The Final Fantasy Thread

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The Fair Lady said:
Is the card game easy to pick up? Asking because I tend to suck at them.
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It requires some trial and error but it's simple enough to understand. Its gives vibes of starting out easy but gradually getting more and more in depth. I like how all the opponents have unique personalities.
 
Crazy thought, would Square Enix ever revisit The Spirits Within someday?
Like try to make it good or salvage it? For me the problem is that it was boring, and all they did was talk and talk and talk. It shows that the people who made it know nothing about film making, neither of the characters had any character whatsoever except bad jokes from Buscemi's character who looks like a lamer Luke Perry. Maybe they should have brought in an actual director to the project. Or at least as a consultant.
 
Michael Wade said:
Remake was really bad about that but rebirth feels a lot less forced, and the card game is legit fun. I haven't lost myself in side stuff like this since KOTOR
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Square has a really good way of easing you into their card games, and then just choke slamming you into the ground with sudden difficulty spikes with it if you're not really prepared or fully understand the rules. Triple Triad was like that with me when I first started it way back when as a wee lad.
 
PS1gamenwatch said:
Crazy thought, would Square Enix ever revisit The Spirits Within someday?
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No.
PS1gamenwatch said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=JzJ8MWDg350Like try to make it good or salvage it?
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That’s one of the 3 reasons it is in they state it is in. They did try to salvage it. Sometimes you just can’t. Because even if you can it will cost you way too much money to do so you’ll never make it back.
PS1gamenwatch said:
Maybe they should have brought in an actual director to the project. Or at least as a consultant.
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They did. One of the reasons the project was so bad. The people that actually made films they were working with tried to turn the film into something it was never intended to be.
 
PS1gamenwatch said:
Crazy thought, would Square Enix ever revisit The Spirits Within someday?
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I thought it was good for what it was, it just wasn't Final Fantasy in anything but name. A game version could actually be pretty damn cool, I don't see them ever touching it again though.

At most I could see them maybe releasing an anniversary edition with special features that may include some type of epilogue in visual novel/audio drama form or something like that.
 
SSj_Ness said:
I thought it was good for what it was, it just wasn't Final Fantasy in anything but name. A game version could actually be pretty damn cool, I don't see them ever touching it again though.

At most I could see them maybe releasing an anniversary edition with special features that may include some type of epilogue in visual novel/audio drama form or something like that.
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If they ever made a crossover type kh game it would be cool to visit for a spell
 
It's interesting how Advent children leaned all the way in the other direction. It leaned towards pleasing fans to such an extent that critics would consider it terrible but the movie was successful because of that.

There's something to be said for not trying to appeal to anybody else but your fans.
 
Spirits Within is like the first 10% and last 10% and somewhere in the middle 10% of a Final Fantasy slapped together as a movie. Final Fantasy as storytelling isn't really translatable to the big screen, you have one and a half to two and a half hours to fit material into for most movies, and a Final Fantasy movie would need like several times that at least lol to fit in all the character and plot points. If you strip it down it fails, like Spirits Within. Maybe a trilogy could pull it off, but the basic framework of Final Fantasy stories is there's a big twist or raising of the stakes halfwayish through, which is fine for a duology but tricky to split that kind of story into a trilogy. Final Fantasy is a story the audience is intended to unfold over multiple days or weeks or months playing vidya, not through a few hours in a movie theater

As its own thing Spirits Within wouldn't be completely terrible, but it's not Final Fantasy. It's a few generic details from Final Fantasy slapped on to a not-Final Fantasy
 
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PS1gamenwatch said:
What did they try to do?
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Turn it into more of an action orientated film than originailly intended.

And well, making the film and any changes cost way too much and Square did not really know what they were doing.

They burned through money.
draggs said:
Spirits Within is like the first 10% and last 10% and somewhere in the middle 10% of a Final Fantasy slapped together as a movie. Final Fantasy as storytelling isn't really translatable to the big screen, you have one and a half to two and a half hours to fit material into for most movies, and a Final Fantasy movie would need like several times that at least lol to fit in all the character and plot points.
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And then you realise Advent Children did fine in terms of putting a story into that time frame.
draggs said:
As its own thing Spirits Within wouldn't be completely terrible, but it's not Final Fantasy. It's a few generic details from Final Fantasy slapped on to a not-Final Fantasy
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It was not intended to be FF in the first place originally.
 
draggs said:
Spirits Within is like the first 10% and last 10% and somewhere in the middle 10% of a Final Fantasy slapped together as a movie. Final Fantasy as storytelling isn't really translatable to the big screen, you have one and a half to two and a half hours to fit material into for most movies, and a Final Fantasy movie would need like several times that at least lol to fit in all the character and plot points. If you strip it down it fails, like Spirits Within. Maybe a trilogy could pull it off, but the basic framework of Final Fantasy stories is there's a big twist or raising of the stakes halfwayish through, which is fine for a duology but tricky to split that kind of story into a trilogy. Final Fantasy is a story the audience is intended to unfold over multiple days or weeks or months playing vidya, not through a few hours in a movie theater

