Square-Enix hopes to release Final Fantasy games more frequently

Yes. Because when I think of mistakes with the Final Fantasy series in recent years, the first thing that comes to mind is how they take too much time to make games. Hell, why didn't they take longer with XIII to give them time to come to the conclusion that having most of the game being linear and on rails isn't the greatest of ideas?

Final Fantasy XIII was well received in the grand scheme of things, and I personally thought it stood up there with the rest of the franchise --
the problem was it took so long to get it out. And Versus? Christ that's been in development for a historical amount of time.

Yes, that's just what that brand needs. More saturation.

The fall in popularity is due to the decline in quality and maybe even a general disinterest in JRPGs. I can see that the timescale is much more protracted than it used to be, but I think games now just take longer to make.

If Square-Enix has a few teams sharing basic technology and working on Final Fantasy games over a period of 2 or 3 years apiece and thus the market sees a new Final Fantasy game every year or two (the Call of Duty model that Kitase likely meant), I don't see how that would be such a bad thing. There's less interest in the JRPG now than there used to be, with the westrn RPG coming to prominence, but I think there's still an audience for quality JRPGs if Square-Enix can make buying one every year or two a habit that gamers don't want to break. This isn't really as ludicrous an idea as a lot of people are suggesting.

The problem is that they've been telling the same story since at least FFX. Maybe SE should try doing something new. And then, yeah, it'd be nice after that to have games be released quicker.

Could they perhaps make RPGs again? I'm getting tired of these interactive movies.

They made a full-blooded RPG with FF12, but it seemed everyone hated it. It's still my favorite of all the post-FF9 games.

No kidding, everyone hated FFXII on message boards when it came out as well, and considering how good that game was, I don't think that the older fanbase will ever be pleased with anything Square Enix does. FF is now a brand for a newer generation, the title is just used for marketing. It's just a confusing mess of nostalgia and anger undercutting what are actually very polished pieces of software.

I suppose message board posters make up a minuscule portion of the market though.

FFXII would've been great if any of the characters were likeable. Balthier and Cid were pretty well written, Cid in particular being an actually interesting character, but the other characters had the depth of a kiddy pool.

I did enjoy FFXII for it's tendency to not try and shove story down our throats. But when it did stop to tell its story or tell us to go somewhere to see something, it was never interesting.

Really, I do think that character is what's been lacking from the recent FF games. It was the characters who gave us an FFIV sequel almost two decades after the original game was released. It's the characters who make FFVI consistently labeled one of the greatest RPGs of all time. Character is what's made Sephiroth and Cloud two of the most famous video game icons of all time. Character began the flame wars between FFIX and FFVIII and kept people playing FFX even when they thought Tidus was a boob. FFX-2 was the first game to take character and stomp it in the dirt. The FF games since then (and including that one) have had consistently interesting gameplay and world settings, but none of them have had any characters worth writing home about.

Character is so important to a game with a story (note: WITH A STORY. I'm not talking your basic platformer or more Western-style RPG). What do you think has kept Metal Gear Solid going for so long? We can argue all we want about whether it has well-written characters, but Snake is an icon. Something about Snake is interesting enough to write home about.

Other examples include Mass Effect and Dragon Age. People talk about the gameplay in them, sure, but more people talk about Morrigan-this-or-that or who you had a relationship with in Mass Effect.

It's no surprise. Characters are the most important part of any fiction, for most viewers or readers or gamers. I tend to start my own fiction with environments, since that is actually what interests me, but as a viewer/reader/gamer I'm in the minority. A lot of people care passionately about characters, and even some of my favorite fiction (such as the Belgariad series by David Eddings) was my favorite because of strong characters. My biggest issue with Final Fantasy XIII, which I found mostly to be a great game, was Hope. I wanted to strangle him most of the way through the game.

Character are nice, but I want a good dungeon crawler, and FF12 was basically that.

