Rebirth is rebirthing?

 

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is the latest step on Tetsuya Nomura's journey to totally transform the game's industry into the movie industry, and may I just say he has done a bang-up job so far! Already we're looking at an industry drowning with sequels, but after Remake came along suddenly Remakes became the fashion and now we're living through that age of discovery- huzzah! Of course, Rebirth is still a game created for the slugs at Sony to guard jealously like dragons leering over exclusivities- so I cannot provide any thoughts about the quality of the game compared the excellent original except to say 'I hope it's good'. (Can't wait to play it... after we get Final Fantasy XVI! Because we're still waiting on the game before it to come out on PC!) And maybe, according to recent news, I'm part of the problem.

The ever present gremlin floating in the sky above us all, with it's eyes on our innermost financial secrets, has conveyed that apparently, Final Fantasy Rebirth is selling far below the margins of the previous title in the franchise. When comparing time frames with Remake, Rebirth is only doing about half the sales and that is- genuinely surprising. Many comments have been made trying to explain this way, but none really seem to stick with me. The 'everyone was in the middle of a pandemic' argument certainly accounts for a few percentages to be knocked off, but was Final Fantasy VII really the kind of the game that casuals flocked to during lockdown? Not Animal Crossing? Because everyone I know who got into gaming around that time played Animal Crossing. Just saying. 

What about the 'it's the novelty of the original game which got people through the door' excuse? I can see the logic there- Final Fantasy VII is the single most beloved game of the franchise, Square teased the possibility of a remake for at least a decade beforehand, that was going to drag in the curious. But surely the fact that game was fantastic would have brought those people back, no? Those players, drawn by their nostalgia, would love to see how the narrative progressed from then on, wouldn't they? Witness those iconic moments, the death of Aerith, the arrival of The Weapons, Cloud's Rebirth, The One Winged Angel? If anything, those week one sales should have been boosted by all those sceptical of the original finally coming around to the fact that this franchise is back. Only PC fans really have an excuse to be wary, given the fact they gave us a badly optimised facsimile of the PS release.

But then- maybe that does have some small effect on sales as well... I won't talk for the massive 'nearly half the sales of the original' divide, but perhaps the knowledge that this franchise is not a purely PlayStation original might have wilted the charm of the Final Fantasy Remake brand some small mite. Were I a PC and Playstation gamer who had recently learned of this, I would probably prefer to wait until the PC launch of the game for the pure fact that I prefer to play JRPGs on my computer and not my console. Perhaps that same philosophy dawned on some others out there too. Why spend the big bucks today for an experience you'd consider inferior. Afterall, the PC launch is going to come with the DLC they'll inevitably throw into the game at some point- and they're not going to deliver the same half-baked port they did last time around, right? (Right?)  

What else? Well, they shared their release month with Helldivers 2- which was an attention hog all of it's own, and Persona 3 Reloaded. (which is a money hog, looking at the price of that DLC coming our way, yeesh!) You would think that Final Fantasy 7 would be big enough to remain competitive in that sort of line-up, to be fair, but I guess the way we frame release date competition has slightly altered given the modern day shift. The $70 price point is just a sore thumb over the games industry, and when two massive games of the month both charge that far north of 50, it does change the considerations of your average consumer. Do they really have that kind of cash to burn, especially when all their friends are killing it on the considerably less expensive Helldivers? $70 was briefly a novelty denoting unimpeachable quality but... well... Skull and Bones. (Ubisoft really do ruin everything, don't they?)

There also appears to be a vast reduction in the amount of coverage I'm seeing this game get within hobbyist circles. I've actually managed to avoid spoilers for the game entirely, without actually really trying. I just assumed that it was a lost cause considering Sony actively hate me and fully intended to gate keep the game for months- but the less specialised Final Fantasy circles seem to have passed almost entirely by the game in favour of the big crazes of the year- which is strange considering Remake was literally everywhere back in 2020. You couldn't escape the damn thing flashed on every single home page- all the FF, all the time! Even Final Fantasy XVI had more of a time in the cultural zeitgeist than it feels Rebirth did- perhaps that is just a symptom of these apparent reduced sales?

At the very least I'm sure that the Final Fantasy 7 team can look forward to the inevitable boost in sales when the PC port comes our way because I'm sure a sizable chunk of their prospective audience is sitting with me, arms crossed and deeply unimpressed, as they court the sleek console for no discernible gain. (Afterall, splitting up your audience is just fantastic for business, right?) I know it's all the hope of snowballs flying through the rings of Beelzebub, but I hope this gives some pause to the Final Fantasy hoarders and makes them realise how much bigger their game launches will be if the most JRPG reverent community was allowed access to them along with the rest of the world. Like a Dragon have figured it out, why can't Final Fantasy?

Of course, given the general dominance of the Final Fantasy brand I would be very surprised if this has any real effect on the trajectory of the Final Fantasy Remake series. Their plans are set in stone miles in advance and they're probably already getting started on Final Fantasy 7 Rewind, or Remember, or Resurrect or whatever it's called. (Mark my words- it's going to be one of those three!) But hey, maybe in the future when the next Final Fantasy alumni is stirring the pot with their remake of Final Fantasy 8 or something (too big to remake, my ass! Tetsuya split 7 into three parts- your excuses ring hollow!) maybe we can be spared another stupid exclusivity deal? Pretty please? (I promise to buy the game if you don't go exclusive, Square!)

Promises kept

 Promises made

The other day I penned a blog talking about the rigorous betrayal of promises broken upon the altar of lies. The consequences, the lingering stink of breaking oaths. The inevitable drunken festering of staring eyes, and pointing fingers that inevitably blossom next- the poppy harvest of composting dreams. But what if I just throw that on it's head and talk about the total opposite. Promises kept. "Why, that's got to be the font of endless positivity, right?" Well, well, my hopeless optimistic friend, you might think that but I counter- what about a threat? That's a promise too, is it not? And a threat kept is a danger realised. Do we celebrate merely for the prophesized reaching fruition? Of course not, we scream and panic and cry and woe the day that Paramount ever decided it was going to be their turn to spit on the institution we call video game TV shows.

Halo is indeed going to be receiving it's season 2. As little as we all want to accept it, there's not a dang thing any one of us can do. The show created by a team of people who actively laughed at the source material and believed themselves to be such an 'heightened' form of creator that they could rewrite the very basic essence of everything the games were- they've got themselves a sequel. So now our helmet-less, rebel-rousing, sexual war crime committing, Master Chief can disgrace the name of his position once more with a narrative deeply confused about what Halo was originally about. It's space military fiction with a touch of space fantasy rubbed on top. (A lot more space fantasy as 343 took over, but I was told we had time before the story went down the Halo 4 pit.) Now they have got themselves a new showrunner, but if that will lead to any improvements I don't know. The show already put itself in a bizarre trajectory and even being teased with an actual Halo installation for once isn't enough to wash all that gunk out of mouths. But hey, they promised a season 2- and here we are.   

You know who else was a fan of making promises? CDPR. They made quiet a few in the lead up to Cyberpunk, albeit many in implication. Afterall, they didn't technically say there would be significant choice and consequence throughout the game, they just presented a level with tons of it and coined that ignoble get-out-jail-free-card "And that's just one mission!" They've made great strides since then living up to the spirit of the advertisements. Still it's quite astounding it took several years after launch for an actual crime system to be implemented into a game that had a line of adverts that literally led with "In Night City; what makes you a criminal?" Two years of post-game support, apparently. But on the otherside of all that we can actually say that the promises kept, or rather 'made up for' have gone a significant way to repairing CDPR's quite tarnished reputation and image.

Still is there any boon quite as fundamentally effective, quite as world breaking, as the decision to actually add in the missing train stations to the world? Because that very first shot we ever saw of the game running 'in engine' was of the Monorail rolling above Night City. It's exclusion kind of felt like a slap across the face. Bringing it back after all these years kind of feels like that final moment of truce being declared before the first villain of the anime arc turns around and embraces the protagonist. Enemies to Friends. You know how it goes. There's apparently some work also thrown into making the bike handling a little better and throwing in Romance-partner hang-out sessions- but who cares about that when I can ride above the denizens of brokeville and laugh at that lowly ineptitude compared to my high flying ways! Grovel for me, ants- GROVEL!

