Fixing Final Fantasy: A conversation, part one
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Think Final Fantasy is a little bit broken? So do Nightmare Mode editors Tom Auxier and Adam Harshberger. The difference between you and they is that they had the time and inclination to have a minutiae-obsessed conversation about how to make it better. Tom Auxier: There’s one quote that sticks in my mind when I think of Final Fantasy. I thought about it when I booted up Final Fantasy Tactics for a quick poke a couple months ago, Final Fantasy XIII for another try more recently, and when I saw the tech demo for Square’s new engine. It’s from a relatively famous Simon Parkin piece, said by Yoshinori Kitase, the producer of most modern Final Fantasies, the director and scenario planner for Final Fantasy VI and VII:
When I was trying to replay Final Fantasy XIII, that’s all I could think about: this was a game telling a child’s story through adult characters. It’s The Hunger Games, but instead of Jennifer Lawrence and a dude who’s exchanging promise rings with Miley Cyrus we’ve got adults: Lightning, the career soldier; Snow, the revolutionary twenty-something; Sazh, a father whose child turns out to be an ostracized minority (someone could make a good case for a botched coming out slash AIDS metaphor there). This, to me, is Final Fantasy’s problem in a nutshell. It’s not even on their radar, though. You can tell from Kitase’s quote, and from the survey that accompanied Agni’s Philosophy, the demonstration of Square’s next gen engine, that this isn’t even a priority. Here’s the survey questions: • Did you enjoy this movie? …all of which boil down to, “Is it pretty enough? Is Agni pretty enough?” I wanted to scream at them: she’s pretty enough, but that’s not the point! Adam Harshberger: Honestly, I think that’s exactly what I want to hear Kitase say – but he’s selling the appeal of youth short.
So seeing Kitase say that makes perfect sense. Although when was the last “young hero leaves home” plot in a FF game? Regardless: the most appealing part of Final Fantasy is youth. You can see it in Final Fantasy 10; the Yuna and Tidus romance is nothing but youthful idealism. Final Fantasy 11 is a back-breakingly difficult game, but it has youthful exuberance in the way it makes you tackle its impossibility recklessly, alongside your own band of adventurers and friends. Final Fantasy 12, and maybe this is a stretch, gets its youth from how blatantly Square breaks from tradition in it. They introduced a new battle system to the FF mainstream like it was no big deal – even though the FF12 battle system is really just the FF11 battle system. However, FF12 is the first Final Fantasy to not be a great videogame, if you ask me. And Final Fantasy 13 is the first Final Fantasy to be a mediocre game. It’s all style over substance. They thought the magnificent graphics and increased realism would make us automatically like the characters more, and that’s simply not the case. Celes is infinitely more alive than Lightning. And the characters, like you said, Tom, straddle the line between adult and youth. But they’re not either, they’re a weird in-between. As a result, they don’t appeal to my nostalgia or my grown-up sensibility. It’s just awkward as hell. Now, thinking about that Agni demo, and the questions they asked, I think I get it. They want to simulate that youthfulness. They want infectious, irrestible characters like Locke or Aerith or Zidane. They want a world that sucks you into it, with places like Midgar or the Garden or Lindblum. They’re struggling blindly to recapture that magic, and they want fans to point them in the right direction. Somehow, they’ve forgotten how to be the reckless, eccentric, and daring developers they were. With that quote, I think that Kitase is forgetting the little spark of youth, that lingering desire for adventure that lives inside all of us. That’s what Final Fantasy has always spoken to for me. Final Fantasy 13 is the first one that didn’t speak to me, though. It didn’t speak to a lot of people! Why do you think that is? It has to be more than just the hellish linearity – is it because Square Enix has forgotten what Kitase is talking about? How important youth and being young and remembering being young is to Final Fantasy?”
