Hype: The Last Story

Hey, guys, have you heard about Mistwalker Studios' The Last Story? Well, I'll tell you about it anyway!

The other day I was browsing through my RSS reader and found a story about The Last Story. The writer advised the readers to keep an eye out for this game. I quickly realized why; this was the next great Final Fantasy.

If you're anything like me (or most hardcore Final Fantasy fans) you may feel like the last great FF game was IX. The recent ones, though more technologically advanced, never really reach that epicness that once characterized the series. This is because IX was the last FF game in which Hironobu Sakaguchi was directly involved. He assumed the role of executive producer for following iterations and eventually just quit Square-Enix altogether.

Square-Enix has been milking the franchise ever since Sakaguchi went to establish Mistwalker in 2004 and the result is just not the same. Chocobos and moogles alone do not make a Final Fantasy. While I was inanely hyped over Final Fantasy XIII (wow, 13 already?) the more I learned about it, the more I lost interest. Today it's all the way down to 0. I really don't care about it anymore. I felt I was destined to play pointless casual games for the rest of my life.

This announcement, however, fills me with joy. The prodigal son is back. The REAL Final Fantasy will rise from the ashes like it just used a Phoenix Down. Let me tell you why. Mistwalker has made it very obvious their intention is to write a proverbial love letter to the players who made them famous and felt like they had been abandoned.

The first sign is the title; a direct synonym of the former. Final = Last. Story = Fantasy. Even the title logo uses an art stile very similar to titles of the FF series. Every true fan knows the tale of a desperate video-game company that after a series of unsuccessful games decided to blow its entire (remaining) budget in one (ironically titled) final attempt before they closed their doors for good, and how it not only saved them from bankruptcy but set a standard for the genre. Sakaguchi has made various statements that he is treating this game "as if it were his last" even though all signs point to this game being a huge success.

The second sign is that the game is a Wii exclusive. Back in the day all FF games were Nintendo exclusives on the NES, Game Boy and SNES (Later they jumped to the Playstation apparently because of a perceived need for CD-ROM technology). Even though the Wii has limited graphics the trailers already look amazing, and many critics hail it as the best-looking game for the console.

The third sign was recently revealed. Mistwalker has confirmed that Nobuo Uematsu is composing the music for this game. For those of you who only play FPS games; Uematsu is the musical genius behind all final fantasy games up until IX and a collaborator in most later entries (even as a freelancer after he quit Square-Enix on 2004… hmmm).

The only missing component is the character design. It appears neither Yoshitaka Amano nor Tetsuya Nomura are involved in this project. This worries me because I'm not particularly crazy about the characters I've seen in the trailer. To me they just look like a squad of generic anime characters; the one thing that discourages me from playing other JRPGs (this could be in part due to the original Japanese dialogue). I hope these characters turn out to be as interesting as their predecessors.

Now that we've settled that this game is indeed the Final Fantasy Messiah, let's move on to what's new. The game will feature both online cooperative and competitive play, a first in the "series". Some say this will be a lot like Monster Hunter's online play, which is awesome except for the matchmaking. The combat appears to be very tactical, with everything happening in real-time and players ducking for cover or hiding from large foes.

Besides that, there's no telling what else will change until I see it in action, but I would rather they weren't that obvious with the similarities. I'm afraid that one problem with the excessive subliminal links to the FF series is that this could bring forth the curse of the sequel. Besides, players may be constantly bewildered by any new item, job/class and spell naming conventions (and a serious lack of chocobos).

I haven't been this exited about a video game since the Dreamcast days. I'm very glad some of the minds behind the some of the greatest videogames ever are stepping away from an old, beat-up franchise and starting anew, knowing that if they stick to the original "recipe" the fans will respond, and I certainly hope the success of this game makes more great artists realize this before it's too late.