Hmm. Let’s see. I could do another relevant, incisive, and heartfelt post on politics. Or, alternatively, I could dump all over a franchise that’s way too easy to make fun of, yet draws my eye and ire every time because of a worthless vendetta I have against one of gaming’s most beloved brands.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Tough choice.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Oh, wait. It’s not a tough choice at all. Gather around, children, for today is a glorious day. Come, take a seat around the campfire as Grandpappy Voltech blathers on about Final Fantasy. Again. Because it’s what you crave, presumably.
You also crave that, presumably.
(Even though despite the meme-worthy nature there’s actually built-in reasoning and context behind the much-discussed and occasionally-reviled laughing scene as a means to further characterize two members of the main cast as they develop their relationship over time as one would with a decently-composed narrative which is what Final Fantasy once did on the regular instead of accidentally but whateverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.)
Let’s get one thing out of the way first: Final Fantasy is dead to me. In case you skipped over the tiny text above, I’ll gladly admit -- and proclaim, even -- that even with its missteps and goofy moments, the franchise wasn’t always a million-dollar disaster. There were good games. There were good stories. Once upon a time, it earned its spot in gaming history because of more than just a recognizable name.
Those days are over, if you ask me. Everyone has their breaking point with the franchise -- the title they point to when they want to highlight “where it all went downhill” -- and mine was with FF15. Which isn’t to say that 13 and 13-2 weren’t trainwrecks on top of pile-ups on top of a fleet of ruptured septic tanks. While opinions vary, I’d say that everything tied to the Fabula Nova Crystallis project was disastrous; because of it, my patience wore thin by the time the long-delayed, long-awaited FF15 hit store shelves. I mean, I consider FF Type-0 to be a complete garbage fire, but it’s still the best of the bunch. Let that sink in.
13 was beyond awful, and 13-2 was beyond the beyond. 15 was pretty much the only hope I had left for the franchise; how could it disappoint, considering the decade of work (off and on, presumably) that went into it? How could the prestige and resources possibly lead to a failure of a product? As it turns out: pretty easily. For the life of me, I couldn’t even finish 15. After some 15 hours of dull meandering, sleep-inducing combat, and an MIA story (for the most part, though what did pop up barely left an impression), I dropped it. I played Tales of Berseria instead, which not only provided the thrills and quality I wanted, but also earned a spot as one of my favorite games ever. It just had to use 15’s corpse as a step stool.
At its absolute best (in my eyes), FF15 is decent. Passable. It reaches par and goes no further. There’s an extremely high chance that my disgust for it stems from personal biases; I wouldn’t even be blogging today if not for my need to rage about FF13. The counter-argument here is that you don’t get all that money, all that tech, all that time, and all that prestige…and then put out a product that doesn’t come close to blowing the game industry away. It wasn’t Final Fantasy: Step Back, ‘Cause We’re Dropping This Mic Like a Hydrogen Bomb. It was Final Fantasy: It’s Another One, We Guess. And it wasn’t even finished! They had ten years, and they still needed more time to add in features, fix problems, and use paid DLC to inject crucial story elements into the game. For a price. Because that’s how you tell a story.
How do you even manage that? How? I mean, besides the obvious.
So for me, FF15 was bad enough. But you know what was worse? You know what IS worse? The fact that I, and we, can’t see what’s next for the franchise. We can’t wipe the slate clean. We can’t progress. We can’t see what the devs have learned, either from their successes or their mistakes. Nope, it’s time to hit the salt mines so they can dig up some sweet, sweet nostalgia bucks with a remake of FF7.
That right there irritates me to no end. It smacks of a complete lack of creative vision, of ambition, energy, and can-do spirit. It’s like Squeenix as a whole is saying “we don’t know what we’re doing” or “we give up”. IIRC, the original, internal argument they made was that they had no choice but to do it now, because the team members are getting old and they need another hurrah. Given the choice between now or never, I’d choose never. Go forward, not backward. Go up, not down.
But you know what? Fine. It’s fine. There’s no sense in getting salty about it now, because (barring a cancellation that razes the project to the ground) the FF7 remake is happening. It’s a dream come true for plenty of gamers. And it doesn’t take a head as big as mine to figure out why: it’s because people like FF7. I like FF7. I have fond memories of it, and I think it’s a good game. If I didn’t have a backlog the size of n Abrams tank, I’d grab a copy and play it right now.
