The Myth of the Golden Age - A (Relatively) Brief History of Final Fantasy's Evolution

This is the transcript for the first of a three-part video series I'm putting together. I've already written something to this effect on this blog before, so for your convenience, I've marked the historical relevance in green if you don't care to read my opinions/summaries of the games themselves again. Also, I started writing a few days ago, so the intro is slightly outdated. Enjoy.

[TRANSCRIPT]

So, since Final Fantasy XV officially comes out in a couple of days, I felt like checking to see if the embargo was up to get a feel for its quality. Unfortunately, I jumped the gun and nothing’s posted yet. But I did end up reading a lot of…less than positive responses to the game on NeoGaf. Things like the story not being very compelling and feeling cobbled together, the combat being shallow, the world map lacking breadth, underwhelming sidequests, NO STELLA!!! and so on and so forth. As someone who’s played nearly all of the other Final Fantasy games and has payed attention to the ways in which the series has progressed, none of these criticisms personally surprise me. I can neither confirm nor deny their veracity, of course, and will reserve judgment till I’ve played it myself, but I would not be even slightly surprised if it turned out to be a very shiny sub-30fps turd…

That said, I’m apparently in the minority on this as a sizable defense force emerged contesting these criticisms…almost entirely composed of people who have yet to play the game. Now, of course this kind of thing happens every time someone starts throwing shade at a hyped up release for understandable reasons, so there’s nothing interesting to discuss there…, except for one particular defense for this specific game: “The golden age of FF is over. If you want those old games, you can go away and play those instead.” The phrasing varies, but the main point is always the same: you don’t like the new FF game(s), because they’re not like the old ones.

Obviously, there aren’t many people who actually feel this way. The last batch of FF games from FFXIII onwards have almost unanimously been among the worst in the series. That’s a popular, well-documented, and heavily supported opinion. It’s possible that people were hating on those games for being different, but unlikely given their demonstrably pitiful quality. Rather what’s interesting about the paraphrased statement today is that there is somehow still this belief that Final Fantasy games were a hallmark of excellent quality at some point in the past; that there was a “Golden Age” where every FF game was a brilliant masterpiece of its time, earning the series its former sterling reputation.

Now as you can probably tell by the title of this video, the Golden Age of Final Fantasy does not exist. Final Fantasy games have never been qualitatively consistent and it is in fact the minority of FF games that have actually been “good,” in the first place. And by “good” I do not mean “masterpiece,” but like 6-7/10.  So, how did the series get such an awesome rep? Well, that’s an interesting question to answer. The specific reasons why all come about around the time of Final Fantasy VII, but in order for any of them to make sense, you have to understand the evolution of the franchise that led to that game’s creation in the first place. So, the purpose of this video is to provide that context by going over the first 6 Final Fantasy games and their relevance to the present. As always, I’ll try to be as brief as I can, but based on the fact that this script is 3400 words long, you’d probably best strap in for the long haul. 

FFI - 6/10

4 heroes of light have to save the world from the evil lord chaos by visiting four elemental shrines and slaying the monster atop each one. That’s the plot in a nutshell minus the timetravel nonsense. It’s a short and simple game that introduced the 3^rd person perspective and football player line-up thing that became a staple of JRPGs. It doesn’t really do anything wrong, but it also lacks anything special to elevate it above being average. Solid 7/10 game that you can fly through in an afternoon, BUT I would not recommend playing this game if you want to see where Final Fantasy gets its start. Instead, I would suggest playing Final Fantasy II

FFII – 5/10

Final Fantasy II is not a good game. The adaptive levelling system is frustrating and counterintuitive, the story is too simplistic and surprisingly unfocused for its own good, the characters are mostly underdeveloped, though there are a few interesting ones, and…that’s really all I can say about it as there’s nothing else to talk about. It’s not terrible mind you, just shallow with incomplete ideas. I mean it’s an NES game, of course it’s shallow, but it’s just a little disappointing. I mean they used the rebels against an evil empire plot in a medieval setting, that’s actually kind of unique! Hell, this was the first Final Fantasy game to feature the death of a playable character. That’s right, the first big FF character death was not Aeris in FFVII, or anyone in FFVI, or Galuf in FFV, or even Palom and Porom in FFIV, but Minwu in FFII. The more you freaking know! A-hem. Overall, it’s between a 5 & 6/10. They get points for trying to distinguish themselves from other RPGs, but then lose them again for execution.

