It is curious that ‘Final Fantasy’ was, literally, the last game that Squaresoft was to launch before closing its doors and saved them to this day. The saga has seen more than 35 years of history through its 16 main installments (and countless spin-offs, revisitations and remakes). Now, Naoki Yoshida, the director of ‘Final Fantasy XVI‘, is open to doing something that would mean the end of the franchise as we know it.
The numbers don’t add up
And it has to do with the numbers that accompany each title. Just like the movies get rid of them after a certain installment (‘Halloween,’ ‘Evil Doll,’ ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’), Yoshida believes there are more cons than pros to continuing to number the games in the series: “A lot of gamers are going to go in and look at it like a comic book where you have to read from the beginning to know what’s going on now. It’s hard for marketing because every numbered title we release in the series we have to say, ‘Okay, you don’t have to play the rest.'” Mind you, ‘Final Fantasy VI’ you do have to play it. Not for continuity, but because it’s really good.
Ready to take all the blame and not foreseeing how protective fans are of his stuff, Yoshida continues, “Removing the numbers is something we’ve discussed. Maybe it’s time. For example, you have Final Fantasy XIV. You have a new player who comes in and says, ‘Wait a minute, why am I going to play Final Fantasy XIV if XVI just came out?’ Why don’t we just call it Final Fantasy Online and remove the title altogether? It’ll be easier to understand.” He’s not wrong, but I’ll be damned if I don’t want to be eighty years old and enjoy the kids trying to order ‘Final Fantasy XLVIII’ in the stores.
Yoshida directed the fourteenth part and has produced this one: although his career is mostly focused on making video games, he has also released three installments of his autobiography ‘Yoshida Uncensored’ and refuses to keep his opinions to himself because, after all, he’s past fifty and horribly doubts he’ll ever touch a single title in the franchise again: “Whether Final Fantasy XVII or XVIII would have to have a number or not, that’s going to be the problem of whoever develops it and whoever is in charge of the brand. That’s their problem, not ours!”. That’s called having charisma by doing evil.
By the way, ‘Final Fantasy XVI’ is coming out on June 22 so we hope you’re ready for the new game of the year of the week after ‘Tears of the Kingdom‘ and before ‘GTA VI’. These are tough years for our gamers’ wallet.
