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Hang on, Narratorway - so are you saying that because the more recent games have departed further from relatable elements of human history (a point I'n not really sold on) and created imaginary inventions, they have been lesser games?

That probably explains why the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises never caught on either...

Seriously though - magic, moogles, monsters, chocobos - these are all purely fictional inventions that have no more bearing on human experience than a gunblade or flying machine. Why can't magic (explained by whatever plot device chosen) and guns exist in the same world? If anything, surely a game involving guns would be more relatable to humans than magic?

By all means, put forward the opinion that you prefer your fantasy games to be rustic/archaic over futuristic. But that doesn't have to equate to the fact that a futuristic setting is objectively inferior! The games are fantasy games - that means disbelief is suspended as soon as the box is opened. Just because the fantasy that emerges is one with guns and tech doesn't in itself make it any less palatable than one which has wizards in robes and knights in armour - at least, not to me.

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To me, it is cutscene abuse.Early ff games immerse you without needing to bombard you with beautiful futscenes, which are there to be stunning, rather than being necessary.Its all flash, but when you look past the flash, its pretty bad as a game, because you lack the charm.If you can capture the charm, then the cutscenes will be meaningful.FFXIII was a bunch of kids saving the world, but it didn't have any deep meaning, or interesting character.Its not about future or past, its about Everything breathing life into the game, and immersing you.FF6 did this better than any ff, and it had to do with careful details in every town, and all the plot characters got equal time, unlike others, which has 1 leading character, and everyone else takes a back seat.

In order to make a story about heroes saving the world, you need something to make the heroes something other than generic cardboard cookie cut outs.Its been done to death since the 80s and early 90S, so it wouldn't make it in today's times.

This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 23rd December 2012 22:13

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Not to railroad about XIII again (which I swear I was not a fan of) but Sazh was a far more interesting and realistic character than anyone from VIII or X.

I'm also not buying the whole "too far removed reality" bit. Stilzklin beat me to it, but I don't think you can be any more removed from human history than Star Wars. Now if you just want to say that VII or VIII had some ludicrous aspects to it, sure certainly, and the gunblades are very silly, but I think that's blowing it up a bit.

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I fear my heart and fear my soul
Life goes on, it surely will,
Without me and I wonder:
Will I ever see light again?

Life goes on...

Quote (Stiltzkin @ 23rd December 2012 09:27)

The games are fantasy games - that means disbelief is suspended as soon as the box is opened. Just because the fantasy that emerges is one with guns and tech doesn't in itself make it any less palatable than one which has wizards in robes and knights in armour - at least, not to me.

To you...not necessarily everyone else.

1) It wasn't a binary argument. I wasn't saying unequivocally that post-FFVI were aesthetically inferior solely because they're science fiction. They're designs however were far less relatable by the definitions I provided in the argument and the objects themselves - the 'tech' as you refer to it - is irrelevant, because my discussion was only in the context of visual design. I wasn't commenting about what was being made, but what it looked like. To wit:



You tell me, which one looks more like a functioning motorcycle to you?

2) Yes fantasy requires suspension of disbelief, but that doesn't mean there's no threshold where it can't be broken. There's only so far you can shout 'magic' before you're asking how an unarmored woman with a sword can fight a crab mech with with a death laser for a mouth and freaking saws for hands...



This post has been edited by Narratorway on 23rd December 2012 23:09

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That actually doesn't look that bad.

I get your point about historical relatability, but I don't think that's it. At least, it's not for me.

See, the older FF games were also somewhat inaccessible setting-wise, in the same way. They were just a different sort of fantasy world, merely one made of more traditional fantasy elements rather than one made crafted for each game.

Instead, I think the point about relatability applies to how much we can relate to the characters--their emotions, their reactions to experiences, their thoughts and desires and hopes and feelings.

