I considered strongly putting together a long-form critique of this game, but the most damning statement I could possibly make about Final Fantasy XVI is that I truly don't think it's worth it. The ways in which I think this game is bad are not unique or interesting: it is bad in the same way the vast majority of these prestige Sony single-player exclusives are. Its failures are common, predictable, and depressingly endemic. It is bad because it hates women, it is bad because it treats it's subject matter with an aggressive lack of care or interest, it is bad because it's imagination is as narrow and constrained as it's level design. But more than anything else, it is bad because it only wants to be Good.

Oxymoronic a statement as it might appear, this is core to the game's failings to me. People who make games generally want to make good games, of course, but paired with that there is an intent, an interest, an idea that seeks to be communicated, that the eloquence with which it professes its aesthetic, thematic, or mechanical goals will produce the quality it seeks. Final Fantasy XVI may have such goals, but they are supplicant to its desire to be liked, and so, rather than plant a flag of its own, it stitches together one from fabric pillaged from the most immediate eikons of popularity and quality - A Song of Ice and Fire, God of War, Demon Slayer, Devil May Cry - desperately begging to be liked by cloaking itself in what many people already do, needing to be loved in the way those things are, without any of the work or vision of its influences, and without any charisma of its own. Much like the patch and DLC content for Final Fantasy XV, it's a reactionary and cloying work that contorts itself into a shape it thinks people will love, rather than finding a unique self to be.

From the aggressively self-serious tone that embraces wholeheartedly the aesthetics of Prestige Fantasy Television with all its fucks and shits and incest and Grim Darkness to let you know that This Isn't Your Daddy's Final Fantasy, without actually being anywhere near as genuinely Dark, sad, or depressing as something like XV, from combat that borrows the surface-level signifiers of Devil May Cry combat - stingers, devil bringers, enemy step - but without any actual opposition or reaction of that series' diverse and reactive enemy set and thoughtful level design, or the way there's a episode of television-worth of lectures from a character explaining troop movements and map markers that genuinely do not matter in any way in order to make you feel like you're experiencing a well thought-out and materially concerned political Serious Fantasy, Final Fantasy XVI is pure wafer-thin illusion; all the surface from it's myriad influences but none of the depth or nuance, a greatest hits album from a band with no voice to call their own, an algorithmically generated playlist of hits that tunelessly resound with nothing. It looks like Devil May Cry, but it isn't - Devil May Cry would ask more of you than dodging one attack at a time while you perform a particularly flashy MMO rotation. It looks like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it isn't - without Martin's careful historical eye and materialist concerns, the illusion that this comes even within striking distance of that flawed work shatters when you think about the setting for more than a moment.

In fairness, Final Fantasy XVI does bring more than just the surface level into its world: it also brings with it the nastiest and ugliest parts of those works into this one, replicated wholeheartedly as Aesthetic, bereft of whatever semblance of texture and critique may have once been there. Benedikta Harman might be the most disgustingly treated woman in a recent work of fiction, the seemingly uniform AAA Game misogyny of evil mothers and heroic, redeemable fathers is alive and well, 16's version of this now agonizingly tired cliche going farther even than games I've railed against for it in the past, which all culminates in a moment where three men tell the female lead to stay home while they go and fight (despite one of those men being a proven liability to himself and others when doing the same thing he is about to go and do again, while she is not), she immediately acquiesces, and dutifully remains in the proverbial kitchen. Something that thinks so little of women is self-evidently incapable of meaningfully tackling any real-world issue, something Final Fantasy XVI goes on to decisively prove, with its story of systemic evils defeated not with systemic criticism, but with Great, Powerful Men, a particularly tiresome kind of rugged bootstrap individualism that seeks to reduce real-world evils to shonen enemies for the Special Man with Special Powers to defeat on his lonesome. It's an attempt to discuss oppression and racism that would embarrass even the other shonen media it is clearly closer in spirit to than the dark fantasy political epic it wears the skin of. In a world where the power fantasy of the shonen superhero is sacrosanct over all other concerns, it leads to a conclusion as absurd and fundamentally unimaginative as shonen jump's weakest scripts: the only thing that can stop a Bad Guy with an Eikon is a Good Guy with an Eikon.

In borrowing the aesthetics of the dark fantasy - and Matsuno games - it seeks to emulate, but without the nuance, FF16 becomes a game where the perspective of the enslaved is almost completely absent (Clive's period as a slave might as well not have occurred for all it impacts his character), and the power of nobility is Good when it is wielded by Good Hands like Lord Rosfield, a slave owner who, despite owning the clearly abused character who serves as our introduction to the bearers, is eulogized completely uncritically by the script, until a final side quest has a character claim that he was planning to free the slaves all along...alongside a letter where Lord Rosfield discusses his desire to "put down the savages". I've never seen attempted slave owner apologia that didn't reveal its virulent underlying racism, and this is no exception. In fact, any time the game attempts to put on a facade of being about something other than The Shonen Hero battling other Kamen Riders for dominance, it crumbles nigh-immediately; when Final Fantasy 16 makes its overtures towards the Power of Friendship, it rings utterly false and hollow: Clive's friends are not his power. His power is his power.

The only part of the game that truly spoke to me was the widely-derided side-quests, which offer a peek into a more compelling story: the story of a man doing the work to build and maintain a community, contributing to both the material and emotional needs of a commune that attempts to exist outside the violence of society. As tedious as these sidequests are - and as agonizing as their pacing so often is - it's the only part of this game where it felt like I was engaging with an idea. But ultimately, even this is annihilated by the game's bootstrap nonsense - that being that the hideaway is funded and maintained by the wealthy and influential across the world, the direct beneficiaries and embodiments of the status quo funding what their involvement reveals to be an utterly illusionary attempt to escape it, rendering what could be an effective exploration of what building a new idea of a community practically looks like into something that could be good neighbors with Galt's Gulch.

In a series that is routinely deeply rewarding for me to consider, FF16 stands as perhaps its most shallow, underwritten, and vacuous entry in decades. All games are ultimately illusions, of course: we're all just moving data around spreadsheets, at the end of the day. But - as is the modern AAA mode de jour - 16 is the result of the careful subtraction of texture from the experience of a game, the removal of any potential frictions and frustrations, but further even than that, it is the removal of personality, of difference, it is the attempt to make make the smoothest, most likable affect possible to the widest number of people possible. And, just like with its AAA brethren, it has almost nothing to offer me. It is the affect of Devil May Cry without its texture, the affect of Game of Thrones without even its nuance, and the affect of Final Fantasy without its soul.

Final Fantasy XVI is ultimately a success. It sought out to be Good, in the way a PS5 game like this is Good, and succeeded. And in so doing, it closed off any possibility that it would ever reach me.

It doesn’t really surprise me that each positive sentiment I have seen on Final Fantasy XVI is followed by an exclamation of derision over the series’ recent past. Whether the point of betrayal and failure was in XV, or with XIII, or even as far back as VIII, the rhetorical move is well and truly that Final Fantasy has been Bad, and with XVI, it is good again. Unfortunately, as someone who thought Final Fantasy has Been Good, consistently, throughout essentially the entire span of it's existence, I find myself on the other side of this one.

