Final Fantasy XIII, the latest iteration of Square Enix’s long running and celebrated Japanese RPG series, has come under flac in some quarters for its linearity. In one of the more balanced reviews of the game, Edge admitted that once the game hits its stride at about the 25 hour mark it has some of the most interesting gameplay mechanics in the series, although these are drip fed into the game at such sparse intervals it sometimes seems like your playing the mother of all tutorials, and by which point all but the most dedicated of the series’ fans still have it’s undivided attention. Edge calls this a ‘disaster of pacing’ and in many ways this is correct. Fans of the western-style RPG, a genre that has peaked in the last five years or so, have used this as an opportunity to criticise the old fashioned Japanese RPG (JRPG) for its out dated structures. Responses from Japan that western gamers just ‘don’t understand’ the first half of the game haven’t exactly helped break the cultural stalemate. The argument is that western RPGs are more modern because they are based on freedom of player choice; often including narratives with multiple endings based on moral choices and open sandbox environments – all things that can be seen in abundance in some of the most successful recent iterations of the genre: Fallout 3, Oblivion, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. Meanwhile JRPGs present the player with a single well-told story that does not accommodate player choice and ends at a single point (when the credits roll). For some this makes JRPGs closer to a static artform like a book or a movie rather than the interactive medium of video games, which should be based on player agency. Of course it is tempting to schematise this into a crude analogy of two differing ideological structures. Whilst western games emerge from a socio-political tradition of democracy and individualism, Japanese games stem from a more rigidly structured society that emphasises conformity over self expression.
However in narrative terms this simply doesn’t wash. The Final Fantasy series has always offered a narrative that pits the heroic individual against the status quo – whether that takes the form of the Shinra Corporation draining the planet’s life force in Final Fantasy VII, the oppressive military establishment in Final Fantasy VIII or the manipulative religious institution in Final Fantasy X – and Final Fantasy XIII is no exception to this tradition. The game is set on Cacoon, a floating shell with an entire world built on its inner surface, constructed and maintained by the god-like Fal’cie, who benignly care for their human charges – although there is undoubtedly a dark purpose behind their actions. Scarring Cacoon’s surface is a gaping hole, a remnant of the War of Transgression with Pulse, when the creature Ragnorak almost succeeded in breaching it. Pulse is the world above which Cacoon floats, which despite having never been glimpsed by a single soul on Cacoon, is feared and reviled by its entire populace.
The game begins with the seaside town of Bodhum on Cacoon being ruthlessly purged by the government after its inhabitants come into contact with a reviled Fal’Cie from Pulse, which had been lying dormant for centuries. The claim that they are being ‘relocated to Pulse’ is actually a cover for a massacre. At the beginning of the game we join our protagonists on the Purge train, and although many of them don’t know one another yet, they all become instrumental in leading a rebellion. After a series of events that leads them all into contact with the same Pulse Fal’Cie that caused the Purge in the first place, they are transformed into l’Cie, human thralls that the Fal’cie choose to carry out a specific mission called a ‘focus’. As l’Cie they are granted powerful magic and consequently become complete outcasts from human society. What’s more if they don’t fulfil their focus within the allotted time they will be turned into monstrous Cie’th, but unfortunately the vision they all share isn’t clear on whether their focus is to destroy or save Cacoon. The characters are divided in their decisions. Whilst the girlish Vanille and Sazh (a blaxploitation-esque character with a baby chocobo living in his afro) decide to ignore their new destiny and run away, Lightning (a former soldier) refuses to submit to her fate and rashly sets off to bring down the Fal’Cie and destroy Cacoon, with the young boy Hope tagging along hoping she can aid him in his misguided quest for revenge. Meanwhile Snow, who inadvertently caused the death of Hope’s mother, remains optimistic and strikes off to save Cacoon spurred on by his fiancée’s last words. The motivation behind their actions is explored in this first half, which concerns itself with slowly bringing the disparate characters together into a unified group. This is a very different approach to the standard structure of picking up allies as you go along and, thanks also to some of the series’ deepest characterisation yet (although still not totally free of common JRPG character types), the result is a combat team built of meaningful relationships that the player can invest in emotionally.
A massive part of the genre, something shared by both Japanese and western RPGs, are the town locations; places where the player can take some time out from the battle to shop, trade, and pick up side quests from NPCs (‘non player characters’ – basically anyone who speaks to you in game who isn’t under your control). However in Final Fantasy XIII all of the shopping is done ‘online’ through save points and there are no towns or NPCs, just an endless narrow road that you are corralled down with very little chance for exploration. If this sounds pretty bleak, then it is in a way, but I also believe this linearity is a daring example of the game’s form reflecting its content – even to the point of overhauling the traditions of the series and the expectations of the audience. Reviled by the people and hunted by the government as hated outsiders and revolutionaries, the five protagonists are hopeless fugitives, inexorably forced towards the destiny that is their focus. This is the reason they don’t go to any towns or meet any people; they can’t. It’s not that it was too ‘difficult’ for the development team to construct realistic towns in such breathtaking graphics, as some have suggested. In short the first 25 hours of the game are successful in placing you in the shoes of the protagonists and making you feel the same sense of frustration that they are feeling in the story, through the gameplay.
This also goes someway towards explaining the game’s auto-combat system, where in fights a single press of the action button stocks a series of context specific actions tailored towards exploiting the enemy’s weaknesses. Of course it’s possible to go into the menus and select your own actions, but it’s highly ill-advised as the fights are normally quite difficult and unlike other games in the series your enemy doesn’t bother to wait for you to make your selection before pummelling you into a bloody pulp. Whilst many have seen this as a concession to the worst elements of casual gaming, where the challenge is diluted down to accommodate a wider audience, usually resulting in less buttons to press, this feature is vital to maintain the dramatic pace of the fights. Eventually the paradigm system becomes fully available, allowing you to train each character in a series of roles – the magic casting ravager, the damage dealing commando, the healing medic – and to switch between them throughout the battle. If the game truly was appealing to casual gamers the fights wouldn’t be as difficult as they are, and also the paradigm system is a highly original addition to the series and adds a level of interaction that was removed by the auto-battle system.
After 25 hours of being funnelled down the undoubtedly beautiful corridors of Cacoon, you finally find the inevitable airship and make your way to Pulse. Almost instantly the game opens up. Pulse is made up of wide vistas and open play areas filled with huge beasts that seem to be playing out the process of natural selection, rather than just being there for you to kill. The game finally allows you to explore and offers side quests in the form of ‘stone missions’, where basically you take on the failed focus of a l’Cie, which normally requires you to hunt down a mark for a grand reward, ala Final Fantasy XII. The most impressive thing here, though, is the way the game’s dramatic new openness reflects the character’s own broadened horizons. As citizens of Cacoon the larger part of your group will have been raised on propaganda that insisted Pulse to be a hell on earth, and likewise for the past 25 hours you as a gamer have only been on Cacoon, so you share the character’s sense of revelation (not to mention relief) as the environment, as well as the gameplay, opens up. Rather than being criticised for its linearity the game should be appreciated for its daring to do something new with formal structure. After all this is what embodies the recent entries to the Final Fantasy series, with Final Fantasy X scrapping the age-old character levelling system in favour of the ingenious sphere grid and Final Fantasy XII’s revolutionary gambit system, which has recently been copied so thoroughly by Dragon Age (perhaps demonstrating that the western RPG isn’t always as original as it claims to be).
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