The Ultimate Final Fantasy Thread: This Guy Are Knock You All Down

[Bongo]

I never disdained the Compilation, but I'm prepared to start if this thing is a gacha.

 

[Positronic Brain]

My dislike of the compilation is reserved entirely for the added lore - turns a tight self-contained game into KH Lite. But as long as I don't need to know who Angelweiss Genesis The IV (OC, don't steal) is to understand why Yuffie is killing a metal centipede, I'll endure.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

My dislike of the compilation is reserved entirely for the added lore - turns a tight self-contained game into KH Lite.

You say this, but no part of the FF7 Compliation has lore additions that are remotely complicated, nor are they particularly presented in ways that are hard to digest.

Advent Children: Sequel set two years later. There's still Genova cells floating about making everyone sick, and a group of three edgelord orphan boys temporarily resurrect Sephiroth in their attempt at a mini-Reunion. Cloud gets over his survivor's guilt to save the day w/ the help of The Gang.

Before Crisis: We never got this one, but it's basically just a bunch of back story for the setting that's mostly just logical extrapolations of stuff we already knew. Like AVALANCHE's origins as a broader, more criminal organization, or the origins of the Turks.

Crisis Core: at the core of this story, it's just the Zack story we already know from FF7, fleshed out a little by giving us a slightly more detailed look at SOLDIER as an organization. Focusing mostly on the fact that Sephiroth had two comrades in arms from his generation that were roughly on par with him. One was a goodie, one was a baddie.

Dirge of Cerebrus: Hojo had a bunch of TOP SECRET experiments beneath Midgar that spent a few years post-FF7 building up their power and then finally went out and lashed out in vengeance against the world. And their plan? They tried to trick the Lifestream's self-defense mechanism (Omega WEAPON) to activate and cause a Human Instrumentality-ish event. Vincent was secretly a mini-WEAPON and he went Super Sayian and made Omega WEAPON go back to sleep.

All of this stuff fundamentally was fine. I contend the problem with these games is not the story they gave us, but the vehicle that they used to deliver them. Which were generally bad and naturally made people biased against the the stories that were being told in them. Advent Children was a movie that was 80% eye candy/fan service by weight, so the story felt shoe-horned versus earnestly explored. Before Crisis was a primitive flip-phone game that we never got broken down into 20+ chapters you had to purchase individually. Crisis Core was actually Quite Good, but was trapped on a dead platform nobody played and limited by the hardware of said platform. And Dirge of Cerebrus was an extremely awkward, poorly designed shooter, and we all know how good shooters are at presenting engaging, interactive stories when the only way to interact with the environment is to shoot bullets at it. FF7R expanded the setting/cast/story/lore of FF7 more than the rest of the compilation put together, and it did so in a way that both was easy to digest and felt like an organic addition to the world. This is despite plot shenanigans that make FF7 into ZenogiasXenogears-lite. And the reason why the game nails it is because the vehicle for delivering the story - the game itself - was sublime. If they can continue to keep giving us games this fun/well put together, I've got zero fears of the story unraveling into nonsense.

 

[Zef]

And Dirge of Cerebrus was an extremely awkward, poorly designed shooter, and we all know how good shooters are at presenting engaging, interactive stories when the only way to interact with the environment is to shoot bullets at it.

I feel like this is a needlessly reductive view of FPSs that lets Dirge of Cerberus off the hook for it own, ingrown storytelling issues. System Shock, Marathon, Metroid Prime, or even Halo fans (to name just a couple) would probably bristle at the idea that a first-person shooter can't deliver engaging, interactive stories; and at the time DoC was released, the typical RPG's way of interacting with the environment was to have a random battle at it, which is just another level of abstraction from FPS combat. Even for those occasions when devs made use of the turn-based battle engine to deliver storytelling, or narrative interactivity, there's also examples of FPS counterparts doing the same thing, and neither format prevents the other from having the most traditional styles of narrative: the cutscene and the data log.

DoC's story wasn't bad because it was tacked onto a bad shooter, it's bad on its own merits (or lack thereof). AC and CC reasonably expand the central themes of the original narrative (AC is the most self-indulgent of the bunch, and perpetuated the whole "mopey Cloud" characterization fans grew so fond of) but it still stays true to FF7's core. Same with CC, even as it laid the foundation of what would become DoC. But the story of the DEEEPGROUND soldiers robs meaning from the original game with poorly-developed, hilariously designed characters that exhibit little, if any, storytelling restraint or nuance. It makes the central conflict of FF7 less meaningful by having a smaller, out-of-nowhere conflict have much bigger consequences than Sephiroth and Jenova's, while at the same time copying the former's intent for ill-defined motivations.

