All the most important and interesting with Gamescom 2016

The Great Fantasy again make it like this is the way to formulate the mission of the development director Final Fantasy XV Hajime Tabata. Japanese role -playing games were at the peak of progress up to the era of PS2, when from the advanced console genre they almost once degenerated into a niche something for otaku. It's time to return.

Hajime Tabata controls everything. Determines where the story will go. Decides what products in the Final Fantasy XV universe are needed to open it as fully as possible (hence the film KingsGlave, Anime series Brotherhood And all the other). Behind him the last word in all matters.

Tabat is a huge responsibility. He had already transferred the exit of the game for two months – as he himself says to bring it to mind and not fool people with patches on the day of release. From the perspective of developers, Final Fantasy XV is obliged to become the best part of the series, and after a sad epic with three controversial thirteenth parts, no one should have doubts that it is – it is – it is.

On Gamescom, I was the second time (the first one in this April) talked with the Tabata about the future. And a week before, I spent four and a half hours in the almost full version of the game. I will say right away: this is not the perfect game. At all. But after those four and a half hours I really want to go back.

The world of everything

As usual, Final Fantasy XV is greeted by violent eclecticism. At the gas station where the Sinda girl works, it smells of Central America: everyone (mainly Sinda is mainly) speaks like Rednecs, against the backdrop plays a terry country (in the representation of the Japanese), and the team is stuck in a textbook provincial diner.

It is worth coming to the cape in the south of the same region, and there is already Hawaii. In the architecture of Inssonia – the capital's city, from where the path of the main characters begins – either the flaming Gothic or socialist realism dominates: concrete spiers block the sky, but manage to maintain pretentiousness and grace. And among this, the main characters, cursed fashionistas with forever ideal hairstyles and in the costumes of the regulars of HIVHAUS VEDERINES.

You know, by the way, how to determine in Final Fantasy XV whether the character is important for the plot? Very simple. There is a bald uncle with a belly and in a t -shirt with short sleeves tucked in wide jeans – he certainly will not show himself. But that guy on the bench is dressed in a T -shirt almost from the last collection of Goshi Rubchinsky. Most likely, when we pass by, he will speak with us and say something important.

► Final Fantasy XV, as always, about beautiful people.

But jokes aside. It is beautiful here. Wherever you go, the hosts of different creatures roam around: either the hippos brushed through the spikes, obscuring the entire screen, then some small saber-toothed shusher, then a bird seems to be a griffin, which at one moment flies right above the heads of the heroes, just to show-here He is me, I am, I'm cool. In the distance you can constantly see something grandiose, not from this world, whether it is something man-made, a city or ruins, or even just a very beautiful rock.

And all this is connected again by a sharp contrast. The most ordinary, simple as a stump of asphalt road. There are no surprises in it at all, but it is she who is the simple element that lowers from heaven to earth and links everything strange in the Final Fantasy XV with the usual.

Moving between different places is the time when we get the most information about the world around us. For example, a huge crater with a meteorite is located near the city of Lesallum. This meteorite is still blazing with fire and, as it turns out, nourishes the whole city with energy. Why is it needed, I learned from the conversation of the noktis and the team during the first trip to the city.

The background is revealed in a similar way. At the beginning of the game, we do not know about the four heroes almost nothing: only the fact that Noktis is a prince, and that he, along with three comrades, went to a wedding with the heiress of one of the provinces of the neighboring empire. And that's it. With this knowledge, we are simply planted in the middle of the desert with a stalled machine, and from here the plot is already moving by inertia.

► The game begins in the middle of the desert. The car is stalled, it has to be pushed manually. “So-so beginning for a fairy tale,” one of the heroes notes.

“If the player immediately dump the entire background, he will be lost and may be bored,” says Tabata when I ask him about this. – We decided to reveal the past of the heroes through small sketches, side stories, conversations during the trip. And if you want to learn more about them and at once, we released Brotherhood ".

Judging by the sensations from the first hours of the game, the solution justifies itself. At first terribly unusual, but gradually imbued with the fact that the game just takes you and lets you go. But I had a keen feeling, as if I was spending much more time on the road than I need. Road stories end over time, the four just rides in silence.

