The Death of Final Fantasy





Square's first attempt at making us care
about characters is, sadly, a failure.

By now everyone probably knows the history of Final Fantasy (FF). A small company known as Squaresoft published its “final” game in 1987 (date taken from Wikipedia and therefore likely wrong) which in turn spawned 13 14 sequels. And that’s not counting all the Tactics, Crystal Chronicle, Anime, Hentai, and various other spin-offs it has spawned as well.

Every JRPG there after tried to be like Final Fantasy. And why not? It was a great game, but it was not without its flaws. The main characters of the first game are forgettable at best. Final Fantasy 2 (Japan’s version of two; not the North American version of two which is actually 4) didn’t have characters level up, but rather each character’s abilities increased or decreased depending on what weapons or magic the player used. The characters had a bit more depth to them but they still failed to inspire any kind of emotional attachment. Final Fantasy 3 (again not the North American version which was actually 6. Why they didn’t bring them all over here in the first place is beyond me. Crack maybe?) went back to bland and Forgettable characters. The DS version of FF3 tried to give the characters more personality, but that was, sadly, a failure as well. One thing that FF3 did right, however, was that it started the Job system. Of which has been a staple of the series ever since; in some form or another. As stated above, up to this point none of the characters in the series were ever that interesting.

Cecil Harvey takes on his darkside.

Enter Cecil Harvey. He was the first character in a Final Fantasy game that had any kind of personality. Cecil fights off the darkness that plagues him and becomes a paladin. And that’s not even mid way through the game. There were plenty of other characters to care about in FF4 as well, some of which were only with you for a short time. IV is also when the story telling actually started to evolve into something much more complex. No longer did we have the “nameless characters go off to save crystals and/or world” scenario. While four did feature the crystals, this time shit started to get heavy. Now there were eight crystals, a trip to the underworld, and a trip to the moon. I should also note that while the story was more complex, it never took away from the game play.

Final Fantasy V brought back the job system of three, along with several recycled story elements that helped to flesh out the story a bit more. Final Fantasy V is also the first game to have a proper Villain. FF One had Garland/Chaos who you meet only once twice throughout the entire game. Two had the Emperor who was a pretty evil dude who dies, goes to Hell, sells his soul to the devil, then takes over the place and comes back from the dead. Three’s villain is mentioned in passing on several occasions throughout the game but is never met until the final fight where he/she/it, like so many other JRPG villains is taken over by an even darker force that the characters are forced to fight. IV’s villain was Golbez who is a big dick until he has a change of heart and says he was being controlled Zeromus, a moon alien that you have never heard of before that appears only at the end of the game. Sound Familiar? In V we have X-Death or EXDEATH or Exodus (the latter most likely correct, seriously, the translation in FF V is shit. A dingleberry really? Lay off the crack square) who is really an evil tree who wants to take over the world. That’s it. He’s not being controlled. He’s not devoured by some higher supernatural force or killed and spat out of Hell. He’s evil. He’s nasty, and he makes one hell of a good villain.



Kefka: giving man a reason to fear clowns.

This super awesome super bad villain carries over to Final Fantasy 6 in the form of Kefka. He is one insane son of a bitch. He doesn’t try to destroy the world and fail like all the final fantasy villains before or after him, he actually SUCCEEDS! Six is also when final fantasy began to shy away from the fantasy and move on to a more steampunk/ SIFI feel which has carried over for much of the series. The story in six is much more story driven than all the others up to this point. And the story is really good, even by today’s standards it can still hold up. At the end of the game we are treated to our first second (the first being a scene in 4 at the beginning) FMV cut scene.

