Welcome back to the Wark Digest, your weekly newsletter of new developments and historical insights from the Final Fantasy universe. I’m Chris, aka Hoogathy, and this week some hopes will be raised while other dreams will be dashed, as we dissect a recent comment regarding a beloved Final Fantasy setting.
This week’s newsletter is 2341 words, a 11-minute read.
Yoshi-P on Tides And Tactics
In an interview conducted at PAX East but published by TheGamer last weekend, Naoki Yoshida had more to say about Final Fantasy XVI’s DLC… and also about the possibility of reviving another beloved spin-off?
What they’re saying:
The decision to return to a more traditional fantasy setting stemmed from the team’s desire to make a game more like what they grew up with—although the contrast between “this low-fantasy setting” and modern HD graphics threatened to make things look “very dull” if they didn’t deliberately make things pop
Yoshida further squashed the idea of sequels set after the events of FFXVI
[SPOILERS for the ending of FFXVI!!!]
“
We’re not thinking about making a sequel in this future without magic, with people living on their own terms. We want people to think about what they think would happen in a world like that, and leave it up to the imagination of the player.You have this resource, this magic, and all of a sudden, you take that away. Think about what would happen to us if we took away our technology or our internet. What would happen to the world? There’d be panic, there’d be all this chaos. But in[the epilogue], you have that peaceful scene of a mother and her children, but you have to think, what happened to get there? Turning that into a game, is that going to be a positive experience?”
[/spoilers]
As endgame/pre-final boss DLC, The Rising Tide takes the opportunity to insert another Eikon battle and a brighter environment as contrast
Yoshida: “This is the last Eikon versus Eikon battle before the final boss, so we wanted to make it something that was very, very challenging. It builds upon what you learned controlling Ifrit, and you’ll have to use everything you learned.”
Where [REDACTED] was more vocal in the first DLC portion, Jill will take a more prominent position in the second, as the story takes us close to her home in the Northern Territories
When TheGamer suggested the possibility of using Valisthea as the setting for a new Tactics game, neither Yoshida, Michael-Christopher Koji Fox, or Takeo Kujiraoka saw the potential
Yoshida: “We have a lot of our staff who worked on previous games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Final Fantasy XII, so you’re going to have a lot of that [Ivalice] feel because a lot of the same people are on the team. We’re very happy for you to suggest this because we’re all fans, but if we were going to make this, we wouldn’t want to do the same story that turns out to be a different story.”
Koji Fox: “What would we even call it? Final Fantasy XVI Tactics? That’s a lot.”
Yoshida went on, slipping a little into his role as an officer of Square Enix’s board: “But the series does lend itself well to that kind of storytelling, and we love Tactics as well. It’s probably about time that we do a new one.”
Kujiraoka: “In finishing FFXVI, a lot of people on our team - myself included - now have the experience of working on a Triple-A title. [We’re] taking that experience and using it as a stepping stone to the next title and doing it in a different way. We can’t relax too much - there’s always something!”
What we thought:
Admittedly, while I’d be open to future tales set in FFXVI’s world, I respect the view Yoshida shared—sometimes a sequel risks trampling upon the original’s story or spirit, and this might just be one of those cases (like another certain example involving bombs and blitzballs)
The potential is there, but does it need to be explored?