Where was I? Oh yeah: Grand Theft Auto VI. Now that game isn't out yet, so the only promises we can talk about is the promise that Rockstar has made to the industry in general by warrant of it's station. You see, for all of their painful backwards overprotectiveness regarding past developers sharing stories and hunting down harmless fan-made mods for their single player games- Rockstar are trying to maintain this magical image of theirs. This image of the 'mysterious big developer' who comes by generationally to totally rewrite whatever direction the industry is currently heading in and remind them what a true superstar is. Because as big as the games industry has become, as overwhelmingly popular as some of the best games of all time are- no one else in gaming is pulling 100 million Youtube views in 48 hours. It just doesn't happen unless you're Rockstar.

As much as it's becoming hip for Right Wing Social Media creeps to virtue signal about being unable to stand the franchise because of it's flagrant romanisation of violence against the police- (yes, that's real. Elon said he couldn't bare to shoot a cop in GTA V and now they're all conjuring up falsehoods about virtual blue-live solidarity.) the truth is that Grand Theft Auto is one of those culture phenoms that shapes culture in a variety of ways. Everything that exists about Grand Theft Auto VI seems to indicate that Rockstar have once again upheld their unwritten bargain with society itself, to ride as it's zeitgeist with every new entry. Whether or not the actual game itself is fun or a mismatched hodgepodge of openworld cliches butting heads in a desperate attempt to appear 'innovative'- well, we have couple of painful waiting years to find out. But as of so far- in marketing alone the company have done their part.

And do you wanna know who else kept their promise this year? Square Enix- in their promise to make that atrocious looking NFT 'game' they peddled during the height of that short lived trend- 'Symbiogenesis'. Remember that mess? After the crypto market fell off a cliff and every NFT market was systematically arrested for being various levels of illegally scammy- one would expect outstanding NFT projects to be quietly swept under the rug and all marketing to become gaslighted phantoms of a bygone era. But not Symbiogenesis- oh no! Not only is Square still making the project, but they've already started releasing some to the Etherium chain. And to put some icing atop the cake- to match their soulless and impressively bland art style, according to 'Decrypt.Co.' they've even been named as though entirely by an AI. We're talking NFT characters with names like 'Condiment', 'Wart', 'Egg', 'Starvation' and... 'Cockscomb'? Hmm... got brave with that last one, did they? So if you were wondering whether or not Square were interested in putting effort into this revolutionary, industry redefining concept of theirs... umm, no. They're not. Good day.

A promise made is a vow. And sometimes we don't really want to see what happens on the otherside of that proclamation. In some ways the yearning to see the fruition is itself the meat of the meal- as though purpose is defined by the struggle to achieve it. But given how that sounds like the sort of drivel that spikey haired, Welsh-dubbed, JRPG protagonists would wax-poetic over just before climbing up the last staircase to kill god- or worse, something that Kojima would say on his Tw-X account, I'm choosing to spit in the face of that. A journey unfulfilled is a waste of the single most precious commodity this life gives us- time; and those that can't reconcile the thrill of an escalator taken in place of a arduous hike might as well be philistines waving their fists at the construction of the Library of Alexandria, wishing we'd all just go back to the age of purely spoken knowledge. Or whatever the Philistines were moany about, I can't be bothered to look it up.

Square Enix's woes

 Is Square Enixed?

Fast times at Square Enix high!

 There's only enough room for one dragon

Forspoken is one of those games that ol' Nostradamus me just knew wasn't going to make it big from the very second I saw it. I took one look at the visuals, saw recycled assets from Final Fantasy XV for the world, and recycled visual flairs from the tech demo 'Angi's Philosophy' in the character design, (although I would only remember that very recently in a flare of realisation) and mentally checked the thing out as a lazily processed title. Of course that was a very uniformed preliminary assumption of what I was seeing, and there's nothing inherently wrong with reusing old ideas, and even old assets, to create something new and interesting. But something about the way that Forspoken looked, to me at least, just wasn't fitting together. I didn't like the vast-stride canyon jumping, the featureless craggy expanses and especially not the static flick-wrist combat. But first impressions are mere illusions to which we attach far too much significance- I'm sure the game would win me over given time.

And yet, it didn't. Most seemed to get along with the idea of Forspoken at first, even somehow the well-worn idea of an Isekai premise, all until Frey opened her annoying mouth and started to speak. Marketing is an oft scrutinized equation in the formula of game creation, and one often tossed aside as pandering trite; but if there's one example to prove the power of bad marketing- it's Forspoken. Totally misunderstanding the tastes and sensibilities of the audience, misidentifying the strength factors of your game and how best to convey it's tone, and chucking context free cringe-dialogue at the unwary viewer with clueless abandon has to be one of the most self-sabotaging marketing routines the modern industry has seen. Unfortunately, unlike the movie studios who tried to cut the original Blade Runner into an action movie for the trailers, Forspoken doesn't have that same level of quiet genius in the supporting package to win over the misled and ticked off.

Not least of all because the game was being sold for an eye-watering $70; a price tag insisted upon by Square Enix as just payment for the sheer quality of the products they develop and put out... a laughable joke if ever there was one. On the flip-side, and though the comparison seems a little worn by now, I want to present Tango Gamework's Hi-Fi Rush. A thematically irreverent rhythm-accompanied smash action game that was announced and released within the same hour. Only possible thanks the to the combined platform of Bethesda and Microsoft fans, as well as the novelty of that sort of release window; but still an idea that would conceptually be marketing suicide. But by what small metrics we can actually track, digital sales figures, it would appear that in their shared launch week Hi-Fi managed to beat out Forspoken. In revenue. Whilst Hi-Fi Rush was half the price of a traditional premium release. That is just... ouch.

All this is to provide the background for the news that has been flying across all the relevant headlines recently; Luminous Productions, the Square Enix based yet apparently legally distinct development entity, has been announced to be shutting down after a mere month of Forspoken's release. Let me remind you all, that this was only their second full game release after Final Fantasy XV and we still don't know how much of a flop the game actually was, or wasn't; without a rough idea of development costs we can only speculate. I mean, it was certainly a critical flop, but sometimes those games make money regardless. Not enough to justify keeping Luminous around as a studio, however; because those developers are going to be split up and reassigned to the far-away studio of Square Enix. A studio which, as I said, is located in the exact same building that Luminous was. So... not a big change there, I guess. Maybe some cut pay checks.

Still, it's a sad legacy to leave behind. Even Final Fantasy XV had it's problems both before and after the launch of that legendary game. Before there was the whole, you know, fifteen year development period hanging over the entire team. A little bit trying when you've been doing nothing but make the same game for your entire career. After the game came out there was trouble realising the full scope of the potential, whereupon the extent of the game and it's world was supposed to unfurl through the DLC which got cut off mid-way through production. Fans have but rumours about the giant swathes of content they missed out on, but people say that Episode Noctis would have combined some of the scrapped elements from Final Fantasy Versus XIII into the XV timeline! What I wouldn't give to have finally see Stella interact with Noctis- god, we missed out!

And then Forspoken comes along with it's underperformance, itself just the latest in a slew of bad release games which Square Enix has run out of scapegoats to blame. First it was the Deus Ex developers for failing to address the climate and wants of their franchise, which cost them their trilogy; then it was all their western studios at large for just being so weird and hard to market, leading Square to drop them off at uncle Embracer's and never come back. Now we have more failures, and the hammer has to finally land on someone responsible. Sure, Luminous has to fold but it just can't be them. Luminous didn't seize control of every low performing title that Square has put out over the last 4 years. At somepoint you have to turn around to the common denominator: Yosuke Matsuda.

That's right, CEO Matsuda is being tossed out of the corporate window with a golden parachute, leaving all of his cringe inducing promises of metaversal NFT future unfulfilled, stinking up the place. Meaning that the era of his tyrannical rule is over and Square Enix can finally move on under the purview of their new supreme leader: Kiryu Kazuma? (Why do I hear 'Receive You' playing?) Wait, I read that wrong... actually that's Takashi Kiryu, a man who looks like a computer render of the one in the RPG who betrays the group in order to run back to his evil master, only for the dark lord to end up crushing him like a bug because even he can't stand to be around the snivelling little worm of a man. Oh, and he's also got history leading an NFT company in his past.

