This Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Trailer is Adorably Retro

Square Enix released a rather cute promotional trailer today, for the upcoming final installment in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. Critical opinions of Final Fantasy XIII aside, it's a pretty cool video of the prior events that lead up to the beginning of Lightning Returns. I'm not sure its explanatory power is sufficient to get somebody who never played these games up to speed, but at least it's a cool throw-back to the classic SNES Final Fantasy style.

Part of me wants to warm up to these games a bit, after seeing this. I didn't like the original Final Fantasy XIII's story at all, and although XIII-2's developments didn't seem much better the actual gameplay and depth was much improved. XIII-3's mechanics seem like they will be legitimately enjoyable, even if the plot still sounds like hokum. There are some genuinely good elements in there, and it seems like Square Enix learned some lessons after the initial stumble.

If there is one thing I take away most from this trailer, though, it's just how contrived and random everything seems. The abruptness with which Lightning falls through a rift in the earth, only to fall into Valhalla and become a "warrior goddess" isn't just a cartoonish abstraction -- it's essentially how the story goes! Characters and concepts just appear and are forgotten as it becomes convenient. The rules about the nature of reality completely shift from game to game, as if the writers haven't fully decided where to take things. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing the JRPG equivalent of Axe Cop.

This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

When Square Enix released Agni's Philosophy, a trailer claiming to be a "realtime tech demo" for... something... I had a rather unique reaction to it. While it was tempting for others to extol the quality of the visuals or descry what this change of setting could mean for the near future, I simply found it frustrating.



The video shows off scenes of generic urgency and very well-designed ambiguity, crafting a pseudo-story that never began and will never finish. We're not meant to believe that this hypothetical scenario is actually a vision of the next Final Fantasy game -- and thank goodness for that, as I'm not particularly enthused by the superficial faux-realism it aims for. I'm used to Final Fantasy having "guns" by now, but they've largely been fantastical firearms, like a sword that turns into a gun or an antiquated-looking blunderbuss -- not the full-on AK-47s you might see in so many modern shooters.

Still, it's not the content of the trailer that got to me. What I'm actually irked by is a lingering suspicion that this is what Square Enix has been diverting resources to, all this time. Don't they have better things to do -- like, oh, I don't know -- make the first proper Final Fantasy game of this generation? Last I checked, that was still their flagship brand, right?

I'm not one of those who claim the entire series has gone downhill, ever since < insert absolutely any FF title here, they've all been argued >. There are those games I love, those I like a little less, and those I find relatively unplayable. In the aggregate, I do still love the majority of them. Okay, so I may have once said that if it weren't for the job system and Gilgamesh's theme music, Final Fantasy V would be a miserable kusoge title on par with Quest 64. I still recognize that it's a matter of taste, and I do grant it its rightful place as an installment in the series, because it does more or less adhere to the fundamentals. No matter how one might criticize disparate elements of various installments in the series, no one can really argue that any of them aren't legit Final Fantasy.

Believe it or not, other game developers were once playing catch-up to Square, and wishing they had made Final Fantasy. I don't think they wish that anymore.


Final Fantasy XIII was first announced in early 2006, with the first trailer debuting in May -- almost half a year before the PS3 was released. The game didn't come out until March of 2010, though I'm convinced it was artificially delayed after it was more or less finished, so that the XBox 360 version could enjoy a simultaneous release. If it were another outstanding, deep RPG like any other main entry in the series up to that point, it would have been well worth the wait. What finally hit shelves, though, was barely a Final Fantasy game at all, save for some of the series' recurring proper nouns -- and barely an RPG, save for the fact that there are lots of fights and scenes where characters talk about things. Much of what gave the series its prestigious pedigree and loyal fan base went completely missing: towns, mini-games, side-quests, optional conversations and story scenes, secrets and hidden areas, absorbing level design, variety and contrast in gameplay, meaningful endgame content, maybe a few branching plot paths or an optional character, or even the ability to revisit most areas of the game. Nearly all you do in this game is hold the analog stick forward until your character gets into a fight or a dialogue scene triggers.

