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Paulo27 wrote:

W-why would that be something to apologizing for? Do fans really want to get spoiled?

I don't know about how the Tales of... fanbase works, but I do know some fanbases have a majority who want to know absolutely everything about a game as soon as possible (like with Pokémon), and some fanbases have more people want to avoid spoilers for as long as they can (like with The Legend of Zelda).

Snakebit1995 wrote:

That's what i was thinking...did you want the whole plot written out for you? Why can't we be surprised anymore?

In regards with Pokémon--I used that fanbase as an example because it's the one I know the most about that falls into this category--the fans tend to be either the analytical sort or the trivia sort. With the former, they want to know as much as they can before they start playing so as to plan out how to play in advance. (I'd imagine a good portion of the Sierra point-and-click fanbase is like this too, as not knowing what to do in advance, then making the wrong decisions, will literally render you unable to continue playing the game unless you start from the beginning or your last save was before you made the wrong decision.) With the latter, they have the most fun obtaining information and working from that. In both cases, they don't care much about being surprised, and actually dislike surprises.

Blue21 wrote:

Man, if creators start apologizing for taking their stories in whatever direction they want, I fear for the future of creativity.

The Internet has made Comic Book Guys out of everybody.

Soledit10 wrote:

You're wrong. The issue with the fanbase backlash is the false marketing done for Zestiria. This is a very serious issue to many fans and Baba needs to do more than just apologizing.

This marketing stunt infuriates a huge population of the Japanese fanbase. There are those who doesn't care how Alisha is treated in-game, but is just as unhappy on how she is advertised. Making the DLC episode free for 2 weeks and informing the fanbase that Zestiria has no official heroine, after the game's release, just aggravates the situation. Since it is obvious that Namco/Baba just refused to be truthful. They should never be forgiven for this stunt.

What do you say Mr. Baba and the people at Namco-Bandai should do then?

Sifixs wrote:

Yes, but she is not the protagonist Xillia 2, so there is nothing wrong with Milla

There's nothing wrong with Milla. I don't like the way she was treated, though. She's not Xillia 2's main character, but she's A main Tales series character, and of a game that came out just a year before.

It's like if they brought Yuri back in a Vesperia sequel just to spoiler[lock him in a dungeon, clone him with magic and kill that clone off, and then bring him back at the end.] Not satisfying, and not a fun way to see a character you like get treated, ESPECIALLY the physical manifestation of God.

Soledit10 wrote:

You're wrong. The issue with the fanbase backlash is the false marketing done for Zestiria. This is a very serious issue to many fans and Baba needs to do more than just apologizing.
中略
Since it is obvious that Namco/Baba just refused to be truthful. They should never be forgiven for this stunt.
下略

So... not that different than Metal Gear Solid 2 (Snake/Raiden), Final Fantasy VII (Aerith), the anime Gai Rei Zero (which had completely misleading marketing and first episode, much "worse" than this), or a number of other works. (The Xillia 2 complaints don't seem all that different than Chrono Cross for wrecking havoc on the heroes of a previous game.) Do you complain because Aerith turns out not to be the "real heroine" of Final Fantasy VII?

Thank you for laying out the case for the people who are upset. You've done quite a lot to convince me that the people complaining are very off-base. Absolutely nothing in what you've posted seems like anything to get upset about; a little misdirection now and then from a creator about a plot is perfectly reasonable and helps keep wonder and suspension of disbelief alive (just like how the occasional bad ending in a couple shows keeps tension high in others, even though audiences hate any individual bad ending.) I mean, really, trailers, advertisements, credits order, and figures? So?

Console games are cheaper than they've even been. They cost the same in nominal dollars as they did during the SNES era. I don't find the price plus DLC a ripoff either. (They have lots of other DLC that I'd never pay money for, but I'm okay with paying for an actual side story or expansion in many cases.)

leafy sea dragon wrote:

What do you say Mr. Baba and the people at Namco-Bandai should do then?

Something few game developers ever did: Admit to their mistakes.

Saying their sorry for causing fans "worry" a month before the Tales of Festival. The biggest annual fan event where most of the largest announcements are made. Only an idiot can't read between the lines......why Baba?

leafy sea dragon wrote:

Snakebit1995 wrote:

That's what i was thinking...did you want the whole plot written out for you? Why can't we be surprised anymore?

