Not by The Square On My Chinny Chin Chin

by Andrew Spaulding (cleverbeans)

Let’s say that you are at a doctor’s office. You’re in the lobby perusing the magazine racks so you can look at the cheap smut in seventeen magazine ads. You reach for one hastily because you want to sit down again but, lo and behold, you’ve accidentally grabbed “the three little pigs” from the kids book rack. It’s too late; you’ve sat down in the nice cushy comfy chair that everyone in the office was eyeing. So you decide that this book will have to suffice. You open its cover that has been smudged by countless grubby little hands and begin to read: The three pigs move out. The first builds a straw house. The second builds with sticks. The third with brick. Then the big bad wolf comes and blows down the straw house. Then he huffs and puffs and tries to blow down the . . . brick house? Wait . . . where did the second pig’s house go? You try to shake any loose pages out of the book, but only find that it has been used as a pantry for the boogers of two year olds. Where did the middle section go? I’d argue that the razing of the stick house was the best part; I’m surprised that the wolf manages to blow it over every time I read the book. Sticks are pretty sturdy.

Ok, so what do farm animals like pigs have to do with any video game besides Harvest Moon? Well, let’s add about nine characters, each of them with back stories. Give the big bad wolf a silvery mane, a black trench coat, and superhuman strength instead of engorged lungs. Finally, let’s make the plot about a hundred and thirty-two times more intricate and difficult to understand. Now instead of having grabbed the three little pig’s booklet without middle pages, you have grabbed the entire story of any Final Fantasy, without middle pages.

What’s my point? None of the Final Fantasy games on either of the Playstation systems have lived up to the potential that they could have, they all had various blemishes that should not have been overlooked by their creators. I’m not bashing the games by any means, Final Fantasy VII is one of my all time favorites, and I would be the first to say that. However, Squaresoft has developed a nasty habit of leaving us hanging in the plot department. Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII and IX, and Final Fantasy X all had glaring flaws that were either never explained or never expanded upon. “OH my stars! Did he just say that? I can’t believe that . . . of all the . . . what gall!” Similar to any book that has missing pages, most of the recent Final Fantasy’s have had confused plots, poor dialogue, and poor character development.

Having played FF VII on the inferior Eidos release for the computer (I can’t believe I bought the N64 instead of the psx) and having played it my junior year of high school, I’ll admit that I had to take shortcuts and rush through it. Unfortunately, when I had time to trudge through the crazy plot a second and third time, the CDs were scratched and my game froze (right when Tifa wakes up to see the meteor, GAH!). I did not see the Zack/Cloud scene in the basement of the mansion the first time around, nor did I read the books in the basement library. Frankly, the average player wouldn’t have even thought to go into the library, let alone take the time to go back to Nibelheim to see the cutscene in the first place. Cloud's back story is what makes this game different from most other RPG's: its deep, it’s intelligent, and it’s fresh. However, Squaresoft manages to screw up the story by (I’ll use my “three little pigs” analogy again) not producing the middle pages of the plot. We weren’t forced to go into the Nibelheim mansion basement for a second time to see the Zack/Cloud movie or read the books; both of these events are completely optional, but by no means superfluous. These aspects of the game should be in the forefront, I shouldn’t have to wander around aimlessly looking for extra cutscenes just so I understand the main plot. What cues does the game give us to make us go back to Nibelheim? There are none, we can only go there based upon what friends tell us. The last time my friend told me that I could do something cool on a video game was fruitless; by the way, there is no code to see princess toadstool naked.

Some may argue that showing the gamer these cutscenes outright would make the game linear and boring; i.e. part of the fun of the game is finding these plot points all on your own. Well, I would agree, but what about the Yuffie and Vincent subplots? It’s not even necessary to get these characters, let alone see their back history. These and the different weapons, materia, and chocobo racing were supposed to tide all of the RPG fanatics over. Cloud’s plot is what the entire game revolves around, and if you don’t have a perfect understanding of the main plot by the end of the game, there really isn’t any need for a game at all!

Then the game has the wonderful dialogue (By wonderful I mean appalling). The game never busted out the old “all your base are belong to us”, but the dialogue definitely had a certain lack of eloquence. With such a deep and engrossing plot, one would think they could make Barret a bit more than a stereotypical angry black man or make the conflict between Tifa’s and Cloud’s memories a bit more prominent when they speak to each other. The biggest flaws with the script were the vague references to how Sephiroth managed to “flip out and kill people” with his real ultimate power, when his body was in the northern crater. Some say that JENOVA took his place; some say that his clones took his place; some say it was the real Sephiroth in a metaphysical voodoo, mind control sort of way. Any of these explanations are plausible, which is where the problem lies. Why should we have to come up with two or three theories of how he did it when Square is telling the story?

