Square Enix announced Final Fantasy Versus XIII way back at E3 in 2006, along with its peers Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII. Since then, both vanilla XIII and Agito have actually seen release -- Agito under the new name "Type-0" -- and the former has even enjoyed a recent sequel. Yet Versus remains nowhere to be seen; Square didn't even bother teasing it at last year's Tokyo Game Show.
Now, six years after its initial announcement, Versus is finally start to exhibit signs that... well, maybe not that a release is imminent, but at least that Square is ready to start showing it off in earnest. A few days ago, the company published trailer revealing that the next music pack for 3DS rhythm title Theatrhythm Final Fantasy will include Yoko Shimomura's vocal theme for Versus, "Somnus." And now there are rumblings that news about the game itself is due soon. That's nice, but we can't help but wonder: Is it too late?
Six years is a long time in video games. The current console generation has lasted longer than any before it, but the initial Versus announcement predates the launch of the PlayStation 3 yet is beginning to run the very real risk of not seeing release until the system's successor has hit the market. At this point, we don't doubt that Square will eventually drag the thing to shelves at some point; the real question, however, is whether or not anyone will still care. Long-delayed software doesn't have the most encouraging track record, as last year's Duke Nukem Forever fiasco demonstrated. Hopes, hype, promises, and expectations add up to cast a shadow over belated releases. Even masterpieces have been known to falter under such preconceptions; maybe that's not fair to those games, but it's simply the nature of things.
Versus doesn't simply carry the weight of six years of expectation -- more likely seven by the time it actually comes out -- it also bears the stigma of how unhappy long-time fans have been with the Final Fantasy games released in that time. If the series were at the peak of its popularity, Versus could afford to be an expensive flop. But to many fans, it's the franchise's last chance to prove itself, and if this game -- the one into which Square Enix's A-team has sunk so many dollars and years into creating -- can't uphold the standards associated with the name "Final Fantasy," then maybe (they feel) that name doesn't mean anything anymore. With so much riding on its shoulders, how can Versus possibly fulfill its mandate and keep fans happy and loyal? Here are three key points the game needs to hit -- and not just just hit, but totally nail. Final Fantasy Versus XIII Spot Art
Relatable charactersWe were going to say, "A great story," but that's probably a tall order. Versus XIII is the product of the Kingdom Hearts creative team, a group of people (led by designer Tetsuya Nomura) who have managed to transform a series about the heroic adventures of Disney characters into a baroque, incomprehensible mess of vague plot allusions, dual identities, and nebulous motives. Kingdom Hearts' plot has become a litmus test for compulsive liars: If someone says they understand it, they clearly are one. To make matters worse, Versus XIII shares a common framework (though not a world itself) with XIII and Type-0, neither of which have the most accessible narratives (and XIII-2's plot definitely muddied the waters even further).
In lieu of a comprehensible story, we'll settle for decent characters. After all, characters are at the heart of a good tale; a story need not be great if its cast is sympathetic and consistent. Again, Square's recent releases haven't been scoring clean victories on this front, but we're willing to give Versus the benefit of a doubt. Its leading man, Noctis, definitely didn't make a good first impression; for years, promo material for the game consisted of him sulking on a throne in a sterile-looking modern city before taciturnly mowing down an army of soldiers without any apparent effort -- not really the sort of imagery that elicits sympathy. We've since seen a little more of Noctis, and the layers that have peeled away have revealed a character who no longer seems entirely insufferable; he interacts with pretty ladies, rides around in a chauffeured car, and hangs out with a team immaculately groomed young men in cool clothes. OK, that's still pretty insufferable.
Whatever Square decides to do with Noctis, he needs to be likable. Final Fantasy has tended to go in the opposite direction ever since Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife, who started out as a cocky-but-affable guy but has since been reinterpreted as a mopey basket case. For some strange reason, the franchise's writers seem to have latched onto the mistaken idea that Cloud was popular because he had an identity crisis when in fact everyone loved him because he was cool and confident, and once he'd worked through his identity crisis he was a little more humble but no less capable or determined. On the other hand, XIII's cast featured a few well-written stand-outs, including the surprising Hope Estheim (who began as possibly the most grating twerp in series' history but ultimately grew into a respectable character). Versus faces an uphill battle... but not an impossible one, especially since cut scenes are being shaped by FFXII's Jun Akiyama, whose characters felt more like real people than the anime puppets of XIII.