Instead, it seems like the expansion pass is taking the opportunity to fill out the endgame a little; Echoes of the Fallen was a thrilling dungeon and superboss jaunt, and The Rising Tide could be the perfect cherry on top of the FFXVI experience, especially if it gives Jill the time to shine
Often postlaunch DLCs can feel shallow, but for once, there’s some more substantial meaning to be extracted here
As for the elephant in the room… how refreshing to hear someone from Square Enix not only acknowledge the existence of Final Fantasy Tactics, but admit they should be doing something about it
This comment reads like Naoki Yoshida the Executive talking, as well as Naoki Yoshida the Matsuno Fan; it’s something they should be doing from a business sense, and something he’d personally like to see
Could this be a tongue-in-cheek comment because he knows something is already in the works? Was this an actual moment of epiphany which will spur him into action? In reality, it’s probably somewhere in the middle
Valisthea would have made an interesting setting for a tactical RPG, but the story of FFXVI makes it hard to find a sufficiently compelling angle; retelling the game’s events from another perspective would be rough, a sequel would raise all the same issues that Yoshida identified in the block quote above, and a prequel feels redundant when the world’s history before the game has been fleshed out so well
But sorry, Koji Fox, Final Fantasy XVI Tactics is far from the craziest name this series has ever produced—it’s downright tame compared to Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, Dissidia Duodecim Prologus Final Fantasy, or Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
What’s next? The Rising Tide is now less than a week away, dropping on Thursday, April 18. You can purchase it individually or as part of the Final Fantasy XVI Expansion Pass, alongside part 1, Echoes of the Fallen, and players who complete both can see additional scenes that enrich the ending. More on that next week!
The State of the Mobile Game Department
For a decade or so, mobile games have served as a sizable chunk of the Final Fantasy universe, but these experiences aren’t for everyone. With this landscape having changed recently, let’s take a moment to get everyone up to speed on where this department currently stands.
What’s going on:
Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis has been holding its own on mobile platforms, ranking around the #20-30 range of top grossing games in the adventure and RPG categories, earning over $3 million in revenue monthly
Meanwhile on Steam, its active player count has evened out a little after the hype of its initial PC launch and some big in-game events that followed, settling at an average concurrent player count of 1691.4 for March
This is down from December’s initial average of 2666, although April is already trending higher than March
For perspective, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League‘s average concurrent player count for March was a whopping 594, Redfall has fought to break 100 since its initial release, and the recent sleeper success Helldivers 2 charted 217k
The game has been plugging along steadily with content, having recently added Cait Sith as a playable character alongside relevant story chapters from FFVII, and supplemented official story content with seasonal offerings
Each character in its roster can now obtain a third Limit Break after completing the requisite missions
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius has, by comparison, been slipping to the bottom of the current FF games in terms of performance
FFXVI’s Clive and Jill are officially coming to the game soon, which will surely cause a spike in players and revenue
War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is currently celebrating its 4th anniversary with login bonuses, new story chapters, and collaboration challenges
Things appear to have stabilized now, following the consolidation of its Global and Japanese versions last fall, though its financial performance is a little lower than expected considering it now covers both regions
Ironically, Final Fantasy Record Keeper is still holding its own in Japan, a year and a half since its Global version ended
It’s still generally ranked within the top 100s for downloads in its individual categories, and earning about $500k in revenue monthly
FFXVI’s Clive will also be joining its roster soon, continuing his grand tour of the Final Fantasy metaverse
Otherwise it does appear to be coasting in low-maintenance mode, perhaps limping along to its 10th anniversary this September
To paint the picture with numbers, here’s Sensor Tower’s March 2024 revenue rankings (consolidated, mobile only), with some additional titles for context:
Honkai: Star Rail: $145m (Feb: $85.8m, Jan: $47.5m)
Genshin Impact: $68m (Feb: $89.8m, Jan: $99.3m)
Ever Crisis: $4m (Feb: $3.7m, Jan: $3.9m)
Atelier Resleriana: $3.4m (Feb: $2.7m, Jan: $2m)
War of the Visions: $1.1 (Feb: $1.7, Jan: $2.1)
Octopath Traveler: $1m (Feb: $700k, Jan: $1.6m)
Brave Exvius: $900k (Feb: $800k, Jan: $1.1m)
Note: these particular results are only from gacha games, not including big entities like Pokémon Go and Candy Crush Saga
What we thought:
Ever Crisis is performing a little better than I expected, admittedly, which is heartening to see—though things could be going a little better
In context of the game itself, it’s approaching the grindier stage of the gacha gameplay cycle, where day one players are either hitting a power wall or hustling hard to break their parties’ limits
The power balance could be a little smoother, as could the process of levelling up characters from 60-70, or getting the components to upgrade weapons, or the odds of getting better materia…
The gacha system continues to be held back by the gimmicky “Stamp Card” mechanic, which is the key to getting most event costumes
For the unacquainted: each 10x draw on a gacha banner gets you 1-3 “Stamps” on that banner’s “Stamp Card;” exclusive costumes are unlocked at 12 and 24 stamps, so in order to get the Easter outfits for both Tifa and Cait Sith, you need to get 24 stamps… but the odds of getting 3 stamps on your draw are frustratingly low, meaning you need to make a lot of draws… and this is how they get us
[Addendum: It is actually possible to get more than 3 stamps on a draw, even up to 12 stamps at a time. However the game has never seen fit to bestow that much generosity on me, through all of the times I’ve done draws since the game launched… which only illustrates this whole point all the more. (Thanks to our Discord mod Xion for pointing out how horrendous my luck is!)]