In regards with Pokémon--I used that fanbase as an example because it's the one I know the most about that falls into this category--the fans tend to be either the analytical sort or the trivia sort. With the former, they want to know as much as they can before they start playing so as to plan out how to play in advance. (I'd imagine a good portion of the Sierra point-and-click fanbase is like this too, as not knowing what to do in advance, then making the wrong decisions, will literally render you unable to continue playing the game unless you start from the beginning or your last save was before you made the wrong decision.) With the latter, they have the most fun obtaining information and working from that. In both cases, they don't care much about being surprised, and actually dislike surprises.

Oh I love Pokemon so i know what your talking about. I personally don't min max them but i know people who wanna know EV's and stats before the game is even out.

but plot wise i don't think anyone wants the whole game told to them before it's out I know a lost of JRPG games have a ton of trailers that show a ton of story things but why can't we have fun twists anymore.

It's just like when people data-mine hidden achievements on steam games, where's the fun and the surprise anymore. For some the Binding of Issac was ruined by data miners who found all the secrets hours after release.

Glad he apologized hope it gets somehow fixed with the PS4/PC version if they add new story content.

Soledit10 wrote:

leafy sea dragon wrote:

What do you say Mr. Baba and the people at Namco-Bandai should do then?

Something few game developers ever did: Admit to their mistakes.

Saying their sorry for causing fans "worry" a month before the Tales of Festival. The biggest annual fan event where most of the largest announcements are made. Only an idiot can't read between the lines......why Baba?

The man did nothing wrong. I don't see why plot twists are something creators need to apologize for.

When I first heard this controversy, I thought it was because this was supposed to be some kind of bad ploy to sell DLC, but it apparently isn't, especially since it seems like everyone gets one of these DLCs.

Now, if the whole complaint about how bad the writing is turns out to be a major issue and not something 2ch has blown out of proportion, maybe he should. Demanding that he apologize for the whole "heroine swap" thing is just silly, though.

Quote:

Console games are cheaper than they've even been. They cost the same in nominal dollars as they did during the SNES era. I don't find the price plus DLC a ripoff either. (They have lots of other DLC that I'd never pay money for, but I'm okay with paying for an actual side story or expansion in many cases.)

Time is also an investment factor, an average console rpg experience is usually around 40-70 hours.
an RPG is competing with the time table of other games and other media that takes up personal time, so even at the shorter end of the spectrum of 40 hours one could have seen several seasons of shows or dozens of feature films.
So there should be an expectation of quality on a piece of work that is demanding many hours of the consumers time in place of say watching a few more seasons of anime or playing a different video game.

Honestly the guy really should have to apologize for angry fanboys being spazzes on the internet but it just shows the difference between a professional individual who didn't read just how much people would freak the hell out over a female character being removed from the party and a bunch of entitled fans who blew things way out of hand and probably will just continue to whinge and whine anyway. He may genuinely want to have a dialogue with fans but I doubt the fans will stand for anything other than seeing him publicly lynched. The situation just strikes me as that irrational.

residentgrigo wrote:

This "controversy" is so ridiculous i barely know what to say. Had they revealed it people would have cried spoilers and had they just shut their trap (they rightfully did) and just told their story they would still have been in the wrong.
(J-)RPG´s with changing cast have been around since the 80s and the game sold so the fans should apologize if anyone. American reviewers probably won´t even care...
PS4 version here i come and who come Xillia 2 didn´t cause a tempest in a teacup?
That game pissed all over part 1 and changed the female lead in the middle too. Syphonia 2 is another mess and so on. Hello SilverSpades btw.

That's the part that gets me. Like people lost their minds on the internet yet the game went on to be one of the best selling titles of the quarter in Japan and did pretty well into it's second and third week AS these "controversies" were going on. It just tells me people just want something to complain about online and will seize on any opportunity because it makes them feel important, but then they'll be hypocrites and turn around and buy the game and support the company they claim to loathe anyway. And it's not like the game sold that much less than it's predecessor either, like maybe a 30,000 less when we're talking about numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

Anyway I don't think there's anything wrong with criticizing something, but people really could stand to just stop constantly complaining and being so dramatic about everything cause at the end of the day it really is just a video game and you don't have to buy it. At the very least it never got as bad as Mass Effect 3 where people took at as far as stalking one of the designers in public and giving them death threats to the point where she legitimately started to fear for her life and consider getting or hiring personal protection.

