Final Fantasy Project R: Vision and Design Values

When developing a game, I think a big question that needs to be asked is:

"What are the most valuable elements of the game and why are they important?"

Aligning values is important in the context of development for many reasons, one of the most pragmatic reasons being there tends to be limited resources and resources need to be funneled into the right avenues to bring about the most bang for one's buck. You wouldn't spend all an artist's time on a rock when there are still characters and monsters to be concepted since characters tend to be of higher value.

More importantly, aligning values is especially important before and during the ideation phase where we need to ask what are the most important elements to focus on to understand what kind of game we'll end up with at the end of the journey. In other words, what is the vision for the end product? In my opinion, one of the biggest things issues (among many reasons) with Square Enix's development teams in the past few Final Fantasy games is the lack of foresight into what should be the focus of the game. In the end, the lack of analysis on what is important in making Final Fantasy a Final Fantasy eventually leads to focusing on aspects that may not be as high value as others elements.

So, what are the most important elements of Final Fantasy then?

Is story important? What kind of stories fit the pathos of Final Fantasy? Stories of good and evil? Stories of growth and overcoming adversity? Stories about friends and family bonding? Stories between lovers and rivals? Stories of politics, law and order? Are stories revolving around characters valuable? Are stories revolving around ideas and philosophies valuable? If characters are important, what kind of characters should they be? Expressive and warm or stoic and cold? Angry and repentant or happy and hopeful? What do the characters look and sound like? If themes and ideas are important, what kinds of themes are the focus? Sins and virtue? Moderation and extremes? Existentialism and nihilism. Should the story attempt to be thematic at all? Should the story try to "say" anything?

Are systems and mechanics important? What should the game feel like? What are the primary decisions that the player has to make? Should the game be traditionally bi-modal, split into modes for exploration and battle? Should the game attempt to blend battle and combat into the same modes? What about persistence and progression systems? A traditional leveling system with experience points? What skills can be learned and used? If the modes remain separate, should parameters the effect battle solely be for battle? Should there be overlap between exploration and battle like in more Western RPGs? Is the battle system even that important? Maybe exploration is valuable enough in itself to make a Final Fantasy. Should there be mini games woven into various times in the story? What is the breadth of mini games that are available? Are mini games even important? Valuable?

Is challenge valuable? How should challenge be created?
Is pacing valuable? How should the game be paced?
Is complexity important? Should the game be simple?
Is mastery important? Should the player feel smart or rewarded for playing optimally?
Is music important? What kind of music?
Is art important? What kind of direction and style?
Is ethos important? How do we evoke the Final Fantasy ethos?

Maybe everything is important? But are they equally important? Are certain elements more important and valuable than others? Are certain elements important because of value to the player, or are they important for historical reasons?

I think what may be one of the most difficult things to figure out about developing games with a lot of history behind the title like Final Fantasy is to figure out what's important, why it's important, and how to evoke the same spirit as previous games. Being able to hone in on certain elements of value can help to direct conversations and discussions, keeping focus on what important.

To stir up some conversation, let me start with a disclaimer and a bit of personal history.

Disclaimer: I don't think I'm the target audience for Project R due to my history and my assignment of values. However, I research about game development and game design, and I think I am beginning to see good ways of framing certain discussions regarding development. Additionally, I work as a software engineer for some enterprise intelligence programs and cloud solutions so development pedagogy is always on the mind.

My first Final Fantasy was Final Fantasy VII. I remember first seeing the game over at a neighbor's house, a Japanese import no less. I couldn't understand any of it, but I remember some dude with spiky blonde hair carrying a giant sword attacking a robotic scorpion. When my parent bought a PSX, one of the first games I got was FFVII along with the official strategy guide. Just going into battle with Cloud and Barret, wrecking a giant robot scorpion was a huge moment for me when I was young. The cutscenes were a real treat as well and I savored the few that were there. The first time I saw Braver on Cloud, jumping up and cleaving with a giant slash got me so pumped. I wanted to see all the limit breaks. I wanted to see those big number come up, even though I had no frame of reference. I didn't really understand the idea of a damage cap. I just wanted to get to the next battle, get a chance to activate some new limit break with some interesting looking boss, and see those big numbers roll. Summons like Shiva, Ifrit, Knights of the Round, those were really showy, animated magic attacks that I couldn't get enough of. Final battle with a split party attacking Jenova? Ending the final battle with Sephiroth with Cloud's Omnislash and the Ultima Weapon. So freaking awesome. The spectacle presented was hard to match by anything I had played previously. From then on, Final Fantasy was in a way synonymous with spectacle. When I become older, especially when internet access and gaming websites became more of a thing, I noticed that my experience with FFVII were a bit different than others. Many talked about the depth of the story and the shocker of a certain female party member dying due to some emotional attachment. I never put Aerith in my party since she didn't have a cool offensive limit break so when she died, I was kinda meh, good riddance. All the story I really remember is that Turks Turks Turks, Sephiroth is a bad guy, kick his ass. The most memorable part to me was probably getting to date Yuffie at Golden Saucer on my second playthrough. That was enough for me. Things like Don Corneo's mansion were diversions that I had to suffer through to get to the next boss fight. Certain mini games were cool like the motorcycle chase (Cloud swinging giant sword on bike hype) and Chocobo racing were at the least entertaining because of the spectacle.

