I want to ask a question about darkness.

With FF16 appearing to show abit more blood and gore then normal ( tho I'd debate if it actually does and we'll get to that ). I want to ask everyone reading this if they feel the Final Fantasy series is dark enough. Least from what I've seen is people are super happy 16 appears to be darker than what we've gotten lately. But my question is this.. IS IT REALLY? There's alot of body horror in the PSX FF7 to the point you can mistake it for a Resident Evil game at times, and if not that game PE is RPG RE made by SE. I also seen people compare it to WRPGs like Dragon age ( FF16 anyway ) and I want to say Dragon age isn't as dark as any of the FF titles.. not really.

I think what alot of people are mistaking for tone is the artstyle. Yes most if not all WRPGs look darker then an FF title but the themes and whatnot I say were always darker in Final Fantasy. It looking like a WRPG doesn't make it darker for me.. if anything it makes it look like it's trying too hard when it never needed too. Mass Effect for example doesn't feel darker then FFX.. and FFX feels way darker. For the simple fact the cast is made up of teens, teens who are for the most part going off to kill themselves to maybe give the planet 10 years of sin freedom? That game is literally a cycle of death, it's the main theme.

FF7 again is full of body horror, and FF8's A plot in the beginning is about a group of high schoolers who are trained from pretty much birth to be killers. Thats WAY darker then super solider fighting aliens to maybe save the world in my opinion. Dragon Age's A plot is " We must stop the darkness" But that's it. It only looks darker because it's gritty.

So with FF16 looking more gritty then normal, do you think people are mistaking that for tone? Am I overthinking this and off my base? Let me know, lets talk about it and have a friendly chat instead of fighting about trolls and mogstation items.

It's impossible to say for sure with just a trailer to work off of.
Basically everything I say would be conjecture.

Final Fantasy has for a very long time portrayed very dark subjects underneath a heavy layer of flash, sparkles and cute, look at Type-0, one of the more upfront darker stories in the series still has moogles going "kupo", a foul mouthed shop keeper and Jack.

FFIX is one that is a lot more whimsical and comedic but underneath the front layer it is a dark story just not in your face dark, it starts hitting you once you go to Burmecia, and it is present throughout the game with heavy subject matter but the tone is still naturally drawn to fun whimsical adventure let's go.

FFXVI looks to follow type-0 based on the one and only trailer we have seen, with having a more upfront darker tone, but I can bet money they'll add some cutesy or quirky stuff here and there, it is a mainline final fantasy game, doubt they won't try to pull a Chocobo acting cute, cactuar acting like a cactuar, a moogle in some shape or form, tonberry walking up with a knife, a wise cracking character.

Basically I'm saying expect the odd tone whiplash but the more consistent tone will be the heavier darker one rather than the light comedic one.

People who think that Final Fantasy wasn't 'dark' enough before have clearly never played through key games in the franchise. The entirety of FF9 deals with the concept of free will, genocide on multiple levels, your own impending death and how you cope with knowing one day you're just going to lay down and never get up again, whether or not your life even has MEANING, the fact that the souls of the dead legitimately power the most meaningful and country advancing technology in the setting, and so many other depressing subjects that would be considered one of the darker JRPGs if not for it's cartoon art style. The art style and humor which are literally there to counterbalance the sheer existential dread permeating throughout the entire narrative.

In regards to FFXVI, like Crushnight I feel that while it looks more 'dark' upfront due to surface level aesthetics I don't doubt that it'll still have the same level of camp and charm as most of the rest of the series. It just might have to counterbalance all that so it doesn't have the tonal dissonance of a steak slapped on top of a glitter sprinkle cupcake.

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Originally Posted by Enla

People who think that Final Fantasy wasn't 'dark' enough before have clearly never played through key games in the franchise. The entirety of FF9 deals with the concept of free will, genocide on multiple levels, your own impending death and how you cope with knowing one day you're just going to lay down and never get up again, whether or not your life even has MEANING, the fact that the souls of the dead legitimately power the most meaningful and country advancing technology in the setting, and so many other depressing subjects that would be considered one of the darker JRPGs if not for it's cartoon art style. The art style and humor which are literally there to counterbalance the sheer existential dread permeating throughout the entire narrative.

