Will Final Fantasy ever make a "Dark Side"?

[Pandemonium1960]

Forgive if this has been asked/discussed before. I was wondering if Final Fantasy would ever be doing a "Horde" side? So we could make Dark/Evil Characters? Sometimes it's just fun to be bad.

[Iscah]

Not in this story format, no. They'd have to write everything twice.

[Goji1639]

In games like World of Warcraft you're kind of a nameless, faceless footsoldier in a larger world. FFXIV is way too character and story driven to allow for different alignments like that. You're basically whatever the story needs you to be.

[Pandemonium1960]

Not in this story format, no. They'd have to write everything twice.

Thanks! That makes sense.

[Enla]

Unlikely at this point given how far back they'd need to rewrite things. Also as Goji stated the very existence of the WoL and how they affect the story kinda prohibits a faction system from working alongside a well told and engaging narrative. Some games can pull it off successfully, SWTOR in it's initial release, but even they eventually collapse back down to a singular goal for their players to engage with with just mildly different dialogue flavors to account for the faction issues. At this point you're going to have to wait for the next FF MMO to potentially explore that concept.

[gumas]

dont think so, the theme of the game is pretty much like standard JRPG/dragon quest style where a hero vanquish the evil typical storyline.

at the best, the dark side we can get is probably the twist and turn we got in the story like the cutscene where people change to sineater in SHB, thats probably the darkest one i ever seen in this game

[Theodric]

It wouldn't be impossible, though it would take a lot of extra resources. One point in its favour is that the game and writers themselves make it a point to show that good and evil are matter of perspectives rather than absolutes. We just happen to be seeing various conflicts through the eyes of one particular side.

[Rosenstrauch]

Final Fantasy 4: The After Years has one or two "chapters" where you play as characters who are, or once were, villains. Kain's darkside is the lead character for one or two segments and Golbez is the lead character of his own chapter, an active party member in the penultimate chapter, and out of that game's huge cast he's one of the best party members for the final chapter of the game due to his overall high stats, high HP, and Taunt being an offense-oriented tanking ability.
Beyond that, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is somewhat notorious in that the game's protagonist, Marche, has a motivation you'd usually see in a story's villain: He wants to destroy the world the majority of the game takes place in to return to his own.
Oh, and there's the Dissida series, but those are fighting games and from what I recall, the story modes in those don't actually let you play as the villain characters.

Beyond that, I think this sort of system needs to be built into the game from the ground up, and part of the reason you rarely see it is because it doubles or even triples the workload on the developers' behalf without necessarily resulting in larger or longer player retention. World of Warcraft is the exception, and even then there's plenty of complaints to be had about the Horde's schizophrenic writing. Apparently it's really difficult to write "Dark Hero" factions without them gravitating towards extremely... odd... behavior. Like engaging in forever wars because they want to "kill hope", to use a recent example.

[Marxam]

I'd give my left arm for a darker storyline.

[Shougun]

I think a two sided story focused, you the hero driven, game could work, but it would need to be built that way from the start. Also could benefit a lot from an alt friendly setting, so you can play both views smoothly yet still enjoy freedom like the job system and side specific choices but in a semi-lore logical way. Might have some fun with it like your hero is made of multiple active souls, nameless one, changing god, etc.

I'd give my left arm for a darker storyline.

Raubahn would like to know how to delete others posts.