More Like Unrealized Fantasy
With all the talks of how advanced the latest generation of games consoles is, it’s easy to forget that mobile gaming has come a long way, as well. Sure, there’s a lot of cookie-cutter games out there, but there’s also a lot of games, like House of Da Vinci or The Room that are pushing the medium to an extent, with imaginative puzzles or crisp graphics. Given that phones twenty years ago were considered groundbreaking if they had Snake, let alone a touch screen. We even have a couple of Final Fantasy titles available for phones, but the mobile version of Final Fantasy XI was undoubtedly the most ambitious.
Sadly, it looks like this was too big a challenge, as the game’s production has reportedly been shut down – before it even kicked off in earnest.
At this point, details are scarce. We don’t know if it was supposed to be a full reboot, a spin-off, or an earnest attempt to get the entire game on mobile. It’s worth noting that the original game is still going strong – albeit with a fanbase hampered by the massive success of follow-up Final Fantasy XIV – and a mobile version could well have revitalized the game.
The reboot was due to be a collaboration between Square Enix and Korean developer Nexon, but with the cancellation it’s unlikely we’ll get to see what Nexon would have done with the franchise, or how well the game would have played on mobile devices. In fact, all we have to go on are a couple of concept images released in the past few years, with nothing in the way of gameplay to go by.
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