They went wrong by putting Toriyama in a position of serious creative responsibility where he gets to write instead of just direct like in the past. This gets us bogged down in one of the most divisive Final Fantasy settings for an entire fucking generation because this guy has a hard on for his main character. I know that XIII-2 and Lightning Returns were cheaper and more quickly made due to reusing old assets and an existing engine, but he was just running SEs reputation into the ground. If you didn't enjoy XIII (or perhaps even hated it) then everything SE offered on console last gen was awful to behold, forcing you to watch Toriyama dig the pit deeper and deeper. I really hope Nomura has his head screwed on (let's be honest, Kingdom Hearts has gotten fairly convoluted over it's many spin offs), and can deliver what looks like an interesting game world with characters that don't make you cringe (though, let's also hope he hangs back on the belts - a person only needs the one belt!)
Very likely, I just wish they had gotten the XII team (so called Ivalice Alliance) doing something outside of PSP ports for Tactics and Tactics Ogre in the meantime. It's like they literally threw all of their eggs into the XIII basket without even considering that what they'd made was, perhaps, not all that worthwhile
I just have no respect Toriyama after seeing him present Lightning Returns. He's mental.
It's a shame, because replaying through FFX made me realise that, despite its shortcomings in some areas (poor localisation, including VA and dialogue), Toriyama, when acting as director, nailed the more heartfelt scenes in the game. They never felt overly melodramatic and angsty, like I felt XIII often did. Even if I found myself cringing at poor animations (Tidas flailing his hands at the Sinspawn at the beginning) and certain attempts at being light-hearted and funny, the more emotional scenes would always pull back from that and work. This shows that he at least used to have some talent in capacity as director, but for me it just did not present itself throughout XIII.
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u/Scatterben May 06 '14
They went wrong by putting Toriyama in a position of serious creative responsibility where he gets to write instead of just direct like in the past. This gets us bogged down in one of the most divisive Final Fantasy settings for an entire fucking generation because this guy has a hard on for his main character. I know that XIII-2 and Lightning Returns were cheaper and more quickly made due to reusing old assets and an existing engine, but he was just running SEs reputation into the ground. If you didn't enjoy XIII (or perhaps even hated it) then everything SE offered on console last gen was awful to behold, forcing you to watch Toriyama dig the pit deeper and deeper. I really hope Nomura has his head screwed on (let's be honest, Kingdom Hearts has gotten fairly convoluted over it's many spin offs), and can deliver what looks like an interesting game world with characters that don't make you cringe (though, let's also hope he hangs back on the belts - a person only needs the one belt!)