Final Fantasy XV convinced me that I could still love video games when I thought, for a moment, that I might not. That it was still possible to make games on this scale that were idiosyncratic, personal, and deeply human, even in the awful place the video game industry is in.

Final Fantasy XVI convinced me that it isn't.

5/10

It is undoubtedly the most refined Final Fantasy since the twelfth installment in the series.

And yet, compared to Final Fantasy XV, this is not necessarily a good thing (unless you want to claim that something stable, balanced, refined, and polished is by definition better than something unstable, unbalanced, unpolished, and unrefined - which is something I strongly disagree with). FFXV was incomplete, hasty, and narratively defective but how original was its touristic reinterpretation of the hero's journey?, how fresh and cruel was its approach to the Bildungsroman?, how brilliant was its use of open world mechanics and ludonarrative dissonance to make you actively delay the moment you'd face your destiny?, how brilliant was its rhetoric use of its worldbuilding and aesthetics?, how brave was its merging high fantasy, magitek, and japanese trashy clichés?

Compared to that, FFXVI is rather serious and straightforward. Spoilers ahead - The plot is archetypal: first you must free people from slavery and then you must save the world from being enslaved by a god in a (guess what?) neverending cycle of death and rebirth. A quest for the free will then, socio-political first and philosophical then, in both cases markedly existential. It's something that Final Fantasy fans are (perhaps too much) familiar with, as this could be the synopsis of most of the games in the series. This time, the worldbuilding is much more pluralistic than usual, inspired by Game of Thrones but without relativism. The Dominants remind of Attack on Titan's giants and the Eikons are destructive death-bringers depicted as kaijus (Ifrit appears just like Godzilla) - in the end, the quest to free mankind from slavery is also a quest to free the world from such powerful weapons (and this trough the use of such weapons, of course). A quest to destroy technologies of power, that begins with a wise use of those same technologies.

The gameplay is rather dull: you basically walk (or run) and kill things from beginning to end. Primary quests are terribly linear but full of good cutscenes and breathtaking action sequences, which is good. Secondary ones are all fetch quests: speak here, speak there, speak back here, kill that monster, speak again, that's it. Except for a bunch of quests towards the end of the game, all the non-primary material here is (both gameplay and plotwise) almost pure trash.

Which is not that surprising, I mean, the whole series is about having a story-driven main quest and dozens of dissonant (at best) or dramatically bad (at worst) secondary activities - with the only exception being FFXV, which as said tried to make sense of its dissonance.

Let's just say that they could be more daring this time. Although there's violence and sexuality in an unprecedented way for the series, the rest is rather conservative, from the narrative tropes to the mmorpg gameplay.

The plot may be rich and all but I personally fond it less exciting (and moving, and thought provoking) than most of the others in the series, and same goes for the rich, perhaps too rich, cast of characters.

     'Those great, beautiful ships, rocking silently on the calm waters, with their idle and wistful sails, are they not telling us in a silent language — when will we depart for happiness?'
     – Charles Baudelaire, Fusées, VIII, 1887 (personal translation).

One of the most difficult issues in fantasy studies is to define its contours and, by extension, its relationship to reality. In her seminal study, Fantasy: The literature of subversion (1981), Rosemary Jackson points out that fantasy violates the conventions and rules of our reality and: 'threatens to subvert rules and conventions taken to be normative [and] disturb "rules" of artistic representation and literature’s reproduction of the "real"' [1]. The capacity for deviation that speculative fiction offers is both an opportunity and a danger. Jackson points out that this subversive potential does not mean that fantasy or the fantastic are genres that always aim for social progressivism. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the pulp tradition was steeped in racist, homophobic and misogynist tropes that exerted a lasting influence on fiction throughout the late twentieth century and to this day.

     The misogynist issue in Western-style fantasy

Many authors hide behind these historical precedents to conceal a conservative discourse. The existence of multiple races allows for the perpetuation of social oppression, and while female characters have generally become more active in recent decades, they continue to fit into old-fashioned stereotypes [2]. The Final Fantasy series is part of this dynamic and has always oscillated between these major themes of fantasy fiction, notably by offering a regular comparison between magic and technological modernity, nature and industry, good and evil, humanity and divinity. These dichotomies are relatively common and allow the story to touch on issues such as capitalist exploitation and the use of natural resources. However, the representation of other topics remains disastrous: Final Fantasy XIV (2010) is especially characterised by deep-seated racism and sexism, the latter partially masked by the presence of strong female characters in positions of power.

It is hard to say whether these precautions were taken to appeal to a particular audience, but it is clear that Final Fantasy XVI ignores all these concerns and plunges into the most outrageous archaism, piling on misogynistic scenes wherever possible, supposedly justified by the harshness of European medieval society. Excuses of this kind obscure the real issues. The player follows the story of Clive Rosfield, drawn into a quest for revenge after the Phoenix Gate incident, which spells the end of the Duchy of Rosaria. Miraculously reunited with his childhood friend Jill Warrick, he joins Cid's group, determined to change the situation of the Bearers – magic-capable individuals enslaved across the continent. Final Fantasy XVI is therefore a tale of free will and independence, pitting the dark nature of the world against the purity of Cid and Clive's ideals.

To create this atmosphere, as well as the division between good and evil, the title makes extensive use of violence, sex and sexual violence as narrative drivers. Lenise Prater explains that Fiona McIntosh's Percheron trilogy (2005) constructs: 'a series of juxtapositions between good and evil [...] through the representation of sexual violence' [3]. The same processes are at work in Final Fantasy XVI, from the very first narrative arc of the adventure, where Benedikta is cast as the archetypal femme fatale, ready to use her body to manipulate her rivals: the character is constantly brought back to her status as a woman, and it is the threat of sexual violence that cements her development – Annabella is constructed in a similar way. Final Fantasy XVI revels in the dichotomy between whores and innocent virgins. Despite the Western aesthetic of the title, Jill is no more than a yamato nadeshiko who is constantly sidelined by the game. She mostly serves as a narrative device to advance the plot, through her multiple visits to the infirmary or because she is kidnapped by Clive's enemies. The title denies her any agency, and her nuanced fragility is only hinted at in a few sentences before being brushed aside: it takes almost thirty hours of gameplay before Clive explicitly asks her how she is, despite her constant concern for the protagonist's anxieties.

     A case for centrism and laissez-faire

This conservative portrayal is echoed in the discourse on the Bearers. The game is moderately critical of slavery on the continent and fails to make it a structural issue for Clive, who always remains somewhat detached from the problem. This issue is structurally embedded in the way the player interacts with the world, as they are extremely passive in relation to the events portrayed in the story. While the player is aware of the political manipulations taking place in Storm, they cannot act on them directly; Clive is blindly thrown into the fray and the situation is simply resolved in a battle that depoliticises the social stakes. Similarly, the Seals donated by certain NPCs guarantee Clive's reputation in the community in a highly artificial way, removing any roughness from the interactions. Clive fights to free the Bearers because he inherits this mission from his father and Cid, but this task seems disembodied throughout the game.

