Square Enix says “HD Means Lamer RPG’s”
By Chris Cesarano
Just to warn you, this article is going to drop all pretenses of being professional. It is a knee-jerk reaction to a small clip in a larger interview. However, it is not because I love the franchise in question (Final Fantasy). It is because what is implied means nothing positive for the future of games.
Unfortunately I was unable to find the original interview in full from Ultimania magazine. What has mostly been bouncing around is the reasoning for Final Fantasy XIII’s linearity as well as the fact that HD technology is preventing a remake of Final Fantasy VII.
For those of you not familiar, Final Fantasy XIII does not have (m)any towns. It is allegedly more linear than Final Fantasy X had even managed to be, which offered no option for side quests or world exploration until near the very end. I personally have not done much research on the subject (what with not really caring about the franchise since X), but it is certainly odd as most Japanese role-playing games, and even most Western ones, are known for having massive worlds you can explore.
The reasoning given in the interview is simply the HD graphics. Evidently the graphics require so much time to develop and are so detailed that in order to create a proper experience the larger world must be sacrificed. This might be an understandable argument if it weren’t for games such as Oblivion and Fallout 3 being about nothing but huge worlds to explore. From what I managed to play of it even Blue Dragon had managed its own over-world map in a classic RPG style. Even if developing a world in the same manner of the older Final Fantasy games is too much of a graphical strain, you could always go the same route as Dragon Age, where a map is presented and you choose locations to visit. There is less exploration and no real over-world map, certainly, but there are plenty of locations still available in a non-linear fashion as well as side quests and optional dungeons provided by other means.
Square Enix pushes their excuse further by claiming this is why you won’t be seeing a remake of Final Fantasy VII, at least on the Playstation 3 (I still theorize it will be a coming handheld remake five or more years from now). To take those graphics and update them to current standards would require more work than Square-Enix is evidently capable of, and it would not be proper to make a remake of the original game more linear. It would compromise the original vision and style.
I can at least give them credit for not wanting to compromise the original game, but listen to what they are saying. Evidently modern graphics technology means smaller worlds instead of bigger ones. Meanwhile, it seems as if every other genre is making use of the new technology to build larger worlds. Just look at the evolution of Halo, where environments become larger and more detailed over time. Even Oblivion and Fallout 3 manage to live up to their predecessors while retaining massive environments to explore. Same goes with the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
If I weren’t such an opinionated American I’d be speechless. I don’t know if the employees at Square Enix are inefficient project managers or if they think gamers are complete morons. For as long as games have existed the evolution of technology has always meant “bigger” and “more”. Levels and environments have become larger, detail has increased, more abilities and features have been implemented, more genres have mated and spawned identity-confused children, etc. If you were to compare the world of Final Fantasy VI with that of Final Fantasy VII I’m sure it would be as big, if not bigger. Weren’t graphics more complicated then? Instead of needing nothing but 2D sprite artists you suddenly needed 3D artists. Most of your art staff had become obsolete outside of handheld and sprite based games.
Yet somehow, just because games are at a higher resolution (or so the wording suggests), the worlds they inhabit must suddenly become smaller. At least, according to Square Enix. The rest of the gaming world seems to be making larger bosses in larger levels filled with more weapons and granting more abilities to players.
Of course, it can be argued that games are getting shorter, but sometimes I wonder if this is truly the case. Maybe in terms of some shooters, yes, but as a result enemy A.I. are more intelligent, mechanics are more flush and refined and the levels are less repetitious. Back when Doom was new you could make finding chromatic keys the only objective on each map. Players demand more these days, so more mechanics need to be developed. The gameplay is suddenly more dynamic as it relies on more than just finding a key in a memorized position.
Shooters may be shorter than your typical platformer from the Super Nintendo, but that’s not unusual either. Platformers were always of a different style of play. That comparison cannot be made accurately since there are few platformers around still, and I doubt anyone would find Super Mario Galaxy or New Super Mario Bros. Wii to be shorter experiences in comparison.
Ultimately it depends on perspective and genre. Some genres have become larger and longer, others have become shorter but offer a greater variety in gameplay and thus increase replayability. There is a trade-off either way.
That is, except with Final Fantasy games. Even if you leave out criticism of the stories themselves, there is less to explore in the environments. Some of Final Fantasy 10’s dungeons felt tedious and took too long to explore. Did those dungeons really need to be so long? Couldn’t that time have gone to making more dungeons in a more open world? Just examine a game like Wild Arms 3 on the same system. Each dungeon took roughly fifteen to twenty minutes to complete, but instead of following one corridor after the next you were solving puzzles in every other room. It spiced up the gameplay and no dungeon felt like a chore. Surely this would be a better option than making dungeons of long corridors that take over an hour to complete.
Perhaps the problem isn’t in the graphics, it is in the priority Square-Enix has in game development. While I certainly preferred the combat in Final Fantasy X over that in Wild Arms 3, I ultimately had more fun in the latter title because dungeons were creative and just the right size. You could stay up until three in the morning saying “ok, just one more dungeon” because they were short enough. The over-world map was still massive, dungeons were littered across the land and the story still provided dozens of hours of entertainment.
Yet developers don’t try to imitate Wild Arms 3. They didn’t try to imitate what excellent innovations EarthBound had brought to the table, either. Publishers are always going to try and imitate the larger successes, and even people that hate where Final Fantasy has gone are going to buy the next iteration. So despite all of the critics and forums filled with complaints about the game’s linearity, publishers are going to see that they bought it any way.
Next thing you know, more games are sacrificing open worlds for linear gameplay, just as Grand Theft Auto created a sudden focus on open sandbox gameplay instead of finely tuned mechanics.
High Definition graphics come with a lofty price tag, certainly. Yet it shouldn’t come at the sacrifice of excellent gameplay. I’d rather play an ugly game that is fun at 1080p than a beautiful game that sucks.
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