Ultimately, to understand why Sephiroth is such a crazy mofo, or why Cloud is socomtohgnar (I seriously did not make this word up, it means: so completely and totally gnarly), we should have better dialogue and events which are pertinent to the plot to be handed to us instead of dug for. The game is inherently flawed because the gamer has to think extra hard about the difficult plotline before he can even begin to think hard about the themes. However, it is still the best of the Final Fantasy games on both Playstations, that’s why I’m being most critical of it. Its tough love, baby! Unfortunately, I can’t say that I love both of the next two sequels. FF VIII and IX were B minuses at best.

Whenever I have intellectual (read: nerdy) discussions about Final Fantasy with my roommate, we both agree that Final Fantasy VIII and IX were the growing pains of the Playstation Final Fantasies. VIII was when Square decided to focus all its energy on a plot, and absolutely no energy on character development. Think about it, Final Fantasy VIII has a pretty decent plot, but you never really care about what is happening to the characters because they come across just as interesting as corn-on-the-cob with no butter. It would have seemed perfectly natural that Edea was being controlled by a witch in the future, if she had been developed more; but she wasn’t developed more, and many people think she’s a crazy ho-bag as well as a poorly fashioned character for the entirety of the game. Plus the music of FF VIII was so boring, aside from the brilliant “Liberi Fatali”, that it sounded like Nobuo Uematsu had been abducted and replaced with Al Gore. Final Fantasy IX on the other hand spent all of its time focusing on character development. The dialogue in the game is fantastic, virtually no “engrish”, and they never translated “beer” to “juice” to “protect our feeble minds” like in old Super Nintendo RPGs. Then the inclusion of Active Time Events brought another dimension to the characters, you could see what they were thinking and doing at the same time as your playable character. This made the other characters seem like they had their own agendas and ideas instead of blindly following the leader. However, I’m sure everyone who has played Final Fantasy IX will agree with me: This game has more plot holes than Swiss cheese . . . that’s been shot point blank with a shotgun . . . and stabbed a couple times with a big pointy stick.

Let me replay the scene that went on in my basement at the end of this game, the first time I played it: “YEAH! Take that Kuja! Jeremy!!!! (my brother) Come and watch the end with me! Wait . . . what? Who is . . . ? Where did he come from? Why is he quoting Star Wars? I’m confused. My head, arrrgh!!!” and then my head exploded from the confusion of this completely nonsensical final boss.

When I beat Final Fantasy IX, I thought it was very reminiscent of the last half of Jurrasic Park: The Lost World. The writers of that movie probably never stopped to consider that a Tyrannosaurus Rex in San Diego made as much sense as people peeing on the toilet paper in public restrooms (you know who you are, I’m going to hunt you down, jerk). I’m guessing the Square writers pulled the same nonsense; they had a good idea for an ending (I loved the ending despite the glaring problems) and duct taped it in to let everyone know that it was all hunky-dory in the kingdom of Alexandria. Well, it wasn’t hunky dory for me! Where the heck did that last boss come from? And why were there seven Vivi children at the end? Why was Dagger’s hair long in the FMV at the end? How long did it take for Zidane to return from the Iifa tree and why did it take so long? WHY DID NOBUO UEMATSU WRITE THAT HORRID, HORRID SONG AT THE END?! The answer to these questions is like the answer to why anyone would enjoy Michael Bolton’s music, there is absolutely no reason. Square didn’t explain anything at all, thus our entire attachment to the characters, that they spent so hard working on, was lost in the confusion of the plot. These two games were fun to play, but they are definitely not going down in the history books as classics. Square learned from these games though, and went on to produce the first Final Fantasy on the Playstation two, Final Fantasy X.

Final Fantasy X was excellent; I think that its plot is one of the strongest and most coherent out of the past three games Square has released in the FF series. But the problem is that Final Fantasy X is as straightforward as Angela Lansbury’s butt is wrinkly. If I had to find any more of a linear game on the face of the earth I would probably end up with Tetris, or maybe the original Gauntlet for the Nintendo; yeah, the one with fifty billion of the exact same levels. I’m not just talking linearity of the plot; I’m talking Characters, dialogue, even the fighting engine.

