This weekend at the PAX Prime gaming convention, two very big video game franchises with very big followings announced their 25th anniversaries only days apart. Friday saw famous game developer and gaming savant Hideo Kojima celebrating the birth of his famous Tactical Espionage Action games the Metal Gear Solid series, and Saturday celebrated the inception of the wildly popular and seemingly never-final Final Fantasy Series. To celebrate each of these accomplishments, both companies came out with new things in a big way.
On the Aug. 31, Kojima took the stage to celebrate the birth of his baby — the MGS franchise. Only a week before, Kojima mentioned that what he would show at PAX would “change video games forever.” Hefty claims, but it was his vision with the MGS games that did change games forever. Going into the announcement, most people assumed that this new announcement would be Metal Gear Solid 5, supposedly what should be the newest game in the long running series, and that it would be running on the much touted Fox Graphics Engine.
Instead, Kojima revealed gameplay and a trailer for a game called “Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes,” something he touted as an open world Metal Gear Solid game. This is a big step forward for a franchise known for being incredibly linear. The latest game in the series, “Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots,” involved going from cut-scene to cut-scene completing objectives in between, and is known for being almost more of a movie with interactive sections than a game. The game's final cut-scene was almost two hours long. But “Ground Zeroes” is looking to be a big step forward for a franchise that is known for taking big steps. Moving the game to an open world setting would give the player a lot more control to do as he pleases and would break the game up from just being a partially interactive movie. That's not to cut the Fox engine short either, from what was shown the engine running the game looks absolutely gorgeous.
Then, merely a day later, we saw the Square Enix take the stage to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the final Fantasy franchise. Square actually cheated a little bit, as they released information a day early. This fall in Japan, they are releasing a collection of all thirteen final Fantasy games, with an art book, soundtrack and other goodies included. The pack — priced at over $400 — would include Final Fantasy I and II, as well as IV through IX on PS1 discs, Final Fantasy III on PSP UMD, Final Fantasy X through XII on PS2 discs and XIII on PS3 discs. All in all, without one of the original PS3s, you would need a PS2, a PSP and a PS3 to play all of the games. Granted, this is one of the most storied franchises in video game history, and this collection would be a huge piece of video game history to own.
The real announcement though came on the following day. There was a lot of speculation as to what would be announced on the day of the anniversary.
As it turned out, it was actually Final Fantasy XIII-3, though by a different moniker. The game, originally developed as XIII-3 was now called “Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.” No gameplay or cut-scenes from the game were actually shown at the press conference, but what was shown was a presentation from Art Director Isamu Kamikokuryo. He detailed that the game would take place solely on an archipelago of four islands: a radical shift from the other games in the XIII series, which took place on an entire planet and throughout time respectively. The game would also be revamping its combat system again to make it more dynamic, actually allowing you to control the main protagonist Lightning's movements in battle, instead of just hitting commands. It appears to be another move forward for the XIII series, though it remains a trilogy that series fans have grown distaste for. The initial art for the game looks promising and has a lot of potential but it might not be enough to sway fans that think the trilogy is a waste of time.
All in all, it was a busy weekend at PAX for these two video gaming giants. Announcements aside, it really is mind-blowing to think how far video games as an industry have come since 25 years ago when the original Metal Gear and Final Fantasy were released. Hopefully the next 25 years for video games will be just as prosperous.
Reach the reporter at brian.bishop96@gmail.com
