Final Fantasy? No Such Luck.

by Darkeye Heruelen

All right, everyone, it's time to play the name game. Here's your first set of clues. We're looking for the name of a company here. They make role-playing games. They've attracted a fanatical following of gamers worldwide. They've led the way in the field of graphical breakthroughs for years. Many gamers begin involuntarily drooling at the mere mention of this company's flagship name. And, to top it all off, they have the most ridiculous and undeserved stranglehold on today's video game market that I have ever seen.

The answer: Squaresoft. That's right, the makers of Final Fantasy are coming under fire, and it's about time, too. It's about time that Final Fantasy lived up to its name. It's about time for us to see the FINAL Final Fantasy. This series' ungodly popularity is the biggest travesty I've ever seen befall the video game market. To make one thing brutally clear before I go further, I, no matter what you may think, am DEAD SERIOUS. This is not parody, comedy, or satire. This is an honest expression of how I really think and feel. I am fed up with the way people are deifying the Final Fantasy series, as if they were a part of some sick, twisted religious cult centered on worshiping video games that don't deserve to be worshiped. The Cult of Althena from Lunar 2 springs to mind. When somebody mentions the acronym "RPG," people immediately think of the Final Fantasy series. For instance, I have seen countless web pages claim to be "RPG pages," when all they feature are Final Fantasy games. While this is technically accurate, as Final Fantasy is indeed an RPG, they would be more accurate to call themselves "Final Fantasy pages" and save others a great deal of confusion and frustration. Those pages that do feature other games usually don't feature them in any great detail, having a few pictures or plot summaries. However, their Final Fantasy sections are adorned with pictures, fan art, screenshots, short stories about the games written by fans, music files and desktop themes for download, and countless other features. This is clearly not a very well-balanced page layout. While I can understand some sections being more developed than others when a page is first starting out, two factors suggest that this is not the case with these pages. First of all, all those pages that I have seen have been up and running since at least 1998 or 1999. Second, all but a few of those pages with unbalanced sections have Final Fantasy as their most extensive section. This suggests to me that there's more going on than just the efforts of a striving webmaster trying to get his page off the ground. Here's my question: Why Final Fantasy? I can think of plenty of games that deserve those twenty or thirty more megabytes of server space than Final Fantasy does.

Now, let me explain to you all what I find wrong with the games. First of all, they are becoming their own cliche. Or rather, falling victim to it. What I mean by this is that all the games are turning into the same thing, repeated over and over with a few changes to characters and environments. Ever since Final Fantasy Three/Six, the main character has been some kind of confused, pathetic figure trying to work out an identity crisis. This, by the way, is not exclusive to Final Fantasy games, as it appeared in Xenogears, Vagrant Story, and Parasite Eve as well. Once is all right, but who wants to play countless games that are all about some nobody trying to figure out his or her place in the world? Terra wanted to be accepted by humans, despite being the half-breed that she was. Cloud was the absolute pinnacle of the "confused star" syndrome, to the point that I still don't understand the truth about him after my fourth time through the game. The entire cast of Final Fantasy 8 was fighting with memories and identity at one point, but that game did a lousy job of resolving the conflict, as the characters just blamed their amnesia on the magical creatures that they bonded with. "It's the GF," they said. "The GF slowly eat at our memories when we junction them." I, for one, am sick and tired of trying to figure out what's more important to the characters: finding out who they really are, or trying to stop some sociopathic villain from slaughtering countless millions of innocent people. Excuse me, Mr. Cloud, but if you can still swing a sword and manage to avoid swords swung at you, then why don't you go stop that long-haired, effeminate freak from smashing the world to smithereens before it's too late? Your personal problems aren't going to make much of a difference if you're dead. Maybe I'm being too cynical, but after seeing the same bloody thing time and time again, it starts to chew away at my nerves, especially when it's poorly executed. I would much rather play a game like Lunar: The Silver Star Story, which is centered on an ambitious youth who goes up against unbelievable odds to protect the people he cares about, and emerges victorious, than a game about some loser who belongs in a mental institution as he's being treated for Dissociative Identity Disorder and thinking "Oh, yeah, and we have to stop this evil dude when we get a chance, too."

