Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Coming to Steam this Friday (May 12)

Derangel

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FINAL FANTASY X/X-2 HD Remaster on Steam

Looks like Square Enix's Final Fantasy porting is continuing with the divisive Final Fantasy X and it's critically panned sequel, Final Fantasy X-2. There isn't a ton of information on the Steam page yet but I presume this will be a port of the PS4 version of the game. The HD remaster ran at 1080/60 on consoles so we can assume that will be the case for the PC port as well. Given SE's other ports don't expect a ton of bells and whistles with this, I wouldn't be surprised if it only rendered at 1080p as well, so I'm sure we'll see modders needing to fix it up like usual. No information on price is available yet. The listing just appeared out of nowhere, confirming rumors that have been circulating for several months.

Edit: Thursday, not Friday. Can't edit the title.

Game is out. It's currently $18 on Greenmangaming if you use the code WATCH25. It's $23.99 on Steam, at least for us US folks. No clue on prices for other regions.
 
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If they don't completely botch the port then this is actually pretty awesome news. I've been wanting to play the Remaster for a while now but don't have a PS4. Guess I know what I'm doing this weekend!
 
If they don't completely botch the port then this is actually pretty awesome news. I've been wanting to play the Remaster for a while now but don't have a PS4. Guess I know what I'm doing this weekend!

I haven't played the PS4 version but the PS3 and Vita versions are really good. I hope this port turns out well...As well. Not that I'll have time to play it right now though. Neck deep in Stallaris and got Uncharted 4 coming tomorrow. Too many games to play.
 
Now we just need Final Fantasy XII and the circle will be complete. Hopefully including the International Zodiac Job System content. This year will be the 10th anniversary of the original's release.
 
I think I only played X once and forgot most of the plot so it would be nice to play through again. Though I'm not looking forward to dodging 200 lightning strikes.
 
Uugh, lightening strikes. At least you don't have to buy or craft a weapon with no encounter on to do it. Just turn on the no encounters booster and spend the next five hours of your life trying to get the timing down perfectly...And not forgetting where you left off in the middle of it.
 
I enjoyed this on PS2 so I might pick it up during a sale. I've read that it was $30 on PSN so I imagine it'll be around that on Steam. Summer sale isn't too far off!
 
Heh... I bought the PS3 version shortly after it came out. Then I got distracted and haven't picked it back up since...
I might pick it up again on the PC but only if I can cheat a save with 100% al bhed from the start. (I did on the PS3 but holy crap was it a complete pain)
I may even finish it this time. (my PS2 copy had like 80+ hours of gameplay.. Yuna had gone darn near everywhere on the sphere grid)
 
So, it looks like I was wrong about the framerate. All the console versions ran at 30fps. This port is also locked to 30fps. Unlocking it will probably cause the game to run at 2x speed, but we'll see. I'm sure someone will try to find out how to do it.

On the plus side it supports resolutions up to 4K. There is support for ultawide resolutions. You just need to change that in game.

The game supports windowed, fullscreen, and borderless windowed modes. When playing in ultrawide mode there are boarders on the left and right of the screen.

English dub only. SE claims "technical issues" but I'd bet on it being more of an issuing with licencing the Japanese VA's performances.

There are two places to go for graphics settings. There is a settings menu in the launcher and you can press escape while playing the individual games and get to a more detailed settings menu.

The game supports the following settings:

Brightness
VSync (on or off)
Texture Quality (Low, Medium, High)
AF (up to 16x)
Shadows (Off to high with the shadow resolution listed next to the setting)
MSAA up to 8x
Color Correction (on or off)
Post Filtered AA (off, FXAA, and SMAA Low through Ultra)
Something called Unsharp Mask (on or off)
AO (off through high)

Key rebinding for both the keyboard and controllers is supported

Volume options are:

Master
Voice
Music
SFX

The "escape" menu also gives you access to the cheats and tells you the keybindings for the boosters. It is also how you quit the game and go back to the launcher.
 
