Ten Years of FFXIII?

IGN is reporting that the next game in the Final Fantasy series will probably be around for quite a while. If Square/Enix has anything to say about it, we'll be playing the FFXIII family of games for the next ten years. "Although speaking with a Nintendo magazine, Hashimoto brought up Final Fantasy XIII as a comparison for Square Enix's decision to expand upon the FFVII storyline through the Compilation project years after the game's original release. 'Different from something like VII, which we expanded upon afterwards, with Fabula Nova Crystallis FFXIII, we've thought about an expansive world setting from the start. Under the idea of wanting everyone to be sucked into the world for 10 years, we're preparing a number of categories.' He likened this approach to films like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings." Chris Kohler took the time to point out that, in the same interview, the Square folks stated they're still not entirely convinced about this whole Virtual Console thing. "We feel that the Japanese game market still requires [physical] media. Also, FF and Dragon Quest are played by a wide range of users, from children to adults, so there are limitations when you consider the problems that we would have with billing systems."

Comments

Which kind of games?

[EggyToast]

So, is this going to be like a "lots of games in Ivalice" kind of thing that they're doing with FF12 and the newer FFTactics games, or a bunch of spinoffs a la FF7 (of dubious quality)?

I've always been a fan of the game worlds that SquareEnix has been able to craft, even if there are some standards and similarities between all of them. Being able to explore more of the "extra stuff" would hopefully lead to a more developed backstory, making it even more entertaining to play through games multiple times (as long as they actually stay consistent, of course). I just really don't have any interest, though, in playing 10 years worth of melodramatic end-of-world tales... in the same world. Get kind of monotonous, ya know?

Square is in for a rude surprise.

[DragonPup]

"There is no FF7 but FF7"

That is, I don't think any of the Final Fantasy games to come will have the staying power that 7 has had. Making a business strategy around a franchise of a sequel that is still a long ways off doesn't seem to be too bright.

Re:Square is in for a rude surprise.

[Mattintosh]

FF7 was only "great" to those that didn't play FF3(6). Even the nerfed American version of FF3 was better than FF7 in terms of everything other than the ability to play FMV.

Re:Square is in for a rude surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

This emotional aspect is what separates FFVII from FFVI.

I agree - the characters in FFVI had so much more emotion and backstory and character than in FFVII, that I can still remember all the characters from FFVI but can't really remember any beyond the Big Three (Aeris, Cloud, and Sephiroth) from FFVII. And the only reason anyone remembers the Big Three is because the Sephiweenies never stop talking about them.

What was Cloud's character? He was a characterless ass. Sephiroth never made any sense (first he was good, then he turned bad because?). And Aeris was essentially the weak little girl, up until - actually, wait. She died, because she was the weak little girl.

Contrast with FFVI. Terra starts off playing weak little girl roll, which slowly evolves into very powerful half-Esper. Locke has a troubled past that makes him want to protect the other women in his life. Edgar rules a kingdom, despite wishing to live free of his duties. Sabin, Edgar's brother, has the freedom Edgar desires, and mainly desires to grow stronger while fighting the Empire.

I'd go on (and did, originally) but it just goes on and on with the rest of the FFVI cast of characters, like Celes, Shadow, Cyan, Gau, Mog, Setzer, Strago, Relm, Umaro, and Gogo. Not to mention the non-playable characters like Kefka, General Leo, Emperor Gestahl, Cid, and others.

So, yeah, FFVI was much better due to the emotions that the characters invoked compared with FFVII. I guess it goes to show how a good story beats FMV.

Re:Square is in for a rude surprise.

[JFMulder]

It was a lot harder to develop an attachment for the previous games, when all we had were sprites.

Yeah, because, you know, it's was harder to development attachment to characters in books before we made movie version of them, because all we had were words.</sarcasm>

Re:Square is in for a rude surprise.

[EggyToast]

I honestly feel that the reason that 6 isn't addressed anymore is due to how the game isn't a set of characters and their melodramatic relationships, but rather more of a "group of adventurers from around the globe who group together to defeat evil." The WoR portion is largely what the "aftermath" of most games are, and there are signs of the world recovering. Kefka is largely absent other than the occasional show of power and prevention of any real order developing. When he is defeated, there are no questionable towns, no weird alliances or government programs that could, potentially, continue. The Esper thing is resolved and the world can essentially get back to normal.

