Final Fantasy XVI - State of Play

[The Fury]

haxxiy said:

I mean... the 'series original gameplay' has been gone for over 20 years now, more than half of the time Final Fantasy has existed. It's not coming back.

From I to IX, a whole nine games, Final Fantasy followed the same-y copy of Dragon Quest's 1986 turn-based combat. By the end of the century, it was already irrevocably outdated and braindead compared to almost every other game in the market. So the surprise is that it lasted as long as it did, not that it changed in the end.

Even GameFreak, the least talented among all Nintendo's first and second parties by a country mile and targeting a constantly renewing children's audience with Pokémon, innovates more in gameplay terms than Square did in their classic years...

You are correct, it probably won't, SquEnix are appealing to a general audience but that doesn't mean I have to like the changes. 20 years but 4 main series titles, took them 15 years to make 10, took them 20 more years to make 4 (and I'm including 16 in this).

Turn based isn't outdated just because you don't like it. Gameplay can't be outdated because it's just how you play, gameplay has no time limit. Is chess outdated because it's turn based? Is Risk?

Here's another example of what I mean in terms of changing original gameplay. I love Tekken, it's one of my stable series that has held fast over all these years, they have slowly reduced the amount of games per gen due to how fighting games now work with seasons and DLC. However the fundermental gameplay has remained the same in all that time. A 3D arena fighter, each button is a limb. They adapted with changes like emphasizing juggling mechanics, walls instead of just open arenas, specials, rage bars and stuff, to keep up to date with how fighting games are progressing, improved graphics, hit detection and engines for development. They even changed their main story mode in T7 to replicate the success a changeable character story modes like Injustice or MK, instead of the generic arcade style. However at the core it's still a 3d arena fighter, each button is a limb.

Yet, if they changed it to be more similar to Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, with half circle + punch style moves, a 2d plane fighting game. I probably wouldn't buy the next entry. It's still called Tekken, is still a fighter but I'm not interested because it's not Tekken gameplay.