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FFXV's cut content volume is worth bringing up again.

peronmls

Member
The whole game is one giant cut. It was supposed to be Final Fantasy Versus Xlll. It seemed to take a lot from KH1and2 as it had a very familiar command menu. It's not even what it was supposed to be but still used the assets and renaming scheme. Nice try though, Square. That change to a numbered title was one big marketing show for their one big fuck up.
 
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Mister Wolf

Member
it looks decent... I stopped playing due to how awful the fighting system was. there was 1 instance where an automated animation of a special attack threw my character down 2 floors, which would have meant I would need to traverse a big chunk of a dungeon all over again... at that point I just uninstalled the game, and never returned.

I was about to stop multiple times before that, but that was the final straw

the game is pretty braindead over all, if you don't do optional side-missions all you do in the main quest line is quite literally braindead and super easy fights, followed by "spectacle" boss fights that are 90% show and 10% pressing random buttons... no brain required

I grew to despise the game the more I invested my time into it. I finally just spent all my money on health potions and brute forced my way through the game to be done with it.
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
Insomnia, originally set to be the games opening locale, before venturing out into the open world. Essentially completely cut and relegated to a barebones dungeon:



Altissia, whilst you get to explore it, they clearly developed a much more sprawling city and areas that you never get to visit, including the giant stadium. The entire experience in the game felt short lived for such a big locale with so much detail.



Then you have the 2nd open world / world map area that was left half finished and completely cut from the game.





Tenebrae, another locale for which they developed a ton of the map, yet you again only stop there for a few mins before moving on.



Not to even mention what seems like hours of cutscenes and CG shown across the Versus XIII and early FFXV trailers that never made it into the game at all. They developed some beautiful environments and then did nothing with them..... the story felt disjointed and unfinished, the combat compared to something like 7R wasn't fun at all. The new team they hired for the project wasn't up for the job.

The game deserved an extra year or two in the oven and all the resources they took out of the game by making the CG movie, anime, marketing and DLC could have been consolidated to make a truly monumental FF game. One that I think fans would have acknowledged as a return to form for the series and likely would have made this the highest selling game in the series by a country mile.

Stellllaaaa!!!!

Stella-Luna-comparison-final-fantasy-xv-37716529-748-450.jpg

Wow I forgot about all this. This is tragic.

It's the kinda thing that makes me feel like vertical slices are gaming's ultimate evil.
 

Vandole

Member
I loved it, warts and all. The way I looked at it was there was a ton of content and exploring to do on the first continent. More than enough to satisfy me. Once I had seen and done all I wanted to I jump to the second half of the game, and the cuts let me just focus on the meat and get to the end quickly.
 

odhiex

Member
It is disappointing, content-wise, but I am glad that I have finished the game once.

Maybe someday, in the distant future, somebody at SE will be interested in remaking this game.
 
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Amiga

Member
You could tell the sword teleport mechanic was meant for the city level. the Plot of the movie could have fit perfectly in that part as a standalone game.
 

SoraNoKuni

Member
SE was impatient with Nomura, and rightly probably, then gave it to Tabata, the rest is an ok game that could have been a great game.

Versus XIII still lives in my dreams though.

:(
 

Larxia

Member
I finished the game last year for first time and absolutely loved it.
I hope there is a way to explore insomnia. Is it a noclip mod or something ?
edit: oh it's actually a mod. Doesn't look like that if you just noclip out

Wasn't the whole city part of the Ardyn dlc?
There are actually multiple versions of Insomnia in the game. Ironically it's the place with the most variations in the game despite being the place you see the least...

The version in my video is indeed the version you can see in Episode Ardyn, I'm simply using a mod to replace the city ruins from the Royale Edition by that version, and cheat engine to modify some of noctis movements and have more freedom.

