so Having The Chocobo is this concept i've developed to talk about universes beyond and what works/doesn't for it. the thing is that for 99% of crossover IP promotion, all you need is iconic characters. you wanna get your shit into fortnite, mortal kombat, so on, all you need is a handful of beloved recognizable characters. but for an mtg set, you need way more than that: you need iconography, creatures and places and objects that fans will recognize and be excited about. one of the reasons for all god-awful cards in spiderman was that wotc were worried about players opening packs and not seeing spiderman. this is because spiderman doesn't Have The Chocobo: there's no franchise specific place or object or concept that holds the same iconic and beloved status as its ~6 most prominent characters. you have to make a bunch god-awful generic filler cards with peter parker or miles morales randomly slapped onto them if you want to get something recognizable to fans into most packs.
final fantasy on the other hand--final fantasy Has The Chocobo, which here means the literal actual chocobo but when i use it means 'the breadth and depth of non-named-character iconography to fill out all the needs of an mtg set with cards fans of the original property actually want to see'. nobody was worried about final fantasy fans opening packs and not seeing cloud strife, because they would see a moogle, or a black mage, or a summon, or a town, or a mother fucking Chocobo, and that would be exciting and cool for them. so when evaluating UB sets i have found it really useful to think about the property its adapting and ask, does it Have The Chocobo?
