What if Final Fantasy never returns to its roots?

[Jinx]

A lot of people on this forum (as well as other places) have been talking since X or XII about how they hope the game goes back to its high fantasy themes instead of the modern-techno feel games have these days.

But what if the game never goes back that way? Will you continue to play FF games? Will you sit and wait in hope?

[Shiva95]

I will continue to play the games because I still like them, but I prefer the old games. I still hope that Final Fantasy will come back to its root eventually.

[VeloZer0]

I'm not so much enamored with the high fantasy, though I also don't think that full on advanced sci-fi makes good settings for this type of RPG. Anywhere industrialization or prior seems to work well though.

When I really get down to it the setting is far less important than compelling story and strong mechanics, and I don't think they have nailed both since FF9. To me that would be getting back to their roots.

[fat_moogle]

I'll continue to buy Final Fantasy titles for as long as I'm physically able to. FFVII was the game to get me in to the series back in '97 and since then I've bought every main entry, excluding XI and Lightning Returns (I know XI is Online and LR is a sequel, but it's still got XIII in its name) so it would be a shame to just stop. Sure the franchise has changed a hell of a lot but to me if future games have a good story and it plays well then I'll judge on its own merit, not "oh but what if it played like this" or "what if they did this?"

Of course that's not to say that I wouldn't want to see them go back to something more traditional at some point, but I'm intrigued to see where they take XVI after Type-0 and XV.

[Shorty]

I don't think it ever can go back to its roots. They have enough of the standard fantasy fodder in their early games, and they've progressed to a whole new world. I think this is also what a majority of the fans want, as well, even if it's not what the older fans want.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

If anything, Bravely Default is going to be the games that return to Final Fantasy's roots. I'll keep buying games from both series!

[theundeadhero]

I stopped collecting them with Lightning Returns, and that will continue unless they do make a game that's back to it's roots. If that never happens I'll most likely never buy another one again.

[Ayen]

They technically already returned to their roots in XI and XIV.

I'll continue to get the games I think are good and ignore the rest, as I have been doing and will continue to do with this franchise and every other franchise I'm a fan of.

[Psychotic]

When people say they want it to "go back to its roots" I don't know what they're talking about and sometimes I think FF fans complain just to complain.

As I said in a thread in the XV forum, Final Fantasy has always innovated and tried new things in new worlds. The modern techno thing has arguably been prevalent since FFVI - 20 years ago. Regardless of tech level, every Final Fantasy has had a fantasy setting. Even XV in its "realistic" setting clearly has fantastic elements like the gigantic monsters, magic and high octane fight scenes.

Having a good game is more important than the minutiae of the style of fantasy setting presented. Would FFXIII be any less of a turd if that exact style of game had been presented in, say, FFIX's world?

[VeloZer0]

As I said in a thread in the XV forum, Final Fantasy has always innovated and tried new things in new worlds.
To be fair, what innovation means to SE now and what it meant to Square 20 years ago are completely different things. They constantly changed stuff from FF1 - 6, but I think the sum total of change over the first 6 entries is less than they think is necessary for each new title nowadays.



Having a good game is more important than the minutiae of the style of fantasy setting presented. Would FFXIII be any less of a turd if that exact style of game had been presented in, say, FFIX's world?
Exactly.

[Freya]

They may go back to it but I think it has to fit thematically with whatever story they are trying to share. So yes I think they can.

[fat_moogle]

They technically already returned to their roots in XI and XIV.
Oh yes, XIV has a lovely world. It's a shame I just can't get in to the MMO aspect :(

[Del Murder]

Techno is fine, but I hate seeing modern settings and set pieces in my Final Fantasy game. It doesn't all have to be wizards and dragons but some kind of fantastical mythos and elaborately constructed areas is necessary for me to really get into the game.


Having a good game is more important than the minutiae of the style of fantasy setting presented. Would FFXIII be any less of a turd if that exact style of game had been presented in, say, FFIX's world?
No but XIII's world was actually pretty cool. We just didn't get to explore enough of it. However, it would be more of a turd if it took place in modern day Japan rather than Cocoon/Pulse.