Interestingly enough, I don't really find any cast from the FF franchise to be inherently deep or to have gone through truly rigorous development -- they are fairly straightforward characters (FFVI is the epitome of this), and I think that's helped carry the games into popularity. Simple characters in a fantastical adventure that conveys powerful themes -- this is a big part of what Japanese game design is. That's not to say the writing is bad simply because it doesn't match something like Planescape Torment, because FF games do indeed have very well executed characters and story arcs, but it's pretty much a whole separate genre of story telling. Japanese RPGs like XIII, for example, really go for the player's heart strings with each line of dialogue. Characters develop via emotional outbursts, where as in a game like Dragon Age, the player is meant to be impressed by the detail within lore and character backgrounds. Whichever game I want to play depends on my mood, really =p.


As for XII, I don't have much to complain about, almost at all, to put it flatly. Vaan was a great opening perspective, and I loved how the game literally portrayed him and Penelo as bickering children in the background of cutscenes as the adults took the reign of the story. They really forced him into a few scenes which felt out of place at times, but I was glad they lessened the focus on him overall. Ashe's dilemma was quite powerful, the dialogue between Basch and Gabranth was chilling (incredible script, really), and Fran's and Balthier's story arcs were very relevant. Opinions will vary on that though, I just really admired the way they handled a game about war, politics, reconciliation, etc... as opposed to the more personal stories of the old games. As for the core gameplay and structure of the game, THAT was impressive. And those cities, they had such a stunning amount of detail to them.

My gripes with XIII, then, would be some minor pacing issues as the battle system takes time to heat up. And then characters, mainly Hope and Snow, and how they dived too deeply into melodrama where they failed to remain believable. Other than that it was quite a positive experience, almost reminded me a bit of FFVI with how the characters were handled. And I'm becoming a sucker for streamlined RPGs, as I greatly enjoyed XIII and Mass Effect 2 this generation.

I would like to go on record as saying that Final Fantasy XII is fantastic. Some of the characters may not be as memorable as the cast from X, but Ivalice quickly became my favourite video game world. Amazing.

..maybe they should just create something new. They had talented writers when they made FF7&8. Some of that talent made it into the game. Other talent seems to have made sure the game's presentation was taped together, and that there was some kind of link between gameplay and story.

FF8 even had a few of the scripted scenarios where you were playing in them. That was one of the series' highlights, in my opinion. The battlefield blowing up in the background while Squall and Rinoa would run around. Was a couple of semi-interactive events turning up that way. Even if it always ends up being a mini-game with a few button-prompts that lead to some very implausible bridge to the next part of the ..not actually bad story..

Same with the build-up for the assassination of the sorceress. That was a consistent story with elements that were really well made. But you always saw that they didn't have the graphics or the engine to really display the entire sequence completely. And they didn't have the skill to create good enough segueways with the tools they had (the prison-sequences - where the rules in the game turn into the rules in the game-world. Or some of the skips between cinematics and game-time - and some of the skips between overview and battle-mode, when your brain has to twist into a knot to maintain suspension of disbelief... horrible stuff).

Thing is that if they try to copy that in better graphics - where the actual game-mechanics in the other FF games dictate how the events play out - then what you get won't make sense. It will just be the same game as before, except with prettier overlays, and the same fractured game-world.

Maybe that's good enough, though.. I don't know.

But that's always been the problem with SE's popular games, hasn't it? That no one have been bold enough to do something brilliant with the design (like Tri-Ace did with Resonance of Fate). Or have the guts to simply say out loud that the weird narratives that barely worked in the other FF games shouldn't be kept at all.

That they either need to create something that works in the cinematic style they want to adopt. Or else they need to start treating the bridges between the segments more seriously.

I mean, what's going on when a battle suddenly freezes time and boxes you in to pocket-dimension where insane summoning attacks can happen - without any of it turning up in the "real world" afterwards? That's not a change of perspective in those battles, it's a change of dimensions instead.

Same thing when the plot keeps the same "Character A is introduced, does pose, flaunts weapon and says catchphrase". It only works in something like FF7 - where the cartoony graphics allow it, and no one expects movie-direction.

I don't really find any cast from the FF franchise to be inherently deep or to have gone through truly rigorous development -- they are fairly straightforward characters (FFVI is the epitome of this), and I think that's helped carry the games into popularity.

