Bergsonian Critique

Over the years, it has become progressively easy to take the Final Fantasy series for granted. Cynicism and skepticism are seemingly the only responses that spring up in message boards and blogs whenever a new title is announced or released. Whether it is the graphics, the characters’ artwork, the premise, or the gameplay, there is always someone who would raise an eyebrow and question the integrity of the series and, consequently, launch a personal interpretation on where and when it has gone wrong. But the truth of the matter is that Final Fantasy had never had a directive path to begin with; it had never adhered to a grand scheme that it would borrow its ideas from; it had never, most certainly, pertained itself to someone or something. Just like The Legend of Zelda, developers usually come and go, directors and producers are swapped and shuffled, and old mentors are rehired to come up with new ideas. The question that presents itself is whether it is fair to impute the recent Final Fantasy XIII of faults it has never committed; that is, to deem it flawed simply because it didn’t abide the rules created by its antecedents. For self-conscious (and hopefully sensible) critics, the answer should be no.

Still, to analyze Final Fantasy means to analyze its legacy—a legacy of a franchise that has been adulated on how it sets and refashions the rules of the genre and its own oeuvres. Indeed, there are few games in the market that not only they create generation of gamers but divide them: purists esteem the pixilated classics, novices admire the CGI-driven masterpieces, and online junkies lavishes on Final Fantasy XI and its expansions. It is not an overstatement, then, to declare that Final Fantasy is synonymous with time; hardware reform, technology, game design, and game philosophy, all are facets that exert an influence on Final Fantasy and vice versa. Yet, these factors are rarely the contributors of this generational schism, because storytelling has always been and still is the crux of the argument that sets to differentiate one Final Fantasy game from the next, and one Final Fantasy fan from the other. Nonetheless, it is fair for one to judge the chief games of Final Fantasy comparatively and generally, but it is imperative to address the merits of each game independently and specifically.

For Final Fantasy XIII, the ambitions always seem to overburden the merits; one can easily tell, within few hours in the story, that the entire structure of the game is circumscribed to a specific and a repetitive scheme, which is a daring vision for a role-playing game to adhere. Because, while not as liberated as their western counterparts, most eastern RPGs offer diversions and side-quests that not only they amplify the main scenario but impart the opportunity for the player to understand the world without any great constraints—most of Final Fantasy games are actually famous of such feature, and Final Fantasy XII is a prime example of that. But Final Fantasy XIII eschews the “unnecessary” distractions to necessitate the fundaments of a “character-driven” narrative.  Conceptually, this is supposed to come off as an inducement, propelling the player in the story single-handedly without taking any respites or optional excursions (explanatory datalogs, for example, are implemented to answer all there is to ask). In fact, the restriction placed on the Crystarium, which can be lifted intermittently upon completing the main chapters, is designed to curb the desultory level-grinding wherein the difficulty of enemy encounters does not abate significantly, which, therefore, does not protract the length of interruptions unnecessarily. For many players on the other hand, the linear, strings-of-corridors-and-cut-scenes structure did very little to keep them attached to the major spectacle as there’s little else to do but to keep pushing forward.

It must be said, however, that linearity in an RPG is not an inferior option to the popular, seemingly open-ended design exhibited by many games in the genre, specifically if it makes sense in the narrative. For Final Fantasy XIII’s defense, this is exactly the case—after all, you control a group of six individuals whom, despite their personal dejections, are inflicted and branded with the mark of the l’Cie, a curse that carries the burden of either fulfilling the Focus or facing a fate harsher than death itself. And the fact that the chosen slaves of the fal’Cie are frantically execrated in Cocoon doesn’t make things easier, which means the simplest kind of contact would endanger the fal’Cie and the citizens critically by Cocoon’s theocratic government, the Sanctum. Thus, with such premise, it would be incongruous if the game allowed the odious pariahs to sojourn in towns and cities where the danger of being identified as a l’Cie is always looming, not to mention the awful dread of turning into a Cie’th, an aimless servant that enjoys no salivation nor a state of mind or freewill if the Focus is not met. Therefore, remaining idle is obviously not conceivable given the dire consequences, and it seems the only way to intensify such a foreboding probability is by making the narrative as linear and as pressing as possible.

