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What's Next for the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII?

      2004 has been a particularly good year to be a Final Fantasy VII fan: not only have we gotten tons more images from that pleasant surprise of pleasant surprises Advent Children, but we've also been treated to the announcements of Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus, and Crisis Core. All of this, we were told, was a part of the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII", Square Enix's "polymorphic" extravaganza.
      It's kind of alarming that they've announced so much in such a short span of time. Out of the four projects unveiled, only one-- Before Crisis-- has been officially released, and that game has yet to leave Japan. As for the others, Advent Children has been delayed multiple times, Dirge of Cerberus isn't due to come out until 2005 and doesn't even have a confirmed genre yet, and Crisis Core won't be out until 2006. Before Crisis has been very successful so far, but at this juncture, we don't know how the others will fare. Perhaps the only thing that is certain is, despite the quality of the finished pieces, the other works in the Compilation will make boatloads of money for Square Enix. Final Fantasy VII is Square's most successful and enduring game, and has garnered such a reputation to the point that name recognition alone will move product. Lucky for us, Square has a strong track record when it comes to the quality of their products in general, and I trust that they have been treating these FF7 spinoffs with equal care.
      With that issue aside, one must wonder: is there anything else planned for the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII? If the Compilation is truly "polymorphic" as Square Enix claims, would they go beyond the predictable media of games and CG movies, and branch out into other areas of entertainment? First off, let's look at exactly what Square Enix means when they say "polymorphic".
      In an interview, Square Enix analyst Ichiro Otobe says:
      "[Polymorphic content] is defined as one [piece of] many different mediums or terminals. Because each terminal has different specifications and uses, we need to design for the different functions of each terminal... In a traditional model, that transition was very sequential. But games created out of movies are just the movie experience again, with a little bit of interactivity. Most of the time the game is just following the movie plot. In the new model, we come up with a concept with interactivity in mind-- one that can create many types of content out of that."
      However, in the case of the Compilation, the "concept" being used is Final Fantasy VII, a preexisting piece of content that was originally intended to serve itself and no other media. FF7 has since proven itself to be an unusual game in the company's history in that it continues to have a huge fan-base several years (and one console generation) after its initial release. At the time FF7 was made, tradition held that sequels to individual Final Fantasy games was something that just wasn't done. However, ever since the box office failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Square has been struggling to make up for their loss; since then, they've created the first direct sequel to a Final Fantasy (the lighthearted FFX-2), merged with one-time rival Enix, and have seen their music and publishing arm (DigiCube) go bankrupt. For Square, the polymorphic approach is not just a new kind of multimedia experience, it's also a business model; and of course, what better way to test this model than with the company's most beloved game?

      So what may be in the pipeline for loyal FF7 fans? For that, we can look at what Square Enix has done with its other franchises. Right now, one of its most popular non-Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest works is Fullmetal Alchemist, an anime and manga series that has also been made into a video game and boasts a full line of merchandise. By all accounts, Fullmetal Alchemist is a true multimedia phenomenon, and has garnered a strong following in Japan and elsewhere. To a lesser extent, there are the Final Fantasy, Chrono, and Dragon Quest series, all of which began as console games. In the past, Final Fantasy has been spun off into a traditionally-animated OVA series (Legends of the Crystals) and TV show (FF:Unlimited), as well as a CG-animated movie (FF:TSW); however, none of these are directly based on the games themselves. Far lesser known, there have also been Final Fantasy comics and manga, the latest of which runs in Square Enix's biweekly magazine Young GANGAN and is set in FFXI's Vana'diel. Square's Chrono series has likewise been turned into anime (some of which includes characters from Chrono Trigger) and manga, as has Enix's Dragon Quest series.
      With that said, we can confirm that Square Enix has had experience working with different formats and mediums of animation, as well as printed comics. With the CG movie already in production, an animated series seems unlikely, but a manga serial might not be out of the question. Of course, if such a thing were to be in the works, Square Enix would want to get the best artist(s) they can for the job. In a perfect world, FF7 character designer Tetsuya Nomura would draw the manga. This would place him in a role such as the one Yoshiyuki Sadamoto was in for the manga adaptation of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, for which he was also the character designer.
      There is also the possibility of Square Enix tackling mediums with which it is not so familiar. Flash-animated web cartoons would be one particularly interesting and inexpensive option; just such a thing was done for the anime series Infinate Ryvius after that show ended. In addition, novels are a popular way to spin off manga and anime series in Japan, so a book adaptation of FF7, any one of the Compilation projects, or an entirely new story might be interesting. Myself, I'd like to see a book containing the text of the "Loveless" play, which is mentioned every now and again in FF7, or a novel about the Cetra who lived 2000 years ago.
      On a similar note, there's also the possibility of taking one aspect of FF7 and incorporating it into a different medium. In a way, this was done with Chocobo Stallion, a PS1 title released in Japan in 1999, which was essentially an entire game about chocobo breeding and racing, one of the major minigames of FF7. Why not create a FF7-themed version of this concept, made for the Palm platform or the Nintendo DS? Or a Materia hunting game, similar to a collectable card game, and perhaps in that same format? The possibilities are endless.

      With a new year almost upon us and Advent Children's worldwide release on the horizon, it seems that although we've seen so much of Square Enix's plans for Final Fantasy VII, there might still be more to come-- Square has surprised us before, so I wouldn't put it beyond them. The seemingly constant addition of projects to the Compilation has made cynics and skeptics out of many an FF7 fan, but there's no denying one's curiosity in seeing what the original creators will do in expanding the world of a game that we love so much. Whatever happens, I trust in Tetsuya Nomura, Yoshinori Kitase, Nobuo Uematsu, and the rest to give us fans a memorable experience, no matter what the medium.