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Final Fantasy VII retrospective, the game that killed Squaresoft
- Thread starter Canis lupus
- Start date
It makes me really sad that Spirits Within ruined them... I really loved that movie. 
Though on wiki, it says that apparently Spirits ruining them stopped the merger from happening earlier? Sounds like Enix backed off when Square lost the money and didn't get back on board for a few years.
Though on wiki, it says that apparently Spirits ruining them stopped the merger from happening earlier? Sounds like Enix backed off when Square lost the money and didn't get back on board for a few years.
OldKentuckyShark
Member
I don't know if Final Fantasy 7 contributed to the down fall of the company, but if it did I think it was worth it. FF7 was a great game, and it was my introduction to RPGs.
Northeastmonk
Gold Member
I read it. But FF7 and theories are BS. I only list games after because I can't say anything good about Square since those years.
TacticalFox88
Banned
GhaleonQ
Member
It is weird, though, that Stanton makes his argument but says the Playstation 1 (and, what, Wonderswan?) games of Squaresoft were its golden period.
I do think Final Fantasy VII (my 2nd least favorite entry now that XIV is fixed and XIII exists) was the inflection point for their plummet. I'd like to think my point (which I won't back up with evidence here because it's Sunday, dang it) is more complex: that Squaresoft leveraged its resources in service of nonsense.
That era of Squaresoft, though filled with good games (Final Fantasy IX is 1 of my 3 favorite video games and I've defended many of these against harsh criticism), is packed with style encroaching on substance. Front Mission 2 had crippling loading issues, Einhander is super-simple though atmospheric, I can't believe he mentioned Xenogears at all, Parasite Eve is the movie-light novel version of Vagrant Story, Another Mind is a visual novel, and almost all of their 1999 games are, if I'm harsh, incredibly basic but aesthetically marvelous. What is Chrono Cross if not Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Style? There's often less underneath the surface than there was in their Super Famicom days. It's because they were of a piece with Final Fantasy VII, not that they were pure until Final Fantasy VII changed everything.
Stanton largely makes the point that it's the leveraging of and focus on greater resources, period, that doomed them. He's confused the West and East, clearly. Squaresoft didn't just have oversized ideas. They had dumb ideas. Level-5 racks up a ton of expenses with merchandise, licensing other companies' properties, and pushing aesthetics. Are they a disaster? No. Their strategy works when they had great ideas like Inazuma/Lightning 11. It doesn't work when they had dumb ideas, like Gundam Age or Ni No Kuni/2nd Country.
...
...On the other hand, one could just as easily dismiss his argument by looking at it (from, "Looked at simply as a set of RPG systems" on) and saying, "Oh, it sounds like he just wants a Tales Of game."
tornjaw
Member
Just what happened to the creator of arguably the greatest gaming franchise of the time that he made THIS?
_poster.jpg/220px-Final_Fantasy_The_Spirits_Within_(2011_film)_poster.jpg)
I believe that if we had gotten Advent Children at that time instead of Spirits Within, Square would look very, very different today.
I think people are just trying to say that it brought us games like FF_ therefore I wouldn't blame it for starting Squares downfall.
Sorry to hear that.
RedAssedApe
Banned
spirits within is actually better now than i remember it being. i think its actually held up alright.
mugurumakensei
Member
FFVII being the beginning of Square's overly large budgets doesn't discount that for many it was the golden age of Square.
It just says FFVII began Square's foray into big budget risky products.
I'm not sure what the argument is here. Did he select FF VII because of its focus on "cinematic" storytelling? Other FF titles before it already did that. Is it the FMVs? In that way you could also argue it was the CD medium that killed them. Just the Western success? That seems like a flawed argument.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
I read it, but it's hard when you say it's golden period and then say it's a downfall at the same time. Heavy narrative games, I can love them just fine, but really I love FF7, but not FFXIII, but the last paragraphs distinctively tying it all in saying "murderous" when thinking how that 16 year old game did FFXIII in. Man, goddamn modern SE did that game in.
You can have the same approach but if the quality just isn't there, it just isn't there. FFVII broke the US market but you would have to ignore the narrative heavy previous Final Fantasy games also when taking about somehow FFVII started it all.
