I think I’ve hated Square-Enix for roughly a decade now, possibly more. It all started with Final Fantasy VIII in the late 90’s, but considering the simultaneous release of quality titles like Xenogears I still held out some hope. Once we hit the Playstation 2, however, all bets were off. Final Fantasy was a shadow of its former self, they were charging a premium for graphics and little of substance, and their biggest new release was Kingdom Hearts. In truth, Kingdom Hearts likely wouldn’t have pissed me off so badly were it not for two reasons:

1. I was in high school and thus wanted any excuse to hate things for dumb reasons. For example, I hated Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker because it reminded me of Blue’s Clues.
2. More significantly, they seemed to ignore any Squaresoft game from before Final Fantasy VII, revealing to me that the company only cared about their newer and younger fans rather than those of us that had stuck with them since childhood (even as a teenager I was a crotchety old bastard)

I think what really tipped me into complete nerd-rage mode was what they had done to Final Fantasy Tactics. The original is one of my top games of all time, one that I am tempted to claim as the best game of all time due to its excellent combat, customization and design. On top of that, the story was incredible by any standards. If it was a book you could recommend it to people th at enjoyed A Game of Thrones. It is intellectually political, it tells a dual-sided story about two types of heroes, the line between good and evil is frequently blurred and despite the dragons and magic it presents a plausible world of fantasy.

Then Squaresoft decided to place the franchise onto the GameBoy Advance and change the plot into The Never-Ending Story. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say they had ripped off the anime Fushigi Yugi? Nonetheless, this incredibly mature and sophisticated game was transformed into a fairy-tale where a bunch of school kids are sucked into the world of a book called Final Fantasy. Gone is any inspiration from the political climate of medieval Europe or the machinations of the Catholic Church. Instead they made a children’s story that was a complete mockery of the previous game.

As the aughts continued Squaresoft gave me little reason to love them. They absorbed the other Japanese RPG giant Enix, and pretty much stopped producing any of their franchises except for Dragon Quest. The money craving monster started to become the largest publisher and developer in Japan next to Nintendo.

The past few months have reminded me of another corporate giant, however. Once upon a time EA produced nothing but trash and tripe, and they were practically a death knell to any studio they absorbed into their nightmarish capitalistic collective. They were the Anti-Gamer, taking what the niche consumers loved and pushing them onto an assembly line to “make them profitable” to that dreaded mass market of mainstream “gamers”.

Things have changed since then, however. EA ha s started to give its studios greater free reign. They don’t want to just churn out one sequel after the next (unless you’re a sports franchise). They have taken risks on new ideas like Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge, and in a couple of weeks we’re bound to see their brand new space shooter get a sequel (and it got a little over two years development time as well instead of rushing it toward Holiday release!). They may have swallowed up BioWare, but the studio is still kicking strong producing the games they want the way they want to (except maybe the DRM on PC, or project 10-dollar). After Activision cast Brutal Legend aside, EA was right there to pick it up and put it out despite the fact that Double Fine’s games are niche and risky.

EA is what a corporate giant must be in this economic climate. They have their slew of garbage titles intended to sell to the masses for a quick buck, but they use that money to fund the more risky endeavors from smaller studios or visionary designers.

Now, this article isn’t about EA, but I’ve come to think that maybe Square Enix isn’t too different in retrospect. Star Ocean: The Last Hope was everything I’ve come to hate about big-budget JRPG development, and from the sounds of it Final Fantasy is still running strong purely on style with no substance for the player. Yet this generation I’ve picked up Project Sylpheed and found it to be a blast despite the God awful story. The past couple months I’ve grabbed hold of Nier and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume and found myself to be greatly pleased. Now I’ve read some details on hiring Obsidian to develop Dungeon Siege III, and I can only wonder what such a team-up can result in.

I think it is time I cast that old teenage angst and hatred over Square Enix aside. They are still making the over-rated popular shlock, yes, but they’re also starting to make some interesting choices and fund some decent projects. They are simply too large of a corporate entity for me to hate everything they are doing. There’s a lot of good stuff being done as well, and I’d be a fool to miss it.

This, at least, means we can all look with optimism to Activision. Yes, they’re a corporate monstrosity the likes of which have never been seen by the games industry. Yes, plenty of fools still latch onto and hunger for the same assembly-line tripe every year from them. But you know what? They released Transformers: War for Cybertron in 2010, and that was actually a good game. Maybe in a few years we’ll be able to look at this corporate giant and smile, seeing them take the money made from their less-than-mediocre products to fund interesting ideas that wouldn’t stand a chance in this very competitive market otherwise.

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