Beyond the main quest, the side quests are particularly lacklustre and do little to deepen the world-building. Because they can be accessed at any point in the game, Final Fantasy XVI chooses to exclude companions from them. They simply disappear from the cutscenes and thus have no chance to react to the world around them. Since the intention is to establish Clive as an ideologically good, open and self-governing character, all side quests are resolved by Clive's ideological concessions or miraculous unifications in the face of artificially created danger, without the slightest contradiction from any of the other main characters. Only in the final stretch does someone point out Clive's hypocrisy and domineering power over Jill, but the scene is quickly swept away by the return of Gav, the comic relief of the group.

Final Fantasy XVI is more concerned with shocking, melodramatic or cathartic platitudes than with radical denunciations of inequality and oppression. Worse, these shocking scenes do not even make the world dynamic, so poor is the structure of the narrative. Two problems stand out. Firstly, the interweaving of high-intensity sequences with slower passages: instead of building up the world through genuine slice-of-life sequences, the game multiplies banalities that the player has already understood for several dozen hours. The temporality of the story is also incoherent. Clive seems to cross the continent in a matter of hours, while his rivals remain completely passive. The confrontation between the Sanbreque Empire and the Dhalmekian Republic is characterised by irrational stagnation and passivity, allowing Clive to strike unhindered. The Twins always remain static, despite long ellipses in time.

     A hollow and meaningless experience

Perhaps Final Fantasy XVI should not be taken so literally, but rather accepted as the nekketsu it becomes in the second half of the game. Such an interpretation would be acceptable if the game did not take itself so seriously. However, as in Final Fantasy XIV, the writing wallows in a very uncomfortable theatrical heaviness – which the actors generally manage to save from disaster – as if clumsily mimicking the drama of Shakespeare's historical plays. However, Clive's disillusioned, self-deprecating, borderline comic character breaks up this fiction. Some characters work well, playing up their theatrical nature, such as Cid or Lord Byron, but they are quickly relegated to the background or an essentially comic role.

The shifts in tone and pacing detract from the development of the narrative, which cannot be saved by a few flashes of brilliance. The aetheric floods seem to have been imagined as a reflection of nuclear risks, highlighting the danger of Japan's post-Fukushima energy crutch, but in the end they are only used as a narrative expedient to create danger where the plot needs it. The pinnacle of dishonesty and disrespect for a title that centres its discourse on human free will lies in the choice of names for the NPC fillers. In the pure tradition of Final Fantasy XIV, they include puns and comical alliterations ('Broom-Bearer') that strip them of all substance and reduce them to ridicule. In the second half of the game, a little girl is introduced as a character of some narrative importance, but the title does not even bother to give her a name or address her living conditions.

Meanwhile, the action sequences prove to be particularly hollow. The choreography in the first few hours is quite ingenious, highlighting Clive's agility with complex movements and rather creative camera angles. As the title progresses, this aspect is abandoned in favour of fights that drag on and resort to nekketsu clichés. The duel against Titan lasts forty minutes and is a miserable succession of attacks around the stone tentacles. Final Fantasy XVI even has the audacity to end the battle not with the obvious cinematic climax, but with a dull and particularly unpleasant aerial sequence. Subsequent encounters also drag on for no apparent reason other than to demonstrate a genuine – if futile – mastery of the lightning engine.

     Ergonomics, gameplay and fluidity

While Final Fantasy XVI boasts detailed environments at first glance, the facade quickly cracks. The early areas are indeed highly detailed, to the point of drowning the player in detail – navigating through the thick vegetation is quite difficult, forcing the player to use Torgal to progress – but the quality deteriorates as the game progresses. The dense environments disappear in favour of vast open areas that struggle to convey the majesty of the world. Although the cities visible on the horizon are beautiful backdrops, they fail to radiate materially onto their surroundings, which then become mere abstractions. Moreover, Clive's movement is extremely sluggish: even getting on his chocobo is an unpleasant task that constantly interrupts the fluidity of the action, while the player is condemned to an extraordinary passivity in order to get from one place to another.

In the Hideaway, this impression is reinforced by Clive's inability to sprint: in the second half of the game, getting to the backyard is a gruelling chore. The magic of this cocoon quickly vanishes, as the various characters keep repeating themselves and are only mediocrely animated. Despite the detailed scenery, the game borrows all its animations from Final Fantasy XIV, giving a very artificial tone to the discussions. The Hideaway is less a place where the player can comfortably catch up with their favourite NPCs, and more a burdensome obligation to access NPCs, side quests and the hunt board – requiring the player to physically go there to see the location of elite monsters, a design mistake that even Final Fantasy XIV avoided.

The enjoyment of the combat system is left to the player and their experience of other character-action games, but it is absurd that the player has to wait at least twenty hours to finally be given a modicum of flexibility in their attack options: Final Fantasy XVI justifies its unique protagonist with a deep combat system that encourages the creation of diverse builds, but this philosophy is only appropriate in a New Game+ where all powers are unlocked from the start. In a first playthrough, the player must suffer from an impressive slowness, to the point where the Story Mode becomes an obvious option. The title here echoes the recent problem of Shadowbringers (2019) and especially Endwalker (2021), which first designs its battles with the Extreme and Savage versions, before cutting out the most difficult sections for the Normal versions – the result is a sense of incompleteness that is particularly damaging when combined with the very slowly evolving combat system.

It is difficult to place Final Fantasy XVI in the landscape of modern Japanese video games, so awkward is it in every way. With the title still in its cycle of artificial marketing in preparation for the DLCs, one can only speculate as to the reasons for these failings. Perhaps the lack of coherence can be explained by the fractured development team working on two major games, and the highly eclectic nature of the directors brought together by Naoki Yoshida. His design philosophy is particularly well suited to an MMO, but Final Fantasy XVI suffers greatly from it: the endless succession of side quests involving the Hideaway characters just before the final battle is incomprehensible, as if the game had remembered that it needed to conclude. Hiroshi Takai and Kazutoyo Maehiro's narrative vision is a series of shocking, empty, meaningless scenes: players of Heavensward (2015) had the opportunity to suffer from Ysayle's portrayal, and it is surprising that Final Fantasy XVI does even worse, a standard-bearer for passive misogyny in modern fantasy. That Jill's theme becomes 'My Star' and denies her any agency in the game's final moments is particularly painful and aptly sums up the title.

__________
[1] Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The literature of subversion, Routledge, London, 2005 [1981], p. 14.
[2] On the topic, see for example Peter Bebergal (ed.), Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots Of Dungeons & Dragons, Strange Attractor Press, London, 2021. In the afterword, Ann VanderMeer discusses the conservative roots of pulp fantasy and of the historical TTRPG.
[3] Lenise Prater, 'Monstrous Fantasies: Reinforcing Rape Culture in Fiona McIntosh's Fantasy Novels', in Hecate, vol. 39, no. 1-2, 2014.

“And thus did our journey begin…”

You’re a wide-eyed, adventurous youth, that sees the world through a vision painted in vibrant hues of wonder. It’s your friend’s birthday, and the stars align as you, along with two others are going to spend the night at his home. The thrill is palpable because it’s the first time you’re spending the night at a friend’s place—a realm usually off-limits according to the unwritten rules of your mother’s parenting playbook.

You love video games. You always have. Some of your first memories are sitting in your father’s lap as he plays Sonic the Hedgehog and X-Men on the Sega Genesis. Just last year the universe smiled upon you, bestowing a Nintendo 64 and a Gameboy into your eager hands. It’s lead you on a path toward infatuation with the worlds of Pokémon and Super Mario. Yet, in this tapestry of nostalgia, a new thread weaves in—the enchanting notes of a little game named Ocarina of Time, your sole deviation from the familiar.

