If they went with the direct sequel to Final Fantasy 6

[hassanchop]

How would that have turned out? How would it have impact things? From this article which was brought up in another thread:

www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7

Final Fantasy 7 was an obvious next step, but with console hardware advancing quickly, Square wasn’t sure how to approach the game. It could play things safe and stick to the 2D pixel art style of previous games; it could risk a new art style on aging hardware; it could dabble with early 3D graphics on new machines. Ideas spilled in every direction, and over the course of two years the company took three distinct attempts at getting the game off the ground.

The first of those three was a direct 2D sequel to Final Fantasy 6 for Super Famicom. Setting aside work on the Super Famicom version of Final Fantasy 7, Square began to explore options for where to take the series in 3D. In 1994, that was a new concept for the company, and most of its staff had only been trained to make games in 2D. So rather than jump in head first, Square decided to put together a small experiment.
Using high-end machines from 3D hardware powerhouse Silicon Graphics, Inc., Square put together a tech demo showing what the characters from Final Fantasy 6 could look like in a 3D battle scene. Team members say they always thought of the demo as a research project rather than as something they’d sell to players one day.

Behind the scenes, the process of making a 3D tech demo started with Kazuyuki Hashimoto, an engineer who had experience in early 3D game development working with companies like Sega, Nintendo and Sony.





When Square released screenshots from Final Fantasy 6: The Interactive CG Game in 1995, some magazines jumped the gun and reported them as the first look at a game for Nintendo 64 (under its early name "Ultra 64"). Those reports turned out to be incorrect.

[Mozenrath]

I am kind of glad it didn't. It's kinda hard to follow up the events of 6, the stakes could hardly be any higher than they were at the end of the game.

Besides, it's kind of interesting that you can actually get to the end of the game with VERY few party members if you were so inclined, though obviously, there's no real reason to not get people outside of for the hell of it. A sequel would mean having to invalidate any of the experiences of people who were kind of left with the impression many of the party members were abandoned to their fates, which isn't my thing, but I could see people getting some interest out of that.

[A Platypus Rave]

Jan 13, 2017 15:01:47 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

I am kind of glad it didn't. It's kinda hard to follow up the events of 6, the stakes could hardly be any higher than they were at the end of the game.

Besides, it's kind of interesting that you can actually get to the end of the game with VERY few party members if you were so inclined, though obviously, there's no real reason to not get people outside of for the hell of it. A sequel would mean having to invalidate any of the experiences of people who were kind of left with the impression many of the party members were abandoned to their fates, which isn't my thing, but I could see people getting some interest out of that.

Only story I can think of for it would be rebuilding the destroyed planet... but I don't quite know how well that works from a fun game perspective.

[Deleted]

Be a tough game to follow. I consider that game a truly top shelf SNES title and I didn't even like RPGs yet when I bought it with my birthday money. Tried to play it. Hated it. Then within a year or so, it finally clicked and I lost myself in that World.

So yeah, it's quite likely it would've disappointed to some degree, but it would've been nice to see even an average 64 RPG if the rumor had been true.

God did that system have nothing going for it in that department. Amazing Nintendo mainstays. The best wrestling games ever. A handful of fun, quirky things then the rest of it's library was just absolute shit.

[dav]

Jan 13, 2017 15:04:18 GMT -5 A Platypus Rave said:

Jan 13, 2017 15:01:47 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

I am kind of glad it didn't. It's kinda hard to follow up the events of 6, the stakes could hardly be any higher than they were at the end of the game.

Besides, it's kind of interesting that you can actually get to the end of the game with VERY few party members if you were so inclined, though obviously, there's no real reason to not get people outside of for the hell of it. A sequel would mean having to invalidate any of the experiences of people who were kind of left with the impression many of the party members were abandoned to their fates, which isn't my thing, but I could see people getting some interest out of that.

Only story I can think of for it would be rebuilding the destroyed planet... but I don't quite know how well that works from a fun game perspective.

?

[Powerline]

Jan 13, 2017 15:04:18 GMT -5 A Platypus Rave said:

Jan 13, 2017 15:01:47 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

I am kind of glad it didn't. It's kinda hard to follow up the events of 6, the stakes could hardly be any higher than they were at the end of the game.

Besides, it's kind of interesting that you can actually get to the end of the game with VERY few party members if you were so inclined, though obviously, there's no real reason to not get people outside of for the hell of it. A sequel would mean having to invalidate any of the experiences of people who were kind of left with the impression many of the party members were abandoned to their fates, which isn't my thing, but I could see people getting some interest out of that.

Only story I can think of for it would be rebuilding the destroyed planet... but I don't quite know how well that works from a fun game perspective.

I don't think you'd even have to have some "world rebuilding" aspect to the game, just have that be the story. Some other source of evil (and what their ties are, or lack thereof, to Kefka could be worked in) is trying to hinder/halt that recovery. And you go from there.

Jan 13, 2017 16:20:26 GMT -5 @lesscra said:

Be a tough game to follow. I consider that game a truly top shelf SNES title and I didn't even like RPGs yet when I bought it with my birthday money. Tried to play it. Hated it. Then within a year or so, it finally clicked and I lost myself in that World.

