Final Fantasy XVI is the dark twist of the video game

According to the producer, the franchise has always been about conflict”between who has the power and who is used and/or exploited by those privileged few […]. It can be difficult to assign particular ethnicities to the antagonist or protagonist without unleashing public preconceptions, soliciting unwarranted speculation, and ultimately fuel the controversy“.

To undermine this last point, however, are above all the words of Yoshida himself, according to which the team that worked on the title wanted players to concentrate “less on the outward appearance of the characters” and they saw them more as “complex and diverse people by nature, background, beliefs, personalities and motivations”. It’s bizarre to argue that in a world created by Square Enix characters of color cannot be portrayed with the same complexity and richness of nuances with which the white ones are made. And despite Final Fantasy has included characters of color in the series in the past, for the moment they have not yet taken part in the more complex stories that the company hopes to realize.

The question of classification

Final Fantasy XVI is not the only title in the series to have received the ratings Ripe by the Entertainment software rating board, the organ that classifies the video games that come out in North America, but it is the first in the main trend. Also in Europe, where the system in force is the Pan European Game Information (Pegi), the game is indicated as suitable for adults only. In the past Yoshida has declared that the classification gave the team greater creative freedom, allowing them to explore the complicated themes in which they were interested. “We don’t want to create something violent – explains -, we want to create something that feels real“.

But it’s not just about violence. One of the characters, Cid – a fan favorite of the series, usually presented as a geek engineer – is a heavy smoker, a detail that according to the Esrb would not allow the game to be evaluated as suitable for everyone. Even a party would be scrutinized. Imagine this scene, says Yoshida: the characters are celebrating after a victory and raise the mugs filled with wine; to get a rating Teenit would be necessary to tell the regulator that “that’s not wine: it’s grape juice that everyone drinks after battle“.

But the goal isn’t to create a game that revels in moral gloom or squalor. Although Square Enix has focused heavily on the new title’s gloomy image in its presentations, Yoshida says that Final Fantasy XVI And full of hope. From the demo, however, this aspect is difficult to grasp. Fighting at night in a castle full of enemies, and then joining a merciless battle that has reached its climax certainly does not convey optimism. But according to Yoshida, it’s a promise of personal growth, which doesn’t differ much from what he would like future developers to do with the series: “Whoever is doing Final Fantasy XVII, it probably won’t be us“, he points out. The game, therefore, is one lesson for future creators. “More than just showing players that the series can have more potential, it’s about showing future developers that they can do whatever they want.”, Yoshida says.

This article originally appeared on Wired US.