Toy Fair 2014: Square Enix Plays Nice With Metal Gear, Batman and More

It seems like Square Enix has been making collectibles and action figures for video games for almost as long as its been developing the games themselves. This year at Toy Fair, the manufacturing side of Square showed off a bunch of cool new additions to existing lines, including all-new Play Arts Kai figures for Batman: Arkham Origins, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and surprisingly, Titanfall.

Play Arts Kai, Square's line of fully-articulated action figures, dominated the company's booth this year, and for good reason. As some of the most articulated and detailed figures on the market, the Play Arts brand has expanded beyond its humble Final Fantasy roots, and delved into properties like Metal Gear, Tomb Raider, Mass Effect and many films as well. This week, several new licenses made an appearance, including the Atlas mech from Titanfall. While there was no date or price available, we did get a nice look at the prototype for the scaled down war machine. The sculpt looks a lot like the statue included with the collector's edition of Titanfall, but it's not really clear if the pilot included will be poseable on his own.

Square's also got some new Batman figures coming based on the designs in Arkham Origins. Batman, Robin, the Joker and Deathstroke are all set to arrive at some point over the course of the next year, and these figures should compliment your existing Arkham Asylum and Arkham City collection nicely. This Robin is much better than the one released from Arkham City, though there isn't much special or different (aside from minor cosmetic changes) for the Joker. Batman's got a whole new outfit and Deathstroke has never had a figure from Square before, so both do stand out.

We'd be remiss in not mentioning the fully-painted Snake/Boss from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. We saw the prototype back at NYCC last year, but the finished version definitely looks as fantastic as we'd hoped. Unfortunately, the continually rising costs of the Play Arts line finds Snake poised to arrive at retail for $99.99. That's well up from the cost of previous Metal Gear figures, especially when you learn all that's included is one extra set of hands, another head, a pistol and a knife. Play Arts figures have seen price points skyrocket in recent years due to higher manufacturing costs, but soon Square might find itself offering figures at prices almost twice as expensive as Figmas, 3-4 times more expensive than standard NECA figures, and rapidly approaching resin statue prices.

What little new Final Fantasy collectibles Square was showing will no doubt make fans of the long-running franchise happy. New Static Arts toys based on Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII looked very nice, but it would have been nice to see more of what's in store in regards to Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. Still, even with the premium price tags, we were impressed by Square's offerings. The collector in us can't wait to add many of these pieces to our displays. It's just too bad the part of us that wants to eat dinner might have to forgo a few meals to do so.