Yasumi Matsuno, the man behind Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre and FF12 just launched a Kickstarter for a new TRPG.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/482445197/unsung-story-tale-of-the-guardians
Wish I had $10,000 to donate. x.x
Pledged for my fiancée and I~
I'm gonna pledge on Friday, but I'm not really sure what to think about this game. There is not a central character-based narrative. It's a game where the player can be one of five armies or something. While I love Matsuno's world building and his rich atmospheres and histories, it's that personal character driven approach of his that makes Tactics my favorite game. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like this game will have this.
With Matsuno and his music composer... and a team of developers that were raised on tactical RPG's like us, it's worth just pledging for the chance at a great game. It has the potential to be legendary
Edit: Thanks for the heads up btw Havermayer!
3.2 million USD for a map editor. Let's go! If everyone on this forum donated about 100 thousand, we could have it by the end of the week.
The synopsis seems like standard Matsuno fare to me. Tactics Ogre, FFT, and FFXII are primarily world-driven narratives. The protagonist of these games is a small actor on a much larger stage. In the present case, it seems that there will be not one, but many small actors, each of whose story is told over a shorter length of (gameplay) time. This is likely to conform the gameplay to its smartphone platform, on which games are expected to be played on the go in short bursts.
I think this formula has potential. It will be like George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. With many actors onstage, Matsuno has the freedom to write tragic endings without breaking the narrative's continuity. Thus, he needs not rely on tired tropes like Plot Armour.
I do hope this gets funded, simply because Matsuno needs the work.
However there are some issues. People just see his name and react to that. What appears to be the case is that this tiny french company simply hired him to work on a pre-existing project rather than this being a project idea of Matsuno himself. So they're using his fame to raise money.
He's still writing the story and designing the world and mechanics. Xifi linked to that info the other night, but I can't find it in my backlog.
This needs to be a front page news story, this is HUGE.
PS: And pledged.
Popped my KS cherry on this one. Now to just sit back and wait until they make me a game.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/482445197/unsung-story-tale-of-the-guardians/posts/735272
The game described in Matsuno's words.
Wow things are really not looking good for this project. I think they are loosing backers faster than they are gaining them. With only one week to go it is likely they will make their main goal, but stretch goals are looking pretty hopeless. The team appears to be working hard to rally, but they really had a terrible game plan going into this. With all the staff and talent they had around this it is pretty shameful that they messed this up so big and came so unprepared to run a kickstarter campaign.
I'm torn because I want another game from that Matsuno team, but I'm not impressed with who they have chosen to team with.
*losing. Lose the opposite of win. Loose is the opposite of tight. :eng101:
And yeah, a bunch of words do not make a compelling presentation to anyone but members of a board meeting. They needed substance.
When Havermayer first posted this, I didn't bother to even read/listen to the pitch before pledging. That said, maybe make sure you also put your concerns over on Playdek's kickstarter page so they'll at least have no reason not to see them (if you haven't already). I say that coming from encountering feedback (well, biting criticism) elsewhere on the internet and wishing it had been directed somewhere I actually read (so I had a chance to do something about it).
There have been many many many requests to see anything resembling a screenshot or mock-up. That one thing would bring in a lot of fence-sitters, and should have been there when it launched. I just really hope it isn't too little, too late to put that in an update at this point.
And yeah, we pledged before reading the whole thing, too. No regrets. Just sincerely hope it meets goal, or we will be sad pandas.
Base gameplay screenshots update
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/482445197/unsung-story-tale-of-the-guardians/posts/740862
Unlike my fiancee, I totally understand and support the triangle movement.
Edit: Ow... not only have they not gathered a single donation in nearly 8 hours, but they're 133k away... which is what they were mid-day yesterday. This hurts. And Xifanie says the total has -dropped- from when she last checked, even. I have serious doubts that the goal will be met. :(
I hope they recognize the need for as large scale game... If they use a poorly planned kick starter as a barometer for interest they'd be crazy.
I am afraid that's probably going to be it then... Despite Matsuno putting everything he had into the project and even enticing Sakimoto and Yoshida to jump aboard his name recognition alone was not enough to carry a kickstarter to its final goal. Had this been four or even three years ago this really might have stood a chance, but Matsuno's name has been too long gone from the matters of importance in the industry that people have begun to forget about the pioneer of Tactics games.
With this failure, even after uniting his team, will likely disillusion the man himself to continue with game designing all together.
It is a true shame. This project seemed like it could have been promising with what snippets of information we were told but public apathy and poor planning on Playdek's part ruined the best chances for it.
It will still be made regardless, just only for Android. The game was already being made, the Kickstarter was for mainstream multiplatform.
And the problem isn't lack of Matsuno's notoriety, it was a combination of factors. One, early on, there was an attack made on the nature of the project by spreading word that Matsuno had next to nothing to do with it. That brought the support train down quite a bit. Two, there's the matter of how nothing was really said about the game itself until 15 hours ago.
Matsuno still has plenty of notoriety. The Kickstarter's existance went viral pretty much immediately off of his involvement. The only issue of timing was in starting a Kickstarter for a game without anything to show about the game but concept art. It's a strategy game, and most strategy game players care more about mechanics than artwork.
You might have a point. Perhaps its improper to say that Matsuno's name has diminished as of late there were a mess of other issues. Maybe I'm being too doom and gloom about it.
I agree with Toshiko. Horrible kickstarter campaign, makes me worried about the quality of the final product as well. I think they are loosing backers at the same rate they are getting new ones. It still might be funded, but such a wasted opportunity. Great seeing you LD.
Always glad to see a familiar face, Cheetah. Not to say that there still aren't a lot of veterans about, Xifanie seems as busy as ever in making new hacks, Elric's blossomed into the foremost face of FFH with his own highly unique repertoire of skills and the rest of the crew is still busy at work with Arena or putting together their own ideas. The only noticeable face I see missing is Eternal.
