FFXII's Gambit System is, and I am not exaggerating for effect, the mechanism by which you relinquish control of the game.
The Final Fantasy series has been an nearly unbroken string of cinemas for several installments now, and with this new innovation they have managed to wrest even combat - that tawdry, unregulated brothel of player interaction - from our increasingly desperate grip. I am not a "Final Fantasy Hater," though such people exist - indeed, I believe many are currently employed at SquareEnix, where their evil labours on Final Fantasy XII have birthed darkness in a twisted mockery of The Holy Nativity.
A glance at today's comic will give you a taste of a savage and cyber future where the rubbery feeding tubes of SquareEnix - tubes which are at once part esophagus, part tentacle - latch on and then digest the Odin All-Father of gaming deities.
1up suggests in their recent preview that it's hard to know what the fan reaction will be, but one need not resort to nostradaman ambiguities to derive this one. It is going to sell out in every store until the stores get their next shipments, which will then sell out. The lines of merchandise will themselves create lines, except they will be lines of people instead, and their hands will clench on sweaty money. Reviews will rest high, like crowns, at 9.0 and above. No divine punishment will ever be meted out! The giant hammer will hang there, suspended, but not fall. Looking out from my tower - my robe resplendent, chin heavy in my palm - I will think of winter.
Even I - I, who have made myself a fortress against it! - feel that brand's dense core drawing me in. It's even set in Ivalice, which twists the knife. I want to summon spectacular creatures to war with violent root vegetables - or, at least, I am not opposed to their being summoned. I want to navigate convoluted familial bonds and fly in ships designed explicitly for that purpose.
Most of all, I want to do what's right.
And I love being wrong on things like this, so if it's really this amazing thing where you're, like, programming your guys or whatever, you'll tell me about it - it's not like I don't own a PS2. It may be physically difficult to pry out the Guitar Hero disc by this point, but I've been working out, and I think I've got what it takes.
(CW)TB out.
It's sad to feel that way about a series you once loved so much. I hope they will eventually go far enough in their experiments that they will recapture the elements that made it so irresistible in its early days.