verisimilitude
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The art director speaks in the latest video for Final Fantasy XIV
One of the defining elements of Final Fantasy XI was the attention to detail, with every area of the world carefully crafted for maximum verisimilitude. It's a tradition that has been carried on to Final Fantasy XIV, with the game's art direction as one of its primary selling points. Akihiko Yoshida, the art director for the game, shares his thoughts on the design of the game and his hopes for the player experience in the newest Making of Eorzea video, embedded after the cut. Yoshida discusses the added challenges experienced with the game's dynamic format, as well as the many ways that the team has tried to expand upon the lessons learned from Final Fantasy XI. Players of the open beta have no doubt noticed the amount of detail going into each environment, and it helps make even mundane tasks more enjoyable. See what Yoshida has to say about designing Final Fantasy XIV's visuals after the cut, and keep your eyes open as the open beta continues (Square-Enix has been rolling out a new patch nearly every day).
The Mog Log: Layers upon layers of questions
There's a lot coming down the pipeline for fans of both Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI. And there are a lot of questions to be asked, even though not all of them quite mirror those of your beloved author. (Those questions are generally shouted at the sky, insinuating it can hear me and that it needs to give me a beta key.) But while I'm not busy staring at a harsh, uncaring sky, I can certainly offer you a fair number of answers. hatri1181 asks: "I scored really low on the benchmark, but my system beats the living hell out of the min specs. Does that make any sense to anyone else?" Yes. The benchmark isn't totally accurate, as many people were screaming as soon as it was released, and it features several odd points. Points such as being sponsored by one of two major GPU manufacturers, and highlighting the most congested areas of gameplay with no options to turn settings down, only up -- the sort of things that have resulted in people being fully capable of running the benchmark and having scores telling them they could not.
The Mog Log: Unabashed adoration for Final Fantasy XI
Before you go any further in this column, I invite you to join us in today's listening: "Happy Together" by The Turtles. Stare at the above illustration while you listen, and I imagine you'll start laughing before long. But songs that can be turned unintentionally funny aren't the focus of today's column -- that's reserved for praise and adulation of Final Fantasy XI. See, I got called out not too long ago on being very negative about the game recently. And it's a fair accusation. I was unhappy with the the announcements at VanaFest 2010, I had been a bit critical of the game's obstacles and future before... in short, despite having been writing this column for a couple months, I hadn't said a whole lot of nice things about the game. It's easy to take away the idea that I don't like it any longer. That's not true, of course -- if I'd stopped liking it, I would have stopped writing a column about it -- but I haven't praised the game so much as cranked about it like a hurricane. Thus, I'm taking the today for five unabashedly wonderful things. No caveats!
The Daily Grind: Cartoony or Photorealistic?
As far as artistic game development goes, there appear to be 2 schools of thought: Expressionistic aesthetics allow the designers to better portray emotional states, or heighten the absurdity/drama of a moment; photorealism lets players immerse themselves more readily into a world that might be unfamiliar to them, and generates a stronger feeling of verisimilitude. Of course, your mileage may vary, but in general, these modes of thought hold.When it comes to MMOs, where an overarching story frequently takes a backseat to game mechanics, which style provides a better experience? Would WoW benefit from an overhaul of its graphics, making things more realistic-looking? Would EVE Online become a completely different game if everything were cel-shaded and anime-like?