GVman wrote:

Soledit10 wrote:

leafy sea dragon wrote:

What do you say Mr. Baba and the people at Namco-Bandai should do then?

Something few game developers ever did: Admit to their mistakes.

Saying their sorry for causing fans "worry" a month before the Tales of Festival. The biggest annual fan event where most of the largest announcements are made. Only an idiot can't read between the lines......why Baba?

The man did nothing wrong. I don't see why plot twists are something creators need to apologize for.

When I first heard this controversy, I thought it was because this was supposed to be some kind of bad ploy to sell DLC, but it apparently isn't, especially since it seems like everyone gets one of these DLCs.

Now, if the whole complaint about how bad the writing is turns out to be a major issue and not something 2ch has blown out of proportion, maybe he should. Demanding that he apologize for the whole "heroine swap" thing is just silly, though.

I think if anything it just continue to show how the Japanese entertainment culture and it's increasing fixation on bishoujo characters as a defining line between whether something is good or not is really getting more and more out of hand by the year. Like don't get me wrong I don't mind bishoujo characters or anything (I think Milla is a fun character and rather easy on the eyes) but some people take it just way to seriously to the point where everything else about a game or anime is rendered utterly irrelevant and window dressing it seems. There can be countless other things to look for in a game/anime but it seems nowadays if the cuteness and attractiveness factor of the character isn't given what fans feel is it's due that placates their attachment to them it's, forgive the pun, and instant game over.

It can be so hard to read for creators at times too, especially ones that are veterans from the older school and didn't grow up in a fan environment where these things were just so crucially important, and it's a huge double edged sword as well. If they get it right then it can mean a huge windfall and a mega-hit, if they get it wrong and fail to read the affection for a female heroine right and she ends up getting killed off or her story takes her in a direction other than what people thought as a result of the plot than it can lead to full on meltdowns and people, some of whom have been in the industry for years losing their jobs in a flash.

Somebody said they fear for creativity here and somebody said they figure girls>plot and I think both of those go hand in hand and are legitimate concerns at least as far as Japanese media goes.

John Thacker wrote:

So... not that different than Metal Gear Solid 2 (Snake/Raiden), Final Fantasy VII (Aerith), the anime Gai Rei Zero (which had completely misleading marketing and first episode, much "worse" than this), or a number of other works. (The Xillia 2 complaints don't seem all that different than Chrono Cross for wrecking havoc on the heroes of a previous game.) Do you complain because Aerith turns out not to be the "real heroine" of Final Fantasy VII?

And yet, Psycho, one of the earliest and by far the most famous example of this protagonist switch plot twist, has been sung to high praise everywhere ever since the movie came out.

Soledit10 wrote:

Something few game developers ever did: Admit to their mistakes.

Saying their sorry for causing fans "worry" a month before the Tales of Festival. The biggest annual fan event where most of the largest announcements are made. Only an idiot can't read between the lines......why Baba?

I don't really see what the difference is between saying one is sorry, provided it's genuine, and saying one made a mistake. You'll have to elaborate on this one.

Snakebit1995 wrote:

Oh I love Pokemon so i know what your talking about. I personally don't min max them but i know people who wanna know EV's and stats before the game is even out.

but plot wise i don't think anyone wants the whole game told to them before it's out I know a lost of JRPG games have a ton of trailers that show a ton of story things but why can't we have fun twists anymore.

It's just like when people data-mine hidden achievements on steam games, where's the fun and the surprise anymore. For some the Binding of Issac was ruined by data miners who found all the secrets hours after release.

Me, I don't like the idea of hidden achievements, especially if they're things that don't come naturally when you're playing. Something like "Do X 50 times," that I'll likely eventually get once I play enough. Stuff like BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger's "Decommission Nirvana 3 times in one round on standard settings" is not (you barely have enough time to do that in one round doing it on purpose). Games tend to have this habit of making the most obtuse achievements the hidden ones, and that drives me nuts because I'm now wandering around aimlessly if I don't look it up in advance, and I hate wandering around aimlessly.

