NOTE: All footage captured for this was in 1080p, so it is not a true UHD experience. However, I exported it in UHD because my usual render settings severely compressed the FF16 image quality (particularly in photo mode shots with shallow focus, and in Lostwing/Haven/Dalimil). The final rendering process took 26+ hours, with my computer not running anything else. Appreciate y'all understanding!
Finally got around to watching this video now that I've beaten 16 on the PC. You make a good strong point about how it's nice to see the bearers being helped, but frustrating seeing them so helpless. But given how much effort this game puts into fleshing out the background characters in all the towns (and especially the hideaway), it's nice to see someone go through it all with such a eye to pick up on all the stories, plenty I missed myself. But also, you actually missed on the the Undying spies! The guy behind the bar in the Dalimil inn is also one of the Undying. He mentions it after the L'ubor quests, iirc.
This makes me realize how much I missed in my first playthrough. I understood that the NPC's changed after certain events and progress in the game. I did not expect for the changes to be contiguous that they have their own plot going on in the background. Really nice work by Square to put this much effort into world building.
Almost 2 whole hours of video essay photography?! Damn, you cooked up a full course meal. Going to enjoy sitting down and giving this a watch later. Honestly, your content is highly underrated for the quality you maintain.
Even though I finished the game twice to get the platinum trophy and made a conscious effort to pay attention to details the second time this video has shown me so many details and little stories that I missed with the npc's. So thank you I really enjoyed the video.
I am so glad youtube recommend me this video. So much stuff I didn't realize during my playthrough with the background NPCs. Highly underrated channel. You def deserve more views!
Woo hoo!!!! I've found such joy in your other photography series. I've recently taken up photographing my characters and npcs in the sims 4 (which is admittedly sort of built in) but even your interest in following and learning about them inspires me to take more interesting shots. Thanks for such long-form vids.
Wow I called myself actually stopping to interact with every npc after every major quest, but there are s o o o many in this video ive never seen before, or larger details that went unnoticed to me initially. Phenomenal ~ So glad yt actually recommend me something good for once ;A;
Arf! I've only just watched this as I've just finished FF16 today! Beautiful video as always. I enjoyed my time in 16 (story & characters, not gameplay) but completely missed the level of detail you found, thank you for this! I appreciate the world even more
Thank you for your support as always, Lizziee! I'm so glad these details resonated -- even if the gameplay maybe didn't. It means a lot that this video helped. 🙏🏽
The presence of the NPCs as you have hilighted in how they're used and how their day to day's are portrayed has been very good, im ashamed i never noticed some of these myself. im surprised you didnt showcase as much of Waloed, i admit, inspite of the lack of NPCs in that overall region, the lack of them paints a...well in the context of Valisthea, a kingdom of the dead of sorts, streets and houses left to rot as all that remains are beastmen and those whove lost their wills to the aetherfloods, an almost worst case scenario image for Valisthea, contrast that with the lives of those in storm compared to ash, its contrast is surprisingly effective an impactful to me.
@@jonathandear4914 Thank you for the comment! This is a really good point re: Waloed. It's such a stark and desolate contrast, but it really is effective. Probably something I should have brought up. I ended up axing their section from the script. The few Waloeder NPCs I'd identifed were (1) the folks in Mikkelburg, (2) the crew of Barnabas' ship, and (3) the Waloeder woman in the Hideaway. I'd considered talking about how cool it is that even these minor NPCs (including the one at the Hideaway) are voiced with the Scandinavian accent the major characters from Waloed have. They're few in number but there's definitely a lot of detail there!
The game's dark journalist take on bearers was great. It should make u uncomfortable and feeling anger and disgust. This is a world that wears its evils proudly on its sleeve after all.