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So, it looks like I was wrong about the framerate. All the console versions ran at 30fps. This port is also locked to 30fps. Unlocking it will probably cause the game to run at 2x speed, but we'll see. I'm sure someone will try to find out how to do it.

On the plus side it supports resolutions up to 4K. There is support for ultawide resolutions. You just need to change that in game.

The game supports windowed, fullscreen, and borderless windowed modes. When playing in ultrawide mode there are boarders on the left and right of the screen.

English dub only. SE claims "technical issues" but I'd bet on it being more of an issuing with licencing the Japanese VA's performances.

There are two places to go for graphics settings. There is a settings menu in the launcher and you can press escape while playing the individual games and get to a more detailed settings menu.

The game supports the following settings:

Brightness
VSync (on or off)
Texture Quality (Low, Medium, High)
AF (up to 16x)
Shadows (Off to high with the shadow resolution listed next to the setting)
MSAA up to 8x
Color Correction (on or off)
Post Filtered AA (off, FXAA, and SMAA Low through Ultra)
Something called Unsharp Mask (on or off)
AO (off through high)

Key rebinding for both the keyboard and controllers is supported

Volume options are:

Master
Voice
Music
SFX

The "escape" menu also gives you access to the cheats and tells you the keybindings for the boosters. It is also how you quit the game and go back to the launcher.
Nice to see Squeenix adding more quality of life improvements to their PC ports after numerous complaints of ones released prior. I don't think 30 FPS will be an issue since this is a turn-based RPG we're talking about.
 
Nice to see Squeenix adding more quality of life improvements to their PC ports after numerous complaints of ones released prior. I don't think 30 FPS will be an issue since this is a turn-based RPG we're talking about.

Disagreed. They need to put in the effort to untie game logic from FPS. The PC version of FF4 runs at 15 FPS in battles due to the frame cap.

Yep, just released on Steam at noon. I read that this is a port of the PS4 version, and that the PS4 version has a RNG bug. What is the RNG bug in the PS4 version?

There WAS an RNG bug that was patched.
 
Disagreed. They need to put in the effort to untie game logic from FPS. The PC version of FF4 runs at 15 FPS in battles due to the frame cap.

There WAS an RNG bug that was patched.
In a game as old as this one, that would require an entire rewrite of the underlying engine rather than just updating assets. Would you be willing to spend a full $60 on a game that originally came out 15 years ago?
 
Disagreed. They need to put in the effort to untie game logic from FPS. The PC version of FF4 runs at 15 FPS in battles due to the frame cap.

That's the way the engine was developed. A lot of game engines back then tied everything to FPS. These kind of ports and remasters are never given the time or budget required to do that kind of thing and nor would it really be worst the cost, especially for a budget priced title.
 
Yea, I don't expect the moon out of these titles. I just want them to work. Luckily, none of these games are severely hurt by having some mildly hitches to frame rate, or whatever. These aren't competitive MP titles, or balls to the wall action games.

The only thing I feel Square should be doing is ensuring some form of "protection" for the older titles. By that, I mean, they should be offering the older sprite models and variants, instead of just the recent mobile ports. Even if that bumps up the cost to $20 a title, I'd buy that. FFVI isn't unplayable in its current state...but it isn't ideal. I wouldn't care if they wanted to "pretty it up" as long as they offered the original too. I just want an SNES port with the FMV cutscenes, and no load times. I'm not picky.

Like, the FFIV Complete Port is the ugly mobile one. I wish they ported the PSP version.
 
Also the mobile ports are pretty bad sometimes because the company that made the mobile ports (iMatrix) was pretty lazy in how they did their engine. I tried FF5 on the PC but got a refund because the port was just so crappy.
 
FFX is easily my favourite Final Fantasy game. I will be buying this just for that title. FFX-2 can suck a lemon.

