Things Just HappenWhat the hell

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of the Final Fantasy series, so let me preface this post with my personal history with Final Fantasy.

In early 1998, I picked up Final Fantasy VII, and it was my first RPG. It was new and exciting, and for the time being, fun, and I played the shit out of it. Then came Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy VIII, and even then Tactics was my friend, while VIII quite literally put me to sleep(I know this because I woke up the next morning with the game still on). Around this time I found an old SNES cartidge – Final Fantasy III(actually VI, but that’s how it was labeled). I didn’t actually play it much, because by this point I had other RPGs I had taken a strong interest in – Breath of Fire III and Suikoden, and I was soon to add Skies of Arcadia to my list as the Dreamcast was on it’s way. At some point Final Fantasy IX came around, and eventually left, and I probably could not have been more unimpressed by a game that wasn’t Mark of Kri. The main series more or less fell off my radar at this point; I played Tactics Advance, which can be summed up in a nutshell as disappointing, and I watched Advent Children, even played Kingdom Hearts. At some point my brother acquired Final Fantasy X, but I’ve yet to touch it.

I liked Final Fantasy VII – at the time. These days, not so much, and I’ve become rather disillusioned with the series as a whole. I view them with open skepticism, mostly because I haven’t any reason not to.

Let’s start with the writing. Remember Shinra? A corrupt government, but Sephiroth was the real villain. In IX, there’s the queen bitch, but she’s not the real villain either, that’s Kuja. Even in Tactics, with corrupt politicians amok, the real villain is Altima. Corrupt politicians that aren’t the real villain has become such a staple of the series that Wikipedia picked up on it, among others. While the main games aren’t direct sequels in the fashion of some games, they might just be worse, instead just dressing up the same old story in new clothes. The solution here is simple; change the goddamn writers. Hell, hire real writers, a different one each game, and suddenly there might be a diversity of story. If they had Hideyuki Kikuchi(Vampire Hunter D) write for one game and Terry Prachett(Discworld) write for another, the stories would probably be as different as night and day. Most importantly, they’d be FUCKING NEW STORIES.

This is the part where I’m not even going to pretend I don’t hate Tetsuya Nomura. I’m really tired of his shit-scribbles dominating Sqeenix’s works in recent history, especially his preference for men with womanly hips. The answer here is much like my answer for the writing problem; new blood. How about art direction by Tsutomu Nihei(Blame!) or Brian Froud(Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal)? Hell, they could even choose artists who would compliment the writing, bringing together talent for a stronger game.

If you think you know where I’m going, you’re probably right if you’re thinking I’m going to say the series needs new music. It does, but mostly after the writing and art, because they should all work together and make the game stronger as a whole than as it’s parts. As it stands, Sqeenix has no reason to change the music, because, well, it suits the games. By putting out the same game over and over, they’ve also just put out similar music over and over.

Final Fantasy’s gameplay changes every game – or at least, it changes it a little. The core elements remain the same, with things like magic and summons and various other things changing, but the whole basic system being essentially unchanged. At least Tactics jumped off in a bold direction and added movement to the system, which made the gameplay deeper, while the main series busily paddles around the shallow end of the kiddie pool. Perhaps, Sqeenix, you could push what JRPGs can be in terms of gameplay by, oh, I don’t know, integrating parts of other genres and blurring the lines of what genre a given game is, or even little things like letting the player character jump over those annoying impassible two-foot tall hedges.

Final Fantasy suffers from the same problems as many other big game franchises – finding a formula that works and sticking to it. Sqeenix is a big company – according to Wikipedia, they made $100 million($100,000,000) in profits in 2009. When JRPGs come up, Final Fantasy inevitably comes up at some point too, being more or less the flagship series of JRPGs. But rather than lead the way, bringing us new fantasies, Final Fantasy does seem to be a final fantasy, a poor horse limping onwards while Sqeenix’s executives beat it with thorny sticks and tear gas. Squeenix is a big enough company that they can do some gambling, and I propose they do just that. Drop “Final” from the name, and show us a new series called Fantasy that doesn’t just give us the same vision, but explores the limits of fantasy and what RPGs can be as a medium for a story.

Hell, they could just start a new “Fantasy” series and keep the Final Fantasy series for all the drooling wretches that eat that shit up.