I don't really understand how you can call FFVI the epitome of straightforward character, when the whole point of that game was to take character cliches and give them back history. Shadow was the perfect example of this; on the surface he's a classic assassin ninja character with no real personality. But if you delve deep enough into the game, you'll find a fairly rich history to him that makes all of his decisions in the game that much more complex.

Sabin and Edgar are other perfect examples. One is literally a "body builder" while the other is the dandy king. But both facades are acts and the relationship between the brothers is a very deep one and well explored and developed throughout the game.

Don't even get me started on Terra and Ceres. They were emo back when emo didn't mean you had to wear black and mope around all the time. They actually kept their pain pretty well hidden, which made scenes like the opera house one extremely poignant, because it was revealing their emotions through the art of acting, basically emotion revealed by proxy. Locke is another key player in that triad. Which I could easily delve into further if needed.

Even characters who are fairly skin deep, like Mog, are put in the disorienting situation of the world ending, and their reactions to that reveals a lot about them.

Final Fantasy VI is the standard by which I judge nearly any RPG that I've ever played since. It's the reason Final Fantasy VII disappointed me so much (because VII really plays too much like VI, only without the spark of personality that the characters in VI produced).

It's absurd to say that Square-Enix needs to try to do something new. Each Final Fantasy is new in all of the ways that matter. The Final Fantasy name doesn't mean the same game all over again. It simply stands for the JRPG produced with first-rate production values and an epic plot and a massive world. That's worth doing as many times as Square-Enix can manage it. Sometimes, efforts work better than others. The stripping down of the actual exploration that began with FFX and (hopefully) ended with Final Fantasy XIII is an unfortunate diversion, but otherwise the games have held true to their main themes while producing wildly different scenarios.

Yes, you see the active battle system used a lot. It began with FFIV, but then Square-Enix produced the class system for V that allowed you to really change how battles went for your charcters. In VI, you could put in Street Fighter-like button combos to perform super moves specific to some characters, like Saban. VII just sucked. VIII produced the draw system, which was as unique as the series ever needs. IX was a conscious throwback to the earlier games in the series. X went with a purely turn-based system and you could swap out characters. It was fast-paced and wonderful. XII was, by all accounts, quite different from that. I've never actually played through it, not yet. And XIII was spectacular, one of the most unique battle systems in an RPG in ages (though from what I hear, inspired by and expanded over XII's combat system).

Many of the people who gripe about the endless stream of Final Fantasy titles with one breath quickly use their next breath to beg for another Kingdom Hearts installment, or a new Mana game. I think one of the problems for Final Fantasy games is that it has become the CoD of the genre. No matter what happens, a lot of people will be displeased. The series has found too much success and now there's a large portion of the target audience that wants it to fail and will ignore innovations just to see that happen.

Final Fantasy isn't perfect. Like every other series, it never really has been. But it deserves a better shake than it has been getting lately. Square-Enix is still taking the franchise seriously (as it should), and JRPG fans should be hopeful for a true return to form. It's still possible, and it would be wonderful!

I'm hoping FFXV turns out to be every bit the classic that FFVI was. The problem is, the culture that created Final Fantasy at Squaresoft is gone. Hironobu Sakaguchi left to form Mistwalker, Nobuo Uematsu pretty much followed him, and Yoshitaka Amano is only involved at a promotional level at this point. Even the Ivalice faction of FF is no longer with Square. All that's really left is Tetsuya Nemura, who isn't the character designer he was in 1997.

What's left is a corporate asset. Maybe the executives will hand it to a team that will do something good with it, maybe not. Right now, I'm not too optimistic.

(Meanwhile, why not allow the possibility that other studios might have done something interesting with the "jrpg" template..? :) )

Of course, if SE was really interested in making a quick buck, all they'd have to do would be to throw together a graphics-enhanced remake of FFVII. Bam. Instant best seller.

Except that they've said repeatedly that an up-to-date version of FFVII would take years and years of development and cost a gargantuan amount of money. It would be a massive hit, and SE still won't do it, which should spell out how impossible it really is.

