Final Fantasy as a Military Science Fiction.

I'm wondering what anyone would think of Final Fantasy being written as a military science fiction?

These days, Final Fantasy has as much sci fi as it does fantasy. 6 and 7 were both Dungeon Punk, for example, with shades of Steampunk and Cyberpunk respectively; 4 had a trip to the moon, etc. 1-3 were the only ones ISO Fantasy Standard, and even 1 had sci fi level Lost Technology in the form of the War Mech enemy and an Advanced Ancient Acropolis area. F.F. is more or less it's own blend of Speculative Fiction. So your idea is quite viable.

edited 24th Oct '14 12:00:25 PM by dvorak

The problem is that many ideas central to FF just don't make any kind of sense in a military-sci-fi context. The one time they tried to fix a few of those (The Spirits Within) the reaction they got was pretty much universally "It's kinda okay but it's not FF".

To Matt Striker.

What do you mean? While the F Inal Fantasy series is certainly fantastical (and at times juvenile), the concepts of warfare and the military certainly still apply. After all, FF 7 and FF 8 both involved military characters.

For starters, the games' eternal insistence on bringing swords to a gunfight. No matter how cool it looks, melee weapons won't have much of a role in any kind of sci-fi military unless you specifically set up the rules of the universe in such a way to make it viable (Dune being the best-known example there), and that results in further logical holes because even then a lot of things would still be more useful than swords.

The way modern(ish) firearms and swords coexist in the FF games simply makes no sense beyond Rule of Cool, and one of the main "rules" of military sci-fi is that Rule of Cool needs to take a back seat.

As for the military characters, well...the closest to that I've seen is the cast of FF VIII and even those were Mildly Military at best. For the most part, any military force portrayed in any even remotely realistic light exists only to supply Mooks for the major characters to slaughter without any apparent effort.

Don't get me wrong, I like Final Fantasy. Some of the games are very much in my favorite-games-ever list and even the weakest of them are still entertaining.

But shoehorning them into a genre they just don't fit into is probably not a particularly viable idea. It's kinda like making a Rom Com out of Silent Hill.

edited 21st Oct '14 7:13:32 AM by MattStriker

@ Matt I thought the big problem to Spirits Within was the Uncanny Valley CGI models. Although I can see your point. The F.F. 'verse has four constants; Magic, Moogles, Chocobos, and Heroes Prefer Swords, all of wich were absent from that film.

edited 21st Oct '14 10:19:46 AM by dvorak

Well, at least they had a Cid.

Ok five then. How did i forget Cid?

Matt Striker, have you looked up 'Fight Club Rom Com'? You should if you haven't - with a bit of editing, you can twist pretty much anything into anything else. ...thinking about it, I'm a little surprised that no one's ever made a 'Silent Hill Rom Com' video.

Coinage, what exactly did you have in mind with your first post? Matt Striker is right about the feasibility of proper sci-mil shoved into existing Final Fantasy games and settings... But if you just want to create a FF-based RPG structure around military battles (or that Nazi Superhuman thing you had going on a while back), that might be a different thing entirely. I don't think you had Advance Wars in mind, though...

I mean, Metal Gear Solid as a turn-based RPG isn't too farfetched (just barely feasible as milfic, if you're careful), the difference being that the Quirky Mini Boss Squad would be your party, and the mooks they fight are all Solid Snake. (And all completely identical, too. Ba-dum ting.)

Well, I was thinking about world-building. The idea was to take all the tropes that are common to all Final Fantasy series (super-soldiers; magic, etc...) and find a way to incorporate them into a world that made sense. For instance, since guns exist, modern-military science would exist as well. Wars, and especially the asymmetrical warfare waged by many of the resistance movements.

How would magic be incorporated? The closest "origin" I've heard is either exposure to some form of extra-terrestrial biological entity (Jenova Cells to "Final Fantasy VII"; Fal'cie brands in Final Fantasy XII).

My goal was, well, not to sound too arrogant, but my goal was to find a way to take "Final Fantasy" seriously again. I guess I've been watching the Spoony Experiment too much. I like some of the ideas and art design, but aspects of the world-building (and especially characterization) seem to be lacking in many of the stories.

edited 21st Oct '14 5:20:47 PM by Coinage

Personally, i should think the best way to have magic in a modern setting was the way they did it in 6, 7, and 9-the result of rigourous experimentation with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, either through stealing it from Pure Magic Beings or exposure to Mako (not Jenova cells; those just make people better at magic and crazy and biologically improbable) or distilled Miasma.

edited 22nd Oct '14 3:52:09 AM by dvorak

Just mix your favourite elements from each game, throw them into a blender, and reap the results.