What's very interesting though is that "this" version of the city has been there in the game since the veeery beginning.
On the original console release, a version of the city was loaded out of bounds during the installation sequence (you could play around the citadel entrance, fighting some ennemies while waiting for the game to install). The version of Insomnia that was loaded had the EXACT same layout has the one from episode ardyn, almost everything was already there, it was just lacking details.
I think this really shows that they were originally planning to use a lot more insomnia in the base game, they had so much already done before even the base game release, with a specific map design we can recognize.

For some reason they didn't use this actual layout for the playable version of the Insomnia city ruins in the first release of the game, but a much smaller / cut version instead.
They brought back the original design in the royale edition, where the whole area was now explorable but still only in the ruins version, and then finally they also reworked that original version for episode ardyn like they did for Royale Edition, only this time it was finally the pre war / daylight version.
It's a shame that the best version of the city we have was only used for a 1 hour dlc... but what I just said also explains why this version of the city has so much details despite being only for a dlc, they already had big foundations for it, it wasn't all from scratch.

This video is very interesting, it shows the original first version I talked about in the beginning of my post, in the launch version, during the installation time, people who played episode Ardyn will be able to recognize it, it's just a low detailed version:
 
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Myths

Member
As good as Tabata was at getting a project done, he wasn't the right person for a mainline FF game. The entire direction and feel of the game was similar to Type-0. Another project that cut corners and felt disappointing.

The project feels like it was so close to being that bigger game fans waited so long for, but they just gave up at the last hurdle. Really disappointing from S-E.
That’s not his problem. He took up a project of someone else’s, so the person who was on it in the first place shouldn’t have been directing a mainline game by the same notion.
 
Rem
SE was impatient with Nomura, and rightly probably, then gave it to Tabata, the rest is an ok game that could have been a great game.

Versus XIII still lives in my dreams though.

:(
Thats not true at all, the reason Nomura leave the project, was because by the time of versus enter full production with tabata, he was working on 3 different projects, FFXV, KH3 and FF7R, he cant co direct 3 different games, that was what happen, ffxv was in full production for just 3 years and half, before that, was just pre production, nomura never have the chance to work on versus like he would wanted
 

Tommi84

Member
Magic beings
Mobile phones
Communication over vast areas
...
You learn about the attack from a god-damn newspaper.

I rolled my eyes so much, I can't even imagine. And I don't even want to start on the whole 'let's introduce some major, MAJOR story plots outside of the game' shitshow
 

lifa-cobex

Member
SE was impatient with Nomura, and rightly probably, then gave it to Tabata, the rest is an ok game that could have been a great game.

Versus XIII still lives in my dreams though.

:(
TBF with SE. Nomura kept changing how he wanted to approach the game in terms of story and theme. The development seems like it was a shit show.
After that secret area was found where you slowly uncover a story (that was no confirmed to be canon). I really get the sense that Nomura couldn't sit on one story and develop it.
Poor Tabata had to tape together what was left to him.

It take the game as it is. I could have been something far more but it's not the worst thing in the world.
 
TBF with SE. Nomura kept changing how he wanted to approach the game in terms of story and theme. The development seems like it was a shit show.
After that secret area was found where you slowly uncover a story (that was no confirmed to be canon). I really get the sense that Nomura couldn't sit on one story and develop it.
Poor Tabata had to tape together what was left to him.

It take the game as it is. I could have been something far more but it's not the worst thing in the world.
Thats not true at all, Versus never enter full production until mid 2013, and nomura barely work on xv, he leave in 2014 to work on kh3 and ff7r, all that fault was from tabata, in fact , we should blame tabata as well for the cancelation of the true ending and their dlc fiasco, he wasted time and resources in stupid colaborations, a stupid vr game, and specially a multiplayer who cant be monetized (that was even less money for square to make)
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Final Fantasy GIF


“trio/three protagonists”

Calculate Figure It Out GIF by Originals


(sorry, couldn’t resist)

I wish I had gotten attached to the main cast, but only Prompto mildly interested me. Honestly when that mercenary lady replaced Gladious, I wish that had been permanent (or at least offer more party members and let the player decide which 4 to use, you know like most RPGs) as almost the entire supporting cast interested me more than the main four.

