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Square Enix er klar over at de må gjøre noe for å få yngre spillere til å oppdage Final Fantasy
Tidligere i år avslørte Circana-analytiker Mat Piscatella at amerikanske spillere under 30 år ikke er spesielt interessert i Final Fantasy-serien, men at det heller er eldre spillere som liker serien. I praksis betyr dette at publikummet deres bare vil fortsette å krympe i fremtiden.
Square Enix selv er godt klar over dette, og i et intervju med Nintenderos (oversatt ved hjelp av Copilot), Naoki Hamaguchi, hovedutvikler for den nye Final Fantasy VII remake-trilogien, hadde dette å si om sine neste skritt :
"Når Final Fantasy VII-nyinnspillingsprosjektet nærmer seg slutten, ønsker jeg å innfri forventningene til fansen som ønsker enda mer dybde i denne verdenen og dens karakterer. Samtidig er jeg veldig klar over behovet for å vurdere hvordan vi kan utvide potensialet til Final Fantasy-serien som helhet for neste generasjon."
Tidligere i år sa en annen Final Fantasy-veteran, Naoki Yoshida, omtrent det samme. Det er derfor tydelig at dette er noe som bekymrer Square Enix og er noe de holder et øye med. Hvordan de vil lykkes med dette, gjenstår imidlertid å se.
Hva tror du ville vært en god måte å få nye fans til å oppdage Final Fantasy-serien på?
The Expendables sagaen skal utvides med en "kvinnedrevet utvidelse" kalt Expendabelles
The Expendables kommer snart tilbake, men ikke på den måten du kanskje forventer. Etter fire kapitler med Sylvester Stallone i førersetet og med Jason Statham i hovedrollen, som tok over som hovedrolleinnehaver i den kritikerroste Expend4bles, vil sagaen snart vokse videre med et prosjekt som ble utforsket flere år tidligere.
Etter premieren på den første filmen ble det forsøkt å lage et kvinneledet alternativ, men det endte med å bli skrinlagt da skaperne ikke helt klarte å forstå hvorfor det var nødvendig med et rent kvinnelig team i narrativ forstand - men nå har de tydeligvis funnet en løsning, ettersom prosjektet er tilbake i utvikling.
Ifølge The Hollywood Reporter er en film kjent som Expendabelles på vei og vil være en opprinnelseshistorie som er "satt på slutten av 1990-tallet under høyden av Y2K-era spenning og geopolitisk usikkerhet." Det sies å være et "reimagined project" basert på den opprinnelige ideen, og ifølge folkene bak filmen vil den by på en "stilisert, actiondrevet filmbegivenhet designet for å utvide franchisens mytologi, samtidig som den står stødig på egne ben."
Expendabelles vil bli produsert av Eclectic med støtte fra Lionsgate, og bortsett fra å navngi noen forskjellige produsenter og ledere, venter vi på å høre mer om rollebesetningen og hvem som skal styre prosjektet kreativt bak kameraet.
Forza Horizon 6's return to 'wristband progression' isn't the stand-in for a career mode I wanted it to be, but maybe that's for the best
One of my favourite memories of the old Forza Horizon and Motorsport games is that satisfying feeling of progression you get moving from your first crappy ride and eventually splashing the cash on a supercar. It's been absent in recent games in both the open world and track racing genres of Forza, but things were looking up when Playground Games confirmed that wristband progression would be returning in Forza Horizon 6.
In the Developer Direct at the start of the year, Torben Ellert, design director of FH6, said, "You'll start out as just a tourist in Japan", requiring you to earn a place in the Festival first. "After that, you'll rise through the ranks, unlocking wristbands as you complete races in faster, more exciting cars," Ellert explained.
And that's not untrue. For about five seconds, you are a tourist. Technically. I mean, you're best friends with the Horizon Festival organisers, and you're given a handful of free cars almost immediately, so take that newbie badge with a grain of salt. I don't know about you, but I'm yet to receive a fleet of cars on a holiday. That's nepotism, baby.
All of this is to say that I don't have any connection or fond memories of my starter car. In fact, I don't even remember which one I picked because I've not actually used it past the first race, and you're given all three anyway.
After that, you'll rise through the ranks of the Festival, earning higher-tier wristbands as you complete events across Japan. These wristbands dictate the performance cap of the vehicles you can use. The opening qualifiers restrict you to C-rank vehicles, but each successive wristband raises the floor. You'll quickly be racing B and A-rank cars in the Festival events. At face value, it's got the career progression I've been craving, and it's certainly a step up over its predecessor which gave out the Corvette C8 as a starter car.
But Forza Horizon is, ultimately, an open-world racer that wants you to drive around in whatever you want whenever you want. These restrictions in the main events don't actually prevent you from driving more powerful cars in the open world or Discover Japan events, like street races.
But my main gripe is that it's just too damn easy to climb up that ladder. My garage was immediately overflowing with cars as a reward for playing previous games. It's even more noticeable if you have the Premium edition, which includes a bunch of bonus rides across its different packs. And it only snowballed from there.
Once again, Wheelspins are a car crash for progression, handing out expensive cars and bucketloads of cash like it's candy. You rarely ever need to buy or tune a car for an event because you'll already have earned at least one applicable ride for free. This is quite a feat considering Wheelspins have intentionally been made rarer in Forza Horizon 6 explicitly to encourage more satisfying, linear progression.
Similarly, there are two new progression paths—Horizon Festival (the wristband races) and Discover Japan. They're a fantastic way to house all the different activities you can do, but you'll get rewards like cars or thick wads of cash all the time for completing tasks, like races, stories, and even food delivery missions.
All of this is to say that I don't have any connection or fond memories of my starter car. In fact, I don't even remember which one I picked because I've not actually used it past the first race, and you're given all three anyway. Just a few hours into your holiday in Japan, you've got multiple houses with garages stocked with cars. The progression mandated by the Festival races begins and ends there.
Alas, I must admit that half the fun of Forza Horizon is to drive around in fast cars, but there's no ignoring that it loses most of the satisfaction without the build-up. And it's hard to force yourself into that career progression when you're presented with a stacked list of cars before every race and repeatedly handed new ones just for breathing.
Forza Horizon 6 car list: All the rides you can collect.
Forza Horizon 6 Treasure Cars: Skip the clues.
Forza Horizon 6 Barn Finds: Track down these relics.
Forza Horizon 6 review: What we think.
Forza Horizon 6's tug of war between complete, free-wheeling freedom and linear, rags-to-riches progression isn't a replacement for a proper career mode. It's a compromise at best.
And frankly, part of me thinks I wouldn't actually like more forced progression if my wish came true anyhow. I'd probably be missing my supercars if I couldn't use them at all until 30 hours later, once I'd paid my dues. Especially given how slow collecting all 550 cars in the Forza Horizon 6 car list would be. I had a blast turning a crappy kei truck into a super-powered S2 rank beast, or tuning it to do backflips and handstands.
Perhaps Playground Games' approach of encouraging more linear progression in the main races, but letting you complete side content however you'd like, really is the best of both worlds after all.