Petition to Square Enix to create a new 16 bit FF game

[champagne supernova]

In the newer FFs, I like wandering around the towns and, in the PS2-onward generation, like wandering around the landscape and admire it. I feel like a person exploring the sights and checking up on my people. I do not get that in the older FFs because of the restraints in dialogue and the fact that everything looks relatively samey (compared to the variation in the modern games). And this expands outside of the FF series. I enjoyed Ultima 7 & Ultima 8. I felt immersed in the world. But, today, this second? I would rather play Elder Scrolls 4.

So, I think graphics are a factor in making a world immersive. But maybe we can leave it as personal preference, otherwise this argument's just going to go around in circles

But Bob, believing that modern FFs not appealing to the masses is the problem with modern FFs is, in my opinion, the type of thinking that is going on in Square-Enix that is causing them to release weaker FFs, which in turn, don't have the mass appeal. There is too much focus on what will make FF sell instead of having a clear vision on what will make a good game. This makes it a bit wishy-washy. That's why I've been hopeful about Versus XIII. I think it's Nomura's baby and he wants it done in a certain way, whereas XIII was a bit of a corporate bureaucratic decision.

@Vivi, I disagree with your take on most of the points that you bring up. If they wanted suicide to be a major theme, they should have built it up properly, not in a 5/10 minute section. It's quite a major thing. As for people deciding to give up slowly because life was meaningless - I'm a nihilist. I don't believe in an absolute meaning to life. I'm not planning on jumping off a cliff. And, in general, most people would rather live than kill themselves. Instinct of survival and all that jazz. But personal opinion again.

[Loony BoB]

I am fairly confident that every single Final Fantasy game, or at least every single one since FF1, has been made with the intention of appealing to the masses. I don't think this is what has made them suffer in recent times - I think it is the extremely long development times (making the games cost so much, meaning they won't gain a profit unless they sell twice as much as Uncharted 2 did, which would be an insane target) and the lack of understanding/communication with gamers (see: FFXIV until Yoshi-P came along). Oh, and in some cases you could say a lack of creativity. I think the storywriting has been there, no problem. The varying battle systems haven't really been the cause of suffering - they will continue to evolve, and some people will like some battle systems more than others, etc. The difficulty in striking a balance between too much to do (FFXII) and too little to do (FFXIII) hasn't helped.

For me, the voice acting has not been a positive thing for Final Fantasy but I'm not sure if such a thing can be changed in today's gaming world. Perhaps that is why RPGs do well on small consoles - they can allow the music to really sound through and set the mood, people can make up their own voices instead of having to listen to Tidus, Yuna and Seymour, we can actually remember the music and, well, better immerse ourselves.

As I say, though, it's too late for all that - voice acting is here and it seems it is here to stay. I wouldn't bet against the idea that even if they did another 2D game that they would still use voice acting, it's that prominent in the modern era. But, you never know. Perhaps someone will eventually catch on. Could you turn down sound effects and voice acting and turn up the music on FFXIII? I don't think you could. I'm not sure. But that might have been a good idea, if they made the music more obvious. FMVs probably don't help either. Everyone knows when Aeris died how that music fitted so perfectly, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you what kind of music was playing when Sahz and Vanille had because I was too busy listening to their actual voices. Which, it must be said, were great - I did love the voice acting in FFXIII as well as FFXII. But the music suffered big time as a result in both games.

