Final Fantasy XIII and the religion
Lightning strikes
Final Fantasy XIII is my first Final Fantasy game ever. Usually when i tell people that i have never played Final Fantasy they look at me in bewilderment, consider if i should be medicated, and then usually just walk away. But its true. For some reason i have never had the opportunity to play Final Fantasy. Thats why i, now that i have the chance, immediately bought the latest game when it came out and digged into it. I have now played it for a bunch of hours, enough that i feel i can let people know my opinion about it.
First off, i must say that the game is absolutely breathtaking graphically. The cutscenes leave me in awe when they are done, and the actual play graphics is some of the most awesome i have seen in a long time, if ever. The style is japanese, and that means that all the girls have short skirts and huge eyes, while the men are big muscled and weirdly masculine in a gay way.
The gameplay mechanics of the game are however not something i am in awe about. I actually find them a bit boring, BUT i am well aware that its because i am not used to the japanese rpg style of games. So all i can say is that, its not exactly my cup of tea, but i understand that a lot of people love it. Having little to no experience with JRPG’s before, i feel that i shouldn’t say much more about that.
Story and religion
However i will say something about the story – don’t worry, i won’t spoil. What strikes me about the story is just how much religion is embedded in it. It might not be obvious to most people, but a game that incorporates “spirits” that protect/attack humans, set in a mythical world, bears a LOT of resemblance to the japanese religion Shinto. Here the belief is that spirits can inhabit all parts of the world, and therefore should be given respect. Even though Final Fantasy XIII doesn’t directly use Shinto elements, it has a lot of the moral and ethical systems inherent in this. But thats not really big news. This has been done in japanese cartoons for a long time, especially in the awesome animated movies of Hayao Miyazaki.
Other things struck me about the story. All the main characters are cliches taken to the extreme. They all embody a human emotion/aspect. Snow is love, Lightning is anger, Vanille is innocence, Hope is fear and later bravery, and so on. They are all taken to extremes, which, forexample, makes Vanille the most annoying character i have EVER encountered in a video game. But alas, i can’t remove her from the game.
The plot and story is not something i will talk about here in an attempt to keep this post spoiler free, but i will say that so far it has been a very imaginative world, but extremely linear experience. I have absolutely no sense of agency in the world, meaning that i don’t feel that my actions has any impact on the world at all. The story will run its course, with its awesome cutscenes, in a very linear way.
Linearity – follow the line please
Finally the linearity of the game has struck me as odd. It gets better about 30 hours into the game, but still it is no where near the ‘open-world’ experience i have gotten from other modern RPG’s, and have been told that earlier versions of Final Fantasy also provided. So i can’t help wonder how much of the game has ended up on harddrives at Square Enix never to be published, or if all of this is in fact because they wanted a very linear story? I don’t know. I can however say that, even though it is very linear, the game is definitely worth playing. The AMAZING cutscenes just makes the game worth it. Of course, if all i wanted was amazing visuals, i could just buy the latest animated blu-ray movie from Pixar – but hey, i wanted to join the Final Fantasy playerbase, okay!
Yea, there has been discussions about why jRPG’s are the way they are, and how that is contributing to their decline in popularity over the years. The fact that they do not evolve, they do not progress as a medium, they have a set game style and they refuse to change that in any shape or form. The reality of course is that the world has changed and turn based combat, initially created of course due to the technical limitations of the hardware in the past, is not something that the public desires at all anymore. While in Japan this still may be fairly huge I see jRPG’s going the same way adventure games did, or the traditional music industry for that matter, representations of markets that refused to adapt to the changing times.
But yes, with all their terminal faults these games sure as hell are pretty :)
Yeah they do seem a bit outdated. But one shouldn’t rule out games just because they don’t evolve. LOTS of boardgames haven’t been changed in many many MANY years and they are still being played now.
I am not Japanese, have never been to Japan, know any japanese, or can in anyway speak on behalf of the people living there…. but…. perhaps they just prefer that style of playing? I mean, if its a convention of how they play the games, then perhaps they would complain if the style suddenly changes. Imagine if everyone started making FPS games turn based – that would create an enormous uproar. Perhaps its the same with the JRPG’s. Also the developers don’t really have any incentive to change it. I mean, Japan apparently prefers games like that, and us westerns buy them anyway – so why spend time and effort to change it?
Also – about adventure games. Notice how they are storming back on the scene right now?