I think this is an incredibly cool and unique series, and I can't imagine the amount of work that went into collecting all of this footage. Kudos to you for taking the time to dive so deep on an often underappreciated aspect of game design. Please take what I'm about to say not as an attempt to undermine your work, but to start a genuine conversation about the NPC quality in this game. Having played the game, I think this video can give a somewhat misleading impression of the overall effect these NPCs have on the typical gameplay experience throughout FFXVI. The fact is, that their presence is seldom felt. FFXVI's NPCs are extremely static, and are typically locked into a looping animation for much of their existence. Their dialogue only changes very rarely, after major story events--and that's just for the NPCs that stick around for longer than just one section of the game (NPC's from Rosalith Castle, for example, are never seen again). As such, you can usually expect their dialogue to remain unchanged for several hours at any given time (this is a long game, after all), which immediately breaks immersion should you happen to walk by them more than once. The animations are decent for whatever repetitive movement they might be engaging in, but they often don't match up to whatever it is they're saying--and sometimes it doesn't even feel like they are addressing you specifically. The example you gave at 15:02 of the two ladies commenting on Clive and Jill being a cute couple illustrate this quite well, actually. Notice how their movements seem completely at odds with their dialogue, or how they don't ever turn to face Clive despite their lines being directed at him. Likewise, facial expressions and lip movements often don't register any dynamism in relation to context either, and when combined with the context-blind animations, give the NPCs a very uncanny valley, robotic air. Like you're watching the animatronic puppets at an amusement park. I would also argue that FFXVI's NPCs are particularly disappointing in light of their relative scarcity. When you play a game like Spider-Man or GTA, you expect a very large number of NPCs because the developers need to believably sell the concept of a metropolis to the player. Accordingly, you will usually expect each individual NPC to be somewhat more generic, given the incredibly large volume. FFXVI is not like that. There are no large scale, explorable cities in this game (it's one of the most disappointing things about the game, actually). Most of the time you are only exploring small areas or towns, and as such, there are only a handful of NPCs at any given time. With such a relatively low NPC density, you would expect the game to have some top-notch bespoke interactions with these NPCs, maybe some truly unique or memorable models. But that never happens. And in fact, its questionable whether FFXVI does anything more notable with its NPCs than games with far higher NPC density. When you compare their dynamism to something like the NPCs in Watch Dogs 2, for example, it's night and day. Even comparing them to NPCs in The Witcher 3, they don't really feel like an huge improvement, despite that game being 8 years old at this point. It's actually interesting because I feel like other games get a lot more out of their NPCs by simply having them move around more, even if they don't have as much detail in their modeling or dialogue, simply because a sense of movement can create the illusion of a bustling town or city more than a really intricate piece of armor. All of this is to say, FFXVI's NPCs feel largely lifeless and outdated. Yes, they have impressively detailed models, but on a typical playthrough, you are not going to be zooming in on NPCs to marvel at the intricacy of their clothing. Most players are simply going to walk by them to see their reactions and hear their dialogue and maybe see what they do if one stands around a while. The job of most NPCs is therefore to sell you on the world you are inhabiting *at a glance.* And I don't think FFXVI's NPCs really succeed on that front.
@@lets-mosey Hey, thank you for the thoughtful comment! This is the kind of good-faith feedback I live for. My intent isn't really to represent an average experience with any of the games I cover -- but to examine what else is going on we don't typically pay attention to. I actually agree with you that most of the NPCs feel like animatronics. One thing I'm trying to contend with in this series is: How much do subtle details matter? Do they actually impact the average player’s experience in a meaningful way? I love your point about NPCs serving their most important function *at a glance* -- and I agree that FF16's NPCs fall short on that level, especially re: the context-blindness. Where I diverge a bit is that I think there *is* a lot of dialogue! The frequency of NPC updates does depend on the town/region/etc., but generally I found there to be a lot of easily missable conversations. NPCs repeat lines and animations on the same visit, but do change things up after relevant story beats (and with more frequency if the story is progressing close by). A few even show up in the wild. Again, jury's still out on how much that matters when these are so removed from the typical player’s path... Essentially: Square used a lot of constraints but I was impressed by what FF16's NPCs manage to do within those constraints. As AAA development costs start ballooning, I worry NPC quality will become one of the first things developers will start to skimp on -- and I want to meet each game where it's at. I've found FF games to strike a good compromise within the RPG genre. With GTA or Spider-Man, I look for a very different, more vibrant NPC pool (though, less responsible for commenting on the story). I didn’t mind that FF16 didn't quite have that -- but it’s why my main critiques are pointed at where they fall short narratively, instead of mechanically. I'm with you that the mechanical flaws can result in some narrative flaws, though.
