But do you have the complete set?

 Lots of posting in such little time, and yes, the quality is varying, but the thoughts need to come out when they are on the brain. As you know, I occasionally respond to announcements, review a game here and there, explain my dreams for a perfect game and in some cases a perfect world, or just plain ramble about possibilities. The Game Bay isn't dedicated to just bashing things or reviewing games, it's a window to the gaming world in a way that most people don't think about on a daily basis, even if they are one of the "hardcore."

 Gaming is evolving at this point, and no one is really sure how it will turn out. It's really hard to see a point in the immediate future where gaming will become a completely non-physical medium, it's tough to predict the successes of the Wii or Natal when things like the Power Pad and the EyeToy have failed to make impacts in the past, and when people hail Demon's Souls as being wonderfully impossible, it's hard to imagine a time where the challenge will be gone forever. There are so many things going on, and the explanations could fill a novel. That's something I intend to try someday, I should mention. Speaking of which, I think my next post should be about the video game crash that could happen sooner than anyone expects.

 For now, I'm going to stick with the state of the DLC, as a recent announcement has Squeenix backing off of that idea for Final Fantasy XIII. Nevermind the fact that I have no real intention of making this game anything more than a rental, but I have to give Squeenix props on this one. I understand that there are many, many people who would completely go for this kind of thing, and to be honest, I have my ideas as to how this could work to Squeenix's favor later on down the line, but I'll get to that later. The fact is that many of new RPG's are starting to buy into DLC's as being a completely viable way to maintain a game's popularity and expand the original scope. That's completely fair.

 Fallout 3 has it. Borderlands has it. Dragon Age has it. Any Dungeons & Dragons that could slap an expansion on did so. Diablo 3 will most likely have it. MMORPG's are built off of it. Hell, even the old Ultima games would let you import characters to the next game. Historically, expanding an RPG has been a profitable and smart thing to do, especially when you consider the passion that role players put into their games. It doesn't necessarily have to be a DLC, it just has to expand the game somehow. One can't really fault the developers for putting what is essentially an expansion on the digital market, because it's really nothing new and it's proven to work well.

 When it comes to an RPG with a strong narrative, however, DLC's don't always seem like a good idea. I don't mean that every game with a great story needs to forget the idea of incorporating a DLC, because that's not true. A good comparison would be in the movies. Stargate had a great concept that told one story that could have been part of many, so that's where it eventually went. Yet, imagine if Studio Ghibli decided to franchise out the Princess Mononoke concepts, and you can see where things might have gone downhill.

 Final Fantasy is a bit like that for every game of the series. I can appreciate ideas such as Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy Dissidia, but the credibility of the individual stories were somewhat sullied when things like Compilation of Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X-2 showed up. It's not that these games were terrible (though, that's a separate discussion on its own), it's just that they expanded on what was already an interesting, self-contained storyline. Final Fantasy games tell a story, and by the end of the game, that story is over with and closed off. There are always questions, but I never absolutely HAD to know if Gogo was Daryl all along. That's something that I'm supposed to take with me just like when I first wondered about Deckard's identity in Blade Runner.

 This entire conversation is ultimately voided out by the fact that the Final Fantasy XIII world is already planned for expansion with Versus and the like, but the real reason I praise the lack of DLC is a different kind of what is hopefully creative integrity when it comes to the gaming medium. Games put down a pretty good investment on their games, and while I did bring up the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII as being expansions of the universe, they are also individual games. Never in the Final Fantasy series has their been a "tack on" download or an "expansion" download, because every single game ships out to be as complete as possible. Yes, there will be patches in Final Fantasy XIII because that's the state of the gaming world, but when you pick up a Final Fantasy disc or cart, you are always assured that you are getting the complete game. While I'm not exactly happy with the direction of the company, if I decided that I was going to get XIII I know that I would be getting the complete experience regardless of when I buy it.