But back in the present, the birthday boy unveils something else that is unfamiliar to you—the PlayStation. Prior encounters were confined to store kiosks, but now, in the warm glow of your friend’s living room, the PlayStation becomes a symphony of novelty. He pulls out a plastic case, revealing a disc for a game he says is called “Final Fantasy VII”. You didn’t know games could come on CDs, nor have you ever heard of Final Fantasy. You have no idea what to expect as he snaps the game disc into the console, and it begins to whirr.

You’re instantly struck by the visual allure of this game. The painterly backgrounds, the lifelike character models, and the music, unlike anything you’ve ever heard in a video game, leave you utterly astonished. It’s more than just a game; it’s a portal to an undiscovered realm where moments of joy become indelibly etched onto the canvas of your memories.

Captivated, you and your friends take turns between playing and watching each other until the first light of dawn breaks. In those magical hours, not a single worry occupies your thoughts.

Final Fantasy is not merely a series; it has inexplicably become a part of my personal growth, evolving synchronously with my own journey–a steadfast companion that has consistently stood by my side, much like a trusted friend.

While not every attempt at evolution has been an unqualified success, the enduring truth remained—Final Fantasy retained its distinctive essence. It was still the person you knew.

Through shifts in tone, aesthetic, mechanics, and lore, there has always been a discernible throughline that defines the essence of Final Fantasy. This enduring thread of continuity is what fuels my excitement when contemplating the new horizons the series will explore and why I was anticipating its arrival on new hardware.

Much to my chagrin, Final Fantasy XVI has left me more disappointed than I could have ever imagined a game in the series could. That’s because XVI is a confused, over-embellished mess resulting in a work that seems to have strayed far from the core of what defines the series’ identity. While continuing the series’ ethos of reinvention and eschewing all of its RPG systems is not an inherently adverse decision, the execution is often abysmal.

That’s because now Final Fantasy is a bleary action game that lacks the mechanical depth or focus necessary to produce an enthralling action experience. While flashy and well-animated, the combat system is woefully straightforward and repetitive due to being restricted to a singular combo sequence heavily reliant on Eikon abilities kept primarily on cooldown for optimal damage output.

Ironically, this makes the gameplay feel much more like three Final Fantasy XIVs in a Dante costume than embodying the essence of a Devil May Cry game. With a low skill floor and ceiling, the game falls short of delivering a truly gratifying action experience that fosters individual player expression. As a consequence, nearly every combat encounter unfolds in a uniform manner, requiring little more from the player than the management of cooldown rotations.

The game exhibits a persistent inclination to rip control away from the player, particularly during crucial boss encounters. Rather than allowing players to get into a flow, it frequently interrupts the player’s agency to initiate cutscenes or quick-time events. Furthermore, for an action-centric game, it notably lacks in challenge; I managed to navigate through the entire game without dying once.

Moreover, while most action games typically span 8 to 12 hours and steadily introduce upgrades and new abilities, this game follows a different trajectory. It extends combat in the same monotonous combat patterns for prolonged stretches of 5 to 8 hours before infrequently introducing new abilities through Eikons, disrupting the expected pace of progression.

Speaking of pace, XVI is one of the most poorly-paced games I’ve ever played. It falls into a predictable pattern that is not unlike the main story in XIV since you’ll be undertaking 45-minute to one-hour missions that are primarily cutscenes (that often have admittedly high peaks of spectacle) before spending hours running around performing errands like picking up dirt or killing wolves.

This may have been fine on its own since side content often enriches the world and imparts a distinct essence to it. VII Remake masterfully achieved this, as its focus on the ordinary in side quests significantly contributed to the overall humanist experience.

For instance, an early side quest involves Clive delivering meals to the hideout’s residents, a task that recurs later in the game.

Ostensibly meant to underscore Clive’s character evolution and his growing connection with those around him, the lack of endearment in both Clive and these characters results in this endeavor feeling more like inconsequential padding.

It doesn’t help that the world of Valisthea is an uninteresting dark fantasy facsimile that lacks any defining traits other than series pastiche. Despite attempts to convey vastness across the continent, the game predominantly features diminutive, quaint villages, failing to offer the grandeur of bustling cities seen in earlier titles. While large, distant cities occasionally tease the horizon, these remain inaccessible, confined to linear story segments. This limitation is regrettable, considering the considerable effort invested in crafting detailed and visually appealing landscapes.

There were so many instances where I felt something akin to what I often felt playing XV: a sense of exploration driven by intrigue from the environment. I’d catch sight of captivating landmarks on the horizon, enticing mu curiosity. Occasionally, they might appear trivial, but sometimes they would end up being legitimately impressive dungeons. All of this takes place in a seamlessly interconnected world, encouraging and emphasizing the joy of exploration with your party.

XVI regrettably fails to offer any definitive fulfillment in this aspect. The world is a series of barren, disjointed hubs that could fit into a thimble and merely pad the game’s run time.

Even the set pieces and boss fights are mostly glorified cutscenes with player control taken away, often at multiple junctures during combat, to set up a quick time event. Most of the game is on autopilot, and combat often feels like a formality… a genuinely great decision for an action game.

The vestiges of RPG systems in XVI serve as little more than window dressing, only coming off as lip service to previous titles. While you can level up and acquire or craft weapons, their absence wouldn’t significantly impact the gaming experience. Weapons merely serve as objective upgrades, enhancing damage and stagger potential without introducing any elemental advantages or trade-offs for specialized performance. Consequently, this lack of depth fosters a sense of hesitancy and a lack of confidence in the game’s new direction, leaving XVI feeling muddled and uncertain in its approach.

XVI falls short in delivering an engrossing narrative. The storytelling unfolds as a sluggish, uneven journey that veers away from its core thematic elements midway. The intricate exploration of themes like slavery and bureaucracy? Abruptly abandoned in favor of a divergent quest to confront a divine entity.

This makes producer Naoki Yoshida’s statements about the lack of inclusion of non-white people humorous since the game gets quite ridiculous and rarely finds itself grounded in “reality”. Hence, the idea that brown people can’t exist in a fantasy setting with kaiju battles in space is worthy of all the ridicule it received. It’s also really funny how it tries to justify Clive’s family’s slave ownership because they were nice to their slaves.

Final Fantasy XVI is a shallow and hollow experience with nothing to offer besides production values. Everything exists in service of spectacle, and what we are left with is a game so obsessed with cinematic prestige that it is bereft of substance.

There are flashes of brilliance. In a different world, this game, with its combat and scope, could have been a somewhat solid open-world RPG. Or if the scope was reigned in and more complexity baked into the combat system, a solid, linear action game.

Also, for a game that seems to harbor such an active disdain for its legacy, the ending tries desperately to tug on nostalgia strings to evoke pathos. The result is a lazy, intellectually insulting narrative climax that is entirely unearned.

The Final Fantasy series has always made reinvention the point. If one game in the series was not your favorite flavor, the next installment could be. However, I do not think that will be the case moving forward. With this game being a critical and commercial success, coupled with bloated budgets and long gestation periods, I believe this is the direction we can expect the series to take. This is a problem because XVI sacrifices so much of the essence of Final Fantasy without leaving much left to take its place.

