BlueHighwind's Final Fantasy XV

Its no secret that the Final Fantasy series is a mess at the moment.  They haven't had a really good game released since...  I don't know... man, its been a while.  What games have come out lately?  "Crystal Bearers" could have been great, but it was way too short, "Dissidia" was crap, "Final Fantasy XIII" turned out to not even be worth trying ("a flawless, 14-karat turd" - mrklarryd), and there are at least a dozen other games they've released in this series lately that I haven't even bothered to pay attention to.  The last great Final Fantasy game I think might actually have been "Final Fantasy XII" which came out four years ago on the PlayStation 2.  Even then, amongst Final Fantasy fans I'm something of a minority for thinking FFXII was that great, there's a lot of people who absolutely hate that game.  Maybe you could count the "Advent Children" remake from last year - that was pretty decent, but it wasn't a game.  The PSP remake of "Final Fantasy Tactics" was awesome, but that game is twelve years old at least.

Final Fantasy's fanbase is usually the most divided group out there, but FFXIII's response was negative even for this crowd.  Recently the CEO of Square Enix, Yoichi Wada, even had to publicly say something along the lines of "I know some of you guys hated this one, I'm sorry, I don't know where we're going next".  Then again, the game still made a Mt. Fuji and a half of money, so maybe there isn't an issue at all.  However, let's be real here:  FFXIII was only such a huge release because of the brand name.  If this wasn't "Final Fantasy" but instead "Corridors and Cutscenes:  The Game" I don't think it would have made half as much money as it did.  Even as it makes huge profits, this brand is hurting.  How much punishment can a fanbase take?

You see, FFXIII has its fans.  But when "Final Fantasy XIV" and "Final Fantasy XV" come out, the FFXIII crowd is going to be just as unsatisfied as the FFXII people, the FFX people, and even those sad hold-overs from FFVI and FFVII.  I'll explain:

Final Fantasy games, from the start, never had any real interconnected continuity.  Nobody from "Final Fantasy I" was still around for "Final Fantasy II", and the two plots were completely unconnected.  This isn't really a seres, as much as an anthology of different RPGs.  Even in the old days gameplay would shift in between titles.  One game might have a Job System, another would have a fluid cast, another would have Magicite, Materia, etc.  But as different as these games were, they at least had a fairly standard Final Fantasy feel.  You knew that as much things changed in Final Fantasy Q, you would still be riding on a Chocobo, summoning Bahamut, getting an Airship, and fighting in rows with random battles in Final Fantasy R.  Was it perfect?  No, there were plenty of problems with the series I - X, but it all sorta felt unified on some level.  Yeah the stories were different, but at least the games felt like sequels*.  Maybe its just because I played all these games in rapid fire in the span of two years from 2005 to 2007, but it all felt like maybe the series was going someplace.  There were some games I didn't like, but that was fine, they were missteps on the path towards where-ever Square Enix was taking this series.

But in the new millennium, Square Enix just raped this series.  "Final Fantasy XI" was an MMO, thus making it hugely incompatible with any of the other ten.  As a matter of fact, the FFXI fanbase is barely even the same people as the fanbase for the other games.  Then came FFXII, yet another single-player RPG.  However, here's where things changed wildly.  Turn-based combat was out, random battles were gone, and the battle system was a heavily strategic affair that moved much quicker than any other Final Fantasy game.  I liked the changes here, but I can understand somebody missing the old ways.  And this would have been fine.  "This is the next generation of Final Fantasy", I thought "from now on things are going to move in this direction."  But that's not what happened.  "Final Fantasy XIII" was just as huge a departure from FFXII as it was from FFI - FFX.  These games aren't even recognizable as being from the same series anymore.  Every game is a bizarre little experiment in strange new gameplay.  I know FFXIV is an MMO, but what about after that?  If FFXV has a different system as well, then the FFXIII crowd will hate it, the FFXII crowd will hate it, and so will everybody else.  Then that game will gain a fanbase, and FFXVI will again piss off everybody.