So in the best case scenario, I’d think -- and hope, desperately -- that the remake is going to pump the super soldier serum into the original game. Better graphics, better sound, bigger worlds, all the production value magic that’d prove the company’s technical wizardry -- while doing a service to the game, brand, and industry. Honestly, I (on a personal level) don’t need top-of-the-line stuff. I don’t need to see every individual strand of Red XIII’s hair, and I don’t need Midgar to be the size of San Andreas. Just make improvements within reason. Work smarter, not harder. Or…costlier.
But I guess that’s too much to ask out of Squeenix. History’s repeating itself. The remake was announced back in 2015; we’re three years out from that as of writing, and yet there’s been very little indication of what state the game’s in. Sure, there was a demonstration/trailer of some newly-minted action bits, but given the GIGANTIC departure between FF13’s early trailers and the actual game, there’s a lot that could have changed by now.
So basically, the remake exists in some nebulous state where nobody outside the reach of Squeenix’s scraping tendrils knows what’s going on. They say it’s episodic, but in what capacity? They’re hiring new talent, but to what end? Why are we going into another media blackout when we just got done with this shit with 15? What is happening with this company?
And there’s the rub. The real reason for this post isn’t to gripe about FF some more…again…some more. No, the real reason for this post is to gripe about Squeenix itself, largely because of its treatment of such a potentially-golden franchise. Because when you get down to it? Boy, they sure are a bunch of bumblers.
There was a big FF event recently poised to detail the future of 15 -- part of an anniversary celebration, more or less -- and the hype was building. What would come next? What would the fans receive from on high? Turns out it was an anti-announcement; three out of four impending DLC releases were canceled, PC/modding support would wither on the vine, and director Hajime Tabata (who actually got the game out after Nomura faffed around for like seven years) bid farewell to 15, Squeenix, and Luminous Productions in one fell swoop. What a way to celebrate a birthday, huh?
Let’s get one thing straight first: I’ve got nothing but well-wishes for Tabata and the technicians who actually did the work to craft and code 15. Wherever they end up, I hope it’s a good place. I feel like I can say that confidently -- and sincerely -- because I can divorce people and products, creators and creations. As a result? I can still point to Squeenix as a whole -- albeit as a faceless entity -- and say this is another botch for the record books.
It’s bad enough that the game was unfinished, but now it looks like from now on, that “was” will have to be an “is”. The Lunafreya episode was one of the casualties, meaning that any characterization she was supposed to get (MIA both in my time with it, and MIA in the full playthroughs of countless gamers) is basically a pile of dust. How do you do that with one of your central characters, especially when it’s the love interest and a lynchpin of the plot? Oh, right, I forgot. Squeenix hates women.
Next issue. Riddle me this: why is it that Tabata’s out, but Nomura gets to stay? Like I said, he’s the one that got 15 out there, and has gotten other games out before within a vaguely-reasonable amount of time. His games were flawed, absolutely; given his work on Type-0, I’m inclined to believe that his watermark is 1) a decent opening, 2) lots of meandering to follow, and 3) a cockamamie story event that’ll make you question your faith in humanity. Then again, maybe he broke the mold with The 3rd Birthday, since he worked on that…along with Motomu “I’m In Love With Lightning” Toriyama, soooooooooooo it’s probably best not to touch that one.
Next issue. What’s going on with Luminous? I haven’t been following them closely, so it’s not like I have a pulse on their dark machinations. Maybe that would explain why they’ve suffered a reported extraordinary loss of $33 million, accelerating Tabata’s departure. I guess they’re working on something else -- and news tidbits reflect that -- but who knows when they’ll have some AAA output? Who knows if that output will be any good, given Squeenix’s modern-day reputation?
