Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Developers Discuss Changes Made Based On Player Feedback – Tokyo Game Show 2021

The development team behind Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin have been taking player feedback seriously as they work to improve the game ahead of its release next year, in ways that even they weren’t expecting.

After hearing all the speculation from fans about the identity of Chaos after the initial demo that launched in the summer, the developers – a collaboration of minds from Square Enix and Team Ninja – went ahead and included his name (Jack Garland, es i.e. the name of the main character) in the new trailer that was shown during the Tokyo Game Show 2021.

“The protagonist is Garland, and for a while I had in mind that one day I would like to tell the story of how Garland becomes Chaos,” said producer Tetsuya Nomura during a special presentation of the game on Saturday night. . Nomura participated as an announcer, while other team members and two guest players appeared in person. “But for whatever reason, the trailer messed up the twist, I guess.”

Jin Fujiwara, one of the producers, told the team that the proverbial moogle was already out of the bag, leading to the inclusion of the scene at the end of the TGS trailer.

“Fujiwara told me so too,” Nomura said. “He said, ‘People outside of Japan have already figured it out, let’s reveal it.’

Aside from spoiling Nomura’s twist, the feedback the team received from the first demo has led to a number of changes. Graphics were updated and lighting adjusted after players complained that the initial demo was too dark. The new demo, and presumably the final game, will also support 4K rendering.

“We’ve put a lot of energy into making sure it runs at a high frame rate, even at that kind of high resolution,” said Koei Tecmo director Hiroya Usuda.

Even though there was positive feedback from the first demo about the game and the game’s responsiveness, the team still made adjustments in that area. The Lightbringer attack, for example, now consumes more MP, but lasts longer. There have also been adjustments to MP and how quickly the breakout indicator reloads.

A new feature called Resonance has been added to help improve the usefulness of NPC characters in your party. The other characters will be more aggressive in the use of their abilities while the resonance is active. The feature was added to improve the AI ​​performance of the NPCs in their party. Players can now also change the jobs of the other characters in their party.

NPCs can now equip new gear, which was the team’s way of solving the large loot issue, leading players to say they couldn’t use it all. The game tutorials have also been modified and new ones have been added to help introduce players to the world of this game.

The game is difficult, similar to the Nioh series from Team Ninja, and the difficulty levels have been renamed “story” and “action”. Also, the difficulty of the game will not change depending on whether it is played in single or multiplayer mode.

“We wanted to set a difficulty level for people who want to focus on enjoying the story,” Square Enix director Daisuke Inoue said of the story’s difficulty setting.

The gameplay of the multiplayer part of the game was also presented during the exhibition.

“We got a lot of feedback from people who wanted to play multiplayer or who wanted to play with their friends,” Inoue said. “That was something we really wanted to include as well.”

Three members of the panel, playing as Jack, Ash and Neon, teamed up to tackle the new show area, Refrin Wetlands, the new area of ​​the current show. One of the guest musicians mentioned that some of the choruses on the stage soundtrack sounded familiar to him, then wondered if he shouldn’t say anything more, to which Inoue quickly agreed, possibly hinting at some kind of possible callback. .

The multiplayer section showed the three-person team facing off against enemies and using the skills of the job classes they chose for their characters. They struck the enemies in unison and finally took down the boss, after a few close calls, to end the test.

Job classes also come into play in multiplayer and can be used strategically in some cases. For example, a white wizard who charges a spell long enough will be able to expand the area of ​​effect and benefit the rest of the party.

Since the difficulty does not increase in multiplayer, the developers said that it was probably easier to play in a group than alone.

The team will also take feedback from the second demo and apply it to the final game. The current demo will remain available in the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X / S stores until October 11. The survey, where players can submit comments, will be available until October 18.

The game, which is a derivative but not a direct sequel to Final Fantasy, is scheduled for release on March 18, 2022, but pre-orders for a standard edition and a digital deluxe edition are now available. The title is part of the 35th anniversary of Final Fantasy, which will be in 2022. For more information, you can also see our first preview after getting to work on the game.

Jason Coskrey is a writer living in Tokyo. Find him on Twitter at @JCoskrey