If that’s the case, I fear I might have to disembark from the journey, left with nostalgia for what once was, rather than anticipation for what might come.

You’re older now. The weight of the years makes it increasingly challenging to muster the fervor for pursuits that once ignited your passion. It feels like just yesterday you were eagerly tearing through the packaging of a pristine PlayStation 2, enveloped in sheer elation at the prospect of delving into the world of Final Fantasy X. Yet, paradoxically, those moments now seem shrouded in mist. The vivid tapestry of memories has gradually receded into indistinct relics, their vibrant hues fading into a subdued palette of somber grays.

The friends with whom you forged a foundational memory on the day of discovering a beloved video game series have become mere echoes in the corridors of distant recollection. Decades have elapsed since your last exchange, and thoughts of them now rarely arise.

In the intervening years, new friendships have blossomed, and others have withered away. The ebb and flow of companionship has charted a course that, much like your own journey, has gradually distanced you from the familiar shores of home. As the currents of time carry you further away, the recollection of those once-cherished moments becomes increasingly elusive, obscured by the passage of experiences and the ever-expanding horizon of your life.

Have the hues of enthusiasm faded into a more muted palette? Is this a natural evolution of the human spirit as it traverses the landscape of age? Acknowledging the inevitability of change, you recognize that transformation can often herald improvement, even carrying the potential for exciting developments.

A new Final Fantasy’s release is imminent, and the initial spark of excitement dims under the weight of tempered expectations. A new friend, attuned to the significance this series holds in your heart, surprises you with a fresh copy of Final Fantasy XVI, blissfully unaware of the skepticism clouding your anticipation. Embracing the notion that change can breathe life into the familiar, you decide to immerse yourself in the new chapter.

Yet, after a few hours of exploring this new realm, a sobering reality settles in. It resounds a contemplation that has resonated within you concerning existence itself. The experience leaves you pondering whether a subtle cynicism has woven its threads into the fabric of your once-unbridled optimism. Your journey through the corridor of time has left you with a reluctant acceptance of the present—it is what it is.

“…and thus did our journey end.”

From the producers who watched Game of Thrones and Attack on Titan comes Final Fantasy XVI, the latest entry in the long-running RPG franchise that seeks to upend the tea table and forge a new path for the series. It is a game of terrifying lows, of dizzying highs, and were the middles creamy then I might have come out impressed with my 50 hours spent here. But it's in those middles that a good RPG makes, and unfortunately, Final Fantasy XVI is disappointingly hollow.

Now, let me make it clear: I have no interest in the "Is this a Final Fantasy?" debate that has seemingly spawned around this game. If anything, FFXVI might be the MOST Final Fantasy the series has been in a long time, if not ever. It's married to many of the classic themes found throughout the series and the RPG genre in general to an almost cliched degree. If you think that a shift towards a more action-oriented style somehow lessens its pedigree I don't know what to tell you, as action RPGs have been around forever, and Final Fantasy has long been a series DEFINED by its ability to constantly experiment and reinvent itself. It's a silly conversation to have.

What I will take issue with is that both the action and the RPG elements of this game are shallow at best. So many systems that form the core of a good role-playing game have either been excised or drastically reduced, some to the point where you question why they even remained in the game. I could maybe forgive this if the action part was robust enough to make up for it, but that aspect of the game feels like a paper-thin copy of the "character action" genre it seeks to emulate. It's a game that doesn't know whether it wants to be an action game or an RPG game, and that tug-of-war between the two tears at the seams of what might have otherwise been a great game. There was genuine potential here, but even putting aside some of my personal preferences for what I enjoy, FFXVI never truly managed to capture my full attention.

That isn't to say there weren't things about this game I enjoyed, mind you. As I said, it's a game of peaks and valleys, and both of those reach out as high and as low as you can go. But man when this game is rolling it's genuinely exciting. The way each story beat culminates in a bombastic crescendo, coupled with one of the best soundtracks of the year, results in some incredibly hype moments and some awe-inspiring boss battles. These Eikon battles (the in-game term given to the kaiju-like summons the characters inhabit) are practically worth the price of admission alone. Almost at odds with its setting, Final Fantasy XVI loves to reach into a huge bag of shonen anime nonsense and pull out whatever blood-pumping inspirations it can find, to the point where you can easily recognize some of the specific things being referenced. Throughout much of the game, there is just an insane escalation that goes even further than what you'd expect, though sadly it peaks well before you land the final blow at story's end.

Final Fantasy XVI is also a showpiece of just what the PS5 is capable of. This might genuinely be the most gorgeous game to ever exist, with incredibly detailed landscapes and far more unique towns and locations than I was expecting. The decision to pull back from the open world of FF15 into more narrow, structured environments was the right decision, as it allowed for tighter handcrafting of what you discover and a more memorable, believable world. Now, I'd love for Final Fantasy to take another shot at the open-world formula after the huge swing-and-a-miss it took last time, but this wasn't the occasion for it. Smart decision-making here.

Less intelligent were some of the choices made in telling Final Fantasy XVI's story, because if I could point to one glaring issue with its overall presentation, it's how massively terrible its pacing is. I've seen this point brought up by others but it almost feels too glossed over. FFXVI's narrative is one that's stretched out almost twice what it needs to be. Several plot points are drawn out longer than what's required or reiterated in a way that attempts to establish facts we already know. You'll think you're at a moment to confront a major character, only to have it snatched away so we can fill out time with needless bullshit. I'd be more forgiving of this if the things you did in between these climactic events were good, or satisfying, but they aren't. This is what constitutes the middle of the game I referred to before.

So much of FFXVI's gameplay revolves around running through these gambits of smaller enemies into minibosses into more smaller enemies into bigger bosses. I don't want to get too much into the combat just yet, so I'll say for now that it's not nearly compelling enough to hold your attention or challenge you enough to make this repetitive mission structure enticing for a full playthrough. Game design is usually repetitive by nature; I don't have an issue with that. I do have an issue when it's not nearly fun enough in most of these encounters to become anything other than a slog.

Side quests are perhaps an even bigger offender, where here they constitute some of the most rote and boring you'll find in an RPG. I suppose I should be happy they were even included at all with all the other RPG elements that were dropped. But man, so SO MANY of them are the bargain basement fetch quest variety, to the point where they even bleed into some main story missions. I don't mind doing a bit of legwork for quests but you gotta give me some more interesting ones in between. Fetch quests also tend to work best if you can merely collect the items along the way, in standard gameplay, so in some cases, you'll have already completed the quest by the time you're assigned it. Here, though, all items for these side quests are only generated on activation of the quest, so you'll have to drop what you're doing and go to that specific area of the map to get what you need, then return. There's an embarrassing number of "go deliver this food to people" tasks. Waste of time.

The worst thing is a lot of the resentment I feel towards this part of the game is partly my own fault. I forced myself to do every side quest. And the frustrating thing is, by the time I got to the end of them all, I completely understood what they were going for. The culmination of these side quests dovetails nicely into what Clive is doing at that time and paints a more complete vision for the story. It just doesn't excuse the tedium of it all, and it wasn't made better by the fact that it dumps more than 15 side quests on you at once right as you're about to hit the point of no return.

