Regarding the News:
Final Fantasy Versus XIII now Final Fantasy XV
I’ve had a day now to
start getting used to calling it Final
Fantasy XV, and my god, it feels so good. Final Fantasy has been a gigantic part of my life, one of the
defining elements of my childhood. In the wake of the Final Fantasy XII,[1]
the seemingly never-ending XIII
franchise, and the failed MMO, I was genuinely concerned that another bad move
from Square could bring it all to a possibly-deserved end.[2]
And maybe that wouldn’t
be so bad. The series has become infamous for its borrowing of tropes and
character templates from itself, but in reality, each game in the series is
radically different from the others. If Final
Fantasy was over, it would just mean that Square would take anything
planned as a Final Fantasy game and
market it as a AAA title under a different name. That’s what happened to Xenogears and Parasite Eve anyway. But I can’t say I wouldn’t be heartbroken
anyway. I liked Angels and Airwaves and I liked +44 but I’d be outright insane
to say I wouldn’t take Blink-182 over them any day.[3]
When the trailers for Versus XIII came out years ago I just
thought it was being released under the franchise name as a marketing gimmick.
Fine by me, the title of anything is ultimately completely unimportant, and
using the Final Fantasy name to
market something ultimately unrelated to the main series of classical JRPGs
allowed many niche franchises to emerge and later flourish. The Mana series for example, started as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden [4], a
humble Zelda-inspired Gameboy title,
and the first game in the SaGa
franchise was released as The Final
Fantasy Legend in the United States,[5]
and of course Final Fantasy Tactics,
whose director Yasumi Matsuno went on to co-direct Final Fantasy XII with the legendary Hiroyuki Ito[6].
I’d been occasionally
re-watching the older trailers for what was at the time Versus XIII and thoughts have always been the same: “The graphics
look great, the dialogue is fantastic, the music is heartbreaking, and this
game is never coming out.” Tetsuya Nomura had been tied up in the Kingdom Hearts franchise[7] and
its incessant spinoffs since about 2008. Versus
XIII had been labeled his vanity project, which meant there was no way any
work was getting done on it until there was somehow a break in the series.
I’ve felt since around
the time that XIII-2 flopped that at
least from a corporate and from an “ethical” perspective it was time for Nomura
to be allowed to direct a main numbered title in this storied franchise. I’d be
lying if I said I didn’t despise Birth by
Sleep[8]
in particular, but because of those prequels and interquels[9]
Nomura is one of the only big names left at the company who makes the company
any money. Hironobu Sakaguchi is gone and doing just fine thank you (same with
Uematsu), Yoshinori Kitase is too comfortable sitting on his legacy[10], Hiroyuki
Ito is still in the doghouse for not saving Final
Fantasy XII, and (thank the random providence of the universe) Motmou
Toriyama is locked with Lightning Returns.[11]
And let’s be real, in a
franchise that involves some of the biggest most popular names not just of
Square’s empire, but of Disney? There’s
not a chance in hell that Nomura has the kind of auteur creative control that
one might envision he does. In fact, writing and design by committee are really
the only things that could possibly explain how absolutely insanely stupid Dream Drop Distance’s story turned out.[12]
But all of this is
ultimately irrelevant. The other day I was driving to pick up my dogs from my
mom’s place in fairly heavy rain. I hit an exit ramp a little too fast, and
started swerving off road, heading into bushes I couldn’t clearly see into.
Looking into the blur of green and brown was the clear thought that in all
likeliness there was very likely a tree branch or something of the like that
would crash through my windshield, impale me through the chest, and kill me. A
moment later, I realized this was not the case. I was fine, so was the car. I
turned off the car, hit the emergency lights, and gave myself a moment to
breathe while I realized I was still alive and spent the rest of that day
thinking yet again about death and the impermanence of all things.
I remembered two
winters ago when my father and I were almost in a multi-car accident in the
winter of 2009 that would’ve almost certainly killed us. I thought about how my
original disc copy of Final Fantasy VII
is starting to skip, even after years of me doing my best to take care of it.
