The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild which launched in March has inspired many developers and one such developer is Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata. GameSpot managed to catch up with him during PAX West and talk about what he has planned next. Interestingly, he really wants to recreate the feelings that players experienced playing the open world Zelda game in his next title. Here’s his thoughts:
“I’ve heard a lot from the dev team and their reactions to having played it (Zelda Breath of the Wild) . But just from hearing the stories and the feedback, you know, we can tell that it’s a really complete game,” Tabata said. “It’s very polished, almost a perfect game in that regard. And our goals are probably to take that experience that players felt with Breath of the Wild, but with our own technology and our own know-how.
“We have in our disposal to create a very, very high-quality game with a strong visual element to it, while creating a world that’s really immersive and really beautiful. That’s probably our goals in terms of what we want to be with our next project.”
Hope he succeeds. We need as much awe inspiring as BOTW.
If it is labeled as “Final Fantasy XXIIVXI-3XL REBORN” I dont care how much you copy Zelda, I won ‘t be buying. FF lost its luster to me
” i wont buy a game because it’s” name is the dumbest reason to not buy something
Well I’m only looking forward to FF7. FF15 will just be the cherry on top if it releases on the future next gen console I buy.
@Trippersiggs22 You clearly missed the intent of his post. He is saying that Final Fantasy has released so many uninspired sequels and spinoffs that the series has lost its luster. He’s not going to support the series if the games are uninspired, because Square Enix will continue to release uninspired games if people keep buying them.
@steveb944 You mean 16, right? Unless you’re looking forward to seeing 15 re-released on the next gen.
They always do a failure after a failure, their ‘know how’ is just bullshit. Lot of money wasted for nothing. I’m sorry to say that because FF4/7/10 were good, but Final Fantasy is ‘no more’.
True but thats because people who weren’t real RPG players whined about turned based combat. After they left Turn based combat things went to shit for me atleast, even causing the whole genre to die. Ni No Kuni is one of the rare games that reminds me of the golden days of the RPG genre.
On Topic Zelda breath of the wild would have been even greater with better graphics. It would have been a 10+ instead of a 10.
Zelda changed numerous times but they were always really enjoyable games. They just can’t make a good game anymore, eventually the new hired people aren’t good like the old ones. I don’t see anything good about new Final Fantasy episodes, not the gameplay, not the characters… they are just bad.
I quit buying Final Fantasy after part 13 and it used to be my favorite genre RPG genre shit happens but yeah your right. Just like Rare studios got ruined by new people.
Ni no Kuni isn’t turn based tho but I agree and final fantasy isn’t really wt it used to be. I didn’t mind the combat it wasn’t terrible to me but the story was just really lacking for me. Didn’t complete it and didn’t buy the dlc so maybe those were better.
Final Fantasy’s 4, 5 and 10. What about 6? That one is one of the best ever!
I didn’t play it, just tried it barely and didn’t liked at start and abandoned it early, but I would not say that’s not good. I can’t have an opinion on it. My favorite is the fourth. Didn’t played FF9 too and didn’t liked FF8.
It’s good. 6 it’s good.
FF4, to me, is the best FF game I ever played.
It was excellent, still overlooked by many. My favorite too.
I agree unfortunately. Ff15 was awful. The battle system was a joke and the overworld was very empty feeling. The entire game was empty feeling. Instead of trying to evolve turn based battles, they completely fly off the rails with some horrible battle system that was a fucking mess. All they have to do is make a FF6 type game with turn based battles, voice acting, and up to date graphics. It wouldn’t be hard to make a good FF game. That’s what kills me the most. Square tries too hard and always fucks shit up.
On the contrary another Square team is doing wonders with the old revisited mechanic. Project Octopath is going to be a masterpiece, I tried the demo and it was a blast!
Always nice to see a truly great game inspire other developers. It benefits us all.
||If it isn’t released on the Switch in the future then I’m not concerned by this nonsense…||
Everybody learn from Nintendo, but they can’t reach that level
Get Switch or get out.
Pingback: El próximo Final Fantasy intentará recrear las sensaciones que produce en el jugador Zelda: Breath of the Wild
}{ It won’t amount to anything… You can’t create an open feeling game if you choose to release it over several episodes… Not that Square would ever do that… … }{
What would the gaming world be like without Nintendo to inspire pretty much all innovation and quality ? Not saying other developers couldn’t do it, Nintendo just makes it easy for everyone by laying blue prints for everything.
