So, yeah. I was thinking about Crisis Core, when I remembered the big long mission list. That got me thinking about some other FFs (specifically, X, XII, and XIII). The list of optional content in FF games is taking a trend I really don't like. In X, we had the optional bosses in the Monster Arena. That was fair enough. Each individual one had a specific purpose (being the source of particular equipment or Spheres), and the final one was an optional superboss. I had no problem with that system, except that it seems to have triggered the onslaught of Square's newest obsession: Marks.

Marks seem to be Square's solution to optional content. When XII came out, most of the sidequests were scrapped (there are still a few, but they are very poorly done), and Marks became one of the game's highlights. The number of good moments were few and far between. What mark left the most lasting memory? Gilgamesh. Why? I guarantee it has nothing to do with the way the battle is fought. No, it's because there was good writing and excellent characters behind it.

Crisis Core was also extremely Mission heavy. Each mission involved? Yep, hunting down a particular monster on a map and killing it. Apart from the mission summaries, was there any interesting dialogue in the missions? Nope.

Then we get into XIII. All other content (besides a single two minute minigame early on) is completely absent. They even took out the interesting backstory bits from the bestiary. In its place, we get more marks. And these are worse still. The battles are no different than every other battle we fight. A good number of the mark missions are to kill the same monsters we've been grinding against for the whole game. Events around the marks are almost completely absent, and when they are around, they are just five second cutscenes completely devoid of interest or even dialogue (there is one interesting mark scene, and one mark scene that features dialogue [but is still boring]).

What is happening to the rest of the game content? All other content is getting squeezed out of the game, and the marks are getting blander and blander. This is not a promising future for the series. What happened to the other sidequests? To the Wonder Square and Chocobo Racing? To Mr. Dolphin or the Shinra marching corps? To the huge Materia sidequests? And all of those were just a few instances among many in a single game. Where has all the content gone?