era) FF game at it's roots. These games were not 'open world' and neither was FFVII OG. What they provided was the feel of an open world by encouraging just enough exploration so that you'd encounter the geographic restrictions that subtly guide you to the next accessible location.
And that is due to the linear nature of JRPGs as that is key to the story. To do it any other way would make it feel not like Final Fantasy, so I expect them to stick with this formula.
I actually love the open world in FFXV, but I understand that what I enjoy and what I want from games is different from what others want. What I want from FF, or from any RPGs are explorable areas that feel connected and cohesive. It doesn't have to be fully open world, Dark Souls still feels connected and cohesive without being open world, but it does need to be more than what we had in X, XII, and XIII. Dragon Quest XI is ok, but I'm not a fan of loading screens between areas, and having the "overworld" for the boat and the whale just felt weird. Personally, I'd rather FFVII Rebirth do something more like FFXV then like DQXI.
DQVIII had an interesting design for a world map though, it felt "real scale" in exploration in that roads and trees and whatnot were scaled to the character, but it was still clearly a representation of the world rather than a 1:1 recreation of it.
YEs All J-RPG's need a world map if they want to be successful, also world maps should take it a step further with these new consoles now, world maps should have air, sea, inside the ocean map, sky maps, and finally outer planet solar system maps. I'd spend 1TB of my harddrive just to play the best J-RPG that could do it all.
Most JRPGs never had world maps and have been successful.
@@Chelaxim Sure but the classic ones were better with world maps, actually studies show take the game that doesn't have world map, and then add it in, that successful would be over successful, and those are the games that really hit the nostalgia many years later. The ones you'll remember the most.
Love this channel sm 😫💖
nice vid
I disagree with most of what you have to say.... but I would like to hear your view on more of square enix`s silver age games of final fantasy 14 endwalker, nier replicant ,automata and even Final Fantasy 16 when it is out. The probelm with 13 and 15 for me was that it did turn in to Tetsuya Nomura VS square enix, just like 12 was with Yasumi Matsuno
VS square enix, Since Yoshi P and Yoshinori Kitase have taken more control of whats coming out and have been able to conrtol square enix greed for more money. I think there has been much improvements.
Nomura was just the designer for XIII and XV. Kitase has had as much control now that he did in the 90s.
I have a huge problem with you buddy!!! You have made me so mad!! I have watched all of your videos and have no more to watch!! I need more!!
Your stuff is amazing, you explained everything I was thinking when it came to the remake or final fantasy in general. I love the series but I went off the rails awhile ago.
Hahaha. Thanks man! I appreciate that a lot You had me worried for a second. I was thinking oh God, what now...
Big thank you for checking out the channel!
I will always love world maps, but after you've already found a location, fast travel is a must.
That's what the airships were for.
To be honest i never liked maps that much, wandering aroung big areas is not my thing, i wanted to keep playing to discover what would happen next in the story and not to be running in maps where nothing relevant happens.
I can understand that. I was like that with battles. Always wanted to skip or get out of them as quick as possible so I could get on with the story. That usually ended up taking me longer overall, as I'd hit major walls experience-wise.
Same, I never cared for them. Everything is so zoomed out that you can't really have much interesting gameplay on a world map. I don't mind getting to see a picture of the continent with locations marked (even Pokemon does that much), but I don't need an empty level-select screen. I don't feel anything looking at a single tile mountain or tiny strip of white that might be a beach next to the water. I'd much rather have zones connecting towns and dungeons that can have much more detail and gameplay that isn't just random encounters.
Ha they're definitely not bringing the world map back. No one in the devs team thinks it needs it either