Now, let's look at "Lunar: The Silver Star," as long as I mentioned it. Alex didn't have any identity crisis to work out. He was a boy following his dreams, and when the Magic Emperor took away the girl he loved, he made up his mind to become a Dragonmaster, save his girl, and stop the Magic Emperor's reign of terror as well. If someone's going to be fighting with personal issues, let it be something like the question Master Ghaleon asked Alex on the boat, whether he could sacrifice one person he truly cared about in order to save an entire world from destruction. No matter how sure you are of your place in life, that's still an almost impossible question to answer. You have to figure out what's more powerful to you: love or guilt? And while Cloud cowered in fear when Sephiroth just played mind games with him, Alex looked the Magic Emperor, a man who could crush him like a grape with a snap of his fingers, right in the eye, never backing down. Alex even threatened to kill him if he didn't get away from Luna. I remember the moment clear as daylight. Alex's exact words were "Get away from her or DIE!" So, while Alex states his feelings of rage to a being with almost god-like power, Cloud cowers, Terra looks to Locke for help, and Squall goes on mood swings that take him from being inches away from autism one minute to gushing over some girl the next.

Now, let's compare the so-called phenomenon that is Final Fantasy to another popular series, one that has recently made a comeback after a seven-year absence. That series is Sega's "Phantasy Star." While Final Fantasy is a detached series, that is, a chain of games that have relatively little to do with each other except for a few common or re-appearing factors, Phantasy Star is an ongoing saga, with solid connections between characters, and events taking place in the same world. That, the way the series is laid out, is the reason why Phantasy Star has the, forgive the one and only pun I will make in this entire thesis, "phanatical phollowing" it does, and why Final Fantasy just has fans. I'm sure that there are some people in the world who would consider starting wars over Final Fantasy, but if you compare fan pages, the webmasters of such pages, and almost anything else Phantasy Star-related on the net, you'll find that Phantasy Star fans are much more ardent in their views and feelings than Final Fantasy fans are.

One element that Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star share is the death of a main character. Now, I'm sure you've all read enough rants about Final Fantasy Seven to know what happens mid-game, so I'm not afraid to throw in a spoiler. I laughed when I saw Aeris die. Why did I laugh when she died? I laughed for a couple of reasons. First, the game forces Aeris to be a part of your three-man team for a long time prior to her death, and I really didn't like only being able to swap out one character. Add to that the fact that I never liked Aeris in battle due to the fact that her abilities were sub-par at best, and you can clearly see why it was a royal pain to have her forced into my front line. But the real reason is that I didn't care that she died. I had established no connection with her. I didn't care about her as if she were real, because the game failed to get me attached to her. Now, when I saw the death scene in Phantasy Star Four, which I will not spoil due to the fact that I doubt as many of you have played it as have played Final Fantasy Seven, I almost screamed in rage. I swore that I would make the villain pay for what he had done, even if it meant pulling an all-nighter in front of the television screen and running on nothing but coffee and willpower. Why the difference? Because in Phantasy Star Four, I had gotten attached to the character that died. Also, up until their death, unless the player lets their HP reach zero and doesn't bother to revive them, thus letting all the other characters get the experience points, this character is the strongest one you can have, being replaced by a stronger one only for a brief time. I know I sound pretty vague with my wording, but I'm trying to eliminate spoilers due to the fact that Phantasy Star Four hasn't been spoiled in the past the way other games have. There's one more factor that contributed to my response to the death scene. In Final Fantasy Seven, you don't see Aeris' death coming. The more intuitive gamers might, depending on how much experience they've had in the past with character deaths, but the game never shows Aeris in a life-threatening situation until her death actually occurs. It just hints that she's getting in over her head by trying to stop the villain by herself. In Phantasy Star Four, you get a hint of what might happen, and the game sends you on a quest to try and stop the inevitable. But it happens anyway, despite your best efforts.

So, when PS4's character dies, you lose a strong fighter, you find out that part of your latest objective was for naught, and you lose someone who, up until their death, was a very integral part of the story. Also, this character's personality is much more thoroughly developed than Aeris', due to the fact that you have no control whatsoever over who is in your party until the very end of the game, unlike Final Fantasy Seven, which gives you free rein to switch characters on a whim. Because you're stuck with this character, they're a part of every single event that occurs up until, and obviously including, their death. And speaking of the death itself, allow me to make one final point before moving on. Aeris' death was sudden, but quick. The death in Phantasy Star Four was a long, drawn-out, and quite torturous one for the character as they lay in bed, stricken with pain so intense they can hardly speak. There's a greater sense of despair conveyed in Phantasy Star Four than there is in Final Fantasy Seven.

