The Final Fantasy series is one of the most important and longest-running in video game history, as well as one of my personal favorites. Given its changes in mechanics, graphics, and storytelling mechanisms, it should be ripe fodder for discussion and intelligent criticism. But it’s not. It’s boring. 99% of the time, if there’s a conversation about Final Fantasy, it’s just boring and stupid. Please, Internet, stop having these conversations:
Which Final Fantasy is the best?
You pretty much can’t say the name of any Final Fantasy in public without someone giving you their ranking of the games in the series. It’s a dizzying wall of numbers and occasionally words, meaning nothing. Can you make any particular statement about someone who prefers Final Fantasy VII to VI? Tactics or X? It’s a near-meaningless personal preference. Coke versus Pepsi. CSI: Miami versus CSI: New York. There may be legitimate and interesting differences between the games of the series, but which one you personally prefer isn’t that, especially without context.
And yet people get really invested in this. Every game in the series is the best ever, every one ruined the series forever. The argument is boring, and the reasoning is usually stupid. Just stop already.
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Square Enix court politics
Final Fantasy has been running for two and a half decades, and the people who have made it have changed over time. This is a given. Some of those changes likely affected the series itself, yes. But it’s neither interesting nor insightful to blame single individuals for everything that has gone wrong with the series since they gained more power. Changes in technology, business, society, and more are all part of the story. Scapegoating is limited and dull.
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Your personal history with the game
Look, it’s really cool that you and your older brother didn’t have any games except Final Fantasy VIII and you spent a summer passing the controller back and forth and finding every secret without the help of the Internet. That’s a great story for you and your brother. And that kind of examination of childhood experiences can, occasionally, make for a fantastic personal essay. But it’s not anything more than that. It’s not criticism. It’s not analysis. It’s not relevant to any discussion unless that discussion is about personal history, and shouldn’t be treated as such.
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Final Fantasy X’s voice acting
Yes, FFX had voice acting. Yes, that’s relevant to judging the game as a whole now. But you don’t need to bring it up every time the game gets mentioned. Talking about the combat system? Not directly related to voice acting. Strengths and weaknesses of its lack of world map? Nothing to do with “HA HA HA HA.” It’s okay. You really can talk about the game without talking about the talking in the game every time.
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An HD remake of Final Fantasy VII
For some reason, this has become the holy grail of a certain subset of fans. No Square-Enix announcement can come out without them wondering where the FFVII remake is, or how stupid Square-Enix is to just leave that money on the table. Yes, FFVII is a cool game. But the original is easy enough to find on the PSN store, and soon on Steam. So how did it become The Only Video Game That Matters For Remaking?
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If there’s a thread running through all of these boring discussions, it’s people prioritizing their own experiences to the exclusion of everything else relating to Final Fantasy. And I can understand that—role-playing games with wonderful music and strong characters can worm their way into your mind. But you have to let them out again, so they can play with other people’s thoughts and experiences, and we can all learn from one another and have smart, interesting conversations about games that deserve it.