But yeah, whatever people might say is wrong with SE/FF, I stand by my assertion that reverting to 16 bit graphics will not fix it. FFVII, FFVIII, FFIX, FFX are all fan favourites, although in many cases some are liked more than others and some are even hated by others. But they all did well commercially, they all did well with the critics. FFXI did well enough. FFXII was an interesting one but I wouldn't say it was a bad one, and it has grown on me since I first played it. In fact, checking out the reception it got from major critics and it's metacritic score, I'd say FFXII did wonderfully. So XIII was too linear for a lot of people and certainly lacked gameplay elements. Is that a reason to say their single player games are all crap now? One game, with a couple of things that didn't click right? If so, I still think that's absurd. Perhaps me liking the game makes it harder for me to comprehend why that one game is enough to make the entire single-player series go bust, but oh well. Second up we have FFXIV which was a complete failure, and I personally believe this is down to a seeming inability for the original producer to communicate with fans (as evidenced by the many fans who were in the beta that said pretty much nothing was improved on between beta and the game going live) and also a board-pushed deadline which the game was simply not ready for. Also, levequests. But basically a lot of things went wrong, but I like that they are working hard to fix these things. Either way, we'll have to wait and see what Yoshi does there. But for the single-player series, one game with a metacritic score of 83 (which, it should be noted, is not bad for your average mainstream video game) is not the end of the world by any means.

Still, I do want them to appeal to the masses better purely because I want FF to continue as a solid series. I don't have any major problem with FFXIII, so you could say I should not declare that there is a big problem at SE because I can't see it. But I can understand that if such a problem is seen by so many others then the company needs to look at it purely in the interests of continuing to make FF games. If I want more FF games, I have to hope that they make a change that is in the interests of the wider community than just myself.

[champagne supernova]

I agree with you that FFs are designed with a mass appeal in mind, but that applies to every large game. But a game that has mass appeal is first and foremost a strong game. So I think they should focus on a game they feel will be something brilliant and the appeal will follow. This is a theme for most Japanese studios though - more and more they try copy Western studios when maybe they should try differentiate themselves more.

I don't think it's long development cycles though. X and XII was 5 years (which was long), but XII to XIII was only 3 years. And there was also X-2 in the middle of that. It may have recycled some stuff, but there was a lot of new locations & characters made, variations in old locations, a new battle and class system and new mini-games. GTA3 to GTA4 was a gap of 7 years, with Vice City and San Andreas coming 1 and 3 years after GTA3 respectively. Vice City and San Andreas could probably be considered as somewhere between a X-2 and a new FF in that it required more work than a X-2, but still retained a large quantity of the basic engine, unlike XII and XIII which were completely reworked.

Disagree with you a bit on voice acting. Yeah, when the voice acting goes wrong, it's bad (laughing scene), but it can also be very good (Reddas at the Pharos). Those old FMVs also had no dialogue, so maybe Squenix should focus on using the visual and musical aspect more in its games.

But you're right: in the single-player RPG, there is yet to be a bad FF. XIII might be overly linear and hopefully Square-Enix will learn their lesson. Can't be worse than the notoriously ridiculous (so I've heard) levelling system in FFII, and Square-Enix learnt their lesson from that. But I think the focus on mass appeal led to the overly-linear nature of XIII. Lots of people (myself included) complained that XII was paced too slowly. If Squenix listened to that, then they moved too far in another extreme, thinking that people want a quick, action-packed game, rather than looking for a more balanced approach.

The other possible issue with XIII is that the head of development may not quite be at the top level yet. But it's a learning experience. I think Matsuno not being around to put the final touches on XII also led to that game not being as good as it could be. And it's why XIV is such a mess-up. From what I've heard, it's all over the show without any clear focus. That's what this new producer is having to do: define what FFXIV is first and then make the gameworld to implement his vision.

But I think WK agrees with me that Versus XIII looks good (and I'd rather they kept quiet and announced a release date 6-months before it's done rather than rush it like XIV) and I think XIII-2 could be an interesting glance at where the future of the FF series will be now that mistakes have been made. XIII-2 could be an indicator whether lessons have been learned.

And Loony Bob is right. Making FF go back to its 16-bit roots will limit the game. FF has always been about renewing and innovating. And I don't like the idea of a spin-off 16-bit FF because I feel that they are just cashing in on the brand. Rather let these smaller design teams work on original IPs so they can try develop gameplay and storylines that are new and non-FFish.

