I’m a good chunk into Final Fantasy XVI, continuing this major Final Fantasy kick I’ve been on lately by playing a brand new one right when it’s come out. The game’s fun! Combat’s a delight and the world and story are excellently realized. It’s super different from prior games, but then, what Final Fantasy isn’t, and the fact that it pivots to action-based gameplay so well is a testament to the effort that’s been put into it. The other big departure from the last twenty-ish years of Final Fantasy games is its jettisoning of modern and futuristic technology in favor of setting it in a typical medieval setting. And not just any medieval setting at that, Final Fantasy has gone full Game of Thrones.
You’ve got the castles, you’ve got the bleakness, you’ve got the world map with the miniature mechanical-looking settlements. The main character has a giant wolf buddy who everyone refers to as a dog (despite it, and I cannot emphasize this enough, being a massive wolf). The similarities are intentional — the developers explicitly say they watched Game of Thrones in a want to imitate the feel. And it’s there, for good and for ill. Characters swear, the violence is bloody and intense, there’s politicking aplenty as rival nations jostle for control. You don’t have to play the game long to go “Oh yeah, there’s a lot of Game of Thrones in this.”
Final Fantasy XVI doesn’t sit content in its Game of Thrones pastiche, though. It uses its aping of Westeros as a jumping-off point, quickly mixing new things into the mix and developing from there. It’s not interested in telling the same sort of story Game of Thrones did, rather it’s got kaiju-sized summons that nation-states wield like WMDs, magic crystals that might be poisoning the world, and a faction that wants to free the enslaved underclass that keeps society running. It’s outlandish and bombastic, and, for all its similarities and tone, is a completely different beast in execution than Game of Thrones.
I think there’s a lot of merit to being willing to shamelessly copy something and then elaborate from there. Star Wars took ideas from Dune and The Hidden Fortress and built out something totally different; Stranger Things is ET and The Goonies and a host of other 80s movies rolled into one but telling a new story; Tolkien used the trappings of various mythologies as a starting point to weave his epics, and in turn, laid the foundation for basically every high fantasy story since. I can see a criticism of Final Fantasy XVI for being too much like Game of Thrones, but I think that’s part of the fun. We’ve seen Game of Thrones, so why not take those elements, mix them in with a bunch of other things, and see where it goes? The game starts with the familiar and goes somewhere different, and, gotta say, it’s a very fun direction.
Essays, Not Rants! 