Tom: I identified with Squall, too. If you asked me what the critical game blogosphere needed most, it needs someone to write a five thousand word sendup of how great Squall was. He’s wonderful. He has an arc: he goes from mopey, snarky, self-obsessed teen to someone who can lead the defense of a floating battleship. Incredibly fucked up shit happens to him, and he gets sad, but he deals with it. It seemed like they were going for the same beats with Lightning. Awful things happen to her, and the entire cast, but the game misses the crucial moments of self-doubt that Squall hit so well. The moments where I gave up on the game was when Lightning, in the sewers beneath some city or another, resolved, out of the blue, that she was a horrible person. All of her scenes with Hope were just cringe worthy, because they were old people pontificating about how young people have problems with an air of contempt. It’s company men, men who have forty year old problems, telling a fifteen year old story.The only moments in the game that really rang with truth—with “write what you know”—were the ones about Sazh and his son. Someone in the writing team really knew that: they knew a man dealing with a son becoming something he was brought up to hate. How long he keeps it hidden, his awkwardness, they hit those beats. They hit the Serah-Snow-Lightning triangle, because that’s a pretty adult plot, and someone knows that. They hit Hope and his father.They miss the youthful moments, though: Snow and Serah, falling in love; Lightning teaching Hope how to be strong; Vanille and Sazh, running away together. They miss the youthful moments of irresponsibility, of fantasy, of rebellion. They miss them because they’re comfortable men employed by a massive company. The people who wrote this game worked on Final Fantasy’s before. They’re older guys, getting into the company once Square Enix went from games company to multimillion dollar business. They write the beats they know. Some of them worked on Final Fantasy VII, though. Final Fantasy VII was video games’ punk rock record. I remember reading that Kotaku piece months ago about how Jade Raymond of Ubisoft thought that video games weren’t speaking to the Occupy generation; Final Fantasy VII was a game about ecoterrorist kids! It’s a dystopian take on a world where the head of a large corporation can be killed by a genetically engineered monster, then his son can give a speech on the balcony, his father rotting inside, about how he wants to rule with fear. Real Dick Cheney shit. Rinoa was a terrorist, too, a Galbadian Katniss a decade early. These games speak to me, not in a nostalgic way, but in a fresh, immediate way: these are the things we’re going through right now. Final Fantasy XIII tries for this feeling. People are being deported at the beginning of the game, after all, by a fascist government. But it never quite hits the same beats, because Square Enix isn’t comfortable with this anymore. The writers here came onboard after VII, when the series hit the big time. They’ve gone from small clubs to stadiums, and the names on the stadium don’t want them to write songs about terrorist-heroes. They want love triangles, toothless dystopias, and ultraviolence instead of youth. So I think it’s a little bit of both: I think Final Fantasy XIII’s developers aren’t in touch with youth, and I think they’re discouraged from being in touch with youth. It’s a bit like a classic rock band, twenty years on, releasing new albums: everyone’s telling them to play the hits, but the hits are these songs that don’t work in stadiums, that are out there. And they’re not in the same place any more: it’s why Pearl Jam’s most successful song of the last decade sounds nothing like their classic output. They’re not in the same place anymore, and I don’t think Final Fantasy‘s developers are, either.
Follow us along for part two, now available where quality games blogging is sold! |
How do we fix these articles?
Who write through generalization, half truths?
Final Fantasy I was a last-ditch effort for Square to make a game they were interested in making before they went out of business. Thus the title “Final Fantasy.” It was the equivalent of an indie filmmaker maxing out their credit cards to afford the last reel of Super-8 film they needed to finish their movie.
To extend the metaphor to Final Fantasy XIII… it was the equivalent of a huge, budget-inflated blockbuster where they started planning merchandising tie-ins and sequels before they finished the initial script outline. Hell, forget equivalent–that’s literally what they did. Final Fantasy isn’t a creative work anymore, it’s a product that just happens to involve a controller and a set-top box. They even compartmentalized the development team into silos and told them to start churning out work, virtually slapping it together into a disk when they had enough fodder. The art teams had nearly three times as many environments modeled, textured and lit as the game ended up using, but the path through each one is literally a walkway suspended through the middle involving zero interaction because nobody ever bothered to talk to them about gameplay.
