Everything about the leadup to the release of Forspoken, Square Enix’s big new open-world action RPG, has been alowkeymess. But you wouldn’t know that from the launch trailer which stays upbeat on the modern-day magical adventure by taking a bunch of words out of context and spinning them into deceitful accolades.
“This Forspoken launch trailer is kind of telling us that the game might not actually be that good and here’s how I know,” trailer editing aficionado Derek Lieu said in a TikTok video that blew up over the weekend. “The biggest red flag are these quotes which are either one word long or two words long.”
He proceeded to go through each phrase flashed on screen during it, found the original source it was from, and read the larger context aloud. In almost every instance the meaning was very different from the way the words were presented in the trailer, and not intended to be taken as unambiguous praise.
In one example, Square Enix lifted the word “Beautiful” from a December preview published over at Distractify. In context, however, the quote wasn’t saying that Forspoken was beautiful but that it had the “potential” to be a “beautiful story-driven game that will pull at your heartstrings with each new chapter.” It was, after all, a preview and not a review of the final game, though the site’s editor said she didn’t take issue with how the word was used.
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“Square Enix did ask for permission to use the quote, and we did approve,” Distractify gaming editor, Sara Belcher, told Kotaku in an email. “In our actual review, I do refer to the game as ‘beautiful’ (that was my opinion of the game’s world since the preview, which is why I didn’t personally feel the quote felt out of context). We do not charge for the use of quotes in promotional materials.”
In another example, the Final Fantasy maker quotes the word “impressive” from Game Informer. The only problem is that the word in question doesn’t even come from a hands-on preview, but from a news write-up of a gameplay trailer from a Sony State of Play. “Frey’s traversal abilities are impressive, allowing for fast movement in and out of combat, both in aerial and aquatic situations,” it reads.
To recap then, Forspoken’s newest trailer included a truncated quote of someone describing one of its older trailers. Game Informer’s actual review gave the game a 7.5 out of 10. It did not include the word impressive, instead describing main protagonist Frey’s overall adventure as “[not] without its highlights.”
Game Informer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lieu told Kotaku that the intent of the video wasn’t to claim that he thinks the game is or will be bad, but rather that the misleading framing heavily implies that Square Enix wasn’t confident enough in the game to let it stand on its own without the bogus accolades.
“They could be entirely wrong taking this approach and the game is actually good, or has merits they could be focusing on instead of looking for quotes,” he said. “So I think it says more about the people in charge of marketing the game than it does the game itself.”
Companies relying on misleading quotes from critics and review outlets is nothing new. Sometimes they remove the original context. Sometimes they just search for any source, whether it’s reputable or not, that says your game is awesome. Almost always the accolades themselves are in giant fonts while the publications they’re pulled from are too small to read unless you’re taking time to analyze them in a TikTok video like Lieu.
As a point of comparison, he also shared two Forpsoken trailers that make the game look appealing without resorting to lies. The first was a trailer for the demo released last month. The second was a recut of an existing social media trailer that was repeatedly roasted online for its Joss Whedon-style fourth-wall-breaking dialogue.
“The real problem isn’t the narration at all, it’s that they don’t lean hard enough into the tone the narration should be selling and i know that because i proved it just now to be sure,” wrote Twitter user spellbang who took the same ingredients but remixed them in a way that looked much cooler while retaining the sensibility of the original.
The artistry behind making a good video game trailer aside, lying is bad and companies shouldn’t do that. It’s bad enough when a trailer full of pre-baked footage masks, say, how poorly a game actually runs. It’s even worse, though, when companies go out of their way to try and rope independent media outlets into their deceit. Publishers are supposed to get permission before using other people’s quotes in their marketing, and to be transparent about how they will be used.
Square Enixdid not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Just buy a PS5? What, is it hard?”Screenshot: Square Enix
Final Fantasy XVI, the upcoming installment in the long-running JRPG series, drops on June 22 as a PlayStation 5 exclusive. That exclusivity is a bit of a bummer as other Final Fantasy games, such as Final Fantasy VII Remake, were also available on PC. And the last mainline entry, Final Fantasy XV, was multiplatform. Unfortunately, at least for now, the new Final Fantasy game will remain on PlayStation 5 only, according to the game’s producer.
Producer Naoki Yoshida, colloquially known as Yoshi-P, was interviewed at a Mahjong tournament over the weekend, where he was whether Final Fantasy XVI would come to PC, something Square Enix confirmed when it revealed the game almost two years ago. However, despite that detail found in the footnote text at the bottom of the trailer, Yoshi-P said the release information is wrong, according to a “rough translation” by the Japanese gaming news Twitter account Genki_JPN. In fact, there may not be a PC version coming at all, as Yoshi-P is apparently suggesting folks go out and buy a PS5 instead.