Just wait until the 30’th game: Final Fantasy XXX!
Hehe
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JoODv8LVib8
Japanese games industry is all over the place. Bethesda is on board with the Switch with heavy hitters and they still play hard to get. Good luck with that.
Your headline is incorrect. Tabata is not working on the next Final Fantasy. He is currently working on a new IP. Please fix it.
Take all the inspiration from Zelda you want, but at the very least, allow Nintendo fans to play Final Fantasy on a Nintendo console again. There are no real excuses anymore with the Switch and Nintendo is very willing to show love to these third party devs. Cloud was in smash. We all know he didn’t deserve the spot but here we are. I’m just saying.
What’s sad is that after having being inspired by Nintendo, Nintendo fans will have to lay and beg for the title to make it to the Switch.
I wonfer if the inspiration will be as half assed as how FFXV was inspired by TLoU.
I’m a huge fan on the Final Fantasy series and believe it’s really lost it’s way to XV and the XIII series. I also love the LoZ series and think Breath of Wild is fantastic and deserving of all the praise it gets, so my first reaction to this was positive. But as I was thinking about it, I very quickly had a change of opinion.
One of the things that made the FF series great was that it tried new things and that’s true even with the new ones, but what separates the new ones from the old (XII and before) is that the early ones were happy being what they were. XV was a game that was in development for so long that it was announced before the first iPhone came out and through most of that time it existed as a single-player, story-driven action RPG and instead became a game that just fully ticks all the boxes. In other words, people like online play so they add it. People like multiplayer so they add it. People like open worlds with missions so they added that. People like DLC so they added that. I still bought it to give it a fair shot and it just feels like some loveless, time vampire of a product.
Them saying that the next one will feel like Breath of the Wild just feels like they just found a better game to copy and it, in no way, reassures me that the series has found a new direction. That’s not to say that they can’t learn anything from BotW but I think the biggest lesson they can learn is to return to their roots and expand on what made Final Fantasy what it was.
I liked final fanasy 15 but you are completely right that they added too many things that the fans wanted and didn’t go in there own direction. This is similar to Sega in a way…
Sega with a sense of direction is actually hard to imagine now lol
… Well hopefully they do good. I prefer semi-linear final fantasy’s like 6, 7, and tbh every final fantasy except 11, 14, and 15. I mean as long as they make the story great in 16, it can be open worlded but for a final fantasy fan this isnt the greatest of news.
I’m only hoping to get on the Switch
FF1, FF4, FF4 After Years, FF5 and FF6 because these are the best FF games I have ever played.
Have you played them all? I can see them putting FF 1-6 on the switch. I’m more of a fan of 7-12 though and that happens to be PlayStation exclusive era… the one console I don’t have
No I haven’t played all of the FF games because I don’t have so much free time to play all. I played only few of title of the series and these titles are those who appear on the Nintendo console.
You mean “Recreate How ‘Players Felt With Skyrim/Dark Souls’”
LOZ turned its back on its own conventions. And now thanks to insane IGN scores, we now have to do LOZ Dark Souls for the rest of the franchise.
LOZ (1986-2011)
I really don’t see the similarities to Skyrim and Dark Souls. Dark Souls is 100% about it’s combat and Skyrim… just kind of sucked. BOTW was all about exploration and very much felt like a successor to the original Legend of Zelda.
Can you go into more detail about how it’s “LOZ Dark Souls”?
Weapon durability and cheap deaths.
That is all.
None of those are even remotely unique to Dark Souls or Skyrim. Weapon durability is also something that incentivizes you to approach situations in the game more cautiously and in different ways. It was also a easy way to give value to exploration. If I had the best gear in the game and it never broke, then treasure chest would become useless very early on in the game.
Why should have to play sneak-around with field enemies when OOT and Skyward Sword never hampered you with this burden. And it’s only an insentive because they buffed up enemies to give you cheap game overs.
I WANT to play this game like a 3D Zelda game (and there doesn’t seem to be anymore 3D Zelda games after Skyward Sword).
If BotW becomes their new definitive, then 3D Zelda as we knew it is dead.
It’s not like field enemies were completely absent from previous 3D Zeldas. There actually were a few in OTT, Wind Waker had some, and there were quite a few in Twilight Princess.
The buffed up enemies were more so to incentivize the player to collect more hearts and upgrade gear. It was also done to maintain the ability to progress through the story in any way you wanted without certain areas having a ridiculously easy enemies later on in the game.
