Also dumping this here: Is the Final Fantasy franchise dying? Apparently the last two installments were relatively unsuccessful. I didn’t play them because I didn’t have the correct console, or the descriptions of the plot turned me off; FF12 was described as LoTR+Star Wars, which made me be all like “why would I want to play that?” and FF13 was described as a mess, plotwise, and also all of this stuff about whateverCie reminded me of the hard drive.
I discussed this with various other people, and I came up with the suggestions that FF should mess with recurring visuals (for example, people should only use guns, and no one should use swords), or instead of LoTR or Star Wars, do something that would be more interesting, like… China Mieville’s Bas-Lag series, or the Book of the New Sun (no, srsly, actually Book of the New Sun would make a decent jRPG setting, maybe, although you would end up soloing most of the time), j0. I think I do feel something stifling about the… aesthetic? of Final Fantasy. Possibly it’s the way they combo technology and medieval/generic fantasy elements. It just seems boring, aesthetically, because it’s the Japanese gaming default, but then I tend to be a purist when it comes to worldbuilding these days.