“Nobody said a word about a PC version releasing,” Yoshi-P said. “Why is it like a PC version is releasing six months later? Don’t worry about that, buy a PS5! Sorry, I went overboard. We did our best so please look forward to it.”
It’s interesting Yoshi-P is purporting that a PC version isn’t planned. Scrubbing through some old Final Fantasy XVI trailers, such as the “Awakening” one from September 2020, it was definitely stated that the game is “not available on other platforms for a limited time after release on PS5,” suggesting it could possibly hit other consoles in the future at the very least. Such was the case with the Final Fantasy VII Remake, where the “limited time” window was about a year. However, all recent marketing for the game, from newer trailers to its official website, now makes no mention of it coming to PC. This is unfortunate considering other Final Fantasy games are on more platforms than just PlayStation and the fact that Sony’s newest console can still be difficult to find. But in the grand scheme of things, knowing how deep Square Enix’s relationship with PlayStation is, it’s not surprising. At least the exclusivity deal should take advantage of the PlayStation 5’s hardware so that there’s no loading.
Kotaku reached out to Square Enix for clarification but did not receive a reply before publication.
Alongside sticking firmly to PlayStation consoles, Final Fantasy XVI has been rated mature for certain types of content featured in the game. Specifically, according to a translation on the Brazilian Ministério da Justiça website, for hate crimes (yikes) and sex scenes (nice).
Last month, the legendary co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog was arrested for allegedly purchasing shares in a development studio before its involvement in a Dragon Quest game was announced. A month later, he was arrested a second time for reportedly buying stock in a company that was set to work on a Final Fantasy spinoff. Yesterday, Tokyo prosecutors formally charged Yuji Naka for inside trading roughly $1,080,000 in Final Fantasy stock.
According to NHK, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office determined that Naka had been making a profit on insider trading (Thanks, VGC). For the uninitiated, insider trading is when someone with non-public knowledge of a company is able to use that information to trade stock at an advantage. Doing so is illegal in Japan. So Naka ran afoul of the law when he purchased shares in ATeam before the studio had announced that it would be developing the mobile game Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier, a battle royale that was exclusively released for mobile devices. Though the game was announced in 2021, Naka was arrested on December 7 of this year.
This was a month after he had been arrested the first time for buying shares in Aiming, the studio that created Dragon Quest Tact. In both of these incidents, he was arrested alongside Square Enix employee Taisuke Sasaki. Sasaki was indicted for trading roughly $782,000 in stock.
If the two made a profit off the ATeam stock, it was presumably before The First Soldier was canceled less than a year after its launch. Square Enix had clearly been hoping to capitalize on the popularity of Fortnite and other battle royales. Instead, First Soldier suffered severe performance issues and was exclusively available on mobile.
Naka had joined Square Enix in 2018 to direct Balan Wonderworld, a strange action-platformer that was near-universally panned as a flop. The game was unfocused and confusing to many reviewers, and Kotaku included it on a list of the year’s biggest gaming disappointments. The director departed Square Enix in June 2021. Maybe Naka would have been better off if he had been focused on directing a good game instead of manipulating the stock market.
Final Fantasy is now 35 years old, and that feels a little bit weird to say. While not the first RPG series to ever grace a home console or even the first Japanese-developed RPG, Final Fantasy is, arguably, the JRPG. Everyone knows it, and everyone has played at least one.
There’s a lot of debate about what Final Fantasy as a franchise really is, and over the last 20 years, a lot of people have felt disappointed by huge overhauls to combat or setting. But there is no one kind of Final Fantasy. I can’t really think of any other series that has changed as much and as often as Final Fantasy has. Right back to its origins, Final Fantasy has always managed to innovate, iterate, and reinvent.
Final Fantasy has always managed to innovate, reiterate, and reinvent
And where did all of this creativity start? The original Final Fantasy on the Famicom in 1987. Now-legendary series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi had long wanted to make an RPG for Square, but following Dragon Quest’s runaway success in 1986, he seized the opportunity and pushed through the odds to make Final Fantasy happen.
To celebrate this momentous 35th anniversary, I want to look back at the original six Final Fantasy titles and see how each one innovated and reinvented the wheel, paving the way for other RPGs, as well as forging a path ahead to continue to create unique masterpieces.
Final Fantasy I – A Class Act
“The fun in an RPG begins when you create a character, in my mind,” designer and battle director Akitoshi Kawazu told Jeremy Parish in 2012. Inspired by Ultima, Wizardry, and Dungeons & Dragons, the original Final Fantasy was the result of a team of seven people at Squaresoft, headed up by Sakaguchi. The series creator “made a concerted effort to be different” from Dragon Quest, and the game’s job system is perhaps the defining part of that difference.