In regards to FFXVI, like Crushnight I feel that while it looks more 'dark' upfront due to surface level aesthetics I don't doubt that it'll still have the same level of camp and charm as most of the rest of the series. It just might have to counterbalance all that so it doesn't have the tonal dissonance of a steak slapped on top of a glitter sprinkle cupcake.

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I meant to put in FF9 too in one of my examples as yeah... 9 was DARK. That forest man.... T.T. I guess I might just be overthinking it, It feels like when I was listening to people talk around when Sonic Adventure first came out and everyone I knew was shocked at how serious the game gets towards the end. And I won't even mention SA2. But it was the same thing, to me those games felt the same as the series before. But to people who never looked past it's first stage it was never an anime like series and more a cartoonly series. So I guess I might've had flashbacks to that as people all over seem to be going goo goo over the darker artstyle.

That brings me to this question, to me this is just normal Final Fantasy artstyle. But forgetting the actual connections to yoshi p and all that, Did this reveal really give everyone XIV feels? I saw alot of 15 in this to be honest and if I ever felt like this was XIV themed it's only because they share the artstyle. And Yoshi... Hell alot of people on youtube called this the XIV expac until the title dropped. What am I missing? :O

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Originally Posted by Gameovers

With FF16 appearing to show abit more blood and gore then normal ( tho I'd debate if it actually does and we'll get to that ). I want to ask everyone reading this if they feel the Final Fantasy series is dark enough. Least from what I've seen is people are super happy 16 appears to be darker than what we've gotten lately. But my question is this.. IS IT REALLY? There's alot of body horror in the PSX FF7 to the point you can mistake it for a Resident Evil game at times, and if not that game PE is RPG RE made by SE. I also seen people compare it to WRPGs like Dragon age ( FF16 anyway ) and I want to say Dragon age isn't as dark as any of the FF titles.. not really.

I think what alot of people are mistaking for tone is the artstyle. Yes most if not all WRPGs look darker then an FF title but the themes and whatnot I say were always darker in Final Fantasy. It looking like a WRPG doesn't make it darker for me.. if anything it makes it look like it's trying too hard when it never needed too. Mass Effect for example doesn't feel darker then FFX.. and FFX feels way darker. For the simple fact the cast is made up of teens, teens who are for the most part going off to kill themselves to maybe give the planet 10 years of sin freedom? That game is literally a cycle of death, it's the main theme.

FF7 again is full of body horror, and FF8's A plot in the beginning is about a group of high schoolers who are trained from pretty much birth to be killers. Thats WAY darker then super solider fighting aliens to maybe save the world in my opinion. Dragon Age's A plot is " We must stop the darkness" But that's it. It only looks darker because it's gritty.

So with FF16 looking more gritty then normal, do you think people are mistaking that for tone? Am I overthinking this and off my base? Let me know, lets talk about it and have a friendly chat instead of fighting about trolls and mogstation items.

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I found Crystal Chronicles to be ultra bleak, any time I replay that game on the Gamecube I get depressed. An entire world covered in miasma and if your caravan fails, your entire town will die slow horrible deaths. And all around you are the remains of former signs civilization and towns that didn't make it, all lost to the miasma.

Final Fantasy has, for a long time, incorporated mature themes and brutal death behind a veil of color and fun. The death usually happens to non-main cast members, so that it feels distant, and in the earliest iterations of Final Fantasy, it was usually animated like a cartoon wherein the people dying either died in a huge explosion or off screen entirely.

