T w e n t y S i d e d
The airship Tidus helped salvage at the start of the gameThe Al Bhed don’t acknowledge this or thank him, which would really go a long way to smoothing out that whole unfortunate slavery “misunderstanding”. is parked here, and it’s been cleaned up and is ready to fly.
Wait. How Long Has it been?
If you go strictly by the visible day / night cycle in the game, then…
- Day 1: Tidus arrives in Spira and meets the Al Bhed. The day ends when Sin attacks.
- Day 2: Besaid island. The day ends after meeting Yuna.
- Day 3: The ship ride from Besaid to Kilika. The day ends when Yuna performs the sending.
- Day 4: The ship ride from Kilika to Luca. The day ends while sailing.
- Day 5: The Blitzball tournament. The party sets out on the Mi’ihen highroad. The day ends at the inn where they fight the Chocobo eaterWhich I didn’t mention in this write-up. But trust me, they fought one..
- Day 6: Operation Mi’ihen. The day ends at Djose Temple.
- Day 7: Moonflow to Guadosalam. Afterward you stop at the inn in the Thunderplains. While you can’t see the time of day, the game does play the “sleeping for the night” lullaby sound.
- Day 8: Exit the Thunderplains. Pass through the forest. Lake Macalania. Kill Seymour. The day ends when Sin attacks under the lake.
- Day 9: Bikanel Island.
So in nine days the Al Bhed hauled the Airship up from the bottom of the ocean, cleaned it up, figured out how it worked, found or built replacement parts, repaired it, fueled it, figured out how to pilot it, and gave it a factory-fresh coat of paint?
Yeah, yeah. Final Fantasy. I know.
I know.
Airship Ahoy!
Way back in 2001, I played through this game with my brothers, who were both long-time Final Fantasy veterans. They watched my progress carefully, making sure I was being properly indoctrinated into their fandom / subculture / cult. But every few hours one of them would say, “We STILL haven’t got the airship yet?”
It’s staple of the series. Or at least, of the last few previous entriesFrom the standpoint of someone in 2001. I don’t know what the series is doing these days.. Once the story is established, you’re given an airship and allowed to fly around the world sandbox-style. It’s often used as shorthand for, “Okay, the tutorial is over. Now you’re really playing the game.”
This part of the story is where I think the expectations from returning fans really come back to haunt the author. The player reaches this point in the story and they think, “Okay! Now we have the airship! Time to explore the open world.” But no. This is a tease. We’re not off the rails just yet and we’re not going to fly the airship. In fact, the “open world” part of the game is still many hours away.
We’re twenty or thirty hours into Final Fantasy X and we’re still following a completely linear path. That’s thematically appropriate, since this story is about a pilgrimage, and a pilgrimage loses quite a bit of its gravity if you can just hop from one location to the next. Particularly when all of the other pilgrims make the trip on foot.
The writer has to be very careful here. At the end of this journey, Yuna needs to reject the teachings. She has to go to the very precipice of death, and then back away. This needs to be a move of conviction and principle. If the storyteller fumbles here, then it will come off like Yuna is just an irresponsible teenager who quit because the task was too hard and she didn’t want to die. Sure, they could have Yuna say, “I am very committed to my beliefs!” over and over. But the rule of show don’t tell demands that we see her comitment in action. And the best way to do that is to show that her resolve never wavers, despite how much she suffers on her journey.
This idea would be completely undermined if Yuna’s voyage was easier than that of the summoners who came before her. One of the recurring themes in the game is how we’re following in the footsteps of past summoner parties. This is the road that Braska walked. The road that Lord Ohalland walked. The road that Lady Yocun walked. We’re following the same path of a dozen champions of the past. Along the way we see landmarks they visited and challenges they overcame, and we find the crude graves of the ones who failed in the wilderness. We can’t do all that if we’re cruising overhead in luxury.
We need to walk this road, which means that having an airship would undermine the story. On the other hand, having an airship is a staple of the series. Leaving it out is like having a Batman game where you can’t glide overhead because the story needs him to spend all of his time on the ground. Maybe this isn’t a good story for a Batman game.
The game designer tries to solve this by allowing you access to the airship after Yuna’s pilgrimage to Zanarkand is complete. The problem is that the story is 90% of the way over by that point.
This was my first Final Fantasy game, so I was never bothered by the lack of mobility. But for longtime fans this is still a sore spot, because for them it doesn’t feel like the game really “starts” until just before the ending. You can’t do sidequests until you’re on the threshold of the final boss, and that feels wrong.