Ready to be knocked down? — Image: Square Enix
Stylistically Final Fantasy was pretty different from other RPGs of the time. It wasn’t totally medieval and it was more “fantasy”, hence the name. But with the crystals, the four elements, and the in-game class and job designs, it felt very different. Wizardry had done classes and jobs before, but Final Fantasy simplified things, and your four chosen classes all got an upgrade as part of the narrative in the game’s most memorable moment – meeting Bahamut, the King of the Dragons.
Warrior, Thief, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, and Red Mage. Those are the six original jobs. You’re not playing as a warrior hero in Dragon Quest or the shipwreck-prone Adol in Ys, nope – you’re whoever you want to be.
the game’s job system is perhaps the defining part of that difference.
The job system is one of the most iconic parts of any RPG, and you can make a pretty strong case for Final Fantasy popularising it. Final Fantasy III (no, not the SNES one) improved upon it tenfold by adding more jobs to the game like Summoner, Ranger, Dark Knight, and Dragoon, with Final Fantasy V introducing even more iconic roles like Blue Mage and Samurai. Both games make other improvements to the system, but this is where it started.
Image: Square Enix
Also, ending a time loop? That’s got to be a pretty significant moment in video games back in 1987. Hey, at least in 2022 we all (read: those with a PS4 or PS5) got to kill Chaos.
Final Fantasy II – This is our story
Really, Final Fantasy IV (yes, the SNES number II) is the game that popularised the story-heavy side of Final Fantasy. But Final Fantasy II (the NES one – keep up!) is the one that really started the trend.
In a lot of earlier RPGs, the story was either barebones or the hero was a nameless character that was left for you to superimpose yourself upon. Here, you start off with four distinct characters (you can give them names, but their defaults are Firion, Maria, Guy, and Leon) and, before you even find your feet, you’re thrust into an unwinnable battle and forced to watch your party die in front of you.
Death permeates Final Fantasy II’s story, which focuses on a rebellion army who are fighting against the Emperor and an evil empire. Character’s jobs are set in stone, and the cast all have personalities and motives – basic, sure, but they’re there. But the success of the original Final Fantasy opened up the sequel to a lot more experimentation and a much darker tale where many named characters die (including party members).
Image: Square Enix
Even though most of the original team returned to make Final Fantasy II, the sequel made some pretty major departures from the first – and not just in having defined characters. I’m dancing around it, but Final Fantasy II is the most divisive entry in the series. The main reason for this is that it’s the only game in the main series that does away with experience points (EXP). Kawazu, again in charge of the battle system, replaced EXP with a reactive kind of levelling. If a character uses a sword a lot, they’ll gradually get better with it. And if a character takes a lot of hits, their HP goes up.
It’s… finicky, to say the least, but it’s the one big part of the early Final Fantasy that Kawazu took with him when he went to develop the SaGa series.
But Final Fantasy II might have established the most Final Fantasy things – chocobos, Cid, the Ultima spell, the Genji armour, the Blood Sword weapon, Leviathan, and the theme of evil empires…
Not every innovation has to stick, which is probably part of the reason why Final Fantasy has never revisited this style of levelling (that and the above with Kawazu) or the keyword system hasn’t really returned. But Final Fantasy II also established a number Final Fantasy staples – chocobos, Cid, the Ultima spell, the Genji armour, the Blood Sword weapon, Leviathan, and the theme of evil empires all came from II.
Wark or kweh? — Image: Square Enix
Despite its rocky place in the series’ history, Final Fantasy II was a showcase of the team’s creativity and innovative ideas, and while many series hallmarks have come from this game alone, others were abandoned.
Final Fantasy III – I summon thee
Final Fantasy III – which was actually the last ‘missing’ Final Fantasy game to get an official English version, thanks to a 3D DS remake in 2006 – is a weird one to talk about here. Its defining feature is that it expanded massively on FFI’s job system; there are now 20 jobs instead of just six, and you could swap between them outside of battle. In many ways, Final Fantasy III was a return to what made FFI work so well while improving on those aspects. As FFI was a response to the original Dragon Quest, III was a response to Dragon Quest III, which had a solid class system itself. Final Fantasy wanted to do it better.
Final Fantasy wanted to do it better.
