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    Final Fantasy is Square Enix's most famous and successful franchise and has been going for more than 35 years. With the impending release of Final Fantasy XVI, there are sixteen numbered mainline games, with dozens of spin-offs.

    The Connective Tissue of Final Fantasy

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    Mento

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    Edited By Mento  Moderator

    (Hey guys, I originally wrote this for the October 23rd Sunday Summaries and its section on Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, but it's fairly long and only part of what I wanted to convey about the game - I'll have finished it by Sunday, so expect... well, whatever amounts to a review from me these days. Instead, I figured I'd make it its own blog and keep this week's SunSum manageable. Or, at the very least, a little less of a giant text dump than usual.)

    Many game franchises of a particularly long vintage will frequently toss in call-backs and references to their previous exploits, especially those that were received particularly well or remembered fondly by proponents who have stuck around. Yet, in only a few cases do these self-referential blasts from the past have a purpose beyond simple nostalgia. For these rare breeds, the references are a necessary bridge between the old and the new, between the experimental and the established, and a means to effectively ground what would otherwise be a conceptually bizarre gamble or several.

    Final Fantasy is one of those cases.

    If Final Fantasy is known for anything, besides the recurring iconography and lore that I'll discuss in just a moment, it's for its risk-taking. Some of those risks have historically paid off; the thematically distinct and technologically ambitious Final Fantasy VII was a major coup for studio Squaresoft for example. Yet an attempt to take the Final Fantasy line into a new medium - 2001's expensive flop of a movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - would force the suddenly strapped Squaresoft to become Square-Enix, merging with what was once their chief JRPG rival in order to stay afloat. With the exception of a handful of lazy sequels, the Final Fantasy series has been taking risks its entire lifespan, from the slightly apocryphal tale of the first game being a double-or-nothing Hail Mary to save the fledgling studio to the troubled ongoing development of the latest, Final Fantasy XV, which hopes to make the same kind of strides in the open-world genre that another major Japanese release - Konami's and Kojima Production's Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - did the previous year.

    Yet in order to reliably link together a series of games that not only have discrete characters and settings, but will often completely change its combat engine and presentation style from game to game, it's important to have a few familiar touchstones to connect the games together. Then, when it comes time to market the game, it's still able to invoke the fond memories people have of those that have come before. Unlike Zelda or Mario or Dragon Quest, you're never entirely sure what to expect with a new Final Fantasy, but there are almost always enough familiar beats and visuals to convince you to give its handlers the benefit of the doubt, no matter how many ways this new venture might not deliver on its promises. That is, if some of the more recent disappointments haven't turned you off entirely.

    I was considering this when I was playing Final Fantasy Type-0 this past week or so. The game's not a typical Final Fantasy, or at least it wouldn't be if it didn't follow two mechanically similar games also designed for portable systems - Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII for mobile phones and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for PSP. To Type-0's credit, it isn't cribbing on the apocrypha of the adventures of Moody & Psycho, but certain elements definitely feel familiar to anyone who has played those two spiritual predecessors. While it doesn't play like your average Final Fantasy title, and its non-numbered name reflects as much, it still contains a team of interchangeable students at an academy that seems to double as a military training facility who are sent on various missions to put down an evil invading empire who is technologically advanced but lacks much in the way of magical oomph. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's the approximate premsie of at least three Final Fantasy games: Final Fantasy Type-0 manages to create a distinct real-time action RPG system that relies largely on avoidance and timing, supplements it with an uncommon "social life scheduling" mechanic (though it's far less in-depth than something like Persona's) and occasional RTS sorties, and yet has enough plot and visual/audio allusions to its forebears to be instantly recognizable as a Final Fantasy game. Whether it's the trademark overture playing throughout the safe confines of the school HQ or the liberal use of chocobos to expedite overworld travel or the fourteen androgynous teenagers that comprise your playable party, only five of which are blond guys with ruffled hair, the similarities are uncanny. And, honestly, I can't help but view it as a strength, for as cheerfully derivative as it can be.

    Naturally, the specific "students become mercenaries at a specialized school" plot hook is taken directly from Final Fantasy VIII, as is its faceless technologically-adept empire and the overpowering supernatural foes that are scattered across the world that only ever so occasionally opt to get involved with something as mundane as politics and borders. In some respects, Final Fantasy Type-0 is what could hypothetically result if Final Fantasy VIII leaned hard on its mercenary deployment missions throughout the whole game, rather than switching narrative tracks after a botched assassination on Sorceress Edea at the end of the first disc sends the party off on a sequence of digressions. The game's absolutely steeped in less direct but still oddly incongruously overt references as well, such as fighting the multi-armed Gilgamesh on a "big bridge" or marching across a wintery landscape in a bipedal MagiTek armored vehicle. Even the musical cues are clearly derived from prior games, from the aforementioned Final Fantasy overture in the party's scholastic headquarters, to the amusingly steadfast orchestral remix of the familiar chocobo theme for its overworld, to this melancholy piano tune that recalls some of the tenser moments in Final Fantasy VII-IX (it seriously sounds so familiar, but I can't place the specific dramatic piano music moment it's riffing on).

    I could spend all day pointing out the subtle and less subtle references, like an entire eccentric Moogle squadron that represents the various Jobs from Final Fantasy 3 (and 5 and Tactics to a similar extent) - they even refer to themselves as the Cranberry Knights - or that the four civilizations are based on elemental crystals, not unlike the kingdoms of Final Fantasy IV. Ultimately, though, that's all kind of the point: the game developers wanted to try new mechanics, new systems and new features and wanted to present them all with a familiar wrapping to mitigate the amount of disorientation that might result. The plot - which is acceptably labyrinthine, as befits a good Final Fantasy spin-off - and the limited character models/animations of what were tiny, tiny people in the original Vita version don't really matter; Final Fantasy is and always has been a showcase of JRPG ingenuity first and foremost, and occasionally a demonstration of the most state-of-the-art graphical capabilities of its era second. If the character development and story beats are passable enough to encourage me to see its tale through to the end, that's usually enough. I love a good story more than anybody, but let's not kid ourselves that a video game can reliably deliver one; instead, appreciate the rare treasures that do, and appreciate the other assets of those who have focused their efforts elsewhere (...while still absolutely criticizing their narrative shortcomings, of course, but maybe with that mitigating factor in mind).

    That, I think, is how Final Fantasy's designers and directors are afforded the freedom to toss the dice with new ideas over and over: they rely a lot on the goodwill of the Final Fantasies that worked by frequently invoking them through visual and audio cues, and shrug off those that did not work by wiping the board and trying something else next time. As long as the series' reputation holds through its lesser products, and our fond memories of the Final Fantasies we played years ago still endure, new games can continue to push design boundaries - for better and worse - and produce wholly distinct creations. Even if, as the case may be, those "distinct creations" might look and/or sound a lot like the last dozen or so.

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