Nuke Home
Everyone escapes in the airship, and then it nukes Home as a middle finger to the Yevonites occupying the place. We haven’t seen Yuna since Sin attacked under the lake, but everyone (correctly) assumes that she’s in the hands of the Yevonites and that they have whisked her away, out of the blast radius. Nobody is worried that she broke free and went back to Home, or that she gave her captors the slip and is now wandering around in the desert.
This is a sticking point for me because the writer hasn’t shown how the Yevonites are getting around. Sin transported us to the other side of the world map. So how did everyone else get here? So far the only modes of transport in the world are ships and shoopuffs, both of which are for crossing water. And since we seem to be in the middle of a barren desert, I’m thinking there’s probably not a lot of water around.
So the mental image I have in my head is that the Yevonites captured Yuna (somehow) and then dragged her, on foot, across the desert towards the coast. They probably got a hundred or maybe even two hundred meters into the desert before the nuke hit and vaporized them all.
Which doesn’t happen, of course. I guess the Yevonites have access to the transporter room on the starship Enterprise, because they managed to come all the way around the world to reach Home before we did, and now they’re going to drag Yuna all the way back to Bevelle – the capital city and home of Yevon. They will arrive there well before the only known airship in the entire world. In fact, they arrive so far ahead of us that they will plan and stage a state wedding before we can catch up with them.
The Wedding Crashers
The party crashes the wedding. The CGI bits of the cutscene were featured heavily in the pre-release materials back in 2001Which I assume means TV spots. I mean, this was 2001. We were still a long way from having video advertising on the internet.. It’s a ridiculous scene where the airship swoops in and hooks the wedding platform with massive steel cables, like the kind that might hold up a suspension bridgeI suppose it’s not worth asking why an airship would be carting around huge cables like that.. Then Yuna’s guardians – all six of them – slide down the swinging cables and throw themselves at the enemy. They don’t even talk about it first.
It’s classic Final Fantasy cutscene: A ridiculously implausible yet visually stunning spectacle. It’s silly, but in a lot of ways it’s also kind of the point of the game.
Seymour seems to have recovered from that whole death thing, and he’s having another go at marrying Yuna. Yuna is playing along because she’s looking for a chance to perform a sending on him. The party jumps out of the airship and assaults the wedding party, which seems to be made entirely of forbidden (by Yevon’s teachings) robots and soldiers carrying forbidden firearms. I suppose that’s lucky. They would feel like such assholes if they stormed in here waving their weapons around and saw the wedding party was all weeping bridesmaids and smiling little old ladies.
I wonder how plausible Yuna’s plan was? It seems to take a minute to send someone if they don’t want to go to the afterlife, and in the meantime the summoner needs to do some fairly conspicuous dancing around. It’s certainly not something you can do as a sneak attack.
Yuna tries to send Seymour here at the wedding ceremony, but it’s possible Tidus and company forced her hand. When they show up a huge fight ensues, and Yuna tries to send Seymour in the confusion. Maybe she would have waited for a more opportune moment if the wedding had gone as planned?
While the audience doesn’t know it yet, Seymour’s plan is to finish the pilgrimage with her. Maybe he would have done so with a large entourage to protect him. Then again, he constantly acts surprised that Yuna continues to oppose him. Maybe sooner or later he would have let his guard down. It’s hard to say what he’s got going on underneath all of that pokey blue hair.
Footnotes:
[1] The Al Bhed don’t acknowledge this or thank him, which would really go a long way to smoothing out that whole unfortunate slavery “misunderstanding”.
[2] Which I didn’t mention in this write-up. But trust me, they fought one.
[3] From the standpoint of someone in 2001. I don’t know what the series is doing these days.
[4] Which I assume means TV spots. I mean, this was 2001. We were still a long way from having video advertising on the internet.
[5] I suppose it’s not worth asking why an airship would be carting around huge cables like that.
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The Middle Ages
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
Wouldn’t the fastest method of travel without tech be aeon assisted flight? Yuna did it and there’s two different kinds of aeon fully capable of the task. Now I know you’re going to look at me funny and point out that in gameplay it’s shown that you can’t summon multiple instances of the same aeon at once in your various aeon duels. In response I point out that if that’s actually a hard rule of the setting rather than a gameplay thing the world makes a lot less sense given the sheer number of summoner parties implied to exist at a time.
