I was going about my average day, filled to the brim with lament over the fact my favorite developer hasn’t made a game since 2011. When suddenly, like some divine sight. Some angel become manifest. Some rejuvenating essence for a withered decomposing soul. I read the headline “Something Something New Game By Hironobu Sakaguchi Something Something”. I leapt through the roof. The hole still remains where I broke through the ceiling tiles. I have to put pots down when it rains now like when I used to live in my uncle’s shed. A time in my life when I had one reprieve from this cruel world, the works of the genius, Hironobu Sakaguchi. Fantasian Neo Dimension is coming on December 5th and you should absolutely care about that fact.
Fantasian has actually already been out for a couple of years now and I remember getting just as excited for it back then. Only then did I have to feel my heart sink so far that it almost fell out of my anus. ‘Only for iOS and Apple products’. Not even Sakaguchi can get me to start using an Apple but if I had enough disposable income, I would’ve definitely thought about it. Since then, I’ve been in a state of perpetual denial over the existence of Fantasian as a coping mechanism. So when I saw that headline, and it stated that Fantasian was coming to PS5, I finally felt inspired to write this month’s article.
Hironobu Sakaguchi
For those that don’t know, Sakaguchi was the lead developer of the Final Fantasy series during their best era, between Final Fantasy I and X. He created Final Fantasy as his last-ditch effort in the gaming industry, hence the name. The success that followed can only be measured within the annals of history. Final Fantasy is one of the most well-known names in the gaming world and made the obscure genre of JRPG as big as it has become.
Though Sakaguchi’s role changed a lot throughout his time at Square, you can tell how important his influence was after the precipitous drop in quality after FFX. Technically, he’s credited as producer in X-2 but that game came out after he’d already left the company and he’s spoken about how he isn’t a fan of direct sequels so I think it’s safe to say he had little involvement with that game.
Hironobu Sakaguchi: unparalleled storyteller
It was an ugly sequence of events that led to his departure at Square. First, Square was planning to merge with one of its biggest competitors at the time: the Enix corporation. Then Sakaguchi made a film that bombed so badly that it was causing tension with their merger. Sakaguchi took responsibility onto himself and stepped down from his place within the company. Square Enix then proceeded to become the titan it is today filling the game shelves with mediocre AAA shlock. Final Fantasy suffered from his absence as their stories became more contrived and boring. FFXVI is the only good Final Fantasy to come out since FFX. I hear FFXIV is good too but I’m not into MMOs. So what made Sakaguchi’s Final Fantasys so good?
Final Fantasy Is So Good
No single element can be pointed to distinguish the quality of these games but for me, the top things that influenced me so much were the writing, the worlds, and the characters. Because of Sakaguchi’s aversion to direct sequels, every Final Fantasy game is built from the ground up storywise. They each have their own worlds, characters, and plots, and they don’t cross over ever. This way, there’s no disparity with the title. Every Final Fantasy is as final as the last.
23 years later and FFX’s cutscenes still look amazing
The fact that every FF has its own world is so impressive. Growing up, sequels were always something specific. They always had to take everything from the predecessor and give you more. Aliens is just Alien with more aliens. Terminator 2 is Terminator but with two terminators. So in that vein, sequels have always felt lazy to me because everything is already there, you just have to add more. Final Fantasy taught me what a real sequel can be. They don’t have to take any kind of source material from the original story, they can be their own thing with maybe a few franchise tropes to give it that FF flavor.
When it comes to the writing, Final Fantasy is unparalleled. On top of the fact that you have a full new world to explore and discover with every game, they also hold nothing back when it comes to the plots they write. I’ll quickly go through the plot of FFVII as my example because it’s the one everyone’s played so I’m less likely to spoil anything.
The First Class SOLDIER turned mercenary, Cloud Strife
FFVII Rocks
You follow Cloud, a tough mercenary as he fights with a gang of eco-terrorists trying to take down a powerful corporation that’s killing the planet by extracting its natural resources. You are given so much to work with right off the bat. The counternarrative of the terrorists being the good guys. The criticism of corporations killing the planet is even more relevant today than in ‘97. This is all to the aesthetic of a cyberpunk futuristic city blending magic and science in that beautiful way the Japanese like to do.
