Honestly though, how did they make a mainline Final Fantasy game that isn’t an RPG and not expect to receive a lot of blowback?

Seriously?

It absolutely can. I’ve been to multiple comedian shows in venues as big as an NBA stadium that required you to lock your cell phone up in a pouch.

Bless her heart. If you’re a woman in your 30's to 60's and still describe yourself as an “influencer” chances are you still very much are immature and vain.

It begins.

Sir, this is a Wendy’s. 

All four of those games sold below expectations (only Perfect Dark Zero sold over a million copies, which was still less than half of what the original sold on the N64). Their performance was the major contributing factor in Microsoft restructuring the studio near the end of the 2000's so that it just focused on…

If you count Game Pass users downloading it for free, sure. If you count actual units sold, not even close to their biggest game.

Go and look back at how successful any sizable game studio was before being acquired by Microsoft vs. afterward. Go on, I’ll wait.

The trial was a disaster, but I think it’s absolutely hilarious that any gamer still thinks Microsoft buying a studio is actually a good thing.

I’d argue that Cid is probably a bigger standout than Clive, but yeah, besides those two the characterization is paper thin.

...an actual RPG?

Thanks for letting us know you haven’t played half the other mainline games.

100%.

Clive is definitely one of the best parts of XVI, but I think there is some severe recency bias here.

Me:*Jaded man in late 30's who approaches all late-stage capitalistic society with a healthy amount of cynicism *

I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

That’s funny, because the second I started to hear from senior development staff of the game dismissing traditional RPG elements as important to the series I knew there was going to be blowback from fans.

OG Legend of Zelda will always be my favorite because it gave us this glorious picture:

Well, at least we now know that the whole “we want to cast younger versions” was total bullshit.