The Final Fantasy X HD remaster and why it makes sense.

[rvbnut]

So it's too expensive to remake Final Fantasy VII but not Final Fantasy X?

That is because with X the engine is all relatively the same.
Art needs to be touched up.

With VII, everything needs to be redone. It'll be a waste of time and energy for Square soft to do this (yes I still call them square soft)

 

[BanicRhys]

Wait, is this actually confirmed?

If so, are they just copy and pasting the same game on a blu ray disk but with higher resolution graphics this time or are they completely remaking it like they were pretending to do with 7?

I just have to say this if it's true, please redub it or include a Japanese with subs option. Please, Tidus' voice actor will always be Ratchet to me, I can't accept him as anyone else.

So it's too expensive to remake Final Fantasy VII but not Final Fantasy X?

With VII, everything needs to be redone. It'll be a waste of time and energy for Square soft to do this (yes I still call them square soft)

To be fair, remaking FF7 would make a butt load more money and be a whole lot more entertaining than that stupid sequel for FF13.

 

[GundamSentinel]

I can only say that I'm happy with the remaster. Personally I don't really care about any of the old Final Fantasies (didn't really like anything before X; maybe I'm too much of a graphics whore, but if that was the case I'd probably get a decent PC. Oh well.). I can understand that fans want an FFVII remake, but I'm not one of them. Me, I'm hoping for a remaster for XII so I can put another 1000 hours in it.

 

[Your once and future Fanboy]

So it's too expensive to remake Final Fantasy VII but not Final Fantasy X?

Yes, just as it's more expensive to rebuild a house, than it is to renovate it.

FFX needed just a refresheing of the graphics, but FF VII needs a complete re-build to come into this generation.

...and Square have said again and again that they don't intend to remake it.

 

[Your once and future Fanboy]

I hope they use the PAL version for the basis of the remasterd version.
There was a lot more content and challange in that version.
For example: Penace, the quote "superboss" that was only in the european version. And the dark aeons.

 

[LilithSlave]

In your defense, Human Revolution is pretty god damn solid.

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Oh I just...

So you think that Deus Ex games are awesome but Final Fantasy X is terrible? Oh good lord no. Not even close.

The "places it doesn't excel" is literally everything besides the soundtrack, the battle system, and the equipment system. And arguably the voice acting, but, y'know . . . "HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!". Ugh.

That "hahahaha" line was supposed to make listeners cringe. They were forcing themselves to laugh. I used to hold hope that almost everyone bashing the voice acting of X for that laugh was just being incredibly tongue in cheek. But apparently. That scene pulled off exactly what it was supposed to pull off.

I'll just go on about what's good about the game. Both expounding upon what you said is good, and mentioning things you didn't. For starters, Final Fantasy X is one of the more rare tales of romance in a video game. Something video games need a lot more of. Yes, the battle system is indeed good. It wasn't anything particularly innovative, it was turn based. But it offered some of the best turn based combat that ever came out of Final Fantasy. Something that Final Fantasy actually shines at, because when they've tried to put action combat into Final Fantasy, they haven't done very well well. The game started off with typical, low HP, and built up to a point where you could not only break the traditional HP and damage barrier, but utilize them to the full, and actually still have a challenge. There is no such thing as being truly overpowered in X, because no matter how powerful you get, there will always be a challenging foe out there to push the limits of your strength. Further was this added to by the revolutionary grid system, for leveling. Which in terms of giving you things to do, essentially allowed you to level up to around level 400, if you so wished. There are a great wealth of sidequests to do in this game. And if you're a person who likes sandboxes or games like the Elder Scrolls, sidequests are a good thing. Quite so, there are a ton of things to do in the game, especially toward the end of the game.

The game, unlike other Final Fantasies, while having a bit of an "epic" theme about the human species being threatened and the like, doesn't force itself to be epic and doesn't force itself to be as epic as the others. The most epic thing is, again, humans being continually ravaged by Sin. And the goal isn't to save humanity from impending doom, but to ease and lessen it's death and suffering. And the story focuses much on politics and romance and character interaction in general. Some of these things being many people's favourite thing about jRPGs.

Spoiler

In Final Fantasy V, the world is under threat of destruction from a silly antagonist whose only motivation is destruction of everything. In Final Fantasy VI, the world is under threat by a madman who wants to destroy everything. In Final Fantasy VII, the world is under threat by a madman, fused with an alien parasite, that wants to destroy/parasitically infect everything. In Final Fantasy VIII, Ultimecia pretty much wants to destroy everything oddly enough, once she becomes omnipotent. In Final Fantasy IX, the universe, or possibly even the multiverse is under threat by a jealous, dying man.