I think you've got some decent points about how the fidelity of the npcs' simulated lives (the fact that they just remain in place cycling animations) lends an uncanny dissonance in the illusion of reality other games (like Spider-Man or GTA) might convey, but I actually think that the "npcs only change their dialog after story events" is actually a much stronger benefit than you're viewing it as. Most games don't have that level of... well, growth to their background characters. Skyrim, for example, has at least as many bespoke NPCs who all have their own lives and schedules and you can follow them around throughout a day and watch them live their lives. But, for all their mobility, they are remarkably static... in their characterizations. They're basically the same at the start of the game as they are after you've saved the world. But basically every background character in 16 who has a spoken line has their own whole story to tell. Who they are changes little by little, every time those story events happen and their dialog changes. It fleshes the world out in a way that makes *it* feel more real, even if the individual models may seem more stationary in the moment to moment gameplay. Like... I'm not sure if this is the right way to put it, but even if Valisthea doesn't feel *living*, it feels *lived-in*.
@CaptainGCN I'm not sure comparing FFXVI to a game that is nearly *14 years old* is as convincing an argument as you seem to think it is. And even if we wanted to make that kind of comparison, Skyrim is a fairly disingenuous choice. After all, Bethesda is not exactly known for creating lifelike NPCs. On the contrary, I think the general consensus is that Bethesda have some of the most robotic and uncanny valley NPCs in the business. A more reasonable comparison would be to games like Dragon Age (which is even older, funnily enough). In any case, the concept of NPCs altering their dialog after major story events is not novel. Games have been doing that since the 16 bit era. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a little more in 2024, especially from a developer who is supposed to be at the forefront of the RPG space. It's also hard to overlook the deficiencies in FFXVI's NPC design (and overall design tbh) when you have contemporaries like Baldur's Gate 3 absolutely blowing it out of the water.
@@lets-mosey I love BG3, everyone loves BG3, but BG3's only background NPCs that tell any kind of story or growth are the Tieflings that you can meet in each act... and functionally, they are the same as 16's background NPCs. They too are largely static standing in one place with a canned bit of dialog that changes after major story beats. What makes 16's NPCs so interesting to me is actually what makes BG3 such an excellent game. Mechanically, BG3 doesn't actually do a lot that other D&D based western RPGs haven't already done. What makes BG3 so great is the absolutely vast amount of actual content Larian was able to build up over the course of the early access, looking at what players were doing and trying to do. Yes, NPCs that change their dialog is not new, but the thing that makes 16's so interesting is the sheer *scale* of it. All these background NPCs have their own internally consistent narratives they're telling parallel to the game's actual events that you can pick up on if you go back and visit them over time, as this video shows.
I mean, with L'ubor's questline, I think the fact the town takes the wrong lesson rings more true - you're not going to magically resolve bias and racism with one speech from a child. Look at actual reality - with mountains of experience, data and history to refer to, people still plow through with the wrong idea, or do the right thing for the wrong reasons. The whole story isn't about perfect endings, but that despite setbacks and misunderstanding and failures, you have but one path, and that's forward.
Weird, I keep forgetting this game even exists. The NPCs had quiet a bit of work put into them, but the rest feels rather unimpressive for a PS5 exclusive :/
I loved the npcs they integrated so seamlessly in the world. I was rooting for the gay couple near the brothel, intrigued how a certain npc had no name because Mid couldn’t remember 😂 I was sad to learn that an npc had died after being on a quest to help him create his own dish
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
NOTE: All footage captured for this was in 1080p, so it is not a true UHD experience. However, I exported it in UHD because my usual render settings severely compressed the FF16 image quality (particularly in photo mode shots with shallow focus, and in Lostwing/Haven/Dalimil). The final rendering process took 26+ hours, with my computer not running anything else. Appreciate y'all understanding!
thank you bro for the video! realy amazing Working!