EDIT 1: And this thread highlights how focusing on mass appeal can be detrimental. You, me, Vivi22, WK and Bastian all have our own views on the series, and although you & me are closer than Vivi, WK and Bastian, they are still divergent. Now, imagine Square-Enix try to appeal to all of us by incorporating all our views. It would be a mess. Okay, I've exaggerated the example to illustrate my point, but I think I wasn't getting across what I meant when I said, 'focusing on mass appeal.'

EDIT 2: I also remember watching a history of FF on either X or X-2, and they said they always made a Final Fantasy like it was going to be their last one (basically, like when they all thought it was with FF1). Thus, there was huge commitment to making a product first and foremost. I think there has been/was a bit of a movement to a corporate culture of profits, getting games released at a certain time, middle-management interference etc. Hopefully they've learnt their lesson.

[Depression Moon]

but XII to XIII was only 3 years. And there was also X-2 in the middle of that.

XII came out in 2006. XIII came out last year. X-2 came out three years before XII.

[champagne supernova]

but XII to XIII was only 3 years. And there was also X-2 in the middle of that.

XII came out in 2006. XIII came out last year. X-2 came out three years before XII.

I used Japan's release dates on Wikipedia

[Bastian]

Again, I don't think ANYONE is saying that the new FF (what are we on now? 14? 15? 16? I stopped playing after 9) should be 16-bit graphics etc.

What we're saying is that we want a FF in the style of 4-6 (I would personally limit to "the style of 4-5 myself). It doesn't have to be "Final Fantasy 18" . . . it could be called "Final Fantasy Legends 2" or "Final Fantasy: Retro Game To Make Our Very Old Fans Happy" . . . whatever. We just want something that for us harkens back to the golden days. Because I've gotta tell you, I've tried my hand at post-FF6 games, and they just don't do it for me (except 9, but even so, I think I would have preferred that one as 16-bit) because there's just something super charming about 16 bit that speaks to my nostalgia.

And maybe that's all it is. Nostalgia. But that suits me just fine.

When I first found out about FFLegends I was over the moon. When I played FF4:TAY I was estatic. I much prefered playing FF in a style that more closely resembed my first introduction to the series.

Do I think that 16-bit graphics are better than HD 3D current-gen graphics? No. But they're charming. Do I believe that 16-bit graphics magically force a great story and so on? No. While there's a bit of truth to the "restrictions breed focus and creativity" but it doesn't always work out. There are some terrible 16-bit RPGs out there.

We're not demanding that Squeenix stop making current gen-styled FF. Some of us just want to return to our own childhood and play a brand new FF in the style that we grew up with.

Is that so wrong?

[Mirage]

Yes, I think it would be cool to create a brand new 2D game that wasn't a sequel of some other FF game, but I would still want this game to be of very good technical quality, so I disagree with calling it a 16-bit game.

For me, 16 bit means limited color palettes, sprite resolutions, animation frames, sound quality, polyphony, and lots of other limitations. Don't get me wrong, many 16 bit games look good for their time, and have aged well, but in a new game, I would want something that at least tapped into a bit of the power that a new console brings with it, even if the game isn't 3D.

It is perfectly possible to make a game that looks retro, but would still struggle to run smoothly on something like a PS2. That scott pilgrim game, for example, would probably be impossible to make run on a PS1, it would most likely take the power of a PS2 to run the game at the same resolution and framerate.



-edit-
I also agree with champagne supernova, sort of. FF10-2 had what I can only describe as the bery best implementation of the ATB system to date, and sported a very good job system as well. Too bad the story was derp and ruined the wonderful ending of FF10.

Despite that, I've played FF10-2 three times as much as I played FF10. Simply because the gameplay is way better.

[Slothy]

If those are the only times you died in the game then you must be freakishly good. Firstly, you can not be strong enough to take on a boss fight due to dodging too many battles. Secondly, you can use the wrong set of characters, meaning you miss out on vital options that other characters provide. Thirdly, despite how automated you can make the game, you are still in control of what your character is doing and there is every possibility that you can wind up "doing it wrong". And, of course, you can have the wrong paradigm setup or not switch in time or... well, there are a lot of things that can go wrong, let's face it. If you felt the battles were playing themselves then... well, with the amount of times I died in that game, you are a FF God amongst FF men. Some of those battles were incredibly frustrating for me.

