I’ve been again prompted to muse by the contrarian opinions thread, which felt better suited to a different topic, this time one that already exists!
The idea came up over there of long-running franchises having died a long time ago due to things like principle developers leaving came up, including Final Fantasy. I found myself disagreeing, or at least having some caveats. Certainly, my opinion on the series’ status is greatly informed by what I see as its current pinnacle in FFXIII, but I think in general I would characterize the modern series as being in the middle of a years-long identity crisis since FFXIII, oscillating around a central question: is Final Fantasy a niche JRPG series or is it a global phenomenon with appeal to gamers everywhere?
Every mainline game since has tried to answer that question in its own way to recapture the prestige of the series in its own way, to varying degrees of success:
- FFXIV 2.0 doubled down on nostalgia, targeting lapsed fans to some success. While the game is almost certainly one of Square Enix’s most profitable ventures in the modern era (and maybe ever, I’m not sure if its yet outstripped FFXI given higher operating costs), there is a substantial subset of FFXIV players who have never played another Final Fantasy game, and as the game moves forward into a future where it has less and less old material to mine, the appeal to the nostalgic crowd is likely to lessen with time (and MMORPGs live and die by their expansions, with FFXIV now in its first real downturn since the relaunch). In many ways, FFXIV is the series at present, but it’s such a different experience from most other games in the series that I’m not sure it can be part of what helps the series find its footing in the modern era
- FFXV had perhaps the most troubled development of any game in the series to date, and is one of two post-XIII games I would characterize as “seeking a global audience,” by moving into a new game form / genre—arguably to its detriment. At the time of its launch, the enthusiast gaming market had not yet soured on the open-world format to the extent that it has now, and for all the ways the game feels strange as a Final Fantasy game (particularly in its action combat), I believe it is one of the most successful mainline titles in the series as far as sales numbers go, coming in just after FFX and FFVII. While we haven’t seen another game quite like this one, elements of it would find greater success in FFVII Rebirth, and there’s still a lot of Final Fantasy DNA in this one
- FFXVI instead sought a global audience by leaving behind much Final Fantasy’s identity in terms of game design / gameplay, treating the “brand” as a series of superficial signs and signifiers: there is essentially no party, the combat is closer to a character-action game than even FFXV’s, and its principle inspirations arise not from Japanese culture, but from western fantasy like Game of Thrones. Boldly striding into new territory for the series seems not to have paid off to the satisfaction of Square Enix, and it’s hard telling what that means for (a hypothetical?) Final Fantasy XVII. My personal sense is that the audience Square Enix imagined exists (gamers who would play a JRPG if only it were more like other games that aren’t JRPGs) doesn’t actually exist, but whether they recognize that (and what they do about it) remains to be seen. Sakaguchi Himself did seem to like this one, though, so maybe there is a way for Final Fantasy to remain itself while pushing forward into unknown territory
- FFVII-R (I’m including both current games here) feels almost like a sort of parallel timeline where the team is trying more directly to unify old and new. FFVIIR is the central reason I’m not convinced the series is dead yet, as it shows that at least part of Square Enix is interested in the series’ through-line from the original Final Fantasy to now. Many of the people working on FFVII-R were there for the series at its height in the PlayStation era, and the Remake games seem in some ways to be interrogating the idea of what it means for a game to be a modern Final Fantasy game. While the gamble of a trilogy of games as opposed to one seems at present not to have entirely worked from a sales perspective, the individual games have been critically well-received, and it’s possible the games will have long tails like many successful titles in the series’s past, given the looming third and final entry (and an admittedly assumed combined release of all three for the PlayStation 6)
Alongside these, Square Enix spent the last several years using its smaller divisions to experiment, seemingly with the goal of determining whether the vocal crowd looking for “old-school” Final Fantasy experiences is large enough to support their ambitious, AAA development machine, which remains as focused on the forefront of graphical technology much as it has been for decades. They seem to have concluded that this audience is too small, however, restructuring yet again to re-focus their efforts around big-budget projects like the Remake trilogy, Kingdom Hearts, and other mainline Final Fantasy titles
Having followed the last decade-plus of Final Fantasy with a lot of curiosity, it seems to me that the series is at a turning point, with two primary options open to it: 1) continuing to seek global audiences by appealing to western sensibilities as they did in particular with FFXVI or 2) moving more toward the hybrid approach of FFVII-R. FFXVII (assuming it happens at all) feels like it’s make-or-break for the future of the series, which is never exactly a great place for any series to be
Crucially, we don’t even know who (or if anyone) is working on FFXVII right now, either. I’d reasonably guess it’s not the Kitase/Nomura division (are they still Creative Business Unit I?), since they’re likely busy with FFVII-R3 and Kingdom Hearts IV, and I’m not certain it’s the Yoshida branch (Creative Studio 3) either. They do appear to be working on another AAA game based on some cryptic things Yoshida has said, but it would be somewhat strange in the modern era for one division to make two back-to-back mainline titles (though I suppose Square Enix itself is treating the Remake games as mainline titles in some ways, so maybe it wouldn’t be so strange for CS3 to take the reigns again so soon). Whatever CS3 is working on, my gut says Natsuko Ishikawa is leading the story for it, as she’s seemingly taken a much more hands off role for FFXIV since her work on Shadowbringers and Endwalker catapulted her to momentary stardom among that game’s fandom
Their other divisions haven’t had many touch points with Final Fantasy for some time now, but we don’t know a lot about their current restructuring, so it’s possible that could change. If it does, we might see a FFXVII that goes off in some other direction entirely than I anticipate—maybe they give one to Yoko Taro? Wouldn’t that be weird (and potentially pretty awesome)?
There has also been some talk in various interviews of the current old-guard passing on the torch, though. Perhaps this sort of scenario is more likely than I think, and what we’re actually seeing in the modern era is Final Fantasy on life support, though, with the creators with the last ties to the series origins simply waiting for their successors and a truly new era to begin
Whatever happens, I’d guess we’ll have a better answer to the question in 2029, give or take a year!