As its own thing Spirits Within wouldn't be completely terrible, but it's not Final Fantasy. It's a few generic details from Final Fantasy slapped on to a not-Final Fantasy
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Maybe if it was handled like Lord of The Rings. But it would be a herculean task to get non-gamers and casual fans to be invested. Like I said Spirits Within needed less talking, a balance of exposition and action, a balanced mix of sci-fi and fantasy and more character in their characters. Say what you will about Nostalgia Critic but he had a point that it is too dull and lifeless and even if they they did encompass some fantasy to the product it would still have the same problem.
 
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6MillionCoofs said:
And then you realise Advent Children did fine in terms of putting a story into that time frame.
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And Advent Children had the benefit of the characters and exposition already being taken care of for the audience. It was like a 2 parter series finale after the 5 seasons of story and character development that was the original game
 
Fun fact: The Spirits Within as it ended up being released (the script changed a lot during production) is actually extremely similar to the first rejected proposal they were going to use for Final Fantasy VII. For example, just like in the movie, New York City was supposed to be the setting for FFVII, and it would have been more of a detective plot; this initial idea was later reutilized for Parasite Eve, in the same way that the second discarded proposal eventually became Xenogears. The Spirits Within even has its own version of the Lifestream, with the titular spirits basically standing in for Jenova, also brought to the planet via a meteorite. Hironobu Sakaguchi worked on Spirits Within not long after he'd finished work on VII, and wrote the initial story, titled Gaia, that was the film's basis.
 
draggs said:
And Advent Children had the benefit of the characters and exposition already being taken care of for the audience. It was like a 2 parter series finale after the 5 seasons of story and character development that was the original game
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Sure it had the benefit but as someone that watched it before playing the OG game, it did not need it to understand. Characters in the movie work fine. They learned a lot from Spirits Within.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
It shows the devolution of the series, and gaming in general. The idea of having a minimalist scene is fucking foreign to game directors. Everything needs a billion lines of text, cutaway to other people so niggercattle will realize yhat bad thing happened and overwhelming musical score.
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One of the reasons SH2Remake is guaranteed to be bad, the post-modern industry has almost lost the ability to be subtle. And certain games, and certain moments and certain characters NEED subtlety. Remember when Sakamoto had Samus talk in Other M and tried to do Metroid melodrama?
SSj_Ness said:
That guy has to go.
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They'll just do him like they did Abe if he ever goes off the plantation and starts saying things like "have sex" to the Japanese instead of the new foreign workers they are now being forced to import by the trainload.
 
I was curious but couldn't help myself. I asked ChatGPT to rewrite Final Fantasy The Spirits Within incorporating elements from the original games. Not sure if it will improve anything but.

In this reimagined version of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the story maintains its core plot but introduces elements of the beloved game series, including Warriors of Light, black, blue, and white mages, and powerful summons like Shiva and Shinryu. The film follows Aki Ross, whose haunting visions are tied to the mysterious Phantom Planet. She soon learns that a part of this planet crashed into another world inhabited by the Warriors of Light and gifted mages. These warriors and mages have used their newfound magic to prevent the Phantoms from destroying their world and have been sending messages to Aki through her visions. In this version most of the alien inhabatants in Aki's vision of the battles were summons, turned into bioweapons, the inhabatants were exploiting the lifestream of their world, it's spirit, as a source of energy, and eventually harnessed into weapons. As the story progresses, the mages help Aki and her team realize the Phantoms’ true nature as the spirits of a lost alien race. With this knowledge and the support of the other world’s inhabitants, they work to put these restless souls to rest. In the climactic final act, the Warriors of Light and mages from the other world transmit the alien particles containing the eighth spirit to Aki. As in the original film, she and Gray combine it with the other seven spirits while the antagonist, Hein, destroys the Zeus cannon and himself through his stubborn actions. Gray sacrifices himself as a conduit to transmit the completed spirit into the alien Gaia in an emotional and dramatic moment. The Earth’s Gaia returns to normal, and the Phantoms ascend into space, finally at peace. As Aki is pulled from the crater, clutching Gray’s body, the Warriors of Light and mages from the other world send psychic messages thanking her for her support. To Aki’s shock, they reveal themselves to be humans. The film closes with Aki, heartened by the collaboration between worlds, gazing across the newly liberated Earth.
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Another interesting tidbit, when Spirits Within flopped, workers of Xenogears and Chrono Cross departed, and the anime Final Fantasy Unlimited was discontinued and a following season cancelled.
 
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