I've heard that argument, but it doesn't have as much power when you consider that Final Fantasy XIII cost something like 80 million dollars to produce. They could spend the money. At least this time they'd be gauranteed to sell it. I mean, shit, didn't they sell some ridiculous number of copies of just the PSN rerelease?

I mean, hell... they could do what they did with FFIV and FFVI and just release a version with more cutscenes, all of them done in Advent style graphics, and it would sell. As long as they threw in some kind of extra dungeon and maybe a couple new mini games, people wouldn't call it too much of a sell out.

Alright well it's a bit naive to think you can take something made over a decade ago, brush it up with current generation graphics, and sell 10 million units of the same product in the state of the current industry. A game like VII would need to be reworked in nearly every aspect, and I'd almost say that'd be a harder task than creating a new IP (and easily just as expensive). It's a huge gamble and can easily backfire. I'm sure we'll see mild touch ups and ports, like what we're getting with FFX HD, but if a FFVII or VI remake was really that easy of a cash in, we would have gotten it by now. Square can make a game like XIII instead, push their usual 5-6 million units, and reach out to new audiences. Or they can follow message boards and business advice from doomsayers (obviously not directed at anyone here) -- really I'm not an expert though.

Sakaguchi seems like he is also jumping ship to faster paced, stylized RPGs. I really hope The Last Story is as good as I hear it is.

Alright well it's a bit naive to think you can take something made over a decade ago, brush it up with current generation graphics, and sell 10 million units of the same product in the state of the current industry.

Except that there are numerous examples of this succeeding. God of War HD, Shadow of the Collosus and ICO HD, Beyond Good and Evil HD.... but let's go closer to home, shall we? How do you then explain the fact that FFIV has been remade at least three times? Counting it, I'm seeing the PS1 remake, which was the same game with one crappy cutscene at the end and hard mode included, there was the DS version remake with all new graphics, and there was the advance version remake, which was the old game except with a couple new dungeons.

FFI, FFII, and FFIII were all remade with "advanced" graphics, basically an updating of the sprites in the case of FFI and FFII, and new dungeons. I think FFI this happened twice, once on the advance and again on the DS. FFVI has been remade for the PS1, with nothing new added except a couple glitches fixed and some new really bad cutscenes. That's the version being RE-RELEASED this week on the PSN, by the way.

So why would it be naive to think this would work again, with their best-selling game of all time?

I'm not arguing that this would be my preference. I would prefer to see a new game, moving away from the tired FF series that I used to love so much, or an FF game that truly tried something new with its characters and story, with maybe less of a focus on incredible graphics (which only do so much for a game, after all). But I don't think it's a naive thought.

As I said, I fully expect to see something like an HD brush over, that takes very little work indeed, I agree. I thought you guys said FFVI with Advent Children visuals, which is wooaaahhhh. Simple handheld remakes and touch ups do not equate to rebuilding an entire game to HD console standards -- that's a shaky analogy. It's a huge undertaking, and not necessary considering their new games still push the usual amount of units. There problem isn't sales, it's inefficient development time while attempting to break into the new market. A call back to the old forms of game design would only hurt them at this point.

I'm sure we'll see some brushed up remakes on Vita or what have you, easy money to be made there.

As I said, I fully expect to see something like an HD brush over, that takes very little work indeed, I agree. I thought you guys said FFVI with Advent Children visuals, which is wooaaahhhh. Simple handheld remakes and touch ups do not equate to rebuilding an entire game to HD console standards -- that's a shaky analogy. It's a huge undertaking, and not necessary considering their new games still push the usual amount of units. There problem isn't sales, it's inefficient development time while attempting to break into the new market. A call back to the old forms of game design would only hurt them at this point.

I'm sure we'll see some brushed up remakes on Vita or what have you, easy money to be made there.

