Father of Final Fantasy: "Stop Rehasing Final Fantasy!"

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Abstract Debauchery

Abstract Debauchery

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Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series, recently took part in a candid exchange with a Square Enix employee in which he told the company to stop endlessly rehashing the same game.


Hironobu Sakaguchi, generally credited with creating the Final Fantasy series, left his executive vice president position at Square in 2004 to start his own studio, Mistwalker, responsible for Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey.


In a (light-hearted and friendly) Twitter based exchange with game designer Takashi Tokita, current head of one of Square Enix’s development divisions, he was surprisingly frank:



Sakaguchi : “What about if you stopped all the rehashing of Final Fantasy?”​

Tokita : “We’re planning to!”​
Click to expand...
Sakaguchi fields scepticism about his own current project, “The Last Story”:


Ahiru0026: “Last Story sounds just like a Final Fantasy rehash from its title alone, what’s up with that then?”​

Sakaguchi : “If you tried it, I think you’d see it’s not in any way a rehash.”​
Click to expand...
Few could help but sympathise with Sakaguchi’s comments – Japan’s gaming industry, and in particular its RPG segment, have become stultifyingly unoriginal in recent years, failing to innovate in any significant fashion save moderate improvements in graphics.


Even Square Enix boss Wada, known to be a fan of western games, has given hints that the franchise may finally move on – might change finally be in the air?

Source: Sankaku Complex [Link Removed]
 
Haha, that's actually quite epic :wacky: So the big man in finally getting peeved with how they're using FF. :wacky: I'm hoping this 'light hearted' conversation is a subtle enough hint to pack it in. Mind, money talks, so I wouldn't be suprised if it'll be ignored or just purely taken as a joke.
 
Although I love the fact that Sakaguchi is clearly showing his dissatisfaction towards what Final Fantasy has become since the days of FFIX, I can't help but raise an eyebrow at his own project: The Last Story. From what I've seen so far (to be fair, not very much), there's little revolution, nothing I haven't really seen before, still rather conventional etc.

I'd have thought that Sakaguchi is a man who likes taking the conventional route. Look at Lost Odyssey, that was deemed a rather old-fashioned kind of JRPG. It's a little rich for Sakaguchi to tell SE to stop "rehashing" Final Fantasy when it looks like he's doing the same but without the milking.
 
I kinda raised my eyebrow at the fact that he said it in the first place. :hmmm:

No offense really, but he left, so why is he making suggestions. They're a successive game makers company, and I really don't see why his input was needed.

Some people actually love and enjoy what Square Enix is doing, and I'm kinda non-opinionated over the games right now, I really couldn't care less what they do.

I just think that, if you don't want something - don't buy it. No one's forcing you to.

If their company has more votes for working on an older game, they should. They should all have fun in their work as well, to be honest. If they still do things like how XIII came out recently, I don't see the big complaining fuss that most people give them.
 
I agree with the man...what happend to making ORRIGINAL charecters?
FF hasnt had a charecter recently thets not based on another...The premis of RPG's in general are all pretty much the same,some form of disaster hits and its time to save the world/person/thing to save said world....But at least throw in a charecter that dosent make me think of another one.....
I HOPE the hint hits home...but I doubt it will....
 
This sound extremely stupid considering it's exactly Sakaguchi who was rehearsing the same game. Final Fantasy's 1-9 are all exactly the same game 99% - and it's when he left franchise moved along and has nothing to do with it's roots: FF11, FF12, FF13 - share only name and attributes.

Also what's with that "move on" comment by Wada? Like I said FF already has nothing to do with it's predecessors and Versus gonna make that fact even more solid. So how exactly they gonna move? Start calling Potion "Medicine" or Attack "Weapon"? Now that's stupid.
 
Hahahahaha, epic win, Sakaguchi. Epic win.

I'm with him on this whole thing. :mokken: Their games have become dull and forgettable. Maybe now they'll change it.

Good point, though above poster. Sakaguchi is the exact person that rehashed the same game 1-9. Hypocrite :mokken:
 
Even if it is rich coming from him, even if he is being a hypocrite, he is still right. FF games have been on the decline into mediocrity for a long time and he did create the series so I think his view on his own creation is still worth listening to.

I doubt anything will change. This isn't big news at all IMO, it's just some side story and I find it hard to believe that one man's comments in some Twitter conversation is going to make SE completely revamp FF into a great series again.
 
Well, even if it won't make a huge dent on the massive pile of asshattery that SE has become, maybe they'll start to think that not everyone is buying into their bullshit anymore.

However, even if this did happen, they'll probably just keep adding on to said pile of asshattery hoping that their fans will eat it up.
 
It's a shame because fewer people are getting interested in old-school RPG's like the old FF titles, and SE have to move into a completely new direction with their games. This annoys fans of the old titles, but the thing that is the most frustrating is the fact that they use the power of the Final Fantasy brand to sell these new games. The new titles are what Final Fantasy is supposed to 'look' like, but not what Final Fantasy is supposed to 'play' like. That's why they are considered unoriginal and forgettable. It's time to end the Final Fantasy series, but this won't happen because SE will lose out on millions and millions of money.

Because the size of old-school RPG consumers have fallen and because SE now only care about making profit (the usual behaviour of a massive company), we will never see games like Chrono Trigger or Mario RPG that could be viewed as 'rehashes' of FF, but nevertheless were stunning games so no one really cared.
 
Oh whoa, I'm actually torn. I'm still happy with the stuff coming from S-E, but I absolutely loved Sakaguchi's work to. Other's mention his own hypocrisy with his own work both new and old, but I can understand his feelings too :hmmm:
 
I'm with Sakaguchi 100%, even if there's some hypocrisy on his words. After all, he did create the series, so no matter what age we're in, his words are still worth reading or listening to.

Just look at the heroes from I-X. Maybe Squall's attitude reminded us a little bit about Cloud (and boy, how the fans ate that up), but that's about it, really.

But now the heroes from new titles HAVE to remind us of someone else, using that other character's fame in order to make the new one famous (Lightning = Cloud, enough said). I didn't play Final Fantasy until 2001, but I can sincerely say I like how it was and not what it has become.
 
I think it's BS how everyone says the FF games havent changed. It's just everyone jumping on the bandwagon
 
random twitter blobs between random person A and famous person B sparks SRS BIZNESS as usual.

fairly sure they were just talking with each other here, game creator to game developer. i see no hostility in any of those quotes, no contempt, nothing. if anything i see sakaguchi recognizing that FF games have been rather similar in both concept and execution, and poking fun at it. the second quote is the developer doing the same.

you have to consider the context that these statements were made in. but perhaps this is the wrong place to support objectivity.
 
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