Emphatic Experiences

FINAL FANTASY XIII (Square Enix, 2009-2010)

Before the thirteenth iteration of the venerable FINAL FANTASY series was released stateside, I’d heard some murmurings from the internet that the Japanese populace were a tad displeased with the title. I just recently finished and will have to say I really enjoyed it (A- grade, I think). I will give the upset people this: FFXIII almost isn’t a FINAL FANTASY game. Sure the naming conventions are the same–Fire becomes Fira, and so forth–and the art matches up with the series–Tetsuya Nomura was once again the character designer–but there are plenty of game play elements that don’t follow. For one, the game is very linear. Overworld? Who needs it. The guys at Square are trying to tell a story and they don’t want that pesky side quest stuff and free roaming to distract the audience. I could write a whole something else about that. My wondering here is whether or not the game would have been received any differently if the name hadn’t had FINAL FANTASY in it. How much does the name of a game change our perception of it?

Can you tell how much the player is doing here?

The battle system in FFXIII is one thing I really enjoyed. It’s a tactics game. The player only controls one party member–the designated “leader”–and even then there’s an “Auto-Battle” option which selects the best commands for a target. Really, the action is handled by the AI, not the player. The player’s role is to manage the party as a group by switching character’s roles from Ravager (a combo chainer) to Medic (the healer) or Sentinel (a defender), and so forth. Let the characters do there thing once they’re in a role. Now, this is very different from previous FINAL FANTASY games where the player would control the whole party and enjoy turn-based combat. (Save for FFXII which played more like Kingdom Hearts from my understanding.) So, what if the game had been called FINAL FANTASY: Real Time Tactics? (Okay, maybe that name sounds dumb but bear with me.) What if it hadn’t have been party of the “main series” and had a name like some side-shot title? I wonder if it would have been nearly as successful, first of all, then I wonder if it would’ve gotten the same complaints–in this case, most likely.

"Hey, where's my Arwing?"

There’s another game from a few years ago that made me wonder the same thing: Star Fox Adventures for the Nintendo GameCube. Now, we’ve all played Star Fox and plenty of us enjoy Star Fox. That’s the game where you fly around, boosting through rings, shooting stuff in space, and doing barrel rolls while a frog crashes into a nearby building for the fiftieth time. (I’m not bitter.) Star Fox Adventures was not that game. In fact, it was almost a Zelda rip-off (from Nintendo, too). I played SFA before I’d ever played through Star Fox 64 or the original on the SNES, so when I popped this guy into my GameCube, I enjoyed myself. The game was fun, the grass was beautiful, and it helped me wait for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker which was due out the following spring. It didn’t make me feel like a space cadet, though. After playing Star Fox 64, I quickly understood people’s disappointment with this title. The two had almost nothing in common. The space segments in SFA felt tacked on just so that the developer’s could get away with calling the protagonist Fox McCloud and the ending was pure, phoned in fanservice.

The truth was that Star Fox Adventures had actually been another game called Dinosaur Planet. For the sake of identification, Nintendo had Rare change the name and swap out the cast of characters for the Star Fox cast. (Sort of a modern day Doki Doki Panic becomes Super Mario Bros. 2.) The idea was that nobody would recognize or care about some new IP called Dinosaur Planet but plenty of people know and like Fox McCloud. Plus, fans were asking for a Star Fox game for their new purple box. Why not just give them this? It was a publisher decision more than a design decision, I think.

Before and After

Star Fox Adventures is the example of changing the name of a game for the sake of sales and public interest. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, as the story goes, was the same thing, as I’m sure about fifty games starring Mario are. I’m wondering here if maybe sometimes we should go the opposite direction and change the name of a game for the sake of the design and how consumers will receive it. A title, especially an established brand, carries a fair amount of expectations along with it. I think Resident Evil 5 also suffered from this. RE5 was not a survival-horror game like the series is known for. So, when I go to the store hoping to pick up the newest and greatest survival-horror game and get home with the action-shooter that was RE5, I may be pretty disappointed. I may even be upset enough to get mad at Capcom, say that they’ve betrayed me, and not want to buy any more Resident Evil games until they “fix” it. I’m not saying I will, but I’ve heard some similar mumblings from peers. Star Fox Adventures was not a Star Fox game so why call it Star Fox? Why not dare to give us something completely fresh? FINAL FANTASY can almost pull this off simply because the name is nothing more than a brand; the game’s have nothing to do with one another (there are a few exceptions) and the rest of the title is just a number. However, suddenly changing 50% of the formula after fifteen or twenty years can catch some people off guard.

This is a debate for developers and publishers, I’m sure. It may be something that doesn’t really matter. If a game’s good, then who cares what it’s called, right? A good hamburger can still be a disappointment when you thought you were getting a chicken sandwich. I’m just thinking that maybe we should be more open to the idea of new titles. Okami was a fantastic Zelda game. So was Darksiders. With the right marketing and word of mouth, we can get passed having to rely on established franchise names to deliver our new content. Or is a name just that important?

I found these pitch materials sitting on my HDD from this spring and realized that they had yet to be uploaded. This is a collection of documents I put together for a mock pitch, as if I were in charge of a development studio and hoping to get the “green light” from a publisher to begin production on this title. My idea was for a 2D Kid Icarus remake for the DS. (Well, that’s a bit spoiled now since Kid Icarus has been announced for the spankin’ new 3DS. Regardless, the exercise remains successful.) Below you’ll see the one pitch document which exists as a sum of all the parts–the one page pitch, the competitive product analysis, cost breakdown, and so forth.

Kid Icarus DS: Pitch Document (example)

The post-graduation summer is somewhere around halfway gone now. During the job-hunting campaign, I’ve been finding other ways to keep myself busy. I’ve been running my mind around a few different game mechanics and ideas, some of which I should be able to get into design document form sometime and get up on here to show. I’ve been working through that huge backlog of games that senior year left me with and enjoying  a lot of it. Beyond that, I’m playing around with a novel that’s been in the works for a while. Within the next few weeks, there should be more posted on here from me. I’ve got reviews and design docs to share.

Just a few updates to go along with the Fall of Limgoth project. There are a lot of documents and spreadsheets to peruse–dialogue, assets lists, stat testing, skill sets, playtest notes… Just about everything that was used during the development of Fall of Limgoth. All of what is found was typed up by me and used by myself and the rest of the team to help make the game as good as can be. Take a look if you will over on my Projects page.

RwR Play Testing Week 05