Yeah, the disconnect was annoying, honestly the world design was so lacking. Final Fantasy sometimes mixes sci-fi and fantasy and even a bit of our modern reality, but it usually seems to work. Here, four K-pop dudes in leather casually stroll up to one of their Game of Thrones cosplaying dad, then take off in their car where they have to get help from a mechanic who apparently works on vehicles with lots of skin exposed which is TOTALLY a smart move (not against fanservice, but don’t be stupid about it). Like, what?

Also, I generally prefer at least some of the characters in JRPGs to not really know each other when the game starts as it makes growing their bond and getting to know each other easier to pull off. You can do a cast that already is well familiar with one another but it takes top notch writing and for me XV didn’t deliver on that.

I feel like GAF needs an embarrassed emote lol... eeeeeeniways fair fair
 

Keihart

Member
Well, the game was aproaching 10 years in development, it had to come out at some point or become vaporware.
At least made some of the money sunk on it back.
 

Kumomeme

Member
around 3 years of development while most AAA out there usually has 4-5 years.

we might get all these if the devs can get another a year or two in development.
 
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Perrott

Gold Member
Here's some out of bounds screenshots I took.
This one has so much VS XIII vibe in it, reminds me of the early builds trailer / scans of VS XIII. Really feels like a left out area from that project:

5B8E3FF53D932660B2E831C13FEF5E43F839BBAA


And here's some more FF XV 2013 / Insomnia sadness :

51810219451_52b9cfde7d_o_d.jpg
2FCCDF78BC651A164675C077B9336AA422996A6B

51810331783_e57dbbbbc5_o_d.jpg
Damn, it's crazy how it still holds up as the best looking Square Enix game... ever.
 

EDMIX

Member
While I did really like FF15 in the end, it is tragic to know what it "could" have been. :messenger_pensive:

Could have? You mean you miss seeing what could have been yet another area with nothing going on? So...I don't know how to tell many of you this, if you only liked FFXV, I don't see how simply having an other area was going to make it into this amazing thing suddenly.

I believe they cut it simply because they had nothing going on to make it worth even keeping the area. You go there at the end annnnnnd nothing going on.

Not to even mention what seems like hours of cutscenes and CG shown across the Versus XIII and early FFXV trailers that never made it into the game at all.
I see no evidence to even suggest that. Hours? You made the game? You wrote it? How the fuck do you to what degree what was left or not? "seems like" fanfiction. Thats it. You fucking want some webaboo fanfiction shit and simply are in love with something you never played and just made up in your mind THAT shit was the GOAT that was left behind. I have to call bullshit on this one bud, the perrson who even wrote the damn game made it clear outside of a character change, its faithful to what he wrote


So if the story sucked in FFXV, I have a hard ass time believing the real good shit was with 1 character and yet another empty area and a opening cut scene. That just sounds really hard to believe.
. the story felt disjointed and unfinished,

A story can be bad sir. It was just a shit story lol For all you know, if they add all that other shit, the story would be just as bad. All games release with a good amount of content left behind as all things can't just be crammed in the game and I've yet to see any game developer argue that 100% of what they wanted was done 1.1 exactly how it was planned day 1 or something, so a story can be bad regardless and I don't think that what was missing was some glorious thing, I think the design, story and characters in FFXV simply isn't that good, changing a fucking name, adding a cut scene and another area I don't really buy would have changed as much as some of you are clinging on to lol

You are just holding on to some fanfiction shit....

it was frustrating because you could feel a much bigger game waiting to happen and it never did ...

Or....the game was just bad. I think this notion that the content left behind was "legitz da good partz" is a nieve narrative that I saw going around for years that pretends that exact cut content was really going to drive the game home, sir....that would be like saying you didn't quite like AC Vallhalla after 200 hours, but shit...that cut content was really, really, no hear me out...REALLY where the game would open up.