My next Final Fantasy was actually Final Fantasy Tactics, a wholly different game than VII which I should've hated due to a surprising lack of spectacle. However, I kept playing even though I lost quite a few scenarios. The story flew right over my head so I just kept plodding along until I started to figure out the systems involved. Just by playing and losing, I learned that I couldn't just take everything head on. I had to have a strategy going into battle and target certain enemies. I had white and black mages inching forward to cast their spells to best effect. As my Ramza started to gain experience, I created this dual wielding ninja samurai. I remember getting Agrias, Goffard, and Mustadio and loving how unique they felt due to their unique jobs. And then I got Orlando. Overpowered bastard was so fun. Had every special swordsmanship ability. Due to the design of the game, I had to learn smarter ways to approach each battle and the game rewarded progression with access to special characters with special jobs. Additionally, they're given at a time when I had more understand of the underlying systems so I had so frame of reference on how to use them in certain strategies. I felt smart that I learned the systems and I could start forming strategies that were tailored to my own sensibilities. I felt I gained a form of mastery. One thing to note is that I felt especially betrayed when Goffard left my party because he was so cool and useful. Him leaving left a hole in my party and my heart.

After VII and Tactics, the two things I help in highest regard of value in Final Fantasy was spectacle, that VII offered in droves, and sense of mastery, which Tactics taught me. Tactics had some spectacle, but it was different. Rather, mastery was in itself a sort of spectacle, to see a battle plan carried out, to have backup plans when things got bad.

Of the next two RPGs, one showed me a different type of philosophy in approaching the RPG promise and the other solidified my love for spectacle. Those two games were Fallout and Xenogears.

Fallout seriously showed me a different set of values. The game exploration and combat happens in the same mode. You can kill just about any NPC except children. Stats actually matter outside of battle. Certain options and paths can be locked off without the right stats. Within the system of the game, I could play who I wanted to be. I could be an asshole genius or a seductive black widow. I could lower my intelligence but raise my strength to become a lumbering oaf. I could get a freaky disembodied mutant head to commit suicide by showing the errors of his hypothetical future. I could also just wander the wasteland as a vigilante looking for mutants and bandits. I could create this character in my head and even in limited ways, the game would react to my character and my character's choices. Because of Fallout, I learned about Baldur's Gate, Planescape, Deus Ex, and many other WRPGs that offered the promise that I could in at least some limited fashion play a character in a virtual world where my decisions had some impact outside whether or not I could beat a boss.

Xenogears followed the same flow as FFVII for me except the spectacle was different. Comboing moves was so cool. Being able to save AP to dropkick a dude 5 times. Awesome. Watching Billy sling his pistols, shotgun and juggle Redrum over and over again. So good. Giant robot gears fighting other giant robot and monsters. Fury pink monster suddenly getting huge and wrecking the Calamity lookalike. Billy summoning a giant revolver to shoot a warhead at extreme speeds. Make my day...

Fallout taught me to value a different kind of play where battle is not the only dimension that is important. A more traditional pen and paper experience where the stats and parameters of characters are an abstraction of their abilities and their moral alignment. That the stats are global constraints rather than just modifiers in battle.

Xenogears basically confirmed that Japan were the masters of spectacle. Japanese games are still very distinctly Japanese in their spectacle and few Western games can match.

FFVIII offered more spectacle and some really cool summons. Limit breaks were really cool, too. Squall's Gunblade was hella cool. I rented the game from Blockbuster and I had to turn it in before I could finish.

