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Continuing the Legacy: The New Final Fantasy Game
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by Mario Podeschi, August 4 2010
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On a forgotten page of eternity, there lies a land embraced by mighty gods. Her name… Eorzea. As fates cross, swords will clash under the eldritch veil of a crimson shadow. Heroes of the realm, take up your blades! To answer the call of destiny, you must join hands… once again.
--Final Fantasy XIV: Official E3 Trailer
Final Fantasy XIV is Square Enix’s second attempt at an MMORPG set within their most popular franchise. As direct successor to an already successful online market, it seeks to overhaul Square Enix’s MMORPG presence with upgraded graphics, new play mechanics, and a commitment to the most popular tropes of the series.
Square Enix’s first MMORPG, Final Fantasy XI, was played at its height by more than 500,000 subscribers on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 2. Despite these successes, XI has long felt like an unfinished product. The graphics are only average—ambitious when first released but paling in comparison to more recent projects like the single player Final Fantasy XIII. Furthermore, American gamers used to the elegant design of World of Warcraft’s quest system rebelled against the idea of “grinding”—mandatory leveling through plotless, repetitive monster-bashing.
The new Final Fantasy game promises to correct these issues. Player activity is directed largely by items called “Guildleves,” which function as quest cards that allow access to adventure areas for the player and her party. The cards themselves are a setting-specific tarot deck, representing themes like Valor, Diligence, and Constancy. The theme of the card corresponds to the theme of the quest, so that players can direct their characters to the kind of quests they most enjoy.
Though the graphics of its predecessor have started to show their age, the art of XIV is top-notch. Square Enix has alpha-tested and released plenty of media outlining the “Limsa Lominsa” faction, a seafaring nation painted in every shade of blue imaginable. In Limsa Lominsa, mist-shrouded towers stare off into deep blue seas while sun-lit clouds drift across an azure sky. Indoors, fisherman’s globe chandeliers illuminate spacious marketplaces filled with everything from bags of grain to navigational tools. The textures are vivid and varied. From rain effects to the grain of wood in the pirate lord’s flagship, Square Enix has created a texture palette of startling realism.
Like its predecessor, the new Final Fantasy game offers five races to choose from, but each race is now divided into two subraces. The Lalafell (Japanese hobbits) now offer a spiritual, nomadic desert subrace in addition to their more vanilla, agrarian cousins. In general, this and the other subraces allow for “darker” character options. Admittedly, the player races of XI tended to be cuter characters than they were menacing, and the expanded options now allow players to play goliath pirates rather than gentle giants, or war-painted nocturnal catwomen in lieu of their gentler sun-worshipping counterparts.
Though characters still gain levels to express general increases in power, job-specific leveling has been heavily restructured. Characters gain “physical levels” that represent broad, across-the-board increases in power, but class abilities are measured individually and can be swapped as easily as picking up a bow rather than a spear. The end goal of this design is to allow flexible playability where characters can fill different roles depending on the needs of their group. Solo play is another design goal, allowing characters to quest alone without having to settle for inferior loot and experience.
The classes themselves are divided into four “disciplines”—general categories of class options. Two of these encompass the usual selection of melee fighters, ranged attackers, healers, and blast-casters. The other two disciplines place a focus on skills instead of combat powers. Resource-gathering classes allow players to harvest lumber, minerals, or fish, while artisan classes allow these resources to be formed into weapons, armor, jewelry, or food. Among the innovative features is the “Culinarian” class, which in particular has seen a lot of attention from Japanese news sources. This professional chef class engages in Iron Chef-styled cooking competitions while providing long-term buffs to allies or patrons. In short, Final Fantasy XIV has made what appears to be the most earnest attempt at making cooking cool in any MMORPG to date.
Keeping with its forebears, the new Final Fantasy game gives much attention to characterization. Emotive animations like thumbs-ups, dances, thoughtfulness, and combat maneuvers make each race distinctive. Furthermore, the same intricate texturing that decorates the terrain also decorates the characters. His head bowed, a thin wizard wears coarse, off-white robes accented by a smooth damask neck wrap. A warrior wears plated armor laden with the scoring of countless deflected blades. A woman’s gloved hand lifts a stein to her lips, with one pinky stretched out across the bottom rung of the handle, while wisps of her hair float in a coastal breeze. If the attention to detail is consistent throughout the game, then Final Fantasy XIV may raise the digital acting bar yet again.
Music is provided by veteran Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Eumatsu. At recent Distant Worlds: The Music of Final Fantasy concerts, Eumatsu’s orchestras have provided sneak previews of the new soundtracks while projectors display trailers for the upcoming game. Rest assured, the new Final Fantasy game will feature many old favorites. The game already includes the arpeggiated “Prelude” which began it all, and wherever there are chocobos, players can no doubt expect the “Chocobo Theme.” New tracks include familiar but reimagined rock-and-roll battle music, Arabic rhythms for the desert Lalafellians, world themes inspired by XI, and other compositions in the usual variety of styles the gaming world has come to expect from Eumatsu.
Final Fantasy XIV is due to be released on September 30th, 2010. In the meantime, Square Enix is slowly lifting the curtain on their new project through trailers, alpha and beta testing, interviews, and the Distant World promotions. An elegant homepage features sections in Japanese, English, French, and Dutch where potential players can ogle pictures, view trailers, preview play mechanics, and read background on XIV’s virtual world. Hopefully a Final Fantasy 14 open beta is looming around the corner.
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