A Final Fantasy for fans and first timers indeed: Final Fantasy XV is for everyone, and as a result Final Fantasy XV is for absolutely no one.

Between Square Enix's struggle to acclimate to the development process of seventh-gen hardware, the tumultuous state of the company in the early 2010s, and the Fabula Nova Crystallis brand's hard focus on the mainline Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, Final Fantasy Versus XIII was a game that was impossible to make. Ten years after its inception, Square Enix instead settled on making Final Fantasy XV the only game that any big-name corporation could ever possibly make in the climate of the 2010s game industry.

I admire and respect people's desire to find meaning and personal resonance in what was eventually delivered in Final Fantasy XV - everybody has their slop of choice, and the Heavens above know I am not exempt - but I feel that much of the most generous readings of the game fail to see it for what it is: a recurring trend in the majority of interviews with Hajime Tabata indicate that he was first and foremost interested in creating a game that would be as accessible as possible, reach as wide of an audience as possible, and - naturally, by necessity - sell well. Edges were filed off, idiosyncracy and personal touches were traded for easily-digestible variations on what had become popular in the industry and culture around video games by the point of its rebirth: vacuous and empty open worlds devoid of life beyond their skin-deep beauty. Shallow bonds between shallow characters, the lowest-common-denominator appeal of spending time with the boys or the obvious potential for the yaoi fan demographic masking the blatant misogyny at the core of the script. Entire vertical slices of necessary information and storytelling being absent, surgically removed to be sold back to the player through films, animated adaptations and predatory DLC models. Brand names and corporate sponsorships peppered throughout, to anchor the game to its consumerist ideals and destroy any hope of denying what it is: while all video games are inherently products and thus are necessarily burdened by some degree of cynicism, the recurring inclusion of brand names by Coleman, Nissin, and American Express act a stark reminder that Final Fantasy XV has been accepted by and joined the ranks of its contemporaries as something made to be marketed and sold. Consider that the expanded Final Fantasy XV universe was cancelled and left by the wayside by the higher-ups at Square Enix, while the pay-to-win mobile game still persists to this very day.

Many will vehemently defend Final Fantasy XV's flaws as unsightly bumps on a more coherent whole, or even defend its flaws as purposeful barbs and thorns on the surface of a carefully-cultivated masterwork. To one extent or another, I can't help but agree: Final Fantasy XV is bad on purpose. However, it was not bad on purpose to prove a point or make some grand artistic statement. Final Fantasy XV is bad on purpose because its audience has spoken, and the industry has no choice but to answer: this is what it means to be a Video Game in the Modern Era. This is what sells. This is what you and I have asked for, and this is what you and I must live with.

I don't know if we necessarily deserve better than Final Fantasy XV, but I do certainly believe that we would all be better off in a world in which we did not allow a game like Final Fantasy XV to become what studios and corporations correctly presume is what audiences are asking for.