Smooth play mechanics
It's not enough for Versus to present a decent story; it needs to play well, too. What very little we've seen of the game in action hints at a Kingdom Hearts-like combat system, where AI-controlled partner characters join the player in real-time battles on an open field. Attacks knock foes into the sky, allowing for hovering aerial combos. Noctis' companions appear to specialize in different weapons -- including a blond guy in glasses who totes guns -- and those brief glimpses of footage include images of the ability to swap between lead characters as well. The blond guy in question, whose name Prompto makes him sound like an escapee from a Shakespeare play, reportedly grants the ability to turn Versus into something of a third-person shooter with precision targeting. Kingdom Hearts is a decent enough base for real-time combat mechanics, as seems to be the case here, though it certainly offers plenty of room for refinement. Its combo mechanics amount to shallow button-mashing, a simplified take on the likes of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. I don't mean to suggest Versus is obligated to adopt quite so involved a design as those other games, Square would do well to consider investing more depth into its combat than stringing together hits topped with a magic spell or triangle-button flourish. The further they can take Versus' play style away from XIII's -- which is to say, make it require more player engagement rather than less -- the more likely disenfranchised fans are to be drawn to the game. The structure of the game also needs to be less canned than Kingdom Hearts, which almost invariably amounts to hub > cutscene > monster closet > cutscene > hall > cutscene > monster closet > repeat.
It's possible a hint of Versus' combat style can be divined from its cousin Type-0, which also features real-time combat with AI-driven characters sporting diverse weapons, but hopefully not. While Type-0 is a great-looking portable game, its battles feel curiously detached -- not quite reducing the player to spectator, but definitely abstracting the overall experience. Versus needs to deliver a more convincing sensation of force and weight than that.
Quintessential "Final Fantasy"-ness
Most of all, what Versus needs to feel like is, simply, Final Fantasy. Many gamers have found recent entries lacking the ineffable classic essence of the series, whatever that may be. Square has been peddling the superficies of the franchise, the crystals and spells and summoned monsters and porcelain-skinned heroes with perfectly feathered hair, but the RPG experience that created so many fans with games like Final Fantasy VII and X has been in absence. Players complained long and loud about the lack of features like towns and character armor in XIII; and while to some degree those criticisms were often a case of gamers getting hung up on trivial details, they spoke to a growing dissatisfaction with how the overall Final Fantasy experience has changed over the years.
In fairness, the series has been about striking new directions since its very first sequel. On the other hand, the games are really all over the place these days: Linear story crawls in X and XIII, massively multiplayer online time-sinks in XI and XIV, and a brilliant but uneven synthesis of the two in XII. Trademarks like meaningful character customization and world exploration at will feel increasingly rare, and the days of optional party members and substantial side quests have gone the way of the PS1. Players balk at the amount of busywork inherent in the series, the number of unintuitive elements integrated seemingly for the sake of selling guides, and the way plot lines make no sense without the help of supplemental publications that are never published in English. I think, more than anything else, what drifting fans want to see from Final Fantasy is a sense that their tastes still matter to Square. The franchise all too often leaves gamers with the impression that its creators' main concern is courting the attention of fashionable Tokyo teens rather than catering to the interests of its millions of existing fans. Gamer entitlement has been quite the hot topic of late, and I don't mean to suggest that Square Enix is obligated to pander to every little expectation of its fans -- where creative expression is involved, the customer isn't always right -- but focusing on their expectations certainly feels more honest than trying to woo fickle hipsters.
At this point, I'd like to think Versus is too far along in its development process for Square Enix to massively change its direction (then again, maybe it's not), but I do feel the most important thing the game's designers could do is take a long, sober look at what fans have been saying about Final Fantasy of late and address them. And I don't mean they should do as with XIII-2 and simply run down a checklist of complaints about the previous game and do the opposite; I mean really get to the heart of the ennui that's settled over the hearts of fans and unravel the cause of the growing sentiment of disappointment being directed at the franchise. The solution is more complicated than, "Be more like Call of Duty," or, "Crank up the mopey Cloud-ness of the game." I don't presume to have the perfect solution, but I certainly hope the Versus team does.
What does Final Fantasy Versus XIII need to do to win you over and be worth the six-year wait? Are you content with whatever comes down the pipeline, or do you have a list of demands as long as your arm?
|