Also could’ve sworn rikku, at least, acknowledged where the airship came from but didn’t overtly thank tidus.
That kinda makes sense, especially since Bevelle’s Aeon is Bahamut, the bigger flyer.
Aeons can manifest in more than one place at a time, but only once at any one place at one time.
Thinking about it, Evrae being a troop transport dragon would have answered the question of how the Guado are getting around so quickly, as well as the question of “where the hell did this dragon come from and why has nobody mentioned Bevelle has an apparently holy dragon?”
INORITE
Being a pretty decent MMO if what I’ve heard is anything to go by.
MMO? QED.
XIV.
Wait, that’s not an acronym…
FFXIV.
It’s decent if you don’t mind the first fights being against things like ladybugs.
Link extremely relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2BYnJcA69I
Well apparently after XII, they decided to release a remixed version of XII on Steam. Then they skipped two numerals and are going to release XV next. Makes about as much sense as jumping from X-2 to XII, I suppose.
Also, they released The Crystal Bearers on Wii, the Dissidia sub-series on PSP and Vita, Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and Revenent Wings on DS, Two Theaterythms, and exactly one Bravely Default. Also Fortune Street and some other spin-offs.
No other Final Fantasy games have been released since XII. Certainly none in the main series. Nope.
I was all fired up to correct you on the recent release history of the main FF series, then saw your last line, and saw what you were doing.
Kudos for playing it so straight through 2 whole paragraphs. I really had no idea.
You failed to mention the FF XIII trilogy. I can understand that though since most of the FF fandom seems to want to forget they exist. As a longtime FF fan (own and have completed almost all the US PS/PS2/PS3/PC releases) I still haven’t made significant progress on the FFXIII trilogy.
There was also the second MMO FFXIV… I really wish the MMOs had been released as a separate series line instead of being part of the main numbered line.
Shamus, you forgot to put the break in again.
Blimey, Thursday already?
I actually really hate the whole wedding assault scene because I found it be one of the most frustrating examples of gameplay-story segregation I have seen in a while; you battle your way through several waves of robots and riflemen to get to Yuna and probably take a couple of dozen bullets to the face in the process and then surrender when threatened by rifles in the cutscene. I know battles are by necessity a massive abstraction but to have the cutscene come immediately after the gameplay demonstrated that guns weren’t very threatening was too much for me.
Why would you pass up a chance to type ‘ludonarrative dissonance’? :)
Well, Campster always declines the opportunity to say it…
I thought it was discobiscuits?
The wedding scene also represents a point when the battles are least abstracted. The game shows you that the enemies are objectively present in your location, and the exact nature and composition of these enemies and the environment in which you fight them figures prominently into both the scene and the mechanics: a unique battle moves forward through these enemies, with the party working their way up the stairs through their ranks as they near the altar.
This was the worst possible moment to invoke story necessity to render the party helpless.
It’s even worse than that, because immediately before those fights those very cutscene guns are being fired at them as they grind down a cable in a straight line for like a mile, and nobody bats an eye. Not only is it gameplay/story segregation, it’s story/story segregation.
At least it’s not ludoludic dissonance, which would be decidedly ludicrous.
Narratonarrative dissonance?
Their bullet absorption shields have been drained.
It’s for this reason that I feel playing a No Sphere Grid game actually makes more NARRATIVE sense. The things the game presents as big threats actually become big threats! And yet you have all the tools you need to deal with all of them, while never once “leveling up” on the sphere grid. It’s pretty awesome… alas, it’s also a little tedious, what with having to keep doing side fights to get your limits up, doing weapon crafting, etc etc. But it really does improve the ludonarrative dissonance problem! I swear!
In this scene in particular, the feeling isn’t “I tanked all these bullets, why am I surrendering?” it’s “I got shot several times, passing out repeated from the blood loss only to be barely revived and pulled forward by the help of my friends (and drugs), but clawed my way to a barely passable technical victory– keeping literally one turn away from a total party wipe at all times, counting on speed and wits to get ahead. Now that I’ve got here, my escape route is cut off, I have nowhere left to run, and I’ve used up all my options. Game over.”
It’s pretty awesome.
I bet it’s hair all the way down.
Most men think about sex every 40 minutes, Seymore thinks of his hair every 40 minutes.
Like everything until we reach the Calm Lands, this makes no sense.