Also the mobile ports are pretty bad sometimes because the company that made the mobile ports (iMatrix) was pretty lazy in how they did their engine. I tried FF5 on the PC but got a refund because the port was just so crappy.

How can someone F*** up a port of a SNES title? I can emulate it now perfectly.
 
How can someone F*** up a port of a SNES title? I can emulate it now perfectly.

Because they decided to "enhance" it. NEw graphics and shit like that. Well for one, some of them weren't all that well done, but also they didn't just take the ROM and put it in a purpose built emulator, they wrote an all new engine and did so rather lazily. Then they had to make it touch friendly since it was for mobile devices. Ok whatever... except the PC port is pretty much the exact same shit, including mobile UI, running on a PC. So it has an ugly mobile interface, shitty font with rendering issues (because they didn't want to license a good font), compatibility issues due to their shitty GL interface code (again from free sources) and noticeable tile issues on big displays.

The good news is I don't think Square outsources the ports of their newer FF games to these idiots, at least not as near as I can tell. So they are better (though still not perfect) ports and also they get patches. The mobile-desktop ports get no patches again because iMatrix is useless.
 
Modder Kaidaien (he's responsible for fixing Tales of Zesteria and Tales of Symphonia along with working on other games) has started doing some work on this. He's already made a mod to enable the Japanese dub with English subtitles. Normally you were only able to use the Japanese dub if you selected Japanese subtitles but then you couldn't use the English dub. His mod currently does not change the language of the cutscenes but he's promised to fix that in the next release. He has also found what could potentially appear to be some kind of DRM besides Steam being used on the game.

Link to the mod: Release UnX v 0.0.1 · Kaldaien/UnX · GitHub
 
Wait a minute.. its serious Eng dub only? The Steam page specifically lists Full Japanese Audio! I was going to buy it specifically to support its inclusion since it seemed that SE was doing the HD remaster, right.

Jesus they never bloody learn. Or worse, it seems like sometimes they offer JP audio without an issue, and other times its this kind of catstrophe. Glad to see that once again modders set things right.. hopefully the next version all full "undubbing". I used to make Undubs back during the PS2 and occasionally NDS days, but I've always maintained that it should not be necessary! The kind of issue Derangel is mentioning is particularly frustrating and I noticed it on the Android version of Final Fantasy IV - it shows that the JP audio files are RIGHT THERE but you just aren't allowed to select them unless paired with JP subtitles/game UI.

This kind of thing is repulsive and I don't want to hear a goddamn thing about licensing for regions or anything else. Hell, let it be like Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid V where the user has to manually select the audio track they desire and download it, which makes it a user-directed action ot a SE provided distribution; I'd even download elsewhere, manually swap file names, patch etc...if SE could see fit to not impede users in doing so. Either way, if they cen't released the game right, then I don't know why bother releasing it at all - after years and years of watching Japanese media claim they can't show X again, or release it on Y legally etc.. because of some issue with licensing the opening/closing song, voice acting, or other nonsense etc.. that should be enough reason to change the contracts going forward to prevent this kind of thing.
 
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Voice acting and music licencing in Japan works differently than in the West. VAs and musicians have full control over when and how their work in used. Sometimes they're charge A LOT more to allow their work to be used outside of Japan and sometimes they simply won't allow it. Companies can either accept the demands or try to find someone else.
 
In a game as old as this one, that would require an entire rewrite of the underlying engine rather than just updating assets. Would you be willing to spend a full $60 on a game that originally came out 15 years ago?

Yes, because I don't tie game quality to age. If anything, older games are better than newer. So, yes, if they give me a significant improvement, I will pay for it.

That's the way the engine was developed. A lot of game engines back then tied everything to FPS. These kind of ports and remasters are never given the time or budget required to do that kind of thing and nor would it really be worst the cost, especially for a budget priced title.

$30 isn't budget priced. And they did the work to get the engine running on the PS3, the PS4, and now Windows, so let's not pretend like the engine is a hugely insurmountable and expensive option. Engine development and changes are already baked into the cost.
 
