Friday, January 15, 2010

The Out-Cast: Episode 0 - Final Fantasy XIII

*There have been some downloading problems with Mediafire, so I'm adding a second mirror. Also, the cast should be up on iTunes in the next few days.

This is our first episode of our new Podcast, The Out-Cast, where we talk in depth about Final Fantasy XIII. It clocks in at 93 minutes. Download it below and please leave us your comments.

The Out-Cast: Episode 0 - Final Fantasy XIII
Download: Media Fire, Hotfile
Streaming: Blip.tv


00:00 Introduction
04:47 Personal History With Final Fantasy
11:26 Why is Final Fantasy XIII Important and the Japanese Market
17:49 Linearity and Comparisons to Other Final Fantasys
27:07 Game-play of Final Fantasy XIII
39:13 The Good Things and the Bad
47:11 Characters and Localization Issues
69:55 Voice Acting, Translation, and Music
83:41 Final Thoughts

Note: When talking about the "black stereotype" in Japan I was actually thinking of Bobby Olugun, not Bob Sapp, in that "son's question" television anecdote. Correction by Dan Feit.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

yay :D thankyou for being the only person whos fueling my enthusiasm for ffxiii in english

Anonymous said...

brilliant review! you covered everything i wanted to know and with no dastardly spoilers. i cant think of anything to recommend either you pretty much hit the nail on the head but you did interrupt eachother everynow and then :P hahaha

thankyou!x

FoamyFloater said...

Absolutely wonderful job, each and every member contributed great feedback and insight that was well-informed and biased....in a good way. Too many reviews out there, even from "renowned" gaming websites, end up generalizing and watering-down the full game experience to appeal to readers who just want the gist of the game. They even end up A title games that don't even belong to the same genre!

It's so refreshing to hear a group of guys, actually based in the culture and society of Japan, to give deep insight into Final Fantasy 13 and just how much parallelism there is in relation to the Japanese culture. It's an exciting portal as an American gamer myself to escape the sea of generic FPS and Warcraft-styled games (Orc=bad, Elf=good mentality lol) to engage in such a well made and diverse game.

Thank you so much for your great podcast!

FoamyFloater said...

So much for proof reading on my part :P

Last sentence of the first paragraph should have the word "comparing" before "A title games."

Sorry about the double post, and thanks again for the hard work you guys put into making the podcast!

Unknown said...

This is a great review. It restored my faith in FF13 after allllll the negativity i've read. You guys are good talkers ;), you should continue gaming related podcasts.

Unknown said...

A great podcast full of great information.

JMHCurly said...

Great podcast, extremely informative about the nature of the game and I really enjoyed all of you feelings about the "linerity" of the FFXIII. Just a small question though, I have played FFXI for about five years now and I'm just wondering why you all seemed to have an aversion to it. Thanks, brilliant podcast mates.

Dima said...

Great Podcast guys, not only was it nice to hear your views on FFXIII, it was also very interesting to hear about Japan and its gaming culture, particularly surprised about the non-popularity of HD...

Also, just 1 complaint, Media Fire was quite slow for me and took a few refreshes to work properly, would you guys perhaps consider uploading your podcast to multiple mirrors?

Anonymous said...

great job guys! that was a great podcast! for the next one could u discuss a bit about white knight chronicles? i think its been out for a while in japan. but the international release date is upcoming. i just thot it d be cool if u guys could share your thots on it. keep up the fantastic work!

Josh H. said...

Hey, just thought I'd let you know that I really liked your podcast. You put a lot of my fears to rest about the game, namely the character development and story.

You asked for ideas, and I thought it would be cool if you could give impressions on other JRPG's. Gaming reviews here in America seem to have something against JRPG's and I rarely find a review that I agree with, but you guys seem to be fair but accurate in your review of a game.

Thanks a lot!

Gwyn said...

Hey there everyone! Thanks for the comments and questions.
Rather than respond here, we are going to incorporate them into a new mailbag section of the podcast! So keep an ear out for the new episode early next week!

Anonymous said...

Where is this on iTunes? I want to subscribe but I can't find it.

Gwyn said...

We have been having some issues finding a hosting service thatis affordable and easily accessible from Japan. The plan is to get the show up on itunes eventually though so please bear with us just a little longer!

Anonymous said...

I'll try to be patient! Anyway, I'm really looking forward to it.

Anonymous said...

Hello Radical Dreamer. I just viewed your video review for FFXIII, and I'm now pumped for the game. Excellent job, downloading the podcast now.

Unknown said...

Half way through. I love it. Well informed people, and it's cool to see the view from over there, and hearing North Americans, Australians etc living in japan's opinions. very interesting. I could listen to you guys just talk about Japan and the stories of stereotypes and stuff. So interesting.

Anyways, there's another podcast released today, it's by 1up, it's spoiler free as well, you guys should check it out too, they're all well into the English version. Vanille's voice actor they describe as.. A little Australian girl who seems like shes acting like a little Japanese girl. :P and they actually prefer Hope's English actor, say he actually sounds 14 rather than an adult trying to sound 14. It's very interesting. Here's the link. (It's the one posted on the 25th)
http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3176689

Great GREAT first podcast. I loved it. Keep it up. Should make a Twitter account that updates when you guys release new ones or something.

Thanks for an hour and a half well spent.

Anonymous said...

Wow, adults reviewing games, nice. And they... you know... "they" said it couldn't be done. Lol.s

GG Keep it fresh.

Anonymous Insomniac said...

Wow you covered damn near everything in FFXIII -- Great work!

Anonymous said...

Kinda insulted our intelligence there, assuming people outside of Japan don't know how Japanese girls behave... y'know most of us are just gonna watch Vanille and -know- it's commonplace over there. We've played other games, we've seen films/anime, it's not that much of a secret. Japanese culture is pretty well-recognized in the west.

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