FFIX offered some nice spectacle, though still quite a bit muted in comparison to VII and VIII. I got into the third disk, but decided to lend it to someone. Got it back and it was all scratched up. Would skip and freeze so never finished IX. I kinda got a similar vibe from IX like I did from Tactics in that the characters felt very unique, especially Quina and Freya.

FFX is a sore spot for me because there was a lot of spectacle but I could never love it. Like the spectacle was there, but it wasn't as effective as I thought it would be. The systems didn't actually seem that involved in comparison to Tactics though there were definitely certain optimal strategies. Hell, I actually liked playing Blitzball more than battling since I just loved using Tidus' Jecht Shot to take out three dudes and usually score with the final shot. I wouldn't have minded if the battle system were more fun like Blitzball. Additionally, in X, XII, and XIII, there was some experimentation with using summons not as just nuclear options, but as controllable party members in battle. To me this diluted somewhat the point of using summons as spectacle as opposed to VII, VIII, IX, and even Tactics somewhat, where resources are spent in order to essentially cast a really pretty powerful looking spell. By making summons more usable in the general case, they lose the nuclear weapon identify a bit. That means they need to be retooled to be more usable in the general case where they can be mastered and added to the pool of tactics. I remember getting a bit bored with the game and the only thing that got me through it was the story was decent. The one thing about the story that is actually incredibly memorable to me was charming Lulu. By acting favorably to Lulu, I got her to throw me the Blitzball during Tidus' final Overdrive and got her to ride with me on the snowmobile scene. That struck me as a very WRPG thing to do, where certain choices and decisions could lead to certain outcomes. The outcome was purely cosmetic, but at least the game outside of battle acknowledged that MY Tidus fancied Lulu more than Yuna for at least a few brief moments. It was much like in VII where I could get Cloud a date with Yuffie. I kinda wish the Final Fantasy series took a few cues from WRPGs, like newer ones from Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or even the much maligned Alpha Protocol on how to make exploration more meaningful outside of combat effectiveness. I don't know what it's called outside of just "Role playing" but I've called it second-order decision making (for the sake of discussion, I'm defining second-order decision making as a decisions made under the the pretense that the outcome of the decision does not depend on your own personal competency as a player). Even though I don't like it as much as other people, they could even take a page out of Dark Souls in allowing more freedom to effect the exploration plane.

So yeah, Tidus X Lulu. Tulu never to be canon. :(

In the case of XII, I felt the game has certain qualities similar to Tactics in that the game requires a certain level of knowledge before mastering the system involved. A lot of the spectacle is hidden behind using MP to use Quickenings and Esper summons. Problem is both are incredibly tactical in nature, meaning they can't be used in the nuclear weapon case at will. Espers act like party members when summoned and will only use their signature attacks under certain conditions. Quickenings need to be chained to maximize damage. As such, you could chain tens of Quickenings but deal so-so damage. For what it's worth, status effects, especially debuffs can be ridiculously effective. Such strategies that abuse bubble-decoy-reverse can trivialize many battles. However, other strategies are also effective and require some foresight. On my third playthrough, I ran a full monk party. Unarmed damage while powerleveling to take advantage of damage scaling due to levels. Great fun running a beatdown squad. Best part is watching Fran backflip all over the place, a spectacle all on its own. As for gambits, I liked them as a interface optimization, but I thought buying gambits was an odd design choice. Gambits should have been unlocked from the get-go. While some people rag on gambits allowing the game to play itself, I kind of like the "machine" comparison. In previous Final Fantasy games, the game is like a machine that would run and poll the player for input. Select attacks, magic, flee, whatever. The player already has certain algorithms and heuristics on what choices to make when the game polls them for a choice. To me the gambit system is allowing the player to build another machine that the game will poll for decisions. The fun and reward of mastery with gambits is that the player is pitting their machine against the scenarios in the game using the player's understanding and strategies using a function as input rather than a simple value. In my opinion, it's fun to see your machine run in real time, intervening when necessary or updating the machine to reflect new knowledge or understanding of the scenarios. One thing I will say is that compared to previous games, XII has some rather opaque mechanics. Combos are among the more spectacular elements in XII, but there is some rules that make it difficult to exploit without proper setup. The rules for combos is never explained in any real detail, but learning the rules allows greater damage options for those inclined to massive combos. Genji glove katana hype!