So it's seems we're on the verge of some historic changes across the Square Enix world, whilst also a historic amount of crap staying exactly the same because of the revolving door of clowns we call the corporate elite. Even with Matsuda out the door and Luminous shuttered, don't think this marks the end of confused titles bouncing off walls with mishot marketing campaigns that kill once decent ideas, all because the powers that be are too busy salivating over the exploitative potential of their WEB3 suger daddies. You expect me to fall about praising the bravery of the company to finally give the slightest amount of change a shot? Or to give this new CEO a chance even knowing exactly what he's all about, where's he going to take Square and how the board of directors probably only brought him on board hoping for a 'play as you earn' tainted future? Yeah, that's a negative to all that. Kiryu can bite and receive me.

Avengers Down! Avengers Down!

Do believe I told you so!

I'll admit, it lasted much longer than I expected. Although even with that being said I am totally going to milk the fact that I told you so. I told everyone so. From the exact moment it became clear that Marvel's Avengers was going to be a Live Service I predicted it's colossal fall like clockwork and I was wrong and right. The prophecy was delayed, but it came true eventually. Which isn't to say the game didn't ever have anything resembling a fighting chance in it's inception; rather that, I think, lo and behold, the decision-makers totally undervalued the amount of effort it would take to first launch a Live Service and to break it into the top 3 services that rule the industry. Just like in the age of the MMO where everyone and their mother was launching a WOW clone and trying to just wing the 'post launch support' as they went; amateurish plans have led to amateurish embarrassments for the Live Service crowd time and time again. Which I do believe marks the last of every single one of Square Enix's many Live Service endeavours going the way of the Dodo. And good riddance!

If you've a perceptive mind on you, perhaps you can deduce what my self-righteous bragging is about. Just recently the Marvel's Avengers team announced they were hanging up the shield and killing support on the game from this point onwards. Or rather, they would be killing support after an upcoming update that will make all the cosmetics free for everyone to play around with, which is actually fairly nice of them. Although at this point they might as well make the game itself free as well before the servers shut down and the thing becomes unplayable outside of the singular core story missions. Marking the end of a game that was slated for death pretty much the second it revealed it's true nature to fans in a 'tail between the legs' demonstration presentation that is sure to live on in infamy. Topped perhaps only by the legendary moment when Valve announced Artifact, only to be met with a stadium full of boos when it was revealed to be another online card game. (Incidentally, Artifact is also no longer with us.)

Right from it's first mewling mumbles fresh from the hatchery, Avengers was the lightning rod for all the frustrations of a gaming public sick and tired with strong properties and solid games being irreparably warped in order to fit more 'monetarily promising' models. Titles like Anthem who's back was broken on the knee of corporate monetisation mandates, for a game that could have very well been promising as a single player or limited multiplayer title being forced into a environment it doesn't belong and won't thrive in, because Destiny made a lot of money with their Live Service once. That frustration did, admittedly, result in Avengers perhaps receiving a harder time than it deserved out of the box. The gameplay was decently fun and the visual presentation was somewhat pretty in it's environments and decent character models. And the boss fights, what few they were, proved engaging enough. But even the supremely jumped-up didn't have to poke far to come across genuine faults with the Avengers package that they could crucify the game for.

The lack of gameplay variety was a serious issue, and a major contributing factor for people getting very sick of the combat very fast. Every somewhat interesting unlockable outfit was locked behind purchasable cosmetics, which felt like a crime for a full priced title which just happened to also be a super hero game. Outside of the main quest the team didn't really know what to do with the end game to make it even remotely interesting to play with. The team tried to subtly make the EXP grind heavier in order to pad out player playtime and hopefully also retention. It was just scandal after scandal with this game. Even their good PR moments seemed to be muted or shortlived. Hawkeye was quickly overshadowed by the arrival Kate Bishop, who literally just felt like his 'shadow fighter' and whittled away at player's patience. Black Panther dropped with any big fanfare outside of this game's specific community. No matter what happened, Avengers just couldn't get a break.

And you know what? It never could have gotten that break. Not even conceptually. And do you know why they couldn't have? Because Live Services just can't function as an industry within gaming. Think of what a Live Service is and what it entails. A consistently maintained and played product providing constant grinding and reward incentives to players that demands excessive time commitments and encourages a little bit of 'on the side' spending to keep the lights on. Hook a couple of whales, milk them for the lionshare of profits; bob's your uncle, you've created an ecosystem exploiting the financially irresponsible for your own end, great! But what's the one heavily spent resource which is essential for all players in order to get the most out of these sorts of games? It isn't money, most every Live Service provides a free path. It's time. The ultimate resource.

Time, as I'm sure you're just so very fond of hearing, is limited. Increadibly so. And if every Live Service you play begs and pleads with you to spend two to three hours each and every day with no end because the game is updated so regularly, then how many such games can a single player feasibly maintain in their daily routine? Two at most? Consider also that there are large swathes of the gaming community who scoff at dedicating that much time and effort to a single game, and you've got a decently niche subsector of gamers being squeezed between dozens of games they cannot possibly juggle with any deftness. Unless you get in on the ground floor and score your lifelong fans back when the idea was novel and the overwhelming negatives of a potential forced addiction wee widely known, you'd have to compete for a table scraps worth of an player base, all the while praying that the small net you can afford to cast netted you a Whale or two. And Avengers was not a spry chicken to this game genre.

Live Services are largely cynical and bankrupt, in a manner that is so very obvious to the public by now. Pursuing such a model in this day and age is tantamount to slapping your audience around the face and telling them how you know that they know the trap your setting but you expect them to tie themselves to it anyway under the vain hope that the enjoyment of the game outweighs the crushing expectation to play incessantly. And it rarely does. Marvel's Avengers was just one of Square Enix's many attempts to secure a cash cow in this drained-dry market and it performed about as well as they deserved. Which is why I cannot but stand baffled at the fact that Square threw away all of it's western companies claiming they don't know how to work a profit out of them, considering they paid literally no attention to the flagging trends of the market and flopped each one of it's franchises on it's face in front of everyone repeatedly. (You reap what you sow, I guess.)

The Avengers game should have been a co-op multiplayer game that followed a single strong main storyline and maybe pursued a traditional DLC structure for some additional adventures; the brand was certainly big enough to score a great swathe of sales with that model and that was all Avengers had the framework to be in the first place. Not every game can become an Online megahit just by throwing some rogue strings of Netcode in the software; just look at Fallout 76- that game has struggled to do anything significant since the Wastelanders Update raised expectations apparently way too high nearly three years ago. There's something to be said for playing to your strengths and not wadding too far from your obvious specialities; and there was a perfect gap in the market for a team-based co-op title just waiting to be filled. Or at least a single-player team-based super hero game. But no, Avengers snoozed and Guardians of the Galaxy took the crown. Alas, poor Avengers... I knew them well, Matsuda-San.

So... Is Deus Ex happening or what?

 I asked for this!

Portentous news, everyone! Square Enix have lost their damn minds and are going through a midlife meltdown, burning all of their hard won reputation in a bonfire, shaving their head into a Mohican, buying a Harley Davidson and becoming a biker bro for the summer. In their self sabotaging insanity, Square sold off a good chunk of their greatest studios and IPs to a decentralised Swedish holding company that has a name which sounds like the enigmatic faceless corporation funding the tyrannical corporate crony badguys in a futuristic dystopian novel. ('Embracer Group', huh? It's not what I would have called you but if that's your name, that's your name.) What this means is, for perhaps the first time in a dark moon, we might be getting to see a follow up to the long dead Deus Ex franchise now that Eidos aren't required to Weekend-at-Bernie's up the Avengers game alongside Crystal Dynamics anymore!

Of course this is a might, wrapped in a maybe, and garnished with a possibly. Unlike with the upcoming Next gen Tomb Raider game which is confirmed to not have been confirmed yet, no one seems to have word on any clandestine Dues Ex work in the background. (People are pretty certain a new Tomb Raider in the works. I thought 'Rise' was supposed to be the tying off for this new story thread but I guess maybe we are going to go the distance and just remake the original games. Atlantis here we come!) Thanks to the the Harlequins over in the joke-of-an-initiative know as the 'Deus Ex Universe' leaving us on part one of a supposed trilogy; 'Mankind Divided' has been the unexpected final note of the franchise since 2016, and I, for one, have been begging for some content.