Whether it will continue, it’s not clear, but so far here is the advice: do not forget when the game comes out, immediately find as many tent camps as possible on the map. The spaces here are huge, and it is possible to teleport only between them – in any case, at the beginning of the game.

How they fight here

The impressions remain mixed from the combat system. If you are not in the know, the battles are here in real time. And they look luxurious at the same time – even the very first trailers did not deceive this. The way a knocktis takes out a saber, then a crossbow, then crumbled the size of a rail (he even takes out a fishing rod so, by the way), how he leaves loops from blue sparks, easily leaving the attack, or throws a sword into someone to teleport To him-it is very beautiful and very in the final.

But sometimes it seemed as if due to attempts to combine the essence of the old step-by-step battles with a deft “realm” turned out to be neither. For the usual action, an attack here is too awkward in combination longer than four beats, and some special techniques (like group attacks, when the knocktis and someone from the team grab hands and do something cool) take control of the hero from you for a long time.

If you look at these battles as tactical, then sometimes there is much lack of direct control over the partners – they are not too smart on their own, and it remains only to hope that they will not accidentally kill themselves in the battle with the boss.

► Attacks can be fended, leave them with timely pressing the button. There is enough space for the manifestation of the skill, but due to the speed of animation of the habit, you have to rebuild.

The most strange thing I felt when I fought with major opponents. Large monsters (really large – like a nine -story hippo with a broken eye in one of the first serious side missions) there are a lot, but when you fight with them, I want to climb on the scruff of the scruff of the head purely instinctively, as in the head, as in Shadow of the Colossus or Dragon’s Dogma. But it does not work. You run around, drink your heel and from time to time throw something from afar.

However, with the habit of business they go better. I can understand where the depth will come from in this combat system: resistance and vulnerabilities to different elements are mixed to the basics, the effectiveness of different weapons against different opponents, attacks from stealthily (before the start of the battle, you can have time to cut down several opponents, if you would be displayed), and the same timings, in the end. This is not Devil May Cry , Not Bayonetta , It’s better to beat here less often, but more accurately and on time: despite the real time, the battles here can be quite leisurely, and in almost any situation there is an opportunity to hang on some slope, inspect the battlefield and decide what to do next.

The system of creating spells is moderately intriguing: you collect the essence of different elements around the world, and then combine them with different consumables to receive just the balls of fire, the heating balls of fire or there are balls of fire, flying apart by a fan. In the trees of the development of characters (each of the four has its own set of skills) also hidden a lot, although compared to the giant web of talents from the tenth Final Fantasy and even License Boars of the twelfth, all this is a drop in the sea. But, in any case, in these four hours no one had time to get to the calls called, and of all the heroes I pumped half the Noktis from force, so it is likely that there are new layers further in role -playing mechanics.

► When a special scale is filled, you can run special receptions of partners. This is the only way of direct influence on them (the order “go and do”), which I found in the demo.

In the end, only at the end of the demo I found that if you press the sprint button at the last moment before the end of stamina expired, the scale will be completely restored and the noktis will accelerate again. This non-obvious moment almost entirely eliminated my claims about "To run somewhere for too long". I fully admit that there are a lot of such unobvious moments in Final Fantasy XV, and then another question arises: whether the game can be taught everything properly?

What they do?

The main character is not one. We manage a noktis, but gladiolus (muscle mountain), Ignis (wise guy with glasses) and Prompto (baldbes) almost always with him. Sometimes “guest” satellites will join the party, but most often you will play for these four.

An interesting dynamics are felt between the heroes from the very beginning. It may seem that the knocktis against the backdrop of his companions is a useless saliva … But he, let's say, do not salivate. He is the future king, nurtured in greenhouse conditions, with his concepts about honor, conscience and other. He begins the game with a “clean leaf”, and new features immediately begin to build on his character.

Actually, satellites help him take place in what he lacks, while also showing himself in one way or another. Gladoi constantly covers other asses. Ignis makes plans and gets boring. Only Prompto is still noteworthy only by the fact that it is hyperactive (and in places great annoying) sloppers. Although it seems that a typical WildCard-most likely, something unexpected will be revealed in it later. In the end, he is the only one of the whole team does not belong to the nobility.

