If there’s one factor that’s true about video game fandom, it’s that they’re by no means, ever fully happy. Final Fantasy followers had trigger to rejoice yesterday as Final Fantasy 7, 9, 10 and 12 were announced as coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox One along with their present PC and PS4 releases. Quickly, nevertheless, a query arose: what about Final Fantasy 8? What did Squall, charismatic moody teenager and one of many collection’ finest protagonists, do mistaken?
The reply is – effectively, it’s sophisticated, and there’s in all probability a number of causes compounding to forestall it from taking place with ease. So let’s speak about it by taking a little bit of a Final Fantasy historical past lesson.
An necessary piece of context to debate right here is video game preservation, and particularly how extremely poor it was within the nineties, when Final Fantasy was in that golden age that produced FF7, Eight and 9. The reality of the matter is that this: again then, Square didn’t have a correct system for archiving and saving its work after launch. Things could be misplaced – and rapidly.
The growth of Final Fantasy 7’s authentic PC port gives a pertinent instance of this. When a California-based group of Square and Eidos staff started work on porting Final Fantasy 7 to PC in 1997, the Japanese workplace initially dropped off what they mentioned was the game’s supply code. It turned out this wasn’t fully true: it was an older construct of the game, plagued by bugs not within the last launch and even full with scenes that had been minimize for pacing and tone from the PS1 launch. This construct was apparently all that the Japanese workplace might lay their palms on, and initially it was as much as the PC port group to bridge the hole between that and the PS1 authentic as a way to make the PC launch resemble the unique as a lot as attainable.
Eventually the group acquired the PC model operating, although it was plagued by caveats and points because of the way in which it’d been made. Not even the PC model’s completed supply was saved, nevertheless – when gearing up for the 2013 PC re-release of the game that’d lay the inspiration for the trendy console and cellular variations, Square Enix couldn’t discover it.
“The funny thing is, I got a call [a couple years ago] from Square, because they wanted to rerelease the PC version, and they asked me if I knew where the gold master was,” Eidos President between 1997 and 1999 Keith Boesky advised Polygon of their excellent Oral History of FF7 final 12 months. “Yeah, they lost it.”
In the top, Square would merely reverse-engineer and frankenstein the trendy launch collectively from the earlier retail PC construct. With FF9 extra of the supply was intact, which is why the cellular and fashionable console model of that game boasts larger decision textures and different related enhancements.
This historical past of poor record-keeping and backing up has had a knock-on impact on re-releases of traditional games of the period throughout the board. This is why the PS4 variations of Final Fantasy 7 and 9 can usually look so uneven. They characteristic higher-resolution, crisply-detailed character fashions and within the case of FF9 even improved character textures, however the attractive pre-rendered 3D backgrounds look grainy and pixelated. This is as a result of these pre-rendered backgrounds have, for essentially the most half, been misplaced. All of the backgrounds in FF7, Eight and 9 have been created at a far larger decision than wanted then compressed down to suit into 320×240 or 640×480 resolutions.
When Square was carried out compressing them, it appears the high-end work was largely thrown away. Some examples survive, specifically high-resolution Final Fantasy 9 backgrounds that have been saved by their Western artists and uploaded to portfolio web sites (see the instance of that beneath), however the high-resolution backgrounds are gone. The identical is true for the CG animated sequences. If these native-res backgrounds had been saved, we really might’ve had lovely larger decision variations of the PS1 FF trio years in the past – however they weren’t.
This is in the end the destiny of FF8: it’s in a troublesome limbo area the place a model of the game that’ll be straightforward to port appears to now not exist. Chances are that the unique PS1 supply has been misplaced, since groups used to delete work to maneuver on to their subsequent undertaking as soon as a product shipped. Square Enix know individuals need it, however a lot as with that long-coming FF7 port, it’s a bigger endeavor to get it carried out.
Meanwhile, there’s a PC model – nevertheless it’s a bloody mess, having not been given practically as a lot love because the 2013 port of FF7. Its controller help is absolute rest room, it crashes extra usually than it ought to and it nonetheless has god-awful midi music, the sheer catastrophe of which may be heard over on YouTube.
People laughed and mocked Square for having a full 12 months between the PlayStation Experience announcement of FF7 for PS4 and its December 2015 launch, however the reality is that is in all probability how lengthy it took Square Enix to get a model of the game operating reliably on the platform. With supply code misplaced and FF7 made up of 5 completely different game engines for the completely different modes of play, it was a really complicated undertaking. FF8 is a bigger, extra formidable game, and is structured in an analogous method. To deliver it to PS4 (and in flip different platforms) will take time.
That doesn’t imply Square shouldn’t be engaged on this, thoughts. We’re years from the unique PS4 launch of FF7, and FF8 turns 20 in just some months, in February. The time has come: no matter the associated fee, it needs to be Squall’s likelihood to shine once more.
One other thing – there may be a secondary drawback for FF8 apart from preservation, as noticed by eagle-eyed followers. This is predicated extra on commentary and supposition than onerous details from ex-employees of Square Enix, however a whole lot of followers speculate a part of FF8’s woes may be tied to its vocal theme music, Eyes on Me.
While Eyes on Me was written by FF music scribe Nobuo Uematsu, it was carried out by well-liked Chinese singer Faye Wong. Eyes on Me’s melody is strung all through FF8’s soundtrack in items akin to ‘Julia’ and ‘Waltz for the Moon’, and these non-vocal variations of the observe have appeared in games like Dissidia Final Fantasy and rhythm game spin-off Theatrhythm – however the model with Wong’s vocal observe has been absent from all these games. This is very suspicious with Theatrhythm, which has included different FF vocal tracks like FF12’s ‘Kiss Me Goodbye’ and FF9’s ‘Melodies of Life’ – so there may be a musical rights concern as an extra wrinkle.
In the top, it’s the traditional gaming fan story. Thanks for the ports, Square… however we wish extra. Fix up that gunblade, gained’t you?
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