If there are two jobs that feel distinctive and unique to Final Fantasy, I think they were formed here – the Dragoon and the Summoner. So the Dragoon technically was introduced in FFII as an ally named Ricard Highwind, but FFIII is where it really comes into its own, all because of one word: ‘Jump’. Spears and classes that use spears have appeared before in other video games, but the Dragoon is a particular kind of class, one that attacks from the skies and can stay safe from enemy attacks, all with an advantage against aerial enemies.
Totally what it looked like on the Famicom. Promise. — Image: Square Enix
Summoners, however, are even more important. Summons, Aeons, Espers, Eidolons, Astrals, Eikons – Final Fantasy is the series for summoning huge, ethereal creatures. And while other RPGs like Namco’s Tales series or plenty of Western RPGs have had summoners or summon spirits, Final Fantasy’s brand of summons feels special. These creatures are often plot-critical, rely on an enormous amount of power, and make you feel awesome when calling a huge image of an old, wizened man onto the battlefield just to rain thunder upon the field.
why would you fight a giant bird with a knife and not as an armoured, jumping, spear-wielding expert?
The game certainly encouraged you to swap between jobs, but Final Fantasy III also hints to use certain jobs at certain times. There’s a boss that pretty much requires you to play as four Dragoons (it’s possible to win as other jobs, but it’s not fun, let me tell you!). And while things like that are annoying, I think it’s a pretty fascinating way of establishing what a job is without the characters having defined personalities.
After all, why would you fight a giant bird with a knife and not as an armoured, jumping, spear-wielding expert?
Final Fantasy IV – Actively Timed
This is it – arguably, Final Fantasy IV (the first 16-bit SNES entry) is the game that really put Final Fantasy on the map. At least before that pesky eco-warrior Cloud Strife came onto the scene and actually got the Final Fantasy series into Europe…
Final Fantasy IV has, for its time, a pretty beautiful character arc for its main hero, Cecil. A dark knight employed by an evil empire, Cecil spends much of the first part of the game going through a moral dilemma, realising he’s slaughtering innocents all for the sake of his king, culminating in a scene where Cecil, atop the aptly-named Mount Ordeals, atones for his sins and fights his own reflection to become a Paladin.
Dark armour means bad guy, right? — Image: Square Enix
But we’re not really here to talk about the story, as impactful or iconic as it actually is. We’re here to talk about perhaps the most important thing Final Fantasy has ever done for the turn-based RPG – the Active Time Battle system (ATB).
Hiroyuki Ito, who would later direct Final Fantasy VI, IX, and XIII, came up with the ATB system when watching Formula One (as lead designer Takashi Tokita told 1Up in an interview in 2013). Previous turn-based RPGs meant inputting all of your character’s actions one after the other before the action played out. In FFIV, though, each character and enemy has an (invisible) bar that fills up over time. When it maxes out, the player can tell that character what to do. The speed of the ATB bar is determined by the character’s speed stat, and you could influence it with time-based spells like Haste.
Hiroyuki Ito, who would later direct Final Fantasy VI, IX, and XIII, came up with the ATB system when watching Formula One
The inclusion of this shaped the series going forward – not every single Final Fantasy game has used it (see Final Fantasy X, XV, and the upcoming XVI), but this was a momentous development in RPGs because it sped up the action while still remaining fixed to the genre’s roots. You could plan battles more accurately and manipulate character speed to your advantage.
There are like 25 different versions of this game. That’s how iconic it is. Edward is also good in at least one of them. — Image: Square Enix
This is still one of the most Final Fantasy things out there today, and not many other RPGs have used the ATB system – Chrono Trigger, Parasite Eve, Grandia, and Child of Light are examples (and two of those are Squaresoft titles). But many 3D Final Fantasy games have used an iteration of it – XII’s Gambit system relies on order and cast time, and X-2 has different-length ATB bars depending on the job you’re playing as. If anything, the ATB system allowed other RPG developers to experiment with the turn-based system that had been long established at that point.
Final Fantasy V – Adventure and experiment
The middle child of the SNES trilogy might be the least innovative of the original six, but Final Fantasy V is still a pretty special – and pretty important – addition to the genre.
Before Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy V is the most iterative entry in the series – again returning to I and III’s job system, but instead letting you play as a group of established, named characters. It’s also maybe the most humble entry in the series, given that the main character Bartz isn’t some grand hero (though there are some heritage things going on) but is just an adventurer having fun with his best pal, Boco the Chocobo.
Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler, Fantasy Life, and many more games owe Final Fantasy V for their excellent job systems.
Let’s go back to the job system again, though, because if I established it and III improved on it, then V is the definitive job system in the series. Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler, Fantasy Life, and many more games owe Final Fantasy V for their excellent job systems. Even 30 years after its release, Final Fantasy V’s level of customisation and freedom with its job system is excellent, allowing you to not only swap between classes whenever but also enabling you to cross-equip skills between classes as you level them up. So this time, if you really wanted to, you could play the game with four Geomancers, and it would be totally viable. Earth bells for days, right?