I don't bring this up just to take a dig at Square Enix, but rather to identify that there is a problem. I don't enjoy poking holes in FFXIII -- okay, maybe in a morbid kind of way I do, a little -- but mostly, I'm just an FF nut who wants to see the series return to its former glory. I could believe that some of FFXIII's omissions were conscious design decisions (there are some who are glad for the lack of towns, oddly enough). Still, I wonder how many of those decisions were made as a reaction to realizations of the skyrocketing costs of game development, rather than a natural preponderance for innovation. When they decided to reduce all shops to a single menu brought up at occasional computer terminals, part of that was a solution to how you justify the mechanics of purchasing supplies and gear in a depopulated wilderness -- but the fact that the game takes place in a depopulated wilderness is in itself a product of necessity, make no bones about it.

So, what does a responsible company do when faced with these complications? Does it spread itself as thinly as possible, continuously announcing new titles and spin-offs in rapid succession? It's become something of a running gag, that for every game Square Enix actually releases, they seem to announce development of three more. At the same time Final Fantasy XIII was announced, they also announced Final Fantasy Versus XIII. The first trailer appeared in December of 2006, and since then all we've seen are videos of establishing shots and story sequences, and recently a few quick cuts of some random battles. It's six years later, and I don't think there's a single person in the world who's actually seen this game in a playable state. I'm starting to wonder if it will ever see the light of day.

For reference, here are a few things that have happened entirely within the development period of Final Fantasy Versus XIII:
1) The entire Uncharted and Mass Effect trilogies have come and gone, as well as four Assassin's Creed titles.
2) 38 Studios acquired Big Huge Games, developed and released Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and two expansions, and recently collapsed into bankruptcy.
3) Square Enix themselves released both FFXIII and its direct sequel FFXIII-2, made the MMO FFXIV, and then made it again, and released six Kingdom Hearts games.


We're not talking about a young company who's just learning the ropes of the video game industry -- Square Enix is a behemoth that has been making all kinds of games, for decades. Final Fantasy has almost always been one of their most popular franchises, which is why we see so many remakes and spin-off games that borrow the name. Those spin-offs don't mean anything, though, if they can't maintain the integrity of their core titles.

It's really disheartening to see them trying to do everything but make a traditional Final Fantasy game -- not that I consider Versus one of those, but presumably it represents a similar scale, investment-wise. When the Agni's Philosophy video hit, it was the straw that broke the camel's back -- a slap in the face to that part of me that is still waiting for the next great RPG. The message I took away from that trailer was that not only are they revealing yet another pie-in-the-sky pipe-dream project of theirs before finishing what's already on the table, but that they spent undoubtedly a sizable amount of time and money on character design, motion capture, voicework, animation, model and environment rendering, writing, etc., for a new graphics demonstration that isn't even aimed at any game systems that currently exist.

A friend of mine suggested that perhaps this new next-gen graphics engine would help them streamline their development process. Okay, but if the engine is for next-gen systems, isn't that basically an admission that they've given up on improving their development process this generation?

With Great Graphics, Comes Great Responsibility

A sentiment I've keenly felt throughout this generation of consoles is that games in general are striving for style over substance. Then again, perhaps "striving" isn't the mot juste -- "settling" might be a more appropriate wording. After all, is it fair to accuse the creators of the oft-maligned Final Fantasy XIII of intentionally setting out to produce a stiff, on-rails experience, in which player agency and depth of exploration were all but obliterated? I have no trouble believing that Square-Enix originally sought to craft a worthy successor to an impressive lineage of sprawling, fantasy epics, saturated with curious side-quests, mini-games, and other charming distractions and secrets. Unfortunately, after close to four or five years of development time, what we finally got was exceedingly restrictive and linear. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do -- essentially just a series of very picturesque hallways filled with monster battles, punctuated by scripted dialogue scenes -- truly, the JRPG equivalent of Time Crisis. The bulk of the time and money seemingly went into producing the (admittedly gorgeous) HD graphics, with little to none left over for anything else.