For the record, I never had the chance to beat the game, but I did get part way through Chapter 11 I believe it was (when you get to Gran Pulse), and yeah, the only times I really died were when the game threw things at me that you couldn't possibly see coming the first time and I was killed by a situation which was essentially unfair (one of the many reasons I despise combat in that game). I don't tend to run from battles when I play RPG's so I had no trouble hitting the cap on the Crystarium each chapter, and frankly, most battles were easily beaten by rotating through three paradigms for much of the game. I had a fourth which included two healers and a commando in case I came across an enemy who could dish out a lot of damage and I would occasionally need more healing, but I can probably count the number of times I switched to it on both of my hands. The number of useful strategies in the game were quite limited which made it easy to make a handful of efficient paradigms. You just had to pay attention and read the flow of battle properly, which only became difficult when they threw instant death attacks in there which you couldn't know about before hand (which was stupid). And for the record, I wasn't getting low ratings on the majority of battles. Maybe the first time I encountered an enemy if it threw something unexpected at me, but once you learn their attacks it's not hard to get a good rating every battle.

@Vivi, I disagree with your take on most of the points that you bring up. If they wanted suicide to be a major theme, they should have built it up properly, not in a 5/10 minute section. It's quite a major thing. As for people deciding to give up slowly because life was meaningless - I'm a nihilist. I don't believe in an absolute meaning to life. I'm not planning on jumping off a cliff. And, in general, most people would rather live than kill themselves. Instinct of survival and all that jazz. But personal opinion again.

Once again, they didn't have a lot of available space on the cartridge to build things up. A lot of concessions had to be made in the script as well when it was originally brought over from Japan because they simply couldn't squeeze all of the english text onto the cartridge. I'm not going to say that the scene couldn't have been done better as a result, but I am saying it did a damn fine job of condensing the scene to the essentials that effectively got the point across.

I also never said that people would have given up because life was meaningless. I said they'd give up because there was no hope of their situation ever improving, or of ever seeing their loved ones again. Again, we're not talking about some ordinary everyday situation here. We're talking about a situation where the people on that island not only saw the world end and lost people they cared about, but the world itself and the plants and animals on it were slowly dying. So not only would it be very difficult for them to survive, it was literally only going to get worse. There was no hope of rescue, of ever seeing home, or of ever building a new life on the island because the world itself was literally dying. Combine that with the fact that suddenly being forced to survive in the wilderness on it's own, even with the shelter of a house, would be extremely difficult to a degree most people can't actually imagine (try going days, or even weeks without a decent meal, trying to scrounge up whatever food and water you can. Even fishing can be far more difficult than the game implies, even with proper equipment).

The most important part of any survival situation, before food, water, shelter, or anything else is actually maintaining the will to keep going. And without hope of things ever getting better that can be extremely difficult, especially for those who have lead relatively comfortable lives. People who've been lost in the wilderness in the real world have given in to the depression that can creep up on you quickly in a situation like that, and easily spread to the rest of the group. And when depression starts to take hold of someone, particularly in situations of high stress, it can quickly spiral out of control. Yes, it's no simple matter to override our natural fear of death and instincts for survival, but then, we override natural instincts all of the time, and when someone has spiraled into a deep depression, they aren't always thinking straight. But even if you are thinking straight, are you going to tell me it isn't rational to end it quickly rather than face the dwindling resources and slow death a ruined world offers?

You may not agree with this take, but it's not only a plausible explanation for a group of people ending their lives, but a realistic one given the circumstances we're talking about here.

