Ouch.
So it's not been a very common year by the metric of how often I've talked about Square Enix, and that's not because they're a company who's games I find objectionable by any stretch of the imagination. I actually really like Square's games, their overly designed conceptualisations and their usually world-tier JRPGs; (Whether or not we're still allowed to use that term.) but I just can't afford to engage with their habit of overcharging for every one of their titles. No matter what the game is, whatever the type of development process or the size of the output, Square insists on pricing the game higher than it's similar contemporaries, so I end up buying those instead. In fact, recently Square even found a way to overprice a full-price worthy AAA title, but pricing it over full price. And you know what? I only think that's a 10th of the reason their company appears on a downwards spiral to the pits of hell!
A much larger aspect of that would be the decision makers absolutely losing touch with what their audience wants and is looking for, to the point where the only games Square really has to show off today are Final Fantasy's forever and freakin' Symbiogenesis! Everytime I get a look at the logo of Symbiogensis, my heart sees a new cool-looking logo for a JRPG, before my mind reminds me that it's actually place-holder art for perhaps the most full-throated NFT/gaming project ever mounted. Square are well and truly dedicated to trying to revolutionise the relationship between gamers and their wallets, to make the Square Enix brand preeminent again, through tricking every Weeb in the world into being their pay-piggies. Of course, such a fetish is defined by payment from one party to another under hope of a recompense that may or may not come, and usually doesn't. Which I think actually fits this world a bit too cleanly, doesn't it?
Symbiogenesis has somehow still managed to retain it's elusiveness since being announced, delivering to us only one extra trailer showing off their map space and some details plucked off the Twitter such as how the game will feature 10,000 'unique' characters that will all be NFTs. Of course, these NFT characters will somehow be tied to the theoretical gameplay that Symbiogenesis might potentially have. We don't know, because Square either have nothing designed or are too embarrassed to reveal that this is just a mobile game with even less going on than Fate Grand Order. (Not to offend FGO fans, but come on; You know the game is mobile trite, right?) The only kicker being, and this one gets me right in the gut- the elements of art we're seeing are to the same standard of typical Square titles! Well... mostly. We'll get to the outliers.
The Youtube video which Square has shown off, which depicts only the splash drop reveal of parts of a world map, but with a subtle stylisation that vaguely reminds of Persona's world depiction- somehow already has it's like and dislike bars turned off. Despite the fact that Youtube still have their dislikes removed meaning no one could even see the absolute dunking they were getting anyway; but I guess that made that public by the merit of omission, didn't they? Mostly the criticism seems to be because the marketing is so awful that the only people who even knew this trailer dropped were those following Square on Twitter who had full knowledge of what the project was and judged it on those poisoned roots. But the art, the music composition, the feel of the trailer- they're fine. Not great, we still have no earthly clue what the game even is, but enough to make me realise that genuine artists are having their talents wasted promoting this pipe-dream to nowhere.
Of course, then we have the character models that Square tried to 'sneak preview'. Just a handful of the '10,000 unique models' that players can buy with 'in game functionality' and 'the right to use them on social media profile pictures'! (Oh, so I can buy permission to make my Twitter PFP an anime character? Wowzers, I've always wanted to pay to be bullied!) And as you might imagine, for any team that was tasked with creating 10,000 unique characters for one project, they all look the same. Now when I heard that criticism I was understandable sceptical, I've heard Anime knee-jerk haters claim that all the faces of protagonists are identical before and it's typical a clueless catch-all critique of the visual style of anime. But actually looking at these characters... no, they're the same face copy and pasted 10,000 times.
Literally every face is the exact same shape, with a really odd looking underbite that makes every face look distinctly shrivelled and oblong. They are all positioned in the exact same pose, looking off into the same indistinct middle-distance, and they've all had their other facial features superimposed onto that base frame. I can confirm this, as can anyone by simply looking at the dolls and seeing how their hair clips right through the hats that some of them are wearing, which is intensely amateurish when we're talking about 2D models! That doesn't just detail an art project that has been slapped together by AI, but one which didn't even go through a human review and touch-up process after the fact. Quite honestly, this isn't even worthy of having the, typically artistically divine, Square Enix brand logo slapped onto it. This is an embarrassment to their prestige.
All we have to go on for what the game might actually be when it comes out is an apparent pitch document discovered which details the model of the game. Of course it is as you would expect, people use their NFT characters to log into accounts where they get quest hints that are entered into some sort of world event, all the while being pressured at key points into duplicating and selling their NFTs? I think. It's confusing. Doubly so because this is one of the most pathetically poorly laid out pitch documents I've ever seen, with a step by step process in which step one is in the middle of the page! What happened to the top left of the screen? (Or the top right, if we're following Japanese standards.) Ugly design for an ugly plan for a game that sounds like it's going to have one ugly heart beating it it's gilded chest.
Symbiogenesis to me is the embodiment of dystopian modern game design given digital flesh; a 'investment opportunity' game that caters to all the least interesting aspects of the market to try and drum up fascination. Money hungry moguls are already rushing to it, and I see them snapping up whatever they can, laughing at the audience who stares on in abject horror at what Square Enix has become. They all consider a totally inescapable reality that these games are the new norm of the entertainment industry, in which it makes total sense to alienate the old-school relics of today so you can snag the audience of tomorrow. The problem is, today's audience is tomorrow's audience. Gaming just doesn't want anything to do with NFTs, from a functional level and a people level; and if Square is going to keep dragging their feet on this matter, spurred on by brain-rotted Dr Disrespect clones- they're going to be left behind to wither in the dirt. We might just lose Square Enix to this struggle, and that would be one crying shame.
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