Working Out My Distaste - Final Fantasy XVI Reveal Trailer

So I sometimes intend to use this for subjects I sort of hope age poorly. In this case it's the reaction that's been brewing in my mind for like a year now to the FFXVI reveal and why the game fundamentally does not excite me based on what they showed. The game had by all accounts been in dev for about 3.5 years by then so it feels reasonable to say that what was shown is representative. I want this game to be something I enjoy and I have little doubt it'll be "good" for whatever metric used (i.e. technically impressive, interesting mechanics, decent plot that falls apart about 3/4s of the way through like essentially all FF games) but I'm very interested in trying to unpack what about the reveal trailer makes me think it will not be a game for me.

Let's make sure we're all on the same page, if you haven't seen it here's the trailer used to announce the game. Watch at work at your peril it's somewhat violent though much of the more explicit violence is left to implication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr6PtdY0i7M

Okay we're all on the same page here. So... that was... dour. Like that's the key thing that feels inescapable here whether you like the trailer or not, it is essentially bereft of any kind of joy or even enthusiasm? I guess the way I'd put it is that usually trailers for a new Final Fantasy have large focuses on the world of the game, they aren't "happy" per se but there's often a focus on grandeur and natural beauty. We'll set tone aside for now and look at aesthetic. The actual aesthetic design here feels completely generic. If people weren't riding war ostriches and there wasn't Ifrit and Shiva being bastardized in such a specific way from their original cultural contexts you could make it just about anything. To be fair no Final Fantasy world has any consistency, it is these hallmarks that give them consistency, we're also seeing a very small part of that world, the green blasted hellscape the few battles we see taking place is likely caused by something the lore calls "blight" which is connected to the "mothercrystals" from which magic/tech seems to spring. That said it feels like there is a conscious medievalifying of the aesthetic. There exists a constant push-pull among Final Fantasy in both developer and fandom about how fantasy and how sci-fi it should be, while the claim is often made that the original games were strictly more medieval it's hard to interpret the sky castle graphics in the NES version of FF1 as placing it anywhere but in space so the weird aesthetic clashes are core to the identity. I'd imagine in the final game these aesthetic clashes will absolutely happen, but to me it's leading with what I would hope is aesthetically its least interesting foot. The setting just seems to be going for "europe" where the series in say XV we had the wild fantasy contrast of starting with a basis in the American southwest, in X it was the natural beauty of Okinawa, they felt like worlds I'd never see anyone else try in their fantasy and this feels like... Dragon Age of Thrones.

To look at it though there's obviously more to the world consideration. This is a very world focused trailer but it's in a very contemporary fantasy mold. Fantasy as a prestige product is very wrapped up in a perception that what makes "good, worthy" fantasy is politics. Not political undertones which will inevitably crop up into any narrative, but like "this world has an internal politics and this faction is warring with that faction because of this lore history." This is honestly probably the first issue I can take as to how the game feels likely to clash with my personal tastes. I find that type of fantasy kind of numbing and tedious. It's not impossible to draw me in, but put simply if the forefront of why I should care is the hundred years war but with countries you just made up it's very much not immediately my type of fantasy. It'll show up as a marker of my obvious biases and tastes but FFVII hit kind of a perfect spot for me personally, the lore and politics you need to know are immediate and visceral "Shinra holds a stranglehold over world politics, must be destroyed" which doesn't end up being the emotional throughline of the original version, but still it is an immediate and visceral motivation. Here we're seeing a setup that seems to be "the two fire summons from FF are having a big fight and also there's politics intertwined with that?" The obvious emotional story here is protagonist (revealed to be named Clive in material since given via the website) wanting vengeance for his probably doomed home/family. Little bro houses the Phoenix summon, bad times await. The desire to be world lore focused feels baked into the DNA such that it gets pride of place above character descriptions on the game's website which means identifying six kingdoms with separate flag designs before describing any of the characters.

So let's address the very limited gameplay shown in that trailer, sure looks like Devil May Cry don't it? On some level I feel like I should be enthused, the battle director got poached from Capcom seemingly in 2019 having most recently worked on Devil May Cry V. I kinda... don't want this kind of combat in FF? Like I'm fine with action based FF combat obviously, I dig XV a lot despite its flaws and VII remake is a straight up masterwork, but both are also working from a "how to wed action and what FF has been before" and the foot they put forward here was "it's just Devil May Cry." That kind of visceral combat has to be paced very very well and across a 40 hour experience... I dunno. We obviously don't know how the mechanics underpinning combat actually work, just that it seems to be real time action gameplay, we'll have to see more of it along with how character building works, but I do want to bring it up because it's honestly married as much as everything else I've listed to my biggest misgiving. Tone.

The action here is clearly meant to be dismal, violent and gritty. We see clive stabbing a downed foe on the ground, there's generally a desire to focus on the brutality of combat to some degree. This lines up with the general unhappy tone. Drama is going to be at the heart of most any FF trailer but everything in this trailer has bent to showcase an unhappy worldview to the point where the action that seems framed as meant to excite the viewer just feels to me like the same misery. The keyword here seems to be revenge, where previous protagonists could be brooding or sullen, this is the first protagonist whose default expression is an angry frown. The fisher king here has a world built around him and that world is as angry as he is.

To close this I'll address an elephant in the room, something that has kept many people excited past similar misgivings, the involvement of many key staffers from Final Fantasy XIV. The first time I expressed this opinion I actually had a few FFXIV fans come down on me hard (please FFXIV fans to me you're markedly more concerning than K-pop fans) for not "understanding" how important it is that they are making it. I... don't like FFXIV. I can't even say it's horrible, it's just an MMO and I don't like those. The core gameplay wasn't fun for me and the world was kinda boring to me when I was playing A Realm Reborn. People seem to really like the later expansions? Like Stormblood and up? I don't have the time and patience to reach that point so I'm working with what they showed me when I speak of XVI. Naoki Yoshida has never worked on a game I invested in (he's also a producer on this not a director, director's Hiroshi Takai who also did a bunch of FFXIV work but I at least know some other things he's been on). Single player and MMO design and storytelling are wildly different beasts so while it's academically interesting to me to see this team pivot the other way I have no in-built fondness for them. Them's the breaks.

So yeah, while I can list many things that give me misgivings (and allow me to clarify these are just misgivings, I bought a PS5 in part to be sure I could play the new FFs) they really trace back to tone, I'm just not buying what that trailer's selling about this angry vengeful man and the other things that would normally pick up the slack for me like art direction aren't there for me personally. I hope the final game wows me, I'm still definitely getting it.