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My FF hot take of the day:

 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
I don't really think that's even lukewarm. FFV's narrative elements at large are overwhelmingly disregarded by most players, and very commonly by people who otherwise laud the game for its mechanics.
 
It really wasn't until FF6 that Square figured out how to both tell a good story and let the player customize their characters. It's hard for Bartz to have a deep personality when he could be a Knight or a Dancer or a Blue Mage or anything else at any time.
 

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
In terms of craft, Final Fantasy V was a large step forward in the intricacy of the direction of cutscenes. More of the story and character is conveyed through movements and posing than they ever attempted in Final Fantasy IV, much less earlier. It laid the groundwork not only for the operatic pathos of Final Fantasy VI, but also the nonverbal experiment of the prehistory chapter of Live A Live and the constant slapstick of Super Mario RPG. Although they were not able to convey the personalities of Bartz, Lenna, Galuf, Faris, and Krile through their differing performance in battle, it still comes through crystal clear through the visuals and animations, and that's the sort of thing that had the entire industry excited in 1992.

There's also the matter of genre. A light adventure fantasy is not as respected a narrative form as something with a lot of darkness and introspection, but I wouldn't call it inferior. It has much to say about the human condition, specifically in regards to legacy and connection. The complex reverberating problems inherited from the past are made right by a brave new generation who rediscover what was forgotten; the uniting of a divided world is the only alternative to oblivion. Bartz realizes he has taken up the very same mission that took his father from him; Lenna's self-sacrificing nature is connected with the pain of bereavement that she's felt again and again; Faris, in rediscovering where she came from and finding companions she can be honest with, at last attains the sense of freedom she had been seeking; and Galuf struggles to carry hope to the next generation, which Krile embodies. Don't let the fact that they're all goofing around and the villain literally goes "Muahahaha" distract you from realizing that this is all extremely solid stuff.
 
I should qualify my statement. I don't think FF5's story is bad, I just think the nature of the Job System causes a disconnect between the gameplay and story in a way that makes things seem slighter in comparison to the FF games surrounding it.

The class of the characters in FF4 and 6 are extremely important plot-wise. Cecil as a Dark Knight turned Paladin, for example, ties the gameplay to the story. Bartz is just kind of a vague adventurer, because the story can't be built around him as a Ranger or Black Mage or whatever. His personality can't be informed from the way you play him in battle, which limits his depth.
 

Mogri

Round and round I go
(he)
Staff member
Moderator
But every character in 7 and 8 is a blank slate in battle, and the story isn't harmed by it.
 

Regulus

Sir Knightbot
I think it's a little different. Their secondary abilities are blank slates, but they all have character-specific equipment and limit breaks that are informed by their character background. They can all use ability augmenting materia/drawn magic/guardian forces, but Barret is always a guy that had a gun grafted to the arm he lost.
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
Staff member
Moderator
Over the last month or so I've managed to drag myself through Final Fantasy XVI. I don't have a lot of nice things to say about it!

I cannot reconcile the game I played with the fact that there's so much FFXIV creative DNA on the development team. What on earth went wrong? If I didn't know any better, I'd have bet my shirt that this either began life as Unrelated Grimdark Fantasy Game and got rebranded to FFXVI at the eleventh hour, or else was the work of an outside team who weren't really that familiar with FF but definitely wanted to get some of that Game of Thrones money, seven or eight years too late. There's very little of the wonder, warmth and whimsy (the three W's) that one typically associates with the Final Fantasy brand here, and in fact the game seems somewhat embarrassed at times to be a part of the series. For example, mounting a chocobo gives you a two-second sting of their theme but then it's back to business as usual. The climax of the prologue section is a harrowing, viscerally upsetting scene where Ifrit tears Phoenix apart while Clive cries and screams I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU. I get that it's meant to be unpleasant to watch, but it reaches a level of adolescent, faux-mature edgelordiness that I don't really want in my Final Fantasy, and I honestly considered turning the game off there and then.

Valisthea is a grimy, grey world populated by miserable people who are sick of living there. Why should I want to save any of it? At no point is there any incentive to explore off of the critical path, because there's nothing interesting to see or find. Contrast FF7 Rebirth, which boasts a vibrant, expansive land stuffed with secrets and things to do, and charming, memorable characters to meet.

In lieu of interesting art direction we are given Spectacle in the form of the Eikon battles, which start with you turning into Godzilla and only ramp up from there until you're Shadow-of-the-Colossusing your way up the body of a screaming rock golem the size of a continent. During that sequence in particular I could practically feel the developers looking back at me every few seconds, going "isn't this the most fucking epic thing you've ever seen?!" when the scale and tryhard excess of it was so absurd that it actually became kind of boring. It's like the endless Obi-Wan vs. Anakin lightsaber fight in Revenge of the Sith, where it's so overblown and overdesigned that it just ends up feeling mind-numbing and artificial. I'm sure each such battle took thousands of man-hours to put together but I wish they hadn't bothered.

The characters don't fare much better. Clive's alright, I guess; he initially presents as Grizzled Hero Man #68721 but gradually reveals himself to be kind of an endearing dumbass.

Barnabas: My master awaits you in the capital... But I cannot allow you to attend him in your current state.
Clive, who's gotten his ass kicked to within an inch of his life by this exact guy twice now: And how are you going to stop us?!