I thought Square was onto something with XII, as the world was probably as close to a meld between JRPG and western ones (vast, open exploration, loaded with secret bosses in the Marks, Rare Game, Espers, etc.). To me, the main weakness was that the actual plot was pretty generic. I cared more about hunting down the next high-level mark than I did about doing things like challenging Vayne for ownership of the world or whatever. But, I could also say that about a game like Oblivion. What was more interesting: the "save the world from demon-god invasion" main plot or things like the guild storylines or even random exploration where you find wilderness caves and settlements and see what mischief you can get into there? I thought FF XII was a solid game that with some refining, could be a good launching pad for the franchise to really reinvent itself.

So they followed that up with a game that puts you on rails until Chapter 11 (of 13). And the sad thing is that now that I can explore areas and do optional missions, the main thing I'm noticing is how virtually every battle goes like this:

1. COM/RAV/RAV for the win.

2. If monster has a lot of HP, switch to COM/COM/RAV for when they're staggered.

3. If I take a lot of damage, switch to SEN/MED/MED for healing. Switch back when all is well.

I mean, it works for when there's something good on TV, because I can do most stuff in this game while paying about 10 percent attention to things, but I'm not sure that "The game you can play while multi-tasking 50 other things" is the best selling point possible. It's kinda like the complaint I've seen some people have about Dragon Quest games where you mainly just tap the attack button with the occasional burst of spellcasting to get through fights. Except here, the animations take longer.

I hold to what I said in my review of FFXIII. Which was basically what Rob just said.

When I try to picture the next FF game I would actually play, I get little images in my head. I picture the vibrancy of the world of FFXII, with the more fairy-tale story telling of games pre-FFVII, involving a cast of interesting but SUBTLE characters, such as we haven't had since FFX, but without the moroseness that has pervaded the series since FFVII.

Essentially, I picture a pre-FFVII final fantasy, but one which uses nicer graphics (though uber-realism is not a prerequisite and removing that perceived need may well get SE that earlier release date they are looking for) and a battle system that moves away from traditional ATB.

On that note, I am interested in the more Kingdom-Hearts style FFVersus but the last press release said "the darkest FF since FFVII!"

I loved FFVII, but goddammit... put the horse to rest already.

Because, really, the best thing about FFXII is that it was totally nothing like FFVII.

Just reread Suskie's review. I'd forgotten how awesome this paragraph is:

Most of the cast is disappointingly one-note as well, and you could probably surmise much about each of them based on their appearances and physical mannerisms alone: Vanille is a perky, overly effeminate pile of squeals, Snow has a popped collar, Hope (or Destiny or Inspiration or whatever his name is) singularly defines “angsty” in a genre where that word crops up too frequently already, and Lightning (ugh) is the sort of stoic and valiant protagonist – with caged emotions! – that doesn’t work nearly as well now that Lost Odyssey has so brilliantly deconstructed that archetype. Only Szszzhzh resonates as someone genuinely relatable, which is odd, considering he’s a black guy with a chocobo living in his fro (a frocobo if you will). With the game having a safe 40 hours for character development, I was hoping the cast would surprise me and rise above their generic outward appearances, but that didn’t happen. Oh, what’s that, Lightning? You call yourself that because you don’t want people to know your real name? Piss off.

When I try to picture the next FF game I would actually play, I get little images in my head. I picture the vibrancy of the world of FFXII, with the more fairy-tale story telling of games pre-FFVII,

Square Enix made that game already and everyone bashed on it. It was called Final Fantasy XI.

Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV should have been released as Final Fantasy Online and Final Fantasy Online 2, respectively. They do not belong in the "main" series, not even a little bit. Square-Enix was stupid for beliving otherwise not once but twice.

Can you offer a compelling reason why they don't belong in the "main" series? As it stands, FFXI is a finer game than any of the "main" series and--to me, at least-- encompasses more of the "Final Fantasy" feeling than any game to carry the title in the past decade.

As for XIV, well. That game was released before it was even halfway finished. I'll reserve judgment on it until the game receives its 2.0 release.

Actually, I'm going to nuke the original version of this post for now. I'll edit in a better answer shortly.

Okay, I'm back...

Final Fantasy games have always been about the singular experience. You are in control of a party of heroes as they venture out against evil that threatens to consume the whole world. That was true from the original, with its four light warriors, all the way up through the battle against Sin in Final Fantasy X.

