Cognition Dissemination: Square Enix Couldn’t Have Blown This Harder

Anticipation was moderately high for Square Enix’s E3 2021 presentation thanks to the games they planned to show and announce. The company announced good-looking titles prior to it, not to mention the rumors from leakers who couldn’t keep quiet about the new titles the company would reveal. It was bound to be, at least, an entertaining show.

This was a theory that sadly didn’t come to pass. Three key problems manifested with the show: The way they presented their titles, the good-looking upcoming games that weren’t shown for whatever reason, and the baffling decisions made for the games themselves. They had a prime opportunity here and botched it.

The Guardians of the Galaxy video game coming from Eidos Montreal doesn’t look bad, per se. It actually looks quite good. It’s taking a different approach from Crystal Dynamics’ struggling and ill-considered Marvel’s Avengers title by being a single-player game where the player controls Star-Lord, accompanied by other members of the GotG team like Gamora and Rocket Raccoon. Together, they’ll go on missions to fight enemies, and never stop talking in the process (keep in mind the team in question here), while Star-Lord makes decisions at key points in time. Spending 11 minutes on the game, about a quarter of the whole presentation, was the most peculiar decision of all. That was too long for a showcase (ostensibly?) not dedicated towards it.

This, combined with an extended look at the remaining content coming to Marvel’s Avengers, was enough to speculate that Disney was buying out Square Enix. But there’s a chance the company wrongly figured this was what viewers wanted to see. The harsh comments and thumbs-down votes on several YouTube videos suggests that it was not.

Every other announcement came with at least one baffling detail. It’s nice that Square Enix is providing “pixel remasters” of the first six Final Fantasy games. It would have been nicer if they showed them outside preview panels so small that squinting was required to pinpoint every detail, not to mention how they’re apparently skipping consoles to only hit Steam and mobile platforms. They could, of course, release on consoles eventually. Let’s just hope they’re better than the hideous monstrosities that are the existing versions of Final Fantasy V and VI on the above platforms, though there’s potential for them to still not be on par with the SaGa remasters. There’s no excuse for that.

I was forward to seeing Babylon’s Fall again following the late-2019 preview, even though the core action looked predictable by developer PlatinumGames’ standards. It was already clear that its development has been rocky considering it missed the initial 2019 release timeframe after its 2018 announcement, beyond the pandemic creating hurdles for everyone. The result of this was on clear display during this presentation by being another live service game, this time with character models and backdrops that appear to be a step down from those previously showcased thanks to the need to handle four playable characters. The desire of Square Enix to release another live service game when their heavily-hyped one bombed is also questionable. Neither company involved is likely to make significant changes again, so we’re stuck with this. There’s a chance it could turn out to be a hidden gem, but we’ll see.

The Life is Strange segment shouldn’t be taken down with all the other nonsense, but it wasn’t without issues. The remasters for the previous LiS games barely look different from the previous versions, reducing the need for anyone who’s previously played them to check it out. Life is Strange: True Colors, though, looks fine. It’s a real damned shame that it was part of this presentation.

I’m going to be fair again and say there’s also a chance that Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, the noted Souls and Nioh-ish game developed by Team Ninja rumored by insiders for a couple of weeks, could turn out well. They, however, could not have bombed harder with the introduction. The first trailer instantly became one of the biggest memes on the internet thanks to how easy it was to ridicule the constant mentions of Chaos, and protagonist Jack’s desire to kill it. Not to mention how the aesthetics, dialogue, and “edgy” character designs seem to be channeling Japanese games made for a circa-2010 western audience. Contrary to rumors, the game is actually coming to all non-Switch platforms, instead of being a timed-exclusive for PlayStation 5.

In a true “cherry on top” moment: The demo version for PS5 owners still hasn’t been fixed after 24 goddamned hours as of this writing. Truly performance art.

Again, there’s a chance the final game could be good, and we could get a preview of this through the demo provided they ever get it working. But the concepts around this game are baffling for a project due for a 2022 release. If they do have a gem here, the marketing team will have to work extra hard to wade through the Chaos (not sorry) to repair its perception. Best of luck.

Notable was the number of great-looking upcoming Square Enix games that didn’t appear. Final Fantasy XVI and Forspoken were MIA, likely to reemerge at a future Sony presentation. On the same level, Project Triangle Strategy will likely reappear at a Nintendo Direct — perhaps tomorrow’s. Neo: The World Ends with You was also not present during the show for no good reason, despite it being planned for release in late July. There was also nothing Dragon Quest-related, even after an anniversary stream full of announcements. Talk about a bizarrely-planned and presented show.

Square Enix could not have flunked this any harder than they did. If someone told me they wanted to make their lineup look as bad as possible, I’d believe them with little hesitation. This is all the proof anyone needs that how titles are presented can often matter more than what titles are presented. I don’t envy the job the marketing teams will have to make these projects look better, the poor people. They won’t get paid enough for this.