What if we retired the 'should it be fantasy or science fiction' argument and did something different?

There's a bot on Bluesky called NESBot that posts links to resetera threads and one that caught my (and a lot of people's eyes) yesterday was this:

Ever since Final Fantasy VII released and hit cultural paydirt, this question of "Should FF be more fantasy or science fiction" has exploded out and like, I kiiiiinda bristle at the question every time since both "sides" of these genres have been present from the start of the franchise and I'm tired.

Up front, I absolutely will not malign people for having an opinion on the franchise as a whole while having also missed the first 5ish entries because this is not a chronological series and there have been 11 mainline intervening games. That is a higher percentage just mathematically speaking! But that said, it's at the very least important to point out that both space and time travel have been in the DNA of the games since that first entry on the Famicom. Travel to the moon plays a huge role in IV, asteroids as spaceships are a major plot point in V, etc etc.

I'm obviously one person with one person's experiences to pull from but I legitimately don't remember outrage at VI including mechs and trains "taking away from the fantasy" element, but I do remember this with VII because it was noticeably a step in the direction of a more dieselpunk / modern dystopia (Sakaguchi's original pitch for it to be set in modern New York is WILD) and both it and VIII were these incredibly high-budget, high profile games that dropped the "hey isn't high-fantasy Europe a cool idea for a setting" entirely - so I get it!

IX's marketing being full of "this is a return to fantasy" I think is where some of these arguments of "one vs the other" come from and it just kinda sucks (especially since that game featured an alien invasion lmfao)

I legitimately love FFXV, you can't take cup noodle partnership away from me

But to get back to the original question - would I want something more "science fiction" focused or "back to fantasy" and I think my answer is neither?? What I want from the franchise would be something completely different in one of two directions:

It'd be neat to explore a design mindset akin to what they did for FFX that creates a relatively unique fantasy setting that isn't just "Future City" or "Medieval Europe (as experienced through the lens of modern western fantasy authors)".

Yes, FFX's world of Spira was heavily inspired by Okinawa and southeast Asia but it did interesting things with that as a visual baseline that made it feel like you were truly experiencing something new in the franchise (the fish-out-of-water protagonist and 'seeing the setting after a technological collapse' also helped).

What if they made a game that features a unique world that isn't just a rehash of fantasy or "sci-fi" tropes that has those technological advances and still finds ways to justify "but we fight with swords still"?

XIII tries this a bit aesthetically but ends up too far in the "Futuristic Generic Anime World™" that it kind of falls flat to me, and no shade - I enjoy XIII and it looks incredible but it's not quite what I mean here. I think devoting time to a creating setting that doesn't "feel" recognizable as something else is really important. XVI had nothing for me at the worldbuilding level, and going "the other direction" will likely just lead to like, fucking Mass Effect or something and please no lmao

This idea is infinitely more interesting to me; smaller games by smaller different teams rapid-fire releasing multiple titles over the next 5ish years where the only restrictions are:

1. It has the mascots incorporated somehow (Moogles, tonberry, a "Cid", cactuars, chocobos, etc)
2. It is called 'Final Fantasy' and numbered as official entries
3. (On the fence about this one but I think proposing without would get me tossed out of the window at the Square office) It has some kind of RPG-based battle system and level progression
4. There is no design or writing crossover between the upcoming and existing titles. Whoever's working on XVIII can't touch XVIX¹, etc. We're talking new blood entirely. You can keep the Uematsu theme tracks (arranged by new composers) and maybe hire Amano for the logos but that's it.

God, Matt McKenzie acted his ass off in this scene.

Fuck it, everything else is fair game. I get that I'm a "want shorter games with worse graphics by people paid more" sicko but hear me out!!

This one's a murder mystery where you're a detective related to the victim and/or murderer! This one's a sports anime where the 'blitzball' is the combat instead of the minigame, this one entirely takes place on a planet-sized prison where you start an uprising and have to navigate different gangs, this one takes the jokes about FFXV and makes them real where you are actually a boy band touring across a country, etc etc and they all come out within a year or two of each other. They don't need to be high fidelity; they need to be good and released.

"But MSD, why not just do that with another franchise or standalone games or side projects. Isn't that what the point of Tokyo RPG factory was? Final Fantasy is supposed to be..."

Gonna stop you there because Final Fantasy is in the middle of a massive identity crisis! There's no solid definition at this point of what a "Final Fantasy" game even is, which can be used as a blessing to be something new!! Is it a turn based JRPG? Is it an action based AAA game? Is it a plucky underdog swan song? Is it "the best graphics and most minigames"? Is it a tentpole, "household name" franchise?

The "brand" of Final Fantasy isn't going anywhere so it might as well become something worth talking about! Now is the perfect time to follow-up the mixed bags of XV and XVI (again, which I enjoyed!!) with something so fucking random and surprising that people find their joy.

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Anyway, thanks for reading. Here's your end-of-post cats. Their names are Sloth (left) and Skitters (right) and they scream at me if I don't give them tiny dregs (like, absolute dregs - I know this is not actual nutrition for them) of oat milk if I eat cereal. Sloth in particular cracks me up because he dips his paw in and licks it off from there.