In any case my interests have been subverted for the time being, but I'm never one to give something up for ever. I'm a fairly... cyclical person. My first attempt at hacking games started with FFII SNES, experimenting with game genie codes and the like. Then as I grew older I started to learn how to mod Zelda 64 and from Zelda 64 to FFT, then FFT to the older .hack// games, and finally .hack// back to FFIV, my first original interest of modifying the data, but there I can say I've grown substantially as a hacker with learning that came from revisiting the Zelda 64 scene for a while.
As has always been my penchant, I have wrote up full lists of disassembly of routines in FFIV with full and clear understanding unto their underlying meanings (for the first part)
My FFIV Hacking Page (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1883.msg19106#msg19106)
I have written nearly 50 new routines. Some minor changes to what was already there and some major changes that leaves no shadow of the original data. Whenever I do return to FFH in an actually... contributing manner, I think my vastly improved ASM skills will hopefully be able to help people in a more meaningful manner than I had in the past.
But I digress, I am always glad to see the leaps and strides this site has made. Elric's The Lion War project in particular looks to be a highly impressive work.
Aww, LD, you are too kind :P
My modding life actually started back on Duke3D in which i modded all aspects of it for my own TCs.
There was other small things along the way like level/mechanic editing in certain games, but FFT
being literally the one game i always came back to, FFT was always the ideal thing for me to start
modding.
My abilities however can directly be attributed to my team and this site. I had the motivation and will
to get things done, but none of it would have been possible without any number of Xifanie's tools,
ideas from Mercs and Remix, and the tutorials written by Cheetah, Raven, Celdia and all the Elders
of FFH.
I'd have made a mod either way, but without these things and the people I talk to daily (Xif, Raven
and other members of the Jot5 team) My quality would be nothing like what it is now, nor would my
skill.
PS: Eternal is still around IRC at times, but not very active on the site anymore.
PSS: Sorry I have nothing to contribute towards the kickstarter :P
I think they should cancel the kickstarter and start fresh in a couple months.
PS: OMG I have been hacking FFT for over 6 years...
Quote from: Cheetah on February 08, 2014, 10:29:33 pm
PS: OMG I have been hacking FFT for over 6 years...
Scary when you start to think about it like that, isn't it? :P
Xifanie please do a thoughtful rebuttal to this bullshit:
http://kotaku.com/final-fantasy-tactics-wasnt-supposed-to-have-casting-t-1519947150
I'm really trying to stay positive and this really shouldn't be a big deal, but it just continues to make me loose faith in the project that doesn't even understand it's own history. I believe that there was some kind of error in this response but they really need to correct it. It makes no sense that the charge system was completely dependent on system limitations.
Well, I'm having a little trouble understanding the situation.
It sounds like Matsuno would be the one who answered the question in the last update.
If that is the case, and that it was properly translated, it would mean that they designed most of the game around a limitation, that they got rid of later (possibly by necessity), and then just decided to not rebalance the skills without CT because -effort-... AND developed all the no charging skills without that limitation at the same time.
I think it's more likely that Matsuno just misremembered... it's been a while after all: 17 Years.
Another possibility would be some misinterpretation about charging animations to let the PSX load the effect file... but that sounds very unlikely.
Then again, it is not clearly stated if Matsuno OR Playdek answered the questions.
They clarified to say that it was Matsuno's response. I agree with your thoughts Xifanie, definitely some kind of misunderstand or mistranslation.
Just because you can do it with the final NA release doesn't mean they could do it at every build of the game along the development cycle. As an aside, do we know that it's the case that removing cast time from the original release (JP) doesn't have an effect?
Regardless, we apparently got cast time out of it.
Have have never come across drastic differences between the code of the Japanese and the US releases.
They have announced that the dream team of Hitoshi Sakimoto will be joining Yasumi Matsuno, Akihiko Yoshida regardless of stretch goals. So dream come true and they deserve more support in my eyes.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/482445197/unsung-story-tale-of-the-guardians/posts
I'll always agree that they deserve more support. Just, some things that have happened make me claw at my face.
Here's hoping.
The Dream Team is back together! Alright! With that confirmed (and with only 30,000 left to make) I've done my small part of pledging 20$ (mainly to get the game when its released)
Forget my doom and gloom, it looks as if Matsuno is back in full force!
I'm still pissed about a terrible kickstarter campaigne, but they still have my support.
Last day to pledge; about 25 hours left!
I just kicked down $30.00.
Soooooo happy the goal was reached, and Sakimoto on board~
Now just to wait and see
I have to say I wish this was coming out for a system rather than PC/Tablet/phone or whatever it is. Kind of my loses my interest.
To be honest, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of it being on other platforms. If it does well enough on Android and PC, I'd bet they'd listen to requests for ports.
I'm not expecting the game to do well at all. I've backed it and I'm hoping for the best, but I dunno man. A game like this exclusively for smartphone with no brand recognition doesn't feel like good odds to me.
What I'm hopeful for is that this will be kind of a launchpad for the company. If they are passionate about TRPGS and making a game with depth to it... and with some luck if Yasumi Matsuno shares the feeling... then we could have a good follow up game or games from them. There's no way to tell, but if that happened I'd be happy. More attention to the genre is nothing but good for us.
Quote from: Jack of All Trades on February 22, 2014, 09:09:07 pm
I'm not expecting the game to do well at all. I've backed it and I'm hoping for the best, but I dunno man. A game like this exclusively for smartphone with no brand recognition doesn't feel like good odds to me.
Buuuuuuuuuut it's not exclusively for smartphones. >>;
Did you miss the part where they met goal?