It's a shame that FF seems stuck with Tetsuya Nomura for the foreseeable future. Dude's designs have reached this boring 'black leather with belts and hair gel' plateau.

I also expected the scenery to be more... fantastical? Where are the weird glass forests and misty valleys from the other games. Oh well.

I haven't played one since 7, but I don't really see the problem here. If you like off-roading and hitting pedestrians and ignoring a plot, play GTA or any of its clones. FF games have always been plot-heavy and while it's cool that they've made them less linear, if I was a fan this wouldn't bother me.

What does bother me is how their hair stays perfect despite going pretty fast in a convertable. Also, isn't this encroaching on Duke Nukem Forever's "when it's done" release date record at this point? From what I've seen, it looks pretty, but I've already seen prettier from the likes of Borderlands 2 and, well that's the only game I have but there's some beautiful stuff out there.

>> What does bother me is how their hair stays perfect despite going pretty fast in a convertable.

I take it you've never played in an emo band before!

You're right about the graphics looking faintly like ass, though. My biggest problem with this is the noticeably limited draw distance on the trees and foliage; the scenery keeps winking in and out of existence like the grass in Oblivion, eight years ago.

Jeez! I didn't even notice the draw distance the first time! That's like PS2 quality

This was so god damn boring! Videogames are supposed to be fun!

*so goddamn novel

This series is distinguished for it's amazing soundtracks.

The think about the FF soundtracks is that the more realistic the instruments sound the less interesting the music is, because from a strictly compositional standpoint it's incredibly conservative. What made the old SNES FF soundtracks so great was that they were trying to render this sort of lush, overproduced sound with hardware that was completely unable to deliver it, and that's what made it interesting (jsut like how a lot of the best NES music sounds good because they were trying to create slick, 80s prog-metal with three basic waveforms and noise and it came out sounding completely weird). Now that they can actually make the music sound more or less like live instruments (or just use prerecorded tracks of actual instruments) it sounds regressive next to 20 year old TV commercials, much less anything contemporary. It makes all of those documentary soundtracks that sound like tidied up versions of 15 year old Godspeed You Black Emperor tracks sound downright futuristic in comparison.

Which would be fine if the music wasn't such a big part of the series' reputation, but the fact that it is just makes it another reminder that AAA gaming is deeply stunted.

The music in this clip sounds like it's tapping into the whole 80s/early 90s smooth music revival except completely by accident.

Well, I think the music's pretty good! Your 80s/90s smooth music observation is spot-on, OZ, but I don't believe the similarity came about "completely by accident". The song sounds like 80s/90s smooth music because it's *written by* one of the legendary composers who helped to define early-90s VG music!

The soundtrack's not composed by Nobuo Uematsu this time around (which is a shame; I love Mr Uematsu's work), but rather a woman named Yoko Shimomura. Ms Shimomura's got an incredibly impressive resume, one which is ideally suited, I think, for the new Final Fantasy - she was the composer for Street Fighter II (one of the best VG soundtracks ever), Super Mario RPG (widely acclaimed, although personally I never much cared for it), and all six-thousand versions of Kingdom Hearts (KH fans = the perfect demographic for FF XV to cater to).

C'mon, OZ. This was the lady who gave us "Chun-Li" and "Guile's Theme"! That's gotta count for something.

If you're not fond of the soundtracks for Final Fantasy or AAA titles in general, might I inquire as to what VG music (specific games or composers) you do find enjoyable?

(My own favorite VG composers are probably Michiru Yamane, Daisuke Ishiwatari, and Ogeretsu Kun; best known for Castlevania SotN, Guilty Gear, and Megaman 2, respectively. Whomever was ghostwriting for that SNEAKY LYING FAKE BASTARD Mamoru Samuragochi on the original Resident Evil soundtrack was excellent, too!)

I love that Japanese video game composers never really grew out of that one '80s guitar sound that you hear in almost every dreamcast game.

I think OZ has some weird appreciation of music that's based exclusively on what technology it was made with rather than things like melodies, chord progressions, rhythms, etc.

No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No?
No.
No.
No.
You bet your ass there will be!

I don't have a Playstation 4, and the fact that the PC port/Steam version will be loaded down with shitty DRM and a forced login screen doesn't make this an option for me outside of maybe a Spoony review if he ever returns to work.

Piracy!

You wish. I believe that half of these windbags won't stay quiet.

Backstreet Boys - Everybody (Backstreet's Back)