In the place of Deus Ex, we got ourselves a pretender to the throne claiming to offer all the narrative complexity and campaign choice of that storied franchise but with open world exploration and hookers. (Actually, Human Revolution did have hookers in it if I remember right...) But Cyberpunk 2077 ended up having many more problems on it's plate than just trying to be a solid Deus Ex successor, and in hindsight the two series didn't really share much of a similarity to one another aside from the genre they operated in and the appropriate thematic visuals therein. I didn't get my 'Mankind Transcended'. And so the candle in the window has burnt ever onwards, hopeful that this would be the E3 where- oh, it didn't show up. Maybe this Game Awards woul- nope, not a whisper. How about this E3- nope the show was cancelled. Perhaps the Game Awards this year migh- Nope, no such luck. How much longer is a Deus Ex fan supposed to endure?

So yes; I glad that the augmented Jesus franchise has been emancipated from the mistreating swine over at Square Enix. I'd even call a toast were I the type to drink. Instead I'm one to dream, and today I'm dreaming that the Deus Ex franchise has just been offered an olive branch to come back at it once more, right back onto the saddle! Maybe the series may be a little long-toothed, and the sci-fi futuristic body-modding novelty might be slightly worn and patchy, but give her a chance and the world'll see that she still got some good miles on her; yes she does! Whatsmore, I consider it an actual crime for a franchise as narratively driven as Deus Ex to leave us hanging after part 1 of a major narrative thread! (I mean maybe they technically did it before with 'The Fall', but no one really played that apart from me anyway so it's not really a big loss.)

For those who don't remember, or who's memory has mercifully expunged all refence to the cliffhanger that lingers. 'Deus Ex: Mankind Divided' worked a significant distance to bridging together the Adam Jensen character who we fell in love with in 2011's 'Deus Ex: Human Revolutions' with the conspiracy ridden Nanobot hellscape that Deus Ex 1 portrays. You know, a world where there's a decent chance you actually team up with the illuminati in order to fell an even more secretive clandestine organisation called Majestic 12. (God, I miss how Deus Ex was just a smorgasbord of disparate conspiracy theories chucked into a narrative so haphazardly that you can literally run into a little grey alien and it won't even rank on the top 5 most crazy things you've bumped into that level. Also they aren't real aliens, but that's besides the point.)

Whereas 'Human Revolution' neatly breezed us through a globetrotting conspiracy through its runtime which concluded in a climatic showdown to shape the fabric of society. Mankind Divided took nearly the same amount of time (minus 8-10 hours) in order to tell a tiny story about an, admittedly important, legislative measure that could possibly have had an effect, but we wouldn't get to experience it until the next game. Oh, and we actually ended up becoming unwittingly close with a member of the Illuminati who's daughter JC Denton works with in Deus Ex 1; the very same Illuminati who Adam Jensen is supposed to be hunting down. (Wow, he's really bad at his job.) So the main plot was kind of lacklustre, sure, but what a juicy little cliff to perch us on. A great vista, plenty of scope, just make sure you come back around to pick us up in a timely fashion guys. Guys?

But this goes for more than just finishing the story which Eidos started. (Not to belittle how important finishing that story is. Because it is important) This is about bringing back one of the leaders in clever roleplay game design, intelligent script writing which is always at least a sliver more nuanced then you are lead to believe, and immersive sim mastery. In an age where genre niches are being granted more room than ever to find their audience and sometimes even crossover to the mainstream, it almost seems unfair that a leader in cyberpunk video games should be so utterly overshadowed by a replacement who made such a pig's ear of the core tenants of RPGs that people have forgotten how broad, branching and balanced Deus Ex really was at it's peak. (Human Revolution and Deus 1 are timeless masterpieces.)

Embracer Group could very well be collecting these studies and IPs to be trophies on their shelves, to dangle on a mantlepiece so that they look nice, and then never think about them again. I'm choosing to believe that's not the case, and some of the early snippets of excitement that Embracer have put out seems to imply there's room for franchise exploration. Heck, they celebrate being decentralised so much, which I think means they prefer to go hands off and just let these studios create, rather than try and twist them into supporting dead-end live services for the rest of their lives. So I'm hopeful, for the first time in a long time, that the story of Adam Jensen isn't quite over just yet. And god it feels great to say that!

Kingdom Hearts 4

Is this the way to the door to Darkness?

I'm always one to give into nostalgia, but never did I think I'd be struck with a wave powerful enough to wet the ol' eyelids from a series I've barely known for 2 years. That just doesn't feel like a decent enough chunk of time for the memories to burrow deep enough into my core processors that they can then tap into the 'pleasant emotions' cortex. But I suppose that just goes to show how deeply and how much I truly loved the Kingdom Hearts games. (Except for 'Chain of Memories'.) These games have entered by subconsciousness so fully that a bastardised rendition of 'Dearly Beloved' gave me deep chills all up my spinal column and had me holding by breath taut. Perhaps that is why I felt so warm when Sora received that, all important, final invitation to Smash; and why Kingdom Hearts IV gets me so very excited even when I haven't had to time to even get around to III yet. (Or the fifteen games you have to endure beforehand. Man, this series is sprawling.)

First I have to offer my sincere most congratulation to Sora for hailing from a franchise with the balls to stick to it's number system when things get dicey. Time and time again we've seen roman numerals adorn subtitles for series' because the creators think it makes them look all cool and sophisticated, only for those same creative to subsequently drop the concept once they hit the Vs and the Xs; probably for fear of confusing that most easily bedazzled people: toddlers. (Seriously, it's not that hard; games like Assassin's Creed!) Of course, given the Final Fantasy connection I suppose that's not entirely a shocker, because that series has been rocking the Roman numericals for so long that they're seriously toying with putting 'Final Fantasy XVI' on a box and selling it to people not expecting them to have brain haemorrhages in the store. (They have way more trust in the average consumer than I do.)

Second, my goodness they have done an absolute one-eighty on the art direction of this series, and I'm pretty on the fence about how I feel about it. Okay, that's not entirely true: I'm decently sure that I don't like it. Previously, Kingdom Hearts boasted this very cartoonish look, with overly exaggerated body parts, big oversized eyes, even more oversized hairspikes, and a leg-to-body ratio that makes one question the gravitational forces at work on The Destiny Islands. Any character that wasn't from a Disney movie sported these wacky visuals, presumably in an effort to match the animated stylings of our favourite Disney movies which also featured, lovingly recreated, in this series. As the games have moved on they're stepped away from that and made Sora and his fellow human stars, 'Roxas, Namine, Riku etc.' look less absurd and more realistic. Kingdom Hearts 2 saw the removal of the clown shoes, 3 saw the reduction of the hair spikes, and 4 seems to have completed the transition from fun kid's character to boyband wannabe teenager who just happens to wield a Keyblade.

Now to be fair there's actually a pretty decent reason for this. Sora, coming from a world and art style somewhat adjacent to Final Fantasy, has always sort of progressed his visual style to keep in step with the latest Final Fantasy game of the time. Kingdom Hearts 1 came around a year after Final Fantasy X, which introduced the big hands and feet of their art design, so those were features that Sora would borrow. In fact, it's actually somewhat out-of-step that Sora held onto his big cartoon eyes and still decently unrealistic hair in Kingdom Hearts 3, given that Final Fantasy XV had come out three years earlier and that game had pursued a totally sanitised art style. Now in line with Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy XVI, Sora has to be as fidelity-driven as possible in design; and though I may think it robs some of the fantastical charm of the boy-who-rarely-ages, I can't pretend this isn't without precedent.

Those who were waiting around excited to see which Disney property Kingdom Hearts had managed to snatch up this time need not waste their time with this reveal; Square Enix knows the development of their games well enough to avoid any topical Disney universe collaboration promises today so that they can keep themselves free for the Disney movie line-up of 2035: which is when this game is most likely to launch. Still, I think it's fair to say we'll probably see Moana up there, because god-knows we need to not have Ariel be the custodian for our water levels again. Maybe Encanto will make an appearance, but Turning Red will probably be skipped as it's just not vibrant and distinct enough. I dream of bright and colourful worlds, because anything would be more interesting than the boring city-scape that this trailer dropped us into! (Give is a cool name all you want: this place looks dull) Although I understand- this is a tech demo and thus the scene probably won't even show up in the final release; I just miss having proper eye-popping colours and appropriately head-scratch-worthy architecture, ya know?

What his tech demo did manage to show off, however, was a one-on-one battle with a Titan-sized heartless in the middle of a metropolitan city which may have been overly scripted to hell and back, but if this flow of cinematics into and out of gameplay carries over to the finished product then we could be looking at some seriously badass setpeices coming from KH4. Final Fantasy XV had a couple moments of god-sized boss fights where player control took over the action for brief moments, but they felt sort of clunky and required a full transition before they got into and out of the actual fighting gameplay. What this demo proposed here today was something more dynamic feeling than that, particularly with the moment when Sora has a building thrown at him and has to slide through it and out the otherside in order to make his shot. Pack a boss fight with moments like that; and make them meaningful, and this game could be one of the most fun Kingdom Hearts battlers to date.

