#disposable pawns in the game of the gods to be used and discard as if nothing

[in-fair-verona-we-set-our-scene]

I do think Withers has a really subtle background character arc in bg3. Because at the start it is really clear he doesn't want to be here and he's being forced to clean up his mess by Helm and probably Ao. He doesn't really care either. Everything ends so nothing really matters, he'd like to go back to his paperwork now please.

Except he's stuck babysitting a bunch of traumatized dumbasses as they stumble into dealing with the most recent bad idea of his three fuck-up disappointments. So he brings them back when they die for a pittance, lets them pay for some vengeful ghosts to come back as flesh and blood to wreak bloody vengeance on the Absolute, and starts to... comment, on what's going on, as he follows them on their adventure.

Next thing you know Withers is like, doing things unprompted. He refuses to bring back Alfira (or Quil) but that's an act of compassion, keeping the poor girl from the Urge and letting her rest, his actual duty as a god of death. He tells Arabella to follow her destiny and does that thing to make her grief go away which honestly freaks me out but seems to be him trying to help her. He shows up at Moonrise and prompts us to consider why the Dead Three would want a bunch of soulless illithids that would give them no power, getting us to think of the big picture.

And by the end (especially if you do a resist!Durge playthrough) Withers is actively interfering and seems genuinely invested! He brings Durge back from the dead, free of their father! He encourages us before the final fight with the Netherbrain! He's real fucking smug that the Dead Three lost when he never seemed to care about the destruction they caused before! He throws a reunion party and many of his lines are genuinely touching or kind! Especially if a companion died permanently! He has tea with Gale's mom and Tara! He's like, socializing and shit! Yes, everything is temporary and we all die, but there's great beauty in fighting for that precious time and living it to the fullest!

Basically Wither's character arc is this meme, all because Helm made him go outside and touch grass.

[lumi-klovstad-games]

Okay. You know what? I'm gonna defend my argument here. I respect your stance, but I do believe in what I wrote. I will take this opportunity to offer a more pointed illustration of why, since I believe it may help someone --anyone, really-- understand my point better lest they think I'm just cruelly beating on a game they like, even if that person isn't necessarily you (obviously, I hope you'll at least do me the courtesy of hearing me out, but I don't require it. You have one life so you do you.)

First off, again I say: if you enjoyed FF16, I'm happy for you. Truly. Genuinely. My criticisms of it are not meant to instill hatred for the game, but point out where I believe it requires significant improvement.

That being said, read on if you're interested. If not, well, I'll still freely admit to being overly harsh with my original wording before you leave.

Kingdom Hearts is actually a good example for how Square has, in the past, taken stories in a Dark As Fuck direction without trying to edge into becoming Warhammer Fantasy Grimdark. Now, obviously, FF16 isn't exactly that, but it's a clear push in that direction, and one that, as a Final Fantasy 16 thing works well, but I do not wish to see it define the series going forward, as Square-Enix execs have implied they plan to.

Kingdom Hearts is dark as hell, and here's some VERY short descriptions of how:

The villain of the first KH game is literally a guy who mind rapes a child into giving up his body to what amounts to a demonic possession and has genocided multiple worlds because he thinks that's the way the universe should be.

The villain of the second game was willing to kill as many people as possible just to create and acquire the Macguffin he thought might enable him to feel emotions again and had no regard for anyone outside of himself.

The villain of the saga overall wanted to create an endless war between every world in the multiverse because he thought that the resulting never ending butchery would cause "growth" and "innovation" and "answer questions he had about the universe", and used all the prior bad guys in the series as disposable pawns.

Final Fantasy VI literally blew up the planet and made the last several hours of the game's plot AND the final boss not about saving the world, but avenging it.

Final Fantasy X was about a Theocratic State using their Religion's dogma to lock the entire world in a never ending spiral of death, cultivating heroes like crops and casually discarding them by fooling them into pointlessly sacrificing themselves because that gave people false hope and reinforced their faith in the establishment.

Final Fantasy XIII was about a literal Murder Cult of Gods who were bored with the world they were ruling over and so used fear and propaganda to try to start a war amongst their followers that would kill everything so they no longer would be "burdened" with looking after "lesser creatures".

Square has ALWAYS done dark storytelling. You'd be hard pressed to find a Square game that hasn't gone into genuinely grim, disturbing territory. But it's never been so hamfisted about it. The colors and vibrancy of their worlds have typically contrasted the darkness that lies at the heart of their stories, making that darkness more effective and motivating the player to save the world because they've seen a world full of beauty.

