1287: Thunderbolts and Lightning

Japanese gaming never died. It just shifted its focus. And that’s a good thing.

I find myself contemplating this topic for a few reasons, including Twitter discussions on various related topics, and a few articles I’ve seen posted around the Web recently on the subject of Japanese gaming making “a comeback”.

Japanese gaming never went anywhere. It may not be the focus of the games industry now — a side-effect of the very American Xbox 360 dominating a healthy proportion of the console generation we’re just coming to the end of now — but it’s still been ticking along very nicely, and in fact, for my money, it’s been doing a much better job of catering to unique audiences than focus-grouped Western titles.

Japanese role-playing games used to be a big deal. Or, more accurately, a new Final Fantasy release used to be a big deal, particularly back in the PS1 era, which carried some of the best installments in Square Enix’s long-running series. The JRPG market was always far broader than just Final Fantasy, even in the West, but Final Fantasy was in the unique position of being a Japanese role-playing game — by all accounts, a fairly “niche” genre, even back then — that successfully achieved mainstream penetration thanks to its impressive presentation. There were plenty of other JRPGs that flew under the mainstream radar but which are still fondly remembered by fans, but Final Fantasy was the one that everyone latched onto — with good reason.

These days, however, Final Fantasy enjoys a curious reaction from press and public alike. Ever since Final Fantasy XIII came along, there’s been a significant amount of negativity directed at the series — negativity that isn’t altogether justified.

Final Fantasy XIII, like every other Final Fantasy before it, mixed up the formula rather than just being a reskinned version of the previous game. It abandoned the micromanagement of previous games’ battles in favour of a fast-paced take on the Active Time Battle system that focused more on carefully-timed switches of character roles rather than choosing individual commands. It provided a focused experience, pushing the story constantly forwards, forwards, forwards down a linear path until a point close to the end, where you suddenly had a large open world to explore.

Past Final Fantasy games have actually followed this exact formula to the letter — linear beginning that gets more and more open as you proceed towards the finish line, with the game completely “open” by the time you reached the end. Final Fantasy XIII just didn’t hide it quite as well as the previous ones — and intentionally so; game director Motomo Toriyama wanted players to concentrate on the story for the beginning part of the game without distractions.

This is something to be criticised, apparently, yet it honestly baffles me as to why. Final Fantasy XIII’s extreme linearity for the first 20-30 hours or so means that the story is constantly moving rather than doing the usual RPG thing of stalling for hours at a time while the player goes off and breeds chocobos or something. You’re always moving from place to place, seeing new things, meeting new characters, fighting new enemies and learning new nuances of the game’s systems. By the time you come out the end of this “20-hour tutorial,” as some people call it, you’re fully equipped to take on the challenges of the open world you’re dropped into — and you have characters that are beefed up enough to be able to take on some significantly powerful monsters.

A common criticism of that “20-hour tutorial” is that there’s “nothing to do but fight,” which is an argument I can sort of see, but which I disagree with. Sure, in game terms you’re doing little more than running forward and fighting, but in the process you’re seeing things happen around you, meeting new characters, learning about the world — not to mention the fact that you’re choosing how your characters develop and crafting weapons to improve their performance… and not to mention the fact that the fighting is fun. Final Fantasy XIII may not populate its world with gimmicks and sidequests, but that doesn’t make it bad at all. It simply means it’s not to some people’s tastes, and that’s fine; what the people who find it distasteful don’t seem to realise, however, is that “I don’t like it” is not the same as “this is bad” — the very same thing that happens with other, more “niche” JRPGs like Hyperdimension Neptunia, Ar Tonelico and Time and Eternity: games with a laser-sharp focus on exactly the sort of person they want to be playing that game. (Me.)

The initial reaction to Final Fantasy XIII unfortunately meant that its sequel Final Fantasy XIII-2 was met with everything from indifference to hostility on its release, when it was actually a remarkably solid game. Its time-travelling story was confusing and convoluted, yes, but much like the weak, forgettable story of Final Fantasy XII didn’t affect the fact that the game itself was good, so too was the case with XIII-2, which built on and evolved many of XIII’s ideas. It addressed most of the criticisms people had about Final Fantasy XIII while simultaneously remaining recognisably true to its predecessor.

And now we find ourselves coming to the third game based around Final Fantasy XIII’s world: Lightning Returns. Once again, this game is being met with outright hostility for a variety of reasons. Particular attention is being paid this time around to the matter of the main character Lightning, whom everyone seems to have suddenly decided is massively offensive. Game director Motomu Toriyama is clearly enamoured with his creation and that’s absolutely fine — in many ways, it’s delightful to see a creator so passionate about something he’s created; at the same time, I don’t blame Square Enix for indulging in some gratuitous cross-promotion such as putting Lightning in a special quest in the upcoming MMO Final Fantasy XIV, or putting out some promotional art of her wearing the starting costume for one of Final Fantasy XIV’s character types and doing a(n admitedly provocative) pose from that character’s set of default “emote” animations.

It’s here that Final Fantasy’s background as a niche title with mainstream acceptance is working against it. With the JRPG genre regularly losing out to more popular types of game like first-person shooters and open world adventures, it seems that Toriyama is choosing to focus the Lightning Returns experience on a smaller niche that will appreciate it, and in the process is alienating the mainstream. In the case of most modern JRPGs, which have been happily ignoring the mainstream completely for several years now, this is fine; when you have a property as well-known as Final Fantasy, though, it’s an issue. Not that Toriyama and co are trying to focus on a more niche audience, mind you — that’s something I wholeheartedly encourage — but that people seem pissed off that Square Enix isn’t making the games they want them to make.

Well, to that, I simply say good on Square Enix for sticking with what they want to do. Not every game needs to be a focus-grouped mass appeal game designed to shift five million copies. I often find the ones that are to be rather soulless experiences at their core, so I wholeheartedly encourage and embrace any title with the balls to say “don’t like this? Fine. Leave.” rather than grabbing onto their ankles and screaming for them to “PLEASE DON’T GO”. Games are a business, yes, but that doesn’t mean that those who create them have to be beholden to the whims of the public; ultimately it should be the creator’s decision what to, you know, create.

I’m looking forward to playing Lightning Returns. You may not be, and that’s fine. But if you’re not, try not to push your opinions on everyone else as gospel, because there are a lot of people in the world, and everyone has their own take on things. No-one’s forcing you to play or like Lightning Returns; just respect the fact that there are people out there who will be playing it, and who may well end up liking it as a result… just like any other game out there.

Stepping away from the Internet now.