Then, within the first act of the game, you learn that your main enemy isn’t the head of this evil corporation but instead a super powerful swordsman named Sephiroth who kills the head of the corporation and is hell-bent on summoning a meteor to destroy the planet. It’s at this point that you realize that you’re not playing some rudimentary Zelda plot, no, you’re on a rollercoaster. Every time you think you have an idea of where the story is going, it finds a new way to blow your mind. Like when you learn that Cloud is actually built in a lab as a failed clone of Sephiroth and the hatred Cloud has felt the whole game was actually programmed into him so that he would seek Sephiroth out and wake him up from a deep slumber. Mindboggling storytelling.
One of the greatest moments in gaming history
We Experience Stories Through Their Characters
Final Fantasy characters tend to fit into specific archetypes but they’re always given so much space in the plot to explore their identities and their places within their worlds. No matter how crazy the plots get, they always stay rooted in the interpersonal relationships between the characters. If you were to ask me what FFX was about, I would tell you it’s a bittersweet love story even though the plot is all about overcoming an ancient evil by fighting corrupt traditional ideological leaders. It’s another rollercoaster of a plot but what’s most important are the relationships between the characters. This may be the element that’s missing from post-X Final Fantasys.
From XII to XV, they’re all about these big grandiose plots in these big worlds and the characters just happen to be there. There’s never any room given to explore the characters and their motivations and relationships with one another. For example, in FFIX, there’s an entire section where the party gets split in two because one of the side character’s hometowns gets attacked. So half of the team goes to deal with that while the other half continues the plot. Then both of the stories merge back together down the line. They were willing to hijack an entire section of the game for this one character because they knew that the characters were our avenue into the world of the game.
Each weapon represents a character, all crossing entwined with the plot
There’s nothing like that in XII or XV, or most games. And all the big flashy worlds and powers and mechanics and graphics mean nothing if you have no mechanism to relate to the story. And wouldn’t you know, Final Fantasy only became good again once FFXVI came out, a game all about the characters’ identities and how they fit in their world. This is the magic Sakaguchi brings to his games. A type of storytelling that makes his games feel like homes rather than just plots.
Mistwalker
He didn’t stop when he left Square. He went on and founded the company Mistwalker which continued to make games that follow all these amazing trends. Lost Odyssey is a criminally underrated JRPG for the Xbox 360 … which is probably why it’s underrated. The Last Story is another fantastic game but it came out on the Wii. These are not JRPG consoles. People were buying Xbox 360s for Halo and Burnout, not a four-DVD disc set of some insanely long obscure Japanese game with turn-based combat. And no one’s playing JRPGs on a Wii. Last Story was more action-focused than JRPG but my point is no one cares.
I wonder what the world would’ve looked like for Mistwalker had these games been released on the DS or PS3. And when I saw that Fantasian was being made for Apple, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. This is why we need to care about Fantasian New Dimension and the fact that it’s being released on PS5. I want to see this game skyrocket to the top of the JRPG charts. Mistwalker is a great company and it needs some much-deserved recognition.
Nobuo Uematsu: one of Earth’s greatest composers
Nobuo Uematsu
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Sakaguchi’s genius musical counterpart, Nobuo Uematsu. Especially now that it’s been announced that he’s retiring after the release of this game. Though I lament a future devoid of any new Uematsu compositions, I also acknowledge that this man has more than earned himself some rest. There isn’t a single Uematsu song that doesn’t perfectly reflect the scene of the game the song was written for. Uematsu was self-taught in music from the age of twelve and over time developed an instinct for memorable melodies and satisfying harmonies.
As a musician myself, no one has inspired me more than Uematsu. His songs are written so well even from a time when video game music was all screechy MIDI tones. They had to be so they could fit on cartridges and CDs. Even compressed, Uematsu’s songs are still capable of invoking their emotional context without the framing of their associated video game. I listen to them as albums. They’re beautiful. They’re unpredictable. Uematsu is obviously inspired by classical music but he’s diversified his taste into genres all over the spectrum, including prog. In one OST, you’ll hear everything from Tchaikovsky to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Uematsu taught me the value of accepting all genres in an attempt to be a true admirer of music. But what’s even more impressive is his influence on the industry.