The darkest Final Fantasy to date is still probably Final Fantasy II. It involves the Emperor Mateus of Palamecia summoning monsters from Hell in order to take over the world. You play four orphans who are orphans because their family and town are assaulted by the Empire and its Hell monsters. They themselves are nearly killed in the opening of the game, and are saved by the rebellion and the series' first WHM character. They go on to assist the rebellion, but in doing so lead several people to their deaths... they save many more in the end when they finally stop the Emperor, but not before every major town in the game is bombed by his Dreadnought nor before the Dragoons of Deist are genocided along with their wyverns. The Empire also genocides the kingdom of Kashuan. Also, after they blow up the Empire's dreadnought, the Emperor himself forms a tornado with magic that levitates a castle inside, which he uses to destroy every major town except for Mysidia and Fynn with, thus killing any residual populace that weren't killed in the dreadnought's bombing run. So you do stop him in the end, freeing the world from his Hellish conquest, but it's basically a pyrrhic victory. On top of that, there aren't really any comedic break anywhere in the story, and there are no mini-game chains to distract you from all the death. All the death may not impact the way it would in a properly fleshed out story, but the tone of the game is bleak. I actually got a lot of FF2 vibes out of the XVI trailer, but maybe that's just me.

FFIV is where the series staple of having horrific stuff happen, but then hitting you with personal drama or funny town happenings starts. It kicks off with the main character killing a ton of mages and stealing their town's Water Crystal. He's stripped of his command for questioning the king about it, but then you get a cool DRG bro levied on you, a hot WHM GF, and an eccentric Airship Engineer patting you on the back. In town a dancing girl will strip for you, but the spectacle is limited by the graphics. After that... you accidentally genocide a town of Summoners. The game continues on like that, dipping up and down, where the story tone is dark, but the inbetween bits and towns are full of silly events and dancers and porno mags etc. This sort of structure carried forward into every future Final Fantasy in some form or another, the effectiveness on the comedy bits ability to distract you from the dread varying title to title.

With XVI's trailer we're shown a fairly grim perspective. Seems like a tough nuts sort of world, and it goes back to older FFs, where if there is any advanced technology it's going to be specifically locked in a location and no characters are going to be using it. So I think they're basically going for living out Square's ambitious vision for Final Fantasy II, now that it can be fully realized by modern gaming technology. We're shown in the trailer that there's a sort of secondary citizens or "subhuman" caste for society, with the cheek branded soldiers. They showed blood from a decapitation in the trailer splatter over a little boy's face. Ifrit seemed to be smooshing people into blood splatters. I think what they're going for with XVI is to make the darkness that's always been in Final Fantasy stand out. I don't think there will be a lot of mini-games and comedic distractions.

Rather than bottling dark fantasy as high fantasy, I think XVI is going to be mostly dark fantasy. It's speculation based off of the trailer, but I will be surprised if XVI feels light and airy. Though I'm sure it will come with its own subset of memes from the voice acted segments being taken out of context and stuff.

As said, FF has been delving into darker subject matter pretty much since the beginning. War, death, politics, religion, etc. have all been mainstays in the series. It's now just that they are appearing to depict the violence in a clear visual way and aren't really flinching or shying away from it as much as they used to. Of course, most entries in the series haven't existed in a time where the graphical capabilities of the titles were up to showing properly detailed and animated character models so even if there was something going on they couldn't really show it.

So, yeah, the darkness has almost always been there but it hasn't always been really clearly demonstrated on screen.

Final Fantasy games are plenty dark and mature.
They aren't splatter-shooters and gore ridden but the story themes are pretty darn serious most of the time.
Just think of Final Fantasy X. Yuna going on a pilgrimage with the goal to sacrifice herself, getting to know life, friends and in the end losing the one she loves.
I cried pretty hard when she stumbled through Tidus' shade and fell down. (I pretend that X-2 never happened *cough*)

Also look at Yeuls fate in 13-2, see how the "bad guy" loses his sanity from seeing her die over and over again. Not to mention that ending hitting like a 40 ton truck out of nowhere.
See Rinoas self doubt take shape in VIII.

Final Fantasy VII features the most memorable death of a beloved character I've ever seen. Also in the remake, dear God I never felt so strongly about a bad guy before. When Hojo talked to Aerith about what he did to Ifalna, I wanted to reach into my screen and tear him apart. Not to mention the whole issue of reckless use of technology destroying the planet.

Bottom line: games don't have to be like Doom 3 in order to be dark.