So here, in the largest city in Spira, Yevon has busted out their expressly forbidden weaponry, including large robots, for the purpose of protecting the wedding. Tell me, did they have all this stuff ready on the assumption that our party would survive the assault on Home, escape in a means of travel capable of reaching Bevelle in a matter of, what, minutes? hours? instead of the days or weeks it should otherwise take? They should never expect the party to be able to intervene in time, but then again, the wedding shouldn’t be taking place because Yuna herself had no means of reaching Bevelle by this time, so whatever.
And wasn’t a huge part of this wedding that it was supposed to be publicized for the sake of rallying the people? No one can watch this wedding. They’ve swarmed the ceremony with weapons the people can’t be allowed to know about. Now, maybe that wasn’t their first plan. On our way in- even though Shamus didn’t show it- the party had to battle a big dragon that guards Bevelle. So maybe they were conducting a normal ceremony at first, and then only flooded the place with bearded flamethrower monks and 15′-tall kickbots after they saw their dragon get blown up by an airship. But how do they explain any of this to the people of Bevelle? They just say, “You didn’t hear those robot mortars being fired off,” and “You didn’t see dozens of green dudes with M1 Garands?” Although, I guess a different problem is that no one can watch this wedding. Literally, I mean; apparently this is all just taking place on a platform high above the rest of the city, where no one would be able to observe it. So maybe they’d just completely dropped the whole publicity angle, even if the entire city is still going to see a group of circus clowns invade on an airship and then hear a war taking place up there.
I mean, even if nothing else, Seymour still wants Yuna to make him her Final Aeon, and therefore become Sin after defeating the current Sin. Seymour already knows how it all works, even though the party still doesn’t. But then Seymour would also know that the power of a Final Aeon is rooted in the summoner’s affection for the sacrifice, and Yuna loathes Seymour. Does Seymour realize that even if he ends up fighting Sin as a Final Aeon, he’s going to get facerolled? And another thing: why the hell does Seymour want to marry Yuna? She’s got his number now. The charade he was trying to pull earlier is totally blown by this point; he doesn’t need to marry her, he just needs to take her to Zanarkand. But they already burned their one instance of instantaneous offscreen travel taking her here to Bevelle, so I guess they might as well get married! Seymour just wants to have the wedding because it’s literally the most cliche villain antic he can think of.
And why the guns and the robots? No reason. Oh, one reason: because villain. The villains are revealed as hypocrites, breaking their own fundamental precepts. But they have no reason to do so. Does Yevon not have warriors trained with conventional weapons and magic? Why not use them? I mean, the obvious answer is that they’re desperate, and they trust in machina instead, because they’re stronger. But machina weapons are shit. Our party doesn’t use them, and we stomp the whole crowd of riflemen and robocannons. The idea that machina weapon actually have some edge is right out, unless we’re acknowledging that we just get to beat anybody because we’re the heroes. I mean, that kind of takes the tension out of everything, so I’d like to resort to a diegetic explanation before that particular meta-shrug. And they’ve really maintained these things and trained soldiers in their regular use while keeping them secret for a thousand years? JC Denton would find this conspiracy implausible. Don’t machina attract Sin? No. They’re supposed to, but nothing attracts Sin but plot convenience, which is the only explanation for Bevelle’s continued existence. Yevon relies on machina here solely to demonstrate that they betray their own principles.
And Mika himself is going along with all this. Really, this is the moment where Yevon itself- rather than just the fanatical Guado- show themselves as treacherous cowards. But it’s also where they start showing themselves as imbeciles. Mika should realize he’s putting Yevon in some real ludicrous shit for the sake of Seymour, and while Seymour’s hell bent on destruction for its own sake, it’s important that Mika and the other maesters don’t realize that. They still genuinely, desperately want the Pilgrimage to succeed, even if they’re otherwise corrupt, ruthless charlatans. Mika should understand that this wedding all but guarantees Yuna will fail to defeat Sin- that this whole wedding is not only a massive liability, but a huge waste of time.