Anyway, on a broader level Final Fantasy II is also the most important game in the history of Final Fantasy. Yes, more than 4 and more than 7. Even though there’s scarcely a single thing that this game does unabashedly right, it is the genesis of Final Fantasy’s one and only unique identifying trait: Named player characters who lack fixed roles. Almost every other RPG, both Western and Japanese opposes this as doing so robs the characters of defining characteristics that the player can tangibly experience. Ya can’t exactly role-play as someone when there’s no role to play, which is kind of a big deal in a ROLE-PLAYING GAME. There are exactly 3 Final Fantasy games in this entire 15 game series that have protagonists with fixed roles, and though all of them are fantastic, Square still defaults to this model because…r-reasons? I honestly don’t know the cause of this, and couldn’t find an interview to clue me in. However, what I can say, is that not defining characters through the gameplay forces Square to come up with their own forms of character gameplay progression divorced from the conventional ones seen in other RPGs. It’s in this way that FFII also presents the series’ second defining trait of giving every game its own unique form of character development. If you wanted to see where Final Fantasy gets its roots, THIS is the game to play.

If you’d like to see where most of the series’ aesthetic mainstays come in, however, then you’ll have to look to the following game Final Fantasy III

FFIII – 2/10

Now, first and foremost I have to tell you that this is the only Final Fantasy game that I started and did not finish. I picked it up for the DS back in 2006 and hated it so much that I just barely broke the 10 hour mark before calling it quits. Why did I hate it? It has the slow tedious combat, equally snail-like character progression, and the nonsensical story of old NES games, combined with the length and limited saving of more recent JRPGs. It literally meshes all the worst aspects of old and -at the time- present RPG design, resulting in one of the most frustrating and unsatisfying games I have ever played. I read from several players that some changes to the remake’s design, most notably the monster encounters and JP distribution, actually led to a crappier game than the original, but I’ve never made the time to confirm it.

In short though, Final Fantasy III is basically Final Fantasy I stretched out to ten times the original length with a job system that lets you freely switch classes throughout the game. It’s the closest thing we’ll ever get to a bad Dragon Warrior game. The only contribution it makes to the Final Fantasy series is the ability to switch character classes at will. 2/10 WOULD NOT RECOMMEND.

As an aside before we continue, these games make up the true first generation of Final Fantasy, and as you can see are not particularly great.

FFIV – 8/10

This is the first Final Fantasy game on the Super Nintendo, as well as the first unabashedly good Final Fantasy game. It introduces Active Time Battles which sticks with the series through FFXIII, and actually utilizes it well. It also has a more detailed story courtesy of the stronger hardware, complete with plot twists, betrayals, and character development that actually impacts the gameplay! The story is also A LOT better than those of the first generation. It’s not because it’s particularly deep or nuanced or anything; it just has straightforward cause and effect and unfolds in an understandable way. See, that’s the problem with most Final Fantasy stories: cause and effect either doesn’t apply, like in FF1-3 and 8, or doesn’t make sense like in FFVII, FFX, and the XIII games. I’m almost certain that THAT absence is what contributes the most to people generally not remembering the plots of Final Fantasy games: You can’t mentally retrace them from any specific point without having to make an insane logical leap or six somewhere along the way. Mind you, I’m not saying 4’s story is great – it isn’t, just that it makes sense and is told clearly. The end where you find out the big bad was actually being controlled by a super being on the moon is fucking ridiculous, and feels like blatantly moving the goalpost for the sake of drama. However, this is the first FF game where the story is actually a selling point rather than an afterthought, which itself is a feat worthy of praise. 8/10 good game.