If something has a dark tone, it's because of the author's attitude toward the subject matter of the story. Looking at blood or body horror and saying it's dark is making a very superficial judgment. Army of Darkness, Monty Python's Holy Grail, and several zombie and horror movie spoofs are gory and full of blood but not particularly dark.

There's not really enough in the FFXVI trailer to speak to the author's attitude. However, I do agree that there is a dark feel to it.

The FFXVI trailer comes of as dark because of the subject matter. Through a few bits of dialogue, the writer creates an atmosphere of fear, as the characters anticipate a building conflict, and everything that comes with it. There is talk of assassination, a budding conflict that is very obviously a war, a battle over future resources that may mirror crises we have faced in our own world, and may face again in the future.

Through imagery, scenes of battle, talk of war, and a moment in which a fallen dragoon is rolled over onto their back, the trailer creates a sense of ominous foreboding. For the empire to have such a fearsome agent, it must be a truly powerful and dangerous beast, once again building an overall sense of doom.

Hell XIV is pretty dark at it's core thinking about it. Stormblood really hits home for me as the amount thats shown how evil the Empire is, how they treat people "below" them. The amount of death and rape is just a small part of how fucked up characters in this cutestly game with huggable emotes really is. That highlander in the beginnings of Stormblood telling you and Lyse how she was messed with trying to find her father, I can't spell her name but the second main villain in stormblood's story. From whorehouse to whorehouse until she joined the empire and went to do nothing but kill all the people she believed were at fault and just for kicks. And that's just stormblood, ARR and HW and shadows all are insanely dark and unforgiving thinking about it.

I dunno, I need to see more but seeing how they went super crazy in the reveal is giving me odd vibes. Like they are saying.. " We've finally grown up fans" When they been ahead of the mature curve for awhile and I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees this.

hell lets not even get into ffvi's Suicide is a viable option at one point of the plot

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Originally Posted by Rannie

hell lets not even get into ffvi's Suicide is a viable option at one point of the plot

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And that is after the world is basically destroyed and turned into a post Apocalyptic hellscape at the complete mercy of an Omnicidal maniac.

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

Final Fantasy has for a very long time portrayed very dark subjects underneath a heavy layer of flash, sparkles and cute, look at Type-0, one of the more upfront darker stories in the series still has moogles going "kupo", a foul mouthed shop keeper and Jack.

FFIX is one that is a lot more whimsical and comedic but underneath the front layer it is a dark story just not in your face dark, it starts hitting you once you go to Burmecia, and it is present throughout the game with heavy subject matter but the tone is still naturally drawn to fun whimsical adventure let's go.

FFXVI looks to follow type-0 based on the one and only trailer we have seen, with having a more upfront darker tone, but I can bet money they'll add some cutesy or quirky stuff here and there, it is a mainline final fantasy game, doubt they won't try to pull a Chocobo acting cute, cactuar acting like a cactuar, a moogle in some shape or form, tonberry walking up with a knife, a wise cracking character.

Basically I'm saying expect the odd tone whiplash but the more consistent tone will be the heavier darker one rather than the light comedic one.

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Took the words right out of my mouth. "Darkness", as it were is far more prominent in a setting of light. That is why people will refer to movies like Bambi, as being one of Disney's more darker films, and films like The Nightmare Before Christmas to actually be very lighthearted. I feel it is a big reason why the light stage was chosen for us to become the Warriors of Darkness in Shadow Bringers. Opposites attract, so if you want to express something really dark, it has to consume the light around it; not more darkness.

FFIX is a great example you brought up. Fun, whimsical and cute characters set in colorful backgrounds that makes the tragedies they encounter all the more poignant as a result of that. Take what we know about Vivi for example. Imagine his fate on a more diabolical looking creature opposed to this insanely cute black mage with adorable eyes underneath a wizard hat. It just doesn't have the same effect. When I saw the cover art for FFIX, I immediately knew it was going to be a really dark arse game.

Adding Blood and gore to a story doesn't make it darker, at all. Any Doom game (except 3) are good examples of that, especially Eternal, which is, literally, a playable meme

The "darkness" of the trailer to me looks like a lateral move from Final Fantasy XV.