Random Roar: When Does A Mobius Not Continue Forever?

If you’re not familiar with the concept of a Mobius strip, try to picture a surface you can walk along in a straight line where: a) you will never cross an edge, b) you will eventually return to your starting point, and c) your journey will take you along both sides of the strip.  The first two of these stipulations can represent your journey along any kind of sphere or round-ish surface.  If you were to pick a direction on Earth and just walk in as straight a line as possible (for example, start from Quito in the country of Ecuador and go exactly West), you’ll end up back in Quito without crossing an edge, assuming you are Jesus of Nazareth and can walk on water.  It’s the third stipulation that defines the unique property of the Mobius strip.  It would be like finding yourself walking on the underside of a bridge about halfway across it, without having stepped over the edge.

For this reason, many consider the Mobius strip to be endless, a strip that goes on forever with no beginning and no end.  Perhaps when naming a mobile game Mobius, it’s not nice to give players the impression that the game is going to last forever.

To be fair, many Final Fantasy on-line properties are still being supported.  Final Fantasy XI is still running despite there no longer being updates to the game.  Final Fantasy XIV is going to be celebrating a tenth anniversary very soon and is still receiving new story updates every three months or so, with a full game’s worth of content being released every two years.  Final Fantasy Brave Exvius released a trailer earlier this year for its third season.

So the decision to end Mobius Final Fantasy must’ve come as a shock to many players who were playing through the Warrior of Despair storyline and had finished the latest chapter, which at the time was chapter 8.  To Square-Enix’s credit, they did still finish the game and release the final two chapters, but after that, development has ceased for the game.

One wonders if the shutdown of Mobius is related to the cancellation of Final Fantasy XV‘s second season of DLC in some way, and if the Final Fantasy brand is beginning to wind down.  On the other hand, Final Fantasy XIV experienced significant growth during the Shadowbringers expansion and it’s also easy to argue that the opposite is true, that the Final Fantasy brand has never been stronger.  But with no Final Fantasy XVI in sight and the first chapter of the Final Fantasy VII Remake being as divisive as ever – about as divisive as both Final Fantasy XV and the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy combined – Square-Enix might need to focus inward a little and try to figure out what made the Final Fantasy series great in the first place and why recent entries in the series have more often than not made part of the fanbase incredibly upset.

Of course, every fanbase has unpleasable elements who will never be satisfied no matter what a series does.  Final Fantasy is no exception.  Fans complained about the linear quality of Final Fantasy XIII, and let’s be clear, the game did have its faults, but linearity was not one of them, not in the way most players think.  But the developers listened to that criticism maybe a little too much and made Final Fantasy XV a bit too open world, causing some players to lose the focus of the narrative amidst all the sidequests that ultimately meant very little to the lore of the game.

The problem is, Square-Enix thinks that they have looked inward and figured out what made the series great, if recent games like All The Bravest, Final Fantasy XIV and even Dissidia have shown.  These games are so far up their nostalgia that they can no longer see the sunlight.  All The Bravest basically takes players through scenarios based on previous games in the series, but with the most brainless gameplay possible.  Dissidia brings back heroes and villains in floating arenas based on past games in the series and creates very little brand new content to tie it all together.  And Final Fantasy XIV is so chock full of nostalgic content that it’s amazing any new ideas even get through.

But while players will sing the praises of how well Final Fantasy XIV incorporates raid bosses like the Warring Triad and settings like Doma and the Crystal Tower, the game receives a lot more praise for its original stories, especially the ongoing “main story quest.”  In Shadowbringers, the MSQ brought players to a parallel world which was very nearly destroyed by a wave of corrupted light-aspected aether and which has been slowly dying ever since, brought so close to disappearing entirely that a world-shattering calamity is all but certain.  The game’s story at times will incorporate references to past Final Fantasy games, but in a way that serves the story well rather than dominating the story entirely.  Not only do players meet Bismarck from Final Fantasy VI during the course of Shadowbringers (the actual Bismarck this time… long story), they ride Bismarck to the bottom of the ocean, as if making a subtle reference to Final Fantasy IV‘s Lunar Whale.

If one wants to look at a series that stays firmly in the familiar without a lot of gratuitous recycling, Dragon Quest is a good choice.  What my Retrospectives have shown thus far is that even a series that prides itself with remaining steady in a rapidly changing world can still innovate without losing focus on what makes it great.  It may be time for Final Fantasy to return to its traditional fantasy roots one more time and create a more modern take on the kind of game that Final Fantasy IX was… but please, no Final Fantasy IX Remake.

Final Fantasy VII Remake shows that Square-Enix is trying to learn from their past, but they’re not learning the right lessons.  They know Final Fantasy VII was popular, but what they’re trying to do is give players Final Fantasy VII again.  They don’t realize that we already have Final Fantasy VII.  We got it in 1997.  It isn’t even a true remake, but I haven’t played it yet so I shouldn’t really know about that.

My least favourite aspect of the ending of Mobius Final Fantasy is that this game is no longer going to be available to play, ever.  At one point, it was stated in an interview that Mobius is considered internally to be a main entry in the series, given how ambitious the game ended up being.  This is the latest example of the downside to moving towards on-line gaming, whether in whole or in part.  Games that have on-line features or are completely on-line will eventually break.  Everyone with Mobius Final Fantasy in their Steam libraries will no longer be able to boot the game up.  Players who have Dragon Quest IX on their DS and who didn’t or weren’t able to take advantage of the on-line features are no longer able to do so and have permanently lost out on whatever content they would’ve been able to unlock.  Eventually, every single MMO on the PlayStation 4 will shut down, and anyone who hasn’t unlocked the games’ Platinum trophies will never be able to do so.  And so on.

I suppose one could hope that the game can be recycled into an off-line experience, maybe released as Mobius Final Fantasy Complete on a system like the Switch, but at this point, that’s a pipe dream.  If you do want to still experience the game, there’s about a month left until June 30, when the servers go down for good.