How does Final Fantasy measure up to you as an artwork?

[Mister Goober]

Art is about dealing with emotions. Art is a reflection of life. As a game, whether or not the Final Fantasy franchise is good is up for debate. But I don't care about that. What I do care about is the artistic aspect of the game.

To be clear, I don't only mean the visuals or the music or the writing. I refer to all three.

Like, how does it compare against the likes of the Elder Scrolls franchise? Or the Divinity franchise? Or Kingdom Hearts? Or Souls?

In your own estimation, how great is Final Fantasy when we measure it as a work of art? According to you, at least.

 

[Daenoxiis]

In short: Fantasy game developers, even if it's Sci-Fi Fantasy, take a huge influence from anthropology, mythology, and post-modern technological advancement according to our social constructs trajectory under political infrastructures. Dungeons & Dragons remains to be the root of all Role-Playing Games, although the theme can vary from Traditional Fantasy to Sci-Fi Fantasy now.

With the Final Fantasy series being an anthology series, every game is its own world with its own structure of these things. With something like The Elder Scrolls or Fallout, these is Continual Lore and History between the games.

To me, as a mythology and anthropology enthusiast, it is the difference between Mythology and Folklore. Or larger, grandiose-sized tales of civilizations, and smaller, more localized mythologies and folklore such as the difference between Mesopotamian Mythology and Anthropology, and New Zealand Folklore and Mythology. The only real difference is the size scale. Another example could be the Australian Aboriginal Folklore to that of the South African Sans People Folklore. Comparative Mythology is literally its own academic subject and I think that developers of Fantasy-themed games definitely take a large influence from this rather it's intentional or not.

 

[Mister Goober]

In short: Fantasy game developers, even if it's Sci-Fi Fantasy, take a huge influence from anthropology, mythology, and post-modern technological advancement according to our social constructs trajectory under political infrastructures. Dungeons & Dragons remains to be the root of all Role-Playing Games, although the theme can vary from Traditional Fantasy to Sci-Fi Fantasy now.

With the Final Fantasy series being an anthology series, every game is its own world with its own structure of these things. With something like The Elder Scrolls or Fallout, these is Continual Lore and History between the games.

To me, as a mythology and anthropology enthusiast, it is the difference between Mythology and Folklore. Or larger, grandiose-sized tales of civilizations, and smaller, more localized mythologies and folklore such as the difference between Mesopotamian Mythology and Anthropology, and New Zealand Folklore and Mythology. The only real difference is the size scale. Another example could be the Australian Aboriginal Folklore to that of the South African Sans People Folklore. Comparative Mythology is literally its own academic subject and I think that developers of Fantasy-themed games definitely take a large influence from this rather it's intentional or not.

I honestly am not comfortable with Final Fantasy being relegated as "mythology". Mythology is great, but there are some crazy exceptions. For example, the epic of Hercules and the adventures of Achilles are cool stories. Beowulf is a cool story. But then you look a bit deeper, and onto other mythologies. All of a sudden you discover some bizarre stuff from the imagination of crazy writers. I don't know the details, but I know Athena was born when her dad, Zeus, ATE Athena's mother, and somehow through that act, Zeus gave birth to Athena from his forehead. I mean, what in the actual hell...

Final Fantasy stories are far less grotesque and far more aesthetic than that. The story of Hydaelyn and Zodiark (of FF14), for example, has a poetic weight to it that no crazy people can easily come up with.

 

[Dionysos]

In short: Fantasy game developers, even if it's Sci-Fi Fantasy, take a huge influence from anthropology, mythology, and post-modern technological advancement according to our social constructs trajectory under political infrastructures. Dungeons & Dragons remains to be the root of all Role-Playing Games, although the theme can vary from Traditional Fantasy to Sci-Fi Fantasy now.

With the Final Fantasy series being an anthology series, every game is its own world with its own structure of these things. With something like The Elder Scrolls or Fallout, these is Continual Lore and History between the games.

To me, as a mythology and anthropology enthusiast, it is the difference between Mythology and Folklore. Or larger, grandiose-sized tales of civilizations, and smaller, more localized mythologies and folklore such as the difference between Mesopotamian Mythology and Anthropology, and New Zealand Folklore and Mythology. The only real difference is the size scale. Another example could be the Australian Aboriginal Folklore to that of the South African Sans People Folklore. Comparative Mythology is literally its own academic subject and I think that developers of Fantasy-themed games definitely take a large influence from this rather it's intentional or not.

Absolutely agreed!

This is what I began to notice six or so years ago when I started the Mythology Manual project on this site. Some of the references are only surface level window dressing, but others are very, very deep and suggest a more advanced knowledge than the standard D&D inheritance. With Final Fantasy being a long-running franchise, we can also trace how ideas have developed over time as different teams return to similar material and interpret it in new ways.

