Played: January 2024
Why so much serious-minded affect when the follow-through has no backbone? An adult romance reduced to puppy dog eyes and sexless nudity. A depiction of slavery so liberalized it walks into conservatism. Any semblance of meaningful commentary on economic or environmental violence marred by contradictions and lack of imagination in worldbuilding. Some imagery, presentation, and occasional sense of place round out the highlights, but Final Fantasy XVI betrays the promise of a challenging narrative by instead delivering the frictionless experience of a hot knife through butter.
Misogyny is a hit-and-run job throughout. Sure, the camera doesn't leer, and the clothing is sensible, but in every woman's story the initial signs of interesting motivations and machinations turn out to be false. Benedikta is presented as having a dangerous shadowy agency until she's revealed to be a mess of trauma-fueled narrative confusion. Annabella could've been a window into the fascist obsession with eugenics, but she's given no interiority to carry out a real idea. Jill amounts to a fair maiden awaiting her knight despite a rich backstory rife with corrosive revenge and tough responsibility that is hardly allowed to play out. There's a prominent presence of off-screen sex work in the game, but FFXVI's answer to the Madonna-whore complex is to just make all the "whores" into "Madonnas" out of shame. This speaks to how underwritten the men are as well, but the frameworks the female characters are placed into are uniquely sexist. Trust me, I'd rather not have to harp on representation, but when a work has taken so many steps back, how can I not?
"And then there's the slavery" is not how I wanted to start this sentence, but here we are. FFXVI wants to take human bondage seriously and does just enough to signal so. But it's foundational understanding is either so misguided, or it chose so many incongruous plates to spin, that anything it has to say about subjugation and dehumanization wanes from toothless to reactionary by default. Like the characters, its politics initially intrigued me. Was this going to be an entire game about blowing up mako reactors? Are we really going to contend with the morality of violent liberation and what it may wreak on the intended beneficiaries? Is everyone so institutionally conditioned to accept slavery that I'm going to have to sit with genuine unease about potential allies? The answer to all of these range from "not really…" to "lol no". In the early going the depictions of oppression coupled with disorienting aesthetic choices put me in an exciting discomfort that I could not wait to see pay off. Even if the final statements or questions to come could be exploitative or nasty, something interesting was bound for me. And then… nothing. Or nothing but sliding further into shonen iconography, and with it, an easy morality. Morality so easy, that the resolution of certain injustices slide into conservatism not out of any actively destructive worldview (that could still be interesting) but a lazy passive decline into status quo. FFXVI just walks away. I spent a while wondering if I prefer Tales of Arise's failure that simply picked a topic that was always out of its depth or this one that makes an earnest attempt and then sidelines it for nothing. Honestly, I don't know. Maybe I'm just letting the presentation fool me into believing it's taking it seriously?
Because it's a pretty presentation. I'm not someone who was bothered by the cursing or the purple verbiage. The voice acting felt correctly theatrical. The kaiju Eikon fights were mostly thrilling but also too sparkly with little consideration for depth of field. I have felt similarly confused about where to focus my eyes during Final Fantasy XIII's gorgeous spectacles. The vistas are picturesque and traversal was a pleasure. Clive's jump sucks, but the actual footfalls through the land felt tactile, and I honestly had no trouble with the timing of his sprints or riding the Chocobo. On a purely arcade level, I'm of two minds on the combat. It's filled with beats of cathartic power fantasy, but the rhythm of nearly all fights are boringly similar. On a thematic level, it's a shame that anything about a world so complicit in injustice could feel so frictionless. There are times to have your cake and eat it too, but you can't position yourself above pastry only to fall flat with pie on your face.
I've read thoughtful defenses of Final Fantasy XVI, and, man, I wish I played the same game. If we went point for spoilerous point on my issues, I'm sure its champions could highlight answers squirreled away somewhere in the game. Show me a way to look at how each bug is a secret feature. But that's the forest for the trees. It just doesn't add up to a whole that conveys a clear eyed approach to slavery, environmental justice, the definition of freedom, and the discomfort of fighting for it. All topics that the story openly declares war on, and all explorations that I have to squint hard to make sense of. Previously, I met Final Fantasy XV beyond halfway and fell in absolute love with it, but the difference is that I didn't have to be talked into it.
