Should they start creating more adult centric Final Fantasy games

[tony12]

This question has got me wondering a bit. With the increasing popularity of video games aimed for adult audiences such as The Last of Us, Walking Dead, plus many other titles out there. Do you think it is time that Final Fantasy start making storylines for adult audiences as well. As I have gotten older I have realized just how childish pretty much all the storylines in final fantasy games are. Even the best ones are very obviously made for early teens and pre teen game players.


So do you think it is time that Final Fantasy make a plot for adults. More adults are playing games now than ever before and previous video game titles over the past five years have definitely shown that there is a market for them.

[Hollycat]

I find it hard to believe that Cid in Final Fantasy 7 was approved for preteens. no I think that they are trying to take themselves too seriously and its ruining the fun a story can be for adults and still be fun

[tony12]

I find it hard to believe that Cid in Final Fantasy 7 was approved for preteens. no I think that they are trying to take themselves too seriously and its ruining the fun a story can be for adults and still be fun

Cid in ff7 was in no way made for adult gamers. Just compare him to Joel in TLOU and you can easily tell the difference.

[Aulayna]

You mean like Final Fantasy XII?

(also is it coincidental that your two examples of "adult games" are both "zombie" ones? The Last of Us and The Walking Dead are games that are tackling a completely different set of topics)

Final Fantasy's storylines are timeless. To an early teenager they may simply be tales of saving the world. But now as an adult if I go back to something like Final Fantasy VIII there's points of character development there that I simply dismissed when I was a teenager as it was unrelatable.

From pretty much VI onward the franchise has tackled some fairly hefty topics in the background of it's narrative; from love and loss, to capitalism and religion. Think the politics and war of FFXII, Steiner accepting that a female might just be better than him and falling in love with her in FFIX, Vivi's search for identity in FFIX, the underlying criticism of organised belief systems in FFX. These are all very big philosophical topics.

Just because they're not thrusting life and death choices in your face and putting your life on the line in an attempt to make you question your existence every 5 minutes ala The Last of Us or The Walking Dead, it doesn't make them less "adult."

So what exactly is an "adult" game? Is fantasy childish now?

[Jessweeee♪]

Doesn't get more adult than Wall Market

[Mirage]

Actually kind of agree with that. When you look past the comical part of it, Don Corneo is actually a guy who forces girls into sexual slavery. Not a very childish topic, and at the same time, not a topic that young people really think about the first time they play the game. I would guess it kind of flies over their heads until they get older.

[Shorty]

I think there are plenty of adults who can appreciate games without having to steer them in the direction of a specific audience. Plenty of adults like movies like Wall-E and still like old games like Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros. It's all about how well you are able to suspend reality and expand your imagination to make these things work to enjoy whatever it is you're playing.

How do you think the Final Fantasy stories are childish? Like, with the love stories or something?

[Mirage]

Wall-E is fantastic and I nearly cried
I'm 28

[The Man]

If you didn't cry at that montage in Up you're probably a spambot. Or that Futurama episode with Fry's dog.

I'm 30.

[Mo-Nercy]

I think Final Fantasy delves into some pretty 'adult' themes at times though it may come across childish because of the fantasy aspects of the game. In FFIX, Zidane has that superdeformed chibi look and sports a tail, but he's still gets pretty mindsmurfed in Pandemonium, discovering that he's not human and has a limited lifespan.

If you're after a Final Fantasy with a little less 'fantasy' and a darker, grittier, more realistic setting and overall presentation, I say, wait for FFXV.

[Quindiana Jones]

Maturity =/= brown.

[Gamblet]

More Final Fantasys with stories similar to Tactics? YES PLEASE.

[Vyk]

I agree with the OP. Squall, Tidus, and Vaan, ruined Final Fantasy for me. Square admits that they want to follow George Lucas, and take something that can appeal to everyone, and make it with only kids in mind anymore. They basically admit they don't know how to do real drama, and let 15 year olds write their melodramatic plot twists or whatever. I see more characters being whiny, rather than actually feeling something. Nobody ever questioned the intensity of how much anguish Celes was feeling that she actually attempted suicide if you failed to save someone dear to her. And yet on the same token, nobody can take the fake and over-acted whiny angst that Tidus continually cries over during the course of his game. There's unrealistic, and unrelatable melod-drama. And then there's real, palpable, relatable drama. You may not have to be an adult to appreciate it. But I tend to believe you do have to be a little immature to actually appreciate melodrama. So I'm more inclined to believe Final Fantasy games these days are indeed for kids. And Square themselves have admitted as much

I would take something like, say, Xenoblade Chronicles. A JRPG with legitimate drama, with good, solid writing, to take as an example of where Final Fantasy probably could have been going. I bet kids can enjoy Xenoblade Chronicles. And it's not littered with characters who spew nothing but angsty unrealistic emotion that they should be writing down in journals rather than acting out on screen

It doesn't have to be a zombie game, or talk about the fall of humanity, or even have suicide and death and sex-slavery to be something adults can really appreciate. But I would definitely appreciate it if they would stop with the melodramatics of their characters, and send their writers to some sort of writing course, and teach them the difference between the two. Either that or Final Fantasy is just legitimately not for me anymore. Because my days of investing in angsty teens (or younger!) trying to "save the world" is just too unrealistic for me to suspend my disbelief for anymore. Which is sad for them, and sad for me. But that's my two cents

[Aulayna]

Square admits that they want to follow George Lucas, and take something that can appeal to everyone, and make it with only kids in mind anymore. They basically admit they don't know how to do real drama [...] So I'm more inclined to believe Final Fantasy games these days are indeed for kids. And Square themselves have admitted as much

Source?

[Bolivar]

I'm not as extreme as Vyk, I like Tidus and Vaan and Lightening, I can stomach a little melodrama to go along with the other plot points in those games Vyk apparently glossed over, but I agree with the Tony that FF maybe could use a slightly more adult entry. I actually thought that's what Versus' original concept was going to be. I don't think it would be appropriate of the main series, but I would like to see at least a square game to accentuate the emphasis on grittier fantasy that we've seen in the genre lit world for quite some time now.