EDITORIAL NAME

by Peter Beattie 

When I was playing Final Fantasy Tactics, I was surprised, and, yes, offended, by the portrayal of the Catholic Church as, in Martin Haller's words, "devil-worshipping despots." I was surprised because I was playing the game at the same time that I heard Square announce that it would not publish Xenogears in the US due to mature (read: controversial) religious content. At the time I thought that Square was merely worried that sales would be low in a predominately Christian country. But then why release FFT?

From the review I've read of Xenogears, the game does not attack Christianity, directly or indirectly; it simply portrays a world in which aliens use a false religion to dominate the people of a planet. Sound like Christianity to you? (Please kindly disregard this question, UFO chasers.) Final Fantasy Tactics, on the other hand, sums up the mindsets of two very different, bigoted, anti-Catholic schools of thought:
1) The Jesus Seminar / anti-Christian position, which holds that Jesus was a nice guy and all, but he didn't really want to start a whole new religion. St. Ajora decided to use this charismatic leader to start a new religion, thus gaining power for herself / himself. Now, when this idea is applied to the actual historical figure after whom St. Ajora is modeled, St. Paul (or St. Paul and the early leaders of Christianity), the theory doesn't hold up. After all, St. Paul and the early leaders of Christianity underwent torture and death because of their efforts to spread their faith; if their motive was earthly power, they would have obviously given up their hoax when the first hair on their head was threatened.
2) The virtually extinct old Protestant position, which holds that Catholics are devil-worshippers, and the Pope is the Anti-Christ. As I said, these two schools of thought are extremely different, but, amazingly, Final Fantasy Tactics espouses and portrays them both.

Even if it were possible to argue that FFT and Xenogears have the same amount of anti-Christian bias, Square would still have no reason to release FFT and not release Xenogears. In fact, Square would have good reason to do the opposite, since FFT is a strategy game, a genre that has generated abysmal sales in the U.S. Playstation market. Role-playing games, on the other hand, had just been proven to be viable sources of revenue thanks to another Square game, Final Fantasy VII. In the meantime, however, angry gamers protested (some even wrote editorials for RPGamer) in righteous indignation against all of the religious fanatics who would no doubt come flying out of the woodwork to protest Xenogears, a video game, if Square nobly, courageously, and for the cause of freedom, decided to release it in the immature U.S.

Then comes the day when it is announced that Square EA will publish Xenogears in the U.S. RPG fans everywhere rejoice, thanking Square for listening to the plea of gamers!

But I don't buy that explanation. Considering the facts, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole "mature religious content" bit was a scheme to hype Xenogears for its inevitable U.S. release. Think about it: When were you first alerted to the fact that Xenogears had controversial religious content? Was it not when Square was explaining why it wouldn't release it in the U.S.? You see where I'm leading don't you? If Square is so concerned about the detrimental effects a controversial handling of religion would have on U.S. sales of a game, why the release of Final Fantasy Tactics? I think that Square was planning to release Xenogears in the U.S. all the time, and they were just trying to generate some publicity and hype by acting as if the "voice of the gamer" saved Xenogears from extinction and brought it to our shores. It's not unlikely, as it has happened before: Sony decided to release Final Fantasy VII a little bit early in the U.S., citing "overwhelming demand" as their reason, when it was obvious to anyone that it was just a way to get more free publicity.

I'd be interested in what others think of my theory. Feel free to email me with your opinions.

* If you don't see how this applies to Final Fantasy Tactics, re-read the Germonik Scriptures and play through the game again.