Sony had their “huge” press conference at E3 recently and I’m not going to sugar coat anything right now, but it was a big let down. All we saw were re-hashes of games that were already announced with no release date attached to them. Sure a third remake of Shadow of the Colossus is cool, but man are they turning Shadow into Skyrim? Does that game need to be everywhere at all times? Monster Hunter looks cool, but it has never been a franchise that I’ve dived into; maybe this will allow me. The biggest slap in the face was the fact that there was no The Last of Us 2 anything anywhere to be seen. THAT was the game that I wanted to have news on; everything else is just filler to me at the moment. Then came the uninteresting VR sections and what might be the biggest waste of development time in video games history; Monsters of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV, developed by Square Enix.
What in Gods name were they thinking? VR hasn’t even taken off yet, and they are wasting precious developers’ time by making a game where you can sit with “Bros” and fish. I can’t even right now. Instead of putting this manpower towards the Final Fantasy VII remake or possibly Kingdom Hearts III, they didn’t put time into, you know, games people actually care about. They wasted time on a fishing game that about thirty people will play because they can AFFORD PSVR. What a waste of time, talent and money. This would have been a good idea if the PSVR was in more homes and if people were more willingly to accept it. That may not be now Microsoft’s new Xbox One X and the still highly expensive PS4 Pro are vying for gamers’ dollars. Now they have to choose from three things to purchase, and I know that on the bottom of my list is VR. Even with a Skyrim based VR incoming, why didn’t Todd Howard put his smarts into beginning development of Elder Scrolls VI instead of a 100 hour plus RPG VR game. Spending over 100 hours in that VR rig sounds like a great idea right? But I digress; I’m here to dig into Sony and Square Enix’s bad management of development time.
Everyone that I know who is a big gamer is clamoring for a release date on Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy VII Remake, neither of which have been given information on at E3 at the time of writing this (Kingdom Hearts 3 received a new trailer at the Orchestra event, but it still didn’t receive information at E3). Some of my buddies don’t even care about Kingdom Hearts III anymore because of the insanely long gap between announcement and news. Personally I still have some Kingdom Hearts games to beat, so I’m not as gung ho for any news on it; I want to know about Final Fantasy VII. That’s the game that I want to enjoy without having to find disc 3 and jerry-rigging my PS1 to work. I want to experience Cloud’s story in stunning HD quality on my PS4 before I die of old age. Don’t forget though, I can go fishing with Prompto, after I shell out three hundred bucks or so for a VR rig. Yippie!
I’m an old school gamer so I remember a lot of the games that Square made before they merged and became Square Enix’s final form. Parasite Eve is the game that I have the most love for; it is my favorite Square Soft title and I think it is an underused and very abused franchise. Why couldn’t they make a proper sequel to this game? The 3rd Birthday just didn’t cut it for me and I want to see what Aya Brea is currently doing in New York City. If I wanted to spend hours fishing in a video game, I would pop in Animal Crossing or Ocarina of Time! This is just one franchise that needs to be reborn and they have countless others: Vagrant Story, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger and so on. I’m sure every gamer, even the younger ones, would enjoy seeing sequels to these titles. The people who worked on this VR spinoff are obviously talented, so why squander their talent on something that could prove to be a big waste of time?
What would you like to see Square Enix do with its development time? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter, @SuperJerry13.