I'm fine with a linear plot, so long as it's captivating, well-told, and moves at a good clip -- but there needs to be something that makes me feel like this playthrough of the game is my own, and not necessarily the exact same as the next person's. There needs to be variety, contrast, and diversion -- occasionally, I need to get lost on a tangent before rejoining the main mission. All the little things we used to take for granted in role-playing games had evaporated.

Graphics: check.   Soundtrack: check.   Battles: check.
Okay, well I guess we're done -- oh wait, did anyone make an actual game?

Like several other frustrated Final Fantasy fans, I found myself wishing the balance of power had shifted more in favour of developing interesting dungeon designs, entertaining mini-games for variety's sake, and perhaps a few towns for good measure. Basically, I wanted a meatier gameplay experience, and if it meant the graphics had to take a hit or two along the way, that was fine.

Be careful what you wish for.

In a blog post on GameInformer, Chris "Warcraft" Kluwe expressed a great amount of anger toward Nintendo for the way Xenoblade Chronicles turned out. Misplaced anger, I'd say, since Nintendo made the Wii console which the game appears on and didn't develop the game itself -- yet despite some bouts of hyperbole, there are aspects of his arguments that I can sympathize with. I've tried out Xenoblade myself, and I'm psyched to give it more focus once a couple more games are off my plate (is there actually an end to Kingdoms of Amalur?), but already I've seen what he's talking about:

"...this game deserves better. It deserves better than gasping fish mouths bobbing up and down through beautifully crafted dialogue. It deserves better than jagged edged fuzzy textures comprising a breathtaking landscape..."

"I have to commend the folks at Monolith Soft. They’ve done the best they can with what they have available, and you can see the vision they’re so desperately trying to make a reality. The ideas on display in Xenoblade Chronicles are nothing short of amazing... Unfortunately, and through no fault of Monolith Soft, the Wii laughs at their dreams."

Xenoblade's graphics are really quite good... for a Wii game.
Is that still a compliment?

"I’m tired of Nintendo having these awesome franchises and brilliant developers and shafting them with an absolute garbage can of a system. I’m tired of seeing Mario relegated to kitschy ideas because there’s no horsepower under the Wii’s hood; I’m tired of seeing Link fighting through the Temple of Brown Textures and Jagged Edges; I’m tired of seeing games like Xenoblade Chronicles, games with a world vision that dwarfs the imagination and fills the mind with awe-inspiring jaw dropitude, get thrown under the bus by Nintendo insisting on Grandma Waggle Party IV as its core demographic."

Nintendo's strategy for the last few generations has been to produce underpowered hardware and seemingly ignore or deny modern conventions. The Wii is clearly inferior to the Xbox360 or the PS3, both in terms of graphical capability and image resolution. Xenoblade does what it can, but to see that game running on the Wii is to lament over what might have been. As Chris alludes, mouth animations when characters speak are primitive and off-putting, and the otherwise well-designed graphics suffer from having just a few polygons less than they deserve, and can only be enjoyed through the veil of the Wii's grainy resolution. If only there were an HD port of this game!

But then, what if it were made for an HD console? Who's to say it wouldn't have suffered from those same problems Final Fantasy XIII had? There are such high graphical expectations on the 360 and PS3, that anything less than the best is quickly criticized. Would Xenoblade's character models and environments have looked anything like this, had the game been designed from the ground up for another system? The game was made with one system's hardware in mind, and wishing for the image resolution of another may be folly. What game developer seriously makes a game for the PS3, with the goal of creating visuals that look only a little better than what's on the Wii?

Perhaps between the two extremes there rests a happy medium -- or, if this is the happy medium, would we recognize it? Those of us who demanded a different allocation of resources in the wake of FFXIII's graphics-mongering may have gotten what we wanted in Xenoblade, even if it is on a console we loathe. All things considered, Xenoblade still looks pretty good -- and if it ends up giving me all the things that FFXIII failed to deliver, then what have I really got to complain about?