Okay, so a couple years ago Square Enix released some games. There are six of them, and they’re available on mobile, PC and the console of your choice either altogether for the price of one (1) modern Triple-A title or separately for the price of six reasonably priced indies. These games are simultaneously chockfull of history, going back to the roots of console RPGs, and filled with modern affordances that make some of the challenges in these games… not trivial per se, but much less daunting than they might otherwise be. They are more or less united in presentation, taking on a kind of singular pixel aesthetic that harkens back to the NES and SNES days, but each individual title has no shortage of individual tweaks and quirks that separates and defines their identities.
These games are marketed as the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series, and they are meant to represent Final Fantasy through Final Fantasy VI. As I play through Final Fantasy III, the question has bubbled up to the forefront of my mind more than once: are they actually the games they’re meant to be?
Let’s go back a bit. These games have been on my devices for years; on my iPad mini, which is where I’ve decided to play the Pixel Remasters, I even have the older mobile releases of Final Fantasy through VI. Their icons sit next to each other on my mini’s Home Screen, juxtaposing a tiny rendition of Yoshitaka Amano’s old logomarks on each older version with the more stylized art for the Pixel Remasters. I’ve been kept away from these games for various reasons for a while, but recently I’ve been able to carve out a bit of time for them. This isn’t the first time that I’ve tried to play, though; Final Fantasy III and IV, for example, have been games I’ve wanted to beat for a hot minute but I’ve run up against walls in each of them. I got through 95 percent of the first Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster last year, but hit a wall at Chaos itself.
A thing I’ve kind of been struggling with is the idea that, while these games ostensibly faithfully recreate the classic Final Fantasy series for modern audiences, playing them is kind of like playing a game of telephone. As I’ve beaten Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II, I’ve talked to people who’ve played them on earlier versions, whether that’s the mobile games, or the PlayStation ports, or the Game Boy versions, etc. And everyone seems to have a slightly different recollection of the specifics of these games while sharing the broader outline. Certain treasure chests aren’t in the same places, leveling up and grinding feels different, and so on. Meanwhile, I know I’m not experiencing the games “the way they were meant to be played” simply because I’m ramping up all the boosts, babey. I’m rolling into towns as a Gillionaire and overleveled by a factor of 10, I’m doing shit only dreamed of by GameShark owners. I’m one-shotting bosses in some circumstances. I’m making a mockery of some elemental fiends. What I’m doing in these games would’ve been unthinkable to the kids playing them on their NESes 25 or 30 years ago.
The shallow analysis would stop here and simply ask: “is this fun for me? Am I having a good time?” and the answer is yes, I am absolutely having a minute-to-minute blast clowning on idiots with level 4 (out of 9) magic in a babymode part of the map. But that isn’t really why I’ve been struggling. After all, Square Enix made these boosts available for all to enjoy.
When I turn on the Final Fantasy III 3D Remake, the one that appeared (slightly differently each time) on the 3DS, PSP and mobile app stores, I get chills. It is absolutely night and day from the Pixel Remasters.
First of all, it opens with this profoundly beautiful cutscene that (while kinda spoiling… the whole game) helps to add a bit of embodiment to the world and its characters. This cutscene was directed by Kazuyuki Ikumori, the guy responsible for basically every not-in-engine Final Fantasy cutscene since Final Fantasy IX. The game’s protagonists, which are actual individual people here – named Luneth, Arc, Refia and Ingus – are hand-designed by Akihiko Yoshida, whose work has come to visually define everything from Tactics Ogre to the Nier series. Hiromichi Tanaka, the producer of Final Fantasy XI and XIV 1.0, directed this port, and the game was produced by Tomoya Asano, who would very soon after this go on to make Bravely Default, and then Octopath Traveler, and is now in charge of the Dragon Quest HD-2D remasters. Like, heavy-hitters at Square Enix worked on these games and it is immediately felt.
The story follows the broad strokes of Final Fantasy III, but each protagonist has their own individual motivations for joining the party and embarking on this adventure. Luneth wants to discover his destiny, Arc is desperate to prove he isn’t afraid of anything, Refia wants to define herself outside of her father’s expectations, and Ingus wants to prove himself worthy of Princess Sara’s love. As embellishments go, you could do a lot worse.
Final Fantasy III-D is considerably harder in some ways than the Pixel Remaster. There’s a hidden item mechanic that is vital for locating hidden treasures and switches while also being very easy to forget, the game does not necessarily spend a lot of time signposting anything, and there are zero boosts to speak of. When the game came out in 2006, reviews complained about how hard it was and how irritating some of its “archaic” systems were in comparison to modern Final Fantasy. And like… all of these things are true. It kinda sucks to spend time slogging through a battle system that feels as old as it looks only to get five experience points and like 15 Gil. But I don’t think this is a problem, because the reward is deep character moments. It’s discovering more of a captivating story. It’s feeling good about surviving a brutal encounter.
And the motherfuckers had the audacity to do this all again with Final Fantasy IV.
I’m not trying to argue that the Pixel Remasters aren’t worth playing. I’m trying to reckon with their positions as simulacra – not recreations of the original works but essentially second-order copies that have taken on their own meanings separate from that of the original. Their existence as basically a singular work – the “Pixel Remasters” – kind of papers over the messiness and difficulty of tracking down and playing the games on older hardware and software. And I think this papering-over extends to actually playing the games—getting our boosts, breezing through consequential bosses, barreling to the end of each game.
Interestingly, there’s a readily-available point of comparison to make here: Final Fantasy VII and the massive Remake project surrounding it. Just like the first six games, Final Fantasy VII has lived a strange life after its release. It’s seen messy ports, strange localizations, a whole odd “Compilation” phase that spawned semisequels and spinoffs, and eventually even mobile and modern console versions made of it, but the Remake project is something else entirely. It is Final Fantasy VII, but now instead of spending a few hours in Midgar, less than an hour roaming the overworld outside of Kalm looking for a way past Midgardsormr, and a couple of hours max playing in Costa Del Sol and the Gold Saucer, between FFVII Remake and Rebirth you’ve got hundreds of hours to spend doing all of this—and indeed, the fucking-around phase in the nominal middle of FFVII becomes the whole game in FFVII Rebirth.
You don’t really think about it while playing Rebirth but immediately as I was watching the final cutscenes I thought, “this is meant to replace what exists.” When the Remake project is finished, it will end up becoming the definitive Final Fantasy VII. Everything else – from Ever Crisis to the international port of VII – will become ephemera, paratext, historical curiosity. Just like how the Pixel Remasters are “the easiest and most readily accessible” Final Fantasy I-VI versions, the Remake series will be the version of VII for the “modern” gamer.
This feels weird to me. I don’t want to project this out too far and end up sounding paranoid about what I think is gonna happen with the remaining Final Fantasies between VIII and XIII, but going back to my experiences playing the janky 3D remake of FFIII and IV, the ones filled with as much heart and cruft as the SNES originals, that don’t have modern affordances but have charmed the shit out of me regardless, I think the biggest problem with this approach writ large is that it seemingly eschews the messy art and the organic experience – arguably the real fun – of the originals for something ultimately merely utilitarian—a pixelated checklist to fill out, an obligation to fulfill before moving on to more important things.
Leave a Reply to Iro Cancel reply