Final Fantasy is broken.
With Lightning Returns, it has become clear that Square Enix is suffering from a crisis of imagination, caught between a desire to give players what we want while still searching for the creative energy to deliver something we've never seen before. I believe, however, that with Toriyama's trilogy past us, Final Fantasy XV could become the great crystal hope we've been aching for. And to make that so, FFXV director Tetsuya Nomura should heed the lessons of the FFXIII games--the greatest of which is that blindly pursuing sales and creative trends without understanding the reasons for their successes leads you into traps that are difficult to escape.
Seeking Inspiration From Proper Places
...it's laudable that Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama would incorporate ideas from successful games--but like other Japanese developers, Toriyama saw Call of Duty as the standard-setter, hoping to replicate its success without understanding what makes it so successful. Ace Combat director Kazutoki Kono rode the same wave with Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, producing a shallow game with lots of pizzazz but little passion. By chasing a trend, Kono sacrificed a vision he once believed in. Toriyama traveled a similar path on the way to Final Fantasy XIII, telling Tech Digest, "we're more interested in things such as first person shooters like Call of Duty. They give a better sense of tension on the battlefield. We sometimes draw inspiration from those sorts of games. It's not just RPGs but FPS titles that get us excited."
Meanwhile, even most first-person shooters fail to re-create the set-piece-focused style of Call of Duty in any meaningful way. Yet Toriyama was adamant that the best way to tell a great story is to lead the player down a narrow path. "When you look at most Western RPGs, they just dump you in a big open world, and let you do whatever you like... [It] becomes very difficult to tell a compelling story when you're given that much freedom," Toriyama told Xbox World 360 in 2010. This statement has proven a self-fulfilling prophecy: Lightning Returns is not only the most open of the XIII trilogy, but also tells the weakest story by a significant margin. However, talented game developers like Rockstar, Rocksteady, and Xenoblade Chronicles studio Monolith Soft have proven that a big world featuring seemingly endless freedom can also be home to a great story. The problem isn't that writers can't tell great stories in open worlds; the problem is that Toriyama can't...
Creating Relatable Characters
You could argue that Final Fantasy XIII's story was no stunning victory, as much as I personally enjoyed it. I liked Lightning then, but she did not carry the game on her own, and I didn't much miss her in Final Fantasy XIII-2. For some reason, however, Square was banking on Lightning's ability to carry a game on her own, so much so that Toriyama stripped away the party dynamic completely in Lightning Returns. And without an ensemble for her to interact with, Lightning was bled of her appeal, left to mope on her own while reciting repetitive dialogue that turned simple situations into tangled webs of metaphors and religious allegories. Harry Potter had Ron and Hermione to guide him through his relatable turmoil; Luke Skywalker had Han Solo, C-3PO, and other companions to give context to his normalcy. Lightning Returns is like a disappointing sitcom spinoff--the Joanie Loves Chachi to Final Fantasy XIII's Happy Days. Without the proper group of friends to support them, some characters simply wither...
...Toriyama insists that Lightning is a well-loved heroine. He recently told Siliconera, "we know that Lightning is an extremely popular character, even when compared to other Final Fantasy characters." She's already appeared in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn--no surprise, given that she makes a remark in Lightning Returns that she'll have to visit Eorzea at some point in the future. (I'm sure that the story gymnastics Square performed to justify the crossover are exhausting.) I'm not sure where Toriyama gets his figures from, and perhaps Square's market research has led him to that conclusion. My guess, however, is that Toriyama himself is so enamored of Lightning that he’s unwilling to leave the character behind, even if her presence is at the detriment of the game...
Reestablashing an Identity...
Reestablishing the Final Fantasy identity isn’t just a matter of copying past successes, however. It's easy to look back on previous Final Fantasy games and cite the ways in which they are superior to the series' recent outings. I have personally mentioned other Final Fantasies as examples of properly-delivered tropes, but if Final Fantasy is to grow, Square Enix must be willing to break free of the past and prove its ability to discern between innovation and gimmickry.
What is that difference? It's the difference between Final Fantasy IV's active time battles, and Lightning Returns' countdown clock. It's the difference between Final Fantasy III's job system, and Final Fantasy XIII's crystarium. Innovations give us new ways to play games, and change the manner with which the game's systems unfold. Gimmicks introduce change for change's sake, without regard for how that change impacts the elements around it. In some ways, it comes back to Jon Shafer's call for focus: innovations are often solutions to problems or avenues for delivering new ideas, while gimmicks are bolted on whether or not they complement the game as a whole. The former stems from great focus; the latter, from lack thereof...