FFV – 7/10

Basically, what Final Fantasy III was SUPPOSED to be. A fun little game where your named characters can switch between jobs at will. If you want to boil it down, it's updated FFIII with FFIV’s new mechanics and more detailed story telling. That said, the story is generic even at this point in video game history, and extremely predictable given that they tied the unlocking of classes to the characters failing their initial mission. It has some strong characters for the era in Faris and Galuf, and introduces one of the most entertaining recurring villains in the series with Gilgamesh, but otherwise there’s nothing particularly special or noteworthy about the game specifically. Perfectly acceptable 7/10.

The most important thing about Final Fantasy V is that it finally crystalizes the franchise’s process of evolution. As many fans will note, Final Fantasy doesn’t have a linear or cyclical process of evolving which is why most people just say that every game is different or struggle to pin down the series’ defining elements. However, obtuse though it may be, there IS in fact a pattern that still persists to this day.

Every Final Fantasy game simultaneously, replaces an existing mechanic (typically with something new), rehashes another mechanic - typically verbatim (to provide stability), and attempts to refine a mechanic or story element(s) (regardless of whether or not it worked in the past).

Coincidentally, the things Square chooses to Rehash, Replace, and Refine are usually constant across the series. The battle system usually Remains constant for every game in a given era. FF1-3 all use standard turn based combat. FF4-9, FFX-2 & XIII all use standard ATB. FFX tweaks FF1-3s combat with the Conditional Turn Based Battle system, and FFXII tweaks the ATB system by removing the distinction between combat and exploration. FFXV is the first FF game since FFIV - that is the first Final Fantasy in TWENTY-FIVE YEARS to completely replace the battle system. So yeah, it’s pretty constant.

Similarly, what Square typically Replaces whole cloth is the character progression. No two numbered Final Fantasy games in this series use the same character progression. Period. The most similar ones are 3 and 5 and even those two have different systems governing how you gain class experience. If you’re playing a Final Fantasy game, this is usually where the learning curve lies.

And last but not least, the thing Square usually chooses to Refine is, actually the story. At the risk of sounding reductive, Final Fantasy games with 2 exceptions only have two stories. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll call these as story A and Story B.

In Story A, the world must be saved from eternal darkness by a small band of heroes (typically 4), who have to visit elemental shrines/realms in order to gain power and topple the big bad. Final Fantasy 1,3,5, and 10 all use this story, though note that each time it’s utilized Square refines it by adding more dimensions of complexity. Sometimes for the better like in FFX, and other times for the worse like in FFIII.

In Story B, a ragtag group of adventurers with different backgrounds must work together to topple an evil empire, generally by walking up to the emperor’s face and murdering him. I’m being a smidge reductive with that summary, but this is the basic plot of Final Fantasies 2, 4, 6, 9, and 13. Now as you may have noticed by how sparse these lists are, three Final Fantasy games don’t fit this mold. FF7 & 8 both try to do something completely different, though whether either succeeds is another matter entirely. And FFXII is essentially story B by way of story A with a crapton of political intrigue thrown into the mix. However, that game is the brainchild of Yasumi Matsuno, a guy who did not work on any other numbered Final Fantasy game, so it’s not informative for understanding the series.

What YOU need to know is that Final Fantasy never uses the same story twice in a row and is always willing to vary its core mechanics, but also NEVER INVENTS ANYTHING COMPLETELY NEW. The games look different game over game, BUT if you compare every other game, their evolution becomes ostensibly linear, and easily observable. And on that note, let’s get back on task and talk about the last game for this video.

FFVI – 10/10

Final Fantasy 6 is one of the greatest games Square has ever made. That’s not an opinion, but a comprehensively researched conclusion. For more specific info on this, check out this outstanding project. It’s actually kind of hard to break down in brief why this game is so amazing, so I’m going to use some of the terms I discussed here for shorthand. Final Fantasy VI uses the B story, and in keeping with the series’ evolution pattern is more complex than Final Fantasy IV. I personally think of it as a Disney story on acid where you see all of the larger than life heroes, the silly moustache-twilrlingly evil villains, and know exactly what needs to happen and should happen to lead to a happily ever after…and it NEVER comes! Good is punished, intelligent evil dies at the hands of insanity, cults emerge, the world is destroyed, and even though the protagonists manage to band together to defeat the god emperor, the damage has already been done and nothing will ever fix the world. The story is in a word…fantastic, moving even, which is shocking for a SNES game. Final Fantasy VI is also one of three Final Fantasy games, the others being 12 and 13 that feature an ensemble cast. There is no definitive main character or face for this game, which actually allows the game the freedom to repeatedly separate the party and focus on specific characters. To this day many of them are still comparable to the characters of contemporary Final Fantasies, which again is INSANE considering just how old this game is. If you’re curious for details, I cannot stress enough how much you should check the link below for details. It’s really quite impressive. Gameplay-wise it also follows the pattern, so there’s nothing interesting to mention there. Well, other than the introduction of desperation attacks which later evolved into limit breaks. Anyway, you get the idea FFVI is amazing and wonderful and you should absolutely play it if you have any interest in JRPGs.

