Final Fantasy XVI

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British Fantasy Sixteen

Originally posted on Dreamwidth, 2023-07-16.

Yes, it’s another FF16 post. I’m effectively in the final stages now: all sidequests are done, just trying to get through marks and chronolith trials to the best of my ability before partaking in the time-honoured Final Fantasy tradition and going off to kill God.

Firstly: I love this game. The dust has yet to settle, but it’s definitely in my top three FF games at the moment. This is mostly because of the characters, who I’ve already gushed about; the characters are always what suck me into a game, and in this case they are all so excellent. The proof that I really like a game always comes when there ends up being a specific person I become obsessed with. That has very much happened on this occasion, and this is my decree: it’s that one guy, the crown prince of Sanbreque.

look at him he’s so sad and so beautiful

Something I’ve been repeatedly asking myself is whether non-British people are getting as much out of this game as I am. The way the characters talk is so British (with the exception of the Waloeders); not just their accents, but all the turns of phrase they use. And those accents and turns of phrase really clearly show the characters’ different positions in society, in terms of both geography and class, which really contributes to the realism of the setting. When those of us who are British engage with the works of large international media franchises, this often involves having to accustom ourselves to US-centric points of reference – and that’s really not the case here. Obviously, British media is consumed around the world, but I think what’s really surprised/impressed me in this instance is the fact that as the game is actually Japanese, a conscious decision must have been made to centre the English version around British linguistic norms rather than US ones (presumably one of many Game of Thrones-inspired development decisions). There are so many subtleties in the script; localisation really has come a long way since “this guy are sick”. (Having said that, I have actually noticed a small handful of typos in the FF16 subtitles – about four or five of them altogether. The day one patch included a “text update”, so I’m assuming these will be fixed in something similar further down the line.)

On the subject of Game of Thrones: yes, FF16 undeniably takes a lot of inspiration from it (bearing in mind that my GoT experience equates to having read the first two books of ASOIAF and having experienced the TV series only by osmosis from [personal profile]lissajous, who is an enormous fan). This was clearly a conscious choice; SE are and should be unapologetic about it. The role of magic and eikons and crystals etc. on the other hand is very much not like GoT, and makes FF16 quite distinct. Another thing not like it is this: while FF16 leans into the warring realms/changing political situations/moral greyness side more than other FFs do (with the potential exception of the Ivalice games – again, I haven’t played Tactics for more than five minutes so can’t comment; FF12 approaches 16 in this respect, but 16 is certainly heavier on it), it does this to a much lighter extent than GoT itself. One of the ways that this comes through is that while ASOIAF/GoT doesn’t have a “main” character as such, here the focus is very clearly on Clive throughout; he is very clearly the central pillar, the “good” character whose morality forms a baseline against which we can evaluate everyone else. (Fortunately, he is indeed a lovely person.) I think this Clive-centredness is the cause of some of the criticism that’s been made re other characters, particularly female characters, seeming undeveloped. Really, it’s that every character except Clive is undeveloped. We inhabit Clive throughout the game; we play as him and only him from beginning to end (barring a couple of extremely short sections); parts where he doesn’t appear are told exclusively through cutscenes that we don’t get to interact with. We aren’t given the chance to know what it’s like being any other characters, and consequently they always feel frustratingly out of reach. When we hear about their backstories, it’s necessarily done through telling rather than showing, which is obviously dissatisfying. As I understand it, FF15 received similar criticism, but even in that game the fact that the party is pretty much always the same four guys allows us to get somewhat familiar with Ignis, Prompto and Gladio; this is reinforced in battle, where we can clearly see the part they play in the action and how they interact with Noctis. In FF16 the combat, like the story, is very Clive-focused; when there are other party members around, you can clearly see that they’re doing something, but it never seems to have any real effect (with best boy Torgal being the exception). The battles do, however, look so cool; so many, as it were, cinematic clashes.

Having said the complexity isn’t on Game of Thrones level, there’s certainly a lot of lore to keep track of, as evidenced by the fact that there are two characters whose main role is keeping Clive updated on who’s who and what’s going on. I think this is the main thing holding me back from writing fic: I’ve written two stories and have ideas for a couple more, and all of them are pretty short, simple missing scenes. I feel like I’m going to have to do a lot of curation of the lore before writing anything that moves even slightly further from what we see in the actual game. As I love this game so much, though, I’m happy to do it.