$30 isn't budget priced. And they did the work to get the engine running on the PS3, the PS4, and now Windows, so let's not pretend like the engine is a hugely insurmountable and expensive option. Engine development and changes are already baked into the cost.

It's literally half the price of a "full priced" game. So, yes, it is a budget price.
 
It's literally half the price of a "full priced" game. So, yes, it is a budget price.

I can count, thanks. And no, it's not budget priced. $30 is midrange on PC and console, high end on portable. $20 is budget price. $10 is sale price.
 
Voice acting and music licencing in Japan works differently than in the West. VAs and musicians have full control over when and how their work in used. Sometimes they're charge A LOT more to allow their work to be used outside of Japan and sometimes they simply won't allow it. Companies can either accept the demands or try to find someone else.

Oh I'm aware of this. But much like how labels in the West had near draconian control over the performance, eventually things "softened" to give more options to the artist, and I'm to understand that the Japanese industry has been changing as well, but at slow pace.. Especially considering that aside from a relative handful of voice acting "legends" (who are treated as A-List actors regarding their craft, and rightfully so) so many performances, especially licensed music is not being withheld at the behest of the performer, but instead whatever manager/media group "owns" them. I watched a documentary on this made a few years back, and I heard that some regulations were being implemented to stop these middlemen who were holding the "presence" of these artists - voice actors, singers, dancers, etc - and demanding huge payments, with relatively little going to the artist themselves. I forget the name of the documentary, but the investigative journalist followed one of the Morning Musume-like girl groups who were basically completely under the thumb of their managers, so even being tapped to have one of their songs used in TV openings/closings for big money didn't lead to the individual performers benefiting very much, speaking to the girls well a decade after their popularity and giving a retorspective of what happened for context.

Especially with a well-heeled company like Square, if they are going to remaster/remake an older game title, especially for new platforms and audiences, they should be ready to re-license any media they might need. With a major release like a Final Fantasy title, there will definitely be enough sales to make up ensuring the assets are well taken care of, and I can't see many of the artists anyway objecting to what is basically a free infusion of money for very little to no work (unless they brought them back in to record lines with new high def recording mediums, but I assume this isn't necessary given remastering tech and whatnot these days ). If they ran into one of those circumstances where say, the manager/media company behind a performer is no longer in service and their rights were taken over by a another company etc...that's the kind of quagmire that Japanese producers have been fighting against for years and new regulations should be put in place to settle; During the marking of "Tatsunoko vs Capcom" there was a crazy experience trying to license music from literally decades ago where the rights were "locked up", so such cases were supposed to be eased by the new regulations.

In any event, in the global media marketplace it is necessary to embrace new means of distribution and be agile enough to get your customers what they want, especially if you occupy a niche appeal; dedicated, but particular. Much in the same way Square-Enix, Capcom, Sega, and others have finally seen the benefit of releasing on the PC and through storefronts like Steam, leading to a roaring success, they're not going to be able to allow their art to reach globally, especially to the most likely customers, if they don't start licensing for global distribution. You can't have it both ways - wondering why your art doesn't transcend boundaries and make worldwide sales, but then failing to release overseas or giving watered-down localized versions when you do.
 
It's literally half the price of a "full priced" game. So, yes, it is a budget price.

It's only $20 for the PS4 remaster, so charging $30 on the PC is a little bit shitty.

I'm pretty sure when I checked the pre-order price on Steam it was $19.99 but they jacked it up to $29.99 on release.
 
I can count, thanks. And no, it's not budget priced. $30 is midrange on PC and console, high end on portable. $20 is budget price. $10 is sale price.

If you want to include the myriad of indie titles, fine. I'm going by the industry definition of the term however. Which places a $30 game from a AAA studio firmly in the range of "budget title". It's been that way since the normal price for AAA games went up to $60.