As to the op, while 'return to its roots' is more or less a buzzword used by people just looking to complain, I would be pretty disappointed if FF becomes more and more modern in its design and we never see another single player main FF game that doesn't have castles and nonhuman races and gravity-defying airships.

[Colonel Angus]

The early FF were always mainly set in a classic fantasy world, but there was almost always something more. Airships, floating continents, automatons, dinosaurs, Arabs, something that always didn't completely pigeonhole it to an exact setting.

However, I would like to see it go back. In fact, I feel XII was a bit of a throwback to that setting. Kingdoms, swords & sorcery, knights in armor, etc.

[Vyk]

There have been soooooo *groan* many JRPGs set in a medieval fantasy setting it got kinda old and stale to me for a long time, and still doesn't interest me quite as much as sci-fi JRPGs. I kinda get a weird feeling that the new Tales of Zestiria is going to be set in a fairly generic medieval fantasy world. Medieval fantasy settings are almost as worn out as teenage heroes and "coming of age" stories shoe-horned ridiculously (and often unbelievably) into JRPG stories and settings

I frequently get more of a kick out of games that are willing to meet in the middle and have something sci-fi mixed in somehow. Which FF generally has always been able to do. I know Robin Hood and King Arthur have never had airships. But I have a fetish for dystopian stories and things like FFVII and Xenogears scratched that itch a lot better than FFIV. Also can't generally go wrong with steampunk or industrial punk, which VI and VII nailed pretty well. I think I appreciated those advancements so much I pretty much just happily waved goodbye to typical medieval settings. But then again, VIII felt a little off. Maybe it was too shiny and clean. Too utopia'esque. I dunno

[theundeadhero]

Back to it's roots doesn't mean graphics. It also doesn't mean high-octane fights. I don't consider any fight in FFI-XII high octane. It means controlling all your characters. It means better character-driven stories instead of action adventures.

[Wolf Kanno]

In terms of going back to a semi-high fantasy/medieval setting style going back to your roots, I'm not terrible in love with the idea since I tend to dislike high fantasy settings. Not that FF was ever faithful to this idea to begin with, but I felt FFXII scratched the itch of seeing such a setting on modern systems since it's pretty close to that time period (though taking most of its cues from the Middle East and North Africa) once you get over the Star Wars inspired Airship designs.

When I say "go back to their roots" I'm thinking more of treating each game like it's the last one. You know, going into each title to make it the best game possible with the tools they have, no plans to franchise it out, and creating a game that is balanced in both telling a story and being a fun game to play. This is not to say every FF in the past met this criteria but I still feel you get that sense from the games when you play them as opposed to the last few entries that do feel more and more like a marketing team with focus groups were attending the development meetings telling them what they can and can't do. Whether we'll see that time come again is uncertain, we'll probably get a high fantasy setting before the series goes "back to the roots".

[Mirage]

I'm an "old" fan and I don't hope Final Fantasy returns to its roots. That doesn't mean that I think the roots suck (although that is kind of what roots do irl! lol.), it just means that I've already played final fantasies (and other RPGs) in those kind of settings tons of times already. Also, almost every final fantasy, no matter how new or old it is, has that "some super-advanced dudes used to live on this planet but now they're gone and we have to unravel their secrets" thing going on in them. There is almost no final fantasy that doesn't have hints (and sometimes way more than just hints) of high technology (or magitechnology!) spread around their worlds, so high tech stuff is very much part of the roots of the series anyway.

I'm personally a big fan of near-future settings, and that is why I initially was so stoked about vs13 I MEAN FF15 in the first place. I greatly enjoyed the settings of FF6, 7, 8 and 13, and the parts I remember as some of the most awesome in 4, 5 and 10 are the ones that deal with exploring the lost technology of the world.