I think one big change in the FF series that started with FFVI (or arguably FFV, I think) is that it started to become less about telling a setting-centered story, and more about telling a character-centered story. Instead of saying "so here's this prophecy about four heroes saving the world", or "so here's this tower floating in the sky where the hero's love interest is imprisoned" or something like that, and then mostly leaving the characters be at that point (or only minimally developing most of them), FFVI tried to tell a story that was much more about the characters, and how they evolved themselves--not just the effects they had on their surroundings, but on the effects their surroundings had on them, changing their outlook on life and their relationships with the other characters.

And the fact that this made it more character-centric means that there are more chances for audience members to get inside the characters' minds and hearts and feel what they feel. And that is key to relatability.

In a way this is a good change in the direction of the FF series. As far as I've heard they've at least tried to do this in the FF games since VI--even if you might hate their art style and costume designs. I mean, I hear that FFVIII is an entire game centered around a love story--you'd never get that in the era of FFI through FFIV. Those were about presenting a fantasy world and presenting an epic tale of heroism in that world, featuring the hero(es) interacting with the world in various ways. As opposed to being about how the world and circumstances outside of their control changes the hero(es).

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 24th December 2012 15:56

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Quote (Magitek_slayer @ 23rd December 2012 21:56)

FFXIII was a bunch of kids saving the world, but it didn't have any deep meaning, or interesting character.

1. They destroyed it

2. FXIII all about the futility of war and what happens when a populace is obsessed with hatred of a binary opposite. People are so afraid of the 'other' that they're blind to their own reality and ruled by tyrants... you know.. like our world

As for Medieval Fantasy vs sci fi: Your face when you first encountered 'ROBOT' in FFI.

also Nway you said Eastern European fantasy earlier, was that a mistake?

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Quote (Blinge Odonata @ 24th December 2012 13:29)

also Nway you said Eastern European fantasy earlier, was that a mistake?

Yeah that was kind of a sticking point because I wasn't really sure how to describe it. The styles were very...Germanic I guess might be a better descriptor.



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FFIV seemed a bit like a random assortment of world/fantasy cultures anyway. You have the east-Asian martial artists in Fabul, the ninjas in Elban, the dwarves in the underworld, the city where everyone's a mage, the land of summoned monsters, and so forth.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 24th December 2012 21:06

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Blinge Odonata @ 24th December 2012 20:29)

Quote (Magitek_slayer @ 23rd December 2012 21:56)

FFXIII was a bunch of kids saving the world, but it didn't have any deep meaning, or interesting character.

1. They destroyed it

2. FXIII all about the futility of war and what happens when a populace is obsessed with hatred of a binary opposite. People are so afraid of the 'other' that they're blind to their own reality and ruled by tyrants... you know.. like our world

As for Medieval Fantasy vs sci fi: Your face when you first encountered 'ROBOT' in FFI.

also Nway you said Eastern European fantasy earlier, was that a mistake?

A lot of games are about war.Look at ff6s war against the empire.They are a dictatorship, but also a theme about the meaning of life, and finding happiness.

FFX:Also deals with lies.Look at yevons teachings, and generalisations made about albhed.My point is:Its been done before, and i won't dwell more in fear of bringing the wrath of mods upon me.

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Why is Final Fantasy 6 "the best?"

Any discussion of this topic needs to at least include a short paragraph on what, specifically, Final Fantasy 6 is "the best" at. Yes, that sentence ended with a preposition. Deal with it.

First of all, Final Fantasy 6's pace is just dynamite. You never feel bogged down in an area. It's just a whirlwind of a game. You almost want to stop sometimes, just to catch your breath.

Second, and this is heavily a matter of taste, I'll admit, but the score is just superb. Stirring, even. This and 4 are the only Final Fantasy games that really get to me, but this one carries away the prize pie just in terms of sheer variety. There's very little ground that the music doesn't cover.

And thirdly?

Let's just say that if you have trouble catching fish, Final Fantasy 6 is the most important game in the whole world.

I must have forgotten many many other things that Final Fantasy 6 does better than any other entry, but those three, the pace, the music, and (ahem) being bad at fishing are what really put it head and shoulders above the pack to me.