Also, to clarify something here which Bastion already mentioned, I'm not arguing that Square should go around making new 16-bit FF entries. I would like to see some 2D entries in a spin-off series or something like that, but I wouldn't want it limited to simply 16-bit graphical stylings. The thing is that with the drastic move to 3D over the years, there's been little improvement in 2D graphics. With the exception of Vanillaware, no one has really done much beyond 2D sprites, and I think that's a real shame. But then, I've always wanted to see an RPG with an accurate representation of Amano's concept art as I think that would be an unbelievably beautiful game to play. And the irony is that now that we have the hardware to start pushing some really creative boundaries with 2D it may never happen.

But I will also state that I do believe that SNES era FF titles, and even FFVII and IX managed to convey a lot more with their simple graphics than an entry like XIII did for me. I'll also gladly defend their art styles for that matter, and do completely believe that they've held up pretty well. Sure the technology may not be there, but they still paid attention to principles of good art design which helps give them a charm that isn't lost because console tech has moved on.

[champagne supernova]

You may not agree with this take, but it's not only a plausible explanation for a group of people ending their lives, but a realistic one given the circumstances we're talking about here.

So you either have to believe that an entire group of people gave up on life or that that element of the story wasn't written well. As I said, personal opinion. I'm going for the latter.

I just have a personal objection to the masses of spin-offs using the FF name, because I think it weakens the brand. Something like Dissidia I can handle because it is using FF intellectual property. But FF Crystal Adventures: My Life as a King etc is pushing it. I'd also like Square-Enix to try develop some new IPs and as they seem to be so risk-averse at the moment, perhaps this could be an area they could generate something interesting (like FF Tactics - which if I recall was graphically more similar to the SNES FFs than the PS FFs).

EDIT: What part of VIII's art style do you think is inferior to VII & IX?

[Bastian]

Yes, I think it would be cool to create a brand new 2D game that wasn't a sequel of some other FF game, but I would still want this game to be of very good technical quality, so I disagree with calling it a 16-bit game.

For me, 16 bit means limited color palettes, sprite resolutions, animation frames, sound quality, polyphony, and lots of other limitations. Don't get me wrong, many 16 bit games look good for their time, and have aged well, but in a new game, I would want something that at least tapped into a bit of the power that a new console brings with it, even if the game isn't 3D.

You can have that. It's called FF: 4 Heroes. But that's not what I want. I want an actual factual 16-bit game with those "limitations" you were talking about. I WANT the synthetic sound of the SNES sounds, I WANT the "limited color palettes, animation frames" etc. Some of us LIKE the old school blocky sprites from the 16-bit era and would love to play a brand new Final Fantasy game in that style again.

I have never played or seen the Scott Pilgrim game, (though I loved the movie) so I don't understand your comparison. I don't understand how a game that looks retro would struggle to run on a PS2. Perhaps we're using "retro" in different ways.

To be clear: what I want is basically FFLegends: a game which would for all intents and purposes be played on a SNES. I don't want any new features that would make that impossible. I want blocky 16-bit sprites, I want synthesised instruments. Etc.

Would I also want a HD current-gen style 3D game with photorealistic graphics? Absolutely (so long as it had castles and armor and magic and dragons and stuff) but that's not the issue at hand. I ALSO want a retro 16-bit styled game. I want both.

[Mirage]

The game looks pretty much just like this. The reason I don't think it would run on PS1 is simply because in some scenes, there's too many sprites and stuff going on for it to fit in the 2 MB of video RAM the PS1 has got.

[Loony BoB]

Doesn't 16-bit refer to systems? So really it would be kind of impossible to call a PS2 game "16-bit"? Not sure, I don't know huge amounts about this kind of thing. And why not go the full deal and go back to 8-bit rather than 16-bit?

I can't comprehend why someone would want the limitations in colouring and whatnot. I agree with Mirage that it's fine to want 16-bit (or 2D or whatever) games, but to settle for having them as a "FF Legends 2" or whatever rather than "FF XV". In which case, sure, these things still might happen. But you'd think that if FFL sold well, they'd make it global. But they didn't make it global. Suggesting that it didn't sell well enough to justify it.

[champagne supernova]

Doesn't 16-bit refer to systems?

