Wark Digest #234 - To Be, Or Tifa 2B

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 the crossovers keep coming for Ever Crisis, now featuring NieR—and speaking of which, where have Yoko Taro and other Square Enix creatives been hiding?

This week’s newsletter is 1775 words, a 6-minute read.

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To Be, Or Tifa 2B

The dust has barely settled on one inter-company crossover, and yet Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis is already revving the hype machine for the upcoming crossover with NieR Automata—check out the first details, alongside news of some further additions and quality-of-life updates:

What’s going on:

• The NieR event “YoRHa No.2 Type B Intercept - Encounter in the City Ruins” event kicked off after maintenance last night

  • 2B appears as a boss and her “Whirling Ravager” is unlockable as a new Enemy Ability (much like Lightning and her “Army of One” in the Final Fantasy XIII crossover)

  • As should be expected by now, Tifa has an unlockable outfit in this event, themed after 2B, while Yuffie gets 10H’s look, and Cloud will follow with 9S’ ensemble later

  • Meanwhile Tifa’s weapon, Spinning Wheel Flurry, does physical non-elemental damage, and boosts allies’ attack when her health is below 50%; Yuffie’s also does physical NE but also inflicts Enfeeble, and when her health is above 70%, she drastically reduces foes’ Earth Resistance

  • While not (yet) featured, Aerith gets a new Ultimate Weapon, Abraxas, on the crossover banner as well

• Beyond the cavalcade of crossovers, a new Sub Gear system allows Gear (outfits) to be equipped as Sub Equipment, applying 50% of their strength to the character—giving more use to those extra cosmetics you have laying around

• The NieR outfits are the first to include C. Abilities, limited-use abilities which replace the ability of your first Materia but are extremely powerful

  • Tifa’s, for example, has 2 uses per battle but deals 2000% damage and applies Exploit Weakness to hers

What we thought:

• NieR’s social account recently declared “We will gladly say yes to anything for money”—and NieR has been very good for inspiring successful collaborations with everything from Final Fantasy and other Square Enix properties, to Stellar Blade, to mobile games like Nikke

  • Yoko Taro himself recently said: “I, Yoko Taro, am a slave to capitalism, so I will do anything as long as I am paid”

  • Even when the series is essentially stagnating on the sidelines, and despite its still-somewhat-niche reputation, 2B remains influential

  • Which begs the question… what’s Squeenix doing with this asset? (More on that below)

  • And also… when the collab is inter-company like this, is there still a big truck full of money that drives up to the Ever Crisis team’s door?

• Ever Crisis is not leaving much oxygen between these events… aside from the middling part where they drag on too long, leaving little to do between them

  • With The First Soldier’s content done, and the original FFVII story having just finished disc one, there’s something of a natural lull in the game’s usual content… leading to both collaborations and dry periods

• Tifa getting yet another costume (Gear) ties in nicely to one major point against the new Sub Gear system: some members of the cast have a lot of Gear, and others have been left out to dry, so this new category is really going to push those popular faces to the top of the meta

  • Either because they’re relatively newer to the game, or because they’re harder to shoehorn into new gear, characters like Cid, Vincent, and Cait Sith have fewer gear, whereas Tifa, Aerith, Cloud, and sometimes Young Seph and Yuffie have had an abundance

  • How much difference this detail will make remains to be seen, but likely it will at least expand the amount of strategic options for teambuilding as more Gear with these abilities arrive…

  • …and the “unpopular kids” will benefit less as the faces of the FFVII series continue to be rewarded

• All of that aside, it’s an interesting move to see this much technical complexity added at this stage in the game, with less original content to help drive it

What’s next? The last roadmap for Ever Crisis showed up to December and the NieR events, which teased not only Automata but Replicant and Reincarnation as well. I’m just saying, with all these white-haired characters to draw from, Young Sephiroth is 110% getting another new outfit too.

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NieRly Related: What Are They Up To?

Speaking of Square Enix’s most eclectic creator, Yoko Taro recently did an interview with Japanese outlet 4Gamer with Capcom legend Hideki Kamiya, and cast an interesting light on what the company has been doing with him lately.

