Every time I think I’ve run out of news for Final Fantasy XV, the next installment in probably the most well-known JRPG to ever grace consoles, more appears. I’m not sure I like this … this information thing.
I can’t escape it: Every time I go online, something new has been revealed, which is something of a shock to the system given that for eight years (a development time that is beginning to tiptoe up to Duke Nukem Forever levels), we’ve received news about this game only in a trickle here and there, a drib one day and a drab six months later, a hurried trailer and a hasty announcement of a title change at E3, shot through with a lot of very long periods of silence. It’s a little like coming home from a long day at work and finding a killer whale sat at your dinner table: Delightful, but unexpected.
Probably the biggest piece of news to drift through is that Tetsuya Nomura is off the project. Known best as the man behind blisteringly popular fan favourite Final Fantasy VII and bizarre but well-loved Final Fantasy-Disney crossover series Kingdom Hearts, Nomura’s work on Final Fantasy XV has always seemed a little fraught. That’s not just because of the development time, or the fact that it began as a spin-off before evolving into a main series game, it’s also because the man reportedly once tried to make it into a musical in the style of Victor Hugo inspired opera Les Miserables. An unwise choice at the best of times – and one he was talked down from – but doubly so six years into development.
He’s been replaced by Hajime Tabata, who’s been doing spin-off Final Fantasy games for a while now, having been behind 1997 Final Fantasy VII prequel Crisis Core and, more recently and probably more relevantly, Final Fantasy Type-0, a game loosely meant as a spin-off from the rather critically panned Final Fantasy XIII that turned out to be a massive popular and critical success, enough so that fans have lobbied successfully for a HD re-release. Good going, Tabata – It’s that success which Square-Enix might be hoping he reproduces for Final Fantasy XV, although the cynic in me does wonder if the company just wants it done so that they can start making some effort towards recouping their development costs, which after eight years could very well be staggering.
So, with Tabata at the helm now, we’ve finally gotten to see both a trailer and a gameplay demo. Fans and game journalists alike had ardently hoped for one, the other or both at this year’s E3, and it had been one of the more stunning developments of the expo that none had materialised, especially as there had been no shortage of excited rumblings that Square-Enix had been planning on revealing something. Now we’ve finally gotten to see both, and the question on everyone’s lips is “What do we make of them?”
What do we make of them indeed.
The trailer shows very little of gameplay: The gameplay we see has visibly been simplified to make the trailer look smoother, which is a little unusual. Instead, the trailer focuses rather bafflingly on what I can only describe as a Final Fantasy Road Trip, as the princely main character Noctis is shuffled through the countryside by his vaguely sketchy mates, all of them whooping and laughing with the hubris of youth.
It’s strange watching a two minute trailer that’s mostly composed of people driving and listening to the radio. I could do that on my own. Combined with gameplay segments that look very pretty but don’t really tell you anything about what playing it will be like, and the trailer might well be the least impressive one we’ve seen for this game so far. Most alarmingly of all, the disclaimer that this is only a ‘sneak peek’ has made its return in this trailer, and that’s never a good sign, because what it seems to mean is ‘This isn’t footage from the game, or at the very least, it’s not beta stage footage.’
Remember, there had been rumours of a Q2 or Q3 2015 release. If Tabata and his intrepid team manage to see those rumours through, it will be nothing short of a miracle, and we’ll talk about that more in a second.
But there’s also the gameplay demo, and that’s a bit more encouraging. It’s a very dry, bare-bones affair: They show off the graphics, demonstrate the teleportation gameplay a little bit, then spawn an enemy to show off the battling. Very business-like, not very flashy, obviously not actual gameplay taken from the game. It does, however, look a lot more like actual gameplay you might see in the final product than the streamlined scenes shown in the trailer, and that’s encouraging. It’s the first time we’ve seen anything of the sort for this game, and it’s rather comforting to be able to look at the demo and go ‘Yes, I can envision actually playing that on a console or a PC.’
So, what other news is there? Well, the first is a bubbling controversy over the party make-up of the game, as it’s composed of five men and not a single woman. Apparently it’s a holdover from Nomura’s reign on the project, as an all-male party was an idea he was keen on, but it’s a rather odd turn for the Final Fantasy series, and not one liable to go over well in a year where one major games company has already remarked that it’d be too difficult for them to model playable women. The Final Fantasy series has traditionally always had a decent amount of female party members: XV could be the first one for a long time to break that trend (which I’d argue is really just good and conscientious writing), and there’s yet to be any clear idea of why. Is it really so difficult to imagine that a young prince might have a woman among his retainers? I’m not sure it is.
Secondly, we are hearing that, according to our lord and saviour Tabata, the game is about fifty-five percent complete. Just over halfway complete after eight years of development might not be nearly as surprising as it could be, but it is concerning. What have Square been doing for the past eight years? Well, apparently, reworking what they had for the Playstation 3 for the Playstation 4, but there’s no way that could account for all or even most of the time. For one of the most prolific game companies in the world working on one of the biggest and most influential game series, it’s frankly shocking.
Thirdly, and I promise we are nearing the end of this winding journey of news, Tabata has made some vague remarks about ‘one button gameplay.’ My immediate thought – and I know I’m not the only one – was that I spent most of Final Fantasy XIII pressing the same button over and over, and that was not a fun experience. But the possibility is strong that there’s something lost in translation here, or even just that this short remark perhaps didn’t adequately communicate Tabata’s vision for gameplay.
It’s a lot to take in, because after years of barely getting any information, we (well, I) are primed to expect hearing nothing new except occasional hoaxes or rumours, in the same way that one generally doesn’t receive brand new information about the Loch Ness Monster, and for much the same reasons.
It’s not all good news – in fact, I’d say that most of it sets up the impression that the wait for Final Fantasy XV will be stretching on for a long time yet. It does, however, suggest a light at the end of this particular development tunnel, though. The game, which had for years seemed like it was going to be the current gaming generation’s Duke Nukem Forever, might actually be playable one day. Whether on that day we are all old men and women creaking our way to the keyboard to eke out a few hours of gameplay in our last moments …
Well, that’s a lot less clear.