It's only $20 for the PS4 remaster, so charging $30 on the PC is a little bit shitty.

I'm pretty sure when I checked the pre-order price on Steam it was $19.99 but they jacked it up to $29.99 on release.

That price seems to depend on where you buy it. PSN still has it for $50 because of course they do and Gamestop still lists $30. Amazon and Walmart have it at $20, possibly other places as well but those are what I checked. Though the game did release at higher than $20.

It might have said $19.19 as a sale price for a bit since Greenmangaming had that listed as a promo price for a short time as well. Was probably a pricing error on someone's part. Not the first time that's happened on Steam.

Oh I'm aware of this. But much like how labels in the West had near draconian control over the performance, eventually things "softened" to give more options to the artist, and I'm to understand that the Japanese industry has been changing as well, but at slow pace.. Especially considering that aside from a relative handful of voice acting "legends" (who are treated as A-List actors regarding their craft, and rightfully so) so many performances, especially licensed music is not being withheld at the behest of the performer, but instead whatever manager/media group "owns" them. I watched a documentary on this made a few years back, and I heard that some regulations were being implemented to stop these middlemen who were holding the "presence" of these artists - voice actors, singers, dancers, etc - and demanding huge payments, with relatively little going to the artist themselves. I forget the name of the documentary, but the investigative journalist followed one of the Morning Musume-like girl groups who were basically completely under the thumb of their managers, so even being tapped to have one of their songs used in TV openings/closings for big money didn't lead to the individual performers benefiting very much, speaking to the girls well a decade after their popularity and giving a retorspective of what happened for context.

Especially with a well-heeled company like Square, if they are going to remaster/remake an older game title, especially for new platforms and audiences, they should be ready to re-license any media they might need. With a major release like a Final Fantasy title, there will definitely be enough sales to make up ensuring the assets are well taken care of, and I can't see many of the artists anyway objecting to what is basically a free infusion of money for very little to no work (unless they brought them back in to record lines with new high def recording mediums, but I assume this isn't necessary given remastering tech and whatnot these days ). If they ran into one of those circumstances where say, the manager/media company behind a performer is no longer in service and their rights were taken over by a another company etc...that's the kind of quagmire that Japanese producers have been fighting against for years and new regulations should be put in place to settle; During the marking of "Tatsunoko vs Capcom" there was a crazy experience trying to license music from literally decades ago where the rights were "locked up", so such cases were supposed to be eased by the new regulations.

In any event, in the global media marketplace it is necessary to embrace new means of distribution and be agile enough to get your customers what they want, especially if you occupy a niche appeal; dedicated, but particular. Much in the same way Square-Enix, Capcom, Sega, and others have finally seen the benefit of releasing on the PC and through storefronts like Steam, leading to a roaring success, they're not going to be able to allow their art to reach globally, especially to the most likely customers, if they don't start licensing for global distribution. You can't have it both ways - wondering why your art doesn't transcend boundaries and make worldwide sales, but then failing to release overseas or giving watered-down localized versions when you do.

Everything takes a very long time to change in Japan. The old xenophobic and heavily nationalistic ideology of Japanese culture is still very firmly in place. It's less so with the younger generation, but it will be a long time before they're able to change things. Until then we're stuck with things being as they are.
 
If you want to include the myriad of indie titles, fine. I'm going by the industry definition of the term however. Which places a $30 game from a AAA studio firmly in the range of "budget title". It's been that way since the normal price for AAA games went up to $60.

I'm not including indie titles. $30 is midrange. Go on Steam and look at the mean price of AAA games. Go to Amazon and look at game prices. $30 is routine.
 
I'm not including indie titles. $30 is midrange. Go on Steam and look at the mean price of AAA games. Go to Amazon and look at game prices. $30 is routine.

You can't count count when titles get discounted over time. AAA games are pretty much always $50-$60 on launch. Remember, AAA is a budget and marketing term and not a game quality one.
 