In Final Fantasy X, Sin is more of a natural disaster whom most likely would not wipe out the human species unless humans were very unlucky. Leaving the game mostly to be a political struggle, and a good one. Thus making the plot actually pretty exceptional among Final Fantasy titles.

Final Fantasy X doesn't have to be exceptional, because if it's even "as good" in some other way as other Final Fantasies, it's just great. Every Final Fantasy doesn't have to be better than the others to be just as good. And do you know what Final Fantasy X has and does well just like a lot of other Final Fantasy games? Character interaction. Like I stated before, Final Fantasy X is like a lot of other Final Fantasy games. There is a huge focus and amount of character interaction. Something Final Fantasy is known and loved for. And you know what Final Fantasy X does at least as good as several other Final Fantasy games? Have good character interaction. Just like VII, VIII, and IX, X has a variety of interesting characters that interact with each other well. And constantly do so.

And yes. The soundtrack is amazing. As well as the equipment system. Final Fantasy X not only gives you a completely customized leveling system, but also a customized equipment system. Up to even creating your own legendary tier equipment if you like, and have the ridiculous amount of time to do so. Further adding to the thousands upon thousands of things to do in this game.

And yes, the voice actors in both the Japanese and English version are great. Might I give a shout out to Tara Strong here for a job well done?

I'd also like to praise it's aesthetic. Even that level of CG, still today takes a lot of time and money to create. At it's time, Final Fantasy X used state of the art graphics to create a beautiful aesthetic. I've played the game on PCSX2, and it truly is absolutely gorgeous CG work. The cutscenes didn't age to well and do look pixelated on a 22-inch 1080p screen up close. But the CG, especially from the close renders of scenes, ones that couldn't be used on the world map, are over the top. Yuna's face, Auron's face, Rikku's face, the characters faces are very, very well done. And the aesthetic, for people who think Southeast Asian culture deserves a place in video games for a change, has a great wealth of it for once in a video game. Beautifully used and adapted to a fantasy setting. Again, giving esteem and representation to a very underrepresented culture in video games.

So why, why on earth would Final Fantasy X suck? It doesn't.

 

[Zantos]

Since I currently have no idea where my PS2 or my copy of Final Fantasy X is, this is really good news for me! All those hours of blitzball lost... still, at least I get to play it all again!

 

[Adam28]

There are so many PS2 games being remastered in HD and yet people are going a little crazy over this. From memory, Metal Gear Solid, God of War 1 and 2, Sly Cooper, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, Silent Hill, and Team Ico's games all have collections either out already or coming out in the future.

God of War and MGS got HD remastered, it's not surprising that an FF PS2 game is getting one as well.

The only criticism I can think of about this is that it seems to be the first game not part of a HD collection which I thought was probably a major selling point of HD remastered games. Now if it had been FFX and FFX-2 (even if you think FFX-2 sucked), it would of made a lot more sense. If it got FFXII as well, then I'd probably definitely get this for the Vita as that would be a really good deal (Portable and can probably just wait until someone develops a better battery! ).

Maybe the Vita is why there is no collection though and instead just one game.

Although I can see where some of the FFVII/other arguments come from (it's what the fans want after all), I don't see why people are bringing it up so much in the news of FFX being remastered. It should instead be brought up when Square Enix makes sequels to games a lot of the fans dislike, looking at you FFXIII-2, FF Agito, and FFXIII versus. All that time could have gone into an FFVII remake instead. I believe Extra Credits also mentioned something about how remaking games can be very boring, so maybe SE doesn't want to bother with the effort as well as the high expectations.

TLDR: This is not a remake from the ground up, but a HD remaster. It makes complete sense to bring a big PS2 hit to PS3 and Vita, although perhaps it should of been a collection. Earlier FF title remake arguments should be reserved for other games such as FFXIII-2.

Yes, just as it's more expensive to rebuild a house, than it is to renovate it.

QFT

 

[Unsung]

(Sorry for no poll, for some reason it didn't show up. I'll fix it in a second.)

Okay, to clarify: the FFX remaster is using a filtered version of FFXIII's engine. Now what that actually means I'm not sure. Questions like: "Uhh, is Tidus' necklace actually going to move?" will remained unanswered until we actually see a video.