@awa64 That story about the FF name and tSquare going out of business is all bullcrap. Not too long ago in an interview Kitase said that it wasn’t like that but I don’t remember the details. Is just like people thinking that Inafune is the creator of Megaman when he has said countless of times that it was his mentor at Capcom who created Megaman.
@awa64 We should have put you on the metaphor train. We have more metaphors, but the Goonies/Super 8 metaphor you implied. We should have gone there.
I’m sorry, we let everyone down.
I definitely do think that FF has some fixing to do. And though I’ve never thought about it that way before, there is definitely a relevant point about youth, though I think there might be a bit more to it than that. But if they were to fix it, that would be a good way to start.
And I think that FFXII’s problem isn’t that it didn’t HAVE that youth; it’s problem was that it had it’s useful moments surrounded in adult conflict that pushed much of that youthfulness out of the way. I think that Vaan’s wanting to leave his poor lifestyle to become something as extravagant and taboo as a Sky Pirate is a great example of the youth that they included, as well as Balthier’s family conflicts and the tragedy of Ashe’s loss. However, these conflicts were, for the most part, squashed with all the politics surrounding them. I think FFXII was aiming to be an evolutionary piece, combining both the youth and adult concepts, and as a result they mixed in an odd manner. Personally, I really enjoyed FFXII, but it is definitely not great for everyone.
@Fleetfiend
@Fleetfiend As I understand it, Vaan was sutured into the story as it’s central protagonist against Matsuno’s wishes. From what I’ve heard, Basche was the lead until Square decided he wouldn’t be interesting with young audiences.
Kitase’s comment makes a lot of sense if that is the case. Now, I don’t mind Vaan, but it is interesting that he was a target-audience interjection into the original work. Perhaps the issue is that they have a sense of a demographic, but not how to genuinely appeal to them?
@Fleetfiend
As I understand it, Vaan was sutured into the story as its central protagonist against Matsuno’s wishes. From what I’ve heard, Basche was the lead until Square decided he wouldn’t be interesting with young audiences.
Kitase’s comment makes a lot of sense if that is the case. Now, I don’t mind Vaan, but it is interesting that he was a target-audience interjection into the original work. Perhaps the issue is that they have a sense of a demographic, but not how to genuinely appeal to them?
@Fleetfiend Most of this conversation that we (well, I) cut was how much I love Final Fantasy XII!
Though we kind of address this in part two, too!
FF has easily hd its best gen ever
I am not sure about this article, i don’t even think i understand the problem to even know do you will fix it in the first place. So FF or even JRPGs and any other game has to be silly and youthful to overcome all of its problem ? What the?
@15thCrystal @APZonerunner just left us hanging at the end. Lol
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@adamharshberger @TrueAxiom Only 66% eh? Never tell me the odds /PatrickLindsey. I dig where you two are coming from though.
@CapnRaccoon @adamharshberger @drydenGG I’m gonna TIE THIS TOGETHER by saying that you overestimate nostalgia; I know people who love XIII.
@TrueAxiom @adamharshberger @DrydenGG I know a few people who love it; but I know more people who would go ape shit for a VII remake.
@CapnRaccoon @adamharshberger @DrydenGG I think you might be overestimating how much the vocal internet represents gamers as a whole.
@TrueAxiom @adamharshberger @DrydenGG You have a valid point there; I am basing my hypothesis on screaming forum fanboys.
@CapnRaccoon @trueaxiom @adamharshberger As one of the people who loved 12/13, I thought they were massive steps forward for the series.
@CapnRaccoon @adamharshberger @DrydenGG I mean, FFVII remade would sell boatloads. But probably not much more than FFXV, and it’s riskier.
@CapnRaccoon @trueaxiom @adamharshberger The story and combat alone make 12/13 gems in my eyes.
