The elephant in the room

[sabin101]

I really have not been excited about what square has brought out in a long time. For me final fantasy games used to mean something. It was fun and different levels to explore but lately it is as been just remake after remake. Like final fantasy 7 and 4 spin offs that have been milked over and over again. I would not mind having a final fantasy 6 remake but it just seems it has been really not good games. Final fantasy 13 and the sequel looks all pretty but I hear a lot of people complaining about those games. I do like playing the old games but once you play them over and over again it gets boring. I do miss those great games square used to come up with. I would love if square came out with a sequel for chrono trigger or the mana world. I am not holding my breath but it is wishful hoping. Here is the question does square really actually care about what the fans want because I have not seen it. When the fans asked for a direct sequel to chrono trigger square said for the fans to buy more copies of the ds game ugh. That does not sound like they care. I don't know if square will ever go back to the glory days when they had great games. I really don't know.

[Wolf Kanno]

Well honestly, it's because most of the people who made all those awesome games in the 90s left Squenix in the early to mid 00s. That's why a lot of the franchises started to slump and sag. I agree that making a direct sequel began the fall cause it pretty much proved to Squenix that fans would buy a lousy sequel for the sake of nostalgia and fanfare. So we've got most of the talent leaving, the rest being utilized poorly, and Squenix learns they can easily make a buck by slapping the FF moniker on a title and make way more money than the game is probably worth. It's pretty much Disney post-90s Renaissance but before Pixar started to make them change around a bit.

I mean their best selling franchise is a giant fan-fiction crossover story that 97% of its fanbase bought either for the FF cameos or for the Disney nostalgia. KH's success is largely due to profiting on the merits of bygone eras. Yes, it has evolved into something that can stand on its own legs but Squenix's marketing of the series makes it pretty much impenetrable to all but a few who have the money and time to play every nuance of the series.

The most profitable business move Squenix has done in the past decade was buying Eidos of all things. FF has pretty much been diluted into a shadow of its former self, no longer really embodying the bold creativity of its early days. What was once a series helmed by a bunch of creative guys just doing what they felt was cool and to make the best damn game ever is now been transformed into a franchise that must be created for maximum profitability.

X-2 and the Compilation were large milestones in the fall, but I feel the FFXIII trilogy is pretty much the next major change. I guarantee that FFXV will probably only have a 1/3rd of it's plot explained with plenty of plot holes and loose ends just so Squenix can churn out sequels to tell the "whole story". Expect each new numbered entry to be transformed into its own mini-franchise within the large FF franchise. You'll probably never see another standalone title for a very long time.

[VeloZer0]

To be fair to SE I think innovation isn't something they lack. They re-invent a unique battle system for every FF that comes out, prior to FF10 they really only ever made one change. I don't think that you can argue that they are afraid to experiment and try new things.

I think the problem isn't lack of innovation, it is lack of competent innovation. They are trying to innovate, they just don't know what the heck they are doing. That and milking the series. But I see that as a problem of the fans own making as much as anything else.

[Roogle]

Expect each new numbered entry to be transformed into its own mini-franchise within the large FF franchise. You'll probably never see another standalone title for a very long time.

That is where a lot of the money is made. There was a parody of Final Fantasy VI that featured consoles as the characters, and the PSP, who was meant to portray Kefka, said, "Remakes and sequels are all the public really wants." How true.

[ReloadPsi]

Ha, loved that parody.

I finally gave up on Square-Enix around the time one of my friends was playing Crisis Core and basically started telling me every little thing they'd either shoehorned in (Zack fell through the church roof too? And the Most Stupid Contrivance Ever award goes to...) or outright retconned (he tells me the monster doesn't break out of the tank in the Nibel reactor any more... thanks for decanonising the only ever scene in a video game that gave me nightmares) and rather than filling in some of the mysterious plot threads in FF7 they instead started making new ones. I'm actually so sick of what they did to FF7 that I now play the game in German, a language I'm not very good at, just so I can ignore most of the story and sit tapping the Circle button during dialogue and cutscenes while I watch something else, because while I still find the game fun I now think the story can go leap up an inbred chocobo's anus.

Hell, the only reason I played FFXIII was because that very same friend thought it would be hilarious to see me totally slag it off (originally I didn't wanna know and had no plans to even touch a copy) and yet I quite literally had to start yelling at him not to talk to me about FFXV yesterday. Unlike X, I shan't be playing that one through at all. I've done my time with the whole "giving games a chance" thing.