Virtual Reality
Final Fantasy XV and Virtual Reality
Final Fantasy 15 and Virtual Reality may be two very different pieces of gaming; one of which being over 20 years old and the other barely being a few months at the time of writing. Even with that realisation and the possible thoughts that one is objectively better than the other – I can quite confidently say that one would not exist without the other, and since video games can’t travel in time, it’s safe to say Final Fantasy 15 wasn’t the one inspiring; but I’ll get onto that in a moment.
Before I touch upon the necessities for these two in comparison, I’m going to start off with reporting on the pair of them; just so everybody reading is on the same page. So, if you somehow don’t already know, Final Fantasy 15 is a JRPG that has a focus on action-oriented combat; along with a beautifully told story that you won’t want to miss out on for any fans of story-based games.
In comparison to Virtual Reality, the difference is practically night and day. One is a video game and the other is a VR system, even before VR was even a thing! With the age of the system it quite clearly isn’t to the same graphical fidelity as today’s hardware, but the small contingency of games that was released for it did help to bring the gaming industry to where it is today. Regardless of the fact that a game was designed for VR or not, Virtual Reality in some way has influenced the stance of the gaming industry.
Final Fantasy 15 may be a title that currently focuses solely on the single-player experience, it hasn’t stopped Virtual Reality from having a hand in its development; just in the most roundabout way you can probably imagine.
Thousands upon thousands of games have been released in the last 20 years, many of which have taken numerous amounts of inspiration and ideas from the last set of games released at the time. Building on top of this, the 10’s of games that came along with the Virtual Reality console will have had a considerable amount of their time and resources having their inspiration moved from one game to another. We’re currently in a point at time where pretty much every game builds off the last one in some way; be it in a big or small way.
A number of Virtual Reality games don’t have the greatest graphics or gameplay, but the game have managed to come up with a couple of ideas that not only are we going to see in a way in Final Fantasy 15; but also in many other games that you might have even played today. Heck, give it even more time and I guarantee, with no shadow of a doubt that we’re going to see more of Virtual Reality’s ideas in more VR focused games – for obvious reasons – but it will just go to show that age doesn’t always trump design.
At this day and age Virtual Reality isn’t nearly as influential as it once would have been, unlike Final Fantasy 15 would be at this point. With this knowledge, however it doesn’t make Virtual Reality obsolete at least for when it comes to future developments; be they indie or otherwise. It is most certainly one of those systems that you can go your whole life without ever even hearing the name of, but at no point does it hold back the grounds of game development that has been flourishing for a number of years now and at this rate it is only going to increase more and more with every passing day.