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For the people using Star Wars as an example to dismiss OP's arguments about the futuristic setting being less relatable, I don't think you get it right (not trying to be rude ). Star Wars, dispite being a "sci-fi" kind of fantasy, actually works around themes and characters typical from a traditional fantasy setting, but add a "sci-fi" skin in the story.

In that sense, Star Wars (and many others space fantasy games/movies) actually proves some of the OP's points on the matter: The basic elements of fantasy should be there in the game, even if revested by a futuristic context, and are elements we already know how they work.

You never got a Star Destroyer to go to your destination? probably not, but you know how is to get a plane (and read how it was to get a ship back in the day). Never saw a battle in space? No, but you probably saw a lot of movies/books that narrate a ship battle on the sea, with the fighters shooting each other in the sky. For that reason, a gunblade looks absurd, wheter a laser sword seems believable. The problem with some of the post FFVI aesthetics is that some of its futuristic elements comes out of nowhere, with no parallel to what we know.

But so you people don't think I'm OP's lawyer , I really think that the char development (mainly if you are

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bad at fishing

) is what shines in the game (as I stated before). The early industrial revolution setting is good, but that's just personal taste, I guess.

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Quote (Kirchewasser @ 29th December 2012 14:31)

For the people using Star Wars as an example to dismiss OP's arguments about the futuristic setting being less relatable, I don't think you get it right (not trying to be rude  ). Star Wars, dispite being a "sci-fi" kind of fantasy, actually works around themes and characters typical from a traditional fantasy setting, but add a "sci-fi" skin in the story.

As soon as I wrote that, I knew somebody would eventually counter with this - and you're completely right. I still made the point though, because to my mind, the same is true of many (I think for this conversation to maintain any semblance of sanity it has to be accepted that some of the futuristic FF instalments are also the worst, but that the two factors are not necessarily mutually inclusive) of the post-VI games.

And I really don't get how a gunblade can be deemed less plausible/more ridiculous than a laser sword which can cut through anything in the universe except its own hilt. I for one love both concepts.

Quote (Narratorway)

1) It wasn't a binary argument. I wasn't saying unequivocally that post-FFVI were aesthetically inferior solely because they're science fiction. They're designs however were far less relatable by the definitions I provided in the argument and the objects themselves - the 'tech' as you refer to it - is irrelevant, because my discussion was only in the context of visual design. I wasn't commenting about what was being made, but what it looked like ...

You tell me, which one looks more like a functioning motorcycle to you?

2) Yes fantasy requires suspension of disbelief, but that doesn't mean there's no threshold where it can't be broken. There's only so far you can shout 'magic' before you're asking how an unarmored woman with a sword can fight a crab mech with with a death laser for a mouth and freaking saws for hands...

1) Well, they both look like they could function as motorcycles, and are both recognisable as such - but yes, the Daytona from VII ( ) certainly looks more like it has been designed with function in mind. And in that sense, I do see what you're getting at, I think. It's not so much the futurism that you object to, but the impractical designs created for the sake of looking whimsical?

2) This is an argument I cannot disagree with - but surely it applies to FFVI as much as any other entry in the series? Is your example any more ridiculous than a mage in a robe withstanding anything stronger than a scratch? Or a ragtag band killing a god? And is the giant crab robot any more lethal than a giant dragon with great freaking claws and a flamethrower for a mouth?

(I should probably add at this point by way of a disclaimer, I have no qualms with the argument that FFVI is the best. For me, it certainly contends the crown even if it does not claim it. I'm just not convinced that the points being put forth by the OP genuinely prove the argument!)


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the same is true of many (I think for this conversation to maintain any semblance of sanity it has to be accepted that some of the futuristic FF instalments are also the worst, but that the two factors are not necessarily mutually inclusive) of the post-VI games.

And I really don't get how a gunblade can be deemed less plausible/more ridiculous than a laser sword which can cut through anything in the universe except its own hilt. I for one love both concepts.