My Final Fantasy phase began in late 2019/early 2020, so this is the first time a mainline game has come out while I’ve been interested in the franchise. It’s been interesting, and often frustrating, to experience people’s reactions to it in real time. With anything as big as this there are bound to be takes ranging from “it’s the best game in the world” to “it’s the worst thing Square Enix has ever made”. There are already so many useless webpages dedicated to this game: so-called walkthroughs that were rushed out and don’t include the actually important information, supposed lore drops that are actually just paraphrases of banal things a voice actor said in an interview once and which anyone could extrapolate from the game itself after five minutes of thought, and pointless clickbaity opinion pieces of no substance. Every games journalism outlet is required to have an article called something like “is this even a Final Fantasy game?¿?”, inevitably based on the conceit that a true Final Fantasy game has no right to deviate from arbitrary gameplay elements last seen approximately 30 years ago. The answer to this question is: of course it’s a fucking Final Fantasy game, it’s a game that Square Enix has released as part of the Final Fantasy series. (Also, all these webpages are like 50% advertising … love having to read an “article” when a third of my phone screen is covered by a fixed-position, irremovable advert and Chrome keeps freezing because of how heavy the page is. Bring back Neoseeker plain text walkthroughs I beg you.)

On having two faves, at least right now

I’ve done that fairly rare thing where I fixate on a character, and I’m now fucking in love with Dion Lesage. To provide some hard evidence for this: at the time of writing, I have watched fifteen YouTube videos in the last six days, and thirteen of these were repeated rewatches of the same three or four clips of his appearances in the game. (Of the other two, one was for work, and the other was a Barbie teaser.) Yesterday morning I counted how many Dion pictures I had retweeted over the same period: it was over 70 (more than a tenth of all tweets I have posted since I last wiped my account, which I think was … this January). At some point during this rampage I also resurrected an old and empty Tumblr blog for the sole purpose of reblogging Dion pictures, after not really having used Tumblr since 2017. For most of the past week I have been spontaneously waking up at about five and immediately reaching for my phone so I can look at Dion pictures, after having stayed up late looking at Dion pictures. Sometimes I think of him and I just can’t help smiling, god, he’s so lovely and tragic and beautiful, I can’t believe this character exists in a video game on my PS5.

The last time I became this obsessed with a character was in early 2021, and that character was, of course, Auron. I tend to be quite serial in my fixations, and on Friday I started worrying that Dion was actually going to replace Auron in my affections. This is something I’m really not ready for; partly, although by no means wholly, because I’m halfway through writing a 300k+ fic that is mostly about him. I listened to the playlist where I shove music vaguely related to said fic and was consoled by the fact that every song still reminded me of him, and that my brain still spontaneously starts generating scene ideas as soon as I leave it to idle. I also came to the conclusion that the things I like about Dion are also things I like about Auron (bearing in mind that in Auron’s case, some of them at least are more headcanons than actual Irrefutable Truth).

To wit (very slight/vague FF16 spoilers up to Bahamut):

Also, in the late stages of the game where Dion is at the hideaway with all the lads and always stands apart from everyone else leaning against the wall and pretending he’s not involved: I have never seen anyone act more like Auron in my life, god damn it.

While I’m fairly flexible regarding people’s headcanons and shipping preferences for Auron, it’s been a bit of a surprise to discover that I’m very strongly on the canon-only side in Dion’s case. There is a popular non-canon ship involving him, and I am just not interested. I’ve got his AO3 tag in a tab on my phone and am currently refreshing it several times a day, but I’ve had to exclude all “/” relationships involving parties other than his canon love interest. I think my strong feelings about this are motivated by the fact that Dion is the first FF character to be canonically in a M/M relationship: I’ve perhaps subconsciously decided that the rarity of said relationship means it must be protected at all costs. Or maybe it’s just the first few days of being very intense about a new blorbo, and I’ll mellow over time, but we’ll see how things pan out.

(I’m also very much not on board with the prevailing trend of assuming he’s a bottom, calling him a twink, etc. – just because he’s blond and slightly shorter than his partner! Like sorry, have you seen this man’s presence on the battlefield? He gives orders like he’s made for it. Actually, now that I’m using Tumblr [i.e. refreshing the #dion lesage tag several times a day and visiting no other page on the entire website], I’m seeing a few text posts about him and … god, every opinion people have about this man is wrong. This is why I don’t do Tumblr fandom, I guess.)

(Also while I’m ranting, this is the first time I’ve had a blond fave and I was never previously aware of the extent to which people don’t realise adjectives that inflect for gender actually do exist in the English language. Sigh.)

It’s so impossible to tell whether my affection for Dion and for this game in general will last; just as it’s impossible to know how active the fandom will be and what directions it’ll go in. If I do end up having two primary faves simultaneously, that’ll be a new experience for me and will probably have some sort of as yet undetermined effect on the way I participate in fandom. For now I guess I just have to be content that I’m this impressed with the game, and try to enjoy other people’s expressions of enthusiasm about it while avoiding the haters (by which I mean “people with takes about Dion that I disagree with”).

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