The last thing I need to address about this game is its influence on Final Fantasy VII. FFVII is one of the least understood games in the history of video games. It’s story, it’s contributions to the series and JRPGs in general, its quality, and so on, are all praised for either unsubstantiated, mis-remembered, or outright fallacious reasons. And sure, it’s age is probably a serious cause of that, but I’m fairly certain that the main reason for this is that people don’t see its serious ties with Final Fantasy VI. So, let’s make those connections clear.

There are three things you need to know about FFVI that are integral to understanding its successor: Magicite, Magic Environmentalism, and the game’s approach to tone.

Magicite are the crystalized remains of Espers/Summons in Final Fantasy VI. Over the course of the game you’ll find dozens of Magicite crystals sometimes in dungeons, and others after lengthy conversations with the summons themselves. As you’ve likely guessed, characters can equip magicite to summon Espers in battle for huge effects. However, all magicite also allows characters to use magic spells and eventually learn them permanently. Ostensibly, every character in this game can learn every spell and become an archwizard of the universe. Now, as you’ll read in the link below, the reason Square did this in FFVI was to compensate for the game having so many characters and the party splitting up all the time. However, they were very aware that this change could also strip the characters of their individuality which would’ve been at odds with the character-centric nature of the game. So, to compensate, each character was given a unique command like Steal, Blitz, and Tools, reminiscent of the job specific commands of Final Fantasy V. They also gave every character a unique desperation attack, which in later FF games evolved into limit breaks, but I digress. The point is that even though everyone can use magic, no 2 characters can ever be entirely alike. Keep that in mind for discussions of future FFs, because it’s going to get referenced FREQUENTLY.

Next up is the Magic Environmentalism. Though Final Fantasy IV is technically the first game to bring sci-fi to the series, FFVI is the first to bring it to the forefront of the story.  As I mentioned before magicite is the crystalized remains of Espers, and in Final Fantasy VI the evil empire is using magicite to both power their magitek walkers and create super soldiers. To get more magicite the empire has to kill Espers, but because Espers have long since left the world, the Empire finds a way to travel to their world and commit genocide. The destruction of a world and its people for the sake of technology as well as the lust for military might through technology are the great evils that the protagonists spend the majority of the game opposing. This dynamic in which nature and the magic it contains must be defended against the evils of technology is also going to keep coming up throughout the franchise going forward, so keep it in mind.

And lastly, we have the tone. Like both of its predecessors the tone of Final Fantasy VI is not constant. It starts out extremely serious, lightens up throughout a lot of middle, then becomes increasingly depressing as it reaches its climax and conclusion. Plenty of stories have an identical tonal arc, so believe me when I say there’s nothing groundbreaking about the game’s approach to tone. What’s important to note is that the game holds its tone for comparatively long stretches of time, and tethers its tone to specific characters. These characters are accompanied by specific musical cues that indicate how you’re supposed to feel about them. This removes a lot of the ambiguity about the scenes you’re watching and cleanly divides the characters and events into distinct goods and evils. And while I’m certain that may be a serious turn-off for some of you, bear in mind that this game is aimed at children and that clarity makes the game easier to digest. I know, this seems irrelevant. Trust me, this is going to become extremely relevant during the discussion of the PSX Final Fantasies

Okay, we’re gonna stop there because this entry is long enough. Next week we’ll pick back up with the game I know you’ve all been anticipating: Final Fantasy VII.