As for Pokémon, it is definitely a series that rewards players for knowing every nook and cranny of how the game works and is one of the most data-mined video game series out there. It says something that when Nintendo asked fans around the world what Pokémon to release with its Hidden Ability, the most-voted answer was Ditto with Impostor. (At that point, the only way to find out that Ditto's Hidden Ability would be Impostor was to data-mine a Generation V game or read up on someone else's data-mining results. That is, no one was supposed to actually know it yet.)

It does apply to the story too, though not to the same extent. That's generally done to figure out what Pokémon are available and where, and the best strategies to power through the game as well as what to watch out for, as some of the games can throw some nasty curveballs to the unprepared. A good example is Norman's Slakings in the games set in Hoenn: They're much stronger than anything you've seen in prior, but each Slaking share a key weakness that becomes insurmountable if you don't already have a winning strategy ahead of time. Another is Spiritomb in any game that has it (except X and Y), as it requires complicated procedures to encounter and catch it that you're unlikely to ever do.

Kaioshin_Sama wrote:

At the very least it never got as bad as Mass Effect 3 where people took at as far as stalking one of the designers in public and giving them death threats to the point where she legitimately started to fear for her life and consider getting or hiring personal protection.

I know BioWare got pretty villified after Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2, but do you know what got that fan so angry? (In any case, that fan had a serious risk of getting arrested if that designer reported it to the police.)

This phenomenon of public shaming of creators, designers, and critics feels like a new sort of bullying to me. Or maybe some sort of irrational "This person makes me feel bad so I'll make them feel bad too," or "I was only playing around," the latter of which I heard way too much in middle school as an excuse for inflicting harm onto other people.

This is a little bit ridiculous. Just because Zestiria made a few missteps (in some peoples opinion) is no reason to worry or call in to question the entire future of the Tales of franchise.

Honestly I don't recall any promises in regards to Alisha being the main female protagonist or of huge narrative significance were ever made during Zestirias development. Sure the promotional material for the game is slightly misleading, but issuing an apology because "fans" jumped to conclusions about a characters importance is over the top.

Theses games are a creative collaboration, made by the developer to tell a story they want to. Anyone feeling betrayed or lied to because the story and its characters didn't turn out the way they expected/imagined, just comes across as extremely self-absorbed.

Kadmos1 wrote:

I think some important questions to consider are: Was this him apologizing personally or speaking on behalf of the company? Also, was this staged or genuine?

I'm almost certain he was speaking for the company, a simple by the numbers apology to diffuse the growing animosity and keep their image intact. Wanting to talk about it on a separate occasion sounds like a classic corporate way to avoid the issue for as long as possible, in the hopes that it eventually burns itself out.

Acting humble and apologetic seems to be the go to tactic in Japan, especially when fan-boys are on the warpath. I'd be surprised if behind the scenes the entire creative team weren't collectively rolling their eyes and thinking "why do we even bother?".

This isn't a plot twist, rather it is a case of bait and switch. You paid for one bill of goods, and received another bill of goods.

Sort of like this. Ultimate Hellsing 2: Alucard's Revenge. You'd think from the title, the trailers, and the promotional materials, it would be all about Alucard, but Alucard is secretly buried alive in concrete in the first episode and is never seen again. So Malakai the vampire steps up to replace him. We all know how well that would go over.

If you insist on using plot twist to describe this, then it should written this way: (fill in the blank) awful plot twist!.

The "Sixth Sense" had a real plot twist.

Soledit10 wrote:

tl;dr

I've never played Zestria or any Tales game for the matter and if that's what the apology was for, it's dumb pure and simple, the gaming industry has enough instances of fans getting all riled up over things they blow super out of proportion or showing just how disgustingly entitled they can be.

If you chase a market, it's part of your job to know how to not upset it. While I've only ever played the Dejap Phantasia, it's clear that the series arranged an expectation of heroines in each game, Zestria played to this expectation and then promptly proceeded to treat its supposed heroine like garbage(amongst other writing and technical problems); the fans reacting poorly to that isn't exactly surprising. And when you manage to alienate your fans, some form of apology is pretty much mandatory if you want to keep the lights on.

Soledit10 wrote:

You're wrong.

No, I'm not. Your entire post sounds like the same whining the so-called fans did. Your case isn't the least bit convincing. And wow, was the only reason you got an account here just to try and prove me wrong? (Which you weren't successful at, by the way.)

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NEWS: Tales of Series Producer Baba Apologizes For Fans' Unease