Return to its Roots?

[Locke4God]

Oh X was quite linear. You're very right there, although it's foray into Blitzball, even though I'm not a huge fan, made it somewhat more palatable for me. But yeah X was super duper linear.

XII was not. You could journey out into the desert very early on, head out to the fortress past the Estersand, run all the way up to the village on the river in the north, go on a number of hunts, engage in a few sidequests within the city, and that's all before the story even gets started. After that the hunts continue, the sidequests grow, and it's very much not linear as much as a FF title will ever be.

But IX was different. You would make it to a town, and there would be very very very little to do, and there was nowhere else to go exept into the little field in front of it. No other houses, or little villiages to go to for any sort of side quest. No side games to play. Nothing. And the side games were horrid in that title. If you want to go Tetra Master on me, the game was not only inferior to Triple Triad, but it was a knockoff as well, very confusing as they intentially left it without directions, and there was very little to be gained from playing it, so there you go.

If you're arguement is airship, then even in IX you don't get it until disk 3 I think it was, and even then you don't get other modes of transportation before that. In 7 you had the downed plane on disk 1 you could take to other continents that were out of storyline chronology. In VIII you got the mobile Seed building early, and could go to side towns before that. There were just things to do.

But all you could do in IX was keep going with the main story. That was it.