If they couldn't pull that off with 100 hours in such a vast open world, I don't really buy that the real good stuff was what you didn't play or something, 1 character is not making that game GOTY, another empty area and a cut scene in the opening is not making it fix all those design issues with the game. Some games I can see where you are coming from, from this game.....its hard for me to believe that considering the writer had no issue with the story changes.

I'm at peace knowing that all that shit removed, just wasn't going to correct the 100 hours I played of FFXV, I don't really believe that. If that was just "ok" for a FF game, MORE OF IT wasn't going to just set me over the moon or something.

Again...look at Assassins Creed. Imagine someone telling you that they feel a much bigger game was just waiting to happen, think of any game you don't like and think of someone trying to convince you MORE of it was going to really get you to love it, as if 100 hours isn't it, but 200, thats where da good is lol FFXV isn't even a good story, its so bad its not even funny, I don't mean like we just need a solid ending, its bad thru out, 1 scene wasn't changing that. Maybe it really is just a bad game regardless of those changes and for all we know we avoided a even bigger train wreck.
 

Kumomeme

Member
Related to Insomnia, their biggest mistake was making the invasion taking place in the movie. We didn't need the movie. Insomnia and its invasion was what we had been teased with for a decade, everyone wanted to play THAT, it was supposed to be a core part of the game. Instead, they decide to make a movie about it (while removing the main characters from that story arc at the same time) and start the game directly with a later chapter that could be a spin off.
there is rumors that said Nomura dislike the movie because Insomnia supposed to be important ingame prologue section. another version of the rumors said Nomura is fine with the movie but he didnt like that another character other than Noctics become main hero which is for me, understandable. imagine FFVII remove Midgar section, turn into movie with with main perspective from other character who later died, then the main game suddenly start with Cloud outside of Kalm.

personally removal of Insomnia part hurt the game narrative alot. it supposed to be the prologue of the game, to set up and introduce the world building and the tone of the story. but we see what happened. it started after the event, where the prince and his close friend already out of nowhere, clueless. even player, left hanging. player, need to watch the movie to get understand of what happened or else they would get confused about the game tone and important introduction like worldbuilding. even the movie is not revolve around Noctics but instead other character name Nyx who is also didnt have any role in the game. in the end, the story feel disjointed.

IMO that first section where the bros push broken car is nice, but for me i would not considered that part is a prologue at all. for me, prologue is non existent in final game at all since the 'real' progolue is separated as a movie. from there, it is not suprise that the game end up with weird, disjointed, uneven narrative. dumb stuff like Noctics know his father death through newspaper could be prevented if all this not happened . same goes with Luna. she would not feel like a character we only hear alot but never meet, then the moment we finally meet, she died.
 
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stuck on pre--production, same shit, different smell.
Started as versus on 2006? launched on 2016? changed directors and name on 2013? nothing cameout of it until XV, so that's almost 10 years of development.
its 3 years of development you like it or not, and pre production and full production are 2 different things, btw by your logic super mario world was 6 years in production because miyamoto have a yoshi sketch in his office since 1985, overwatch was 9 years because the mmo project titan started in 2007, so yeah, ffxv started in 2013, and just before that all you saw was a concept, a concept who many elements dont enter full production and was in the full release
 

Keihart

Member
its 3 years of development you like it or not, and pre production and full production are 2 different things, btw by your logic super mario world was 6 years in production because miyamoto have a yoshi sketch in his office since 1985, overwatch was 9 years because the mmo project titan started in 2007, so yeah, ffxv started in 2013, and just before that all you saw was a concept, a concept who many elements dont enter full production and was in the full release
keep coping, as if Nomura and company were playing with their fingers in the air to make all that concept art, assets, protoypes and cinematics to show at shows.
surely.
 
both some o best games from last gen.
I just ignore everything in Phantom Pain past act 1...

