It's only now, as the chaos of E3 is starting to settle, that you might be asking yourself "What was that Final Fantasy game that Square showed before they revealed the FFVII remake? What was the deal with that?" Square-Enix has released more information about World of Final Fantasy than the trailer covered.
When they say "World of Final Fantasy" they really mean it -- characters from every game that has ever sported the brand name, including the Tactics and Crystal Chronicles spinoffs, will appear here (except the ones from those Game Boy games that were actually Mana and SaGa games retitled). But you don't play as any of them. Instead you'll play as either the chibi boy or the chibi girl who wander into Grimoire, the land where all this takes place, and your main task will be to battle and befriend monsters from the FF series, then raise them.
The game's director, Hiroki Chiba, said World of Final Fantasy is aiming at a younger audience than traditional Final Fantasy games do. Chiba says the recent games in the series that have tried to look as realistic as possible are alienating children, and that a more fantastical art style is necessary to pull them into the fanbase. It's disappointing to hear Chiba equates maturity with photorealism (it's this kind of thinking that created the
Animation Age Ghetto) and I feel my hopes of ever getting another Final Fantasy like #9 have been dashed.
From this distance it sounds like something most hardcore fans can ignore, but it's not like all kiddie games are bad. The reviews will eventually tell us if World of Final Fantasy is a world we would enjoy.