Indeed, many post FFVI installments use recurring fantasy themes with sci-fi skin, but they often fail in finding a corresponding element of reality that allows the player to relate, or do it in such a way that things get too fantastic (motorcycle example). For me at least, that is NOT something that by itself kills the game, but it makes the suspension of disbelief harder, if the game doesnt deliver in other aspects. Anyway, personal matter.

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It's not so much the futurism that you object to, but the impractical designs created for the sake of looking whimsical?

The thing about the gunblade is ralated to that, and about what that object is. We have firearms that have metal made projectiles, right? But in sci-fi fantasy setting, we just replace the projeciles with laser beams, no questions asked. We know of swords that have metal edges, so creating a sword with a futuristic edge (in this case, laser) is just the same. The gunblade is something that has no paralel to what we know. it is not a sword, but also not a gun, so in that case, it is more absurd, or rather more strange (but not necessarily worse or less cool) than a sword with a laser edge. i like the gunblade too, but looking at it helps seeing how "bold" aesthetics are dangerous, and for me, how FFVI is the best because it went just right with innovating the setting without equips from wonderland.

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Quote (Stiltzkin @ 29th December 2012 08:18)

It's not so much the futurism that you object to, but the impractical designs created for the sake of looking whimsical?

Exactly. The farther you deviate from how we understand insert-noun-here to function, the less we empathize and the greater the risk we'll no longer be engaged in the story. Again, this isn't a binary situation, it's just a small aspect and not even the most important, but it is something that becomes a detriment that has to be compensated in some other aspect of the storytelling.

Quote (Stiltzkin @ 29th December 2012 08:18)

Is your example any more ridiculous than a mage in a robe withstanding anything stronger than a scratch? Or a ragtag band killing a god? And is the giant crab robot any more lethal than a giant dragon with great freaking claws and a flamethrower for a mouth?

Again, this comes back to my first topic of fidelity and visual cohesion. In the battle screen, we understand that the enemy is not in a static pose on the left and your characters are not formed in a rigid line on the right. This becomes clear when 1) you can't control your characters directly and 2) when they attack, you see them swing their sword at air and then a slice animation plays over the enemy pose after which damage numbers appear. The way the battle system is visually designed clearly communicate that this is not a 1:1 representation of what's actually occurring, allowing the player to fill in the blanks as to how the battle is really going down and create their own hand waves to fill in any holes in the logic.

All of which gets severely reduced when you're watching the battle in real-time 3d space with the level of fidelity provided by that FFXIII image I posted. There's nowhere near the level of wiggle room the old school games gave you to interpret how that woman survives getting hit with saw blades as big as she is.

Quote (Stiltzkin @ 29th December 2012 08:18)

(I should probably add at this point by way of a disclaimer, I have no qualms with the argument that FFVI is the best. For me, it certainly contends the crown even if it does not claim it. I'm just not convinced that the points being put forth by the OP genuinely prove the argument!)

Don't worry, I get where your coming from. Trust me, there's more than a few times where's I've had to point out that qualifier in my posts.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 29th December 2012 21:21

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Quote (Stiltzkin @ 29th December 2012 16:18)

And I really don't get how a gunblade can be deemed less plausible/more ridiculous than a laser sword which can cut through anything in the universe except its own hilt. I for one love both concepts.

Actually, it's simple. A gunblade is less practical than existing weapons it would try to replace.

A gunblade will almost always be an oversized and impractical weapon that would be less useful than a knife and a pistol separately. It would also be quite cumbersome to use as either weapon because it is so heavy and bulky. It would take a long time to train to use it for very little real benefit. It's a symbol of excess and waste, rule of cool before practicality.

A lightsabre (which can actually cut through its own hilt or more accurately, the hilt of another lightsabre: it's just the beam is kind of projected upwards by the crystal) in contrast is cumbersome because it is small and the blade weighs nothing. The benefits of the training in using it are clear: it deflects blaster shots, parries other lightsabre blades, and can cut through 99% of materials. In fact, as a weapon for a peacekeeping force it makes perfect sense because it is small, it is a symbol of how highly trained the Jedi Knight is. And it's a way to have them make it clear that they're working for peace because they have a weapon to defend themselves and no more.