Finally got around to watching this video now that I've beaten 16 on the PC. You make a good strong point about how it's nice to see the bearers being helped, but frustrating seeing them so helpless.
But given how much effort this game puts into fleshing out the background characters in all the towns (and especially the hideaway), it's nice to see someone go through it all with such a eye to pick up on all the stories, plenty I missed myself.
But also, you actually missed on the the Undying spies! The guy behind the bar in the Dalimil inn is also one of the Undying. He mentions it after the L'ubor quests, iirc.
This makes me realize how much I missed in my first playthrough. I understood that the NPC's changed after certain events and progress in the game. I did not expect for the changes to be contiguous that they have their own plot going on in the background. Really nice work by Square to put this much effort into world building.
Almost 2 whole hours of video essay photography?!
Damn, you cooked up a full course meal. Going to enjoy sitting down and giving this a watch later.
Honestly, your content is highly underrated for the quality you maintain.
Even though I finished the game twice to get the platinum trophy and made a conscious effort to pay attention to details the second time this video has shown me so many details and little stories that I missed with the npc's.
So thank you I really enjoyed the video.
I am so glad youtube recommend me this video. So much stuff I didn't realize during my playthrough with the background NPCs. Highly underrated channel. You def deserve more views!
Woo hoo!!!! I've found such joy in your other photography series. I've recently taken up photographing my characters and npcs in the sims 4 (which is admittedly sort of built in) but even your interest in following and learning about them inspires me to take more interesting shots. Thanks for such long-form vids.
Wow
I called myself actually stopping to interact with every npc after every major quest, but there are s o o o many in this video ive never seen before, or larger details that went unnoticed to me initially. Phenomenal ~
So glad yt actually recommend me something good for once ;A;
Arf! I've only just watched this as I've just finished FF16 today! Beautiful video as always. I enjoyed my time in 16 (story & characters, not gameplay) but completely missed the level of detail you found, thank you for this! I appreciate the world even more
Thank you for your support as always, Lizziee! I'm so glad these details resonated -- even if the gameplay maybe didn't. It means a lot that this video helped. 🙏🏽
The presence of the NPCs as you have hilighted in how they're used and how their day to day's are portrayed has been very good, im ashamed i never noticed some of these myself.
im surprised you didnt showcase as much of Waloed, i admit, inspite of the lack of NPCs in that overall region, the lack of them paints a...well in the context of Valisthea, a kingdom of the dead of sorts, streets and houses left to rot as all that remains are beastmen and those whove lost their wills to the aetherfloods, an almost worst case scenario image for Valisthea, contrast that with the lives of those in storm compared to ash, its contrast is surprisingly effective an impactful to me.
@@jonathandear4914 Thank you for the comment! This is a really good point re: Waloed. It's such a stark and desolate contrast, but it really is effective. Probably something I should have brought up.
I ended up axing their section from the script. The few Waloeder NPCs I'd identifed were (1) the folks in Mikkelburg, (2) the crew of Barnabas' ship, and (3) the Waloeder woman in the Hideaway. I'd considered talking about how cool it is that even these minor NPCs (including the one at the Hideaway) are voiced with the Scandinavian accent the major characters from Waloed have. They're few in number but there's definitely a lot of detail there!
I love this series! I haven't gotten around to FF XVI yet, but when I do, I'm coming back to watch this bad boy in full!
Thanks for the support, Wilson! Hope you enjoy the game when you get around to it! 😄
i am waiting for that PC port. Can't wait.
Man, amazing video, make me appreciate the game even more! Hope more people see this
I’m obsessed with this game, thanks for this
The game's dark journalist take on bearers was great. It should make u uncomfortable and feeling anger and disgust. This is a world that wears its evils proudly on its sleeve after all.
Clive has a camera?!
FFXVI is such a masterpiece.
9:58 - wow such details that there in the game, but you just pass them
I think this is an incredibly cool and unique series, and I can't imagine the amount of work that went into collecting all of this footage. Kudos to you for taking the time to dive so deep on an often underappreciated aspect of game design. Please take what I'm about to say not as an attempt to undermine your work, but to start a genuine conversation about the NPC quality in this game.
