Art and Design - Final Fantasy 15 Book Review
18Art and Design: Final Fantasy XV is a polarizing but generally good video game art book. It primarily has screenshots from the final game, as well as some concept art.
0:00 - Introduction
0:27 - Quality of the Physical Book
1:00 - Content
4:40 - Aesthetics
7:06 - Nostalgia
7:35 - Backstage
8:02 - Closing Remarks
QUALITY OF PHYSICAL BOOK
-It’s wide format, baby! 16 inches wide and 9 inches high, which means some images are 31 inches long.
-It has about 215 pages with either art or words.
-It has a good quality cover and decent pages, which are made with silk.
-The images are quite sharp, especially for how big the actual prints are.
CONTENT/INNARDS
Variety of images and image types
-While there’s some final concept art, and some cool things like transparent pages, almost all of the images are final CG renders.
Organization
-I think the book is organized in kind of a weird way for a video game art book. The contents are in chronological order from the story point of view. However, this includes the Kingsglaive movie, the game, and the anime. I would imagine that most people are familiar with the game and not the other two mediums.
-While the chronological order often makes sense for these kinds of books, it lends itself best to looking through the whole book in one or a few sittings, and might seem completely all over the place to a person who just wants to thumb through it at your house. There might be a picture of a doll right next to a city-scape.
Is there writing or insight from the artists and developers themselves?
-Not really.
Does it have what you want it to have?
-There are almost no monsters in this entire book. It’s really disappointing.
-One of the main problems is that there is just way too much from the movie, even if some of it is cool. The book is a little over 200 pages, and it’s in chronological order, and the start of the game is on page 90!
-There’s a lot of artwork of the characters, which are mostly final CG renders. While impressive, it isn’t really was I’m most interested in seeing.
-There is only so much space in this book, and if they are making decisions about what to include I would have cut out a lot of stuff like an extreme close up of a hair pin.
-I’m mostly interested in monsters and huge landscapes. While there are some, I wish there was a lot more.
-I also wanted much more writing, explanations, and iterative art. There’s talk of how much work they went through the recreate classic monsters, for example, but it would have been nice to SEE what they were talking about.
-There’s basically no input from the developers or artists themselves. It would have been so great to read about why they made the design decisions they did and how they thought through things, but sadly that is not really in this book.
AESTHETICS
-It’s hard to argue that the book doesn’t stand above it’s peers in terms of deliberate art direction. I find the layout very pleasing. It would make an excellent display piece or coffee table book. I wish all art books had this sense of style. It’s a million times better than plots of rectangles.
-There are tons of full pages of art. And seriously, it has probably the biggest actual pieces of art in any video game art book I’ve ever seen.
-The wide pages are a dream. It’s ideal for video game art and it’s a shame more video game art books don’t do this.
-The cover doesn’t feel plastic-y like a lot of video game art books. It’s feels “flat” and high quality.
-I like that the book easily lays flat without closing itself, which is actually pretty rare and quite nice.
-There are a few unique pages that are a nice change of pace, like some “half” pages.
-There are a few “transparent” pages, and some of them are used to pretty cool effect. One shows how the city walls are laid out in a square, and another gives a cool red glow to a Cerberus.
NOSTALGIA/AFFINITY EVOKED FOR THE GAME
-There is a certain feeling that comes from playing Final Fantasy 15. That feeling is not evoked by amazing layouts of a vial. While some images did make me experience nostalgia, a lot of them were so focused on the appearance of the characters and objects that the sense of exploration and wonder was left behind.
BACKSTAGE
-Does the book offer any backstage glimpses into the games development? Not really.
-The intro has a story about how they updated the Leviathan design, and there was an interesting remark about how the developers see certain designs, like the Behemoth, as almost a kind of visual language for the series. I found that an interesting concept to think about - a visual language. Unfortunately there’s no artwork of the Behemoth in the whole book.
There are 17 book reviews in Season 1 of my series “Mike’s Video Game Art Book Reviews.” I hope you enjoy them!
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