Onto my next point: Square is just as bad as Konami about seeing a game's success or failure and taking entirely the wrong lessons about it. For instance, deciding Infinite Undiscovery, genuinely one of the best JRPGs of its generation, was "just something people clearly didn't want more of" when it failed to meet sales expectations, never mind that they put it exclusively on the worst performing system in Japan at the time (the Xbox 360), and barely marketed it all in regions where Xbox 360 had a bigger foothold. Tellingly, the dev team entirely cut their ties with Square-Enix for good afterwards.

Or, after seeing all the bad customer reviews for Final Fantasy XIII, which remains a front runner for "most divisive game in Final Fantasy history" and deciding that game needed TWO sequels. Admittedly, the sequels both addressed gripes many people had with the original, but that they were greenlit at all was shocking. It did not help that they too still landed to decidedly divided audiences.

This is also the same company that was dead certain that Forspoken was a surefire hit because it was made more "Western Style" (which Square-Enix seems to have developed an obsession with recreating for some reason), when their marquee games like Final Fantasy have traditionally stood out in America for... exactly not being that.

My fear (and a well founded one given how Square-Enix execs have behaved in the past) is that Square-Enix will look at the success of Final Fantasy XVI, and decide, without ever considering the other factors, that it was the literally dark and muted color aesthetic and much more pointedly grimdark tone that was so popular, and continue that trajectory, turning Final Fantasy into something that no longer stands out so well amongst all the other games that are already doing that. Final Fantasy has worked so far partially because it's not "Dark and Edgy" like everybody else.

That is why I want the game to fail. As an individual game, I like it. It's good! But Square-Enix has shown time and time again, for decades now, that they are willing to abort promising IPs, and promote and continue to support unpopular ones, because of mercurial executive reasoning that deliberately misconstrues a game's performance on the market and acquires the wrong take away lesson again and again as they have done for at least 20 years. The only thing that could actually stop that is for the game to fail to a degree that Square-Enix takes a bloody nose (or, crucially, just feels like they have) and washes their hands of the experiment.

It's worth noting that when Square-Enix has backed off an idea in the past, they've historically revisited it a few years later, but it tends to be much better because developer hindsight is often 20/20.

Fortunately, as Square-Enix is a company that delights in routinely setting highly unreasonable sales figures, the game could actually perform quite well and still be regarded as a disappointment. So, it's not as though I'm wishing a Pox on anyone's House here. And so far, it looks like exactly that is happening: it's doing well, just not "Square-Enix Executive Board's Hopes And Dreams" well, because that's not really a reasonable or attainable goal for most games, even a modern Final Fantasy game.

So, if this goes the way I hope it will (and early evidence is suggesting it will), everyone gets what they want. Square-Enix isn't going to "unpublish" FF16, so people who like it still get to enjoy it. Final Fantasy XVI still turns a profit, just not Square-Enix's unreasonably idealized idea of a profit. Square-Enix resultingly backs off making Final Fantasy into a Game of Thrones-toned "Dark Fantasy" series, and hopefully revisits the idea of a Medieval or Renaissance-themed Final Fantasy later, but realizing that a game doesn't have to lack bright colors or have the world be so depressingly bleak to tell a dark as pitch tale.

As for 16's dark as hell aesthetic and tone, I actually do dig it, and wouldn't mind it forming the basis of a spiritual sequel with a new IP; triple-A gaming could always use more of those, after all. And it would permit Square-Enix additional opportunities to be seen as something more than just "the FF and KH company".

Hopefully this didn't come across too harshly. If you read all this and still disagree that's totally fair. You are your own person with your own opinions and I have no interest in trying to force anyone to agree. I did feel laying down my thought process was important and I didn't really do that adequately before, in addition to having opened my argument with harsher word choices than the topic deserved.

Apologies for the long as hell post. Kudos for those who stuck through it all.

Have a potato.

I don't intrinsically hate Final Fantasy XVI, but I need this game to fail as badly as possible.

It is too bleak, too colorless, too depressing and dark.

And if you enjoyed the game, that's okay! I'm glad you did!

But I don't want this bleak tonal shift to become standard going forward. And if FFXVI is a massive success, then Square Enix, a company who is a leading world CHAMPION at learning the wrong lessons from a game's success or failure, will be tempted to move the entire SERIES in that direction, and Final Fantasy stories were already plenty dark, just less in your face about it.

Final Fantasy shouldn't try to be The Witcher.

Please fail, FFXVI. I can't bear the thought of Square Enix going "oh! People LOVED the new darker and grittier tone! Okay, apply that but even more so to the next SIX FINAL FANTASY GAMES!"

It's too much. Final Fantasy does not need to be bleak or oppressively dark. Put that shit in another game.