Of course, some people have raised eyebrows over some of the awkward, antiquated, animations that we're seeing on display projected atop to this otherwise 'Unreal Engine 5'-level showcase. Seeing that weird run cycle where Sora holds his Keyblade upright as though waiting for a pitcher to slug a fast one at him any second now, really jars against the rest of the presentation here, as does the stiff transitions through the grappling hook pulls and jumping. Although I think we can tentatively chalk this up to reused assets from Kingdom Hearts 3. Remember this isn't a release trailer, this is basically just a proof-of-concept for where the team are going with the direction of the gameplay. I know we take the label 'gameplay is not indicative of the final product' with a bit of an eyebrow; but just take a look at the tech demo for Final Fantasy XV, or Kingdom Hearts 3, and compare them with their final products, and you'll see yourself the world of difference in the fabric of everything the game has to offer from visual themes to character design to basic movement.

The question that still lingers over the heads of every Kingdom Hearts fan yet persists; is this too soon for a Kingdom Hearts mainline sequel? Of course not! Don't let the embarrassingly prolonged wait period between 2 and 3 fool you into thinking that's the norm of game development. If every sequel took 14 years to come out, Final Fantasy would still be in the single digits! Time off doesn't make a great game, great ideas and talented developers make great games, and they can pull it off in 5 or so years just as well as they can with a decade behind them. Although, I do wonder if Tetsuya Nomura will manage to find time off from his self-inflicted FF7R purgatory in order to direct this game, or if we're going to have to suffer the whims of an all-new director. I don't know if any-mind is as warped enough to helm this adventure for another baffling outing; so my hopes really on on Tetsuya to get pumping on his overtime. All and around; this is a great treat to look forward to on our gaming horizon: I can't wait.

Chaos is here

 And most wish it wasn't, apparently

Lo and behold, after hardly believing it to even be a real game: Final Fantasy: Stranger unto Paradise- around of Paradise- inside of- whatever that stupid title is supposed to be- has landed! And can I just say that no one is more ecstatic than I? Not that I'm actually sitting around looking forward to a game from the guys who inflicted Nioh upon me, (I still haven't recovered from that game) but more that I'm tentatively anticipatory for the meme potential of this utter writing travesty. Intentional travesty, as far as I can tell; there's no way you write characters with lines like these unintentionally, but it stands as perfect mocking fuel whatever the guiding heart behind the words. If Metal Gear Rising Revengence can prove so transcendent that even now, nine years later, we're still memeing on it; then I think Jack's Mad Chaos Murder Bender can certainly squeeze out a couple of years of thigh slappers.

And before we set off on the wrong foot here, I think it's important to say that I do acknowledge that Stranger beneath Paradise has managed to score some positive impressions when it comes to raw gameplay. Much as I would expect them to, coming from a studio who once put together the Nioh games which play fantastically. (my gripes with that game don't touch the raw gameplay at all.) I mean, it only makes sense that Team Ninja are going to bring their considerable talents with them wherever they go, so that even a title which is bumrushed into a Final Fantasy game by the excitable lunatics at Square Enix will hold some basic merit to it. Could you imagine a studio renowned for their action gameplay putting out a title that totally sucks in gameplay, presentation and playability? That would be crazy, it would- well, I guess that would be Platinum Game's Babylon's Fall, now wouldn't it? Huh... (It didn't have to be that way...)

Speaking of, can we talk about how weird it is that this game started off as a completely original brand which got twisted into this new 'Final Fantasy: Origins' franchise? I know that's not exactly unique on the landscape of maintaining game franchises, but it's still weird to hear about it happening. Like how the original concept for Resident Evil 4 ventured so far away from the series' routes that the team just got permission to branch off and rebrand the game as Devil May Cry. Isn't that wild? (You're thinking about how similar Dante and Leon Kennedy look right now, aren't you?) But there's something especially weird about this happening for a title which is supposed to reimagine the origin of the entire Final Fantasy brand. Providing context to an originally bare bones game so that new avenues of lore can be explored; it really sounds like the sort of thing you'd expect to be expressly commissioned and watched over by the series arbiters like a thirty eyed Malboro. But then again, I guess people do tend to play it somewhat loose around the FF titles nowadays; given that they've let FF7's remake bloat up into an unwieldly 10 year project.

Paradisiacal Strangers, on the otherhand, is just one kick ass action game with tons of monster dungeon delving, some cool class systems, (called Jobs. Yes, they bought back Jobs) and customisation so that we can make our generic-looking protagonist man slightly less or more generic-looking, depending on how we're feeling that morning. There are enemy types here that are indicative of classic Final Fantasy monsters, which still fills me with that sense of excited wonderment I felt back when they were doing that same thing with Final Fantasy XV; yet here they look and feel even more robust. On it's face, this has everything it needs to be an absolute rocking Final Fantasy game which successfully boots the franchise into the action genre which it has never truly thrived in before. From this vantage point, it's only a matter of time before the inevitable Final Fantasy Soulslike is made. Piano version of One Winged Angel? Yes please! But I guess this isn't a just world.

At it's launch Paradise Falling Strangers ranked on the list of top 5 worst selling Final Fantasy spin-offs of all time; and when you consider that there are over 50 Final Fantasy games and only around 20 of them are mainlines (including sequels like Final Fantasy XIII-2) that is an absolutely damning slap in the face. The only Final Fantasy games which have sold worse are those three Chocobo Spin-off games that I only just discovered existed when reading up for that Chocobo GP blog. (Kind of makes me want to play them now. They're like lost FF gems. Assuming they're any good.) Whilst 'Theatrhythm Final Fantasy',  'World of Final Fantasy' and 'Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Portable' rank higher. (No word on how the Kingdom Hearts franchise fairs up, nor my arch nemesis: 'Chain of Memories'. >Blearg< I spit on that name!) Now to be fair these are numbers coming from Japan because America and some other western territories don't release sales numbers, and one might point out that Dragon Quest typically outsells Final Fantasy in Japan anyway. (I will not make any sweeping statements about an entire country's taste for RPGs based on that knowledge, but know that I'm thinking about it.) But it's rare to see any major discrepancies with sales figures across seas when we're talking about a JRPG; so indications point to this being a bit of a major flop. But why?

If I had to point fingers, and for the sake of this blog let's presume that I do; I'm going to be honest, that reveal trailer made this game look trash. I know we joke and meme about the amount of times the dude said 'Chaos'; but that single introduction, seething of B-movie cheese, was enough to make the non FF diehards just write this game off as more trite nonsense. Despite the genuine talent behind it, despite the global superbrand printed on the box! And for that first impression to knock off some points, it only teed up the game for another hit once the reviews started coming out and they were less than stellar. The game isn't a disaster title, but it's not anything special worth rushing out for. It's just good enough, which doesn't meet the threshold requisite to wash out the taste of week-old cheese that clings to this game.

And that is despite that raw meme value which is no doubt responsible for at least a few impulsive purchases. I mean that one scene alone of seeing Jack let someone pour her heart out to him before dead-beat responding "Bulls***" pumping a Limp Bizkit song through his headphones and storming off moodily is pure gold. And if I told you that scene is literally indicative of Jack's attitude for a good half of this game's scenes, tell me that doesn't make you at least a bit curious as to what this game is about! But clearly that's value we expect to pay off for the brand in the far future, because it's not making dividends anyday soon. Not only is this sad, but it's confusing. How did the Nioh guys make something so reportedly bland? Is this a self fulfilling prophecy of people who went in expecting the game to be bad and thus have brainwashed themselves into thinking that it is? Or is this Square Enix leaning on the team to keep to the 'mostly disappointing' standards that Square have been confusingly maintaining for the past year?

So we have ourselves an unfortunate dud that just makes us want to exclaim "Bullsh***" and play our edgy rock music as we storm out of the death castle. And can I just say what a loss for everyone this is? With this failure it might mark the end of the budding Final Fantasy Origin's subseries before it even had a chance to shine. Which means we're not going to get that Final Fantasy VII origins game featuring Zack that you just know Tetsuya Nomura was rubbing his hands for since the word go. (The freak.) Or that potential FF XIII origins game, where they'd finally have a chance to execute that ultra ambitious Fabula Nova Crystallis crossover they were building up all those years ago. (I just wanted to see Noctis from XV face-off against his pretty boy clone Ace from Type-0 whilst Lighting cosplays as 2B or whatever the heck 'Lighting Returns' was supposed to be about.) What a loss this world has endured.

