The release of Final Fantasy XIII allows players to experience a game created with SquareEnix’s Crystal Tools Engine for the first time. The significance here is that the Crystal Tools Engine used to develop Final Fantasy XIII is also being used to develop Final Fantasy XIV.
There have also been rumors that Final Fantasy XIII’s combat is somewhat based on Final Fantasy XIV’s combat, as backwards as that sounds. MMORPGs generally have a much longer development time than single player RPGs.
First let’s talk about what the Crystal Tools Engine is. A simple way to look at a game engine may be to say that it’s the software that is both interacting with the hardware, and controlling everything that is happening in the game at all times. I’m not going to delve deep into how a game engine works, as it’s not the focus of this article. The reason that SquareEnix made this engine was to streamline content across multiple platforms.
The engine is already known to run on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as is the case with Final Fantasy XIII. The engine also runs on Windows for pc’s in the case of Final Fantasy XIV. While this does not guarantee that all games made with the Crystal Tools engine will appear on every platform, it does make porting them easier.
Final Fantasy XIII is a beautiful game, as someone put it to me, it’s almost like playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time. It isn’t quite the same as Final Fantasy games going from 2d to 3d, however it is a significant graphical advance all the same. The amount of detail present both during game play and movies is amazing to see.
Final Fantasy XIV could very well have the same level of detail in movies as Final Fantasy XIII does, during actual game play though is another matter entirely. You have to keep in mind that in a single player game SquareEnix has complete control over what is being shown on the screen at any given time. In a MMORPG that is not the case, with thousands of players in the same world(SquareEnix has not released any sever capacity numbers, but 2000+ is probably a safe assumption).
What we have not seen from the Crystal Tools Engine is it’s ability to scale down graphics to improve performance, there’s no need for that in a game like Final Fantasy XIII, but there will be in Final Fantasy XIV. The first look at that should come in the near future when the beta rolls out.
Now let’s talk a little bit about the combat system. I mentioned previously that Final Fantasy XIII’s combat has been said to be inspired at least in part by Final Fantasy XIV’s combat.
The first thing you notice about Final Fantasy XIII’s combat is the speed, it is faster than perhaps any previous title in the series. Combat works by selecting abilities(or having it auto select abilities for you) and matching them to corresponding slots on your attack bar. When the bar is filled the attacks fire off.
In Final Fantasy XIV video’s that have surfaced we have seen an attack gauge that may work in a similar fashion, though I have not seen anything that leads me to believe that it will fire off multiple skills when it fills. Keep in mind that what we saw was alpha combat and it is all subject to change.
The speed at which combat goes in Final Fantasy XIII seems unlikely for Final Fantasy XIV. As is the case with Final Fantasy XI the servers will be located in Japan and used by players around the world. That means latency can be higher than with localized servers. That fact at one point gave Japanese players a distinct advantage in some aspects of Final Fantasy XI. Over the years SquareEnix mostly corrected that advantage. It seems a safe bet that they’re not looking to recreate it in Final Fantasy XIV.
When Final Fantasy XIV launches sometime this year, SquareEnix will have nearly 9 years of experience running an MMORPG, a fantastic engine, and a ton of name recognition in Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy comes with a built in player base that SquareEnix will obviously try to attract as they did with Final Fantasy XI albeit not as successfully as they would have liked. Let’s not forget Final Fantasy XI’s player base is not insignificant having peaked somewhere around a million and settled in at around half a million(those numbers are generally accepted though not exact and based upon educated guesses, as SquareEnix does not readily release this information). While Final Fantasy XI was never the juggernaut World of Warcraft is these days, it was and remains a large successful MMORPG.
SquareEnix has stated that competing with World of Warcraft is their intention. Unlike many companies that have tried to do just that, SquareEnix has the resources and pedigree to do just that. Can they manage to cater to the casual players while not alienating their Final Fantasy XI player base, and make a game that will resonate with their home market in Japan at the same time? That would require making a game that both is easy to pick up and play casually while retaining the depth of game play expected by it’s existing fan base. It’s not impossible, but it’s not going to be easy.
The specs a pc will need to run this game should not be overlooked either, this isn’t going to run on your 800mhz netbook. Exact specs at this point have not been released, but they have inferred that it will require a high end pc at it’s time of launch. Final Fantasy XI did as well to a degree, even if that’s hard to imagine when looking at it now. The requirements to play could be a major hurdle to overcome to reach a mass audience. The one luxury they do have over other MMOs in that sense is the PlayStation 3 version. The PlayStation 3 costs far less than a computer to run it at the same level would.
The chances of Final Fantasy XIV completely flopping are not that great, as it stands today SquareEnix is poised to bring another major game to the MMORPG arena. Where it will stand when the dust settles is anyone’s guess at this point. I personally do not believe they can unseat World of Warcraft as the king of the genre at this point. I do strongly believe that they can surpass the success of Final Fantasy XI and take over as a solid number 2 in the western market however.
Whatever the eventual outcome SquareEnix will do it their way, will they borrow from World of Warcraft and other existing MMORPGs? Of course they will. But make no mistake, this will not be a World of Warcraft clone in a Final Fantasy skin. And it does not look like it will be Final Fantasy XI-2, this will be it’s own game and carve out it’s own unique space in the MMO market.