And am I the ONLY one who loved FFX the most? Yeah, the voice acting wasn't so hot (but it's a JRPG where they didn't even bother to lip sync to the American voices, that should have hinted something). But everything else was amazing. Get past Tidus-Yunas' love fest and you have themes of patricide, deacide, arguments for and against religion, technology vs spiritualism, arguments against sacrifice (which, admit it, is revolutionary for FF), atonement for sin, breaking the cycle of death, etc.

Also, Tidus dissapearing doesn't mean the story was a dream--HE was the dream.

You can analyze the shit out of it, in other words.
---------------------------------------------------

More to the point: why aren't people upset over FFXIII-2? Are we still hoping it was just a joke or what?

 

[GrimHeaper]

Is it just the graphics? Or will the voices be getting some work done too?

I ask because if they can fix this:


Then I shall be glad to buy the game again.

That's just his way of crying.

 

[Adam28]

There are so many PS2 games being remastered in HD and yet people are going a little crazy over this. From memory, Metal Gear Solid, God of War 1 and 2, Sly Cooper, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, and Team Ico's games all have collections either out already or coming out in the future.

God of War and MGS got HD remastered, it's not surprising that an FF PS2 game is getting one as well.

The only criticism I can think of about this is that it seems to be the first game not part of a HD collection

Not true. Chronicles of Riddick, American McGees Alice in Wonderland, Resident Evil 4, Tekken 5, Beyond Good and Evil. All HD-ified without being part of a collection.

Thanks, only the ones in my memory were collections. I think my point still stands though, most of these are XBL/PSN downloads and I have a feeling the FFX will be a full retail priced boxed game. If it's a download and priced similarly to Resident Evil 4 then that's even better.

Edit: And by full price, I mean similarly priced to other collections. Probably around £30.

 

[krazykidd]

Aged badly? I think it looks better than the shitfest that was XII.

It really doesn't need remastered, this is a waste of time just to scrape a bit more money from diehard FF fans.

This is my opinion, the graphics were very nice on the ps2 , sure it wasn't as beautifjl as say star ocean the last hope, but if people are talking about graphics for a jrpg, they are doing it wrong .

 

[GrimHeaper]

Well, the villain does look like this:

Let's just say that gamers who haven't played it before won't be impressed.

I love it when you can instantly tell who hasn't played far in a certain game. Not going to say much here but the real villain is a bit more impressive (and no, it wasn't the goddamn whale).

Yeah, impressive, isn't it...

This is the true villain.

 

[LilithSlave]

impossible hair

I don't know about you, but I don't play video games for realism. I play them for the fantastic.

And I have to say, crazy blue hair is pretty awesome. We humans don't get to have natural hair colours like blue and green and all that. But we ought to. And that's why they belong in video games. If I wanted realism instead of a personally appealing escapism, I'd be outside doing something, not playing video games.

And I don't know about you, but I'd take that crazy hair in Final Fantasy over those garishly musclebound dudes in Gears of War anyday.

 

[Archemetis]

We of course all realise what is implied by a 'remaster' right?

We're all aware of how in the past people have 'remastered' stuff like the God of War franchise and everything made by Team Ico.

They're not re-doing it from the ground up(which is obvious), they're unlikely to be doing anything to the animations, character models, cut-scenes, dialogue, base mechanics or mini-games...

They're just giving it a coating of HD gloss...

The best we can hope for is that everything doesn't come out looking freshly oiled like it did in the GoW HD remasters...

I'm not hoping for a Final Fantasy VII re-make any time soon and not because I don't like the games, not at all, FFVII was my introduction to the series as a kid and I hold some fond memories of playing it.

But I don't want it re-made, at least not like how everyone else wants it, which is to say, 'with juiced up graphics in HD'.

I'd be more than happy to see a cartoony-looking FFVII re-make, maybe with the same graphical style as Kingdom Hearts.

I don't believe any old school game needs a HD polish or photo-realistic touch up to appeal to people even more then they already do now...

So does it make sense to remaster X?

Not to me it doesn't.

Rumors are coming out that are saying FFX will be a full fledged remake with the graphics close to that of Final Fantasy XIII. It's doubtful but definitely better than paying 40$ for a simple HD upgrade.

After that horse shit they gave us about how FFVII would take 40 years to remake to current generation standards I highly doubt that rumour is true.