 I'm not ticked off at Bethesda for slapping on expansions to Fallout, because they are more than welcome to make that choice, people will buy it, and it adds more to an already good game. That's never a bad idea. Yet, I know that when I pick up a Bethesda game, there's a very good chance that I'm not going to get the complete experience. There's always going to be something more to get alongside what should have been a complete product. It's a double edged sword....you have the option of getting more of an already good thing, but the value of your disc as being a complete work is now gone.

 So in response to Squeenix saying that they will lay off the DLC, I applaud them for it. You can be sure that your copy of Final Fantasy XIII is going to be a complete creative work that isn't open for modification. Even if I don't necessarily see myself liking the game, they are treating their game like a piece of artwork, and there's a certain amount of integrity maintained by accepting that their game is finished when it reaches store shelves and not open for modification. If I spent $20 adding summons and characters to Final Fantasy XII, then I would look back thinking that my disc wasn't finished and carries less creative value as a game.

 Now I mentioned that there is a way to go around this, and this is mainly because I'm a little concerned about the economics of Squeenix. They are investing way too much money into their projects, and people are having higher and higher expectations for them with every sequel. This was fine back when people either loved or hated Final Fantasy VIII and IX, but they didn't invest nearly the amount of money as they did when they made X, XII, and XIII. I can see why they are making more "compilations" of each major sequel. One day, the money spent on the game is going to be too much, the expectations will be too much, and a Final Fantasy game might just fail in a very bad way. If the risk involved was high enough, this can spell doom for the franchise as it has with many other franchises before. Even Duke Nukem wasn't the blockbuster Final Fantasy was, but they threw so much money into the game, didn't have a good plan, and set the bar as high as the fan's were telling them to do. In the end, it was a bad idea.

 Now Squeenix is intelligent enough to see something like this coming, and we're thankfully in a time where many of the most expensive games ever produced are within two years of the present day due to the high economic ceiling the games industry still hasn't reached. No one can possibly say that there's an end in sight to the expansion of the video game medium, because the end result is so freakishly cyberpunk that we can only begin to dream up the techniques necessary to make them possible. Yet, there's a lot of room to fail when the stakes are so high. In Squeenix's case, individual Final Fantasy games should be the product of good talent, storytelling, and innovation, but not the goal. The engine that Squeenix has made is invaluable to them at this point.

 I've always bashed Square's romp into movie-making, and I continued to bash Advent Children because it was a bad movie with the occasionally awesome eye candy moment. Yet, we're seeing these graphics in games now. The next Final Fantasy movie doesn't actually need to be on the big screen, but rather a downloadable script and voice patch for a movie made with the XIII engine. This is one way they can re-use resources to maximize their profits.

 The second way is to cater to the western crowd, something that Squeenix has tried to do in some ways but doesn't quite know how to master. There will always be a market for a good JRPG over here in North America, but there are millions of other people that cannot stand Final Fantasy because of what it is. Having the engine and the talent involved, they could create a side project that would make them some serious cash. DLC's involve adding onto a pre-existing game, but a module project would not. The funny part is that WRPG's do not demand nearly as much devotion to the end-product as JRPG's do, because JRPG's are all about a specific, elaborate narrative that usually demands as much presentation as possible. Having all those resources at their disposal, there's no reason to think that Squeenix can't try their shot at the D&D route be creating a minimal, difficult WRPG experience that is not intended to be a complete work and then expand that through the creative use of modules much like Neverwinter Nights did.

 I've had this idea for a while, but all the signs are there for the company to actually do this within the next 5 years. Final Fantasy X got a sequel by reusing the engine of the original game, then Final Fantasy VII expanded into a series of games that were meant to make money off of the IP popularity rather than the quality of the games. Final Fantasy XI was an easy way to make money through the MMO structure, and it had its own expansion packs. Final Fantasy XII re-imagined a pre-existing Final Fantasy universe, and XIII already had a triad of games planned for its own. With the new MMO coming out in Final Fantasy XIV and a the cost of the main series, it's not hard to envision a create-a-Final Fantasy turning up within the decade, especially when you consider that Bethesda is really starting to show some genre dominance. And what's their game plan? Reuse an existing engine, give a great core game, and then expand them with modules. Digg It Stumble it ! Reddit