Ever again? It's never been in a Final Fantasy.
What I want from FFXIII and Versus XIII worlds are:
1. lots of secret places full of secret shit. I'm thinking things like Wutai, Fort Condor, the older man across the river bank near Junon that gives you Mithril, stuff like that. I'm thinking all the various towns in FFVI, including the island where you meet Gogo. I'm talking about towns that aren't even required to visit in the main story like Shumi village, or totally badass dungeons that have the game's most illest monsters all in one area as was seen in FFVIII's deep research facility. The hidden shit that rewards players for exploring is far more preferable to just giving you a generic, shitty 60 gil reward in some shitty treasure chest out in the middle of fucking nowhere like in FFXII, or the severe lack of secrets seen in X.
2. I don't want zones like in FFXII. I want one huge world map. Like the beginning of this:
3. Numerous vehicles like in old days: ships/boats, chocobos, airships whatever. All controllable, and NOT just at the end of the game. One problem with recent jrpgs is that they emphasize all of this exploration and secret stuff at the VERY end of the game by giving you no vehicle at all until the very end and by that time you just want to beat the game already. One thing I will praise FFXII for doing is allowing you to go any place in the game at any time so long as you've visited it. It was very Dragon Quest-ish and getting around the world was a joy. You could go grab a ton of loot from various monsters, go to another part of the world and sell the shit, and end up rich. Earlier Final Fantasy's did the same thing. In FFIV, for example you get a ship early on. You get the airship halfway through the game. You get a ship at the very fucking beginning of FFV basically. In FFVI, you get the airship not even HALF way through the game, you get it at least 1/4 through. With FFVII you've got the tiny bronco, that thing you win at the chocobo racing to get out of prison, and the highwind; even then, if you wanted to, you could back track to Junon/Midgar if you didn't have the means of transportation by just going to Cosa Del Sol. In FFVIII, you get a fucking airship that rides on limited terrain halfway through the game. Etc etc.
In FFX and XII you could really on ride chocobos. And in FFX it's like in just one spot isn't it?
It just felt that in the earlier Final Fantasy's 1-9, to be exact, there was a good emphasis on exploration, finding all the nooks and crannies, all the secrets. I'm not going to fault the ps2 era Final Fantasy's -- although FFX-2 was *full* return to this type of play style -- because pretty much all the ps2 era rpgs, aside from Dragon Quest VIII, have the same problem. Thankfully, this generation's jrpgs so far has psx era level of interaction and exploration -- Tales of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon. Blue Dragon especially. I just want a return old FF style exploration.
