[ZeldaGirl]

The Question of Player Control

This goes pretty much against the grain of conventional wisdom: player agency is reduced in favor of enhancing the game's story. At some point there was a very large decision made by the team. It is this: finely controlling player progression -- given a consistent walking speed, linear dungeons, and average battle length -- will provide a more cinematic and seamlessly story-driven game, and a more accessible one.

With dungeons lengthened, towns removed, and cutscenes scattered throughout the game rather than clumped up, suddenly you've got a smooth and consistent experience -- have I mentioned how polished this game is yet? But what has been traded is agency, and that's a faux pas in many current schools of thought for game design (though, notably, the Call of Duty series is big on controlling the player, so it's hardly a one-sided argument.)

The game also slowly and deliberately introduces new gameplay mechanics over its first several hours. The limiting factor in most RPGs, when it comes to gameplay, is the leveling system: you have highly basic versions of the sorts of abilities you'll have access to by the end of the game. In FFXIII, you can't even earn experience points for the first two or three hours, because the leveling system has yet to be introduced.

While that sounds awful, I know that I liked playing a game that gradually introduced new gameplay concepts over its first several hours for several reasons. The dreaded infodump tutorial was completely avoided. Instead, I retained the information that I learned gradually, and I felt like I was learning something new fairly often -- and I think learning is a strong motivator to keep playing games, even if the info is only useful within the context of the game itself.

The thing is, you never earn something new in the game. You're handed it at the point the developers think you're ready. It's pretty transparent. Would it be better if there was something -- maybe a point system -- covering that up? All designers decide when content is appropriate for players. Sometimes the games just bludgeon you to death (if you stumble on a dungeon that you're not ready for).

Sometimes content is locked behind broken bridges that coincidentally get repaired by the king when you've run out of quests in the town you're visiting. And sometimes, in Final Fantasy XIII, a text box will pop up when you cross an invisible line and tell you: it's time for something new.

But when the developers yank members in and out of your party based on the story's needs -- logical in a cinematic context, frustrating from a gameplay one -- this designer control may be too fine. This isn't a new move for JRPGs (characters leave and join all the time in other games) but Final Fantasy XIII found ways to play with my patience. The gamer must, in the end, get with the program: give up that agency. The reward is enjoying the experience.

The Breaking Point

The level of control the developers exert over the player is transparent to anyone who's paying attention. The question is whether this fine level of control is at odds with the game's core mission, or its enjoyability. For some -- maybe many, possibly most -- the answer is "yes".

I'm pretty sure that a big reason the developers structured the game this way is because the team is well aware that gamers who haven't touched the series in a long time will be back for this installment, and that new gamers who hadn't considered it before will be sucked in by the hype. FFXIII doesn't assume genre literacy. But for fans, it can be surprising -- and not always pleasant.

It's worth noting, again, that these impressions are birthed from just 10 hours of play. Every Final Fantasy inevitably reaches what I call "the breaking point" -- the juncture at which the game goes nonlinear and allows you to take it how you like it. Exactly when this happens varies wildly depending on which game in the series you're talking about. When it happens in FFXIII could go a long way toward mitigating the control thing.

On the other hand, developers all know most gamers don't finish the games they buy. Will Final Fantasy XIII's early design be a fatal turnoff, or a slick romp?

There's a gamble the developers continuously make with this series, and which backs away from something I think is becoming fairly well accepted in Western design: shy away from artifice. Final Fantasy XIII is a tower of artifice. It's a monument to polish, and maybe a bit to hubris. On the other hand, each game released, in any series, defines its own genre as much as the genre defines it. If Final Fantasy XIII is judged to not be RPG, it can be, instead, an SCS -- strolling, combat, and story.

My experience so far with it compels me to start all over again with the U.S. version in March; it also gives me respect for a team that has an eye toward addressing common complaints with the genre, the game's predecessors, and expanding its audience. The story is less chunky. The gameplay is better integrated and balanced further toward speed and interaction. The years of development delays weren't just the kinks of working out new technologies; there's a tremendous level of polish (near-flawless partner AI, for one notable example) on display.

But gearing an RPG toward simplicity and speed to some extent spits in the face of a genre more known for slow-paced complexity, and that is where Final Fantasy XIII will find its test.