The "perfect" game setting for me is probably a world that technologically is within 100 years into our future, and also has magical forces, ideally a bit subtle and not very inyoface.

[chionos]

It's not just the "high fantasy" (FF was actually never fully high fantasy) aesthetic, but all the game elements that came with the style. Armor, for example.

I like Final Fantasies that have cool armors to collect. I like the games that have class-based armor systems. This is harder to pull off in the newer settings. Instead of armor you get accessories and gadgets. Instead of journeying deep into a dungeon or fighting an annoying boss to get rad armor, you're "building" it out of raw parts (not crafting, mind you, that's different). This is a combination of setting and Nomura design. I'm not a fan of either.

Monsters in modern settings somehow lacks verisimilitude. Not that it can't be pulled off, but I don't think SE knows how to do it correctly. Maybe after Del Torro saves the Silent Hill franchise, he can work on FF.

Modern settings favor linearity, a tighter and more intimate plot. The intimacy of the newer plots is interesting in its own right. I just prefer a broader story for my FF. It works for other games, but I don't like it in a FF, I just don't. I think it's contrary to the overall style, and requires too many sacrifices in the areas that make Final Fantasy a real fantasy (oxymoron alert) to me. I mean, imagine if FFVII took place only in Midgar, involved only Cloud, Tifa, Barrett, and Aeris, and was compressed into the time between the reactor assault and the Shinra tower climb. No Golden Saucer. No Costa del Sol. No Northern Crater. Yuck.

I understand why it's happening, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

There's no room for iconography in the modern setting. For all the talk of Final Fantasy reinventing itself from game to game, the fact remains that it's a series, and I'm going to keep thinking of it in terms of a series until SE stops referring to it as such and stops making numbered entries. All of the games have had varying levels of iconography, ranging from internal iconography (moogles, chocobos, airships, Cid) to external iconography (Odin, Excalibur, Genji Armor, Bahamut) to memography (You Spoony Bard!, World very simple place. World only have two things: Things you can and, and things you no can eat.) and those things are disappearing from the FF single player experience.

Humor is becoming less and less a part of the experience. Can you imagine an Ultros showing up in a FFXIII or FFXV? No, of course not, because the latest single player games take themselves way too seriously (from what I've seen so far, even though I'm generally hopeful about FFXV's prospects, I see it in this regard in the same light as FFXIII). I don't know that this necessarily has anything to do with the setting. It may be a coincidence with no actual correlation, but nevertheless it's something I used to look forward to in a FF, and it's now a thing of the past.

Regardless, I'll keep getting the games for now, even with my reservations. I mean, a good game is a good game, whether it's a Final Fantasy or not. So if they continue to make games as terrible as FFXIII then I won't keep buying them. But if FFXV turns things around in terms of quality, even considering its overall setting and aesthetic (which I don't like at all) I'll still play.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

Humor is becoming less and less a part of the experience. Can you imagine an Ultros showing up in a FFXIII or FFXV?

Ultros was in XIII-2. Granted, it was as DLC for the Coliseum. That meant to try to disprove your point or anything; I just thought it was funny because I have seen Ultros in the XIII universe, haha.

[chionos]

Humor is becoming less and less a part of the experience. Can you imagine an Ultros showing up in a FFXIII or FFXV?

Ultros was in XIII-2. Granted, it was as DLC for the Coliseum. That meant to try to disprove your point or anything; I just thought it was funny because I have seen Ultros in the XIII universe, haha.

I mean the character itself, the humor of it, the silliness. Not a cameo. But I get what you're saying.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

That's why I said I wasn't trying to disprove you. They do give him dialogue and everything though. If I remember right, the humor is there for the fight; though, it's not quite as well done as the Gilgamesh fight. I do agree that for the most part the XIII trilogy takes itself too seriously.