This is a fan-made mod for FFIX with beautiful updated backgrounds. Check it out, it’s called Moguri Mod
Influence
In 2013, Uematsu earned himself a spot on the Classic FM Hall of Fame. At first, there was some contention from the classical community but once they listened to Uematsu, they welcomed him with open arms. Classic FM presenter John Suchet even lauded Uematsu for getting a whole new generation of people excited about classical music. Uematsu was so good at his little video game music that he almost single-handedly revived the classical genre.
If you have even the vaguest mind towards video game music, you know Uematsu’s name. And if you’d played any of his games for any extended period of time, your perception of classical has changed. This has spread throughout the entire gaming industry. It’s hard not to hear the undertones of Uematsu in any of these big-budget orchestral video game soundtracks. He’s such a titan that all these VGM composers try to imitate him in some way. Classical has become a staple for video game music largely because of Uematsu. Sadly, Fantasian Neo Dimension will be his final soundtrack but that’s also why we should care. I can’t wait.
Looks like they’re teleporting between worlds or something. I’m so excited
Things About Fantasian Neo Dimension That Stick Out to Me
I haven’t looked up too much about the original Apple release of Fantasian because I don’t want to spoil anything for myself. The footage I have seen gets me excited though. Everything about it just exudes the golden era of Final Fantasy. For me, that era is between FFVI and FFX. I do love the earlier games too but they just don’t hit the same. So learning that Sakaguchi got inspired to make Fantasian while replaying FFVI has the butterflies in my heart fluttering. In terms of character design, Fantasian brings a type of anime feel that you don’t really see in Final Fantasy but you do see in other Sakaguchi titles like Chrono Trigger.
It brings the stuff we want from a Sakaguchi RPG, random turn-based battles, a unique battle system based on strategy and tactical play, towns, labyrinthine-like dungeons, airships, all the good stuff. It also has a really interesting new system of battle where you can store random encounters for the future if you don’t feel like fighting. But once you’ve stored too many encounters, you have to fight them all at once to earn more storage. This sounds fascinating to me as a long-time JRPG fan. That being said, what’s stuck out to me the most are the environments.
This battle system looks perfect for an old Final Fantasy fan
Prerendered Backgrounds
One of the biggest things I miss most from the early 3D days is the beautiful art of the prerendered background. This is probably my biggest reason for not liking the 2D Final Fantasys as much. Every screen in Final Fantasy VII through IX is a piece of magnificence. I still remember staring at those screens for hours as a kid as I played through these incredible games. At a time when all games were either pixelated or polygonal nightmares with flat and dead textures, Final Fantasy found a way to immerse you in the majesty of their worlds. Of course, it wasn’t just Final Fantasy.
This is the remaster of the remake for Resident Evil but look how good it looks
Games like Resident Evil 2 and 3 also have amazing prerendered backgrounds and they are also among my favourite games. The Resident Evil 1 Remake for the GameCube still holds up today aesthetically because it used prerendered backgrounds. Of course, modern games can now render photorealistic graphics in-engine so there’s no real need for prerendered backgrounds anymore. Which is sad, pre-rendered backgrounds brought such real-life physicality to the games they were made for. A blending of real art and game assets created a very specific aesthetic that modern graphical fidelity has made redundant. At least, that’s what I thought.
That’s a real model in the background, it’s beautiful
Fantasian Environments
How do you bring the unique aesthetic of the prerendered background to the modern world? Fantasian figured it out. Every background is a real-life diorama that the creators built by hand. And it looks absolutely gorgeous. It has the same feeling as walking around on a piece of art. You can feel the artistry within every frame.
Not to take any praise away from designers of modern game environments, they do incredible work. The environments in FFXVI had me breathless at times. But modern environment designers are magicians. There’s so much space between what they do and what we think they do. For anyone who hasn’t used these game engines, it’s hard to tell what’s a prebuilt asset or an artist’s creation. We don’t know what trickery they’ve used to make the visuals what they are. And modern games are squarely within the uncanny valley at this point because of these geniuses and their graphical tricks. But a drawing or a diorama is tactile. They’re not in the uncanny valley because they’re just real. We play the characters through their stories in these real environments. Though I love how far modern graphics have come, the environments in Fantasian feel more like home.
They’re such best friends
