Honestly when the demo news was leaked the day before; it kind of wound me up. I was thinking weve waited years for this game and they're going to give us another demo, just finish the frigging game!
However the event change all that.
To open with an introduction from Sakaguchi san; that was something small but something important to me.
The franchise sort of went off the rails when it entered double digits. I have fond memories of X but I know that it focused more on the cinematic and discarded a little of what FF is all about. Beyond that it went all over the place; XI and XIV (eventually) were solid MMOs but they were MMOs. XII tried to be this offline MMO type thing, it went for a unique art style etc; don't get me wrong it was a decent game but it wasn't good enough to be Final Fantasy in my mind. I fell in line and got hyped for XIII and for the fast pace, cinematic, action packed experience that it was, it was decent but the linearity really disappointed me and I didn't care much for the story. I've gone off on a tangent here but it serves a purpose...
I felt having Sakaguchi; the father of the franchise, was like a vote of confidence. If he is willing to give his backing, then it must be a return to form.
Then we had the trailer. 'Stand By Me' is a great song and Florence and the Machine are fantastic; ha it was all a bit cheesy having four guys travelling about and 'Stand By Me' playing in the background but I love cheese
The anime had me thinking, wow they are really trying hard here and a friend of mine was like "please just STOP. the game.... that's all we need" I felt I'd watch the anime but I didn't really get hyped about it.
Suddenly we have a trailer for a CGI movie. I'm like "OMG this is like Advent Children!" (I loved Advent Children). And you have all these announcements about the cast; Lena Headey, Sean Bean and Aaron Paul. Actors from some of the biggest TV shows of the modern era. That has me thinking this movie has as much thought behind it as the actual game; and honestly I'm probably more excited about the movie
The demo was still hanging over it all for me though, so when we got to that, to find out it's actually more of a prologue; that's a relief. This is something standalone, that they are giving me to play, it's not a chunk of the game and it unlocks a summon for the main game. I'm in.
The one disappointment for me so far is no word on a standalone Blu-ray release for Kingsglaive. I'm not really big on collector's editions. I own one or two but they were just ones I stumbled upon. So I'm never going to pay €270 for the edition with all the disks. If I have to I'll pay €90 for the mid tier with Kingsglaive on Blu-ray. However in an ideal world I can buy my FFXV in it's ordinary PS4 box, I can buy my Kingsglaive Blu-Ray and hell even the anime on a standalone Blu-ray too. So fingers crossed that is announced once the pre-order hype dies down.
Overall I'm super hyped now. FFXV is possibly tied with Star Ocean V for my most highly anticipated game of the year now.
