Wark Digest #190 - Highwind Is Here
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 we’re considering a new console, treating the staff respectfully, and sitting down to drink our ^%$#! TEA in Ever Crisis.
This week’s newsletter is 1780 words, a 9-minute read.
Cid Joins Ever Crisis
The full playable cast of FFVII is now officially in Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis, as Cid Highwind joined the fray this week.
What’s going on:
Cid unlocked with the Wednesday/Thursday update, alongside Chapter 8 of the FFVII storyline, “An Encounter With The Past”
This covers the Rocket Town, Wutai (disc one), and Golden Saucer (second visit) scenarios from the original game, including the date sequence
Alongside Cid are two new status effects, Stop (which does what you’d expect) and Enfeeble (which makes debuffs act more effective than they are)
Much like the original game, there’s a small, hidden “affection” value for Cloud’s relationships with certain party members, which finally pays off here with the date scene—as you might expect, your most favored teammate can stop by to spend some time with Cloud
What we thought:
As Cid has been one of my favourite FFVII party members since my very first playthrough, it’s great to see my boy come home, especially after he had to sit on the sidelines for Rebirth
This iteration of Cid is, like much of Ever Crisis, a sort of half-way point between the original and the Remake continuity, meaning some of his sharper edges have been sanded down (ie. his smoking, and the lazier mistranslations)
Likewise for Rocket Town and Wutai—and it gives the slightest taste of how they might look in “R3make”
I’d be a little more critical of his optional outfit on his debut gacha banner… if the stamp card odds were actually decent
Enfeeble is actually a pretty interesting mechanic, as it makes debuffs act like the next level, without actually being at that level—so a “low” effect would act like a “mid” effect—and applies to any debuffs as long as enfeeble is active
Point of order, however: his Guild weapon, Mop, looks like a push broom. 0/10 game, no redemption possible
There are unlockable titles for players’ profiles for certain Gold Saucer dates, and their phrasing risked kicking a certain hornet’s nest on social media
What’s next? Meanwhile FFVII Rebirth’s PC launch is just one week away, and the GOTY contender has been confirmed Steam Deck compatible.
Square on Switch 2?
What was once becoming the industry’s worst-kept secret has become a little more concrete, as Nintendo finally, officially announced the Nintendo Switch 2, the long-awaited “successor to the Switch system.” Naturally, people are already beginning to ponder the forecast for Square Enix and Final Fantasy on this new system, so let’s take stock of the situation.
What’s going on:
Nintendo posted an official look at the Switch 2 hardware in a brief video yesterday, showing the next-generation Joy-Con controllers and the sleek design of the system itself, alongside footage of a new Mario Kart
The form factor is very similar, as many speculated, with a more streamlined frame and dock, and a different connection method for the controllers
…and that’s all we really have to work with at this time, aside from the backwards compatibility that Nintendo had previously announced
Nintendo will go into detail during a Nintendo Direct broadcast on April 5, ahead of the system’s launch sometime later this year
Rumours have been swirling for some time now in regards to possible Final Fantasy ports for the new generation of Nintendo hardware, with everything from ports of Remake and FFXVI, to whatever long-desired port you might be able to dream up
What we thought:
We do know that Square Enix sees multiplatform as their future, and there’s no better platform for them to invest more heavily into than a revitalized Nintendo console, especially one with the same lucrative hybrid design as the Switch
Until we know what this system is actually capable of (not just what people guess), it’s hard to say how exactly Square Enix will support it, though
Based on other industry trends, it seems likely/a safe guess) that it could support upscaling via AI/machine learning, similar to the PS5 Pro
Since it’s almost been five years since Sony and Microsoft switched their hardware to solid state drives (SSD), it would be a blessing if Nintendo followed suite, as many Switch games have laborious load times
That being said, it seems possible that this thing could be strong enough to run the regular FFVII Remake—it’s more a matter of, “what do they have to compromise to make it work on the Switch 2”
Over the holidays, Naoki Hamaguchi told 4gamer that his team is aiming to have “more game fans […] able to play the FFVII Remake series of titles,” in a separate instance from the pending PC release of Rebirth, and this could be a very high-profile place to put Remake
Rebirth would be more challenging, though; it’s not at all likely that the Switch 2 will have PS5-levels of power, so what would sacrifices would it take to get this 2024 blockbuster on the Switch 2? Time, and the Nintendo Direct, will tell
The same goes for FFXVI, naturally
Beyond that, however, who knows what unannounced projects Square Enix could have in the hopper for the Switch 2? The release calendar is currently thin, and wishlists are always long
Hopefully the new hardware can bring many new and old FF experiences to the Switch 2, as the original system can already play so many of the essentials
What’s next? In the meantime, we’ll surely see plenty of speculation and “trust me guys, it’s legit” so-called leaks about all kinds of things that may or may not be headed to the new system. Keep those salt shakers ready to douse anything that sounds too good to be true until we know for sure what the Switch 2 is capable of.