Wait a minute.. its serious Eng dub only? The Steam page specifically lists Full Japanese Audio! I was going to buy it specifically to support its inclusion since it seemed that SE was doing the HD remaster, right.

The Voice is tied to what language your in game text language is set to.

The 3 Asian Languages (Japanese, Korean and Traditional Chinese) have Japanese dub, whereas the alphabet languages (English, German etc) are all dubbed in English

Steam Community :: Group Announcements :: FINAL FANTASY X/X-2 HD Remaster
 
The Voice is tied to what language your in game text language is set to.

The 3 Asian Languages (Japanese, Korean and Traditional Chinese) have Japanese dub, whereas the alphabet languages (English, German etc) are all dubbed in English

Steam Community :: Group Announcements :: FINAL FANTASY X/X-2 HD Remaster

Indeed, I saw this and became annoyed because the message notes -

"We know a lot of you have been asking whether there are dual audio options but unfortunately due to technical reasons, we’re not able to include dual audio in FFX|X-2 HD Remaster. "

So according to this official announcement, it isn't even a licensing issue but some sort of technical one. This is even more frustrating because without further detail, I can't imagine what kind of technical issue would cause an insurmountable problem for Square-Enix that would force them to go to market with 90% of what they need - all the vocal and text languages are present in the game files and properly linked - but blocks them from picking one or the other. It can't be a lip-sync issue, because many players are reporting that the character models are sync'ed best for Japanese no matter what and SE seemingly didn't have a problem with that. The biggest issue I take with this excuse is well... there's already a player-made mod that, in its first iteration, allows users to select JP audio with another text/UI language like ENG. Here it is - GitHub - Kaldaien/UnX: Unnamed Project X - Minimal fixes for Final Fantasy X|X-2 Remastered ! Yeah, it doesn't work yet on X2 and the cutscenes still need to be properly language attributed as older games had totally different files for cut scenes back in the day, but even a few hours after release there's a working patch. (Admittedly, the developer is a veteran modder, having fixed the Tales of Zestiria / Symphonia games with user mods/patches, but others have also provided FFX patches - FFX/X-2 Mod: Japanese Voices with English Text :: FINAL FANTASY X/X-2 HD Remaster General Discussions . These require replacement of the .exe with a hexedited one, as opposed to Untitled X Project, but I think they work for X-2 and for cinematics right now while UXP will in the next patches. It will also add things like Playstation button prompts etc)

If the issue was caused by one of those acerbic licensing problems that Derangel and I were talking about, I'd accept if SE would simply let mods exist and develop, not doing anything to impede them (though I'd still send feedback), but if there's a technical issue that was fixed by modders so closes to release, I have to question the issue in the first place. Granted, I do applaud SE for not obfuscating the files; I spent a long time trying to fix a very similar issue with the Android release of Final Fantasy IV, but even veteran Android developers who assisted me lamented the fact the game files were obfuscated inside an encrypted .obb. As a side note, let this be a lesson as to why the "mobile" way of doing things and those that try to bring it to PC, like the Windows Store, must be vehemently rejected! Thinking of it from a QA and production standpoint, unless some unconquerable bug arises with these player mods, the only legit "Technical reasons" I can think of regard some kind of uncommon use-case they couldn't get working, and because of that they couldn't put their QA stamp of approval on something "broken". However, if this was the case perhaps it would have been better to activate the features for everyone else and leave a warning like "Attempting to use Japanese audio and German text on Windows Vista 32-bit using ATI cards older than the HD 4000 series may lead to crashes" or some such.

In any case, I'm glad to see the modders getting to work , but if they can provide a complete experience mod that doesn't trigger any major bugs, I am unsure why Square-Enix's engineers could not do the same with all of the game code and assets.

Edit: If anyone wants to buy the title regardless, GreenManGaming has a voucher code that lasts until MONDAY, May 16 and gives 25% off!
 
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