Death by details
Isn't this just the coolest?
The power of gaming machines today allows for a level of detail never seen before. This is a blessing and a curse. As games become more realistic, they gain more acceptance from a wider audience. This is great, but what happens when obsession meets ever expanding capabilities for an entity that simply doesn't know when to say enough is enough?
This is the problem plaguing the people of Square Enix as we speak: There is no restraint. The most recent example of this issue comes from outside of video games: Tetsuya Nomura's take on DC heroes is…bad…especially considering this is the man responsible for designing the majority of Final fantasy characters these days.
I get that it's supposed to be a re-imagining, and it should be different. That doesn't mean it should be stupid. Nomura's Batman has a cape, that has jagged wings, and skeleton arms, with claws. Head to toe Batman is now covered in harsh, angular armor with spiked shoulders and a helmet that looks like the head of a bifurcated pitchfork thanks to the sharp, pointlessly long ears. The eyes on the helmet even extend up to the tips of said ears in exaggerated uselessness. All of this comes at you at once in what could be accurately described as a mouthful for the eyes.
Yeah, that's Batman. you can tell by his iconic metal bone wings.
This cacophony of details carries over through just about anything the Japanese portion of Square Enix makes. Look at the original Cloud Strife. He was simple. Iconic even. Cloud has a basic uniform: Boots, pants, top, suspenders, belt, and gloves. Its only stick out features are the SOLDIER insignia belt and a single shoulder pauldron. He wears bangles that are slotted for materia, and he wields the giant Buster Sword. Finally, he has a shock of spiky blonde hair and vivid blue eyes.
Compare that to Lightning of FF13:
Lightning wears a zipped up turtleneck vest, with a sleeveless top, which has buckled straps on each breast, a popped collar that has a strap she leaves unbuckled, and a cape. Said outer top is held fast by a buckled strap around her waist. Lightning sports a single shoulder pauldron on her left and a single black sleeve that originates at her glove and runs three quarters of the way up her arm. Her right hand has a matching glove, but no sleeve. Instead she has a pair of straps buckled around her upper arm. A short skort is anchored to her hips by a hefty belt, along with a fanny pack, featuring two zippers and a strap, that's lashed to her hip and outer left thigh by no less than four straps. A pair of knee high boots, that boast at least three buckled straps each, finalizes her outfit.
Lightning also has long, pink hair and wields a gunblade. Oh, she also accessorizes with a necklace that has a lightning shaped charm to give her attire that last little bit of pop it needs. She just needed that one last detail to accentuate her 20+ straps and buckles. They could have called it a day before that point, but why stop when you have the power to add more? This is all from just one of her more tame outfits.
Lightning Returns to the excess to a whole new level.
Perhaps that style of excessive design fit within the world they were trying to create in FF13 though? Maybe I'm taking all of these complaints out of context and it was just a foreign style from a fantasy setting that has thrown me off. To that end, lets compare Cloud Strife's original design to that of his Advent Children appearance. That's a direct sequel to the original, and it's not as outlandish as say his Kingdom Hearts look.
The real changes to his attire start with ditching the suspenders and his belt with the SOLDIER First Class insignia, and swapping his original pauldron for one with a prominent image of the grey wolf Fenrir. Of course the shoulder piece now boasts a fancy new strap across his chest. He has a single sleeve coming from his shoulder armor and running down to his glove. He also sports what I can only describe as a half skirt, and a courier's bag that may be connected to it, fashioned to his hips by a pair of straps that cross his torso and waist respectively. There's enough slack left in the straps that a man literally five hits his size could fit into it, this adds more dangly bits to compliment his half skirt I guess. He has a new, normal belt, and two straps that hang from behind him.
What's more, Cloud's new weapon(s), the Fusion Swords, suffer the most from Square Enix trying to add more and more to their character design. For no real reason, it breaks down into six different swords. It does this in a manner that should render it fairly useless as a weapon. Whatever, these are fantasy stories running on the Japanese equivalent of the Rule of Cool trope.
I guess Advent Children's Cloud isn't the worst looking interpretation of the character.