Having played the game, I think this video can give a somewhat misleading impression of the overall effect these NPCs have on the typical gameplay experience throughout FFXVI.
The fact is, that their presence is seldom felt.
FFXVI's NPCs are extremely static, and are typically locked into a looping animation for much of their existence. Their dialogue only changes very rarely, after major story events--and that's just for the NPCs that stick around for longer than just one section of the game (NPC's from Rosalith Castle, for example, are never seen again). As such, you can usually expect their dialogue to remain unchanged for several hours at any given time (this is a long game, after all), which immediately breaks immersion should you happen to walk by them more than once. The animations are decent for whatever repetitive movement they might be engaging in, but they often don't match up to whatever it is they're saying--and sometimes it doesn't even feel like they are addressing you specifically. The example you gave at 15:02 of the two ladies commenting on Clive and Jill being a cute couple illustrate this quite well, actually. Notice how their movements seem completely at odds with their dialogue, or how they don't ever turn to face Clive despite their lines being directed at him. Likewise, facial expressions and lip movements often don't register any dynamism in relation to context either, and when combined with the context-blind animations, give the NPCs a very uncanny valley, robotic air. Like you're watching the animatronic puppets at an amusement park.
I would also argue that FFXVI's NPCs are particularly disappointing in light of their relative scarcity. When you play a game like Spider-Man or GTA, you expect a very large number of NPCs because the developers need to believably sell the concept of a metropolis to the player. Accordingly, you will usually expect each individual NPC to be somewhat more generic, given the incredibly large volume.
FFXVI is not like that. There are no large scale, explorable cities in this game (it's one of the most disappointing things about the game, actually). Most of the time you are only exploring small areas or towns, and as such, there are only a handful of NPCs at any given time. With such a relatively low NPC density, you would expect the game to have some top-notch bespoke interactions with these NPCs, maybe some truly unique or memorable models. But that never happens. And in fact, its questionable whether FFXVI does anything more notable with its NPCs than games with far higher NPC density. When you compare their dynamism to something like the NPCs in Watch Dogs 2, for example, it's night and day. Even comparing them to NPCs in The Witcher 3, they don't really feel like an huge improvement, despite that game being 8 years old at this point.
It's actually interesting because I feel like other games get a lot more out of their NPCs by simply having them move around more, even if they don't have as much detail in their modeling or dialogue, simply because a sense of movement can create the illusion of a bustling town or city more than a really intricate piece of armor.
All of this is to say, FFXVI's NPCs feel largely lifeless and outdated. Yes, they have impressively detailed models, but on a typical playthrough, you are not going to be zooming in on NPCs to marvel at the intricacy of their clothing. Most players are simply going to walk by them to see their reactions and hear their dialogue and maybe see what they do if one stands around a while. The job of most NPCs is therefore to sell you on the world you are inhabiting *at a glance.* And I don't think FFXVI's NPCs really succeed on that front.
@@lets-mosey Hey, thank you for the thoughtful comment! This is the kind of good-faith feedback I live for.
My intent isn't really to represent an average experience with any of the games I cover -- but to examine what else is going on we don't typically pay attention to. I actually agree with you that most of the NPCs feel like animatronics. One thing I'm trying to contend with in this series is: How much do subtle details matter? Do they actually impact the average player’s experience in a meaningful way? I love your point about NPCs serving their most important function *at a glance* -- and I agree that FF16's NPCs fall short on that level, especially re: the context-blindness.
Where I diverge a bit is that I think there *is* a lot of dialogue! The frequency of NPC updates does depend on the town/region/etc., but generally I found there to be a lot of easily missable conversations. NPCs repeat lines and animations on the same visit, but do change things up after relevant story beats (and with more frequency if the story is progressing close by). A few even show up in the wild. Again, jury's still out on how much that matters when these are so removed from the typical player’s path...
Essentially: Square used a lot of constraints but I was impressed by what FF16's NPCs manage to do within those constraints. As AAA development costs start ballooning, I worry NPC quality will become one of the first things developers will start to skimp on -- and I want to meet each game where it's at. I've found FF games to strike a good compromise within the RPG genre. With GTA or Spider-Man, I look for a very different, more vibrant NPC pool (though, less responsible for commenting on the story). I didn’t mind that FF16 didn't quite have that -- but it’s why my main critiques are pointed at where they fall short narratively, instead of mechanically.