An RPG and an MMORPG are really not the same deal at all. That's particularly true if you compare a JRPG (such as Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior or the Tales or Shin Megami titles). Not just in the Final Fantasy series but as part of any standard RPG, you are directing that band of heroes through an involving world populated by distinct characters who are interesting for reasons beyond the armor you might receive if you complete their side quest.

Blizzard understood this, which is why World of Warcraft wasn't called Warcraft 4. Sonic Team understood it, too, or we'd have a Phantasy Star V right now instead of Phantasy Star Online.

The dynamic when you wander a world in a Final Fantasy game ahead of X was much different. Even in X, it was much different from XI or XIV. The primary reason for that--and it makes a really huge difference--is the player dynamic.

An MMO is built around the notion that as a player, you will team up with other players. Involving NPCs work against that, so they're not included. Constant forward momentum for the plot is also unnecessary, because a detailed plot is difficult to manage when players are joining and dropping out of adventures all the time. For the most part, an MMO really is just a series of fetch quests with a loose narrative tying everything together. The reason to play is to grind so that you can find better armor and gain new quests so that you can find better armor and gain new quests until finally you have explored every area 50 times and gone on dozens or raids or whatever.

It's a completely different dynamic. Someone who adores Final Fantasy VII is looking for a dramatically different experience compared to someone who likes Final Fantasy XIV.

This is not to say that Final Fantasy VII is a better game than Final Fantasy VII. Preferences are going to determine who likes what, and no one is right or wrong in that regard. They're apples and oranges, which is precisely why they don't belong in the same series.

Square-Enix had the chance to establish a new offshoot, a Final Fantasy Online series that could use the Final Fantasy name to its advantage but which would at the same time head off in its own direction. Instead, the company has dilluted the brand as a whole in its effort to capitalize on the MMO craze. This was a mistake, and one that the company repeated for no good reason.

Reading through this thread makes me realize how much I hate Roman numerals.

My opinion of the Final Fantasy series is that it doesn't exist. I see so many conversations on the internet analyzing this brand, comparing and contrasting games that have virtually nothing in common other than falling into the same (relatively broad) genre. They have a bit of shared terminology (sometimes), but their stories, characters, worlds, themes, mechanics, and even visual styles wildly differ from one game to the next. Even the name "Final Fantasy" is stupid, and the only reason it held together was because there was a time (i.e. the SNES days) when each entry was of such consistently high quality that it became the measuring stick for everything else in the genre, and I think we can agree that Final Fantasy is no longer at that level. SE doesn't even seem to know what to do with the brand. They seem to be reinventing it with every new game, and two of the last four entries have been freakin' MMOs, which, as Jason already pointed out, appeals to a completely different group of people.

We know what to expect when Activision says they plan to put out a new Call of Duty game every year; same with Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed. But when SE says they want to release a new Final Fantasy every year, that has no effect on me, because Final Fantasy as a brand doesn't mean anything. All they're saying, in my mind, is that they want to make more JRPGs. Whoop-de-do.

Zelda is a series. Halo is a series. When a new Final Fantasy game is released, no one ever has any idea what to expect. So why do we still care?

I would contend that FFXII was an MMORPG for lonely people.

//Zig

The level of disappointment I still feel for FFXIII amazes me. I still want to jump in and complain about the game some more, but then I remember I wrote a therapeutic review to get it all out of my system. I'm still interested in FFXIII-2 but I'm understandably cautious.

Characters are important, and I'd really like to see a FF game surprise me with character development. You know, we'll always have a broody loner warrior, but can we peel away the layers and learn more about them so that in the end, that character can't actually be described in a couple of words.

Has anyone seen Plinket's reviews for the Star Wars prequel trilogy? There's an excellent bit about character where people had to describe characters from the movies. Most of the prequel characters could be described in a couple of words, but a character like Han Solo, who at first would be described as a rogue leads to "but this and that".

At the very least, I want to see FF characters become MORE interesting after their character development, rather than losing the only trait that distinguished them from the rest of the party.

Edit: It happened again. I started ranting.

Han Solo is arguably the least complex character in Star Wars.