I have had a love-hate relationship with Fabula Nova
Crystallis (the Final Fantasy XIII series) since the first title was released.
The battle system was superb (perhaps one of the best in any JRPG) and the
overall story was "good enough", but the way in which the story was
delivered left a lot to be desired, there wasn't enough character development,
and the world felt like a nothing more than a long corridor. Final Fantasy
XIII-2 was more enjoyable. It kept the great battle system, threw in a
nonsensical yet scientifically sound story (see Everett's Many Worlds
interpretation of quantum physics), and characters were treated more
respectfully than they had in the previous title. The most recent iteration,
Final Fantasy: Lightning Returns, rewards the faithful to the series with what
is inarguable not only the worst title in the Fabula Nova Crystallis saga, but
possibly the worst Final Fantasy title in existence with the exception of that
wonderful iPad thing Final Fantasy: All the Bravest.
Final Fantasy: Lightning Returns, opens up with a sequence
in the city of Yusnaan. The world is ending as a mist-like dark substance
called Chaos consumes more of the world and its residents. In Yusnaan, Snow,
one of the main characters in the first title and a solid secondary character
in the second title, is presiding over a never-ending festivity. People are
dancing and eating their pains away at the end of the world, and Snow - The
Patron - is the one who lords over them all. This is when Lightning, the
protagonist of the first title and a secondary character in the second title,
comes in. She walks into Snow's palace and begins collecting the souls of those
present. Lightning, it is explained, has
been chosen by God as the Savior. Her mission is to save people by collect as
many souls as she can so that she can bring them with her to the new world that
God is creating. And she wants to save Snow.
Snow doesn't see eye to eye with Lightning, so he fights
her. This leads to a chase through the palace, where at the end Snow reveals
that his soul has been consumed by the chaos. He walks into a swirling vortex
of the dark mist and disappears. When Lightning tries to follow, she is
confronted by a girl called Lumina. She teases Lightning, says that she is
"not one of God's regular lackeys", and unleashes a beast to destroy
the Savior. By the time Lightning takes care of the beast, the palace is on
high alert and she is forced to flee.
This is the story premise as presented in the opening
moments of the game. it has the makings of a great story. It has a sinner who
has been redeemed and reborn as Savior and Chosen of God and a formerly
optimistic hero who always saw the best in people who has been consumed by
darkness and succumbed to sin. The fact that they knew each other and that Snow
was set to marry Lightning's sister, Serah, adds to the drama. Finally, it had a
manipulative mysterious figure bent on stopping God's Savior. If Square-Enix
had followed design techniques that it has used in the previous Final Fantasy
titles, it would have been a marvelous story.
However, for this title, they
throw everything out the window to try new stuff, and it ruins the premise of
the narrative and the game experience.
Once Lightning escapes from the palace, she is transported
to "The Ark", a moon created by God to serve as Lightning's home
base. There, Hope (a character who everyone hates) tells Lightning that she
needs to save as many souls as she can, and sends her on her way to save
everyone. The game then gives players an open world. In this open world,
Lightning gets to run around running errands for people. She can do things like
hunt goblins and listen to their stories. Doing these meaningless errands,
apparently, is what saves people. Never mind that she has the power to
forcefully take the souls of people, as shown in the introduction, instead she
decides to nonchalantly help them with their daily tasks. One such example (one
of the most tedious ones) can be seen in the city of Luxerion, where a city
employee asks Lightning to check that all the clocks in the city are in working
order. Why does God's Savior need to do this? To "save the soul of the
person". Nearly every single side quest / board request takes away from
the urgency presented in the introduction. The world is ending! You need to
save souls! You do it by finding a book they lost.
What?
But these are side quests. What of the main quest line? Because
of the open world, the main story suffers as well. The story that started out
so magnificently with Lightning chasing Snow is quickly put on the back burner.
Lightning is asked to investigate a string of mysterious murders taking place
in a neighboring city. The murders are linked to some fanatic order who
worships - ironically - the Goddess of Death, Etro. Those who played Final
Fantasy XIII-2 will remember the name, as it was the name of the goddess who
chose Lightning as her champion.
Because the world is open, rather than having one main
quest, the game presents players with five main quests. The first one is the
string of murders. Another quest involves the player helping Sahz recover his
son's soul fragments, while a third quest has the player joining a bandit group
to find a lost relic. A fourth main quest has the player going into the Shrine
of Etro to fight Caius, the main antagonist of Final Fantasy XIII-2 and the
second Final Fantasy enemy to destroy the world.
And what about Snow and Lumina?
At any point during the time given to the player (did I
mention the game has a time limit?) Lightning can return to Yusnaan to fight
Snow. Meanwhile, Lumina just randomly pops in and out while Lightning is fetching
sunglasses for some lovesick guy with a crush on a street performer.
What do these five "main" quests have to do with
each other? Not much, really. Are they related in any way to Lightning's
purpose of saving souls? Only loosely. The way in which it is explained, the
people who Lightning helps in these five main quests - Noel Kreiss, Snow
Villers, Sazh Katzroy, Caius Ballard, and Oerba Yun Fang, have some sort of
massive internal conflict that must be resolved before the world ends.
Certainly, their concerns and problems are more important
than those of the NPCs giving Lightning side quests. Helping someone to cope
with the burden of protecting the world for five centuries (Snow) or being
enslaved to the will of a thousand minds while being unable to either die or be
saved (Caius) certainly seems more pressing and relevant than having to buy
some drunk guy a fancy bottle of rum (side quest in Yusnaan) or having to find
a lost ball for a kid (side quest in Luxerion), but from the updated premise of
the game (go out there and fetch souls) they are really no different.
By setting the game in an open world, what could have been
an epic story (I use the term 'epic' here in the literary sense) becomes at
best a thin veneer used to mask what is, essentially, a series of fetch quests.
Hey, at least the battle system still rocks.
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