Final Fantasy XVI tackles its ‘Star Wars’ problem

Whenever a new Final Fantasy arrives, fans of the role-playing video games made famous in the 1990s for using the medium to tell deep, epic stories with large, diverse casts hope that this will be the one that brings the franchise relevant again. will make.

Entries from the past year and a half have missed the mark. The most recent installment – Final Fantasy XV, released seven years ago – was a letdown for many, with a disjointed storyline and forgettable characters. Not even the makers will defend it.

Square Enix, the studio behind the 35-year-old franchise, is trying to right some wrongs with the release of Final Fantasy XVI for the PlayStation 5 on June 22. , the studio walks a tightrope to try to meet the expectations of a devoted fan base while attracting a new audience.

For Final Fantasy XVI, that means a departure from features that have been fundamental to every game in the main series, including the ability to manage a large number of characters and the quirky, whimsical tone.

Now players control only one character and take on the structure of successful role-playing games such as The Witcher and God of War. And in its ambition to tell a story to rival “Game of Thrones,” it’s the first episode to receive an “M” adult rating for its gory violence and unnecessary use of obscenities.

Square Enix says the game will focus on the story of Clive Rosfield, a prince seeking revenge after the destruction of his kingdom and the murder of his brother. Players follow the new character from adolescence to adulthood to understand his motivations and eventual transformation.

“We wanted to restore faith in the Final Fantasy series by going back to those roots and putting the focus on the story – and trying to make amends for what happened during Final Fantasy XV,” said Naoki Yoshida, the producer from Final Fantasy XVI. said an interpreter in a recent video call.

Final Fantasy XV has left embarrassing scars on Square Enix due to its confusing story. Major plot points were left partially unexplained due to the decision to distribute narrative details about an animated film and an anime series. Some downloadable content that was intended to expand the background of important characters was canceled altogether.

But it remains an open question whether Final Fantasy XVI’s renewed focus on story content will resonate with gamers.

If Square Enix goes too far towards serving nostalgic fans, there’s a risk of creating the impression that Final Fantasy is out of touch with current gaming trends; if it focuses too much on a new audience, it can be scrutinized because it has abandoned its roots. Trying to please both groups – as it tried with Final Fantasy XV, which got solid reviews overall because of its high production values ​​- it could safely land somewhere in the middle, the plane of creative mediocrity.

Star Wars viewers saw a similar dynamic in the most recent trilogy. While critics praised the second installment, “The Last Jedi,” for offering a fresh take on the space opera by suggesting that any average person could be a Jedi, franchise loyalists detested it for violating sacred canon . In response to the backlash, those violations were reversed in “The Rise of Skywalker,” one of the most critically reviewed Star Wars films of all time.

Final Fantasy’s most defining original gameplay feature – its turn-based battle system, where players cycled through a group of characters and selected an action, such as casting a magic spell on an enemy – was laid to rest more than 15 years ago.

While some people still prefer that system, Yoshida said, gamers — and he’s no exception — had come to expect fast-paced action as consoles became more and more powerful.

Final Fantasy XVI will also take a noticeably darker tone than previous installments that were more light-hearted and accessible, even to kids. The game begins with the invasion of the protagonist’s kingdom and the brutal slaughter of his family. Yoshida said he took this direction to reflect the harsh climate of our time.

“By showing the bad, it accentuates the good that’s there and feels more real,” he said. “But you know, at its core, Final Fantasy XVI is also a story about love, and it’s a story about hope.”

Yoshida said the decision to focus on one character in Final Fantasy XVI was largely dictated by modern combat design. Players controlling Clive must rely on their timing and reflexes to attack and dodge opponents. Adding more characters to the party would have required the player to learn multiple skills, which Yoshida felt would have made the game too complicated.

Stories centered around a single character often echo Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey, where one ventures into the unknown, overcomes a crisis, and returns transformed. That formula has spawned Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter, as well as video game heroes like Link in The Legend of Zelda and Lara Croft in Tomb Raider.

Still, that structure can limit game designers, said Souvik Mukherjee, an assistant professor of cultural studies who leads research on video games as a storytelling medium at the Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, India. Since the camera remains largely focused on the protagonist, other characters encountered by the player only seem to exist to aid the hero.

Some games that take that approach have found ways to tell compelling stories, said Mukherjee, pointing to Red Dead Redemption 2’s story about gang member Arthur Morgan and his deteriorating relationship with the group’s leader, Dutch van der Linde.

However, Square Enix could struggle to pull off a comparable performance. The stories in some of his biggest hits, such as Final Fantasy VI (1994) and Final Fantasy VII (1997, which was re-released in 2020), were revealed through the perspectives of multiple characters and intersecting stories.

The first hours of Final Fantasy XVI illustrate the game’s efforts to tell a complex story involving multiple kingdoms at war. The game will test whether Clive’s solo journey, where he meets some allies but is mostly accompanied only by his dog, will be a successful storytelling mechanic for this story.

The series also has a rich history of portraying strong women, such as Yuna from Final Fantasy X, a summoner determined to banish an evil monster, and Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy VII, a childhood friend who becomes that game’s protagonist, Cloud. Strife, saves from a mental breakdown.

The plight of women is another reason Final Fantasy XV has harassed fans, said Brianna Wu, a video game developer and longtime fan of the franchise. The game gave little airtime to the protagonist’s fiancé, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, before killing her off, and hypersexualized Cindy Aurum, a mechanic who constantly revealed cleavage.

“As a gamer who likes Final Fantasy for the mighty women, I feel like they’ve been really on the wrong track for a long time from a representation standpoint,” she said. “Clive looks interesting, but I’m really waiting to see what they do with their wives.”

Square Enix producer Yoshida said the story of Final Fantasy XVI would resonate with gamers of all generations. By following Clive from childhood to adulthood, he said, the storyline will be relatable to younger players who are just entering the real world and older gamers who have seen what the real world is like.

Perhaps more importantly, will Clive’s story turn a fading franchise into the influential game it once was.