[chionos]

If anything, it's there as a side-note, a DLC extra. I'm talking about the days when the main story itself was full of humor-bumps and laughter crannies, side-cave silliness. There was this really interesting juxtaposition of lighthearted joy and oppressive darkness that made the games very dynamic and helped so much with the pacing. FFVI is a great example (Gau and Cyan interactions, Sabin with Ultros, Relm and Edgar, the ridiculous Sigfried), as are FFVII (Cloud trying to seduce Don Corneo, hitting RedXIII with the soccer ball, etc.), and FFIX (Steiner, Steiner, Steiner, Quina and Frog Cid, the Much Ado About Nothing style love letter scenes). These things were parts of the storytelling, things that fit with the world even when the tone didn't really fit the danger or darkness of the plot, things that worked against the standard characterization and made the characters multidimensional. Characters now are singular. I think this is largely Nomura's influence. He's a single-minded director/producer. It works for some of you, and that's great for you, but I don't like it.

[Markus. D]

FFXIV is a 18-22 hour campaign if you want a story in that roots theme. won't even have to pay for your first month at that rate n_n

XII will probably be on the remake wagon soon too.

[Mirage]

Hopefully, but not probably :(.

[chionos]

Now that's one I could get behind. Would love to see the zodiac release in the U.S. AT THE VERY LEAST.

As I've said elsewhere, FFXI and FFXIV are the two most Final Fantasy of all the recent FFs. But they're MMO's, have monthly fees, huge time commitment issues, and I don't think it's fair to expect all FF fans, if they want a "real" FF experience, to play an MMO. I love the games, I'm glad we have them, but we also need a throwback, rootsian single player experience game. I don't expect FFXV to be that game. But maybe, maybe, FFXVI will give us that experience.

[DMKA]

I doubt it ever will. Final Fantasy is one of the biggest names in the world of mainstream video games, and the classic FF formula just wouldn't appeal to the large consumer numbers Square Enix looks for now.

I would love nothing more than an FF using modern hardware that plays like IV through IX though. That would be amazing.

[Vyk]

I'm honestly surprised nobody ever felt even tempted to step up to the plate on that one. NIS, Atlus, Namco/Bandai, even Capcom have plenty of good JRPGs and experience under their belts. Nobody wants to polish out a genuine old school JRPG even though it may not sell millions it will be massively well received by rabid fans missing the old days. As long as they don't botch it, it's pretty much a shoe-in. But Square doesn't want to do it. Nobody wants to do it. Hell it's hard to think of any recent traditional JRPG. Lost Odyssey maybe. Though there were a few during that time. Infinite Undiscovery was also one. But those were like 6 or 7 years ago. And everything else has branched into even more niche paths. Tales games aren't traditional. Those Neptunia games look far from traditional. Probably same with Mugen Souls. Nobody wants to return to their JRPG roots

[TrollHunter]

I stopped buying them after XIII, so it's been a while since I've bought an FF game. I see no reason to buy a FF game until one comes out that appeals to me... and unless 15 is really good I'll probably continue that trend. There's enough games for me to buy/play already, one franchise failing to entertain me is hardly the end of the world.

[Pumpkin]

If I like the game, I like the game. It doesn't need to return to its roots. I guess we'll just see when I play them

[Bolivar]

The only reason the earlier games stuck to clearly defined genres was due to hardware limitations; even then, FFI had its Wind Shrine with robots and computers everywhere. Once they were able to render it, FF had always been about unique amalgamations of settings and I hope they continue to innovate on that front.

This is probably why I'm usually indifferent to Western RPGs - the games that break from thoroughly established Science Fiction/Fantasy settings are few and far between.

[Vyk]

This is probably why I'm usually indifferent to Western RPGs - the games that break from thoroughly established Science Fiction/Fantasy settings are few and far between.
Torment - Tides of Numenera

Not super familiar with the source, but from what I skimmed it's a conglomeration of hundreds of civilizations at their billion-year climax/destruction all thrown together no matter how far they advanced in science, or weird they became over the eons. It seems like it will be an interesting mixture of ... everything. Planescape - Torment was kinda-sorta that in a way as well. The brewing pot of everything