ATTN: SE, Re: Final Fantasy
(WARNING! WARNING! RANTBOT ACTIVATED! BIASES DETECTED! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!)
Where I live (Nashville, TN), if I mention Final Fantasy to anyone, I get a blank stare. If I try to explain further, it causes only more bewilderment.
If it is your desire to expand the user base of the franchise beyond what it is now, then I have a few suggestions. Granted, this may not be your desire...you may be content to simply restrict yourselves to whoever you're marketing to right now, but I think I speak for everyone here when I say that the series as a whole has a universally appealing message at its heart; the way you are presenting it is interfering with that message's dissemination.
The universally appealing message that Final Fantasy espouses from its very humble beginning is not complicated or hard to explain, and it isn't something that you in the land where the sun rises won't understand.
One word: hope.
Now hope is not a difficult concept for people to understand. Even a small child hopes for things. But it is a difficult concept to convey within visual media. When someone is participating in visual media (movies, or more relevant here, video games), you don't want to engage their conscious mind as much as you want to engage them on an instinctive, visceral level.
When you present a story as supplemental material, rather than making it the "spinal cord" of the gameplay itself, you are doing what director Nicholas Meyer refers to as "bouncing your viewer out of the picture." You are hurting the believability of what your player is experiencing. You are taking away from the fantasy.
Additionally, I get it that you have a computer that could end my computer's existence forever. But these two points sum up my view:
1) You can't go wrong with a little black dress.
Final Fantasy seems like a woman showing up for lunch with a friend in a bridesmaid's outfit. It's overdressed.
2) Less is more.
You have the capability of producing representational art in the framework of a computer program. Why limit yourself to Realism? You can do so much more with art than simply attempt to portray things as they appear to be. The definition of Impressionism that I heard was "art that attempts to portray things not as they appear, but as they really are."
I have a deep, sincere love for the body of work that this series has produced. There have been times when it has been my only entertainment. It has influenced how I've come to view the world. It has illuminated aspects of identity, psychology, and metaphysics to me. You can do a lot more with it than you're doing, with a lot less effort. You're trying too hard.
Harve Bennett said, in the book Star Trek Movie Memories (pp. 301-302), concerning the production of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harve Bennett
...The biggest problems I had during the early stages of this picture had to do with [William Shatner's] appetite. [He was] coming into the situation, as a first-time director, determined that [he was] going to reinvent the wheel and make a real directorial statement. [...] When that happens, the tendency is for the director to to start biting off more than he'll be able to chew. You start thinking too big, B-I-G, big. [...] [Shatner] wanted big, complex shots, [he] wanted big things, [he] wanted things that were going to cost money. [He] wanted stuff that would take time. My job was to keep [his] enthusiasm and [his] appetites from going over a line of practicality.
And, as The Dread Pirate Roberts said, in The Princess Bride:
"Please understand, I hold you in the highest respect."
~ Spoons