The thing is, its not even the cut content for Phantom Pain, its how the game is played that it prevents me from ever wanting to do a second run. As a big fan a few years later I thought to go at it again for the story mostly but when I realized I have to rebuild the whole motherbase all over again and to kidnap random russian soldiers on random missions jsut to get 3 min of story cutscene, i deleted it. Then Death Stranding which i thought no way could it deserve a second run, I bought a PS5 and got directors cut content. Somehow im having a blast again with this walking simulator but PP puts me off so much knowing that everything is so barebones.

Dont get me wrong, DS is also in a way barebones but it fits the narrative. MGS went open world for literally zero reason or benefit. Ground Zeros was awesome and for refference every other MGS i played at least 3-4 times.
 

Y0ssarian

Banned
The more I see about this game, the less I want to play it.

Does it have any redeeming qualities?
I liked it a lot, but the main story missions turned to shit after chapter 8, and picked up again for the final chapter. The story is good and you feel for Noctis and his bros. The open world is beautiful and fun to explore. Combat is hit or miss, they improved on it for FF7 remake. You could make the case that Stranger of Paradise is the eventual end goal for what they were aiming for with the combat. It's better in SoP because they got a talented studio known for action games to make it. Lunafreya is cute.
 
keep coping, as if Nomura and company were playing with their fingers in the air to make all that concept art, assets, protoypes and cinematics to show at shows.
surely.
again, you dont know the difference of pre production and full production, in fact all you saw in the trailer of 2011 and 2006 was a concept, i hope you know whats a concept at least
 

Keihart

Member
again, you dont know the difference of pre production and full production, in fact all you saw in the trailer of 2011 and 2006 was a concept, i hope you know whats a concept at least


I don't know what you are inhaling but this trailer was way past just the "pre production" stage, you don't make new assets and playable demos and what not as pre production.
Preproduction is usually a way to save time and resources not to spend more of them just to scratch them.
Comparing this with Overwatch is like using Fortnite as an example, both of those games changed several times during development only retaining the name and some visuals for the sake of chasing the gaming trends of the time since they took so long to come out.

(There is an interview somewhere where Tabata states that Versus was 25% complete when it became XV)
 
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I don't know what you are inhaling but this trailer was way past just the "pre production" stage, you don't make new assets and playable demos and what not as pre production.
Preproduction is usually a way to save time and resources not to spend more of them just to scratch them.
Comparing this with Overwatch is like using Fortnite as an example, both of those games changed several times during development only retaining the name and some visuals for the sake of chasing the gaming trends of the time since they took so long to come out.

See, you dont even know too well the phases of a game development im afraid

you dont usually make assets in a PROTOTYPE, but you do in pre production

in pre productions you make the game, the core system, some basic animation and all that, and if everything work well, then you enter full production, the production of ffxv was 3 years, again thats a fact, and the pre production of versus was rebooted at least 1 time

pre production can be shut down and rebooted for many reason (financial, need alocate staff to other project, wait for better tech, the game engine its not good, etc)

and that trailer what you saw was very basic, the areas were super basic, empty and bland, they use it to show up animation and what a combat can be made on crystal tools, in fact it was not playable, and almost all the elements dont even make it to the whole game, who run on a very different hardware, on a diferent game engine
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
I liked it a lot, but the main story missions turned to shit after chapter 8, and picked up again for the final chapter. The story is good and you feel for Noctis and his bros. The open world is beautiful and fun to explore. Combat is hit or miss, they improved on it for FF7 remake. You could make the case that Stranger of Paradise is the eventual end goal for what they were aiming for with the combat. It's better in SoP because they got a talented studio known for action games to make it. Lunafreya is cute.
Well you make it sound far better than I thought. It's been sitting on my backlog for years now and I'd like to play it, since it looks so great and it seems kinda comfy with all the bro stuff.

I'll try making some time to at least try it, thanks man.
 