Yeah, it does. I think it refers to the memory size of the CPU per operation, or something like that. So we can never REALLY go back to 16-bit systems.

And yeah, why limit your artists in terms of colour and performance? Letting them do a 16-bit style is one thing, but forcing them to constrain their talents to preserve the smaller colour palettes and performance of an outmoded and outdated system just seems to be peculiar.

[Mirage]

It just refers to how big numbers the CPU is calculating in one chunk, like it can calculate for example a 32bit integer in one swoop rather than having to split it into 16 bit values and calculate them. Also, more bits enable a larger addressable physical memory space.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll just post a few points here:

On the subject of the suicide scene: The people killed themselves cause their values were literally taken from them. A self proclaimed nihilist chooses to recognize there is no meaning in existence (Like Kefka and most FF villains) but a person who does place value in existence only to have it taken away is more likely to take a suicidal approach (though historically, most nihilist cannot be true nihilist unless they are criminally insane cause normal people who try to be nihilist do eventually go into depression and kill themselves or go insane, hence why the biggest dilemma in philosophical nihilism is justifying living and trying to create a meaningful reason to avoid suicide) so as, Vivi22 pointed out, I feel these people simply each lost hope and killed themselves. Yet more importantly here is that I feel you missed the point, it doesn't matter who these people are, their deaths simply served as a foundation to the aftermath of the Floating Continent and are meant to show the player that the new world is not a happy place and is one of total despair. The entire theme of the second half of the game is hope and finding value in life, which is ultimately (and very cheesily) expressed in the final conversation with Kefka. So I feel you are being misguided by an irrelevant element of the story, and missing the bigger picture here.

As for it being irrelevant cause its skippable, I feel you are wrong cause its the fact that Cid's death and Celes' grief is a direct reaction to the players input that adds weight to the scene for the player. If it was meant simply for just Celes' character growth, it would have been presented more like the way you felt it should have been, instead its presented the way it is because you, the player, are suppose to be affected by it. Not out of empathy, but personal responsibility.

I don't feel the love triangle in VII would be anywhere near as heated among fans if it didn't have its interactive elements, Tifa and Aerith didn't choose Cloud, they chose you, the player, which is what makes it so personal. The fact the suicide scene doesn't reward you for saving Cid, makes the player have to choose his death in later playthroughs. Are you a kind person who wouldn't let even a virtual character die? or would you rather whack him off and revel in the drama? The scene says more about the player than the characters, and this is something that I feel makes video games a superior medium for story telling.

The problem with later games that have dropped these elements, is that the gameplay and story are divorced from each other. The fact the games are getting easier and simpler is only adding to the pointlessness of the game side, and the fact the player has no control over the story means that watching youtube cutscenes allows a guy to have just as much involvement and enjoyment as the guy who played through it. The player is no longer really getting anything out of the gameplay, and several games as storytelling mediums are unable to bring anything new to the medium that movies can't already do.

On the subject of personal preference: I agree this mostly just proves how difficult the idea of trying to appeal to the fanbase is, cause we ourselves are pretty divided on what makes a game good. I could care less if a game re-uses maps and visual textures as long as the dungeons feel different with elements like puzzles or strange gimmicks like the Lodestone Cavern in FFIV. Whereas you want to enjoy the story and characters and don't like being bogged down by traversing dungeons and having to micro-manage skills and resources. Yet at the same time, I don't feel we couldn't agree on a happy medium somewhere.

I am intrigued by Versus XIII as a game, but I honestly can't say I'm excited for any SE title in terms of storytelling cause I disagree with you and BoB about the writing. I found XIII to be overly pretentious and boring, and most of the cast felt like stock rpg cliches whose only form of character development was whining about their problems, for 10 straight hours and then smurfing around for another 10 before finally deciding to just give in and have everything magically work out for them in the end. I hate XIII as a story and its cast is one of my least favorite in the series. While I can agree that the changes being made to XIII-2 is certainly for the better and its coming off better as a game, I feel the damage has been done. I probably won't play the game cause I have no interest in the characters or story, nor the world. I found it all poorly written, and overly melodramatic for my taste.

