It’s not shocking that Square Enix is bringing Final Fantasy to virtual reality, but based on what they’re showing so far, there’s not much reason to get excited.
After Sony’s press conference, the company allowed people to play a number of the VR games that were announced at the event. Batman: Arkham VR, which I wrote about earlier today, looks promising. I can’t say the same for Final Fantasy.
The playable portion was exactly the same as what’s featured in the trailer. You enter into an arena, warp between a few pre-determined points and shoot a monster. You fire at that monster for several minutes, and eventually it dies.
That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. It’s, um, bad.
It doesn’t take meaningful advantage of virtual reality, and the mechanics aren’t satisfying. You hold down a button, point in the direction of the monster and win! Perhaps this’ll change when Square Enix delivers the whole thing later this year, but if it’s more of what I played yesterday, temper your expectations.
In fact, the most interesting part of the demo was watching what people did when it was over. After the monster is defeated, you have a chance to go for a ride with the game’s weirdly sexualised take on Cid. Would you be surprised if people decided to get really close to certain parts of her body? You should not.
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13 responses to “Final Fantasy XV’s VR Demo Is Terrible”
Its called a Demo for a reason, my guess is a last minute sticky tape job to get something ready for E3. there was a disclaimer at the start saying ‘this doesnt reflect the quality of the game’ or something like that.
SE can be very resourceful and have a high rate of delivery, im willing to follow them to see how they progress
I didn’t think much of the bulk of what I saw when it was revealed, my interest however was piqued when sitting down in the car. Not because of the weirdly sexualised take on cid but because from what I’ve seen so far of the world, the thought of sitting back and taking it all in as though you were actually there being driven around is fascinating.
But isn’t a demo’s job to demonstrate the gameplay? If it were a sneak peak at an unfinished product that’d be different, but this is trying to show players what Final Fantasy XV VR will be.
Not always. Some demos are there to illustrate an idea of what’s possible underneath all that.
Look at the other demo’s. XV Episode Duscae was a full preview of one open area of the map for you to explore the game mechanics. Based on feedback, they updated to Episode Duscae 2.0, which tweaked the combat, added chain combos, allowed us to attempt to kill Catoblepas, and extra. On my second play, I didn’t even kill one-eye(the behemoth) because I earned the money needed to fix the Audi just in playing with the chain combos.
The Platinum demo was once again- another demo showing off things that are possible- with the transformations.i do hope that there is significant work on car controls though before the game is finally released
Gameplay was the wrong word. Demonstrate an aspect of the game would have been more appropriate. In this case the thing being demonstrated was the VR, and to properly demonstrate the VR in the chosen scenarios key systems must be in place. So either those systems are in place and they’re not great, or they haven’t been implemented properly yet in which case it’s a terrible idea to build a demonstration around them.
I’m assuming there’s pressure from Sony to just put something up there that shows off the PSVR system, so yeah it might be a rushed attempt to make something for E3, but that doesn’t change what a demo is meant to accomplish. If they were nitpicking about the frame rate, texture quality, lack of voice overs, then yeah I’d say ‘well, it’s a VR demo’ but when the VR is bad, particularly in a way that’s lackluster rather than broken, it runs deeper than it being a slice of a full game.
I’m hoping the VR is better than what they’re saying, but let’s face it the game launches in a few months. They might not have picked the best fight to showcase it but it’s got to be showing something pretty close to the final product.
I agree, it feels slapped in, last minute, but then again platinum demo had the exact same feel
Oh here’s a revised combat system, here is driving mechanics, here are how transformations work, here is Iron Giant, and look how cute carbuncle is, and how cute your hammer sounds
Honestly. Most, if not all VR game demo’s seem kind of disappointing.
Can we be honest and just say that outside of rails or simulator games, there isnt much in the way of VR games?
Just like everyone else that wants VR to take off, I am in the same boat, but if its not a rails game, its just a pair of video goggles which Im sure you can get sub $600.
Yes and before mentions it, I know there is a VR setup/game where you can run around in a warehouse(which I think thats really cool), but this is not going to justify you(and your mates) buying a $600 headset for your stay at home console.
Your opinion is exactly why the games sector should not be driving VR. VR’s purpose is to provide an infinite space not bound by real world rules in which you can create and experience anything via your optical senses. Tilt Brush shows more why VR should exist than any game I’ve seen so far.
Did anyone really have high expectations for something as demoey-sounding as “Final Fantasy XV VR Experience”?
Until there’s holodeck style environments to fully explore then VR games like this will be like the first Kinect games, pretty basic. I think that VR games need to be played with a controller for the moment to actually give the player that freedom
I hope this doesn’t become another 3D Movie situation. 3D movies are cool when they’re necessary. But then companies start throwing out unnecessary 3D releases to cash in on the gimmick, that provide little to no substantial benefit from the 3D experience.
I really hope that video game companies don’t start releasing VR versions of their games for the sake of the gimmick. VR’s cool, but only when it’s the focus of the release. I don’t feel as though Final Fantasy needs, nor suits VR.
Tabata said in the post-conference interview that it was just something put together for people to experience at E3, and that they haven’t even decided what to do with it yet. That it could possibly become DLC for FFXV.
Seriously Kotaku..
This game looks like the most cobbled together shitpile imaginable. Everything about it just seems like they restarted several times, came up with 3 or 4 not great games and were told by the higher ups that all of that money had better end up producing something.
So they took random chunks of game from all of the incarnations and came up with a Korean boyband on a roadtrip in Arizona who fight giant monsters and there’s a wizard or something.