@CapnRaccoon @adamharshberger @DrydenGG Because if XV fails, it’s modern FF’s being awful. If VII fails, then they trash creative capital.
@DrydenGG @CapnRaccoon @trueaxiom You and Tom are the only two people I know who are legit stoked on 12. Weird. (from the dude who loves 11)
@adamharshberger @DrydenGG @CapnRaccoon It’s because the discerning customer chooses XII.
@adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom What makes it so great is mostly that it’s different. 1-10 are virtually identical.
@DrydenGG @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Mechanically … sure. I guess the last thing I care about re: FF is mechanics, though.
@adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Don’t get me wrong, I love 1/8/10, but the differences are mostly superficial like in CoD or Zelda.
@adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom So, how many times have you saved those crystals, again?
@adamharshberger @DrydenGG @capnraccoon I like it because its narrative harkens back to VI most directly. It’s all about political stuff.
@adamharshberger @DrydenGG @capnraccoon @trueaxiom FF= Story + Exploration gamified through turn based combat/leveling.Mechanics =/= great
@TrueAxiom @adamharshberger @DrydenGG @capnraccoon 12 was awesome until it literally went deus ex machina.
@ethangach @trueaxiom @adamharshberger @capnraccoon Wait, what? They wanted to put fate in the hands of men, not the other way around.
@ethangach @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Except in 12/13, which were actually fun to play. I think mechanics are vital.
@DrydenGG http://t.co/gbHcv2Hw All political problems are solved by the apparence of the “real” problem–other wordly beings. Very FFIV
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom So Im the only one that hasn’t enjoyed attack attack, heal, attack attack, since SNES VI?
@ethangach @DrydenGG @capnraccoon @trueaxiom I will attack, attack, heal, magic endlessly. Forever. Something about it appeals to me!
@adamharshberger @DrydenGG @CapnRaccoon @TrueAxiom If only Square would learn to balance their systems
@adamharshberger @DrydenGG @CapnRaccoon @TrueAxiom I put up with the grind because I love the rest of the package. FF Tactics though-awesome
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom you mean like the whole story and setting?
@zacaj_ @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Yes, but also the systems. Materia and GFs are functionally very close, for example.
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom you mean like…..Mario? Or every Nintendo game?
@zacaj_ @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Actually, I would not say that about Mario, but about the others, yes. Mostly.
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom later 3d Mario got a but weirder but smb1-3+w etc didn’t change much
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom they really just swapped out a few basic things (end of level, one power up, etc)
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom occasionally they’d come up with something new (over world) and keep it later
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom ff has same basic game play, swap out overdrive and class system
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom personally I’ve played every ff thru 12 and hated every battle system, but
.@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom final fantasy in general is much more interesting if you disable random battles
@zacaj_ @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Not true! Every power-up since the raccoon tail has altered the way the game operates.
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom they so make good use of each power up’s unique abilities in the levels,
@zacaj_ @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Similarly, 3D worlds, the jetpack, round worlds/gravity, and 3D vision all changed gameplay
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom but I don’t think that actually changed the game much besides for 100%ers
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom I’m talking pre 3d
@zacaj_ @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom I think it did and hindsight has blurred it all together.
@zacaj_ @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom By the same note, jumping to 3D in FF had no effect on the game other than visually.
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom that’s a very unprovable/undisprovable argument
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom unlike Mario, however, the visuals of ff significantly effect the tone/feel/story
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom I have a much easier time relating to the 3d ff, and their world’s seem much more real
@zacaj_ @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Tell me, how much of criticism is “provable.”
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Mario, having no story, must use new tech in its game play
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom not the criticism, using the argument that ‘we don’t remember it well’
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom by definition you can’t disprove it since it relies on faulty memory
@zacaj_ @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom But you can document nostalgia and similar effects that alter judgment.
@DrydenGG @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom that CAN alter judgment.
@zacaj_ @adamharshberger @capnraccoon @trueaxiom Those things *frequently* alter judgment, like telling someone a wine is more expensive.
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