So yeah, it's quite likely it would've disappointed to some degree, but it would've been nice to see even an average 64 RPG if the rumor had been true.

God did that system have nothing going for it in that department. Amazing Nintendo mainstays. The best wrestling games ever. A handful of fun, quirky things then the rest of it's library was just absolute shit.

It reminds me a lot of the Genesis in that aspect. If you made your game (or took the time and optimized the port) with the Genesis/N64 and its functions in mind, you could make some great stuff. If you just tried to port a game over from another system and just tried to "make it work" (in this case, Playstation or PS2/Gamecube near the end of the console's life) then you got, at best, an operable but not all-there version of a game.

But it always blew my mind how the N64 had so much trouble with RPGs. You could make a coffee table with all the RPGs the SNES had, and yet you could count all the quality N64 RPGs on about 3 fingers; I personally can only think of two (Paper Mario and Ogre Battle 64) and am just leaving a third for something I'm sure I'm forgetting. I get losing Square was a big blow, but even pre-FF7 launch, even if you take Square out of the picture outright, Sony had RPGs out the ass for Playstation and N64 had cat scraps. I'm not one of those nuts that think "the N64 failed [HA!] because it wasn't an RPG powerhouse", but that was definitely a genre that was starved on N64.

[BorneAgain]

Jan 14, 2017 10:40:37 GMT -5 Powerline said:

Jan 13, 2017 15:04:18 GMT -5 A Platypus Rave said:

Only story I can think of for it would be rebuilding the destroyed planet... but I don't quite know how well that works from a fun game perspective.

I don't think you'd even have to have some "world rebuilding" aspect to the game, just have that be the story. Some other source of evil (and what their ties are, or lack thereof, to Kefka could be worked in) is trying to hinder/halt that recovery. And you go from there.

Jan 13, 2017 16:20:26 GMT -5 @lesscra said:

Be a tough game to follow. I consider that game a truly top shelf SNES title and I didn't even like RPGs yet when I bought it with my birthday money. Tried to play it. Hated it. Then within a year or so, it finally clicked and I lost myself in that World.

So yeah, it's quite likely it would've disappointed to some degree, but it would've been nice to see even an average 64 RPG if the rumor had been true.

God did that system have nothing going for it in that department. Amazing Nintendo mainstays. The best wrestling games ever. A handful of fun, quirky things then the rest of it's library was just absolute shit.

It reminds me a lot of the Genesis in that aspect. If you made your game (or took the time and optimized the port) with the Genesis/N64 and its functions in mind, you could make some great stuff. If you just tried to port a game over from another system and just tried to "make it work" (in this case, Playstation or PS2/Gamecube near the end of the console's life) then you got, at best, an operable but not all-there version of a game.

But it always blew my mind how the N64 had so much trouble with RPGs. You could make a coffee table with all the RPGs the SNES had, and yet you could count all the quality N64 RPGs on about 3 fingers; I personally can only think of two (Paper Mario and Ogre Battle 64) and am just leaving a third for something I'm sure I'm forgetting. I get losing Square was a big blow, but even pre-FF7 launch, even if you take Square out of the picture outright, Sony had RPGs out the ass for Playstation and N64 had cat scraps. I'm not one of those nuts that think "the N64 failed [HA!] because it wasn't an RPG powerhouse", but that was definitely a genre that was starved on N64.

I'd smugly correct you for forgetting Quest 64, but then again so did everybody else.

[Powerline]

Jan 14, 2017 10:45:23 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Jan 14, 2017 10:40:37 GMT -5 Powerline said:

I don't think you'd even have to have some "world rebuilding" aspect to the game, just have that be the story. Some other source of evil (and what their ties are, or lack thereof, to Kefka could be worked in) is trying to hinder/halt that recovery. And you go from there.


It reminds me a lot of the Genesis in that aspect. If you made your game (or took the time and optimized the port) with the Genesis/N64 and its functions in mind, you could make some great stuff. If you just tried to port a game over from another system and just tried to "make it work" (in this case, Playstation or PS2/Gamecube near the end of the console's life) then you got, at best, an operable but not all-there version of a game.

But it always blew my mind how the N64 had so much trouble with RPGs. You could make a coffee table with all the RPGs the SNES had, and yet you could count all the quality N64 RPGs on about 3 fingers; I personally can only think of two (Paper Mario and Ogre Battle 64) and am just leaving a third for something I'm sure I'm forgetting. I get losing Square was a big blow, but even pre-FF7 launch, even if you take Square out of the picture outright, Sony had RPGs out the ass for Playstation and N64 had cat scraps. I'm not one of those nuts that think "the N64 failed [HA!] because it wasn't an RPG powerhouse", but that was definitely a genre that was starved on N64.

I'd smugly correct you for forgetting Quest 64, but then again so did everybody else.

Oh, I didn't forget it.

You could make a coffee table with all the RPGs the SNES had, and yet you could count all the quality N64 RPGs on about 3 fingers