I'm with you that the mechanical flaws can result in some narrative flaws, though.
I think you've got some decent points about how the fidelity of the npcs' simulated lives (the fact that they just remain in place cycling animations) lends an uncanny dissonance in the illusion of reality other games (like Spider-Man or GTA) might convey, but I actually think that the "npcs only change their dialog after story events" is actually a much stronger benefit than you're viewing it as.
Most games don't have that level of... well, growth to their background characters. Skyrim, for example, has at least as many bespoke NPCs who all have their own lives and schedules and you can follow them around throughout a day and watch them live their lives. But, for all their mobility, they are remarkably static... in their characterizations. They're basically the same at the start of the game as they are after you've saved the world.
But basically every background character in 16 who has a spoken line has their own whole story to tell. Who they are changes little by little, every time those story events happen and their dialog changes. It fleshes the world out in a way that makes *it* feel more real, even if the individual models may seem more stationary in the moment to moment gameplay. Like... I'm not sure if this is the right way to put it, but even if Valisthea doesn't feel *living*, it feels *lived-in*.
@CaptainGCN I'm not sure comparing FFXVI to a game that is nearly *14 years old* is as convincing an argument as you seem to think it is. And even if we wanted to make that kind of comparison, Skyrim is a fairly disingenuous choice. After all, Bethesda is not exactly known for creating lifelike NPCs. On the contrary, I think the general consensus is that Bethesda have some of the most robotic and uncanny valley NPCs in the business. A more reasonable comparison would be to games like Dragon Age (which is even older, funnily enough).
In any case, the concept of NPCs altering their dialog after major story events is not novel. Games have been doing that since the 16 bit era. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a little more in 2024, especially from a developer who is supposed to be at the forefront of the RPG space.
It's also hard to overlook the deficiencies in FFXVI's NPC design (and overall design tbh) when you have contemporaries like Baldur's Gate 3 absolutely blowing it out of the water.
@@lets-mosey
I love BG3, everyone loves BG3, but BG3's only background NPCs that tell any kind of story or growth are the Tieflings that you can meet in each act... and functionally, they are the same as 16's background NPCs. They too are largely static standing in one place with a canned bit of dialog that changes after major story beats.
What makes 16's NPCs so interesting to me is actually what makes BG3 such an excellent game. Mechanically, BG3 doesn't actually do a lot that other D&D based western RPGs haven't already done. What makes BG3 so great is the absolutely vast amount of actual content Larian was able to build up over the course of the early access, looking at what players were doing and trying to do.
Yes, NPCs that change their dialog is not new, but the thing that makes 16's so interesting is the sheer *scale* of it. All these background NPCs have their own internally consistent narratives they're telling parallel to the game's actual events that you can pick up on if you go back and visit them over time, as this video shows.
I mean, with L'ubor's questline, I think the fact the town takes the wrong lesson rings more true - you're not going to magically resolve bias and racism with one speech from a child. Look at actual reality - with mountains of experience, data and history to refer to, people still plow through with the wrong idea, or do the right thing for the wrong reasons. The whole story isn't about perfect endings, but that despite setbacks and misunderstanding and failures, you have but one path, and that's forward.
*Ahem*
First.
I'm gonna need you to stop posting W's--the rest of TH-cam can't keep up.
so...the slaves in the game are crystal magic benders
Clive is so hot!
I thought it was just me that would people watch in games...
Weird, I keep forgetting this game even exists. The NPCs had quiet a bit of work put into them, but the rest feels rather unimpressive for a PS5 exclusive :/
Really? I thought the game was very captivating. From visuals to narrative.
Tell me you haven't played the game without telling me you haven't played the game.
I loved the npcs they integrated so seamlessly in the world. I was rooting for the gay couple near the brothel, intrigued how a certain npc had no name because Mid couldn’t remember 😂
I was sad to learn that an npc had died after being on a quest to help him create his own dish