Are all games equal? Should they be?

[Fox]

Except how much of a departure each entry is really depends on your point of view because FF has redefined itself for a long time, alienating a lot of fans along the way as well.

Certainly I will admit to the definition of a 'Final Fantasy' game or a 'Star Wars film' or a 'Harry Potter novel' is open to everyone's own interpretation. When the first game was released, that was what Final Fantasy was. Then FFII came out with a different narrative and slightly different mechanics. So fans of the original had to ask themselves: "Am I OK with these changes? Does this work as a Final Fantasy game?" And if the answer is yes, then their definition has expanded. Repeat that for 10 games and yeah, you do end up with a fairly broad definition. And, like you say, you do lose some people on the way.

Honestly, the older games seem pretty even only because they've gotten the time to settle in the eyes of fans.

I don't think time is the reason. I think it's because the recent changes have been so much bigger that things that used to be a big deal now seem trivial. It seems silly to remember a time when FFVIII's Junction system was controversial because we don't even take turns or control all our party members in combat anymore! I think that XVII will only 'normalise' XV if it literally becomes an FPS.

If the mainline FF series attempted to generate a title that wasn't an RPG, the flow of this conversation would certainly be different. I highly doubt that day is ever going to come.

I think that kinda demonstrates my point. You are doing the same thing that I am, you just have a much broader definition of what is acceptable. Tell me, do you think Mass Effect would be a good 'Final Fantasy' game if it had that brand name? What about Divinity: Original Sin or Baldurs Gate or Skyrim? All RPGs. Are they all reasonable styles to have 'Final Fantasy XVI' put on them next time out?

To me, this is like taking a big room and filling it with people. You have tall people, short people, old, young, men, women, people of different races. Some of them have medical conditions. Some of them are missing limbs. They speak different languages and have different professions. This to me is what FFI to FFX feels like; a diverse collection of fundamentally similar creatures.

Now imagine you put an elephant in the room. If you try and tell me that's a human I'm going to struggle to accept that. Certainly I don't think it really fits in with the rest of the humans. It's too radical a departure. That's XV for me. As I said above, it makes the differences between VI, VII, VIII (which were already highly controversial at the time) look trivial by comparison, which makes it all the harder to accept. In my eyes there does come a point where you've stretched the definition of your brand so much it becomes meaningless to even use the label.