Let's end on a good note. What are those 2 stars worth? A sense of place, time, and people. Whatever their politics, I took 70+ hours to play this game because I was always invested in listening to its denizens wherever I set foot. Every new town or settlement, every NPC on the road, every trip to the Hideaway, I was eavesdropping. Even the bad sidequests flesh out the world as being full of real-ish people. I actually believe the game is doing something interesting with its models by not designing the Hollywood handsome main characters to stand out too far from the masses as most RPGs do. Intentional or not, this creates an equalizing effect in aesthetics regardless of what the narrative undercuts. Similarly, I quite like the music because, while there are few earworms, the soundtrack creates an ambiance of melancholy and malaise that uniformly blankets Valisthea. I'm also a sucker for a good home base with all your pals, and the Hideaway is delightful and ripe with endearing sidequests to pick from. A game where I have the patience to walk the farthest reaches of the central hub between each mission just to hear what the gardener has to say about recent events is doing something right.
What Final Fantasy XVI lacks in substance it makes up partly in texture. Too bad that's not nearly enough.
Why so much serious-minded affect when the follow-through has no backbone? An adult romance reduced to puppy dog eyes and sexless nudity. A depiction of slavery so liberalized it walks into conservatism. Any semblance of meaningful commentary on economic or environmental violence marred by contradictions and lack of imagination in worldbuilding. Some imagery, presentation, and occasional sense of place round out the highlights, but Final Fantasy XVI betrays the promise of a challenging narrative by instead delivering the frictionless experience of a hot knife through butter.
Misogyny is a hit-and-run job throughout. Sure, the camera doesn't leer, and the clothing is sensible, but in every woman's story the initial signs of interesting motivations and machinations turn out to be false. Benedikta is presented as having a dangerous shadowy agency until she's revealed to be a mess of trauma-fueled narrative confusion. Annabella could've been a window into the fascist obsession with eugenics, but she's given no interiority to carry out a real idea. Jill amounts to a fair maiden awaiting her knight despite a rich backstory rife with corrosive revenge and tough responsibility that is hardly allowed to play out. There's a prominent presence of off-screen sex work in the game, but FFXVI's answer to the Madonna-whore complex is to just make all the "whores" into "Madonnas" out of shame. This speaks to how underwritten the men are as well, but the frameworks the female characters are placed into are uniquely sexist. Trust me, I'd rather not have to harp on representation, but when a work has taken so many steps back, how can I not?
"And then there's the slavery" is not how I wanted to start this sentence, but here we are. FFXVI wants to take human bondage seriously and does just enough to signal so. But it's foundational understanding is either so misguided, or it chose so many incongruous plates to spin, that anything it has to say about subjugation and dehumanization wanes from toothless to reactionary by default. Like the characters, its politics initially intrigued me. Was this going to be an entire game about blowing up mako reactors? Are we really going to contend with the morality of violent liberation and what it may wreak on the intended beneficiaries? Is everyone so institutionally conditioned to accept slavery that I'm going to have to sit with genuine unease about potential allies? The answer to all of these range from "not really…" to "lol no". In the early going the depictions of oppression coupled with disorienting aesthetic choices put me in an exciting discomfort that I could not wait to see pay off. Even if the final statements or questions to come could be exploitative or nasty, something interesting was bound for me. And then… nothing. Or nothing but sliding further into shonen iconography, and with it, an easy morality. Morality so easy, that the resolution of certain injustices slide into conservatism not out of any actively destructive worldview (that could still be interesting) but a lazy passive decline into status quo. FFXVI just walks away. I spent a while wondering if I prefer Tales of Arise's failure that simply picked a topic that was always out of its depth or this one that makes an earnest attempt and then sidelines it for nothing. Honestly, I don't know. Maybe I'm just letting the presentation fool me into believing it's taking it seriously?
Because it's a pretty presentation. I'm not someone who was bothered by the cursing or the purple verbiage. The voice acting felt correctly theatrical. The kaiju Eikon fights were mostly thrilling but also too sparkly with little consideration for depth of field. I have felt similarly confused about where to focus my eyes during Final Fantasy XIII's gorgeous spectacles. The vistas are picturesque and traversal was a pleasure. Clive's jump sucks, but the actual footfalls through the land felt tactile, and I honestly had no trouble with the timing of his sprints or riding the Chocobo. On a purely arcade level, I'm of two minds on the combat. It's filled with beats of cathartic power fantasy, but the rhythm of nearly all fights are boringly similar. On a thematic level, it's a shame that anything about a world so complicit in injustice could feel so frictionless. There are times to have your cake and eat it too, but you can't position yourself above pastry only to fall flat with pie on your face.