There's going to come a point where this series where the long-standing fans will give up, and new players will be scared away thanks to the complete lack of continuity between games.  This series is moving quickly from revered to notorious.  "Sonic the Hedgehog" showed us that even the most beloved franchise can die, and die horribly.  Final Fantasy could be next.

So in today's episode of Fanwank Corner, I'll pretend that Square Enix actually has any interest in what I have to say and give a few rather basic suggestions for what "Final Fantasy XV" should be.  Yoichi Wada doesn't seem to know what direction to take, and I, despite not being the Chief Executive Officer of one of the world's largest video game software companies, know better apparently.  So once again the world turns to Blue to save the day:

When a franchise loses its way, unfortunately the only real option is to turn back and rediscover your roots.  There are all sorts of directions that Final Fantasy could go, and several that I would really like it to go, but this isn't about me (egotistical assumptions of wisdom aside), its about the fans.  First of all, Final Fantasy needs to find something that works and stick with it.  Enough of this crazy experimental stuff here, what people want is something regular enough that they can always know if the next game in the series will be for them or not.  When you buy a Zelda game, you're not going to accidentally get a weird RPG with a soul of an FPS and all that jazz, you're going to get the same action adventure game you've been buying for years.  I'm not saying don't evolve, just evolve in a linear fashion of some sort.  You can't expect people to buy game after game of developmental dead-ends and enjoy every single wild combination.  Its time to rewind the clock and look at where you came from, what made people fans of this series in the first place.

"But Blue", somebody might be saying right now, "what about Dissidia?  That game certainly was a celebration of Final Fantasy history."  Well yes, you're right, Mr. Rhetorical Device.  But even though Dissidia did indeed bring back the superficial elements of Final Fantasy's past, it didn't really bring back the gameplay.  It wasn't an RPG, it was a fighting game.  Final Fantasy's roots are nowhere near fighting games.  I'm not talking about nostalgic references, I'm talking about a gameplay style here.  (Also that game didn't exactly celebrate the Final Fantasy series as much as ruthlessly parody it with the single worst storyline I've ever heard this side of "Sonic Rush".  But that's a subjective thing.)

Despite how much I would love a FFXII-2 or some kind of action RPG style, I don't think fans would go along with it.  What I'm saying that what Square Enix needs to do - and I cannot believe I'm saying this - is to make a retro Final Fantasy game.   I know "Four Warriors of Light" is coming out on the DS in the Fall, but that's going back just a bit too far.  I mean, its nice to see Black Mages in pointy hats again, but do we really want to rewind back to the time before these games had plots?  "Final Fantasy III" was nice, but we all know they've done better, we don't need a "Final Fantasy III-2", adorable art style notwithstanding.  Actually I'm thinking of rewinding the spiritual clock back to roughly 1996, back to the days of "Final Fantasy VI" and "Final Fantasy VII" - even "Final Fantasy IX".  I'm talking PS1/SNES era here.

What are the two games that Final Fantasy fans almost universally claim to be the very best?  FFVI and FFVII.  That was the period where the games started getting truly character-driven plots with real emotions, but before the series became so damn melodramatic that it could afford to not take itself seriously every so often.  That was the period when the game systems were complex enough to give a feeling of free customization without being so confusing that Square Enix felt that they needed fifteen hour tutorials before letting players play the game.   Final Fantasy fans are a heavily divided group, but I don't think anybody is going to complain if your series suddenly cut out all the bullshit you've collected over the years and went back to its most glorious days.

The bullshit I'm referring to here is how horribly complicated you've made these games.  You don't need to make leveling up a huge weird system.  You don't need a License Board, or a Crystarium, or any other weird menu screen.  The less menus screens the better.  Just have characters gain stats by killing enemies - its simple.  How do they learn abilities? Just by equipping an item and winning battles:  AP.  It could be a magical orb starting with the letter "M", it could be through the Job System, or it even could be through regular weapons and armor.  Simple.  Simple.  Simple.  You don't need to make Limit Breaks huge complicated affairs, just have a bar to fill up by taking or giving damage.  There's your Limit Break.  And you don't to make Summons a bizarre impractical monstrosity of a system that nobody will ever use:  just select "Summon", get the Summon.  Also, on weapons.  Weapons should be the simplest thing ever.  You buy a gun, it shoots, you buy a better gun, it shoots better, that's it.  Don't give me any of this Bazaar crap where you might get a better weapon if you sell a certain item on Tuesday if you're wearing a green shirt.  We don't need a whole item crafting system on top of everything else you need to keep track of, its just annoying.  Look, I love that you always want to try new things, but your fanbase doesn't want to be guinea pigs.  Find something that works and stick with it.