There's an overall lack of things outside your main quest to even do. The world of Valisthea is not a "fun one." You aren't going to find neat little minigames to play. You aren't going to find any interesting caves or side dungeons to explore. Hell, there isn't even fishing. Come on guys. In the words of Yoko Taro: JRPG NEEDS FISHING. No, what you're left with is a setting and narrative that's overly dour and serious, where humor is left to a minimum, and where you have a development team who wanted to make the most of their first M-Rated game by sticking enough "fucks" and "shits" into the dialogue to make even the hardest among us blush. That settles down a bit as the story progresses but I do think it's funny how hard they tried to make their game "mature" when in the end so much of it came off as largely immature. In that respect, this game feels like a relic from the late 90s or early 2000s when it comes to that.

So what about the story then? Well, Final Fantasy XVI is the story of Clive Rosfield and Clive Rosfield alone. In one of the most drastic and noticeable changes, you don't truly form a party in this game, you play as one solitary character the whole time. Other companions come and go as the narrative dictates, and do join your "party" to "fight" alongside you, but you can't control them, and they're usually gone before you've even gotten a real chance to bond with them. This is Clive's story, and as much as I wish I could say he was a strong enough character to carry that weight, he simply didn't do it for me. The whole story doesn't, really, and although some of that can be chalked up to personal preference, it has enough issues on its own that I can't overlook.

Listen, Clive is a surprisingly well-written character, I can't deny that. I appreciate that the game allows him to be genuinely emotional at times, and he certainly has more sides to him than I initially thought. But he's also decidedly uninteresting to me; another in a long line of chosen one protagonists that only plays further into the cliched nature of what's going on here. And he (along with most of the characters in the game) does not have a strong enough personality that I felt I could latch onto them and become invested in their struggles. There were some exceptions - Cid fucking rules, and I don't think you'll find many who say otherwise - but overall Clive and his band of outlaws didn't leave the impression on me that I had hoped they would. It didn't help that Clive himself seemed kind of bored with as many of the goings-on as I was.

The story itself doesn't fare much better. It oscillates between truly compelling and mind-numbingly boring, and unfortunately, it dives further into the latter as you begin to reach the end of the game. Honestly, I initially laughed at the people who said the story took a turn for the worse later on, as I think they largely were filtered by the reveal that this Final Fantasy game was ultimately a Final Fantasy game. But I also can't deny the early game political backstabbing and posturing was far more interesting than the overly-wrought descent into Jungian philosophical arguments that had nothing new or interesting to say, and felt more akin to a first-semester college student lesson. The main villain, in particular, was thoroughly uninteresting and it's sad because some characters in the story would have made for a more fantastic final antagonist. Real missed potential in this area and I can't go further without delving into spoiler territory (which I don't want to do) so you'll have to take my word on it.

And despite what is largely a very solid performance from most of the voice-acting cast, I feel for them a bit because a lot of the dialogue in FFXVI is cliché at best and downright laughable at worst. They do their best with what they're giving but so many of the characters in the game just trade boring verbal barbs that cemented my overall impression that so much of what was written here is not up to the level of what a Final Fantasy usually is. I don't feel like I'm being unrealistic in my expectations that what has traditionally been the gold standard in RPG storytelling could have been done way better in all departments here.

Now let's finally get to the combat. There is a specific reason why I have been avoiding it up to this point: I wanted to steer clear of comparisons to another Final Fantasy game. I had to reiterate this to myself while playing the game because I wanted to give it a fair shot. I wanted to judge it on its own merits. I wanted to show it was lacking for what it was, not what it wasn't. However, I cannot talk about how much this game fails at its combat system, and how much its gutted RPG elements hurt the overall experience without sharing a few words about its most recent comparable: Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Did you know the marketing for FFXVI described it as "the first fully-fledged action RPG in the mainline Final Fantasy series?" First of all, that's kind of laughable, because what the hell does that make Final Fantasy XV then? Even side-stepping that, I get the qualifier of "mainline Final Fantasy" probably excludes VII Remake, but should it? The whole narrative around this game being an evolution of Final Fantasy felt so bizarre because they intentionally included a blind spot for Final Fantasy VII Remake, and I suppose it's because that game IS the evolution. It already did what 16 set out to do, and far better.

Final Fantasy VII Remake's combat is a beautiful hybrid and fusion of an action game and a turn-based game. You can play it like a pure action game if you want, mapping your attacks to button combos and never having to bring up a menu, but you can also open your command list and stop time at any point to plot your next move; to consider your strategy against what you're fighting. It's exciting and fast-paced but also willing to give you a breather when you need it. That was exactly what I was looking for in terms of a game that brought Final Fantasy's combat to the next level.

By far the biggest issue with XVI's combat is that it's just completely shallow and offers little in the way of thinking or customization. There's no strategy to be found here, and battles can largely be won by spamming your attacks off cooldown. There's no resource to manage here, there are no strengths and weaknesses to account for, your attack's element does factor into damage, there are no buffs and debuffs, there are no status effects; there isn't much of anything that makes a good RPG combat system. All that stuff was in FF7R and learning how to maximize all that was a big part in becoming better as the game went on. In contrast, I learned the basics of how to play FFXVI's combat early on and never needed to deviate from that. It was the same boring combat loop from beginning to end; every single enemy is fought in the exact same manner.

There is no experimenting with different builds either. Final Fantasy 7 Remake has four different party members, each with their own play styles and strengths/weaknesses. But you could make them into whatever you wanted with the materia system; there was a ton of flexibility there. In addition, every character had half a dozen different weapons, each with a unique attack that could be mastered and added to your full roster of commands. And each weapon itself had different abilities that you could put skill points into and level up, while also containing different amounts of materia slots, meaning you had to make a tactical choice on what kind of weapon you wanted to use.

Final Fantasy XVI handles its weapons by basically throwing its hands up in the air and saying "Who cares about gear in an RPG game?" Weapons here only have two stats: raw damage and stagger damage. There is nothing unique or special about an individual weapon, same with your two other gear slots, so you never have to think about what you want to use. Bigger number? Yeah, go with that. XVI also has a perfunctory crafting system that lets you reinforce your gear, but you'll seldom use it because major story missions give you specific material to craft the most powerful weapons. That also means the game is filled with generic materials lying in the field you can pick, or are dropped by monsters, that you'll probably never use. This whole system needed to be rethought from the ground up or dropped entirely.

Okay, so it's not a strong RPG when it comes to combat, but hey, it's aiming to be an action game, right? They brought on the guy who designed Devil May Cry V's combat after all. And yeah, that would be fine, if it at all lived up to those hyper-focused action games. Did they forget the point of games like Devil May Cry is not just action, but STYLISH action? There is nothing stylish about Final Fantasy XVI's combat. Very few attacks have specialized effects; they're all essentially different ways of doing damage. Like there's a fire attack that reflects projectiles but so few enemies in the game do that why would you ever bother? There is little in the way of expression here, and only the bare minimum of combo potential. You don't even get rated on your combat performance after battles. Why are we comparing this to character action games again?