Atelier Resleriana is a similar “tribute” game that launched in Japan around the same time as Ever Crisis, like a Dissidia Opera Omnia for the Atelier series, and it’s performing about on-par, despite being from a far less popular IP
For now, the game seems to have struck a sustainable balance between courting new players, keeping existing players around, and keeping people invested in the high-end (arguably, even pay-gated) content, but we’ll see how the power-creep develops, and how interest wanes as the Rebirth hype cycle slows down
Things don’t look amazing for the Brave Exvius games, though
Some fans suspected the merger of War of the Visions’ versions was a warning sign, as if Gumi and Square Enix were beginning to retreat from that particular battleground, but the 4th anniversary has arrived with modest fanfare instead of an eviction notice, as happened with DFFOO, so it’s got that going for it
Communication on both games seems more subdued than it was back in the days where we had four concurrent English Final Fantasy mobile games; this division has shrunk considerably, but the Brave Exvius verse hasn’t moved in to claim any of the territory forfeited by DFFOO
But, to look beyond, mobile gaming is an absolutely bonkers corner of the larger gaming industry, with titles like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail sometimes breaking $100m in revenue in one month, and many others holding around $10m
There’s just so much noise when it comes to mobile gaming, from incessant ads for new cookie-cutter clones, to the money being poured down studios’ gullets for lowest-common-denominator fare like Candy Crush Saga… so from a certain point of view, it’s impressive enough that Final Fantasy has managed to carve out a couple of niches where fans want to hang out in this environment
What’s next? The next six months to a year should be interesting when it comes to Final Fantasy’s mobile games. Though they seem to be in a relatively safe holding pattern, I get the sense that a dam could (or should) break somewhere—whether that’s one of the existing games folding, or something coming along to replace a fallen title. Offline versions of FFRK, DFFOO, and/or Mobius would still be welcomed by many nostalgic fans/veterans!
Around the Union
Sure, there are some familiar summons in this series, like Ifrit, Shiva, and Bahamut. But have you ever heard the Tragedy of Minimog The Region-Locked? Or Hecatonchier the Many-Handed? This week we’re examining these and other summons that fell by the wayside in “7 VERY Obscure Summons in Final Fantasy”! How many of these have you recruited?
And for those who either missed the original, individual videos, or just need a nice long video in the background, we present “The Complete History of 8-Bit Final Fantasy”—a compilation of the Complete History series, covering the first three games. Now that we’ve covered the 8-bit era, it’ll be on to the 16-bit era and Final Fantasy IV…
And finally, in this week’s installment of our premium newsletter, the Kupo Chronicle, we examine one of Final Fantasy VI’s foundational philosophies: the notion that the game has no set protagonist. Was this really the case?
Now you’re up to speed! From the whole team at Final Fantasy Union, thank you for subscribing. Please let us know what you think of our coverage, and what you’d like to see covered in our weekly installments. As ever, if you’ve enjoyed our work, please share it with your friends!
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Until next time, kupo!
I'm embarrassed Yoshi-P used pretty much the entire video game journalism industry just to tell me that he wants to make a new Tactics game. He should have just texted. Sorry bro.
Fantastic Wark!