I honestly am not comfortable with Final Fantasy being relegated as "mythology". Mythology is great, but there are some crazy exceptions. For example, the epic of Hercules and the adventures of Achilles are cool stories. Beowulf is a cool story. But then you look a bit deeper, and onto other mythologies. All of a sudden you discover some bizarre stuff from the imagination of crazy writers. I don't know the details, but I know Athena was born when her dad, Zeus, ATE Athena's mother, and somehow through that act, Zeus gave birth to Athena from his forehead. I mean, what in the actual hell...

Final Fantasy stories are far less grotesque and far more aesthetic than that. The story of Hydaelyn and Zodiark (of FF14), for example, has a poetic weight to it that no crazy people can easily come up with.

I’d argue that Heracles, Achilles, and Beowulf’s stories all contain their own elements of WTF.

To have a full account of Heracles we need to think about Heracles spending fifty nights with fifty daughters pimped out by their own father. We need to think about Heracles and the murder of his wife Megara and their children (the entire reason he had to complete his legendary twelve labours wasn’t purely heroism, but atonement for this deed). And we need to finally contemplate Heracles and the time his new wife Deianira was tricked by the centaur Nessus into dressing him in a robe drenched in the poison of the Hydra, causing Heracles to rip his skin off and beg to be burned alive on a pyre.

He had better moments too, of course. The day he was walking his dog on the beach and discovered 'Tyrian purple' did no harm to anything other than the murex sea snail his dog devoured, dyeing his muzzle.

Despite the ‘NOPE!’ of many myths, I still find mythology to be aesthetically pleasing. With caution, that is. When you look into many of these heroes they aren’t actually very nice people, but it is their journeys and the hardships they endure which people connect with. I do not idolise them at all any more than I’d idolise Sephiroth (himself celebrated as a hero at first). Not many heroes are honourable or pristine for very long, if at all (this is a recurring theme in the writings of ancient Greek historians like Herodotus, as well as in myths). I’m not even talking about judging by our standards alone. Sometimes it is explicit in ancient literature that these heroes have done wrong and are being punished, have gone mad, etc. Sometimes it is not their fault but down to divine intervention, at other times it is their fault or the divine intervention was deserved, or inherited, or else it is ambiguous or debatable and forces us to contemplate the various issues involved. What mythology has beyond fascinating stories of monsters and heroes are sometimes lessons, and I think Final Fantasy does the same. That said, Final Fantasy’s heroes are a lot more heroic by anyone’s standards. There are some interesting grey-area hero characters in Final Fantasy, but not many mass-murderers and rapists praised as heroes amongst the main cast at least (although that may not be entirely true if we dig into the dark past of people like Terra and Celes whilst tools of the Empire in FFVI, or the reformed Gaius in FFXIV, and so on).

But mythology is more than the deeds of heroes. It is used to explain the world around us, including geographical features and the origins of ancient man-made landmarks where any true history had been lost to time even in antiquity, unless preserved via oral tradition in poetry in some loose form. Mythology also has a psychological value, for it can be used to express the fears and anxieties of a culture, and might offer tools for defeating them. These aspects are what we see quite frequently in Final Fantasy too.

I think mythology is an important lens to view Final Fantasy through, since it has explicitly inspired monsters, characters, items, and even certain storylines throughout the franchise (whether filtered through Dungeons and Dragons as in the first game or, as is often the case these days, significantly more deeply than that). Even the cosmic conflicts of Hydaelyn vs Zodiark in FFXIV, and Cosmos vs Chaos in Dissidia, share a mythological basis. And Final Fantasy does have its fair share of crazy moments… For example, how about the moment Ex-Death hid as a splinter in Krile, biding his time, before popping out to say boo?! That’s almost a very Loki-esque thing to do.

However, mythology is not the only lens. People could not be interested in mythology at all and still fall in love with all of these things as they are presented in Final Fantasy.

And other things have influenced Final Fantasy too. Science fiction and fantasy, horror tropes, William Shakespeare, Thomas More, Dante, John Milton, contemporary celebrities and cultural icons, historical events, jokes, music, and so on. All are namedropped explicitly in the franchise, and others may have implicitly inspired various themes once you use these explicit references as a gateway into examining the games more deeply.

Ultimately, what makes something ‘art’ is subjective. Some might like to admire the buttocks of Michelangelo’s statue of David, others might be freaked out by his (actually quite massive) hands. Some may adore the musical chameleon David Bowie, but others might find his lyrics to be too nonsensically weird to enjoy to sing aloud.

To me what makes Final Fantasy a piece of art is the combination of the story, characters, music which helps tell the stories, and wider lore, all combined together to create a (usually) well-polished whole. Some games are better at it than others, but typically Final Fantasy reuses familiar motifs, including mythological and popular culture motifs, but also draws from the Final Fantasy’s original mythos. The games feel fresh and familiar at the same time, and it is akin to being reborn again each time we play a new mainline instalment. Some might find that therapeutic.

Some might add gameplay elements to this too, but these matter less to me personally. I don’t remember gameplay very well, but I do remember stories, how they make me feel, and the clever way they work various elements into them. There are so many levels to Final Fantasy.

This is a great thread. Sorry I ruined it by being Tl;dr.