The plot was fantastic, everything was explained, and no one goes home unhappy (unless you cried at the ending, like a few people I know). However, the plot dealt with its themes of love, parenthood, and religion with white gloves and pursed lips. It never went much further into the deep end than a three year old with orange water-wings. For example, they could have made the relationship between Tidus and his father a little more explosive. Whenever they wanted the player to see how verbally abusive Tidus’ father was they showed a flashback of Tidus learning how to play blitz ball with his father. Yeah . . . last time I checked, playing a sport with your son was not abusive. They could have also gone all the way and ripped a new hole in organized religion’s patooties, but Square decided to hold back to avoid a religious backlash. Maybe understandable from their point of view, but I would have preferred them to take some chances and go all the way.

The characters were linear too. Each of them were fully developed characters, but they lacked dimension. Tidus was whiney until the very end. Auron was grouchy . . . as was Kimahri . . . as was Lulu. Rikku was always annoying. The only character that really ever changed was Yuna. Unfortunately, the powerful transition from silent, compliant girl to leader matron was lost in the lack of emotion in her voice actor’s voice. The characters never fell as low as the bland-as-grits characters in FF VIII, but never quite scratched the surface of FF VII and IX. They were middle of the road, typical RPG heroes. The few scenes of brilliance were dulled by the poor voice acting, but the character concepts and pretty good dialogue kept them from falling prey to the Breath of Fire I and II curse (no dimensional characters).

All in all, I love every Final Fantasy game ever produced. They are all phenomenal pieces of art, but something tells me that Square still views these games as just video games for kids. Only in the past few years has the company realized that RPG’s are not played by the everyday six year old who doesn’t understand such abstract concepts as love, death, and giant birds that you can ride. With the switch to the Playstation (and even before in FF VI / III), Square began writing these abstract concepts into their plots, but there is still that feeling of being held back by a giant rubber band: the further we stretch it, the further back we are flung. Each time Square pushes the boundaries of its RPG’s they are shot back and have the same problems as before.

Final Fantasy VII began a precedent that set the stage for the games to follow it, but instead of improving upon the glaring flaws of Final Fantasy VII, Square has gone consistently downhill. Square continually produces the same problems in Final Fantasy VII: a confusion of plot points, poor dialogue, and incomplete character sketches. I’ve noted many problems with each game, but as you’ve seen, every game has a positive aspect that the previous doesn’t. FF VII was the most balanced as far as overall fun-ness, but we still had to deal with its incompleteness and confusion of plot. FF VIII had a decent plot with poor character sketches. FF IX had great character sketches with a poor plot. FF X seemed like a combination of all of the good points in the others, but ended up being a jack of all trades, master of none.

Final Fantasy XI shows that Square might be on the brink of turning this wonderful franchise that we compare every other RPG to, into a cash crop. (“Ooh, an MMORPG? Brand that bad boy with Final Fantasy and people will eat it up!”) The same goes for Final Fantasy X-2. On the other hand, maybe with the announcement of Final Fantasy XII and Crystal Chronicles, we see a glimmer of hope. Perhaps Final Fantasy XII, which is being worked on by Hiroyuki Itou (director of FF IX) and Yasumi Matsuno (director of FF tactics and Vagrant Story) both of whom will be reporting to Sakaguchi, will learn the lessons from the flaws that marred all of the previous games.

Using the three little pigs as an analogy with the Final Fantasy series is certainly a bit ludicrous, but it was simple enough to get the point across: Square should heed the advice that the sales of their last few games have shown it. When they strayed from the brilliant (albeit flawed) Final Fantasy VII they began to lose money. Only recently, with a much better plot and character development (and a clever marketing ploy), in Final Fantasy X has Square gained back its sales. Now that Square has merged with Enix, it seems like things are looking up. Hopefully from now on they’ll be saying “not by the hair on our chinny-chin-chins” to the big bad flaws that are huffing and puffing on their brick house. (Yeah, I know that’s lame) Square-Enix needs to sit and think about this next game and what direction they want it to go. Instead of releasing games to the riff-raff, they need to realize that people like you and I take these games as seriously as art, movies, and literature. So, I’ll sit, and wait, maybe play Chrono Trigger for the fiftieth time, and continue to create the perfect Final Fantasy in my head. Don’t worry; it doesn’t involve the three little pigs.