Saving the world with really big swords and the power of friendship

January 1, 2023 5:42 AM

Happy New Year, Final Fantasy fans, I hope you don't have anything important to do today because YouTuber Ludiscere has a series of videos with in-depth analysis of each of the games FFI through FFIV (so far) which you might enjoy.

I personally found the analysis of the much maligned FFII particularly interesting (post title comes from this video) but I have yet to watch the mamoth, five and a half hour, DEFINITIVE Final Fantasy IV Analysis.

And on a similar though comparatively bite-sized path, animator Dan Floyd—who you may know as the original narrator of Extra Credits (with gaming specific content recently moved to a new separate channel: Extra Credits Gaming)—dissects The Animation of Final Fantasy on his animation focused channel, New Frame Plus. Also, currently up to FFIV.

posted by Mister_Sleight_of_Hand (9 comments total)

amazing, but how will I explain to my husband that I am spending five hours of new year’s day watching an in depth analysis of a video game from 1991, though? I need to think up some errands to send him on for this.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:48 AM on January 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

FFIV is the first one I really got into and the first one I finished, although I think I had rented the original Final Fantasy at least once. It primed me to see FFVI in the store and go nuts for it, and boy did that pay off. The scripted storyline for the first few hours of that game was amazing. Square really pushed the formula (and the hardware) to the limit. I don't think I can go back to it, or, really, go back to the series (so many hours! and the writing is better for kids) but it made a huge impression and I still go back to the music all the time.
posted by grobstein at 9:06 AM on January 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Valuable. But ... it looks like Ludiscere is posting these videos at intervals of approximately one year. The only ones I want to see are VII, XI, and later.
posted by neuron at 9:45 AM on January 1, 2023

as a result of the previous FF thread i am currently about 23 hours into FF6, the only one of the cartridge Fantasys i haven't completed (i have just crash-landed the airship after leaving the sealed cave).
posted by glonous keming at 10:10 AM on January 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

The one that is most interesting to me as an adult is FF Tactics. What Yasumi Matsuno and his collaborators bring to the art and writing still really works for me. The magical evils are more legible as symbols for human evils, and the big story with its politics, family and class struggle is more engaging to me than regular ol' saving the world now. (Like Game of Thrones, it's a kind of magical retelling of the War of the Roses.) I'm not sure I'll get around to replaying it, though. I know too much about how the gameplay systems work so they're kind of broken for me.

The same team was largely in charge of FFXII, which I also like, but I sense they didn't have the same degree of creative freedom working on a mainline title. (For example, apparently, the decision to make the story revolve around a child character was not part of the original plan and was based on feedback from producers.)

Matsuno and his team basically got headhunted by Square after they put out Tactics Ogre, which has just been released in a new remastered / rebalanced version.
posted by grobstein at 9:56 AM on January 2, 2023

Ok sorry I just realized I repeated a common misconception:

Matsuno: Well, if I had to give a reason, it’s really quite simple. As a child in elementary school, I looked up to people like Shigeru Miyamoto, Yuji Horii, and Hironobu Sakaguchi. I wanted to be like him! I’d always had that dream. Then, after finishing my previous game Tactics Ogre and leaving Quest, I was talking with some acquaintances and trying to figure out my next move when I saw a job advertisement for a position at Square. I decided I’d go and take their entrance test.

Sakaguchi: I’m sure many people must see the title of this game, “Final Fantasy Tactics“, and think that we headhunted Matsuno and reached out to him first, but it’s actually not like that, just as he says. You can write this down for posterity: (laughs) the idea for a Final Fantasy strategy game was one that I had been brewing and fermenting for quite awhile before.

Interview here.
posted by grobstein at 9:59 AM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

So much good stuff to post from this interview, I'm going to limit myself to one more little bit that illustrates the difference between FFT and the main line:

Sakaguchi: One time I took a look at the whiteboard that Matsuno would sometimes have by his desk, and I saw this huge chart that detailed all the character relationships. He’s quite the obsessive when it comes to his work! I remember seeing one of the connections between the characters, and it said “they have a hard time understanding each other.” I thought to myself, man, this is going to be a deep game.

posted by grobstein at 10:04 AM on January 2, 2023

Matsuno: As a child in elementary school, I looked up to people like Shigeru Miyamoto, Yuji Horii, and Hironobu Sakaguchi. I wanted to be like him! I’d always had that dream.

Okay the one funny thing about this is that Hironobu Sakaguchi is only 3 years older than Yasumi Matsuno. Matsuno was already in university when Sakaguchi started working in games. Maybe it's a wonky translation or maybe there is an element of joking in there somewhere.
posted by grobstein at 11:50 AM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am about four and a half hours in to the five and a half hour video, and honestly I like it a lot. If you watch the earlier ones, the length makes perfect sense - he's covering the same level of detail around plot, character, mechanics, music, linguistics, etc, except that FFIV is just about five times as much game as the previous ones.
posted by restless_nomad at 8:34 AM on January 4, 2023