And, this one is obvious, bring back the fucking towns.  People want to pretend they're in a world, not on a ride.  If making a living world requires bringing back the World Map, as unrealistic as it is, bring back the World Map.  Also, try not to make the next game a straight line.  We all know HD is hard to program with, but you can at least make a friggin' fork in the road somewhere.  Make a figure-eight world at least.  Come on!

Even though this FFXV would be deliberately retro, please don't bring back random battles.  I don't know if anybody misses this concept (and I don't want to meet the person who does), but no.  Just no.

I think what may indeed help Square Enix along its philosphical way - and I need you to brace yourself here - is to just remake "Final Fantasy VII" already.  Yeah, I know that's the single most fanwankery thing a fanwanker can ever fanwank for, but I really do think that this will do this company some good.  They need to take a long hard look at the game that their fanbase loves the most**, and find out just what they're later games are lacking.  This company's A-team needs to dig their face right into that game and find out why people love that game so much.  It isn't the fact that the protagonist looks like Cloud, by the way.  And if FFVII is too much, do FFVI instead.  Or maybe just give the guys behind "Dragon Quest IX" a giant budget, they seem to know what they're doing.

But, then again.  Maybe I'm wrong on all counts.  I mean, maybe the series is doing just fine.  Maybe some people out there are legitimately excited for the next experiment and really do want a Final Fantasy like nothing they've ever had before.  Or maybe I'm right about some things and wrong about others.  Who knows?  I'm just an idiot with a blog after all.  Do any of you guys have any ideas?  I'd like to here something.

On the other hand, while I'm foolishly telling Square Enix how to do their jobs, here's a list of games they need to make already:

• Anything in the "Chrono" series, please just do SOMETHING.  Why are you letting this intellectual property rot when there is so much you could be doing with it?  What are you stupid?
• A proper sequel to "Final Fantasy Tactics"
• Un-cancel that "Final Fantasy XII" sequel "Fortress" and make it a real game already
• A "Final Fantasy VI" remake that actually uses the artwork of Yoshitaka Amano as inspiration and bases its world upon that stuff - but Terra's hair needs to be green
• Also, I always felt that the opera from FFVI had a much better storyline than the game itself, that could be a good basis for a game's plot
• BALTHIER:  THE GAME - yay!

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* As bad as Square Enix is at making an anthology its much worse at direct sequels (these are the guys who made "Chrono Cross", remember).  For whatever reason they can't seem to comprehend the fact that when a person buys a sequel to their games, they want to play something like the original.  So instead of an RPG proper you'll get weird gaming experiments mixing in all sorts of strange other genres that rarely ever work on any level.  Let's take FFXII.  Okay, its a great game, and a sequel would be nice.  Its on the DS?  Okay, fine, portable FFXII, it could be great.  Wait, you've completely ignoring the entirity of FFXII's battle system to instead make console RTS?  (Console RTSs always suck by the way.)  You're basing the storyline around FFXII's least interesting character?  You're not going to build on any of the events from the original game and just basing it in a new continent?  What are you, stupid??

** A long hard look at FFVII would do immeasurable good for the Compilation of FFVII as well, because that miniseries really is just shitting on its heritage.  FFVII was never this angsty.  Yeah, it got pretty dark at times (it may be the darkest game of the whole series) but it was never whiny.  Cloud never gave soliloquies about heavy melodrama and psuedo-philosophy, nobody was quoting goth poetry.  The game wasn't afraid to be silly, and that's something Final Fantasy as a whole seems to have lost.