Don't you dare drop the number from the next Final Fantasy name, Square Enix
Final Fantasy 16 is doing its last lap of console previews ahead of a release next month, though sadly on PC we're not going to be playing it anytime soon. More concerning, though, is something Yoshida told GQ UK in an interview today: there have been talks «with the higher-ups» at Square Enix about ditching the numbers for the Final Fantasy series because they can be confusing for new players.
«A lot of players are going to come in and they're going to look at it like a comic book where you have to read from the beginning to know what's going on now,» Yoshida said. «It's hard for marketing because every numbered title that we release in the series, we have to go into it like, 'It’s OK, you don't have to play the rest of them.»
I get it—16 is a pretty big number. It takes years to learn how to count that high, and the idea of there being 15 other numbers you have to think about before you get to 16? Pretty intimidating. There's also the roman numeral challenge factor. We use plain ol' numbers here on PC Gamer, but officially the game's Final Fantasy XVI. How are children supposed to play this now-M-rated series if they can't even read the name!?
Yoshida also argues, reasonably, that continuing to number each new game in the series could cause problems for his first and primary love, the MMO Final Fantasy 14. «You get a new player coming in and it's like, 'Wait a minute, why do I have to play Final Fantasy 14 if 16 is out?'» he imagined. «Why don't we just call it Final Fantasy Online—just get rid of the number altogether, and that'll make it easier to understand.»
Other than the fact that this is unforgivable Final Fantasy 11 erasure, I sympathize with the point. But to this I present my indisputable counterpoint: a
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