Company's don't care about players, 2022 edition

And everyone claps

Your favourite game company doesn't care about you. That seems like a fairly sensible and acceptable statement to make by most people's standards, of course they don't care about us- they have themselves to worry about. This is a silent and selfish world, everyone's out for themselves, it would honestly be anomalous if a development company suddenly started to care about the well being of their audience just because we squeezed out money for them. But what if I told you that for some developers it goes a step beyond that? They harbour not just apathy, but disgust. Genuine and acute disliking; all for those they claim to be creating entertainment for. And that might seem like a stretch and perhaps a somewhat unfair extrapolation, but the revelations of early 2022 certainly do paint that exact picture nice and clearly for us all.

There have been several iterations of brand new schemes and meddlings that various gaming companies have lauded in the past few weeks, few of which truly push forward our lovely little medium of gaming in any way that will improve, you know; the games. Instead, we're looking at new ways we can pump up the coffers of our favourite development giant in the hopes that- gee I don't know, maybe that trickle-down economics will finally kick-in after all this time? One of the most embarrassing of which has been the whole 'live service model' which has bitten companies in the ass so many times, but still they insist it's the future. Releasing a bad game and telling us it's good but give them 10 years to make it good is wearing a little thin, but don't just my opinion for it. Lets look at Babylon's Fall. That's a game which looked pretty bad, even with big names like Square Enix in the producer's chair and Platinum Games suffering the developer's whip. But worry not for how it looks, because it is a live service! Everything is subject to be improved, the beginning is not the destination, yadda yadda yadda... How did that work out for them? Well the game is currently looking at a player peak on Steam of just shy of 1,200 players. And a average of around 300 at this current moment. Hmm... okay but what about the free demo they put out? Average of 30 players... Yikes, there really is no spinning that one, huh? I guess players want good games. Weird.

But that's just one scheme. Recently I've noticed an influx in subscription mania setting in as game companies get all hot and bothered about the prospect of shackling us all to unending repeating payments. Seems fair enough. The only thing being that they can't really figure out the point at which they make the subscriptions worthwhile. You know, something I'd actually want to dish out some coins for. Take Rockstar: (I wish someone would...) they want us to pay for a subscription to GTA Online. Yes, the very same GTA Online which as been around since 2014. Now it has a special plus subscription with exclusive apartments and cars and- I'm sorry did we all do something wrong to you, Rockstar? Did we all collective kick out your windows in a past life and this is your way of 'getting back' at the world? It's just that, as far as I can recall, GTA Online makes hundreds of millions each and every year. It's paying itself off by the truckload. Yet they need a new revenue stream out of it? Why? How does an 'aura of exclusivity' provide value to your favourite cash cow? Needless to say this was mocked to the high heavens. And even more needless to say it'll go through anyway. Because Rockstar doesn't care what you think, because the players don't matter. 

Oh and what's this? Call of Duty is apparently flirting with a subscription model in the near future and just what are we even doing anymore? Why have our development studios dedicated their lives and souls to whittling down the product but upping the cost on consumers? Haven't they already decided to try and ramp up the base purchase price by £10 this generation? Isn't that enough screwing about? How about blaming this all on stagnant inflation, whilst simultaneously dusting off their 100 dollar special edition versions and asking why we look so insulted? So say that COD gets a subscription service; what does that offer? A recurrent COD experience? We've already got that, it's called Warzone. Or is this going to be Warzone 2? Or maybe just exclusive bonuses for Warzone? What about the core package on offer has been improved in order to justify a recurrent price over a flat buy in. And if the answer is 'nothing', then why are we allowing this to happen?

Of course, I've just been dancing around the true Dark Horse of this whole affair. The villainous plague infesting the minds of overwise sane business men across all industries, the dreaded letters: NFT. I know that the Ubisoft debacle was technically last year, but some of their responses were made this year and I just can't forget about them so easily. Making NFT helmets in Breakpoint, an already dying game, in order to ensure it would become toxic to any prospective newcomers? Paying bonuses in NFTS to your employees? Committing to an NFT powered future, despite the fact that only a fraction of a percentage of cryptocurrency users even partake in the scam-ridden practice? Talk about a neon self-waving red flag and several halves. It's like a litmus test to see which developers still have normal pupils in their heads and which have had their sights surgically replaced with comical dollar signs; because no rational, clear seeing business focused individual could look at the numbers around NFT and see that as the incoming wave of the future.

And nowadays it doesn't even have to be an established video game giant who slides down this path. The grift is so ubiquitous with the industry that people are approaching games industry careers with it in mind. Just take Dr Disrespect's idea which has itself a hair brained, NFT fuelled scheme to try and suck money out of potential fans before the game is even made under some guise that 'everyone is an investor'. And absolutely not just a way for Dr D to abscond with funds from people too poor and dumb to successfully sue him. Forget that gaffe of accidentally nicking one of Cyberpunk 2077's screenshots; the very concept of his company is a worse plague on the industry. He's asking from funding in order to hire the development talent! How can you start a game studio that doesn't even have the development staff until after it gets money from it's customers? Revolutionary? Perhaps. The most suspicious framework for a development studio ever? Absolutely.  

So then with all these backhanded scowls shooting back and forth across the industry, one must ask; what does it take for a company to actually appear to value it's fans in todays age? Is there such thing as a games company that doesn't take advantage of their audience? Well I'd argue there are some, but they're becoming fewer. We just need a company who is communicative about changes which the public need to know about, who focus on making a game worthy of the monetisation strategies they intend to implement first, before putting the game out. A company that respects their audience's time, and who isn't asking them to commit 12 hours a day for several concerted weeks in order to get the most out of the game. Oh, and a company that doesn't try to sell their entire fanbase down a fad speculative investment scheme would be kind of nice. I'd certainly like that last one!

In conclusion, the video game industry is fraught with deciding what it even wants to be to the people it caters too nowadays. The entire medium has rocketed forward in the past forty years, moulding and shifting its core structure to rocket in line with traditional media and now it's slipping past itself into something unrecognisable. There are still people making great games for reasonable asking prices and solid returns; but they're starting to feel like the fringe old school against a wave of anti-consumerist bile. Up until now it's been one or two schemes that the big boys in the industry have rallied behind, pushing the big one forward whilst sneaking the smaller one into games at the same time so that the big one draws all the ire. But now the approach is scattergun and I don't know where all this is heading. All I can say is that gaming looks to a potentially drastic landscape in three years time. 

Babylon is lost

 Elden Ring at home:

It's a strange phenomena that sometimes, inexplicably, you can just smell a disaster coming from a mile away. Like watching the songbirds and small mammals quickly vacate the area before a hurricane, or seeing that trailing swirl of death-feeder vultures overhead; there's something about a doomed project that stinks for a mile and which everyone can detect. Even if you can't explain why, you still know it. It's human nature to respond to subtle indicators, and to detect and be repulsed by danger and disappointment. Thus I don't think a single person really sat down and bubbled with excitement, rubbing their hands in anticipation for the release of 'Babylon's Fall', regardless of the accomplished talent helming the project. Platinum Games, and the absolutely huge publisher bankrolling the whole thing, Square Enix. You can't even pretend you didn't know the thing existed, because Square dragged it around to all the trade shows like a Dance-Mom trucking around LA determined to break their kid into an acting gig. But no one ever took the bait onto the decrepit, three-wheeled hype wagon that Square were pawing off-price tickets for; even an unmarked, tinted-window, hype-white-van would have been more appealing.

And I was in the mood for some Platinum Games action, more so than I typically am at any given time, because as you can see from my recent lineup- I just got done playing through and reviewing an incredible title from their library: 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence'. A true gem bobbing above a sea of tepid middle of the road stocking-stuffer action titles, elevated by truly great writing, over-the-top performances and another neatly slick and stylish combat system from those Platinum veterans. Because they are talented developers; really talented. And they don't typically mess around with average titles, no they put out extremes; it's either the best of the best or a chore upon every waking sense of the body, there is no in-between. Which has encouraged me to develop the 'leap-frog theory' wherein I say it's highly likely that immediately after putting out a good game, Platinum Games must deliver a bad one for the sake of cosmic balance. How does Babylon's Fall factor into that equation? Well, barring some mobile titles which I don't factor into my event chain, the last proper console release from Platinum Games was the rather well received 'Astral Chain'- oh... guess that doesn't bode well, does it?

