Final Fantasy Versus Itself.

(I know, worst title ever)

Hey, you know those stupid prediction articles that are all made up of guesswork skewed by the writer’s personal preferences, the ones that serve to only stroke the writer’s ego as they furrow their brows and pretend to be the next Michael Pachter as if being the next Michael Pachter is something to aspire to?
Yeah, let’s do one of those!

So, Final Fantasy, you may have heard of it, chances are you have strong opinions about it, and the general consensus seem to be that it isn’t as good as it used to be, when exactly “used to be” was differs from person to person, but I’d imagine most don’t exactly consider the current games to be living up to the legacy. That’s why I want to talk about Versus XIII, and its potential to revitalise the franchise, if not outright save it. (Save it from mediocrity that is, it’s not like they’ll stop making money anytime soon)

FF13 was a bit of a mixed bag, there’s been plenty of blogs about the games problems and merits so I won’t open that particular can of worms just yet, personally I thought it was a good game but a poor Final Fantasy, if that makes any sense. Instead, I’d like to look at where the franchise is headed with both 13-2 and Versus and why I think these two games are a pivotal fork in the road for SquareEnix’s future success, or at the least, their reputation.



Final Fantasy XII-2......hwaaaa........ to be honest, I don’t think it’ll be a good game, like, at all, in the slightest, I have zero confidence in it, and this is coming from someone who’s indifferent to the last game at worst. Square say they’re addressing the problems people had with the first game, but from everything we know so far I just can’t see how things are improving. Let’s start with the characters, the heart and soul of any FF game, Sarah and Noel seem to be the only permanent party members from the looks of things, so I hope ya like ‘em ‘cause you’re stuck with ‘em. Call me sceptical, but I don’t see Noel’s “carefree, charge in head-on” attitude breaking new ground as far as JRPGs go, and Sarah, quite frankly, seems like she was more interesting when she was an inanimate object, she looked like she stood a better chance in a fight when she was made of glass too.

Granted this is all hearsay till the game comes out, maybe they’ll have a surprising amount of depth, maybe we’ll be able to explore their characters more deeply now that there are only two party members, maybe while expanding her horizons and travelling the wider world Sarah will start to develop feelings for Noel or question her engagement to Snow. But, I just don’t see it happening. Speaking of the story, remember how FF13’s plot, while not terribly complicated, was made confusing because they kept inserting their own terminology for words that already existed and just generally did a bad job telling us what was happening? Well guess how they’re going to remedy that confusion?



Time travel and alternate dimensions! Because if there’s two things that can make a story coherent and easy to understand it’s time travel and alternate dimensions. There’s plenty of other stuff too, the battle system is being tweaked, so that’s really a matter of personal preference (I liked it once you had a decent amount of options), the third party member being replaced with monsters you collect, QTEs, a lot of reused assets, which I guess is to be expected from a game turned out in less than a year. Then there’s the plot, Noel and Sarah have to travel through time to save Lightning from an alternate dimension where she is a warrior goddess locked in a battle with an unkillable villain who has been described as “Her version of Sephiroth” and looks like he was specifically designed so we could laugh at cosplayers at a later date.

I have a black eye because that plot synopsis made me curl my fist in rage and facepalm at the same time. Honestly, this may be the worst direction I’ve seen a series take since Suicide Bomberman. But enough, I didn’t mean to harp on 13-2 so long, nor did I intend to be so hard on it, but everything I see just rubs me the wrong way, and I don’t think all the moogles and pink hair in the world can save it now (sorry Dale).The most I can expect is an improved battle system but the story and characters, and how both seem to be lacking, may drag it down. And again, all this is just speculation till we get some proper time with it, I’d be thrilled to be proven wrong.



But anyway, this blog is supposed to be about hope! And I believe Versus 13 is Final Fantasy’s best hope for a return to form. I can’t remember the last time I read something about FF13 or 13-2 without Versus being brought up. One of Verses’ greatest strength is its status as a spinoff, you see, every Final Fantasy game has to both reinvent the wheel and stay familiar, they need to create a new world, characters, battle system and story, all while making sure to include chocobos, moogles, summons, menu based battles, airships, magic, fabulous character designs, Cactuar, crystals, a guy named Cid and much more. It’s like a bird trying to fly while still clutching its cage in its talons, basically, Final Fantasy has too much baggage.

Versus on the other hand, can pick and choose whatever it wants, they have the freedom to go nuts with this one and still retain the production values most games could only dream of. Of what we know, there are a few points of interest that seem to be shaking thing up in all the right ways, in my eyes at least.


“This is a fantasy based on reality” as stupid as that sentence is, it raises an interesting idea about where we’ve been in FF games up to this point. We’ve seen medieval, fantasy, steampunk, cyberpunk, futuristic and all sorts of weird in-betweens. But we’ve yet to see anything close to our own world, sure there’ll still be monsters and magic, but seeing it in a world we can relate to is at least worth a mention. This extends beyond just cities that look like real cities, an old fashioned world map that’s now to human scale, and a slightly less pretentious and exaggerated story are things to look forward to.



Violence. Cast your mind back, years ago, to that first trailer we saw for Versus. Do you remember the shock you felt as you saw the protagonist impale a soldier? Do you remember the surprise and, admit it, thrill you got as you saw him snap another soldier’s neck? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of violence or gore, in fact the more I see in a game the more desperate the developer seems to me *coughVisceralGamescough*, M rarely stands for Mature, just inappropriate for children. But if one series could benefit from “aging it up” it’s Final Fantasy. I’m not asking for gore, but a bit of bloodshed would certainly reinforce the darker, down to earth tones we’ve seen so far.

We don’t know much about the battle system yet, but what we have seen has me really excited for one simple reason – options/variety. I’m not talking about “will I cast thunder or blizzard”, I’m talking about taking out the pilot of a giant robot and deciding to hop in and control it for yourself, I’m talking about fighting an enemy manning a turret and turning it against its allies, I’m talking about luring a monster near an explosive material and switching over to the character who wields guns and going into third person shooting to trigger the explosion. Have we seen this kind of thing in other games? Absolutely. But have we had it in RPGs, especially this style? Not to my knowledge. It’s not even that big a deal in the grand scheme (I basically said I’m excited for exploding barrels), but even the best of battle systems can get repetitive after 40 hours, things like this are what keep us guessing and keep things interesting.



I love Final Fantasy, we all do, everyone has fond memories of it peppered throughout their life, but how many times can you reboot the same basic concept? Is there any other series in any other form of media that’s been reimagined thirteen times? Final Fantasy is like The Simpsons, it was amazing in its heyday, but it’s running out of steam, and the sad truth is it may never be as good as it once was. But maybe that’s okay, because when the Simpsons started to go downhill we got Futurama! That’s how I see Versus, not so much a hark back to the past or a huge leap into unknown territory, but a sidestep, familiar yet experimental, something fresh but still within our comfort zone, branching out but with an assured level of quality. And in the end, isn’t that what Final Fantasy has always been doing?

Hopefully we’ll see it soon, right after Half-life 3 and the new Jet Set Radio.



BLAAAH. That went on way longer then it needed to, I actually don’t feel so good about this blog, I procrastinated for weeks and even ended up writing other stuff in between. But it was just one of those weird ones you just need to get off chest and out of your system you know?

Also, that moogle that transforms into a sword and bow is just dumb. And this in coming from a guy who still thinks gunblades are cool.