And as a matter of personal taste, any game that includes Weiss the Hedgehog and Nero is a game that should be laughed back to the story editors, and to a designer that doesn't channel the worst excesses of "mature" seinen manga.

 

[Peklo]

Same with CC, even as it laid the foundation of what would become DoC.

It's the other way around, even though the chronology is in reverse: 2006's Dirge of Cerberus features a live-action Genesis as the secret stinger, teasing the Big G for his elaboration and backstory in 2007's Crisis Core. I'm sure they were both in development at the same time to facilitate that hook and collaboration, though. It's not the Lifestream that connects us, but Gackt.

 

[Zef]

It's not the Lifestream that connects us, but Gackt.

I wonder if Ever Crisis will keep him in after 14 years or if they'll replace him with the current top male idol, uh...

*googles*

Jungkook from BTS?

 

[John]

I feel like this is a needlessly reductive view of FPSs that lets Dirge of Cerberus off the hook for it own, ingrown storytelling issues. System Shock, Marathon, Metroid Prime, or even Halo fans (to name just a couple) would probably bristle at the idea that a first-person shooter can't deliver engaging, interactive stories; and at the time DoC was released, the typical RPG's way of interacting with the environment was to have a random battle at it, which is just another level of abstraction from FPS combat. Even for those occasions when devs made use of the turn-based battle engine to deliver storytelling, or narrative interactivity, there's also examples of FPS counterparts doing the same thing, and neither format prevents the other from having the most traditional styles of narrative: the cutscene and the data log.

Definitely. Resident Evil 4 came out a full year before Dirge, and was miles better at both a storytelling and a gameplay perspective. If you want to jump back to an FPS vs Third Person games, Half-Life 2 was 2 years before it, and had puzzle elements as well as shooting down pat. The medium wasn't the issue with Dirge, it was what the developers did with it.

 

[gogglebob]

You say this, but no part of the FF7 Compliation has lore additions that are remotely complicated, nor are they particularly presented in ways that are hard to digest.

Legitimately, it is VERY similar to Kingdom Hearts, in that the simple, overarching story may be "friendship is great, good guy fights bad guy," but the actual details get very complicated, and (in my humble opinion) really do bog down the Final Fantasy universe.

As an example, Crisis Core is the story of Zack, and how that Buster Sword has a lot more weight to it than Cloud is even aware of. But when you get into the weeds on it, you find the previous owner of the Buster Sword also eventually became a one-winged dog that saved Aerith's life, but is not to be confused with the former director of SOLDIER (heavily implied to be Rufus Shinra's illegitimate brother) that injected himself with the dog-dude's cells, so he became a physical clone that also somehow had a genetically-increased sense of justice, causing him to protect a comatose Cloud with that same one-winged dog from earlier.

And, like, that's neat? But it does seem to make the FF7 universe into this place where FF7 "main characters" are the center of its universe, as opposed to people that just got caught up in the fantastic events of FF7. In my opinion, it makes that whole world feel smaller, and more videogame-y.

(Also, while you could say the same of a lot of Final Fantasy, the character design in Dirge of Cerberus is an affront to decency.)

 

[Octopus Prime]

That is some Prime cut JRPG Fashion, right there.

My Good Gravy

 

[Zef]

What I love about Shalua's skirt is that it's impossible to tell whether it is a regular leather mini with a cloth half-skirt draped over it, or if it's a half-cloth, half-leather mini cut diagonally.

The matching strip around her thighs is just phenomenal. I imagine it's only attached at the X-shaped straps, and she has to constantly pull the narrow part up her leg because it keeps drooping.

 

[Peklo]

To me it's less about my individual opinions regarding the various Compilation entries (I am mostly indifferent to them) and more about being tired of them having existed in the shared consciousness of the audience in the long term through the antipathy and punchlines reserved and directed at them, for years on end. The foremost association in my mind with Advent Children is the litanies of its narrative and whatever else offenses it committed because that's simply what's dominated the discourse for fifteen years straight. VII Remake taking these things, facing its own history, and using them as tools of its own storytelling instead of disregarding them in awkward shame, was honestly really refreshing in that context.