The only way a gunblade would make sense for use as an actual weapon is if it was actually a lightsabre and blaster combined. It's sad, but FF13's gunblade is the most sensible design and it's still pointless because it can only be one of the two forms at once.

This is a similar problem to the Desert Eagle. Many a 12 year old Call of Duty/Counterstrike player thinks that because it spits out a big bullet it's a leet gun that the best soldiers uses. It is in fact a heavy, bulky, complicated, cumbersome, piece of rubbish prone to jamming if it gets too dirty or if you don't compensate for the recoil or it just feels like it.

Gunblades are the Desert Eagle. On paper a powerful weapon, but impractical in actual use with many, many, MANY better options available. In fact, the better options for the gunblade are often the same better options that would be better than a Desert Eagle.

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-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Dels makes a lot of good points.Just because something looks cool, doesn't mean its practical, but design weapons add something to fantasy games, but FF8 is more realistic, which i really don't like.If an rpg is too much like our world, it becomes sci fi rather than fantasy.

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Why is Final Fantasy VI the best?

If you don't understand by hearing this music, you never will.

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Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 24th December 2012 17:05)

FFIV seemed a bit like a random assortment of world/fantasy cultures anyway. You have the east-Asian martial artists in Fabul, the ninjas in Elban, the dwarves in the underworld, the city where everyone's a mage, the land of summoned monsters, and so forth.

I loved that part of it, honestly. It made the whole giant at the end where everyone comes together that much more awesome. I guess in a world where there seems to be very little cultural diffusion, it made sense to me that each culture would develop independently with it's own unique style and values.

In fact, the Lunarians were waiting on the moon for the earthlings to evolve to the point where they could live together... this being the reason Cecil/Golbez's da came down in the first place, i.e to evolve the species with things that would bring everyone together, like airships. The plot of the game, actually, seems like it's part of the process of globalization in this world, what with all the leaders of the world now knowing each other, and interbreeding and all.

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

Thing is, I feel that themes such globalization which you mentioned seem to haphazardly spring from the way FFIV is put together, rather than be something intentionally designed.

Of course, your mileage may vary on whether this is a good or bad thing.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Kirchewasser @ 29th December 2012 19:30)

The gunblade is something that has no paralel to what we know. it is not a sword, but also not a gun, so in that case, it is more absurd, or rather more strange (but not necessarily worse or less cool) than a sword with a laser edge.

Quote (Del S @ 31st December 2012 21:27)

Actually, it's simple. A gunblade is less practical than existing weapons it would try to replace.

A gunblade will almost always be an oversized and impractical weapon that would be less useful than a knife and a pistol separately. It would also be quite cumbersome to use as either weapon because it is so heavy and bulky. It would take a long time to train to use it for very little real benefit. It's a symbol of excess and waste, rule of cool before practicality.

A lightsabre (which can actually cut through its own hilt or more accurately, the hilt of another lightsabre: it's just the beam is kind of projected upwards by the crystal) in contrast is cumbersome because it is small and the blade weighs nothing. The benefits of the training in using it are clear: it deflects blaster shots, parries other lightsabre blades, and can cut through 99% of materials. In fact, as a weapon for a peacekeeping force it makes perfect sense because it is small, it is a symbol of how highly trained the Jedi Knight is. And it's a way to have them make it clear that they're working for peace because they have a weapon to defend themselves and no more.

The only way a gunblade would make sense for use as an actual weapon is if it was actually a lightsabre and blaster combined. It's sad, but FF13's gunblade is the most sensible design and it's still pointless because it can only be one of the two forms at once.

Yep, okay, I'll concede that. When you put it like that, I can see how the gunblade is a ridicluous weapon, no matter what era it exists in. Of course, there are other weapons in the FF-verse which are just as preposterous, but that's not the point here. What I would say though, is that whilst it is certainly true that the designs in FFVI are heavily rooted in industrial-era tech, ad therefore more 'realistic', I'm not sure FFVII-X are as departed from that as is being made out. Sure, there are clearly identifiable examples from each game that are ridiculous, but there are also several from each game that are very realistic (and probably some from FFVI that are a little ridiculous).