Even worse for spin-offs, there's little to really address before the story occurs, and many people in the story have no story-based history. Celes has a minor amount of history in the main story, but everyone else is sort of convinced of the problem and realizes that action needs to be taken.

Compare that to 7, where a band of individuals is fighting a government power. The real enemy, though, is a crazy guy with a mom-complex. When he's defeated, the government programs and all of the technology associated with it don't just disappear. Likewise, there's a huge history of the conspiracies built up in the game. A lot of it is terribly cliche, but it's ripe for expansion in spin-off games.

To me, though, that's also why I really like 6 a lot more. It felt like a full game, and you play the story from beginning to end. You start basically right where the real action begins and where the empire starts to make its moves, and it ends after a hell of a lot happens -- after the climax, after the denoument, at the real "end." FF4 is similar, although it peppers the world with more "mysterious old things from an advanced civilization" which are really just holdover themes from FF1-3. 7 felt like a snapshot, like the story was picked up in the middle and here are the characters. They're introduced and typecast as soon as you meet them, and nothing really changes. There are some twists in the story but the events don't really change the world. In fact, the prevention of any major change is pretty much the underlying element. Compared to 6, where you ride huge changes all the way through (from the discovery of magic, to the use of magic, to the destruction of the world and how it changes past locations, up to people coming to grips with the change and growing past it).

Sadly, it means that it's not a good market for sequels, but I think that's simply testament to how good of a story it was.

FFXIII part 10

[hansamurai]

Hmmm... I say go for it. If Square-Enix is going to spend millions of dollars with some of the best talent creating the universe for FFXIII, why not exploit it? We see this all the time in science fiction and fantasy, why can't it work for video games? It doesn't mean that every FFXIII game will be good, but how many times have we finished a game and thought, "wow, I really liked those characters/cities/culture/history/bad guys/etc. I would love to play another game in that universe." I would love to play another Chrono game, or another game in the world of Final Fantasy 6. Square gave us a taste of this with FFX-2, and even though the game wasn't your typical Square RPG, it sold gobs because it was a direct sequel to a much loved game.

I know that new ideas and such are grand, but sometimes I just like the old stuff. If I fall in love with the FFXIII world (and can afford a PS3), then I would love more games in that world.

Well, it worked for GTA III...

[7Prime]

Seriously, GTA III came out in, what, 2000? It's 2007 and We're just now getting the next installment after: GTA3, GTA3: Vice City, GTA3: San Andreas, GTA3: Liberty City Stories, GTA3: Vice City Stories...

Nobody has any complaints about that. GTAIV probably won't be any more different from GTAIII than GTAIII was from San Andreas.

the 'final fantasy' model is broken.

[Superfarstucker]

The final fantasy RPG model is an evolutionary dead end. The problem isn't so much what these type of RPGs are, but rather what they aren't: a game. I like the idea of playing a game that has a deep story line but it has to present some kind of challenge as well. 'Combat' is merely rote memorization and the 'secrets' are just a ploy to get you to shell out an extra 20 bucks for the strategy guide.

These sort of RPGs give video games a bad name. An RPG can be done well. Ultima Online is perhaps the finest example in my book. Combat had dynamics even if it was horribly unbalanced (only a handful of viable skill/stat combinations) and the economies were real in a way that nobody who has followed has been able to replicate (which was what I thought made the game a faithful rpg).

World of Warcraft, despite its massive shortcomings, is also light years ahead of this style of game. Player versus player and raid combat introduce dynamics that something like Final Fantasy can never hope to replicate. Now I disagree with the premises that raiding and pvp were designed with in warcraft but they are good ideas and do have a future. Namely - more isn't harder, and that goes both with respect to personnel requirements and time investment.

Final fantasy is simply the spiritual successor to Dragon Quest, and we all know how 'great' of a 'game' that is.

To point, though, it isn't surprising that they're going to continue to milk their greatest success. They're taking a page out of a novelist's book. The wheel of time is a shining example of this mentality.

On the other end of the spectrum there is Oblivion, which in my book is just as big of a piece of shit as Final fantasy is.