It's not like I'm uncritical of that stuff either, as a character like Leslie originates from the novels and his story thread in the game was just abhorrent.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I feel like this is a needlessly reductive view of FPSs that lets Dirge of Cerberus off the hook for it own, ingrown storytelling issues. System Shock, Marathon, Metroid Prime, or even Halo fans (to name just a couple) would probably bristle at the idea that a first-person shooter can't deliver engaging, interactive stories

These are just my opinions, so I'm not presenting it as dogma, nor do I expect anyone to agree. And it is reductive, but not in ways that I feel are dishonest and inaccurate. But this is honestly an argument for a different thread.

Legitimately, it is VERY similar to Kingdom Hearts, in that the simple, overarching story may be "friendship is great, good guy fights bad guy," but the actual details get very complicated, and (in my humble opinion) really do bog down the Final Fantasy universe.

That's a fair way of looking at things I suppose. I don't agree with the value assessment though that the stuff being explored is bad and bogs things down. Expansive lore is something that I find very attractive in a piece of fiction. (My two favorite gaming series is Suikoden and MGS for a reason.) When I like a setting or cast, further exploring the minutiae of such is a tantalizing prospect. If you prefer your stories short, simple, and self-contained, I think that's fair, but that's mostly an issue of taste. To me, expansive lore only becomes a problem when:

1) The narrative loses sight of the overarching themes and plot in the pursuit of endless minutiae, leading to a poor balance and pacing of the story.
2) When the lore is intentionally obtuse like say, FFXIII's insistence on overloading the story with proper nouns that all rhyme/hard to distinguish from each other and keep track of.
3) Not dedicating enough time to exploring the lore and/or hiding too much of it in ways that the player can miss, which creates points of confusion.
4) Gating the lore behind hard to digest methods of consumption, like not organically explaining a concept through the plot and dialog but rather through long info dumps, or through other ways that take the player out of the game like audio/text logs, or appendix-style logs of proper nouns.
5) Creating so much of it that it loses internal cohesion/logical consistency when the writers forget what they themselves wrote.

Games like the Kingdom Hearts series manages to whiff on all five counts. The various FF7 off-shoots might whiff in one or two ways tops. But even then, it doesn't do so to the same egregious degree. You needn't have played Dirge of Cerebrus to understand Crisis Core. None of the entries involve overly complicated sets of buzzwords. Most of them remain internally consistent with the lore and characterizations established with FF7. From a strictly formal perspective, they're competent additions to the lore. What's left then, is if the value judgment of if the added lore itself is interesting and/or adds to the pre-established stuff. None of the FF7 compilation stories are anything remotely amazing, but they add some additional flavor to the setting/characters that I found interesting. If you don't think so, that's cool. But I'll be excited to re-explore those ideas introduced in those games in the Ever Crisis adaptation where hopefully the gameplay/platform doesn't suck and saps all the fun out of it.

 

[Regulus]

Eh. For me, the additional context and background details are retroactively damaging to the source material in the same way that Other M is to Metroid Fusion.

 

[Torzelbaum]

That is some Prime cut JRPG Fashion, right there.

Now there's a thread topic...

 

[Octopus Prime]

The spin-offs did all seem to be a contributing factor to everyone’s perceptions of nearly every FF7 character being the exact opposite of how they actually were portrayed in FF7.

When I finally got around to replaying 7, I was pretty surprised to find the entire cast is made up of really fun goofballs with occasional pathos.

Except Cid, he’s just a dill weed

 

[dosboot]

Questions that might start interesting discussions:

Judging by recent trends, what is the likelihood that Final Fantasy 16 is going to have character story DLCs? Is that what people truly want, commercial potential aside? I don't feel these were "missing" from previous Final Fantasies, so how would we interpret what narrative and structual differences exist between Final Fantasies then vs now?

 

[gogglebob]

I find this hard to believe, but there are people that can actually finish Final Fantasy 7 and never engage with Yuffie or Vincent, and completely ignore the fact that there are entire sidequests/caves/towns devoted to these two characters that do not appear in any FMVs for fear of confusing a player that missed them. I maintain that if vanilla FF7 somehow came out today, Yuffie and Vincent absolutely would be DLC, and the only reason they weren't "DLC" in the first place is Sega wouldn't let Sony borrow its lock-on technology (& Knuckles). And I've been saying that for years, even before Yuffie became literal FF7R DLC.

So I'd just say "same as it ever was".