The game will reveal very soon that Mika is an unsent. At the same time, he will reveal that Yevon has always been led by unsent, and praises “enlightened rule by the dead.” This makes no sense. Yevon has four maesters. Only two are dead. One of them was killed by us, recently. In theory, unsent can persist forever, but because rule by the dead is a secret, and people would eventually figure out that the Pope is coming up on his 150th birthday, Yevon can’t actually let its leaders rule much longer than their natural lifespan anyway. And it appears they haven’t. Mika has been a maester for decades, but the faith is a thousand years old. Where are these enlightened dead rulers? Where did the last zombie pope go when Mika got promoted? The whole “Yevon is ruled by unsent” deal seems only to imply that maesters who get old and die persist for some time, but not actually for very long, and then… retire to the Farplane, so their cover isn’t blown. And of course, it should go without saying that the actual benefit of having a Necropontiff is never articulated. In fact, unsent seem to rapidly lose their minds unless it would otherwise be convenient for the plot, so this seems like a plan with no legs. The dead are enlightened rulers because Mika says so. And because it makes Yevon more treacherous, which is the game’s only objective going forward.
Seymour’s a stupid, nihilistic schlock clown. He’s a plot tumor, a jerkoff amalgam of his superior forebears. But that’s fine, for a given value of fine. Might as well throw in someone who contrasts the ideals of the party in this particular way. But did Yevon, through Mika and the other maesters, need to be ridiculous cartoon cliche morons as well? From here on out it’s all mustache twirling on Yevon’s part. I guess the writers of this game really were just terrified of introducing the slightest bit of moral complexity into this setting and undercutting the fantasy of being morally vindicated against a conservative institution. But it cheapens Yevon as a villain. It implies the writers weren’t confident enough to pit Yevon’s ideology against the party’s (and the writers’); that they didn’t think the audience would get it if Yevon weren’t also a bunch of cliche asinine jerks, or, far worse, that the audience might take Yevon’s point, and yank apart from Auron and company.
This is far from a fatal strike against the game; Yevon isn’t the real enemy. Sin is. But Yevon is the core of the setting. Yevon embodies everything about life in Spira: its hopes, its fears, its traditions and history, its shameful origins and its bitter secrets. Yevon should be tragic: premised on lies, founded on certainty in hopelessness, and perpetuated by the exploitation of hope. And it is that. But the whole sequence in Bevelle reveals that Yevon is also an absurd gaggle of treacherous buffoons who could never have held on to the authority or secrecy necessary to exist. The setting can’t be smarter or deeper than Yevon itself, and Yevon is stupid and shallow. But the setting’s first job isn’t to be smart or deep; it’s to be emotionally resonant and uncomplicated, and Yevon certainly is that: they are a bunch of bastards who deserve a black eye. But I’m not convinced they couldn’t have been that and been a tiny bit smarter.
Bravo.
I’m not Commander Shepard and this is my favourite wall of text on Twenty Sided.
Pretty sure the wedding in order to rally the people wasn’t the official idea. And if it was, they certainly don’t need to show the wedding itself, just announce the results. Hell, just pretend that all the explosions were fireworks.
The link between summoner and the Final Aeon doesn’t have to be affection. Hatred is also a strong bond.
Actually, no, they don’t have armed people, that’s what they used the Crusaders for.
Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Regarding the rule of the dead, Twilight of all things easily demonstrates how this works. Have one guy be in charge for a long time and then bring in the next immortal guy you want to rule as his underling. Have the one immortal guy retire and then eventually say he died, but make sure to mention he had kids. After an appropriate amount of time, his “kid” (just the same guy again) can become the previous underling (now ruler’s) underling. Repeat as much as wanted, so long as you control succession and make it a firm rule that the media or equivalent have no access to the families of the leaders.
I don’t think Mika says that Yevon has always been led by the unsent; I certainly can’t find it. He says that he is an unsent, that “only the power of death truly commands in Spira”, and the other Maesters praise Mika for being unsent, but nothing about the history of Yevon’s Maesters past. I think it’s more likely that Mika as a Maester being dead is something fairly new or at least unusual, and that the other Maesters like the idea as it plays into the essence of Spira’s death cycle of Sin. Perhaps Mika believes that the people of Spira will come to accept him as an unsent, and then he can lead in perpetuity.
As for Seymour’s lack of a strong bond with Yuna for the final summoning, I wonder if, in Seymour’s demented mind, the very act of marriage is enough to create a bond between the two. That is, his marriage to Yuna will automatically make the Final Summoning a success, and how Yuna feels will not be as important as her new position as Seymour’s Wife. But I’m kinda swinging in the dark on this one.
In review, I’m not certain if Mika explicitly states that unsent leadership is a temple tradition, and I’m not Ina position to check the relevant cutscene at the moment.