Much like weapons, your Eikon abilities only really do raw damage and stagger damage, but you don't even have to worry about your build here either. It's not like you have to make a choice when you have six attack slots but only two types of damage. Pick the bigger number and spam your heart out to win. The closest you get to maybe an interesting decision is the Eikon powers that relate to countering, but those are really only useful on bosses. At least they're better than the game's standard parry, which is wildly inconsistent and completely counter-intuitive compared to the parry in just about any other action game.

It's not a total loss, however. I do think for how simple the combat is, it works surprisingly well when you're one-on-one against another person or unique monster. It's flashy and at times even fun when you have an enemy that you can actually stop to read its attacks and have your skill tested. If the game were merely that I probably would have had a more positive impression overall despite the relative shallowness of it, but unfortunately far too many of your combat encounters are a boring grind to get through. There's a reason action games tend to be on the shorter side, 10-15 hours or so. This combat isn't nearly good enough to sustain itself throughout a 50-hour game. The meat grinder of wave after wave of standard enemies toward the end of the game was a real test of my patience.

Writing this review has been kind of a bummer. I've come to love JRPGs over the last 6-7 years after mostly ignoring the genre when I was younger. And I really wanted to like Final Fantasy XVI, even if many aspects of its setting and its lore aren't my particular cup of tea. To me, the discussion around this game was never about whether it was a "true" Final Fantasy or a "true" JRPG; it was about whether it was a "good" one of those things. My conclusion at the end is that much like Cid's daughter, Final Fantasy XVI is decidedly...mid.

The first few hours and the last few hours of the base patch are fantasic but there is a lot of garbage packed inbetween all the kino. The world building and actual story is really damn good, but unfortunately for every good scene there's twice as many drawn-out boring scenes and quests. Unlike Heavensward which did a really great job at integrating the individual zone questlines with the main story, the zone questlines in Shadowbringers are all standalone and serve to show you pieces of the world that don't really tie into the main conflict much at all. This leads to them feeling like mind-numbingly boring sidetracks for the most-part, barring the introductions to each zone from like lv.70-74 MSQ (i liked Il Mheg) and the few times Emet, Exarch, and Ardbert appear in them. As if being droning and unfocused wasn't bad enough though, these questlines are also packed full of some of the worst writing I've seen from this game in the form of MULTIPLE big dramatic death scenes for the main characters that end up being blatantly emotionally manipulative fake-outs, with the worst one being insanely obvious and then utterly disrespecting the player's intelligence by carrying on with it for multiple cutscenes and making you watch your player character cry over it.

I guess I formed too high expectations for this xpac from seeing the backloggd score as well as hearing nothing but praise for it since it released, but despite having the best world and main conflict out of the xpacs as well as the best characters, I don't think it deserves more than a 3/5 for being filled with so much unfocused trash for debatably a majority of it (it's faaaar from as bad as ARR and Stormblood though).

5.3 do be peak FF doe so that bumps it up holy shit that was good. 5.2 and 5.3 singlehandedly made me love every scion and cry multiple times so thats a W

An open world soulslike game, with a horse companion that can double jump, in a diverse open world written by George R.R Martin, where you can climb every mountain, sounds like a concept an unfunny gamer would come up with to post in 9gag. The post in question, would be called “The most EPIC souls game of all time”, and it would manage to get 32 upvotes and, a single comment saying “Why not at trending, sir?”, by a username with the ever so infamous Ugandan Knuckles as their profile pic.

Elden Ring is in fact a real game that was released just the other day, and made me and many others simply addicted to it, even if it feels unfinished and straight up broken sometimes. The foundation and feel of Elden Ring are so absurdly strong and well made that even when fighting the same optional boss with 3 attacks for the 4th time, or spending 10 minutes looking for invisible walls in a place that you will never go back to, or just wandering with your horse for 5 minutes looking for something cool besides a bunch of weak enemies scattered in the overworld to grab my attention, I never actually felt bored. To properly explain how they achieved this secret formula, which we’ll be seeing more in the future for sure, we have to talk about how and why they decided for a more open world approach.

“Nintendo hire this man” was a comment made by an anonymous on July 6, 2018, in a 4chan thread dedicated to mocking pseudo photorealistic renders and HD mods of Nintendo characters. The expression became iconic mostly for sounding like something an overly enthusiastic Nintendo fan would say, hoping that the company would change their usual conservative game and visual design approach for a more modern and intricate one, similar to what the majority of triple A’s were doing for years until that point. These feelings have existed before, but were never as prevalent, like with those "This will be x graphics in 2013" memes who mocked people who thought Nintendo would eventually invest more in the hardware side of the consoles during the Wii and Wii U gens, in order to produce more exuberant graphics. The term started to be later used to make fun of fan projects that implemented that lifelike aesthetic, and eventually moved on for even those that didn’t.

3D open world games exploded in popularity in the late 00’s, which drove fans to take their own unique take on some Nintendo franchises that didn’t get the proper treatment. The Zelda franchise was the company’s closest shot at it, as games up until that point were almost ideally open world, however you always had to do certain stuff in a specific order, similarly to a progression in a metroidvania title, which surely fulfilled the need of exploration for some, but many others still asked for a progression system around that instead of it being relegated to just side content. The idea of an ideally open world with Mario, Metroid, and most noticeably Pokémon, became the targets of multiple concepts, fan games, hacks, and even tech demos that tried to break the usual design conventions, mostly focusing around player freedom and diverse replayability.

One title that was famous during the fangaming period although not influencing much on the topic, was Demon Souls. Released in 2009, this PlayStation 3 classic uses what might resemble to be a chapter structure at first, however, utilizes inner-connectivity between places in a more similar structure of a crossroad, as in the player can choose to which road they will delve into, with subsequent paths leading for more areas in the same road. You could and sometimes should, go back to the point of origin and follow a different base direction than before while still not finishing the one you started, as those roads never connected to each other. It might not be as much of an open field when compared to previous Zelda games like Wind Waker or Ocarina of Time, but the branching paths gave a lot more progression flexibility and expression that Nintendo titles lacked.

Released 2 years after the game that ironically had one of the most “soulless” remakes of all time, Dark Souls requires no introduction at this point. The game allowed the player to go to a variety of areas early on, with somewhat contrasting levels of difficulty to the point that the path you chose was entirely up to you, eventually becoming a question of how much are you willing to challenge yourself. The intricacy of Dark Souls connectivity became a major selling point, as areas were tightly attached to each other, giving this atmospheric sensation that made the world feel more vivid. The way in which you’d reach some places like Valley of Drakes or Darkwood Basin depended entirely on what trajectory you wanted to follow this time.

Although that might seem as a definitive and unquestionable upgrade, the clarity in where you can and can’t go can be infuriating at times, as well as the frustrations of wandering aimlessly. However, just the knowledge in the back of your head that you could travel the entire map without the use of a fast travel system, a necessary mechanic utilized by games with this caliber, like The Legend of Zelda for example, ended up adding a lot to the atmosphere, as those games rarely ever went for such a pragmatic approach in most areas.

One sector that I think most will agree was a direct improvement however, was the fact that the areas in Dark Souls gave you, sometimes, multiple options in reaching their destination. Sure, some places like the Catacombs and Anor Londo may have one definitive manner in reaching their destination, but other locations like Blighttown or Darkwood Garden offer a multitude of inner ways, the first offering a variety of inner places to run from the chaotic domain, and the latter just being so open with different enemies scattered around, to the point that if you are aware of their placement, you could avoid every single encounter.