(Also, in the case of Final Fantasy 6, Mog would be Day 1 "Pre-order exclusive" DLC, Umaro would be part of the World of Ruin Expansion Pass [includes a revisit of Narshe! From the intro!], and Gogo would be the DLC reward for completing all the DLC quests)

 

[Bongo]

The last game with "Final Fantasy" in the title to lack DLC was Final Fantasy XIII-1; some DLC was planned for it but cancelled, and both of its sequels had DLC. These aren't cheap games to make and Square Enix isn't shy about seeking new sources of revenue.

As for character story DLCs, they've been following that model with both 15 and 7R. There seems to be an acknowledgment that characters are what sell Final Fantasy games.

 

[Zef]

FF13-2 and, I assume, LR:FF13 (I know little of it other than the ending), presumably had mission-based DLC, right? More battle challenges, with associated lore if necessary, but not to the extent of entire new endings or backstories like FFXV had.

(I don't count FFX|V because you kinda expect an MMO to have DLC, either in the form of expansions or in free patches.)

In the case of FFXV, the game suffered greatly from a lack of vision and cohesive planning, and the DLC were attempts from the producers, writers, and director, to flesh out the game and build upon its story and characters even if they further diluted what vision it had. In the end, once the Royal Edition was released as the "definitive" version, the game somehow succeeded in spite of itself, but I'm in the minority who believe that. I also haven't played any of the "Episode" DLCs, which have received generally cold or negative responses. Worse, if the suuuuuuuper self-indulgent, Dawn of the Future novella had been released as DLC as intended (as opposed to an official printed fixfic), it would have completely wrecked the game's plot and characters. Again, because of a lack of cohesion in the project as a whole.

FFXVI is in the hands of X|V's producer, who famously turned a dying, mediocre MMORPG into a fan favorite and lifestyle for hundreds of thousands of players. Although I don't have enough of a history with the game to judge his resume accurately, X|V fans are excited that he's picking up XVI for the type of unified vision he can bring to the development. I'm willing to take them at their word. So while it's "fine" to give Yuffie and Weiss the Hedgehog a completely isolated sidestory that takes place during FF7R, I seriously don't think she (or Vincent) would remain DLC for the sequel proper. Likewise, I wouldn't expect entire characters in FFXVI to be DLC, but... non-essential backstory elements might be.

these two characters that do not appear in any FMVs for fear of confusing a player that missed them

Someone remind me or point me to a YT: what happens in FFVI if you don't ever grab Mog, Gogo, or Umaro? I've never actually tried skipping them, so I don't know if the ending cinema skips their sections or shows the same "You didn't find them in the World of Ruin, you bad bad person!" placeholder image.

jesus christ imagine if each character's World of Ruin story were DLC like they did for Drakengard 3

 

[Mogri]

Someone remind me or point me to a YT: what happens in FFVI if you don't ever grab Mog, Gogo, or Umaro? I've never actually tried skipping them, so I don't know if the ending cinema skips their sections or shows the same "You didn't find them in the World of Ruin, you bad bad person!" placeholder image.

The only portion of the ending that can actually change, to the best of my knowledge, is Shadow's section if he's for-real dead.

If you don't pick up a character, you'll just see something that gives you a clue to finding that character, with the exception of Terra: if she's still MIA, she'll esper up and fly over to participate in the ending sequence.

 

[Felicia]

So I just finished Final Fantasy XII without meaning to. Spoilers for the endgame:

First of all, I was under the mistaken impression that there was more of the map left to explore, but apparently it's just some paths that lead to other already-explored areas. Thus, I assumed that the attack on the Bahamut would lead to defeating the bad guy, who would then reveal his true evil plan and force us to go to his big deadly final dungeon to defeat his big deadly final form. I mean, the cutscenes started coming thick, but I figured I was just getting close to the end, not to the actual end. And the Bahamut is barely a dungeon at all, it just consists of endless hordes of enemies you're supposed to run from, and then pretty soon the bosses start appearing. Maybe I was a bit overlevelled (Vaan at somewhere around 60, if I recall), but the first few bosses I got through pretty smoothly, which even more made me think that this wasn't the final dungeon with the final boss. And then Vayne goes all musclebound and I'm thinking "wow, the end boss has to be really cool to top this!" And I assume that this isn't the final boss since he doesn't do much more than throwing out a bunch of different "hurt everyone a lot"-attacks, and occassionally becoming invulnerable to attack (which some bosses have done before, so it's really no biggie). I did get a little suspicious that there wasn't any life bar for him, but it still came as a shock when he fell, there were cutscenes, and suddenly "it's been a year..."