Quote (Narratorway @ 29th December 2012 20:32)

Again, this isn't a binary situation, it's just a small aspect and not even the most important, but it is something that becomes a detriment that has to be compensated in some other aspect of the storytelling.

I guess this plus the above does add weight to the VI argument. Although, dare I say it...I don't think the story-telling truly started to crumble until after we got into double figured instalments.

Quote (Narratorway @ 29th December 2012 20:32)

Again, this comes back to my first topic of fidelity and visual cohesion. In the battle screen, we understand that the enemy is not in a static pose on the left and your characters are not formed in a rigid line on the right. This becomes clear when 1) you can't control your characters directly and 2) when they attack, you see them swing their sword at air and then a slice animation plays over the enemy pose after which damage numbers appear. The way the battle system is visually designed clearly communicate that this is not a 1:1 representation of what's actually occurring, allowing the player to fill in the blanks as to how the battle is really going down and create their own hand waves to fill in any holes in the logic.

All of which gets severely reduced when you're watching the battle in real-time 3d space with the level of fidelity provided by that FFXIII image I posted. There's nowhere near the level of wiggle room the old school games gave you to interpret how that woman survives getting hit with saw blades as big as she is.

So the logic is that because we don't get the full visualisation of a dragon flaming/clawing at Locke, we can internally decide that the 2000 out 6000 HP he loses is due to a glancing blow, or slightly charred leg, rather than a full disembowelment or flambee? Whereas Lightning clearly gets sliced in two but somehow only loses 50 HP...

I can see, believe and get on board with this logic. Heck, I like it very much, in fact. However, I have to admit - as a gamer, I never made these internal decisions when playing. I did just think "wow, that dragon just barbequed me. Lucky I'm hard enough to keep standing". You could argue that I made these decisions subconsciously as part of my suspension of disbelief - and maybe I did - but I didn't clock it.

Although - we now appear to be coming towards the conclusion that in order to produce another stunning FF, Squeenix need to go back to a static row, turn-based battle...

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Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 24th December 2012 14:05)

FFIV seemed a bit like a random assortment of world/fantasy cultures anyway.  You have the east-Asian martial artists in Fabul, the ninjas in Elban, the dwarves in the underworld, the city where everyone's a mage, the land of summoned monsters, and so forth.

It should also be noted that the multi-cultural influences aren't represented visually, which was the context I was using when I mentioned FFIV's (or any of the pre-VI games for that matter) aesthetics. The castles of Baron, Damcyan, Eblan, Fabul and Toria all represent completely different cultures, yet all use the exact same European-styled brick/stonework, portcullis's, moats, towers, etc. Yes, this is obviously due to technological and memory limitations, but the reasons why don't change the end result of a homogenous aesthetic coming from a single cultural source.

Quote (Stiltzkin @ 8th January 2013 17:31)

I can see, believe and get on board with this logic. Heck, I like it very much, in fact. However, I have to admit - as a gamer, I never made these internal decisions when playing. I did just think "wow, that dragon just barbequed me. Lucky I'm hard enough to keep standing". You could argue that I made these decisions subconsciously as part of my suspension of disbelief - and maybe I did - but I didn't clock it.

That's kinda the point behind these...things I'm writing. I've found that most people when critiquing the later games make a lot of complaints/nitpicks that can just as easily be applied to the SNES era games (read: FFVI) without taking the time to qualify or even acknowledge this discrepancy. I suspect the reason why is because - as you pointed out - it's not something you think about when playing the game. At least not consciously at any rate. As the venerable Harry Plinkett would say, you may not have noticed...but your brain did.

Or let me put it to you another way: If the infamous 'laughing' scene from X were instead directly transferred in a SNES-era game with sprite characters and text instead of 3d models, lip synch and voice acting, would it have been nearly as awkward?

