Cathartic Corridors : Queering Linearity in Final Fantasy XIII

Once a staple of game design, linear game spaces and play have slowly been pushed aside by open-world and sandbox mechanics in the AAA game industry. Most adventure games now have a duty to give visible agency to the player and ensure that their experience seem unique. Yet, this article argues that linearity in games should be reclaimed as a site of queer pleasure. Tackling how non-linear gameplays and temporalities have been associated with queerness, I first address the paradoxical nature of this argument. Through a brief examination of key FF XIII reviews, I then demonstrate that linearity has become passé in role-playing games and is frowned upon by the gaming community, which both play a key role in the shaping of our understanding of play. Running counter to the values hailed by the paratext, this article argues for a revival of linearity through a queer lens. Drawing upon two strains of queer theory – Ahmed’s queer orientation and Muñoz’s queer horizon, I show that FF XIII’s linearity aligns the player’s feeling with that of the characters and immerses them in a queer journey in which they face the present while walking towards queer ideality.