Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Trailer

So "Final Fantasy XIV".  Um... Not exactly Final Fantasy's strongest moment, was it?  Yeah...  If there were any people left believing that the Final Fantasy series was just as strong as ever, FFXIV broke their spirits pretty quickly, and I don't think FFXIII-2 has done much to win back the crowd.  Anyway, I mostly ignored FFXIV as soon as it was announced, since its an MMO, and I don't play MMOs.  That's not my thing, and it never will be.  Even when the game was released and turned out to be the biggest turd in history, I didn't play it, I didn't really comment on it, and I let the entire miserable event pass right by.  However, Square Enix wisely decided that they weren't going to simply roll over and lose millions of dollars, so they fired the old team and set to work saving FFXIV.  Here's the new trailer:

So I don't know about anybody else, but that looks ROCKING.  Now, obviously I'm not convinced enough to actually go out and buy a copy of FFXIV, there is absolutely no room in my life for an MMO, I still got to play "Chrono Cross", "Xenogears", "The Last Story", "Terranigma", "Mystic Quest", and "Pokemon Black Version", along with finishing "The Last Remnant" and then somewhere in that huge ass-storm I need to have a life.  But still, this is one of the coolest looking trailers Square Enix has released in years.  This is what a PS3 AAA Final Fantasy game should look like, and sadly... its wasted on a damn MMO.  What a shame.

Let me be the first person to say that Square Enix is actually doing something right for a change with their relaunch of FFXIV.  I really hope it works out for them, because they clearly put a lot of work and love into making this world work.  The new director is this guy Noaki Yoshida, who appears to be the straightest shooter at that company.  Every move he's made has been clearly laid out, going so far as to publish whole design documents online and tell the fans exactly what he's doing to make FFXIV profitable.  Its a new level of openness that invites the fans to understand exactly why a second Final Fantasy MMO might not be such a bad idea.  And this kind of openness is unheard of at Square Enix - there has been so little word about "Versus XIII" that last month a rumor that the game was quietly canceled was seriously believed by every major gaming press site.  So Noaki Yoshida, you're the man.  I hope you can make some proper single-player RPGs in the future.  (Nobody can do a worse job than Motomu Toriyama has.)

But really, the great tragedy is that FFXIV looks like a true Final Fantasy game.  That's not to say that Final Fantasy can't have all kinds of different tones and art styles and technological levels, but games like FFXIII are just endless technology.  I mean, futurism has a place, but Final Fantasy was always a cool mixture of different technological levels, right from the very first game.  You start out in medieval castle town and at some point wind up in a floating space station fighting a wind dragon.  And pretty much every game was like that, there was always some lost ancient hyper advanced civilization lying in ruins someplace.  This all cosmetic, but its a style that is very thrilling.  FFXII got the mixture, FFXIII did not.  And for all the futurism of FFXIII, half the crap that happens in that game anyway is just esoteric magical acts of evil gods anyway.

But more importantly this trailer is the tone.  ITS AN ADVENTURE!  Go out, explore, fight evil, save towns!  It isn't characters standing around moping endless, or needlessly pretty boys weeping about some stupid time travel paradox that killed their girlfriend.  There's no spoken dialog at all, its go out there and fight that huge Meteor that's crashing into the planet.  That's an RPG!  That's fun!  This is what I wanted, this is almost exactly what I pictured for "Final Fantasy XV" years ago, and its wasted on a game that I'll never play.

Meanwhile the real "Final Fantasy XV" will probably be a garish melodrama with designs by Nomura directed by Toriyama.  And I can go weep in a ditch someplace.