I've read thoughtful defenses of Final Fantasy XVI, and, man, I wish I played the same game. If we went point for spoilerous point on my issues, I'm sure its champions could highlight answers squirreled away somewhere in the game. Show me a way to look at how each bug is a secret feature. But that's the forest for the trees. It just doesn't add up to a whole that conveys a clear eyed approach to slavery, environmental justice, the definition of freedom, and the discomfort of fighting for it. All topics that the story openly declares war on, and all explorations that I have to squint hard to make sense of. Previously, I met Final Fantasy XV beyond halfway and fell in absolute love with it, but the difference is that I didn't have to be talked into it.
Let's end on a good note. What are those 2 stars worth? A sense of place, time, and people. Whatever their politics, I took 70+ hours to play this game because I was always invested in listening to its denizens wherever I set foot. Every new town or settlement, every NPC on the road, every trip to the Hideaway, I was eavesdropping. Even the bad sidequests flesh out the world as being full of real-ish people. I actually believe the game is doing something interesting with its models by not designing the Hollywood handsome main characters to stand out too far from the masses as most RPGs do. Intentional or not, this creates an equalizing effect in aesthetics regardless of what the narrative undercuts. Similarly, I quite like the music because, while there are few earworms, the soundtrack creates an ambiance of melancholy and malaise that uniformly blankets Valisthea. I'm also a sucker for a good home base with all your pals, and the Hideaway is delightful and ripe with endearing sidequests to pick from. A game where I have the patience to walk the farthest reaches of the central hub between each mission just to hear what the gardener has to say about recent events is doing something right.
What Final Fantasy XVI lacks in substance it makes up partly in texture. Too bad that's not nearly enough.
4 Comments
Hey, thanks for reading and the kind words! I only just started posting here so it's nice to know people can actually see it.
I was a huge fan of FF7 Remake when it came out but haven't touched it or played Intergrade in the 4 years since. Back then I was spouting some real "game of the century" talk but never jotted down my deeper thoughts. Most of my logs are in the form of short videos back and forth with a friend during COVID lockdown, though I remember Aerith to be remarkably well written and finding the game's tension with the original to be a fascinating thesis about memory and scribing history. Definitely due for a replay before Rebirth so we'll see how I feel then! Can't imagine not writing about it here. I've always taken Final Fantasy more seriously than guilty pleasure, but I know we all use that designation differently.
I'm sure OG FF7, which I last played in 2013, suffers vestigial sexism, but I can't remember anything in the Remake standing out. Maybe there are silhouettes of past frameworks, but the women felt as fully realized as human beings as their male counterparts. All within the structure of a heteronormative binary, sure, but that's a longer discourse.
I was a huge fan of FF7 Remake when it came out but haven't touched it or played Intergrade in the 4 years since. Back then I was spouting some real "game of the century" talk but never jotted down my deeper thoughts. Most of my logs are in the form of short videos back and forth with a friend during COVID lockdown, though I remember Aerith to be remarkably well written and finding the game's tension with the original to be a fascinating thesis about memory and scribing history. Definitely due for a replay before Rebirth so we'll see how I feel then! Can't imagine not writing about it here. I've always taken Final Fantasy more seriously than guilty pleasure, but I know we all use that designation differently.
I'm sure OG FF7, which I last played in 2013, suffers vestigial sexism, but I can't remember anything in the Remake standing out. Maybe there are silhouettes of past frameworks, but the women felt as fully realized as human beings as their male counterparts. All within the structure of a heteronormative binary, sure, but that's a longer discourse.
"Frictionless"...?
Frictionless, as in, too easy. Being able to use the same combo over and over in all scenarios. Side quests laid out with exact markers (a fault of modern game design). In general, too little time between my brain wanting to do something and having accomplished that thing. That's great in certain games, like say the Tales series, but it robs FFXVI of the heft the story wants to have. Sometimes a game benefits from pushing back against and not just giving me everything the moment I want it.
thomasthomast
3 months ago