FFXIII has spectacle in droves along with a battle system that had great promise. However, like 12, some of the systems in place are rather opaque. Cut and keep is never really explained so the power of Vigilance and Curse is never fully apparent. Debuffs run on a weird pseudo-random enforced application system. The attack that breaks Daze deal double damage. How is anyone supposed to learn that intuitively? On the other hand, one thing that I did like was that buffs and debuffs were powerful like in XII. The dimensions of being able to have support type roles be more supported as viable options is great. Summons in XIII fell to the same issues with X and XII in that there are definitely tactical considerations to using the eidolons. The concept of building the Gestalt gauge is interesting, but many times the Gestalt mode is not that much more useful than using your full party. A lot of the times, I feel that like in XII, you want to use summons for their special attacks rather than have them as party members. Eidolons were great to look at though. I really liked the idea of the chain gauge and staggering. Launching and juggling is a lot of fun and added more spectacle to fights outside of summons and Full-ATB abilities. It also partially solved the my issue of critical hits since ways of building chain bonuses to increase damage has well as having certain abilities that could drain the gauge for massive damage like a critical hit except purely deterministic. While there were many systems in place that were opaque and some systems needed better tuning, I liked the general direction of the battle system and wish there could have been more feedback into how to make the system more easily understandable, like a tutorial that actually teaches game mechanics rather than a 20 hour story romp. Additionally, there are definitely a couple of obvious optimal strategies. Unlike in XII where I could run a full monk team, in XIII, there's definitely very specific interplay between all the roles. I can spec a full SAB or MED team and win since there are no ways to push the roles into specific extremes to deal damage.

With XII and XIII, one thing that they began to annoy me was pseudo-random systems. While I used to like the idea of critical hits in previous iterations, there were never really many ways to exploit and make critical hits more predictable and consistent (except maybe in X). XIII's chain gauge was a great experiment that I wished they pushed further. It really grind my gears that debuff and even taunt application is based on chance rather than being purely deterministic. Instant stagger and death also are weird aberrations, although I'm not quite as against them since they are clearly cheese strategies that rely on luck.

XIII-2's system were similar to XIII but the feel was tighter. That I liked. Not a big fan of the monster taming game. Was never a big fan of Pokemon. Cinematic events were also a tad cheesy, though I didn't mind the spectacle. I'm not a big fan of quick time events in general, and I think button prompts shown to gate spectacle is odd to me. I didn't really like God of War that much outside of basic combat but I absolutely loved Xbox Ninja Gaiden. Action and spectacle done right with a great difficulty curve. XIII-2 definitely felt too easy.

I've yet to play LRFFXIII, but I like what I see. Plenty of action-y spectacle. Debuff application seems to be deterministic. Not too many pseudo random systems except for enemy attack rotations. Multiple stagger stages. Definite amounts to learn about and gain mastery.

I do want to briefly mention Bravely Default. The game lacks spectacle, but like Tactics and XII, there's quite a bit of mastery in learning the system involved. That being said, I'm lukewarm on the Brave/Default system since most of the viable strategies late game revolve around managing and exploiting Brave points. Many traditional team compositions with a tank, dps, and healer fall off due to never hitting the damage cap or simply being unable to sustain without buying tons of ether. I felt similar constraints from XIII in the sense that the most effective strategies and team comps specifically had ways of managing BP. Summoners are heavily outclassed quickly by just about everything after it. Luckily, special moves provide an avenue to create engines where health and mp can be refreshed through continuous use of healing. Special moves gives spectacle and opens up team compositions that don't have inbuilt sustain.

If I were to make a list and rank things I value about Final Fantasy, it'd look something like this:

*Spectacle
*Reward of mastery
*Intuitive systems (battle)
*Second-order decision making during exploration
*Fun mini-games
*Story

I place spectacle very highly because that's what got me into the series. Barring lack of spectacle, the battle system being fun and rewarding is the next thing I look for in a Final Fantasy. And so one down the list of values.

That list is just based off my own sensibilities growing up with the series. Different people will assign different values of importance. I'm outlining my history with the series along with a few notable games since I showing how values can grow and solidify. While a full history is not necessary, understanding how values can build over time and why they're important to people can give insight on the direction to develop and design certain pieces of a game.

So, to field the question:

What are the most valuable elements of Final Fantasy and why are they important?