Save the Elves (and Dwarves, etc.)!

by Michael J. Greenhut 

Being a nineteen-year-old college sophomore who has followed the Final Fantasy series religiously since age twelve, I can't say I agree any less than 100% that it's losing its edge. The first and fourth games in the series, for example, gave me my fondest memories of the series. Although FF1 would be considered silly, pathetic, obsolete by today's standards, it was one of the best games for its time and in many ways is better than some present day games, in terms of challenge, originality, etc. Character development may have been lacking, but if you had an imagination, it wasn't hard to compensate for the feature of character creation replacing character role assumption. I remember one of the major things I always loved about the FF1 world was that it was Shrouded in medieval mysticism and wonder (dwarves, elves, mermaids) while also having a touch of futuristic technology (robots, towers in space, airships) ... a union of the best of both worlds without the grunge and dirt of reality or the present. For a time, this also seemed to be the premise of the entire series, and that was one aspect that stood out and made FF special and gave it its underlying taste that I and probably many other fans enjoyed. However, by FFVII, we have exactly the opposite: a world consisting primarily of grunge, smoke, broken technology, street talk, and dirty train yards ... with a TOUCH of fantasy and magic.

Many would say this began in FFVI, but I can actually trace it back further to FFIV. Although FFIV still had 99% of that predominant magic and fantasy, by that time there was a missing race: elves (having not yet played FF2j or FF3j, I can't comment whether or not they made any appearances in those games). Yes, there was the lone dark elf, deprived of a story that the FF1 dark elf had, with no town or castle of elves anywhere in the game. The dwarves, however, still remained and played a significant part of the story for FFIV. However, in FFVI there are no elves or dwarves. Magic is all but gone and the industrial age has set in; Bahamut, king of dragons, just blindly exists as some random magicite you find in Doomgaze's mouth, with no story or personality. The cave of moogles seemed to be a one-shot FFVI-only deal. Characters who belonged in games like Street Fighter 2 seemed to find their way into the series starting here. The story was still very good and the game was as addicting as ever, but it lacked that edge of true fantasy that its predecessors had.

FFVII is, obviously, almost completely deprived of magic in the general story; sleazy corporations, dirty cities, tough guys with machine guns and rockets, MIB-style assassins in suits and ties ready to pump you full of lead, motorcycles, even cigarettes seemed to dominate the game almost entirely. There were no races other than humans who had any general presence. Few if any of the summoned monsters were given a story this time, they were just "there". The game was based more on a grim futuristic reality on an alternate world than magic. Now don't get me wrong, FFVII was still a great game with a very good story, and there was definitely SOME presence of magical powers in the game, just hardly any in the general atmosphere or story, and the present/futuristic world dipped in reality took away a major edge in the underlying, almost subconscious, true appreciation of the game.

I'm sure many of us would like to see this trend reverse, judging by the popularity of Final Fantasy Tactics. In many ways, the game is pure genius - not only reminiscent of the best old-style FF games with the brilliant class system of FF5, but even containing references to characters and places in them! I'm not saying all future FF games should be carbon copies of FF4 or FFT; however, all in all if the concept of Fantasy becomes too distilled, the games will become empty.