I’m no businessman, let me tell you that much upfront. Even so, I’m having a hell of a time understanding the industry-wide decisions Squeenix is keen to make. Even if we set aside FF7R trending toward development hell once more, where does that leave the rest of the company? I mean, just think about what they’ve “accomplished” in the past decade or so. Off the top of my head, they
1) Put out the extremely divisive (at best) FF13
2) Made a sequel to that game even when the first installment had a clear ending and shaky popularity, only to sell half the amount of copies
3) Made a sequel to the sequel despite fatigue with that universe and main character, only to sell half of its predecessor
4) Put out an MMO so awful and broken that it had to be scrapped and publicly apologized for
5) Had to rebrand the MIA Versus 13 into 15 to escape the stigma of the mini-franchise that tied a noose around their necks
6) Tapped Nomura to direct one of the most requested and important remakes in gaming history, even though he learned he was on the project the same time we did
I would go on, but there’s a distinction I want to make here.
See, those points skew more toward the business side of things -- which would be where I’d leave it, if not for the fact that video games (despite ultimately being a product) are artistic endeavors. They have to be judged based on how well they manage to come off as art. That’s a given. So the problem is that there wouldn’t be a problem if the franchise consistently fired on all cylinders. It hasn’t. I mean, Christ. If the games were universally considered, objectively described as cool, then there wouldn’t be as big a problem. Squeenix could rely on more than the brand, the graphics, and the money-snatching schemes to turn a profit. But that’s an alternate universe we’re not allowed to even see.
The past five single-player FF games have all been varying levels of trash. At best, they only gain credibility with spinoffs that borrow the name. Their stories are uniformly awful, a mix of nonsense and convolution requiring outside sources (in-game and out of it) to parse. Combat has routinely been disappointing, full of systems that put on airs of complexity when really they’re shallower than the NES-era games. They’ve completely forgotten how to make interesting worlds -- and yes, their problems go WAY beyond the infamous hallway of 13.
I don’t believe Squeenix can make good FF games anymore. Hell, I don’t even trust Squeenix to run to the grocery store, let alone a company. Wasted effort with building engines that don’t have a future; mindlessly pursuing top-shelf production values at the cost of everything else; developmental nightmare after developmental nightmare; relying on the same, stale talent instead of entrusting the franchise to new blood.
I honestly wish there was a custody battle over who gets FF. Clearly, Squeenix shouldn’t be allowed to play father anymore.
I mean, I can barely bring myself to care anymore about FF outside of eyebrow-raisers like this. Outside of publishing endeavors like NieR: Automata and Octopath Traveler, the only in-house developed title that I have any investment in is Kingdom Hearts III -- and I’m pretty sure I’m 85% on that ride because I’ve got to know how it ends. “Disastrously” would be my guess, but whatever. We’ll see. The important thing is that something has clearly gone wrong at the house that FF built. Had they not burned me so decisively and repeatedly in the past, I’d be concerned. Right now, I’m not.
There’s a part of me that wishes I could go back in time and stop FF: The Spirits Within from ever getting made, because that seems to have been the trigger for a lot of Squeenix’s problems and downfall (given that it sparked the merger between Squaresoft and Enix in the first place). If that movie had never happened, the who knows where we’d be? Maybe in a better place. Maybe with better games. Maybe with a better company -- because for as much weight and stock I put into games as a creative avenue, they can often only be made by businesses, companies, and towers of cash. I get that. I don’t resent that fact; it’s a reality of the industry.
It’s just that Squeenix is so uniquely bad at it, they’ve torpedoed their marquis franchise. And they’ll keep on torpedoing it, because one bad decision begets another. What happens now? I’d argue that the company and the beloved brand has already become irrelevant in the grand scheme of things; eastern and western games, JRPGs and beyond, have all managed to provide wihat FF once did in the past…and provided what it fails to do in the present. Literally the only thing keeping them in the spotlight (besides the western-developed games with their name on the box) is the remake of 7 because of nostalgia and morbid curiosity.
That’s it. That’s all they’ve got left. I’d say it’s a bitter pill to swallow -- a truth that breaks my heart -- but I don’t care anymore. I would say, however hesitantly, that if not for me playing some FF games years ago, I might never have wanted to become a writer. Probably would’ve focused solely on becoming an architect. But because of those worlds, adventures, and heroes, I had a dream. I still do. And it’s one that’s completely independent of a bunch of bumblers content with stumbling through the dark.
I’m okay with that. Let them stumble and bumble. Because you know what they say: if you want something done right…
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