I haven't read up much on the game's development history, but apparently it was troubled? I guess that explains the somewhat lackluster ending?

 

[Kirin]

I feel like most FFXII-likers basically consider Pharos to be the "actual final dungeon" in that it's huge and has lots of opportunities to play with endgame-level stuff. The ending itself is basically a series of set-pieces. Hard to say how/whether it would have been significantly different if Matsuno had remained in charge of the writing all the way through development.

 

[Zef]

Oh, FFXII was certainly troubled, to the extent that it birthed Yiazmat and Montblanc's rancor towards it. But I doubt the ending in and of itself is a consequence of that troubled development--it felt natural and straightforward to me *shrug*. There's many other parts of the storyline where you can tell Matsuno left and Kawazu took over, but not, at least, that one.

EDIT: Also the final boss is preeminently Matsuno, the succession of Super Saiyan Broly Vayne to The Undying is identical in theme, style, and visual motifs to another Matsuno game under Squaresoft, Vagrant Story.

 

[Peklo]

There's many other parts of the storyline where you can tell Matsuno left and Kawazu took over, but not, at least, that one.

Can you? I don't think I can. This is rhetoric that's been bandied about for the better part of fifteen years, either by those who loathe what FFXII was, or alternatively those who really like it but felt it could've been better in some respects, and Kawazu's presence on the project--as a last-minute executive producer taking a colossal project to the finish line--provides a convenient scapegoat for all those perceived failings, since while both him and Matsuno are esoteric designers in a larger context there's a relative crowd-pleaser between the two and it's not Kawazu, and so those lines are drawn. In that light, Matsuno certainly can't be taken to task for the finished game in that mental jousting, never mind whoever else worked on it among a team of hundreds, so we're left with these bad faith readings applied to whatever narrative benefits most from it.

If I sound frustrated about this, it's because I am; I'm reacting to a pattern of discourse that's always hung around the game, and less any one individual's words. No one will ever know the realities of that development process as an outside commentator so personally I'd rather avoid conjecture wherever possible when trying to parse it.

 

[Zef]

Don't get me wrong, I love FFXII to bits. There's exactly ONE thing about it that I don't like (the bazaar system) but everything else is such an absolute favorite that I'm thrilled to see 14 take so much after it. And I don't mean "you can tell one from another" in a derogatory manner, either, as I believe both of them did a great job and I'm not privy to the details behind the scenes, nor do I attempt to elucidate them, I just know they were bad enough the remaining devs put in a blatant reference to them as a superboss. But Matsuno and Kawazu do have different directorial and storytelling styles, which was the point of that sentence. More explicitly, in the SaGa games I've played, (only up until RSG2) the narrative threads sometimes seem to come to abrupt ends before coming together for the final sequences, which could appear to be the case for XII, but really isn't.

 

[Mogri]

The Bahamut endgame is inevitably disappointing if you've dabbled in marks at all. I'm not sure it's more difficult than the preceding area even if you haven't, though.

That's fine -- in the end, it's really more of an interactive cutscene than a final challenge, and there's some good payoff with Vayne, Gabranth, and Larsa.

 

[conchobhar]

Akitoshi Kawazu only ever took over as producer, not director— he was there as a supervisor, to keep the project on-track and shepherd it to completion, nothing more. Indeed, he has said he actively avoided trying to put his own stamp on things, even though he also admitted there were aspects of the story he would have liked to change (and clarifying that doing so simply wasn't practical at that stage of development). Some of his proclivities might have made it in anyway, despite his best efforts, but he wasn't massively retooling or rewriting the game to suit him and his approach. I don't think FF12's problems can be hung on Kawazu's shoulders— its development was obviously more troubled than just who took over. Did you know that FF12 once held the Guinness World Record for longest video game development time?

I also really do not buy that Yiazmat was intended as anything other than a tribute to Matsuno.

 

[spines]

There's a tendency in the press to attribute creation of a game to two people, if it's widely known that one of them left the company abruptly some time before the game released and the other one was assigned to continue his role in some capacity

 

[Falselogic]

Everyone knows FFXII is the worst because I can't make out with Balthier in it.

 

[Destil]

Getting the Zodiac spear in the original game is absurd, but amusingly I could see either Kawazu or Matsuno (and no one else at Square) making it like that.