You might end up with the epic story of Firion Strife, a fifteen year old orphan who is recruited into the army by an old man named Cid to become a pilot of the (in)famous Red Wings for the Kingdom of Tycoon. So, Firion leaves, but on his way he meets a mysterious woman with the power to summon powerful creatures. But of course, the evil Empress Ultimecia of Alexandria wants to kidnap that girl (who is secretly the princess of a constitutional monarchy) to use her summoned beasts as weapons of mass destruction... and to cause Time Compression because reasons.

Along the way, he discovers he was chosen one by one of the four legendary crystals and thus, he is the only one who can save the world from the evil warlock Exkefka. Who is also a tree (it makes sense in context).

Anyway, you could easily incorporate some of the "classic" Final Fantasy elements by bending the rules. Remember, it doesn't matter if it's realistic as long as it's believable.

E.g. Some nations still use cavalry in war, but instead of horses they use Chocobos; soldiers carry swords besides their bullets because they're enchanted and that's the only thing that can kill Malboros and/or Tonberries; the militaries were able to synthesize magic but their version is much weaker than that from real users (think witches in FF 8).

Hm... how about this: an aging-up of Final Fantasy VI.

The story takes place in a more modern world with so many restrictions on guns (except in that one country, that everyone is pretty sure is trying to take over the world and become a One World Empire or something) that they are uncommon as weapons. The War of the Espers happened in the past, but that was such a long time ago that everyone sees it as a myth.

Guns and tanks are as effective there as they are in the real world, but not air power. The sky is full of surprisingly intelligent and crafty creatures who see supersonic speed-capable flying machines as a threat - relatively larger and slower airships get a pass, but because of their speed are not effective as combat platforms beyond scouting and spying. Take out rapid first-strike capabilities, and you're stuck in WWII-era tactics.

That 'Southern Empire' is probably staying that way due to its Navy (which is something I would've liked to see in the real FF 6), yeah? Control of international shipping is somewhat easier than air traffic, and you could probably still have cultural limits and exchange similar to what we see in our world.

Suddenly, magic!

It's a force that exists in the beasts of the world, but not in humans. It doesn't rely on ammunition or tensile strength or durability, and so one magic-attuned human could ignore most to all attacks that don't exceed a certain amount of damage.

The question being, how do you deal that damage?

From magically-attuned devices and weapons (or from a gun big enough to actually hurt, like an cannon - and enough magic pumped into defensive purposes would negate even that). Every weapon in the game does damage based on how 'magical' it is, and there is a huge effort during the course of the game to produce more and more magically-effective weapons. You can make magical bullets, of course, but given how limited magic is, it'd make more sense to have a reusable weapon - hence, mostly melee weapons. Edgar would have to spend so much time recovering and repairing Auto-Crossbow bolt heads that he'd completely stop using it around the time he reunites with Sabin.

Terra, being half-Esper, would probably be called something like 'Fully Fortified Human #1'. Celes, Kefka, and Leo (natural humans who have undergone a process to have abilities similar to FFH-1) would be 'Semi-Fortified Humans'. The others (including Mog and Umaro), who get their powers externally through the game, would be 'Quasi Fortified Humans' (no hyphen, as they are similar to Fortified Humans without having been being Fortified).

So the rest of the world is a lot like Japan? Basically, they spend their money on infrastructure and their economy and entertainment. That works.

Guns and tanks are as effective there as they are in the real world, but not air power. The sky is full of surprisingly intelligent and crafty creatures who see supersonic speed-capable flying machines as a threat - relatively larger and slower airships get a pass, but because of their speed are not effective as combat platforms beyond scouting and spying. Take out rapid first-strike capabilities, and you're stuck in WWII-era tactics.

What about space is inhabited by strange creatures? I am thinking about oh, I don't know, sentient thunderstorms? Perhaps the upper atmosphere is inhabited by semi-sentient beings that feed off of sunlight. They are attracted to any energy source, so anything powerful enough to produce the thrust necessary for, say, propeller jets is immediately drained or something. Perhaps, some sort of sentient ozone layer or something.