Pt.0: prospects // positions
As winged monsters soar in the open air above Cocoon, a high-speed passenger train barrels through a canyon. Inside one of the train cars sit several robed individuals, guarded by armed soldiers. As the train approaches a checkpoint in a canyon wall, two of the hooded figures attack the guards, kicking off a prisoner revolt that spreads from car to car and eventually, throughout an entire subterranean processing facility. These two instigators? Lightning Farron, former Guardian Corps member, and Sazh Katzroy, civilian airship pilot.
Watching the introduction to Final Fantasy XIII, you might be tempted to make comparisons to the most prominent Final Fantasy in our collective cultural imagination: Final Fantasy VII. Without much else in the way of initial characterization, Lightning already feels like a gender-swapped Cloud Strife, while Sazh comes across like a timid Barrett Wallace. As more protagonists are introduced to the story, like the headstrong NORA leader Snow Villiers, chipper Pulse l’Cie Oerba Dia Vanille, and innocent bystander Hope Estheim, it quickly becomes clear that we’re not playing with the exact same set of toys that appeared in that prior Final Fantasy. These five (eventually six) strangers, drawn together by fate, initially have goals that sit at cross-purposes with each other; it takes several profound revelations for them to develop a sense of camaraderie and work together towards the goal of saving Cocoon and overthrowing the machinic gods that rule it. Comparisons to other Final Fantasy games, while never truly absent, soon fall short and fall away from our focus.
Final Fantasy XIII is a game I’ve spent a lot of time playing and even longer thinking about in conversation with other games in its immediate vicinity. It is a game both like and very clearly unlike games that precede it and come after within the Final Fantasy franchise; it and its immediate sequels stand as some of the least-well-regarded Final Fantasy games in the series, but its legacy is clear in what carried forward into successive new entries. It is a nexus point for the Final Fantasy franchise, a game that finds itself tangled up in every discourse surrounding its descendants. Yet for all the ways new series entries keep FFXIII‘s legacy alive, it sometimes feels like these titles are themselves participating in backlash against their predecessor.
For all the reasons, big and small, that Final Fantasy XIII and its immediate sequels feel special or interesting, Final Fantasy XV and XVI feel like they are straining to go backwards, to be seen as “normal.” FFXV‘s framework as “Hamlet on a road trip,” as one critic put it, belies the conspicuous fact that its main party and principal cast are uniformly thin or built straight men of a similar shade of pale. The relatively small handful of prominent women characters are treated either as objects to be begrudgingly protected or, if they have any seeming shred of independence, objects of naked desire. We come across exactly one Black character, and one fat character, in the entire game; both are mere quest vendors. FFXVI continues this objectification against a dour Game of Thrones-esque backdrop of medieval violence and hamfisted enslaved-magic-users-as-race-metaphor conceit. The unbridled, queer, anarchistic godkilling joy of the Final Fantasy XIII series is utterly absent by the time we get to the 16th entry in the franchise. In a sense, it’s been rejected outright.
Meanwhile, the shadow of the Final Fantasy VII Remake series looms adjacent to, if not directly over, these modern franchise entries, seemingly taking different lessons entirely from the experiment that was Final Fantasy XIII.
I’ve been sitting with this thought for over a year. With Final Fantasy XVI coming to PC in a little over a week, it feels like it’s finally time to start putting it to paper.
This is by far the largest research and analysis project I’ve ever undertaken. I see it taking form in two, maybe three phases. First: a quasi-“literature review” wherein I examine what critics and scholars have said about these games over the years. I’ve already started this phase; I’ll be including academic papers, book excerpts about these games, negative and positive reviews, and blogged commentary and essays from every level of critic going back to 2010. The second phase: a sort of rolling autoethnographic analysis of FFXIII, its sequels, and the various other adjacent games in the franchise a la my serial run through Umurangi Generation, including a replay of Final Fantasy XV and a first run through FFXVI. I expect to revisit some of my previous essays on FFXV, especially this one on the game’s expression of elite masculinity. The possible third phase – way out in the future, to be clear – would involve a call out to other writers to engage with this overarching concept, either through a specific themed pitching period to No Escape or through something like an essay jam.
Things this project isn’t
- A developer history. While there is absolutely value in learning exactly what went into making a game and how on a behind-the-scenes basis, I don’t know how useful this kind of information would be to the overall comparative analysis taking place.
- A cipher through which to divine “developer intent.” The truth of the matter is that the FFXIII/Fabula Nova Crystallis series was handled by several people in prominent roles at different levels; the same is true for FFXV and its so-called universe, and the same also goes for FFXVI. It would be foolhardy to claim that “the devs” wanted or didn’t want a particular aspect of each game to become apparent at various moments in time.
- A moral judgement on any of the games under consideration. I am bringing my biases to this project for sure, and I will be looking critically at all of these games, but I’m not coming at these games from a place of condemnation – nor do I plan to in the future. This project is not meant to convince you to play – or discard – Final Fantasy XIII and its descendants. There are plenty of reviews written contemporaneously that would be better suited to something like that.
Games covered
- Final Fantasy XIII
- Final Fantasy XIII-2
- Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
- Final Fantasy Type-0
- Final Fantasy XV
- Final Fantasy XV: Episode Prompto, Gladio, Ignis, Ardyn
- Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade
- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
- Final Fantasy XVI, including DLC
The future is unwritten and nothing is set in stone; however, the document I’ve started cataloguing all the critical insight I could find is already very full and very promising. It’s been a while since I’ve had a wild goose to chase. I’m ready to run with this.
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