Indeed, much like it's many lukewarm gameplay tease trailers over the years have implied; Babylon's Fall is a bad game. But worse than that: It's a boring one. A game with no discernible purpose, identity, unique points of interest, initial depth, narrative intrigue or even any unashamed sexual gratification. (All 3DS shovelware titles knew that if you couldn't make a good game, you could just through some huge Anime boobs with ridiculous physics in a prefab map of Akihabara and call it a day. But Babylon's Fall couldn't even manage that.) First impressions don't lie and today it seems they proved more reliable than a card-carrying wiccan Soothsayer; cause sometimes if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, than it's probably a duck. Or some sort of man in a duck shaped outfit, according to world-renowned duck-expert Adrian 'Vigilante' Chase.

I covered this game in the past, and in that little rant perhaps the only positive I had to relay was that I thought the ingame combat looked good. But in hindsight, looking at the finished product, I may have to even revoke that; because in comparison to their own back catalogue these animations are stiff. But at least the combat has animations, because the same could not be said for the cutscenes; good lord the cutscenes! These pre-made artesian narrative-containing nuggets are, quite frankly, all total trash. They're stiff to the point of rigor-mortis, badly choreographed, sometimes feature poor sound mixing, and have the inexplicable trait you see out of some strangled budget Japanese games wherein the style of the cinematic changes drastically on the whim of the wind. The smarter games will hide this with thematic consistency, so that certain breeds of cutscene feature the lower budget approach so you develop a rough expectation of what to expect out of each cutscene you encounter. Babylon's Fall is not one of the clever ones. You can expect to be totally blindsided at random by cinematics that feature an equivalent level of movement to the 1966 Captain America animated show. (I am not exaggerating. Some scenes are genuinely comparable to that, paper-clip budget, show.) 

And that's just the gameplay itself. (I say just as though that's not the single most important part of a game.) Square Enix made the 'inspired?' move of trying to 'Agent 47 garrotte wire' the already-on-life support marketing efforts by revealing very early on that this was going to be a Live Service game. Yes, to put the half-digested cherry on top of this termite-filled rotten sand-cake, (ew, made myself gag a little with that one) Square Enix wanted to pull the ol' 'half finish the game and try to trap enough curious fans with greedy MTX schemes in hopes that they can personally bankroll the rest of development' trick. For some insane reason that sort of announcement never seems to go down well with people. And so it was, that a game which was already looking rougher than a Saturday night in Blackpool, managed to turn-off anyone gullible enough to even view it as a charity case. (Oh to have the traitorous Square Enix marketing team backing you up, all the while trying to shoot you in the rear.)

Now to be totally fair to the absolute troopers who were sent early review codes for Babylon's Fall; some people have stuck this mess out for the long haul. The rest of us just sniffed the trial gameplay and nope-ed right the hell out of there like Vergil from his parental responsibilities, but for some unfortunate souls out there it is quite literally their job to stare slackjawed at a game with the chromatic palette of a mud landslide. (At least they're getting paid for their suffering. No doubt that's one full paycheck for every eye vessel that burst itself in protest rather than enduring this sleepfest.) They mostly report that, incredibly, there is some progress to the challenge and even a little bit of depth in the game if you hate yourself enough to stick out the game for around about thirty hours. I doubt it's nearly enough depth to make the time spent feel even vaguely worthwhile; but there's the silver lining for your overcast day.

Square really isn't cementing the best of track records with their Live Service initiative, now are they? First they helmed a decent game with a seemingly unbreakable franchise behind it, only to ruin the whole thing with a business model that most critics agree is directly hurt by it's Live Service elements, in their Avengers game. Now they're beating a limping, sickly horse with Babylon's Fall. Both times all they wanted to do was magnify the profits of these otherwise singleplayer games with recurrent revenue buttons so they can subsist off the lifeblood of desperate hooked up fans like human batteries out of The Matrix. Is that so much to ask? Now these two financial bombs, (And seeing that Babylon's Fall is struggling to top 1000 concurrent players on Steam sort of indicates that this title is indeed, a bomb) makes it all the less likely that Square will ever deign go down this route in the future. Same with Platinum Games, who also flirted with swearing a deal to the same Milton-esque demon in their own statements.

 

All of this is a prelude to say: stop trying to make live services a thing, because you're just embarrassing yourself and the industry more and more with each attempt. Or better yet, at least try to make sure your game can't be classified as phycological torture in breach of international human rights laws before you tack your life-blood sucking hooks onto the product. Or even better than better; don't try and release your paper-weight action slasher game within the same week as freakin' Elden Ring; are you serious? Babylon's Fall is what happens when all cylinders are misfiring at the same time so that gameplay, writing, marketing, and basic common sense simultaneously break down to create that imperfect storm of 'bleurgh.' My only wish was that this total spew-of-a-game was more entertainingly bad so I didn't have to rely on a hundred similes in order to get through this blog without my brain rotting from lack of oxygen. So in short: 5/5 stars, best game ever, pick it up today!

Oh, So Final Fantasy VII is £70 now? Huh...

 This is fine >Starts hyperventilating<

There's this belief going around the video game industry, one fuelled by wanton and targeted cognitive dissonance. It's the kind of thing that makes sense when it's told in those first fleeting seconds after it's first described to you, as certain figures insist on doing again and again, but which falls utterly apart upon the slightest further scrutiny. I'm talking about the idea that the video game industry hasn't evolved with inflation. Yes, gaming companies, first Sony and recently Square, love to remind people that games have been going for £60 since the nineties, and though they've only become more expensive to make, they arrive at our shelves with the same price tag. It sort of makes sense, but it's woefully, intentionally, misleading. Because whilst the base price of games has remained frozen for the longest time, it's done so at a price point which is entirely reasonable (In fact, a lot of times it's a bit too generous) and doesn't have any of these companies hard-up to run their day-to-days. But the industry has evolved considerably in other ways.

In the age of Microtransactions, booster packs, battle passes and now NFTs, who are the gaming industries' elite fooling when they tell us they're making no more on games then the did thirty years ago? Rockstar makes over a billion each year on the back of one game, which they released eight years ago. That's not because of the price tag on the box, let me tell you; it's the Microtransactions they've been pushing for all that time. And they aren't outliers, almost every AAA game has it's ingame store nowdays, to the point where it's more notable when a game doesn't. (Remember how Jedi Fallen Order scored headlines simply because there was no microtransactions? Shouldn't that tell you something?) Heck, as a whole the gaming industry recently crossed the threshold of becoming the most profitable entertainment industry in-the-world. All of this is to say plainly; there is no sensible reason on this green earth why the premium price of new games should go up £10. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, scrutinise their stake in the situation until the obvious bias unravels itself.

Thus it's with that utter disdain, edging on loathing, that I look upon Final Fantasy 7 Remake's £70 price-tag. More expensive then the original game ever was, to be clear. This matches alongside a release exclusive to the Epic Games Store, a platform which only last month got around to implementing a cart, (A FREAKIN' CART) essentially proposing a plan where customers pay extra for a worse experience. The cherry on the cake of course being the fact that this release is a bloody PC port for a game that's over 2 years old, because Square are just making a power play for how much they can bend people over before they refuse to bend anymore. This isn't a one off. Forspoken, that strange Isekai game which is undergoing marketing ramp-up all over Youtube despite the fact the game isn't due till May, is also set to land with £70 on the price tag. Square are shooting for this, and if they are rewarded for this utter transgression on consumer rights it will pick up steam, and it won't be long before the entire AAA industry is charging a sixth of a brand new console for the privilege of buying software. Tell me I'm not the only one who finds that utterly repugnant!

I've said before that Sony are all aboard this train, and I'm not joking. For their first party titles, Sony has reached for £70 across the board in this next gen tax. Something which would have blown up a lot more if people could even buy up the consoles in order to see that affront to justice in the first place. But considering Xbox wasn't following suit, most could see this as a simple growing pain misstep that some consoles do in their first year or so. A stupid move that they get rightly lambasted for, and then is quickly forgotten as we move into the meat of the console age. But now Square Enix has now bought this scheme to PC, and that makes it a lot more real. Sony fans are happy to put up with Sony's crap because they believe in some twisted concept of 'brand loyalty', it's really rather sad. PC fans don't have any such delusions, and their relationship with Square is rocky as it is, so if Enix wants a fight over pricing then they've got one.