Every job for every character has its own unique outfit. Adorable! — Image: Square Enix
Really, though, for the first half of the game, Final Fantasy V is pretty cosy. Dragon Quest always felt (and still does) like the cosier series, though that franchise pretty much found its footing here. Final Fantasy V turns away from the darker narratives of II and IV and swaps them for a heartfelt game about exploration and adventure. At least until you have to fight the big tree at the end.
Final Fantasy VI – But what if we lost?
Okay, my goodness, where do I start with Final Fantasy VI?
There’s still nothing really like Final Fantasy VI out there. An RPG with no real definable main character (though it’s totally Terra Branford). A huge playable cast, each of whom (*coughcoughUmarocough*) has a strong backstory. A JRPG where there are choices that can permanently alter your party make-up? Oh, and you lose about halfway through the game.
It’s all about triumph over adversity, and hope prevailing over despair.
Final Fantasy VI is often hailed as one of the best in the series, and for many, many reasons. It’s all about triumph over adversity, and hope prevailing over despair. The world is literally ripped apart in front of your eyes at the halfway point, and you (Celes Chere) are left to fend for yourself and find your friends. Friends who you’ve spent 15 or so hours with, who you think you understand and know everything about. But you don’t. The second half of the game is about showing you that, and then you’ll understand everything that they did in the first half of the game even more than before.
I couldn’t make room for the Opera Scene, but it deserves a screenshot — Image: Square Enix
That is if you want. What makes Final Fantasy VI so unique is that it’s about freedom and choice. The first half of the game splits you between three different parties (for the most part) until all three sides come together to join The Returners, a rebel group looking to take down the Empire. But when you take control of Celes in the World of Ruin, you’re only required to meet up with two other party members. In fact, if you really want, you can go and take on the final boss with just Celes, Edgar, and Setzer. But then you’d miss out on Terra’s existential crisis. Or the reason why Locke wants to save everyone. Or that the beast child Gau’s father is still alive. Squaresoft created a game where everyone feels important. Every single character has weight to them – and how many other games can you say have that?
What makes Final Fantasy VI so unique is that it’s about freedom and choice.
Not only can you go wherever you want and recruit whoever in what order in the World of Ruin, the Magicite system means that you can customise characters more than ever before. Edgar might be a proto-Machinist armed with a crossbow, a chainsaw, and a drill, but he can also be a magician who specialises in debuffing enemies. Or what about Locke, a super-fast thief who can mug the enemies and heal the party?
Menus, menus, menus… — Image: Square Enix
Anyone can be anything, even with their pre-established roles, and for the first time in the series, you can pick your own party and not just rely on the characters you’re given. You can mould the team to fit your preferences. Quietly, that’s the biggest thing Final Fantasy VI brings to the table – not only is it a game about hope, choice, and change, but it lets you experience and do all of those things yourself.
The Final (Fantasy)
Final Fantasy’s innovations might have been more subtle in the NES and SNES days, but they were absolutely there. You can see how each of these six entries has not only influenced this series, but also other RPGs – even though it was through dialogue with Enix’s Dragon Quest series for a time.
no two entries are entirely alike, even when they’re improving on one another
Dragon Quest, now under Square Enix, certainly settled into a rhythm around the time Final Fantasy really started branching out. I personally play Dragon Quest to feel something very particular – something very warm and charming, and something that’ll make me smile. But Final Fantasy has so many different variations under its umbrella that it really depends on my mood. No two entries are entirely alike, even when they’re iterating and improving on one another (I and III, for example).
Nowadays, Final Fantasy isn’t seen as a ‘Nintendo’ franchise – which is strange because it was for so long. Squaresoft jumping ship to the disc-based PlayStation worked out well for the company, and Europe (and NA for some) eventually got all of those NES and SNES games that originally didn’t launch in English as a result. So that’s got to be a win, right?
Turn-based Final Fantasy is still here! — Image: Square Enix
Nintendo, at this point, has become the home of spin-offs or the classic turn-based Square Enix games like Bravely and Octopath. Heck, even Dragon Quest feels very at home on Switch. This makes the Switch a nice little console to get into the series – either by picking up one of the many Switch remasters, or by checking out a cute spin-off like World of Final Fantasy (which, hey, if you want turn-based Final Fantasy, there you go!). And the arrival of the Pixel Remaster collection has finally been confirmed, too.
