How The Final Fantasy Series Influenced Me As A Writer

I’ll start this by saying that the first serious story I ever attempted was fifteen years ago.

It was some action/adventure type of story with guns and violence and chase scenes. The main character had a sword which was because I loved Lord of The Rings and because, more importantly, I loved Final Fantasy.

I won’t lie and pretend I was always a fan of the series, because I didn’t get a PlayStation until I was eleven years old, in 1999. At the time, I was a massive wrestling fan, so playing WWF SmackDown was a bigger deal, as was playing Tekken, Fifa, and Crash Bandicoot, amongst other games.

Fast forward a few years, though. In 2001, I was thirteen years old, and a friend of mine received a load of chipped PlayStation games from his sister’s boyfriend. Most of the games we didn’t care about, like Metal Gear Solid (Gasp). There was Final Fantasy VII, though, or rather, the first two discs. I must have been living under a rock because the game meant nothing to me.

My friend didn’t want to play it, but he’d at least heard of it, and he offered to sell me the discs for £1. His selling point was that it was ‘like Digimon and Pokemon.’
That was enough for me, I gave him the pound, took the two discs and I went home. I put the first disc in and started playing.

I was hooked.

When I enjoy something, it consumes me. My favourites rarely change, and when I started playing the game as Cloud, Barret, Tifa and the others, it was like nothing else I’d played before. I didn’t care about the graphics. I only cared about the story, the characters. The monsters. The journey. I adored this game and my friend soon complained that he didn’t see me anymore because I was in my room playing it.

High school was a strange time, and the people that I was friends with when I was younger were changing. We were all going in different directions and trying to find ourselves. Losing myself in an immersive world for hundreds of hours seemed like a great idea. I played through the first disc until a certain section where I needed to dig for this lunar harp to get through a forest to the next section. For whatever reason, I couldn’t complete this part of the game. I didn’t have the internet, and I wasn’t schlepping to the local library to use theirs. I couldn’t afford a strategy guide, so I just shrugged and stopped playing it.

By chance, I went to HMV soon after with my mum, and Final Fantasy VIII was there. I convinced her to get it by promising her I would do chores, she wouldn’t have to give me pocket money, it wouldn’t affect my work, etc. She ended up buying me both Final Fantasy VIII and IX. I started playing VIII first, reading the little booklet on the bus ride home, learning about the characters and the basic storyline. I couldn’t wait to play.

I was hooked.

The opening scene. The characters. The musical score. everything about this game gripped me, and I loved it far more than any other game I’ve played. I’ve enjoyed a lot of games, and the Pro Evo Wars of my late teens will always hold a fond place in my heart, but Final Fantasy VIII changed everything. The storyline, to me, was better than Final fantasy VII’s. I could relate to the characters more. They were a few years older than me, and the main character, Squall, was this loner type who kept most of what he was feeling bottled inside, and I could relate to that. I played this game religiously, and some moments affected me to where I can remember them vividly now.
I still write with the soundtrack playing to this day.
When I finally got to the end of the game, I remember having a tear in my eye and being sad that it was over. I played it again and again, but that first play-through was special; levelling up characters and fumbling around trying to learn the junction system and figure out where the hell I was going most of the time.

I played Final Fantasy IX and loved it. I finally bought a proper edition of Final Fantasy VII and completed that. I played IV, and I played VI because they were available in this weird anthology edition for a while. I even branched out and played games like Tales of Destiny and Chrono Trigger.

Soon, I got a PlayStation 2, and the Pro Evo Wars began, and games like WWE SmackDown: Here Comes the Pain took precedence. I wasn’t playing Final Fantasy games as much, mainly because I was playing multi-player games, and none of my friends wanted to watch me grinding the same enemies for hours on end. I liked the look of Final Fantasy X, though, and I bought it in December 2003.

Now, during this period, no one really saw me. I got Final Fantasy, and I bought several music CD’s: The Neptune’s: The Clones, Jay-Z’s Black Album, and G-Unit’s Beg for Mercy album. I would sit and play Final Fantasy X and listen to those albums, along with Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in Da Corner album, for hours on end.

The game gripped me, and I loved the fact that they voiced the characters. Auron was my favourite, because he spoke little and let his Masamune weapon do most of his talking. When he spoke, though, everyone listened to him, and his words were full of wisdom. I played through the game and got hooked on the characters, and after all the twists, when the game ended, I sat in my room and cried, because it had affected me so much. I couldn’t help it. I felt like I was in the game. I wanted to change the ending because as profound and brilliant as it was, I couldn’t handle it.

I think that was the first step of the writing idea being planted in my head. I liked the idea of being able to control the journey, delay the ending, write sequels and keep the journey going for as long as I wanted, but I wasn’t there yet. This game helped me there, though.

My top 3 would have to be:
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VII.

It’s controversial, as it’s considered almost sacrilege not to put Final Fantasy VII at the top, but I rarely do what I’m supposed to.

So, back to the point.

I was in love with these games and the characters. Characters always had a massive impression on me. Don Corleone in The Godfather. Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. Squall. Auron. Sephiroth. Dumbledore. Harry Potter.  Aragorn from Lord of The Rings. Gandalf. I enjoyed learning about the characters. I loved backstory and little details and learning what made people tick, and all the while, I was feeding my creative brain.

Anyway, fast forward to 2004. I start writing, and I want to write a digital action-adventure story where people carry swords and fight people and train and get stronger, and they travel in groups for protection and wear armour. Not sure where I got the idea for that . . .

Early on, I realised I would be a character-based writer, and that directly comes from the influences of my teenage years. When I first started, I would write massive expositional backstory pieces for every character, usually as soon as I introduced them into the book. It was awful to read, but it was excellent practice.

I knew nothing about outlining my work, and what little structure I had was based on my love of reading fiction, but I kept writing and eventually wrote around one hundred pages on this story before running out of creative stream.

Around this time, though, I read the Godfather, and that kick-started my obsession with crime figures. I read other Mario Puzo books, read Layer Cake, and suddenly, I’m a crime writer, and would remain that way for the next fifteen years.

In my mind, though, it all started with Final Fantasy and reading Harry Potter books, and reading and watching and loving Lord of The Rings, because they taught me that with the right characters, in the right story, anything is possible.
Without them, I don’t think I’m a writer, and maybe even if I was, I wouldn’t be the same writer. I wouldn’t be as effective.

They weren’t my only influences, but they were my main ones, and even now at my advanced age, I would sit down tomorrow and play them, if only I had the time.

Do you have a favourite final fantasy game? Comment below, or drop me an email at admin@rickyblackbooks.com to share!