This evidently made producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Motomu Toriyama retort to the “linearity” criticism by elucidating the complication “to tell a compelling story when you’re given that much freedom,” in which Toriyama later issued an official statement in the European Final Fantasy XIII website, comparing the experience of FPS games and films to the one envisaged for Final Fantasy XIII and expressing the aim behind this conscious decision as “ . . . to allow the player to become absorbed in the drama of the storytelling . . . that is similar to the experience of an FPS style game, where the player rapidly progresses through a series of dramatic events and experiences one after the other on an imposing and atmospheric battlefield.”

While this is an admirable intention to say the least, the final product still does not aspire to the filmic inspiration envisioned by Toriyama and his accomplished team. After all, most of the stories in Final Fantasy are known for their melodramatic characterization –a facet that I don’t practically deplore, seeing that melodramas can be as artistic and expressive as any literary genre available– and Final Fantasy XIII is no exception. But in the latter, the meller is entangled with a stirring urgency, a concoction that is unlikely to impinge the player emotionally and effectively. By definition, melodramas should not to be hurried, and action-based sequences aren’t supposed to be emotional—it feels uncanny when one moment a character is divulging his/her deepest reservations and the second after that he/she is plunged into a boss battle.  Indeed, the reason that many players have wept and moaned during Aeris’s iconic death scene in Final Fantasy VII is because the narrative has given her enough time and substance to ingrain her worth in their minds, whether within the confinement of the story or the gameplay. While the premise of Final Fantasy XIII is curiously engaging, character attachment for the most part occurs too late to develop an affective rapport with the player. This is possibly due to the episodic arrangement of the story wherein the six characters are incessantly swapped and paired up, which, despite the operatic monologues and heightened emotions, leaves few windows of opportunity to correlate with the characters independently before the next chapter unfolds.

Nonetheless, the actual culprit of this emotional disengagement is neither the hasty melodrama nor the linearity of the gameplay—it is something simpler than that and yet far more problematic. To put it plainly (and shamelessly), the story of Final Fantasy XIII is hard to follow, and its focal weak spot lies in its delivery. Just like Final Fantasy X, both the narrative and the characters of Final Fantasy XIII are inseparably bound to the circumstances of the world, in which the latter’s fate cannot be changed unless they change the functions of the world itself. But what separates them both is the way the story is told; Final Fantasy X is narrated through the eyes and deeds of Tidus, who, just like the player, is new to Spira and comes to understand it gradually as the story progresses. Final Fantasy XIII does not boast such privilege; even its inception is completely chaotic, throwing and accruing new terms and argots haphazardly, leaving the player in the lurch for her to navigate discursive datalogs to reach an understanding of the conflict between Cocoon and Gran Pulse. These long minutes spent on rummaging and re-rummaging for clarification detaches the player from the urgency exhibited on-screen, and from investing the time and tenacity in saving the world that is supposedly worth saving.

This is obviously unfortunate, because the worlds of Cocoon and Gran Pulse are exceptionally and fully realized thanks to the game’s visual splendor and distinctive art style. While Final Fantasy XIII isn’t the first game to pioneer the premise of alienated continents that share an intolerable fear for each other, (Tales of Eternia and Tales of Symphonia usually come to mind), it is among the few that features an implicating dichotomy that conveys an artistic necessity to the narrative. One cannot, most certainly, appreciate the magnitude and the metaphor that concatenate the two realms until one traverses their landscapes; Cocoon is utopian, man-made, insular, and technically marvelous, yet it is ravaged by a portentous dread from the unknown and from a government that can complacently “purge” an entire city on a groundless suspicion, whereas Gran Pulse is massive, natural, uninhibited, and sumptuously breathtaking, which, despite its vicious wilderness and aggressive and towering fal’Cie, assumes a safe haven to the wondering fugitives. It is disappointing however that the milieu has received an uneven treatment, as most sceneries in Cocoon are static and out of reach whereas Gran Pulse’s are almost fragrant and tangible.

Still, regardless of the brilliant paradox, the aesthetics don’t simply remain in polar opposites; The Vile Peaks, The Hanging Edge, and Lake Bresha, for example, are areas that effectively showcase the consequences when the two worlds have collided, where an indomitable vestige of devastation and ruination is all there is to see. The narration and descriptions that coincide with the environs, whether by the characters or the datalogs, divulges a tinge of surrealism, particularly when the player encircles the camera in the midst of the landscape. Once experienced, it would be easy to attest that the setting is Final Fantasy XIII’s strongest asset, it just one have to plod through the dialogues and set pieces to acquire the rich history that the developers carelessly concealed behind the perplexing story.

