At last, my arm is complete

However long the road, I invariably find myself drawn to the cello. It has been 8 years since the last time I played the cello for as long as I have tonight.

It was one of the most singlehandedly gratifying things of my life. It is a sweet old habit, the quiet one I don’t brag about (unlike my writing, fashion, and athleticism. Haven’t you heard?).

And so this article is about how Final Fantasy lost me.

The reason we give things up are usually for at least one of three reasons. The first and most obvious is that we lose interest. The second is that our hobby is no longer profitable. The third is a lack of time. And as an age of Japanese gamers moves into the aggressive world of the working class, I don’t find it surprising that their overall RPG sales drop. The big games, of course, sell like hot cakes. But the big games? They don’t do as well.

All the old cliché’s are still as robust as ever. But today’s gamer is a busier gamer, on the whole. In fact, I feel as though RPG’s have been cleaved in two groups: the people with no time to play, and the people with too much time.

The people with no time to play look at the World of Warcraft with disgust. How on earth is it comprehensible that people can spend 30 hours a week in search of … fake armor? I have my ideas, but the crux of the people who are anti online RPG’s bring up the waste of time as reason number one. The latest Final Fantasy clocks in at about 120 to 170 hours, which is a fraction of the amount of time World of Warcraft can demand. Still, that’s an awful lot of time.

The second group with too much time, well, forgive my arrogance. This expanding group doesn’t have more time, but they do make it. Time is not wasted, it is borrowed against something else. And to many, this is an acceptable trade. The single player experience is far too… short. Unexpansive. The linear story format is cliché’. Sexy haired angsty guy with issues must save the world with girls in various states of vulnerability. Secondary characters are good, then they backstab you, then they are good, then they are dead. And 170 hours? You realize, that’s about a month of World of Warcraft, or Everquest. Totally not a good use of time.

And I would argue that these two camps have split firmly as lonely adolescence convaleces into various states of adulthood. And the middle group, obsessed with turn-based combat, impressive visuals, and expansive stories that would make Joseph Campbell proud, are largely left maligned. My associate and best friend, Angsty Gaijin, is in such a camp. Increasingly, he is in the minority. It never fails to shock him how mainstream the success of Final Fantasy 7 was. Indeed, the varsity quarterback of our high school claimed his favorite video game was the same one as Gaijin. Angsty will never believe me, of course. But the split happened, and it won’t go away. The problem is that, for all the pains of old school RPG’s and leveling up using archaic systems, there was never that long to go before you could go on to another event or large battle. There was simply too much to do, and the tedium was broken quickly. Final Fantasy 7 is where the line in the sand was drawn for gamers. It was the last stand. To truly beat the game was to commit to a time sink of leveling up. Every game after that is arguably shorter, the world smaller. Part of this is due to graphical constraints, but it doesn’t change this simple fact. The two dimensional world was more varied, more expansive, and gave you a greater sense of scale than the most impressively rendered Bahumut.

The later games are still impressive, but where once your imagination worked to fill in all the blanks, it is all drawn out in perfectly rendered scenes. There is a theory called the uncanny valley about advanced robotics. Go Wiki it. I think the more realistic these games have become, the more attention and scrutiny is drawn to them. The more two dimensional their characters feel less real because their personalities are that of a cartoon. Westerners excuse this as a simple difference in style, but anime succeeds on the emotions and personalities on display in a story, moreso than any robot or cliché.

There is a movement amongst RPG enthusiasts to blame the current black condition of the RPG on story vs. gameplay based roleplaying games. And while there is that disconnect, it does little to explain the international numbers. With games stamped with Squenix still veritable moneymakers, it is quite clear that even the old mainstays have a near universal appeal.

My final problem with final fantasy is that despite the technical leaps that have happened, the games are so much… smaller/

- no more world maps to surf an airship over: This is the big one. The sense of epic scale is lost.Why should I care if the world looks more real? The imagination does wonders to fill in the blanks. As the games have gotten more 3D, they have gotten smaller.

- The stories of the earlier games shows diverse story telling. It has gone formulaic. I understand that with more money and stock on the line, that it is better to build a decent game that sells rather than risk it all. But this is a lie. Throw your mechanics to the wind! Bravery is often rewarded in this industry. It just takes braver stockholders. Yes, many of the original characters were one-notes, but they were a lot more fun. Cloud is not fun. Locke is.

- Too much leveling, not enough eventing.

- You can’t cheat your way to better leveling. The earlier games would allow even a novice to find an enemy, waste a half hour, and play another 3 to 4 with no serious issues. Nowadays? Don’t make me laugh. That disconnect cost them casual gamers.

Final Fantasy forgot that it was scale, not graphics… story, not alleged epic sweep… that got many gamers going. The final drop of poison for many gamers is the leveling. Some gamers want a lot more, some gamers want less. The happy medium is not found in any recent Squenix game. And so, they’ll slowly suffer sales, each one slightly more disappointing than the last. Which will, of course, make them consider making a “Safer”, more like Final Fantasy 7 game. They’ll miss the point, the gamers, and eventually, the money.