So, let's rap about Final Fantasy XV.
And for once, let's not obsess about the development cycle, which at this point, predates fuckin'
Shakespeare sonnets.
Because I think gamers often find themselves so engaged on a comedic level by the inordinate
amount of time Squeenix has afforded the next proper entry in the franchise that they...
almost invariably miss the punchline.
As bizarre as it might initially seem for me to admit this, Final Fantasy XV... is probably...
...no, you know what?
It full-on fuckin' is the single most important Japanese game release in, at least 15 fucking
years.
For good, and possibly for Jimmy Fallon's monologue-bad.
And believe it or not, the 'bad' connotation?
Is through no actual fault of their own.
Look, I've expressed bemusement at how gamers in the West - even to this day - treat Tokyo
Game Show like the ascension of Christ.
My reasons are simple: When you're watching 5 TGS trailers in succession, all five games
release and maybe sell a half-million copies cumulatively...?
Your show DOES NOT MATTER.
But to understand why that is, you have to understand Japanese gaming in 2014.
Tokyo Game Show doesn't matter in 2014... because - as a consumer of console games - Japan
doesn't matter in 2014.
Not because 'America, Fuck Yeah!'
But because Japanese consumers willfully abdicated their position as foremost consumer of console
hardware years previously...
in the highly profitable pursuit... of mobile gaming.
Hell, I last set foot on the Japanese mainland nearly 8 years ago, and even then, I remember
being blindsided by how heavily transitioned the Japanese consumer already was toward mobile
gaming.
Simply put: Why purchase a console that will crouch in the corner of an apartment with
the legroom of a fuckin' matchbox, taking up space you can't afford to lose... when
- for the same price or less - you can take that experience wherever the fuck you want,
at a size that handily fits into your pocket; particularly when absolutely none of the PS4's
exclusive software gives you even the beginnings of a semi?!
And so they haven't.
Much was made of how the Xbox One was just a rung or two above the Enola Gay on the ladder
of Japanese societal contempt... but conveniently overlooked in all the anti-XBox ballyhoo?
Was the fact that the PS4's Japanese launch also left something of a smoldering crater.
Both consoles have just been sort of sitting there.
Promise alone is selling them by the unbridled fuckload in the West, where we consume three
square meals of baseless hype fucking daily.
But in Japan?
Where the consumer has long since transitioned to a more portable, less expensive alternative
with more appealing software to Japanese sensibilities?
The PS4, Xbox One and Wii U are running unopposed in asshole election.
Japan's entire console industry is teetering near the brink... and only a massively popular,
and most importantly - eminently fucking playable - major console exclusive can hope to regain
the Japanese foothold in the market.
Which brings us once again to Final Fantasy XV.
Perhaps more than any other single title in history, this one game...
could quite literally determine the long-term fortunes of an entire industry.
If FF15 succeeds?
The Japanese consumer has adequate incentive to invest in home consoles once again, briefly
drawing their eyeballs away from the parade of upskirts on their smartphone... and back
to their television sets.
Ah, but this rapier cuts both ways.
If Final Fantasy XV fails - as seems at least likely, given a development cycle that's only
slightly less troubled than Amanda Bynes - Japan could very well take the red-eye out of the
console market for good.
No one wants that, least of all myself, whose first RPG - Breath of Fire the SNES - was
one of a veritable eruption of brilliant games generated by booming Japanese console market
in days of yore.
Good games in Japan...
are often just as fuckin' good when they come to the West.
Provided Capcom isn't in charge of translating the fuckers!
So here's the tricky bit: As much as we're all pulling for it, the odds
of being a kickass return to form...?
Are not in Final Fantasy XV's favor.
The belly-laugh-inducing eleven-year development time is a rough enough landing without the
added uppercut to the nutsack that is the troubled development itself.
Dozens of members of the original creative team have been replaced over the interim decade...
and those are just the informational snippets that have managed to slip out of Square Enix's
answer to Hangar 18.
For an idea of how one of these exceedingly rare marathon development cycles tends to
play out, you have to look for a viable precedent.
And I know what you're thinking, but no, not fucking Duke Nukem Forever.
No, that game's cycle came in fits and starts.
It's the Captain America of contemporary game design.
Frozen for decades, only to be thawed out in the modern day and promptly be accused
by half-wits in the gaming press of being nothing more than an artifact of its time.
No, actually, the only precedent in modern game development, can rather ironically be
found... in another Square Enix title.
One which fans of my show will be intimately acquainted with: Eidos Montréal's abject
financial and critical catastrophe: THIEF 4.
Though its 5-year dev time is less than half Final Fantasy XV's, the parallels between
Teef and Squeenix's latest orgy of melodrama and asymmetrically overdesigned clothing are
terrifyingly profound: Both games were originally produced - and visually designed - by someone
the fuck else.
Both games featured high staff turnover, the appalling extent of which was kept largely
secret from the gaming press and public at large.
And finally, both games - halfway through development - COMPLETELY CHANGED GAMING PLATFORMS.
Now throw in the fact that the game has been subject to every fleeting whim of Tetsuya
Nomura's procession of brainfarts he mistakenly refers to as ideas...?
I mean, for fuck's sake, we learned at last year's E3, that after an evening at the cinema
beholding the film version of Les Mis, the game was quite nearly changed into a fucking
MUSICAL.
Thankfully, Nomura was overruled by Square Enix management, but may I humbly advance
the suggestion that any human being who could actually remain seated in the same room as
another human being...
who is - with a straight face - demanding that Final fucking FANTASY be turned into
a buttfucking musical... that doesn't immediately unholster an automag and fill him with more
lead than a Chinese action figure...
needs to be so impossibly fucking detached from this franchise, he could easily be mistaken
for fuckin' Mystic Quest?!
NOMURA!
Nomura...
nomura...
... When Final Fantasy XV ultimately proves to
be the death knell... of savior of Japanese gaming, it is imperative... that you...
FUCK OFF!
I'm RazörFist.
God - fuckin' - SPEED!