Regardless of how you feel on the matter, it should be plain to see that the character designs coming from Square Enix for their big budget projects are becoming cluttered with details that bring about a sort of subtraction by addition. It creates a lopsided product that has high definition models that you can't relate to.
This focus also seems to be taking away from the budget allocated to story planning, because just look at some of the stories that have come from these people lately. The Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy series of titles, with its try hard name, boasts a bunch of pretty people in stupid outfits that babble incoherently about the l'Cie, fal'Cie, destiny, and time travel. I defy you to convince anyone that has ever read an actual novel, and hasn't played FF13, that this story wasn't taken from some obscure fanfic on the internet.
Well that's it for now. Join us for Part 2 of this discussion, where we further illustrate how these excessive visuals are detrimental to the company's bottom line through delays and poor budget control, leading to unrealistic expectations.
Square Enix has yet to recapture the prestige and glory of the Golden Age the JRPG experienced in the 90's. This arises from two main issues: Square's pursuit of visual quality, and the inability to say no. Knowing when to stop has never been Square's strong point To show this, I want to focus primarily on the company's most widely recognized franchise: Final Fantasy. This is part one of a three part series so make sure to stay tuned each day.
Graphical power: The bane of Square
Chasing Graphics often costs Square Enix.
An almost unhealthy fascination with graphical power has been a Square trademark ever since Final Fantasy 7 moved the series into three dimensions and introduced the FMV cutscenes that have become standard for the franchise. The company seemed to have fallen into a downward spiral for their console releases, one that put beauty before everything else, with a few exceptions.
This pursuit of graphical superiority nearly killed Square with the bomb that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The movie's original budget was to be $70 million, but it took roughly four years and $137 million to make due to their dedication to photo-realistic visuals and trying to live up to the Hollywood blockbuster. To make matters worse, it only made $65 million at the box office. Critics panned the movie, the general consensus being that it really was a gorgeous looking film, with Hollywood star power to boot, but that's all it had going for it. The only thing more bland than the story were the flat, vanilla characters.
Starring Alex Baldwin as Ben Affleck
Despite such a failure, sacrificing story and more at the altar of eye candy became standard practice for Square, who was enticed by the power that the PS2 offered. This also lead to a phenomenon I call Accessory Creep: Character designs would start to feature stupid amounts of excess, while the quality of the story or game play would degrade over time.
Final Fantasy 10 was a great game in its own right, and was impressive for what it was. It also had some story points that were beautiful, but let's not pretend that it was perfect. The story was riddled with plot holes, stupid decisions, and the combat was a step back from other entries. On top of that, what the hell was Tidus wearing? Some horrible concoction of straps, chains, overalls, mesh and the most pointless shirt I've ever seen. Don't even get me started on Belt Mistress Lulu.
Final Fantasy 11 managed to avoid many of these issues due to the graphical limitations it faced as an MMO. In fact, this is a point I would like to come back to. Keep it in mind for later as we continue onwards.
Next was Final Fantasy 12. After FF10 it felt more subdued in the character design department. The story isn't bad, it just felt like it could have used a bit more time in the oven, probably owing to the fact it had a long, somewhat rocky development cycle. The game play itself was streamlined, a feature I very much appreciated, but many hated it. FF12 was the PS2 swan song though:. Above all else, were the overwhelming visuals. Even by today's standard the game looks incredibly good.
People complained about plenty of things in FF12, but graphics were never one of them.
I find it hard to fault a game like FF12 because it was fairly solid all around, even if it is one of the least appreciated games in the series. I have no qualms about tearing Final Fantasy 13 a new one though. Until Final Fantasy 15, I thought FF13 was the gaming equivalent of Square Enix recreating Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in video game form.
By that I mean they focused almost exclusively on visual spectacle. Gods know they didn't put equivalent effort into quality level design, story planning, combat, or anything else in the game. It's the reason FF13 is derided as Final Hallway 13. You may point out that the game expands its claustrophobic design later on, but you shouldn't have to trudge through hours of garbage to get to something remotely appealing in a game.
With the establishment of Square Enix's dogged pursuit of high end visuals, I'd like to direct your attention to the great problem that arises from it… Read on my friends.
