KJ

There were a number of reasons that I didn't pick up Final Fantasy XV when it was first released, but it boils down to the all-male party, and more specifically the really gross ways that the developers talked about the all-male party. I had come to trust Square Enix as a media company, and then they spent two years systematically eroding that trust (between this and Lightning Returns), so I walked away.

But I can never completely walk away from this series, and so when T and I were looking for a new game to play together after we finished Persona 5, we spent awhile looking at our possibilities and eventually landed on this one. Not with particularly high expectations, but given the (mixed, but not terrible) overall critical and fan reactions to the game, and the fact that the price had already come down, we decided to give it a shot. We bought the game, fired it up, played through the tutorial... and then got distracted by something, I don't even really remember what, and didn't come back to it until a couple of weeks ago. Since we'd basically forgotten everything we learned in the tutorial, we started over again, and this time we kept at it. We've gotten a very little bit into Chapter 2 (where Cor leaves the party), and I will say that I like it so far. But I'm not sure that I'll ever come to love it.

The band of bros is... fine. I'm afraid none of them has distinguished themselves much as individuals yet, although I do like the sense of camaraderie among them. I still don't get why they all had to be men. Cindy's character design is ludicrous, and the straight-male-fanservice-ness of it inescapable. (Consider the unskippable cutscene every time you buy gas in Hammerhead, and tell me I'm wrong.) The story is obviously just getting started, and with the first major twist behind us I look forward to seeing the rest.

Not much more to say yet, but I'm sure I'll share my thoughts as the game progresses.

So unless you've been living under a rock (and if so, please tell me where this rock is and let me crawl beneath it with you), and if you're interested in the Final Fantasy series at all, you've probably seen people talking about this interview with Hajime Tabata, the director of Final Fantasy XV. Among other things, he discusses his decision to publish the first Final Fantasy title with an all-male team since 1990 -- yep, that's confirmed now, five dudes and no women in the player party -- in terms that are, shall we say controversial?

"Speaking honestly, an all-male party feels almost more approachable for players. Even the presence of one female in the group will change their behaviour, so that they'll act differently. So to give the most natural feeling, to make them feel sincere and honest, having them all the same gender made sense in that way," Tabata said....

For Tabata, the journey will have the cast adopting what he dubs a "boys will be boys" type demeanor. "It was the story we wanted to tell and what we wanted to show players," he explained.

"The world might be ready to see the curtain lifted on what boys do when girls aren't around, when they come out of the tent all prim and proper."

Ugh. So much ugh, I don't even know where to start.

Maybe I'll start by saying that, for me at least, the all-male player cast of FFXV wasn't a deal-breaker. Given Square Enix’s past track record with providing gender-balanced casts with interesting male and female characters in the Final Fantasy series, I was hoping for better, and the decision to break with that tradition disappointed me. But I had still planned to buy and play the game, to give the story and the characters a chance.

Tabata's interview has pretty much killed that desire for me, and if I'm reading reactions correctly, there's a lot of people who agree with me.

( This got long, predictably. )

If SE wants to break with their traditions and make a Final Fantasy game with an all-male cast, that’s their right. It’s their game, their company, their choice. No one is claiming otherwise. And who knows, maybe Final Fantasy XV will break free of the expectations that Tabata is setting up for us here and be an awesome game. But given his commentary, I have serious doubts. As it stands now, I expect I'm going to have to give this one a pass.