Now, in most games, when a character dies, they're usually killed by the villain. Since RPGs are so heavily character-oriented, a good villain can sometimes make or break a game. Before I move onto another comparison, let me compare Final Fantasy to Phantasy Star in one last field. The two most well-known villains from the series are Final Fantasy Seven's Sephiroth and Phantasy Star Four's Zio. Some Phantasy Star fans would argue that Lassic or Dark Force would be more popular, but Lassic was the villain in the original Phantasy Star game, one that had been played less than the later installments, and Dark Force was not quite a villain in itself, instead being the driving force behind the real villains' actions. So, Final Fantasy Seven had Sephiroth, and Phantasy Star Four had Zio. Sephiroth kills Aeris with a sword through her back, killing her quickly and efficiently, but with relatively little pain or suffering. Zio, however, shows his victim no such compassion. He lets loose a bit of black magic on them, letting them lay in bed for days, dying slowly, and being overtaken with sickness and anguish. To take his words and put them into plain English, Sephiroth wanted to trigger a catastrophe that would release an immense quantity of energy, yet not even singe one hair on his head, then go to the point where the concentration of that energy was at its peak, and just sit there and suck it up, not expecting to fall subject to radiation poisoning, burn wounds, or adverse effects of any sort. A little far-fetched, don't you think? Trying to smash a meteor into the ground and not only be completely unharmed by the resulting release of stellar radiation, but be transformed into a supernatural being by it.

Now, Zio, on the other hand, just wanted to kill people. He looked at the world and, in his mind, saw that it was made up of two kinds of people: those that believed in and followed the ways of Dark Force, and those that didn't. He would take the followers and let them rule the world, living in a paradise filled only with the "saved," and would take the non-believers and slaughter them all in cold blood. Compare Sephiroth's actions in Nibelheim to Zio's in Molcum. Sephiroth burned down towns because he was driven mad with confusion and anger, trying to come to grips with who he was, and falling victim to the "confused character" syndrome that plagues Squaresoft games like the Smallpox. Zio burned down towns just for fun, because he was bored and had nothing better to do, and because the people there didn't agree with him. Sephiroth didn't really know what he was doing, with his mind going a thousand different ways, running a mile a minute. Zio knew what he was doing. He just didn't care. In fact, he rather enjoyed it, as indicated by his speech to the heroes at the top of his fort when they show up on a rescue mission. So, in a nutshell, Sephiroth was actually rather pathetic, much like a two-year old child trying to explain to himself the world around him. Zio was just plain malevolent, like a mentally disturbed child with budding antisocial personality disorder, trying to explain to himself not so much the world around him as instead all the ways he can destroy it.

Oh, no, you don't think I'm done yet, do you? Let's look at Final Fantasy's name now. Webster's College Dictionary defines the word "Fantasy" as meaning "A supposition based on no solid foundation; visionary idea; illusion." At first glance, it seems fitting enough to the game, but if we look closer, we see that Final Fantasy is not as imaginative or, if you will, CREATIVE, as it seems. One of the oldest and longest-running aspects of the series that fans have come to know and love are the creatures that the heroes can call upon to aid them in battle. They've been called many things: Espers, Guardian Forces, Eidolons, or just "summoned creatures." One of the actions enjoyed by many fans is researching the names of these creatures, and finding out exactly where they come from. Upon doing so, one finds out that the names draw heavily from Scandinavian and Middle Eastern mythology. They are icons found in the holy scriptures, storybooks, or folktales of cultures such as the Vikings or the Hindus. So, it appears that Squaresoft has done a lot of research for their games. And, in doing so, have inadvertently voided the accuracy of the title. The games just lost an aspect of fantasy. Those summoned spirits aren't made-up or fantastical at all, in that they're not "based on no solid foundation." They are, indeed, based on a solid foundation, that foundation being the age-old traditions of past cultures. While the names are still names of mythological creatures, they weren't made up by the game's designers. They were simply stolen from their original creators to suit a corporation's need to rake in money from game players who blindly and all-too-readily accept the corporation's words as infallible truth. I've talked to some people who are avid Final Fantasy players about the use of the name "Ragnarok" for the vehicle in Final Fantasy Eight, and asked them if they knew what the word originally was. They smiled at me knowingly and said "Yeah, I know, it was actually an Esper in Final Fantasy Six, but they just wanted to include a reference to a previous game." These are the kind of people I would seriously like to strike upside the head as hard as I can for sheer ignorance. This illustrates my point perfectly: Squaresoft fans simply believe that Squaresoft can do no wrong, nor can it be wrong. Allow me to tell you, just to prove that I do in fact know the true meaning of the term, what the word "Ragnarok" means. In Scandinavian (also known as Norse) mythology, Ragnarok is the end of the world, comparable to the Christian "Apocalypse."

