Before WoW There Was Final Fantasy X

I have a confession to make, one that may help explain my blog’s title a bit: I’m not currently playing any MMO’s, and haven’t for a while.   I’ve had neither the money nor the consistent schedule of free time to invest in something like World of Warcraft or Rift.  What I have been playing most recently is Final Fantasy X, an incredible game whose innovations were ahead of their time.  Well, not the innovations themselves, but the attitude behind the innovations.

When it came out nearly a decade ago, Final Fantasy X was met with mixed feelings for some of its departures from the franchise’s established norms.  The Active Time Battle system that had been in place for the previous six installments was replaced with a turn based system.  The franchise (and genre) precedent of a party of 3-4 characters being fixed in battle was scrapped, and characters were allowed to be swapped in and out in the middle of a battle.  These changes were lauded by most but criticized by many of the FF faithful, who argued that the changes made FFX too easy, removing the challenge posed by the ATB and party limitations. Despite the criticism and concerns of oversimplification, Final Fantasy X went on to be one of the best selling installments of the series, even becoming the first (and only) installment to get a direct sequel.

So in essence, FFX shifted directions and moved the franchise towards streamlined gameplay without the arbitrary limitations of its genre cohorts, shifting slightly away from immersion in order to deliver a consistently fun play experience.  While panned as being oversimplified, too easy and less immersive, it went on to major success.  Sounds a lot like World of Warcraft to me!

This is the kind of development attitude I’d like to see from more studios: breaking down genre precedents to streamline the parts of gameplay that matter.  And the changes don’t even have to be revolutionary genre-shattering changes.  Something as simple as equipping new gear is simpler in FFX, where you are given the option to equip something immediately after buying it, instead of having to “click” through various menus to get to your inventory.  Games are about achieving a state of Flow as often as possible and sustaining it as effectively as possible, and this kind of development attitude only gets us closer to that perfect state of fun and Flow.

PS: I hate to admit this and so will most of you, but part of FFX’s draw is also the amazing set of visual effects for actions in combat, complemented perfectly with appropriate sounds.  I know we like to think we’re above such basic sensory titillation, but FFX proves us wonderfully wrong on that one

Square is going Soft

Seeing as how this is Square Enix week on Steam, I’ve been tempted by several great deals on Square games I never got around to playing.  Before buying I decided to go against my “trust Square’s every decision” instinct and downloaded the demos for Supreme Commander 2 and Front Mission Evolved.  I’m sure glad I did, because both of these games were awful.  Supreme Commander 2 is a hollow shell of what its predecessor was, with major changes that encourage turtling and hyper-specialized research.  Front Mission Evolved is not only a major departure from the franchises most successful gameplay (which I knew beforehand), it’s a crappy watered down version of its third person shooter predecessors as well.  The controls were clunky, aiming was hypersensitive, and the voiceovers were irritating.

Seeing two titles from my favorite game company fail this hard was not only disheartening, it was eye opening.  I took a moment to look back over Square’s history with my favorite franchise (Final Fantasy) and came to the realization that they’ve been putting out crap for almost a decade now. Starting with Final Fantasy XI, the company has continuously released games in the series that scrap the winning Final Fantasy formula in favor of relentless experimentation, striving to make games a showcase for their new ideas rather than fun experiences.  Final Fantasy XII and XIII were good games in their own regard, but it was clear that the focus was on the “revolutionary mechanics” of combat and advancement, pushing aside franchise staples like… fun and story.  Final Fantasy XIV doesn’t even need explanation, especially since the company has personally apologized for how bad it sucks.

Between 1997 and 2002 Square was an RPG powerhouse, raising the bar for the genre with every release.  Now it seems as if their hunt for innovation has made them forget their winning formula:

Add 1 part beautiful story,1 part gorgeous vistas, 1 part innovation, 2 parts familiarity, a great ATB combat system, Nobuo Uematsu and lots of chocobos. Not that hard, Square.  If you want some help getting back on track, feel free to hire me.  In fact, here are two big tips for free:
-More Strategy RPG's
-Whatever happened to the FFVII remake?  Scrapped? Well unscrap it!

Pixelated Memories

Two games came out this month that are sequels (one direct and one “in spirit”) to two of my favorite games of all time.  Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 and Tactics Ogre (spiritual sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics) have both been getting great reviews, and making me languish the fact that I own neither a PSP nor a PS3.  But this entry isn’t actually about these new games, its about my original favorites, MvC2 and FFT.

Aside from the incredible gameplay, ridiculous replayability and visceral combat effects, these two games shared one thing in common: They were both crap graphics for their time.  FFT was a 2D isometric game that usually looked like it belonged on a SNES instead of a Playstation.  MvC2 was a Playstation 2 game that was composed almost entirely of 2D sprites.

As a result of these amazing games having crappy graphics, and other favorite games of the times having distinctly different graphics styles compared to now, I (along with many of you I’m sure) have a natural fondness for pixelated games and classic games with bad graphics. It takes me back to a time when games had to showcase good mechanics to make up for the lacking visuals, when limited audio capabilities tried their best to do justice to the beautiful scores of video game composers (ie: Nobuo Uematsu), and when game genres were still discovering their boundaries and potential.  Most of all it takes me back to simply being a kid and falling in love with video games.

What makes me sad is that the new generation of gamers doesn’t have that nostalgia and never will.  They didn’t watch game graphics improve from 8 bit to 16 to 32, they’ve seen life like 3D graphics fall into the uncanny valley and slowly climb out.  We watched graphics evolve styles, while they’ve simply seen improvement.  Thus they won’t connect graphics of the past to fond memories, and will simply continue to clamor for improved visuals.

I’m sounding like an old codger “when I was your age”-ing, so I’ll just say one more thing.  I think it was a smart move for Kongregate to start carrying Unity games, because the new generation isn’t going to have the tolerance for visually underwhelming indie games.

What were your favorite “outdated visuals” games?