However, I do get that there are people who want games more like OTT through Skyward Sword and I have a feeling the next ones will try to incorporate more elements of those Zelda’s but other than smaller Zelda games, I don’t think they’re gonna ditch the open world and the ability to choose what order you do things in. I imagine they’ll instead be more like Link to the Past where you have new sets of tasks opened up by story developments
So does this game at least have a linear PLOT, or is it just mindless exploring and trying to not get killed.
In this theoretical game, there’s not reason it couldn’t have a plot similar to other 3D Zeldas. I don’t understand what makes exploration “mindless”, though. Exploration is usually a thing that people just like doing. I remember when I first played Twilight Princess, I saw the Snowpeak, Death Mountain, and the Garudo Desert in the distance and I didn’t need the plot to take me there, I just wanted to check out these places.
For what it’s worth, the structure of most Zelda games is a series of fetch quests so most of the time there was no reason for most to be done in a particular order. These are the structures of the 3D Zeldas.
Ocarina of Time
1. Opening area
2. Save the 3 domains
3. You get Ocarina and Master Sword and your next task which is…
4. Collect the powers of the 5 sages
5. Go to Hyrule Castle and beat Ganon
Wind Waker
1. Opening area
2. Save the 3 domains
3. You get Ocarina and Master Sword and your next task which is…
4. Collect the 8 shards of the Triforce of Courage.
5. Go to Hyrule Castle and beat Ganon
Twilight Princess
1. Opening Area
2. Find the 3 Pearls
3. Go to the Tower of the Gods. Get new mission which is…
4. Collect the 5 Mirror Shards (You need to look for all 8 owl statues before you get the last one though.)
5. Go to the Twilight Realm and beat Zant. Go to Hyrule Castle and beat Ganon.
Skyward Sword
1. Opening Area
2. Visit the 4 provinces
3. Fight The Imprisoned. Find the propeller. Go to the Isle of Songs. Get new mission which is…
4. Find the 3 sacred flames
5. Fight The Imprisoned. Rescue Levias. Fight The Imprisoned. Get new mission which is…
6. Fix the 4 provinces and recover the 4 parts of the Song of the Hero
7. Recover the Triforce. Beat Ghirahim and Demise.
Numbers 2, 4, and in Skyward Sword’s case, 6 could have easily been made to do in any order as they usually each have self-contained stories. In the case of the owl statues in Twilight Princess, that could have been made aware to the player in some form from the beginning of the Mirror Shard search so that the player can do both in parallel. I’m thinking part of the reason why the story felt so bare to you in Breath of the Wild was just because there was no companion to talk for Link. Otherwise, all it did was parallelize 2 fetch quests: Fixing the Divine Beast and recovering your memories. The next Zelda would have to do is give the adventure a part 2 and it would return to form with the other 3D Zeldas and Link to the Past.
Yes, it’s fun to explore. That’s the players choice.
But don’t turn that into an actual requirement and a major chore, where gameplay is nearly impossible without it, and story progression takes a back seat.
Oh, and I was asking whether or not Breath of the Wild had a linear plot.
Oh! My bad. I assumed you had played the game already.
Hmm That’s kind of a difficult question. When it comes to collecting memories, you can collect them out of order, but they still happened in a fixed order. When it comes to saving the Devine Beasts, each is a decently lengthy linear story but you can choose what order you do each one in. If you wanted to, you could stop doing one and do another, then return to first one you were doing though. The dungeons you do as part of each Divine Beast quest are pretty much a smaller version of the puzzle dungeons in any other 3D Zelda completely with boss and a cutscene.
There are also cutscenes that get triggered when you’re nearby that kind of guide you toward the Divine Beast and whatever chaos they’re causing.
Of course you have the option to ignore the Devine Beasts and just head to Hyrule Castle right after you leave the starting area but it’s going to be very hard.
So, I guess it’s both linear and non-linear, with the whole story being optional if that’s not what you’re into. The story that is told is pretty damn good, too.
P.S. BotW’s Hyrule Castle is actually one of my favorite Zelda Dungeons because of how many ways you can approach it and because of how large and detailed it is.
Um, all of y’all are forgetting FF 9. If they could make a game set in that kind of world with BOTW elements? I’m sold.
Wow, they best get to work then!
The only way FF could ever be good again is if Square sold the IP. They have no idea how to make a good FF. They need to sell the game to a developer that does. It’s the only way we’ll ever get a good FF again.
Heh. Good luck. Something like that can’t be easily replicated.