You tell him, Clive.

Jill is almost completely flat and exists only to either agree with Clive or be put into peril, and might as well not be a Dominant at all given how underpowered Shiva seems compared to the rest of the pantheon. (There's not even a discussion of her accompanying the Menfolk into the final battle.) Benedikta probably should have been the Dominant of Ice instead, considering how quickly she gets fridged. She goes mad because Clive beats her and steals her power, is then accosted by a gang of men who clearly intend to rape her, and is last seen as a head in a box. Great stuff. Cid coasts quite a ways into my good graces on Ralph Ineson's gravelly deadpan performance alone, but he also only exists to dream so hilariously small as to make Clive appear visionary by comparison:

Cid: My dream is to build a place where people can die on their own terms.
Clive: What about a place where people can LIVE on their own terms?
Cid: ...My God. You're brilliant.

Mid, Byron and Gav are all pretty likeable but aren't going to be topping any "Best Final Fantasy Characters of All Time" lists. I quickly learned to hate Vivian, the geopolitical scholar who unveils an unskippable Powerpoint presentation dripping with overblown gravitas whenever someone asks her what time it is.

Clive: I need to know the current situation in Waloed.
Vivian: In order to understand that, you first must know the history of the region!
Clive: What? No. Just tell me what's going--
Vivian: IT ALL BEGAN SIX THOUSAND YEARS AGO, AMIDST FIRE AND TURMOIL MOST FOUL
Clive: No. No!!!!!!

Torgal is a good boy and you can pet him whenever you want. 10/10, no notes. Later he suddenly morphs into a glowing blue wolf deity and everybody's like "Huh! Anyway,"

Ultima's calm, cold detachment from everything is kind of an interesting note for a villain. He seems genuinely puzzled as to why humans wouldn't all just agree to be turned into LCL or whatever is supposed to happen when his plan reaches fruition. I'm not sure I understand the timeline as he explains it, though. He first gave the world magic as a gift, which then caused the Blight, so he created mankind in order to eventually produce Mythos. So... who was using the magic before that? The chocobos, I guess.

I don't really have anything to say about the rest of the cast.

The game got one (1) good laugh out of me, when Barnabas/Odin stomps Clive for the second time: the victory fanfare plays and up pops the message CLIVE BESTED. Finally, a sign of life, some 35 hours in. Unfortunately it turned out to be an isolated incident.

I will not be engaging with the DLC and I cannot see myself ever wanting to revisit this world or these characters.

Yoshida's aim was for a dark fantasy storyline that would have broad appeal and reinvigorate the series.

Jesus.
 

fanboymaster

(He/Him)
I quickly learned to hate Vivian, the geopolitical scholar who unveils an unskippable Powerpoint presentation dripping with overblown gravitas whenever someone asks her what time it is.

The thing that absolutely blows my mind about these sequences is that she's always always always communicating something that could be explained in about two sentences of exposition for all the info it actually contains but she somehow always manages to stretch it out to multiple minutes, the game is desperate to give the impression of complex world building and has nothin' for actual complexity.
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
It' incredible, how every time I read anything about FF16, I get less interested in playing it. But I think seeing what the prologue shows, that grimdark stuff you mentioned, is the worst thing I read. I can't watch stuff like this, when the artstyle is realistic.

And really, absolutely nothing I ever read or heard, aside from this being an FF, ever motivated me to give it a try.

I hope 17 will seem more like something for me.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
I cannot reconcile the game I played with the fact that there's so much FFXIV creative DNA on the development team.

I have very little to no firsthand experience with XIV, but it does scan to me. XVI's lead writer and creative director is Kazutoyo Maehiro, who came up at Square pretty much exclusively working alongside Yasumi Matsuno on his projects, usually in a level and battle designer capacity... but also event planning, where the writing aspects come in. The XIV team at large are by public expression, the nature of their work, and through explicit collaboration avowed Matsuno fans, so to have someone of Maehiro's background and pedigree on the team in a prominent creative position (being the main scenario writer for XIV's relaunch and its first expansion Heavensward) undoubtedly had an influence on shaping that game as well... and this is where I can't comment on anything directly, but all the criticisms that XVI and Maehiro's work in it receives are things that have been said of the XIV material as well, particularly in how a misogynistic leaning and themes are present in both. All the most passionate fandom for XIV's writing revolves around Shadowbringers and Endwalker, the two expansions which Natsuko Ishikawa held the role of lead writer on, and she did not take part in XVI's development at all. For all of Matsuno's strengths as a writer, he also writes women fairly poorly as a rule, and that is a sensibility that has been passed on and magnified by his successors.
 
I find that take rather strange, Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen was surprisingly very egalitarian for a dark fantasy, with women often showing up as both soldiers and high ranking officials with little weirdness about them, and the player getting to choose the revolutionary commander's gender. Tactics Ogre(the original Super Famicon/PS1 game) also had a decently egalitarian society, though of course Kachua's portrayal does make her not endear herself to many players because, well, she's a teenager who has been left adrift by a harsh war and thus desperately in search of anything that could validate her.

I've definitely heard of FFT and Vagrant Story having some sexist writing though, albeit I haven't experienced either game much, so can't comment on the specifics.
 
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