Visual cohesion and good aesthetics are not supposed to be thought about. Like movie special effects, their job is to make sure you aren't aware they're even happening, but when they fail...that's when you're taken out of the experience...and you start asking questions. As always, this isn't to say that the post-VI games failed exclusively for these reasons or could even be called definitive failures. My second favorite title in the franchise was a post SNES game. More accurate to say I was pointing out that in terms of the underlying mechanics that are used to immerse players in the game's narrative, the stars were perfectly aligned for this one game more than any of the others.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 11th January 2013 08:05

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There's just something fundamentally odd about Final Fantasy 7.

I'll say one thing right off the bat: the players no longer move along a grid. This may be the single greatest departure of the games between 6 and 7, and it matters, and I'll tell you why. When the game is constructed out of a grid, every object and person takes up so many spaces. This makes it easy for the developers to construct the game world, to give the game a sense of scale, of depth. There are many places in Final Fantasy 7 where the player character is off scale with the scenery. To me, this always came off looking really, really weird. Like, weird in a way that twists your nerves.

Example:



Look closely at this picture. The scale is off. Cloud looks like he's 12 feet tall compared to the church door.

I realize that there was a huge graphical shift in the series, and it was difficult to make everything fit to scale when your characters aren't half-inch pixies that look like breakfast cereal...no, wait...



...I don't.

Once again, this comes back to the concept of art thriving under limitations. When you've removed the limitations of the cartridge format, you have, so to speak, removed the cork from the bottle and allowed the genie to escape. Ever since Final Fantasy 7, they've been trying too hard to make a game world that looks realistic, rather than one that looks good.

I always thought Chrono Trigger was the real Final Fantasy 7 anyway.

And that's my...



Now, back to Narratorway.

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Quote (Spooniest @ 15th January 2013 20:54)

Once again, this comes back to the concept of art thriving under limitations. When you've removed the limitations of the cartridge format, you have, so to speak, removed the cork from the bottle and allowed the genie to escape. Ever since Final Fantasy 7, they've been trying too hard to make a game world that looks realistic, rather than one that looks good.

I actually don't think this was the case, but I didn't know how to articulate why. Turns out someone else did already.

...by talking about the Tony Hawk franchise.

The video's almost 20 mins long and it takes a while to get where it's eventually going, but the overall point is somewhat two fold. The first part is concerned with explaining how, as the series progressed, the focus of the mechanics shifted towards more player freedom. Needless to say, the mechanics behind a skateboarding franchise don't really apply all that much to FF, but what he talks about next does.

He notes that as the series progressed, there was a point in the franchise where it hit a sort of game design peak (in his opinion Tony Hawk 3), a point where the mechanics were most in synch with the level design. After this, the series began a slow spiral downward in quality that he largely attributes to the fact that the franchise was still popular, so the publisher (Activision) required a new release each year despite there being nowhere else anyone could think of the mechanics to go. Instead, each new successive game was padded out with content and gameplay that had little to nothing to do with the core mechanics (because they simply didn't know what else to do), leading to games that just became incomprehensible.

Starting to sound familiar?

Now it's easy to dismiss this correlation considering his discussion is almost entirely from a mechanical perspective while my arguments have and continue to be largely about the narrative aspects of a complete different kind of game. I've yet to delve into the core mechanics of the FF franchise, but that's because there really isn't any. The series is constantly reinventing its mechanics with each new game because that's not where its identity lies. Final Fantasy games are not defined by how they're played, but by their stories and characters. In which case what does any of what he has to say about a dead skateboarding game franchise have to do with Final Fantasy?

Well, when separated from the context of game mechanics, I think the theme he's talking about - a franchise meeting its peak - is very much the same discussion I'm making here with regards to the storytelling of the Final Fantasy franchise. He's talking about cohesion in terms of mechanics and level design, while I'm talking about cohesion in terms of storytelling and aesthetics, but the main point of a game that represents the pinnacle of these concepts remains the same. For his franchise it was Tony Hawk 3. For mine, it's FFVI.

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