RaZoR No1

Member
IMO it was hard to get into FF XV, but once you got used to it, it was a fun game.
Unfortunately too much got canned.. I really looked forward to the last DLCs and now seeing all of the cut content hurts a bit..
You could feel the change as soon you left the first world, that the remaining parts of the game felt incomplete/rushed.
What I missed is more focus on the other characters too without having to read into other media (the DLC were there to help, but...) Somehow we just got thrown into the game and goooo.
Still crazy to imagine, that it was announced for PS3 as FF XIII Versus..

Probably one of the bigger gaming "what if"if they have finished and included all of the planned contents
 
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Keihart

Member
See, you dont even know too well the phases of a game development im afraid

you dont usually make assets in a PROTOTYPE, but you do in pre production

in pre productions you make the game, the core system, some basic animation and all that, and if everything work well, then you enter full production, the production of ffxv was 3 years, again thats a fact, and the pre production of versus was rebooted at least 1 time

pre production can be shut down and rebooted for many reason (financial, need alocate staff to other project, wait for better tech, the game engine its not good, etc)

and that trailer what you saw was very basic, the areas were super basic, empty and bland, they use it to show up animation and what a combat can be made on crystal tools, in fact it was not playable, and almost all the elements dont even make it to the whole game, who run on a very different hardware, on a diferent game engine
From the de dev quotes themselves, 25% done and a team of 200 people, that was the scope of production during Versus.
That is hardly what usual preproduction is on other studios, the game was rebooted after having some heavy resources put into it.
The trailer might not have been playable, but it was done in real time to have something to show off after so many resources were already on the project, this was not "concept" phase triying to plan out how to develop the game, they were already burning money left and right on it.

My whole point is that the game was 10 years on development, but you dismiss those 6 years as if it was not already burning resources and they were only planning as usual preproduction goes.

"Pre-production is an initial planning phase of a game development project, which focuses on creating core concepts and writing initial design documents, that describe the future game."
If you start burning resources on assests and engine tools, you are way past pre production already, regardless if all of it gets scractched. (they were way past "prototypes" )
 
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WOW, didn't even know half this stuff existed.

Yeah, I can see why they cut it though. SQ would have taken 15 yrs to finish the game had they attempted to include all that.

Regardless, they did a poor job of cutting and editing the existing content that was left in. The game was okay, but the story which they seemed to believe in so much (evidenced by the launch of the movie alongside the game) was a complete mess and entirely uninteresting... as almost all FF stories since FF8 seem to have been.
 
From the de dev quotes themselves, 25% done and a team of 200 people, that was the scope of production during Versus.
That is hardly what usual preproduction is on other studios, the game was rebooted after having some heavy resources put into it.
The trailer might not have been playable, but it was done in real time to have something to show off after so many resources were already on the project, this was not "concept" phase triying to plan out how to develop the game, they were already burning money left and right on it.

My whole point is that the game was 10 years on development, but you dismiss those 6 years as if it was not already burning resources and they were only planning as usual preproduction goes.

"Pre-production is an initial planning phase of a game development project, which focuses on creating core concepts and writing initial design documents, that describe the future game."
If you start burning resources on assests and engine tools, you are way past pre production already, regardless if all of it gets scractched. (they were way past "prototypes" )
First of all, The trailer you just posted was from ff versus xiii pre production crystal tools engine, the quote from tabata was when versus xiii on luminous engine enter production and he joined the project, studios dont use 200 people for pre production, specially in the ps3 era (Today standard is like 40 people) in fact i cant find the quote where he claim 200 people worked on versus xiii


that was the acual quote, thats a different build

second, in pre production of course you make assets, you need to make at least a portion of the game playable with systems and mechanics, then in full production you expand all that, a prototype its just a game you need to pitch before its aproved in a AAA publisher

and lastly, yes i understand your point, but just because it was annaunced in 2006, the game was not worked for that many years, agito for example was not worked for years, and lets not talk about how crystal tools fucked the entire ps3 gen and made versus xiii a nightmare for the devs, it was rebooted because the game engine sucked, and here are an example of the prototype of bayonetta to show the point

 
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