Then along came seven. Before we go any further let me just say that Sepheroth is a pushover. I beat him at the end (spoilers, the last fight with just him and Cloud) with a single limit break. His role in the game is minimal at best. The true villain in the game is Hojo, who makes Nazi doctors look like decent guys, and Jenova, who is debatably pulling Sepheroth’s strings the entire time. With that said, the story in seven is top notch. Like six before it, the story still holds true today, maybe even more so. Rather than evil Emperors or Kings, seven has an evil President bent on draining the earth of all its energy so that he can churn a prophet (Also more interesting than Sepheroth). Seven also has the first black man, Barrett, and the first nonhuman character(s) CaitSith the puppet cat thing and RedXIII (whom I always like to name Nanaki, which makes for rather comical storytelling later “hey Nanaki, who’s Nanaki?”) And it has one of the most memorable moments in gaming history with the death of Ares (as if you didn’t already know). However, even with such a great story, there are still flaws with the game, like with all the others. There are plot holes for starters (If Tifa is so good at martial arts why would she have a slap fight atop a gun? Why doesn’t Tifa just roundhouse-kick Scarlet into meteor?) Also, just a side note, but why not use the battle scene character models as the game play character models as well? But I digress. Seven’s story is far more complex than anything seen in a final fantasy game yet. To this day it is one of the best. Oh, and fuck square for milking the shit out of this game. If you want us to buy FFVII then remake the damn thing. Which they did. Good job. Now will you please remake Chrono Trigger already?


VIII goes back to the formula of, one villain is controlled by another villain is controlled by another villain who the creators just made up because they couldn’t decide who they wanted the villain to actually be. The story in VIII is more of a love story between the two main characters than anything else(And a bat-shit crazy one with time compression at that). Squall’s transformation from” Emo Git” to “Douch” is likely the main plot of the game. (This of course is just speculation, as the plot in the game makes about as much sense as the plot of a Hentai [which in itself probably makes more sense than the entirety of Final Fantasy VIII]). But this is where things start to go sour. The story in VIII, while still good, begins to feel almost intrusive. This happened a bit in six and seven as well. The opera scene in ff6 for example has you controlling Locke, then Edgar, then Celes. Even when FF7 had long cut scenes, you were given control of cloud (you know you went to Tifa's underwear drawer too). Every few steps in VIII there is some kind of a cut scene, then some fighting, then a cut scene. It goes like this:

· Game play

· Pretty cut scene

· Boss fight

· Another pretty cut scene

· Brief Game play

· Plain boring cut scene

· Repeat
 

Also missing from VIII are the side quests. Sure it had the card game (the monkey thing doesn’t count) and some extra GF’s to find, some Chocobo quests which you could play if you got a pocket station that I’m pretty sure never came to America, and if it did no one bothered to buy, and one dungeon to explore. And don’t even get me started on those damn tutorials.

IX is a return to castles and kings and regents and airships (6 and 7 had air ships while 8 had a space ship, but so did 4 so I guess that counts). The game was originally going to be a side story (like Crystal Chronicles or Tactics) and it shows. It’s still a fun game however. It’s the first final fantasy I ever played and honestly one of my favorites. But even it has its flaws. The villain Kuja, the Kefka wanna be, is laughable at best. The main character is okay, and the other characters have their ups and downs. Albert Steiner and Vivi are among my favorites. IX is also the last game in the series feature a proper world map.

Having a guy named Cid does not a good Final Fantasy
movie make.

Then came the movie Spirits Within and everything went to Hell. Square lost tons of money, fired the director/ producer of Final Fantasy Hironobu Sakaguchi (don’t worry I can’t pronounce it either), acquired enix (who made the dragon quest games) and started producing shit. 

I’ll say this about the next game: X was decent. I am not a fan of blitz ball. I found the whole thing to be tedious and boring. The only reason I even tried it was to get Tidus’s ultimate weapon, which I gave up on after I remembered I didn't care. There were still plenty of other side quests to complete though. The game was fun, but it featured many flaws and changes. Firstly, there was no world map. You had to walk the entire world until you were finally given the air ship. This leads to the second point that while it did have an air ship, you couldn’t fly it in any way shape or form. You simply chose your destination from a list of previously ventured places and are magically transported there. Lastly, the game gave the appearance of an opened world, with several branching paths to veer you from the main course, but the path you needed to be on was never far off. Sin also did make for an interesting villain. Seymour, the guy who looked like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket, was about as villainous as a back-up toilet. The story and game play were pretty good. This game is also the first to have voice actors and to feature the sphere grid that has been in every game since. It is also the first game to get a shitty sequel.