Innovation is part of Final Fantasy’s identity. That’s especially true now given that the PS5’s Final Fantasy XVI is an action RPG, but it has also always been true. What’s consistent, though? Well, Cid, chocobos, moogles, certain weapons, armour, and a handful of other things. Writing for Kotaku, Jason Schreier put it beautifully: “Final Fantasy is defined by how it sounds… The chime of a menu cursor. The squeal of an NPC’s dialogue box. The thunderous jolt of a random encounter”. Theatrhythm Final Bar Line should help drive that point home.
Final Fantasy is whatever it wants to be. It always has been, and it always will be. What number will we be at in another 35 years? Who’s to say (probably XXX!), but no one can predict what direction Square Enix will go in next.
Here’s to there never being a final Final Fantasy.
Moogles have long been the mascots of Final Fantasy — well, alongside Chocobos. And Catuars. And Tonberries, kind of. Anyway, it’s Moogles we’re talking about today, because Square Enix has confirmed that the furry little creatures will appear in Final Fantasy XVI.
As reported by Gematsu, a whole three seconds of Moogle footage has been shared as part of the celebrations for Final Fantasy’s 35th anniversary. We’re delighted to confirm that the game’s Moogles look like classic Moogles — the best Moogles — and thankfully, Square Enix hasn’t messed about with their iconic design.
Moogles have often appeared in Final Fantasy games to offer aid to players. In the beloved Final Fantasy IX, for example, they act as save points, and in Final Fantasy VI, they’re actual party members. We wonder what kind of role they’ll play in Final Fantasy XVI…
Are you a Moogle fan? Give us your best “Kupo!” in the comments section below.
Following on from an ESRB rating earlier this week, Square Enix has now officially announced the release of the Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remaster Collection for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. It’ll be arriving in Spring 2023.
This collection will include Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V, and Final Fantasy VI. These remasters will also be made available individually, or you can purchase them in a bundle.
In addition to this, Square Enix has also announced a standard edition ($74.99 USD) and a 35th-anniversary edition ($259.99 USD). These are Square Enix Store exclusives.
Crisis Core – Final Fantasy VII – Reunion was released today and is a solid remastering/remake of a beloved PSP title. But at least one painting in the new game contains a li’l something extra: a Getty Images watermark, implying that the in-game painting was created using an image preview taken directly from that service’s website.
In our review posted earlier today, we noted that the new remake is a faithful adaptation of the original PSP game, complete with flaws that come about from being overly dedicated to being a perfect prequel. And like the original, while the first half or so of the game is solid, the ending makes for a “disappointing conclusion.” It’s a damn good-looking remake nonetheless. However, we’ve noticed that the new visuals come with a new mistake, in the form of a watermark left on at least three instances of an in-game painting.
During chapter eight of the game, you’ll enter a Shinra mansion. In this very nice-looking and opulent home you’ll find many fancy paintings hanging on the walls. Look closely and you’ll discover these are real paintings. Look a little closer and you’ll clearly see where Square Enix grabbed the art from.
Yup, that’s a big old Getty Images watermark right in the middle of it. I was able to track down the exact painting that Square Enix grabbed using our own Getty account. It’s a piece by artist John Crowther depicting Ludgate Circus in London in 1881.
Kotaku has reached out to Square Enix but didn’t hear back before publication.
Read More:Crisis Core – Final Fantasy VII – Reunion: The Kotaku Review
It appears that whoever grabbed this image from Getty—and possibly didn’t pay to license it, as the watermark is still there—stretched it out and cropped most of its top to make it fit in the frame. And this isn’t a one-off error. The resulting painting appears at least three times in this area of the game complete with the Getty watermark. Whoops!
The watermarked painting appears in at least three different places.Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
This isn’t the first time a big Square Enix RPG has shipped with a mistaken watermark included.Kingdom Hearts III also included a watermark during one cutscene. However, that was a “blink and you’ll miss it moment” and not an easy-to-find painting that appears multiple times and can be seen clearly by anyone paying attention. If you want to see this mistake yourself, I’d go to the mansion sooner than later, as I imagine Square Enix will be patching it out shortly.
Here’s a lovely bit of news to kickstart your week: the first six Final Fantasy games have been rated for the Nintendo Switch by the ESRB.
While nothing has been officially announced at the time of writing, this is presumably the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster set, which originally released on mobile devices back in 2021 before making its way to PC. Fans have since been clamouring for a console release and now it looks like Square Enix might be about to answer our prayers.
As spotted on Reddit, the ESRB has rated all six Final Fantasy games separately for Windows PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. As pointed out by user u/cefaluu, well known Twitter account Wario64 posted a similar ESRB rating earlier this year for the PC release, with PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch conspiciously absent from the list of platforms. Now that these have been added, it heavily indicates that a Switch release may be on the horizon.