Now, time for one final comparison. That's right, I'm almost done torturing your precious series. You won't have to listen to the horrible truth too much longer. Now that we've assessed just how fantastical Final Fantasy actually is, let's take a look at one of the more recently developed role-playing video games, Sony's "The Legend of Dragoon." This game is much closer to a work of fantasy than Final Fantasy is. While the concepts of the Divine Tree of Life and the different races coming from it are similar to the religious beliefs of some cultures, they're not a blatant plagiarism thereof. And aside from the creation theories it puts forth to develop a history for its world, The Legend of Dragoon is a work of pure imagination and creativity. It's made up, plain and simple. If you look at the environments in The Legend of Dragoon (hereafter abbreviated TLoD), and compare them with those in Final Fantasy, you'll see that TLoD has a much more fantastical atmosphere to it than Final Fantasy has. The places the characters visit in TLoD much less resemble places in the real world, and vary much more from one another, than the drab, gloomy, depressing, and oftentimes plain ugly environments found in Final Fantasy. Even places that are supposed to look run-down or worn by age don't look very good in terms of sheer quality. Compare the "Law City" of Zenebatos in TLoD to the City of the Ancients in Final Fantasy Seven, and you see what I mean. When exploring Zenebatos, I found myself thinking "Wow, pretty impressive for an eleven-thousand-year-old governmental center." When exploring the City of the Ancients, I thought "This is it? The Cetra were supposed to be an enlightened, magically inclined race and THIS is the best they could accomplish? They couldn't even build it well enough to withstand the trials of time." And you can't use the games' publishing dates as an excuse, because when running around while in the actual game engine, backgrounds in both games were drawn by artists, meaning that technology levels had little to do with the games' presentation. But not only does the City of the Ancients look unimpressive, it looks unimaginative.

Here's my point: It's in a Final Fantasy game, and yet doesn't look fantastical at all. It looks like something one could expect to find at an archaeological dig that's being performed in a mountain range. The places you visit in TLoD, however, look nothing like what can be found in the real world. It seems to me like Squaresoft's logic is "We're going to make a fantasy game, everyone. But it should be realistic." That can hardly be called logic, as fantasy is supposed to be a work of pure imagination, and should not be anything like real life. Therein lies another of Final Fantasy's flaws.

I hope you have found my writing thought-provoking if nothing else. A note to those of you who are Final Fantasy fans and were yet open-minded enough to hear me out to the end: This is not intended to be hurtful or slanderous to you, as I know that if you're anything like me, you're video game players out looking to have fun playing the games you do. My intentions here were not to insult you, but to make you think. Think for yourself when you play games. When you go to your local video store to rent or buy a game and see a title published by Squaresoft, don't rent or buy it on faith that the little logo on the front automatically means it's good. Hell, just look at what Squaresoft did to Parasite Eve 2: they turned it into yet another "Resident Evil" clone. If you see a Squaresoft title that looks interesting, pick up the box and read the teaser on the back. Look at the screenshots. Look at the price tag. Think about what kind of game you were looking for. If you're unsure about buying it, go rent it first. Don't just act on blind faith. Remember, Squaresoft is a corporation, so their main objective, regardless of public image, is to make money. And with the upcoming release of the Final Fantasy movie that they've spent tens of millions of dollars on, they're going to be much more concerned about their financial standing than about your enjoyment of their games. If you buy a Squaresoft title, they make money regardless of whether or not you enjoy it. If you return it, Squaresoft doesn't give money back to the store. Why do you think stores' exchange policies are more rapidly going toward giving store credit instead of hard cash? But all other things aside: don't hold loyalty to a video game company. Hold loyalty to video games. If you like playing video games, play them. But if you only play Squaresoft or Final Fantasy games, you're limiting the amount of fun you can have. Those of you who say "Well, I want to support the company through the hard times" when you don't particularly enjoy a game aren't making any sense. Why support a company that makes what are, in your opinion, lousy games? Go out and find a new drug. Make the companies live up to your standards instead of altering your standards to ones they can live up to. Their fate lies in your hands, so they better impress you, or else! I think I made a pretty strong case, but if you can find something I missed, that means that there's room for improvement and it gives me an idea of where to go next. The website you're reading this editorial on probably has a hyperlink to my E-mail address for you to click on if you want to send me a message, but in case they don't, you can contact me at celticwhisper_d@hotmail.com. If you have something to say, for goodness' sake, say it! Like I said, I'll never get better unless I can get feedback from people who read my writings. Once again, thank you for hearing me out, and good night.