Few franchises have ended up dividing their fanbase like Square Enix’s legendary Final Fantasy. With the forthcoming FINAL FANTASY XIII-2, we thought we’d give two of our writers the chance to explain why they feel the way they do about what these games have become over the years. So let Mark Ankucic explain why he can wait for the next Final Fantasy… until Square Enix get back to what he originally loved about the series.
It’s hard for me to write this article in a concise and professional manner because… well, I’m a Final Fantasy fanboy. The series has provided me with my greatest gaming memories, and when I found FFXIII to be such a thorough letdown it induced a fair amount of seething rage in me. So to say why I can definitely wait for Final Fantasy XIII-2 will require me to separate myself into two separate and distinct personalities. First, the feral, howling fanboy who wants TO TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPS and arbitrarily smash the keyboard to get his points across; second, the sophisticated critic who, like your parents, is not angry… merely disappointed.
So. Breathe. Let’s begin. I hold that talking about FFXIII as a standalone game and not comparing it to the rest of the series would be a mistake. If it didn’t want to be identified with the Final Fantasy brand (and lose thousands of dollars of revenue), then it would have been called something different, right? So I’m going to deal with FFXIII by comparison, as well as touching on what it lacked as a standalone game. FFXIII was ultimately a dissappointment to me because it lacked the elements I had come to love in the FF series, elements that turned good games into what I found to be life-changing experiences.
Final Fantasy has always done huge stories, with countless plot twists and turns, secrets uncovered, tragedy, a smattering of comedy, always conflict and a quest that shapes the world its characters live in. Now one of FFXIII’s fundamental mistakes was that of telling and not showing. Not only did it include narration from Vanille, who wasn’t in any way a fundamental character (so why was it she had to read us the story?), it also included hundreds of pages of text which explained all the events leading up to what was occurring in the game when the player began. No previous Final Fantasy has needed to do this. They all let us discover the backstory, people’s motives and their purpose through dialogue and gameplay as it occured: i.e. how narrative is supposed to work. Furthermore, had I wanted to read, I would have bought a book (and I wouldn’t have wasted $100).
“Ragnarok?” “Ragnarok.” “Ragnarok!”
And on top of this, arguably none of it worked. Due to my fanboyish fancies, I bought the collector’s edition, got myself the official walkthrough and made a sincere promise to myself that I would see FFXIII to the end. I played the game for thirty hours and gave up when I realised I had no fucking idea what was going on. Besides the incredibly convoluted L’Cie plot device (they were these people forced to accept a mission they had to fulfill, where the consequence of not doing so was transforming into a monster), there was a key moment in the game where all the characters shared a flash-forward. At first they all stated they didn’t know what this referred to – and then they all simultaneously said ‘Ragnarok’, as if they knew what it was about all along.
I felt like I, the player, was being almost purposefully left out of what was happening. Withholding information isn’t the same as building suspense – flow should naturally create suspense. Withholding any kind of logical progression only pisses people off. FFXIII-2 will somehow have to work off this story, and as the story (and therefore the universe around it) wasn’t even slightly discernible to me after 30 hours of play, I can’t imagine how they will make this one any better or less confusing.
Now before FFX, the Final Fantasy games had typically been based around a philosophical theme. FFVI dealt with Kafka’s existentialism; FFVII dealt with ecology, as well as Japan’s place in the new world; FFVIII dealt with leadership and coming-of-age, and FFIX dealt with mortality. FFX dealt with daddy issues, FFXII dealt with… something, and FFXIII dealt with trying as hard as possible to appeal to the Western mass-market. Where there was once one nominated lead fighting for a single ideal, FFXIII had several characters fighting for multiple conflicting goals. Without a single strong and relatable protagonist, the themes and narrative were spread out far too thinly for me to feel like the narrative was drawing me in or for any of the points the game made to hit me in a profound way.
This attempt at appealing to a Western market meant continually forcing themes of freedom, dreams and the power of the individual on me, which manifested as every character making regular impassioned speeches all of which said practically the same thing. As long as we believe, we can achieve! Personally, I couldn’t stand this, because it made the characters one-dimensional; they became plot devices pushing a message rather than people moved to action and affected by circumstances. The only way I can describe their behavioural patterns is as… ‘emotional rollercoasters’. That makes me cringe.
I see what they did there
One character, very subtly named Hope, has his entire outlook changed in a matter of – oh – about five minutes? He runs away from the party, fights a monster, then miraculously becomes chummy, independent, and ready to take on the world. In comparison, Cloud from FFVII was such a gloomy bastard they had to make an extra ninety-minute movie where he smiles for half a second, thus completing his character development arc. Whereas Cloud’s outlook changed with his circumstances and over time, Hope’s outlook changed for the sake of plot progression, which ended any chance I would have had of caring for the character otherwise.
So FFXIII-2 will have some returning characters, but these are characters I couldn’t come to care about in the first place. The reason I loved Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, and even to some extend FFX-2, was because it was like meeting and learning new things about old friends. FXIII-2 will be like bumping into the ugly chick you had a one-night stand with on a crowded train, and you’re unable to reach your smartphone.
The little things are what really made the FF series so much fun for me. The removal of the world map, gone now since FFX (not coincidentally, where my enjoyment of the series started to plummet), left me without a sense of the world I was playing in. What exactly was I trying to save, in the end? Some sparkling points on a map? Towns that were merely load-screens apart? It seems sad I will no longer be able to traverse the world from the back of a Chocobo.
Mini-games have also gone as well – while I didn’t like Blitzball very much, it made for a great break in gameplay and added some depth to the world. The card game in FFVIII still holds great memories for me. Startlingly addictive to play, the investment you put into it on the first disc paid off massively by the end, which gave you a true sense of reward for your commitment. Without these extras, the FFXIII world seems ever more bland and flat to me, its only purpose to serve as a backdrop to a poorly-told story.
Excited, or… excited?
The last and worst thing about FFXIII for me was the spoken dialogue. Since its introduction in FFX, voice-acting for every Final Fantasy has been truly awful, and for the most part it’s because Square Enix doesn’t understand how to perform non-verbal cues. The grunts, groans and squeals (from Vanille in particular, who sounds like she’s mid-foreplay every time she opens her mouth) completely ruin any chance of the player interpreting a character’s emotions through body language. From FFVII to IX, someone getting into a fighting stance or making an emphatic gesture with one arm conveyed how they felt about their circumstances in an incredibly powerful yet simple way. If they were shocked, they took a step back; if they were running away, they moved at three times the normal speed.
Almost cartoonish, it still managed to evoke more of a genuine emotional reaction than all of the grandiose melodrama in FFXIII. Sephiroth killing Aerith was substantially more moving than Lightning punching Snow, despite the fact the first two looked as if they’d been built out of cardboard boxes. FFXIII-2 could fix this, but then it’d seem completely disconnected from the first, and I’d have to ask (again) why Square Enix are bothering with a sequel at all.
I’ll stop there before I’ve written a book – and I could write a book on why I think this game is so bad, believe me. I urge you all to think before you buy FFXIII-2: is this the kind of thing you really want to see any more of? Because as far as I’m concerned your answer should be no, it isn’t.
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