Image: ESRB
We’ve included an image of the Final Fantasy VI ESRB listing above, but you can view similar listings for the previous five titles by heading over to the official ESRB website.
If this is indeed legit, which we currently have no reason to doubt, then hopefully we’ll get some official information from Square Enix soon. In the meantime, check out the official trailer for Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster below to see what all the fuss is about.
Are you hoping to see FInal Fantasy 1-6 make their way to the Switch? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Ten years ago, in a cataclysmic rain of flaring energy, Final Fantasy XIV died. That’s both true in the sense that the land of Eorzea was raked with the almighty megaflare of one of Final Fantasy’s most powerful beings, the dragon Bahamut, and that developer Square Enix shut down the servers of its troubled MMORPG for good.
The launch of Final Fantasy XIV had been an unmitigated disaster, and nearly cratered the studio behind it in the process. But even as players gathered in cities and fields to gaze up at the sky awaiting Bahamut’s reckoning, plans were underway to rehaul the MMORPG entirely, relaunching it as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn—a game with the complete opposite story of the original XIV. It was a wild success that is still going strong to this day, and likely for the foreseeable future.
But what makes XIV 1.0’s shutdown so memorable—beyond the success story it became in A Realm Reborn—is that this was more than the end of one game and the start of another, a sad, quiet shutdown before a vaunted relaunch. Final Fantasy XIV’s inheritors had time to plan the original version’s end and pave the way to their new version, and in doing so created an epic final story for players to witness, one that went on to echo throughout the decade as A Realm Reborn’s long story played out. The decision to not just shutter Final Fantasy XIV but to rebuild it into an entirely new game was made the year before 1.0 would ultimately end, and in the time given, its new producer—Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida, who still helms the current version of the game and is working on Final Fantasy XVI—made the choice to retool 1.0’s original story to tell a tale of apocalyptic proceedings.
Screenshot: Square Enix
The thing about Final Fantasy is that the apocalypse happens all the time. Almost every entry in the game franchise’s history has tackled some sort of potentially world-dooming threat, and its heroes have prevailed, because that’s what Final Fantasy heroes do when they’re not summoning gods or working in the rigorous hair care routines required to look like Kain Highwind or Squall Leonheart. The threat of Meteor in Final Fantasy VII, the rise of Kefka’s godhood in VI after he sundered the world, the battle against Sin in X, time and time again Final Fantasy is a story of myriad warriors and mages coming together to face a fated end and deny it. The end of XIV’s original form was a chance to tell that story where its heroes, the remaining players, did that and lost.
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*lightsaber hum*
SabersPro
For the Star Wars fan with everything. These lightsabers powered by Neopixels, LED strips that run inside the blade shape that allow for adjustable colors, interactive sounds, and changing animation effects when dueling.
1.0’s end is heralded by a small red moon—the artificial construct Dalamud, summoned by Final Fantasy XIV’s primary villains, the Garlean Empire, in an attempt to devastate the land of Eorzea before its forces swept in and seized the ashes for themselves. As players and the leaders of Eorzea rallied together to fight back against the Garleans, what started as a small red dot in the skies got bigger and clearer as, patch by patch, Final Fantasy XIV went to its end. Even when the story climaxed with the defeat of the Garlean commander, Nael van Darnus, at the players’ hands, they learned that it was a Pyrrhic victory: Dalamud would still fall, and the world would perish beneath it. In the final days and hours of the game, players took part in events to push back against the invading Garlean forces, thrown into disarray by their leader’s death, a sense of dread in the air—and the events kept going. Dalamud kept getting closer. Until, in the final minutes, Dalamud’s fiery visage burned in the skies with echoes of strange, ethereal music, and Final Fantasy XIV died with one last cutscene:
FINAL FANTASY XIV: THE FINAL 11 MINUTES *End Of Eorzea*
“End of Eorzea” is a six-minute epic almost unlike anything Final Fantasy XIV had seen, as the forces of Eorzea, heroes and grunts alike, clashed with the Garleans. Dalamud’s true purpose was revealed—not a moon, but an ancient prison, housing the almighty primal dragon Bahamut. Eorzea’s armies fall to Garlean arms, our heroes—the same heroes that had heralded XIV’s arrival in its original cinematic trailer beaten back. At the final minute, an act of prayer by your closest allies in XIV, a group known as the Circle of Knowing, attempts to magically restrain Bahamut, only to dramatically fail, and be rewarded with the beast unleashing its most powerful attack from the series, Megaflare—only this time not wielded as a player fantasy, but a horror to carve fire across the world they had failed to protect.