What they said:

• It’s been years since Taro’s last real credits: NieR Reincarnation and Replicant v.1.22474487139 in 2021, and the Voice of Cards trilogy from 2021-22; he collaborated on Sega’s short-lived mobile game 404 Game Re:Set in 2023, and hasn’t technically published anything since

• Taro addressed the running joke that he’s been slacking off:

  • “I often get told stuff like ‘Why aren’t you making a new sequel to NieR’ or ‘Yoko Taro isn’t doing anything,’ but that’s because recently, a lot of projects I was involved in got discontinued midway through development. I’ve actually been working on some stuff, it’s just that it never ended up seeing the light of day. I got paid for it, so I personally have no issues with that, but people seem to think that I haven’t been doing anything just because none of the work I’ve done is being released“

What we thought:

• You often have to take Taro’s comments with a grain of salt or run them through a trolling filter, but these remarks sound pretty earnest for the most part

  • There’s a chance he’s exaggerating because he’s not at liberty to discuss something, or because he just wants to, but this sounds more straightforward than usual

• Based on this, it definitely sounds like some of Taro’s projects were affected by that big shakeup last year, which saw projects jettisoned as a cost-saving measure in order to re-balance the company’s publishing lines

  • So, was it more NieR, or something else entirely?

  • Not even Taro was safe, it seems

• NieR (like much of his work) is a strange paradox, in that it’s both prohibitively weird or impenetrable, yet also very successful—it has considerable cultural cache, even if it’s never been the biggest seller or the talk of the entire industry

  • …which means it’s also the kind of thing that the company’s new modus operandi probably doesn’t know what to do with

  • Is his weird style a sure shot, or a risky gamble?

  • Voice of Cards, for example, is the kind of thing that would’ve fallen under the axe if it had been developed later

• To that end, Taro has always been very vocal (in his signature way) that he’s willing to work on a wide variety of projects if the money is right

• It’s strange that Squeenix has one of its most valuable directors effectively sitting on the sidelines… and it makes you wonder what others are up to (and what cancelled projects they were working on)

What’s next? If Yoko Taro needs a more surefire project, there’s still a passionate contingent of fans who’d like to see him make a Final Fantasy… though I for one think he’d be better off handling something like a spin-off. If people thought Final Fantasy XV and XVI were too much of a departure, I can only imagine what his vision would do for the mainline’s pop culture perception.

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Superplush

There’s a Final Fantasy IX Anniversary Exhibition being held in Tokyo from now until December 7th, and amidst what appears to be a breathtaking display of concept art, dev materials, and fan works—up to and including a life-size replica of Excalibur II that visitors can pose with—is a rather eclectic run of merchandise.

As shared by Reddit user New-Top2580, there are multiple items based on none other than the superboss Ozma, including what may be the most unhinged things Square Enix have put out: a plush ball (because nothing says “cuddle me” like the Doomsday Sphere) and a button-up shirt that would inflict 9999 damage on Guy Fieri’s wardrobe.

It’s not often you see a superboss featured in marketing to this extent anymore… so Square Enix may be running out of gas for their “make anything but a FFIX revival” challenge.

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Around the Union

Like the ultimate weapons we looked at last week, sometimes a playable character isn’t up to the same bar as their compatriots. Some heroes have a purpose in cutscenes and exposition, but pull less weight in the gameplay itself. (And some just suck, straight up.) That’s why we’re examining the “7 Playable Characters That Were Almost Completely Useless”—did your archnemesis make our list? Are you inspired to take one of these people on your next playthrough and redeem them? Let us know in the comments!

In this week’s Kupo Chronicle, we look at the power of influence… and timing. Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest’s fates were intertwined from an early point, but one series also almost stamped out the other. Read on as we explore the ways that these two oak trees sprouted side-by-side.

And lastly, over at Datalog, we list “7 Reasons To Be Hyped For Octopath Traveler 0!” Team Asano’s pioneering series receives a new installment next week, and we break down the most promising things about it:

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