Sequels also came for the “Soulsborne” franchise, with Dark Souls 2 attempting something similar to Demon Souls, this time with an area, funnily enough, actually called crossroads. There were sections that lead to some other ones, like Huntsman’s Copse or Doors of Pharros, but most areas lead to places that mostly didn’t go anywhere beyond themselves, the only exception being Lost Bastille that could be accessed by 2 different ways, but it’s likely only there for show. Bloodborne came one year later and tried to improve and streamline a bit of it’s Dark Souls inheritance, expanding it's connected pathing while also not forcing the player to venture through the entire map as much, having almost half of its areas being completely optional.

Despite taking inspiration from different philosophies, both of these titles decided to keep the approach of having multiple ways available to walk in a designated section, with their own unique ideals of course. Bloodborne improved the previously somewhat used shortcuts, unlocking ladders and elevators in areas like Cathedral Ward or Forbidden Woods felt like making genuine progress not only by unlocking new areas, but also by connecting them, creating your own crossroads of some sort. Dark Souls 2 tried a more pragmatic approach, with levels requiring you to pass through the completely opposite directions to obtain one specific item or perform some sort of task, so that you can go back and advance normally, which leads to levels giving a weirdly retro vibe, as they seem similar to unlocking puzzles in old point and click video games.

Dark Souls 3 tried a more streamlined approach aimed towards beginners of the series with an overall universal balance, which gives an extremely simplified feeling that the navigation built throughout the years received a direct and undisputable downgrade. However, despite only having 3 branching points that lead to non connected places with 2 standalone optional ones, the areas themselves are made to be more open ended, like Smoldering Lake that gave you a multitude of options and allowing you to fight the boss without the need for exploration, and my favorite area in the series: Grand Archives. This late game section allows you to unlock different layers of elevators and stairs, while still using the bonfire in the bottom floor, giving a feeling of grandeur and conquering whenever you return to where you started, eventually reaching its top, from which you can still see the arduous path you took.

With the Launch of Sekiro a couple of years later, From Software decided to just improve in what they had with Dark Souls 3, improving in its highs with layers of verticality being available with the use of a grappling hook, but also adopting its lows as they just borrowed the same map philosophy. Another deliberate choice that may explain why they went for a more linear approach is the fact that the game was made to feel more cinematic, with beautiful sequences that are way more in-your-face about their magnitude, like the fight against Giant Serpents or Divine Dragon, a story told directly that everyone would be able to follow, and a complete overhaul in sound design and music genre to feel more authentic with the aesthetic.

Eventually, as the years would tell, gamers who leaned toward soulslike games would rather have freedom than gameplay balance. In conclusion, they appreciated having places being connected, and an option to neglect the use of fast travel as the definitive way of progressing, and approaching areas in multiple ways. Few people knew however, that being developed while Sekiro was midway through production, was a title that instead of trying to revolutionize their approach to combat, would attempt something even more daring.

Breath of the Wild, released in 2017, was the culmination of every knowledge that Nintendo gathered through the years, directly addressing the crowd that wished for a more exploratory experience, having only a somewhat intended first path that the game suggests you to give you a feeling of what’s to come, while still being just suggested. Whenever possible with modern design conventions, Nintendo would simplify it, gamify it, and make it look more distinct to the player, which we still appreciate and feel the impact years later. There are some elements that can be attributed as a souls influence, mostly with parry focused combat or the Lynels, but when asked about it, the series director Hidetaka Miyazaki, stated in an interview to Glixel that his game series weren’t even comparable to the sheer magnitude of Hidemaro Fujibayashi’s masterpiece, and claimed that any resemblance was just the Zelda franchise setting the footprints for 3D action games once again. We know for a fact that Elden Ring started development in the same year Breath of the Wild was released, which means that there is a chance that the following sentence might have been said:

“ From Software, Hire this Man “ - Hidetaka Miyazaki, regarding George R.R. Martin.

The answer to how to design areas allowing for more player freedom and expression while still being accessible for newer players became clear after taking a glance in Zelda’s first sandbox world: conurbation with path suggestion. From the very start of the game you have access in theory to 8 out of 11 areas without ever needing to fight a boss, however, for most players the number will be reduced to 5, as it requires advance knowledge in the game’s pathing. Besides rewarding players for mastering the game’s routes, which is good in its own right, the replayability of Elden Ring became by nature absurdly higher than those of previous titles, and allows players from every skill level to have a blast navigating in whichever choice they see fit.

For convenience purposes, the suggested path for a usual non turbulent progression in the map is displayed by arrows pointing in the map towards the next “recommended one”. As a treat for those who want a challenge or a change of pace, the game gives you plenty of ways to go other areas, like for example, reaching one of the game’s hardest areas by following the first road displayed in your map in a direction that’s opposite of the arrow in the bonfire pointing at. The areas have a clear and distinct cut between them, best exemplified in places like Caelid, which is neighbor of the starting area, that display a red crimson sky the moment you step in, showing that the following path will lead to suffering while also taunting you to give it a shot at its misery.

Just like Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring has a gigantic map full of curious locations, begging for you to find them, explore them to the maximum, and repeat the process with other ones. Instead of having an insane amount of shrines as the game's small dungeons, Miyazaki opted for fewer locations that feel more complete and fully realized, sometimes even having connections to other similar places like with the underground cave system. One of my favorite examples, without spoiling it, is what happens with Sifora Well after some specific pseudo-optional boss is defeated, genuinely some mind blowing exploration.

A proper jump button was also finally added this time, which made the very idea of leaping a tool that gives you more to work with while exploring and fighting, instead of a frustrating mechanic only ever used in brief and janky platforming sections. The area's verticality also increased dramatically, which can be perfectly seen in the game’s very first castle area, Stormveil castle. I’ve spent 2 hours in this castle, exploring the best I could as it took me a considerable time to realize I could jump higher to reach some areas that could only be accessed if you were playing Sekiro. There could be more, but I ended up finding 4 ways to reach the castle’s final area, where the inevitably oppressive boss fight awaited me. One of those routes can be accessed by walking normally throughout the area, other will require you to walk the same path but perform a platforming section that wouldn’t have been able to in previous titles, one will require you to take a completely different road that you can unlock with the use of an elevator in the middle of the first route, and the final one can be accessed by doing somewhat of a NPC side quest available the moment you reach the castle’s entrance.

Another thing important to mention is the overwhelmingly positive reception Elden Ring received when the foundation of how they would allow their areas for navigation was made public knowledge, obtaining 2 awards in the infamous yet sometimes adequate Game Awards, being the “Most Anticipated Game of the Year” in both 2020 and 2021. Elden Ring can be seen more clearly nowadays as a passion project from a director that grew up being inspired by Zelda Games, receiving another blessing in a time of need and arguably surpassing what he was inspired from. Under no other context, would a writer as prestigious as George R.R. Martin be invited to assist with a fantasy setting world building, his specialty, particularly after the devastating backlash from the adaptation of his most notorious work, Game of Thrones.

And now that we have finally established how we reached this point in approaching areas, and allowing the player to carve their own path, how’s the game beyond that?

Idk I think it's pretty good :)