Ok, so couple of things...

Uninformed opinions make up some
80% of the internet. So, you're welcome?

I booted up the Final Fantasy XVI demo this weekend, and I have some thoughts I want to share. What's that? You don't care? That's fine. Skip this one. I'm not offended. It takes a special kind of nerd to want to sit through what somebody else--particularly me--thinks about a video game. Oh, and let me be clear, I'm not writing a review. No one cares what I think about a thing, I'm not a critic. Criticism is a skill, and a wifi connection doesn't make an opinion an informed opinion. Anyway, some thoughts...

Well, first, this didn't bode well:

Are they so afraid of AI taking their jobs that they're trying to blend in?

Being a quarter Canadian, I'm actually
a little ambivalent about the War of 1812.

I realize that it's just the name of a development team at Square Enix, and that the team itself worked on Final Fantasy's XI and XIV, but c'mon, that's terrible. Still though, I can get past that. What I can't get past is the British. I have no particular beef with the British, well, maybe the war of 1812, but that was like, a hundred years ago. What I do have a perfectly marbled, forty-thousand yen per pound beef with, is Japanese-developed fantasy games getting localized with British accents for no reason. Well, there is a reason, I just find it a tired one.

Ok, fine, high fantasy and space
authoritarians, if you want to split hairs.

I think the rationale is that we, whoever we are, associate the accent with high fantasy. Final Fantasy XVI isn't the only game guilty of this, and I suppose with its more Game of Thrones/LOTR vibe it's at least less jarring than say, Xenoblade Chronicles, which, while firmly in the fantasy genre, had a distinct anime sci-fi flavor. But I'd really love the option to switch to a more, well, I was going to say American accent, but that sounds wrong too. Maybe it's just about the lack of specificity my native accent imparts? 

Above: the developers of FFXVI
daring us to take this seriously.

Imparts to other Americans, I guess. Yeah, alright, British accents just go with medieval castles, even if the game is set on some other planet. And it works fine in this game, at least as far as I've gotten in the demo. Obviously, Final Fantasy XVI is in no way an attempt to recreate any real historical time or place. And yes, all the "yes milords," and "do you yields" do admittedly lend the world whiff of pseudo-history. Medieval-ish. Still though, it feels like Creative Business Unit III went through all this trouble--too much trouble--in pursuit of authenticity only for the King to ride in on a giant chicken.

Sure, it's like calling out The Red Wedding
for being historically inaccurate but, c'mon.

But whatever, it's Final Fantasy. It's a violation of international law to make one without chocobos. Verisimilitude be damned. Can we talk however, about the choice to give their characters anime hair? Look, nothing's going to make chocobos and giant magic kaiju feel particularly plausible, but one of medieval Europe's most striking features, and perhaps the one that is almost always overlooked in fiction, is its terrible haircuts. 

Until developers of high fantasy video games lean into that, I'm going to continue to call them out on the selective historical accuracy. 

What I'm saying is give Clive a bowl cut you cowards.