► you can give control to the machine to Ignis, or you can manage yourself. True, you will not be able to move out of the road with all the desire, the maximum is to park at the side of the road.

► But chokobo run plus or minus everywhere.

Meanwhile, each of the four has one peaceful skill that develops as you use. Noktis, for example, is fishing, and a very unclear minigra https://sister-site.org/tropic-slots/ is attached to this: you choose a bait, fishing line, throw, hook, then you are a bait in the right direction … “We were told that we had to make fishing too much – we had to do it easier,” Tabata laughs.

Gladio skill is survival, but to pump it to get something more interesting than “knocking more trophies”, I did not have time. Ignis finds the use of monsters, gathered herbs and caught fish, preparing the most beautiful food in video games, giving a team very significant advantages.

Well, and Prompto … Prompto takes pictures. After each halt, you are shown stop cadres from key battles, plot scenes, parking at beautiful viewing points. The photos you like can be preserved – a trifle absolutely useless from the point of view of mechanics, but it very surprised me. Just his uselessness (from the point of view of the old pragmatist) and how much attention was paid to her.

“I think things like this are extremely important,” says Tabata. – Yes, the photos cannot be called the key part of the game mechanics, but they help to enrich the characters and the world around them ".

And the truth. Photos of the Prompto (I am almost sure that the obsession with the fixing of memories is for a reason – the best years of life, whatever one may say), then with what devilish thoroughness the glazing prepared by Ignis is drawn, the way the roof rises when the rain begins (though it starts to rain (though They once decided to raise the roof at the entrance to the tunnel – and lowered me on the road) … Similar things – probably the main surprises of the first four hours in Final Fantasy XV.

► so as not to be unfounded: here is something that Ignis prepares.

But, minus Mishura, there is a completely wealthy open world. It has bunch classes, such as quests about hunting on small monsters, there is the same fishing or skiing for chocobo, and there are really large side adventures. True, I managed to figure out only an order for a giant one -eyed (which I recalled above, speaking of a fight). The fight itself is a little clumsy, but I had enough first impressions of the meeting to remember.

When I ask how to ensure that all these classes do not distract in vain and remain interesting, Tabata focuses on one thing: the open world in Final Fantasy XV is still not a very typical sandbox. In the center of the game is a long, beautiful, linear story that the authors intend to reveal from beginning to end. Everything around is done in order to fill it with moments of freedom. Some side quests may even have a choice – which in the main plot of question will never be about.

But for now, frankly, I'm not sure that there is primary. From going around the world, I have yet received much more pleasure than from plot points. One half is a complex tragic epic about the formation of a hero. The other is a solar road adventure about random meetings and acquaintance with an unknown. And we always had a lot of the first, and the second was very much missing. In video games, for sure.

► Alas, technically console versions do not look as good as they could, however, glory to artists, this is still a very beautiful game.

► Record of the first fifty minutes of gameplay for those who are not afraid of spoilers.

* * *

“If you have PS4 or Xbox One and you will not play in the Final Fantasy XV, then miss a lot,” Tabata says softly but confidently. Now such formulations do not allow themselves even the most arrogant of the developers, but he is sure that this game should become one of the main in the current generation. In the end, if this turns out to be not so, then who needs such a Final Fantasy at all?

You can say for a long time that Tabata has only Type-0 And Crisis Core , which “real” fans are still very fond of chewing for “incorrectness”. But the correctness is not needed here, you need fresh air here. Final Fantasy was never afraid of change. Why would she be afraid now?

I will allow myself to remain in this situation a little skeptic: as I said at the very beginning, already at the first hour it is clear that this is not a perfect game at all. But still, the four hours that I spent with the Final Fantasy XV aroused in me some uncontrolled, enthusiastic, childish curiosity. A similar feeling from recent games, probably, only the third “witcher”.

But in the "Witcher" there were no flying cars, Soviet palaces and chokobo. There was no this unbridled gigantomania, and manic attention to optional details. And there is. And the very realization that anything can happen further in this game, makes you look forward to. In the end, even the imperfect game can remain completely special.

Now imagine how insulting it will be if nothing happens?

All the most important and interesting with Gamescom 2016