Before I begin, I'm going to say this right now: I am not going to make any claims about being right on this topic. The logic may be flawed, the argument laughable, but dammit, I'm trying to do something other than rank-and file reviews! (^_^) I'm writing this to spur intellectual debate on this topic, although the phrases “intellectual debate” and “Final Fantasy” is a pipe dream at best. With that in mind, here we go. Besides, repeat to yourself “it's just a blog, I should really just relax.”

Final Fantasy XIII is one of the most polarizing games I've ever played. I personally don't have many qualms with it, but a lot of people seem to, including Destructoid's Jimmy Sterling. Our favorite big Brit gave the game a scathing 4 out of 10, and while he primarily razed the game's shortcomings with the battle system, a lot of other reviewers and people I've talked with seemed to get hung up on something that I thought was a really dumb complaint. It wasn't the inane characters, dumb story, or the dreaded “press X to win” battle system, it was the linearity of all things that people got hung up on.

Really?

Herein lies the topic I'm going to discuss because everything else about the game speaks for itself. I'm here to talk about why the complaints about Final Fantasy XIII's linearity are invalid.


DERP.

My favorite point to make (and the one that nobody has any rebuttals to, I hope that changes) is that every Final Fantasy game has been linear to some extent or another. After playing XIII, I decided to play Final Fantasy IV—one of my favorite games in the series—for comparison. The game two games can't compare with their gameplay, but the progression is almost exactly the same. You are more or less forced to go from one point to the next, going where the people in the town tell you to.

Let's use other examples in the series. Final Fantasy VI, the best game in the series (sorry, FF7) relies on that linearity, at least for the first half of the game. Its successor is also highly linear until you hit Disc 3, which is about 30 hours in if you take your time with it.

Hell, while we're at it, let's use the JRPG genre itself as an example. Dragon Quest is very linear itself, as is Parasite Eve, Xenogears/saga, and even my beloved Shin Megami Tensei series more or less railroads you along the path the game wants you to follow, yet nobody talks about the linearity of those games.

Now, I know what people are saying: “none of these games deliberately railroad you like XIII does.” Actually, think about it this way: the game outright tells you to go that way. You have no other choice because if you do go off the beaten path, you're going to get killed. The world map in most Final Fantasy games is a lot like the 2008 Bionic Commando remake or Call of Duty games: you can see vast, sprawling landscapes as far as the eye can see, but you can't go there.

But here's what really sticks in my craw and makes no sense to boot: everybody talks about how superior Western RPG's are due to their apparent “non-linearity.” Here's a few examples of RPG's that are not only linear, but some people wouldn't even go as far to call them RPG's. Dragon Age and Mass Effect (the second games of both, in particular) are both pretty linear once you get into combat zones, and even then, total freedom is an illusion.


And on your left, you will see areas you never get to travel to.

The Elder Scrolls is the only real exception to this (at least that I've played) because the story is nothing more than a suggestion. The Ultima Underworld series is also that way. But therein probably lies our enjoyment of JRPG's, and the one thing that Final Fantasy had going for it for so long: the stories. A good story can forgive a lot of things, including linearity. Persona 4 is linear as hell, maybe even moreso than Final Fantasy XIII, yet nobody complained about Persona 4's linearity. Instead, people concentrated on the spectacular Social Link system. I guess P4 gets a pass because it's primarily a dungeon crawler, but if we're going to talk about JRPG's, why should there be an exception to a certain subsection of the genre? Why should Rougelikes and dungeon crawlers be treated differently than a “traditional” JRPG?

Getting back on track (I guess this has gotten a bit tangental), Final Fantasy XIII is guilty of linearity, but why have people noticed just on this game, when it has clearly happened in the series almost since the beginning? Final Fantasy XIII may be a bad game, but I think a lot of the nerd rage has been misguided.

Why is linearity a bad thing anyway? A lot of people will complain about how a game is “too linear,” while turning right around and saying one of their favorite games is, say, Gunstar Heroes. Like I said, Final Fantasy has had a history of being linear, it's just that people decided to notice with XIII.

Next time on my blog, the Destructoid community takes pictures of my drawn-and-quartered corpse and puts them up on the forums!