But of course, Final Fantasy XIV wasn’t ending forever. In the final moments, the Circle of Knowing’s leader, Louisoix Leveilleur, whisks the heroes away to survive the devastation Bahamut brings, so they can re-emerge in the remade world for A Realm Reborn. But the legacy of 1.0 ending like it did didn’t just linger in that metatexual premise that players went on even after the world itself was razed to the ground. The choice to rebuild Eorzea from apocalypse was woven into the story of its rebirth, its ramifications echoing not just across A Realm Reborn, but every expansion the revived game has had in the last nine years, as Final Fantasy XIV kicked off a whirlwind redemption arc to make it one of the crown jewels of Square Enix’s library. The song that plays to bid farewell to 1.0, “Answers”—composed by Final Fantasy legend Nobuo Uematsu—even became a vital part of the most recent of those expansions, Endwalker, framing a similarly apocalyptic narrative where the heroes of the remade Eorzea faced an almighty doom, only this time they defeated it, saving not just the realm but the entire world. A justice for the world they had failed to protect all those years ago.
Screenshot: Square Enix
One of the most compelling, endearing, and perhaps daunting aspects of Final Fantasy XIV is that is an ongoing story, one that deals with highs and lows of stakes and adventure as story cycles wax and wane, and one that is steeped in a kind of history almost unprecedented in the world of games beyond it. Its players have taken their character on a journey that has been going on for almost a decade, and some of them—players of the original XIV who brought their characters over—for even longer. Making the death and rebirth of the game a fundamental part of that base story, and having it echo all the way up to XIV’s latest apocalyptic event, is a crucial part of what makes its success story so miraculous in the first place. Not many games get the second chance Final Fantasy XIV got, whether in the real world or in the land of Eorzea itself, but taking that story of failure and weaving it into one of redemption is a fascinating part of what makes it such a compelling game in the first place.
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Male, female, and cool hat. All the genders are accounted for. Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
It shouldn’t be a big ask from gamers to have more gender-inclusive pronoun options in a video game, especially in RPGs. One producer at Square Enix thinks helping gamers feel welcome by including non-binary pronouns is such a small ask that it was a no-brainer to have it be a part of his new game.
The game in question is the cutesy farming simulator Harvestella, which RPG giant Square Enix just released yesterday on PC and Switch. Similar to Stardew Valley, characters in Harvestella are charged with tending to crops, befriending their neighbors, and overcoming calamity in the form of environmental disasters. Harvestella, Eurogamer pointed out today, features a character creator that offers players the option to choose male, female, or non-binary pronouns.
In an interview with Eurogamer, producer Daisuke Taka said he thinks it is “completely normal” for games to include a non-binary option for players. While having gender-neutral pronouns feels like a small part of the farming sim as a whole, Taka said it was important to let players choose their gender identity because the game is meant to be “for everyone.”
“The protagonist of Harvestella is the player,” Taka told Eurogamer. “We thought it was important to have the player create their own character, selecting different elements, including gender, appearance, voice and name. We felt this was important so players aren’t limited, and feel free to express themselves however they want and as a result are much more attached to their character.”
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Read More: Trans Inclusion Means More Than Just Adding Potential Gender Options To Hogwarts Legacy
Recently, characters in video games that’ve come out as gender-neutral have been met with ire amongst the bigoted peanut gallery of the gaming community. Look no further than the vocal minority within the Guilty Gear Strive fighting came community that had conniptions when Bridget and Testament came out as transgender and nonbinary, respectively. Fee fees got so hurt, one troglodyte took it upon themselves to impersonate a customer service representative and fake emails about Bridget’s gender.
In recent times Square Enix has been making strides in making sure some of its games are more inclusive. In a July 2021 interview with The Gamer, Final Fantasy VII Remake co-director Motomu Toriyama said LGBTQ+ inclusion is an important issue for both gamers and developers.
“In Final Fantasy VII Remake, we rebuilt the original game using the latest technology, but we felt that it should not stop at the technical side and we needed to update the story content being shown in line with modern sensibilities,” Toriyama told The Gamer. That same month, the company debuted a non-binary character mascot, Mina, for that year’s Pride.
However, the JRPG giant doesn’t always get it right. For example, someone might wanna remind Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida that, contrary to his centrist view that people of color walking about ye old Final Fantasy would violate the “narrative boundaries” of the upcoming game’s medieval European setting, Black and brown folk aren’t a “new game plus” feature on planet Earth.
I’m much more into the vibe I’m feeling from the Harvestella guy. “The visibility of gender non-conforming people has become much more commonplace, so we thought it was important to reflect this within the game and show that all players are welcome to Harvestella,” Taka said.