Please Be (Kind)
A fairly routine update to one of Square Enix’s corporate policy has caused a fairly overinflated amount of ire from consumers (or at least, social media users), so let’s take a moment to quickly put some of this silliness to bed.
What’s going on:
Squeenix’s Group Customer Harassment Policy document was updated on January 10, stating that, despite how they value customers’ input, “there are instances where certain customers take actions directly or through our support centers, or towards our [employees] that constitute ‘customer harassment’ […] Such actions do not only prevent our employees and partners from engaging in their work with a sense of security but also causes disruptions to other customers. Square Enix will not tolerate harassment and will take action as necessary.“
The list of actions considered harassment is… all things you should honestly expect: acts or threats of violence, defamation/slander, intimidation, hate speech, infringement of privacy, stalking, etc.
Further, actions deemed “undue demand” include unreasonable demands for product or monetary compensation
The English version has a further addendum, clarifying the document is “a translation of the original Japanese policy based upon Japanese law”
The response to this should have been an indifferent shrug, but instead, some have tried to see it as a defense against criticism and a way to shut down justified haters
What we thought:
It’s frankly somewhat sad that this sort of thing needs to be said aloud, not unlike the signs you see in banks and other businesses saying “hey, don’t be rude to our employees or we reserve the right to remove you from the premises”
Like most legal documents, there’s room to reinterpret things if you want to liberally stretch the boundaries of language; the document is conveying a pretty straightforward message (“don’t be a jerk”) but one could debate what “unreasonable” means in this context
The worst possible offender here would be that line about “unreasonable request for monetary compensation” which, in theory, could be used liberally by customer service reps when customers ask for refunds
It’s pretty clear, however, that this is a defensive move to prevent harassment, not a means of shielding themselves from critique
If you’ve been on social media for more than five minutes, you’ve probably seen someone “yelling” at employees on brand accounts, or otherwise being belligerent and/or irrational—it happens daily
Even worse, look at what’s happened to regular employees at studios like Insomniac, who had sensitive personal info leaked online
Anyone trying to tell you this is Square Enix preparing to attack their critics is just trying to rile people up—this is a routine piece of paperwork saying the company won’t stand for their employees being attacked, and nothing more
Around the Union
On the heels of our annual review/preview issue last week, over on YouTube Darryl broke down “The Uncertain Road Ahead for Final Fantasy”—addressing the abundance of question marks surrounding the series’ future. What lies in wait for the series in 2025 and beyond?
And now that the year is in full-swing, let’s bring back the reader polls! For the first of the year, we’re unearthing an old, out-of-style practice: the printed strategy guide. For the first half of the series’ existence, it was tradition for high-profile games like a new Final Fantasy to get a printed, traditionally-published strategy guide, or at least a feature in a game magazine with maps or tips to get through the harder challenges. Were you the type to buy the dedicated guides, borrow them from friends/stores/libraries, or just use them if a magazine you read regularly happened to have a feature? Or did you abstain from using them? (Or are you a younger fan who never really had the choice?)
Sound off in the poll and tell us your favourite guide-related memory in the comments!
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Until next time, kupo!
