The CoNCast: A Caves of Narshe Podcast Kinda Gig

Last year, we introduced the topic of Final Fantasy VI being awesome as we released new FF6 walkthrough content. The second game CoN added to the site, over a decade ago, was Final Fantasy IV. To stay in order, we now talk about the basics of why FF4 is awesome.

A minor controversy brewed up just before the Western release of Bravely Default, with some female characters becoming more clothed and more 'acceptably' aged. Naturally, the response to this news ran the gamut from those who found it pointless to those who seemed to have a much creepier viewpoint on the whole thing. Naturally, this got us thinking, so we spent some time talking about this newest game and some of the history of censorship in Final Fantasy games, whether forced by Nintendo or willfully taken on by Squenix localization teams.

For more than a few years, the notion of making a game's world be open and available for exploration and plot advancement at the gamer's whim has grown into a hot genre. Games from Rockstar and Bioware have long been considered to be among the cream of the crop, but it seems like perhaps the JRPG and Square Enix specifically have been behind the curve a bit. This podcast explores the allure of the open-world game and investigates what Squenix might be willing or capable to do to capitalize on this market that they've left largely untapped.

IWith 2014 underway, the CoNcast crew looks forward to the Square Enix games for the new year, as well as some other big titles on the way (especially Nintendo, as it turns out!). If you're not up to speed on what's coming next and enjoy folks who are in the same boat, download now.

It's Christmas day, folks! The holiday season is so hectic that it took me two weeks to record and get this CoNcast ready for publication. Also because of the holidays, there weren't many folks around to talk, so we just decided to blow a couple hours playing mairocrat and chatting about the holidays. It's funny, in the end we didn't really talk too much about the goings-on on our respective Wiis, or at least we left that all on the cutting-room floor. What we did talk about a lot is the holiday season, be it this one or good memories of the past. And, of course, with it being CoN, there are a number of semi-entertaining digressions and a fair bit of oversentimentality about the site itself.

This week is Thanksgiving, here in America, so what better time to talk about all the things that make us thankful for the year in gaming? To make it all the better, we invited three people who don't celebrate Thanksgiving in November (a Canadian and two Brits) to give their own in-depth feelings about being forced to be thankful for an American holiday. And we were even a bit thankful for Square Enix towards the end!

It's not "Fetch," and nobody on the CoNcast looks like a member of The Plastics. However, there is something that we've all tried to make happen over time and we haven't gotten anywhere: a remake of Final Fantasy VII. We talk about the history of false starts towards this game, the opinions expressed by Squenix employees over time, what it would take to make the fanbase happy, and even whether we actually care ourselves. But, really, who doesn't care?

For all of gaming history, as technology has evolved, so has the capability to do things graphically. We've reached the point where games can be nearly photorealistic, or they can go a very different route. Shall the twain ever meet? Is one objectively better than another? What games benefit from what art direction? All this and more in the CoNcast.

Inspired by a post at the CoN forums, the group takes a look at whether the quality of work available from Square Enix on portable devices is better than the current work on machines hooked up to TVs. It's a brawl between remakes and smaller, new IPs versus the Final Fantasy juggernaut - kinda. Who will come out ahead?

Sony and Nintendo have both been talking about new hardware recently, the former about both their upcoming console but also the new Vita TV. Nintendo, meanwhile, have an odd-looking handheld that is a 3DS sans 3D. Tokyo Game Show is coming this week, too! And for some reason we talk about fast food.