Final Fantasy general

Speaking of Final Fantasy XVI, when did you think it'll come out?

P.S. No lame "lol 2057 release" jokes please.

Naughty, naughty.

Edited by superboy313 on Dec 4th 2018 at 12:34:04 AM

lol 2056 release

I expect FFXVI around 2022.

It's hard to say until we hear more about FF 7 remake. I'm thinking 2023 though.

Why was Spirits Within such a huge flop?

It was boring. Like really, really boring.

That's what I've heard, yeah, but why did it tank so hard at the box office?

Basically...

• Had nothing to do with the games barring maybe a chocobo cameo and the title.
• Actors who phoned it in (and considering this had the likes of Ming-Na Wen, Donald Sutherland, James Woods, Alec Baldwin and Keith David , that's kinda sad. At least Keith David came out of it good since he voiced Chaos in Dissidia. Kinda like what happened with James Marsters in Dragonball Evolution)
• Aki Ross going from a non-sexualized dignified scientist protag to ending on the cover of a man amgazine in a bikini is kinda dumb
• It really did just feel like a generic sci-fi film rather than, well, Final Fantasy.

Space Ghosts too.

I'm surprised they didn't make a tie in game

If they carry on like they have been, I expect FFXVI to be announced some time in the next couple of years, then they'll spend the following three years marketing VIIR before they actually start developing XVI. Actual release will be about 2026.

Edited by artfulscruff on Dec 5th 2018 at 5:12:12 PM

You do know that SE has multiple development teams, right?

Yeah, they COULD be making FFXVI. They just haven't announced it.

I fully expect them to be working on it but its very likely stuck in development hell like every other big in-house Square game has been since FFXII.

Spirits Within took part of the concept from Final Fantasy VII (the Lifestream), crammed it into a post-apocalyptic future sci-fi version of Earth, threw in a bunch of incredibly generic characters where the actors were phoning it in (and directed by a man who had literally never directed anything like that before) and honestly wasn't anything new beyond being a full CGI movie that was aimed at adults. Where it promptly fell into the assumption that animated stuff is for kids.

The whole "Aki Ross, digital actress" thing kind of weirded people out, and the main thing they had to bank on wasn't a selling point for general audiences who had never heard of Final Fantasy. "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" is not a good title, especially for people who don't know what that is. I think if they had separated it out from Final Fantasy, put some effort into the voice direction and making it at least a bit original, it might have done better.

The only other thing Square Pictures ever made was The Final Flight of the Osiris for the Animatrix and...well, it's not one of the shorts anyone really remembers or cares about.

Edited by Zendervai on Dec 5th 2018 at 3:14:06 PM

It's kind of a shame it bombed, since conceptually it followed Square's philosophy for Final Fantasy properties at the time - aside from the occassional callback or reference to the series's legacy, most of the ideas and concepts presented would be their own with very little influence or overt facets of the rest of the franchise.

And it bombing made them incredibly risk averse and has led to all the mobile games, spinoffs, and even mainline entry titles constantly clawing for nostalgia as a crutch.

It is worth noting though that it didn't happen all at once. I don't think XII or XIII are particularly cloying when it comes to calling back on past titles.

Frankly, the Spirits Within is proof that Hironobu Sakaguchi is NOT the master storyteller people make him out to be and him returning to Square Enix wouldn't solve a goddamn thing.

And just like every game since FFXII, you're expecting it to be a terrible game on every level since FFXII?

Sakaguchi is past his prime. The last thing he did that people cared about (excluding Tera Battle, which is a japan-only thing for the most part) was Lost Odyssey, and the actually good writing in the game was mostly thanks to Kiyoshi Shigematsu, an actual mainstream japanese novelist. He did make the great decision of working with him though, as well as getting Takehiko Inoue to do the art. Too bad the character models don't really capture Inoue's art style all that well.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Dec 5th 2018 at 7:31:34 AM

I don't think Spirits Within had a problem with being its own Final Fantasy world. I mean it was kind of similar to the world of XIII, as I recall.

It just was boring as all hell and had a plot that was pretty boring. Aki doesn't even defeat James Woods. He just spams the Zeus Cannon until he dies.

I will say that I was tickled by James Woods playing another character that winds up whining about Zeus, though.

You mean the General?

I'm sad he didn't burst into flames at one point.

Yeah, I'm not defending the film's quality at all. It was awful.

But a lot of people go on about how it's not Final Fantasy, but I feel like that was the point. It didn't need to nebulously be Final Fantasy - it was an original fantasy setting that wasn't leaning on brand recognition outside its name, and that's respectable that they trusted in it to be that.

Edited by Hashil on Dec 5th 2018 at 4:28:33 AM

Maybe, but at some point it can feel so disconnected to the usual style and tone of FF that it's meaningless to even call it that. Except to give it more attention. You could say it's respectable that it was willing to be its own thing depite the name, but I could turn that around and say that if it is its own thing, then calling Final Fantasy could mean they weren't confident in it, and thought it needed to piggyback off an unrelated brand to get attention.

That's the whole series, to be fair. What does VII have in common with VI aside from a few monsters, spell names, and summons?

Or especially XIII and XV to the rest of the series.

Tonally XII is a political drama and war story that is completely different from every other game's JRPG colored character focused narrative.

I'll give you that Spirits Within was an even greater departure than arguably even XII, but Final Fantasy hasn't been anything more than a brand name since VII.

You could say it's been a brand name since the very beginning. Pretty much all FF games are fundamentally different from each other.