Although this might just be a fight which wages itself, because it hardly took any time at all for people to raise the fact that- oh look: the PC Port of FF7R is a piece of crap anyway! Well that is to say it's a port of a game that is said to be a very decent translation of an RPG classic, but a port made by a team who clearly don't think of the PC players as a viable market as evidenced by the effort they put in. Yes, in typical Square Enix fashion this port is about as optimised as horse-drawn carriage. That simile didn't make a whole lot of sense, but neither does selling a game with consistent frame drops on a 3080 for busy scenes! If one of those god-cards can't smoothly run this thing, I don't even want to think what the damage would be if I tried to run that on my system! (My graphics card would probably just explode.)

And whatsmore, we're looking at a port which fails to provide the standard acceptable amount of graphical options to keep your average PC fan happy; and at this point that's pretty much the laziest possible thing a port can do. Is it really breaking the bank to spend a week or so creating an options menu? Because even if it is, then that'll be worth the time because that work would demonstrate even the slightest degree of understanding for the PC market. PCs, by their nature, are varied and non-uniform beings, with some entire rigs unique and entirely different to others. We need to have the sort of optional flexibility to tailor experiences to our specific rigs. And if you can't manage that much, can't deliver an optimised experience and can't even release the thing on all store fronts, then frankly your work isn't worth £60, let alone £70.

Of course, this isn't the first time that Square has spat in the face of PC fans. Seminal android hack and slasher game, Nier Automata, famously launched on PC with pretty much no PC options whatsoever aside from resolution tweaking. They may as well have just slapped a last gen console emulator in the box and sold that. This was lambasted, reported on, shouted from the high heavens, and what did Square do? Nothing. It fell to modders to create their own configuration menus for the game. What is that about? Making your community handle basic utilities? What are you worth anyway? Final Fantasy XV is said to have been a bit better, to the point where people could at least tailor the experience they wanted out of that game. But 7 Remake? The biggest release they've had these past 3 years? Not worth the work, apparently.

For the games that you desperately want to support and make sure does well, it breaks one's heart to see the decision maker behind the title doing everything in their power to screw things up. A dedicated and talented team sat down and made Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and then the higher-ups swooped in and stuck their stupid price tag on it and then handed it off to a team of PC illiterates to botch up a port. What are you supposed to do as an artist when your superiors are actively sabotaging you? I would almost feel bad for Tetsuya Nomura, but I haven't forgiven him for the HD remake of Chain of Memories. (And likely never will.) Do I expect Square to back down, or fix their port? Maybe... on the 'fixing' part at least, there's no way in a million years they'll stop greedily slobbering over the premium pricing in their hedonistic ritual dedicated to profligacy. And this, once more for mister Days Gone director (wherever he may be), is why I buy only on steep discounts.  

Sora in Smash

 Finally, indeed

And so it has finally come to pass, the clock has turned and the final Super Smash Bros. Character to be added in the largest crossover game of all time has come. I was actually late to the reveal (take a shot for me being late to a gaming event for the fiftyist time) so when I logged in all I saw was a couple of characters duking it out on a by-the-numbers stage and I remember thinking "Okay, so when does the cool stuff happen, who's the new character. All we've got here is Samus and Sora. Wait, wait a second... one of these guys isn't supposed to be here!" And that's how I learnt that our finale hero is going to be the bearer of the Keyblade himself; Sora of the Disney Square Enix divide. Aspirant of Kingdom Hearts, slayer of Heartless, friend to every single major Disney character ever, and remover of puberty during that one chase at the end of Kingdom Hearts 1 but the beginning of 'Chain of Memories'. And may I just say it's about time.

I mean the only reason I didn't recognise him straight away was because I assumed he was already part of the cast, that's how much of a no-brainer Sora was, but I guess the fact that we have him now is going to be an achievement to rest laurels on, huh. Does this make for that explosive finale we all were waiting for? I mean perhaps, for a few, but this isn't so much the mind-blowing "Oh my god, they got ____?" As it is the head scratching, "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Doesn't it?" Then again, looking at Fortnite and the lackadaisical way they've handled crossovers throughout the years, I guess we really shouldn't just be down for anyone showing up anyway. Without Sakurai and his team of professionals leading the way, we'd be getting a procession of low effort skin jobs and not the all encompassing character creation which makes Smash Bros. creation so very special.

Whatsmore, when you really stop and think about it, putting Sora in any other video game is quite the huge deal when you consider that he is a creation of a property owned by Square Enix as well as the notoriously difficulty-to-work-with Disney. In fact, I think the only reason this deal was able to go through is because Disney relinquished it's reign of video games quite a while ago, and so Square have majority control over the direction of the series. The request for this crossover was likely just a document shoved on the desk of Chapek that he signed off on without reading a single word of it. Nintendo and Disney getting into negotiations together sounds like a recipe for abject litigational disaster as far as I'm concerned, and all the courts in the world have been spared a horrible death by paper cut.

That last livestream was a pretty emotionally charged moment for a lot of people out there, not least of all for Waluigi holdouts who don't seem to grasp the concept that the guy is already an assist trophy, thus he actually cannot become a fighter now. (I know most are just memeing, but some people get actually upset and it confuses me.) Seeing Sakurai build up to the moment was a big deal, seeing as how this game has been the ultimate culmination of all his work on Smash up until now. (And the fact that the final DLC character was supposed to drop at the end of the last DLC pack.) Though given the part of the industry he hails from it was obvious we weren't going to see any outward emotion,  I think the gravity of the finality surrounding the reveal touched us all. (Of course, for me that was in retrospect, because I turned up late.)

As for the reveal video itself, that was pretty much as sweet and emotional as it could have been; watching the fire of the Smash logo snuff itself out for one final invitation and then seeing that Invitation be the Keyblade unlocking Kingdom Hearts to release Sora. Or rather, I think that's what they were going for. The whole 'Door to Kingdom Hearts' thing has shifted over the years to the point where I legitimately have no idea what they were fighting over at the end of the first game anymore, so speculation abounds. But seeing Sora drift into the void and float above the dozens of his now contemporaries, was heart-warming to see. And I was even more excited to see that this was Kingdom Hearts 1 Sora. Or rather, Kingdom Hearts 2 Sora in 1 Sora's clothes, for whatever reason. A real call to the past from the team there, nicely done.

Sora's moveset was also touched upon with great detail, but anyone who has played the original games to their completion probably knows a great deal of these moves anyway. A lot of it just naturally flows from the combos in the old games just fine, because these franchises have been destined for each other for so long now. The only move I would personally call to question would be that Final Smash, which has Sora trapping his enemy inside of Kingdom Hearts (as it's identified in KH1, not the KH2 Moon) and then exploding it? Is that- is that a good thing? Isn't Kingdom Hearts integral to the fabric of the universe or something? And since when can the Keyblade blow up doors? I thought that keys opened things in much more traditional ways.

Yoko Shimomura's wonderful suites make for a much welcome edition to the Smash Bros. line up of tracks, and the fact that there won't be any original compositions is just fine when we're talking about tunes this iconic and great. (Except, of course, for the victory fanfare which was composed especially by Shimomura herself.) Swashbuckling adventure pieces really do highlight the similarities I find, and I mean this in the best of ways, between Sakurai and Tetsuya Nomura. Both are visionaries who dance to their own tune, for better or for worse. Both created fabulous and memorable series' that touched the hearts of millions. And now both have their DNA within Smash Bros. given that Nomura's baby, Sora, is fighting inside of Sakurai's baby colosseum game.

If you've been around here for any length of time you'll know that I'm a huge Kingdom Hearts fan (except for Chain of Memories) and thus I couldn't think of a more fitting end for the Smash Bros. lineup than what we've seen today. Except for, I dunno, a crossover with 'Heritage from the Future', but let's not go talking any more craziness up in here. Heck, I already got Pyra, I shouldn't start getting greedy with demands and such. Putting Smash Bros. to rest is a surreal thing to be doing, especially as I, for one, was sure that a third character pack was due to be announced anyday now, and who knows how many years it'll be until a follow-up. (if, indeed, there ever is one.) But all good things must have an ending, and I think we can all agree to some extent that Smash Bros has had this one a long time coming. Till the next one, Sakurai.