XI and XIV are online only. I refused to pay $60 for a game then an extra $10 a month just to play it. Not only that, but XIV was so bad that Square publicly apologized for its existence. NEXT! I do want to try the "new and improved FF XIV but I have yet to sign in for my demo. I have time. It's only been a year....




Vaan makes even gay men look striaght.

XII came out and changed everything up even more. The random encounters were no longer random (a welcome feature in my opinion) the characters were likeable (with the exception of Vaan who just needs to die) and the story was good but not great. The villains are forgettable at best. Okay I admit evil Cid was kind of cool. The story in the games since VIII had all become intrusions to game play. Even IX’s story (which I loved) could feel intrusive at times. Rather than having some gameplay driven story mechanic in the game we are treated to 90 minute beautifully rendered cutscenes. The battle system could be set up so that you just watched the entire game. All you had to do was move from point A to point B and let the game do all the work. Yeah you could control the character if you wanted, but why control them yourself when the computer does it for you right? RIGHT? At least we still have the open world (more opened than X but not as opened as IX) to look forward to . . .

Until now. Final Fantasy XIII took our opened worlds away for a more liner approach. The game practically plays itself when it actually plays. The characters are bland and forgettable (maybe with the exception of Sazah, the only other black man in the whole series, bringing the grand total to 3. The second is Kiros from VIII). And there are no air ships. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if you didn’t have to walk everywhere. If you’re going to make me walk the whole game then at least give me a fucking run/dash feature. You also aren’t given any incentive to return to places you’ve visited, nor can you. And of course, since this game was so highly received by fans it has spawned not one, but two sequels that nobody wanted.

Why the hell has this not made the
next gen leap yet?

At this point the only thing that can save Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy Versus XIII. If it fails to redeem the series, then there’s no hope. In all honesty though, I think FF should have died after VII. Sure nine was good. Sure ten had a good story, but after a while things start to fall apart. What was once good loses its luster. Bread gets moldy, chips go stale, soda goes flat, and games get old. Final Fantasy fell into this trap a long time ago. No Final Fantasy will ever top VII’s story. No FF villain will ever be as cool as Kefka. No characters will ever overcome his or her darkness like Cecil. The Final Fantasy we all know and love is gone and it’s never coming back.

But maybe this can be a good thing. Maybe Square should put the game to rest and truly make a Final Final Fantasy. They have plenty of other games they can butcher remake, like ChronoTrigger/Cross, or Dragon’s Quest or Kingdom Hearts (which still needs at 3 damit) or this new Agni’s Philosophy which I fear is a code name for FF, though I hope I am wrong (and now that Square has acquired Eidos, it has a plethora of other games as well). Just give us Versus Square, then stop. Final Fantasy used to mean great adventure, great story, great characters and great fun. Now it’s like watching Toy Story, then all of a sudden everything stops and you wonder what’s going on. You check the console to make sure that it hasn’t frozen up on you. You then pick up the controller trying to unpause the video, and when you hit the button, your character starts moving and you remember, oh yeah, I’m playing a game. From what I have seen of Versus, which admittedly isn’t much, I am excited. I want Final Fantasy to succeed. What I don’t want is to follow a single line to a cut scene and a boss fight. I want to explore the world. I want to find secrets, and most of all, I don’t want characters that make me want to throw up in my mouth.

Now, it’s like watching an interactive Pixar film in which the characters try to get you to like them by begging. I have not issues with Pixar’s films, which are fantastic, most of the time (cars2 was rubbish) but if I buy a game, I want to play it, not watch it. We all know what happens Square when you try to make a movie. If you want to make a game, then make a game. Leave the movie making to the professionals.