Nevertheless, the narrative design isn’t as bad as it might have been intimated—for those who willingly stick with Final Fantasy XIII should find Toriyama’s linear vision appealing in the long run, mainly in how it manages to whet its kinks in delivering the story altogether. It’s all about progression—the first ten chapters predominately concentrate on the backstory of the six l’Cies and them coming to terms with their own realities, where they have to muster the conviction to accept the events that might befall them (which is not easy feat given the circumstances). And by relentlessly pushing the narrative forward with few interludes as possible, the game concurrently fleshes out its characters to finally culminate in rapprochement, presenting their transition from distraught and selfish individuals to allies and fellow kin (i.e. comrades battling the same fate from within and out). The consolidation of the cast as a united front concurs with the introduction of Gran Pulse and its outstretched, seemingly infinite steppes and vistas. This, too, works splendidly as a metaphor—now that the characters are honest to themselves and resolute in their determination, the game can finally and pertinently open up its fields, expand its mechanics, and decelerate its pace, teasing the player to indulge on various extensions that unfold within reach, where the opportunity to complete the Focus of other fallen l’Cies is imparted. And from that point on, it is anything but a trudge (unless the player has decided to aim for the Platinum Trophy).

With that being said, the argument that mostly works against Final Fantasy XIII has to be its characterization, a flaw that has made few vocal critics to describe it as something of a “generic anime trash” (which is a trashy piece of criticism if I may say so myself). The downside, to put it simply, is that the characters are too similar; almost all of them are stricken with guilt and have been deprived from somebody whom they hold dear. This wouldn’t be problematic if the characters weren’t so secretive about their misgivings for too long; though, even when the right moment comes along, there is usually little left to say. This actually belies the philosophy that the game has created for itself, seeing it presumably puts its story above everything else. While they are moments in the narrative that encapsulate the pathos and kinship between the characters eloquently, they are still being wedged between the predictable and the absurd; The Thirteen Days recollections would have had potential if the developers hadn’t taken it out from the player’s control, for example.

Still, For the most part, Final Fantasy XIII remains story-centric. The characters are placed at the forefront and assume the driving force that propel the narrative forward, but the secret to achieve such a realization, assuming it is a secret, is to avoid reflecting on them individually. Indeed, if we are to examine the characters deliberately in pairs or as a group (as they are mostly rendered), we should see something completely different; for example, to strip Hope’s characterization alone as an individual might produce something unremarkable, but when he is coupled with Lightning, both characters come off persuasively. Their rapport is similar to that of a brother and sister than that of a mother and son; Lightning sees in Hope the sibling that she has lost due to her mistrust and obduracy, and the latter sees Lightning as the patriarch whom has been absent for most of his life. Conversely, the attachment that occurs between Sazh and Vanille is more paternal than a mere friendship; Sazh is a troubled and overprotective father who has just lost his son, and Vanille is a timid girl who has always had a big sister to rely on (i.e. Fang). The camaraderie that keeps shifting about aptly affects the gameplay too; when Hope faces his Eidolon, he is accompanied by Lightning and Fang (the mentors whom have relentlessly pacified his misgivings) even though the game could have allowed a fourth character to take part in the battle, and the same goes for Vanille’s when she was allied and reunited with Fang.

Thus, ironic as it might seem, seeing it has been criticized for being linear and repressive, Final Fantasy XIII palatably pays off its debt by boasting one of the most well-rounded premises in the franchise. Even though it tried to purify its “JRPG-ness” by sourcing western games such as Call of Duty as its inspirer, it wound up displeasing the fans than reinvigorating their interests, with an abstruse story and a melodrama that works half the time. Then again, Final Fantasy should never aspire to please everybody, and it is odd to see it try now. It is nonetheless easy to ascribe Final Fantasy XIII as a turning point for the series in that it embodies a culmination of past experiments and philosophies that are worth emulating. Of course, Final Fantasy XIII is an experiment by itself, which, despite its imperfections, remains an audacious one at that.