As for whether or not a 16-bit RPG would help the FF franchise, I do feel it could. This is not saying that I want FFXV to be a retro title but, rather I feel the current "FF Team" would find making a retro title beneficial cause it would fix what I feel is most of the teams problems. The reason being that the limited resources would force the team to prioritize what they feel is important to make a compelling game. When you can't rely on visual effects and subtlety in character animation, to tell a story, you have to do better with the dialogue and music presentation. If you can't build visual backdrops as dungeons, you now need to make dungeons more engaging by adding puzzles or maze like structures. You can no longer "fix" the game by simply throwing high-res graphics and cutscenes at it to make it engaging, you actually have to find something that works beyond those levels. Would said game be better? In some ways yes, in other ways no, cause technology has brought many things to the series that old games just cannot replicate, but I feel the current designers inability to recognize how to use these elements properly cause they have a weak understanding of the fundamentals has made these elements moot in recent releases. Would it make their next attempt at a modern FF better? Yes, I do, cause now they know what makes a game fundamentally engaging. I feel the problem with many of the modern FFs is that they have forgotten the fundamentals and mostly lack balance.

As dungeons have become more and more like visual backdrops for the story, they have also become much simpler in actual design. I feel its easier to talk about dungeons in the older FFs cause they were engaging, in modern titles, you can mention how cool they looked and what story event happened there but no one actually talks about how fun it was tackling the Mushroom Rock, the Estersand, or The Ark in the later FFs, but people bring up the Lodestone Cavern, the Phoenix Cave, and the Shin-Ra building and how fun the dungeons themselves were. Its because they had elements that made traversing them fun, whereas the other locations are just pretty, or big, and nothing else.

Writing will always be subjective, but if SE continues to insist on making every story some overly melodramatic tripe, I don't see much hope in that getting better or becoming more engaging than just skipping the middle man and watching a show. I don't feel SE has any real writers at this point, there's some promising people in the KH division, but as long as they keep outsourcing to Nojima or using some of their current people, I don't see it getting better. Personally, I feel like SE needs to do everything in their power to re-hire Saga, Kato, and Matsuno cause all three tend to be connected to some of Square's best titles (VI, VII, CT, CC, Xenogears, FFT, FFTA, and VS) and their few duds tend to follow a pattern of having heavy executive meddling involved. Personally, I feel the writing is where FF is becoming weakest cause its the one that has grown the least. Kitase is pretty content to keep the franchise where it is at, to simply appeal to teenagers, that I don't feel FF will ever try to tackle some of the darker and more mature subject matter of other titles. Even XIII really sugar coated the theme of accepting ones own mortality and idea of destiny. I still feel P3 did a better job tackling the subject matter than XIII ever hoped to.

As for VI being perfect, it really isn't, but I feel its aged better than some installments in the series. Many elements were simply good for their time. Half the cast is pretty irrelevant to the story, its a pretty easy game unless you purposely make it challenging, its filled with side characters that don't go anywhere, and its customization system begins the FF tradition of being mostly fluff, as it tries vainly to re-invent the FFV Job class system, while having too many exploitable abilities that suck the challenge from the game. It has its fair share of problems, I just get annoyed that 16 years later, SE is still making some of the same mistakes.

In all, this comes down to preference and where your nostalgia lies. I feel the franchise has lost its reputation from the 90s; and nowadays its remembered more for being easy, wacky designs, and graphics. I don't feel like FF has led the franchise in years. Will Versus XIII fix that? Maybe, hopefully, or it might just collapse under its own weight from the amount of pressure fans are putting on it to redeem a rather lackluster decade, from one of the "golden childs" of the 90s, who could do no wrong. Either way, I'm sure SE will still be able to make millions off the FF name and if that doesn't help, there are still legions of pre-teen fans who will keep them afloat with the KH franchise.