Final
Fantasy will someday cease to be. Today is not that day.
And on top of that,
holy shit this trailer is fucking amazing.
So let’s be happy today that we have something that looks this great and this
exciting to be hopeful about. I like a lot of different things in this trailer,
but I wanna hone in on something particular.
One of the things that
particularly impressed me in some of the older FFvXIII trailers was the little snippets of conversation between the
characters Noctis and Stella. FFVIII’s
dialogue captured the nuances of the adolescent mind, but appropriate to age,
the characters in these trailers speak like young adults. The early dialogue in
this trailer especially reflects that. A couple that is heartbroken that it
cannot be, straining to pull themselves apart from each other. However, the
real gem in this particular trailer is Noctis’ interaction with his father, the
King, as a young boy.
A particular strength
of the best games in this series have been that characters have not been
defined by singular events, but by the forming psychological experiences of
entire lives. Cloud did not have one particular incident in his childhood that
made him want to go to Midgar and become a hero, it was a subtle synthesis of
reading about Sephiroth in Shinra propaganda papers, his inability to prove his
self-worth to others, the subtextual rejection of him by Tifa, his own violent
demons, the lack of paternal discipline from an absent father.
Similarly, this trailer
informs the later segments of gameplay and footage that show Noctis’ father in
trouble with the human emotions of the relationship between them by showing
earlier that scene of the two eating dinner. Noct complains that the food is
terrible, the King replies that he shouldn’t say that, the cook will be fired,
then sticks out his green tongue in disgust of the food, Noct laughs. Thus,
later, when the objective becomes to find and save that character, Noct does
not need to outwardly display how much he loves his father to make this an
emotionally compelling objective. We know that he does. This isn’t just “OBJECTIVE:
Save Your Father, The King.” It’s, “Save Your Father, The King, Who Hated the
Food Just As Much As You Did.” This is how writing
works and I’ve never seen it written on such a genius level in a videogame.
If the rest of Final Fantasy XV shows as much subtle
understanding of human characters as it appears to have already done, and
matches it with quality gameplay (which we’ve already seen) we’re not just
looking at the first good Final Fantasy game
in 15 years, we’re looking at one of the best JRPGs of all time. Get hype.
-Austin
C. Howe, Maryland, 2013
[1] It was a bad game don’t lie to
yourself.
[2] Actually if I’m being honest I
thought it was all over when XIII-2
ended with “To Be Continued”
[3] And lo and behold, Neighborhoods and Dogs Eating Dogs have some of the bands best material, in many
cases superior to anything they’d done previously, and far superior to either
of those projects.
[4] (rough translation: Legend of The Holy Sword: Final Fantasy
Side-Story)
[5]
(Japanese title: Makai Toshi: SaGa
trans Warrior in the Spirit World SaGa)
[6] Director of Final Fantasy IX, one of the all-time greats.
[7] My main comment on the KHIII trailer: “Well, that was vague as
fuck but I’m glad they’re announcing a new console game finally.” Also worth
noting that, though it has slowly broken away from that tie-in, Kingdom Hearts was basically markted as
a Final Fantasy spin-off. The
trailers prominently feature franchise characters, as do the plots of the first
three games in the series.
[8] My complete review: Sound and fury. The gameplay with Terra
was bad enough to make me not want to play the rest. Lack of immersive setting
challenges FFXIII. Moments of vague
but affecting melancholy that the series has done to greater effect before
without such an artifice of bullshit. Fantastic music by Shimomura as usual.
[9] It’s a word. Accept it sooner
rather than later.
[10] But maybe he’ll come back to
direct the inevitable VII remake? A
man can dream.
[11] When he’s done, make sure he never
works in this industry again . . . That’s unfair, stick him with an attempt to
reboot the Mana franchise or
something. Credit where credit is due though, the actual gameplay in LR:FFXIII looks better than anything in
the series before it.
[12]
Axel is back! Everyone gets a Keyblade! Yaaaaaayyyy!!!!! (Eat my shorts.)