This, worded it much better than me.
Lumpy Onion
Member
Probably a better sci-fi movie than the Abrams Star Trek films.
Werewolf Jones
Member
As bad as Spirits Within was it's still probably a better movie than Advent Children.
The cinematic storytelling didn't begin with FF10, merely that by 10 the improvements in technology allowed Squaresoft to bring it closer to how a movie would actually look and present.
The advances in graphics with FF7 and the high emphasis on it in marketing, pushing the FF series to popularity cemented this sort of thinking with developers like Toriyama that 'cinematic, dramatic storytelling' is what the masses want. As a result you have Kitase spewing stuff like how high quality graphics are essential to Final Fantasy even though they would do better to allocate less budget to the graphics.
To say that it was merely 'a difference in camera positions' doesn't quite examine the effects of FF7 enough.
Really, what I want to complain about is how their trailers don't seem to have changed since FF8, where they snap together a bunch of scenes with a love ballad in the background.
mugurumakensei
Member
He selected it cause it was Square's first jump into big budget risks.
This isn't an article about the downfall of the quality of Square's games but about its downfall in business terms.
-Pyromaniac-
Member
Where does the writer of the article get the idea that most FF fans prefer the "cutscene heavy slodge" or whatever he calls it.
Man this article is trying to make a point but it seems like every other sentence he says something that muddies the waters of that point.
Man this article is trying to make a point but it seems like every other sentence he says something that muddies the waters of that point.
It's the budget. Which it says in the article.
to this day i am still flabbergasted how Sakaguchi could even think that this movie would be good and the fans would love it .
with every final fantasy he and his team delivered a masterpiece both in art. music .world and characters every single time and then when it seems that this man truly knows what he is doing he made this travesty and nearly drove the company of a cliff wich Squaresoft never recovered from.
Imean .what went wrong ?
too overconfident ?
Pride?
arrogance ?
Just what happened to the creator of arguably the greatest gaming franchise of the time that he made THIS?
honestly i think the movie is good and half the people calling it shit haven't even seen it
Bronetta
Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
I'd like to vote for the original Final Fantasy, that started the whole legacy and built ridiculous expectations with each sequel and eventually led to that FF movie. DAMMIT SAKAGUCHI WHY'D YOU HAVE TO SAVE SQUARE IN THE 80's!
BishopLamont
Banned
FFXI/FFXII was the beginning of their downfall.
What was the budget of FF VI?
Edit: And how did other series's budgets increase from the 16 bit era to the 32 bit era?
mugurumakensei
Member
I'd need to watch it again. My opinion on it may be biased because I was only 13 years old back then and I expected something FF, but ended up being so disappointed.
The only thing I remember now is that I noticed that the soldiers in the movie looked like those in FF8, that's the only thing I remember.
RedAssedApe
Banned
We should all know by now that lots of people just read what's quoted especially if the title sounds like something they dont want to give clicks to :shrugs:
tiggerkiddo
Member
Interesting article...uhhh I'm not really sure what to think but it does seem after 7, Squaresoft (As any company would that had such a huge success) chose to keep doing games like 7, hoping to continue with the massive success they had but sometimes trying to stick to that formula might eventually come back to bite you again when the quality of your story telling dips and yet you're still pouring millions into it...I think
And just thinking about Spirits Within still royally ticks me off, I just wanted a traditional fantasy story with the Squeenix influence...is that so hard? Stick to what you know, darnit. I mean some might say Advent Children is garbage but I thought it was the perfect and enjoyable popcorn flick.
And just thinking about Spirits Within still royally ticks me off, I just wanted a traditional fantasy story with the Squeenix influence...is that so hard? Stick to what you know, darnit. I mean some might say Advent Children is garbage but I thought it was the perfect and enjoyable popcorn flick.
I don't know if you can blame The Spirits Within on Square's current standings. It was terrible and apparently lead to the Enix merger, but it has nothing to do with why SquareEnix continued to walk down this path of shit. Someone should have realized a long time ago how broken their approach is and corrected course.
