The QTEs In Final Fantasy 16 Kinda Ruin The Boss Fights

To be honest, I had believed that as a society, we had moved past the need for Quick Time Events in video games. I had thought we moved past prompts that rob players of their agency in critical moments. I had thought we no longer needed to endure interactive cinematic interludes with totally obvious outcomes. And I had thought boss fights in general should reward players for their skilled gameplay and combo creativity, not how quickly they press a button when prompted.

That’s why it’s a real downer to see Final Fantasy 16 ticking all the boxes for what’s bad about QTEs. And for some inexplicable reason, it persistently reproduces the problems of QTEs throughout each and every Eikon battle without fail.

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For starters, your QTE options are very limited in this game: Press Square, mash Square, and a few R1 clicks sprinkled in between the abundant Square-y moments. I gave the first Gardua battle a pass for relying on QTE cinematics for about 40% of its gameplay because I didn’t know any better, and I assumed that subsequent battles would be more creative with how they tell their stories and which prompts to press. Much to my disappointment, however, every Eikon encounter thereafter abandoned the suspense of not knowing what to press.

You are facing off against another Ifrit-y version of yourself in a battle for redemption and acceptance. How do find salvation? By mashing that Square button! Then you literally absorb the very crust of the earth as you take on the colossal Titan—a completely different situation—yet you do it through the same mashing action with little to no variation. Later, you confront a draconic monstrosity set on obliterating the entire planet with its devastating Zeta Flare; really high stakes, but you already know what to do. It’s time to mash that Square button! … or maybe not, because oddly enough, there are no consequences for failing the QTEs; another flaw that somehow drains every fight in Final Fantasy 16 of its rightful intensity.

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But back to that tell-a-story creatively point. On a topic like this, I can’t help but remember how the QTEs in Asura’s Wrath’s boss fights were more than just clicky cutscenes. There were analog QTEs that captured how Asura’s body moved, and other QTEs acted as cinematic Street Fighter-y finishers by integrating them into boss attack patterns and staggers. Even the anime punching mash sequences came with a meter showing which of the two fighters had the advantage. Not only were there personalized QTEs based on the battle situation, but you were still in control of your character most of the time. The QTEs just added an extra layer of sparkling meaning to each sequence without replacing the gameplay itself, which is something FF16 never really does except when you press R3 and L3 to accept the truth; the truth that there will never be another moment like this again in the game.

Instead of adding personality to the moment-to-moment action, Final Fantasy 16’s QTEs abruptly take you out of active participation, which can sometimes feel dissociative and expectation-shattering. The Titan Lost fight baits you into thinking you’ll be running and jumping on its tentacle rails all the time, yet the fight quickly devolves into repetitive button-mashing cutscenes and periods where you are playing shmups rather than actually using your main character. The Bahamut fight also takes away your agency with half the battle being fought by Phoenix rather than Ifrit. Quite emotional, I’ll admit, but it feels like nothing more than a glorified cinematic QTE sequence in how it robs you of the catharsis of directing the fight with your own battle-hardened protagonist until the end. And eventually, you end up wondering how much of those fights were actually about you and your own combat skills?

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I appreciate the adrenaline rush of many of these fights, and at many moments, it felt like I was in really a Gainax anime. However, for the life of me, I can’t call them fights in the proper sense. If you think about what people love about the Souls series’ boss fights, it’s that they’ve gone through the whole fight using their own expertise and skill they’ve built from playing the game. However, even if you opt for the extra-hard Final Fantasy mode, it won’t fix these scripted QTE sequences because they have nothing to do with your stats or brains. The QTEs are simply immune to that cathartic feeling of overcoming a really hard challenge; they are there to make sure you don’t get to play the game you were promised. And yeah, the Odin Eikon fight—the one I was most anticipating—is nothing more than one QTE in total, so after that slap on the face, I really wish we never see another QTE again, in Final Fantasy or in any other game.

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