The Return of
Banned
To be quite honest, I don't see how anyone could disagree with this. Final Fantasy 7 definitely had huge influences whether good or bad upon the next decisions the company made. I don't see why people are bringing up SquareEnix games in here either.
Non sense. FFVII was a rousing success.Bad decisions that followed have nothing to do with the game.Also , FFX was a major success as well. Personally, I think SE is fully capable of making a game that can surpass VII sales and de-throne it.
They can but will they ? we'll see.
They can but will they ? we'll see.
I don't necessarily agree with the article as many companies(including square) seemed to thrive with big budget games on PSX and PS2. It's the transition to HD that's killing them. I do find it frustrating though that the majority of people commenting haven't read the article at all.
Pinko Marx
Banned
So if I'm reading the article right, the author is saying that post FF7 Square became a victim of its own success. As in, the success of FF7 lead to many of the stupid decisions that caused Squeenix to be what it is today.
Part of me agrees with it, but the other part of me says that Square was already on that before before FF7 even came around.
FFVI is basically FFVII minus the technology behind it. It shares a lot of the same sort of design, story telling, art philosophies behind it, it was just made in a time before 3D graphics were popular.
Part of me agrees with it, but the other part of me says that Square was already on that before before FF7 even came around.
FFVI is basically FFVII minus the technology behind it. It shares a lot of the same sort of design, story telling, art philosophies behind it, it was just made in a time before 3D graphics were popular.
There is nothing to read, the article is based on a faulty premise anyway.
FFVII success -> We tried movies and failed at them -> square soft into square enix -> FF13(yet again, as if we don't know that the game is bad by now)
He blames the cinematic focus of the games for their failure...you couldn't be more far from logical.He also doesn't acknowledge anything between VII and XIII...You have got PHENOMENAL games in between.
RedAssedApe
Banned
Look at what Naughty Dog is saying about how they wasted a lot of time and energy = money when they scrapped all of their previous work and started from scratch.
They burned a ton of money developing Crystal Tools and I believe they aren't even using it for Versus. Square should have just licensed Unreal engine like everyone else
They burned a ton of money developing Crystal Tools and I believe they aren't even using it for Versus. Square should have just licensed Unreal engine like everyone else
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Poor management is what is killing them.
12 wasn't too bad.
I agree with most of this except I would say FF8+FF9+ the movie did that
Are people even reading this article? Even if you don't read the article from the excerpt and the thread title, it's not saying FF7 is the last good game. It started a whole new way of developing, in this case huge budget and at the time AAA development. From that point on it was no going back and every single mainline title henceforth would also require a budget and a development style/method that matched FF7 if not bigger. It started a trend in the company and the article is giving us an angle that is saying "Did SE doom themselves by doing so?"
The Return of
Banned
The article says FF7 is the beginning of the end for SquareSOFT
Pretty strange argument. Sure FFVII indirectly had effects on Square that led to its decline, in a way that all successes may usher in bad practices and long-term rot. But there were a lot more proximate causes that destroyed them that have been cited than the tenuous FFVII connection.
tiggerkiddo
Member
Haha, you expect people to take the time and read a short article?
Poor management is what is killing the industry regardless of the company.
I expect people to be smart posters and be relevant to the article and not just spout out some random stuff. If you don't read the article and engage in a conversation that actually pertains to the topic at hand, why bother posting?
thats alot of post that goes around like that lol
kaiju
Member
The problem with Spirits Within is that it really has nothing to do with Final Fantasy, at least from what I can remember. I think if the FF franchise-tag was removed they might have gotten away with a mediocre CGI movie.
I always wondered if the Spirits Within plot was considered for the next Final Fantasy game at the time. And if so, if the plot would have made a better game with more fully fleshed out characters and more room to tell the story.
I'd imagine some of those bad decisions must be influenced by FFVII. It'd be an odd company that didn't refer to their greatest success when developing future plans.
Quite enjoyed the article if only for the unconstrained love apparent when discussing the game itself. The theory itself is probably a bit too speculative though, as the author admits.
Pinko Marx
Banned
SE doomed themselves by thinking that it was the AAA budget and graphics that made 7 so popular and trying to chase that dream.