On one hand, the most sensible option by far is that this is a new paradigm, and that Yevon has degraded into this state to force a crisis dramatically coinciding with the ultimate Pilgrimage. It avoids the nonsense questions of the alternative, and builds up Yuna Inc. as even bigger heroes.
But that it makes more logical sense isn’t firm grounds to assume it is so. And the idea of a decadent Yevon is thematically backwards. Yevon represents the “death spiral” Mika himself describes and accepts as unstoppable. Yevon is an exploitative lie, the common person’s greatest fears masquerading as its sole salvation. Yevon itself is stasis and madness, a willful perpetuation of the intolerable and unsustainable. It might not withstand logical scrutiny as written, but it’s a near-masterstroke thematically to have Yevon’s leadership- its personification- embodying this thematic living-death as unsent, embracing the literal half-life symbolic of their slavery to hopelessness. And their status as unsent makes them something intensely feared and scorned by their followers; Sin destroys their loved ones, creating inhuman unsent to prey on them. So it is with the maesters, made unsent by Sin in their own way and likewise preying on Spirans in their own way. This enslaves Spira to Sin even more deeply. Lastly, Yevon’s stasis would be further embodied if this practice of unsent supremacy reached back to Yevon’s origins. To emphasize the great millennial con and the inelastic, irredeemable nature of that ideology, the practice itself must be inelastic. To frame the practice as a recent development, one that would inevitably have cast the faith into an unprecedented crisis, undercuts that lovely thematic undercurrent; its doubly uncharacteristic of Yevon to force its own paradigm shift.
For these reasons, I took it that unsent maesters were simply a fixture of the setting. It’s an irresistible idea, however irreconcilable with a splitsecond’s examination. Which was my point above: the ideas are all there, but the groundwork in this game is just so sloppy.
But lacking any explicit conformation either way, I guess it comes down to an argument from authorial intent, which I won’t press. I’d believe either.
Concerning evidence, I think there’s a lot to support Mika being an exception as an unsent. We know that Maester Jyscal was alive as a Maester, since he sired Seymour and was killed by him; and when Jyscal becomes an unsent, everyone already knows he’s dead – clearly The Plan didn’t involve him remaining a Maester. And, as you say, two of Spira’s Maesters (very recently three) are alive (at this point). True, none of these people are Grand Maester, so perhaps the unsent is only for the tip-top big cheese.
However, I’d still argue for Mika being an exception because the story just works better that way. If Yevon is always led by the unsent, then the story has a problem with logic; it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. But, if Yevon is not always led by unsent, then the story still works from an emotional, thematic, and dramatic standpoint. It doesn’t need dead Maesters to have its story resonate with the audience, but it does need alive Maesters to not punch holes in it.
But I certainly would prefer, as you do, a Yevon that isn’t so obviously corrupt. Some corruption may be okay (I like the hypocritical use of machina, for instance. personal preference.), but the route they took is just too easy. Mika is deluded, Seymour is insane, and Kinoc is a bastard. And Kelk disappears from Bevelle entirely.
Personally, I think the other Maesters should simply have believed Yuna to be lying about Jyscal’s murder. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of this to address next week.
Next week, I planned to do nothing but argue that Auron almost banged a Ronso princess.
I look forward to it.
Seymour’s thought process: “She likes me really; when she throws herself off buildings or tries to murder me, she’s just playing hard to get.”
Just look at that smug smirk when he touches her shoulder.
This is a guy who went to the PUA school of romancing ladies.
I suspect these two facts are related.
It depends on whether “affection” is the summoner’s abstract feeling level, or whether it’s something more of a “point system,” where sacrificing your child is 10 points, your spouse is an 8, your sibling is a 6, your best friend in the world is a 4, etc. on down.
In other words, it’s possible that “being married to” the summoner is a required part of the plan because that would (regardless of what Yuna actually thinks of him) give him more power in the final battle.
So the key to an easy win would be some kind of intricate inbreeding/intermarriage scheme to stack as many relationships into one Final Aeon as technically viable. That… would explain a lot about Spira.
–Or at least, Yuna’s eye colors.
I want to marry this entire comment.
I especially love your comments on Yevon and Seymour; making these people such ridiculously eeeeevil villains just rips out so much of the inherit tragedy of the entire setting. They’re also victims of a hopeless world ravaged by Sin and they sure as hell didn’t choose to be who they are, they’ve just been broken by how terrible this world is and doing what they think is the right thing in such a shitty situation.
I mean they don’t even need to use the whole ‘oh no they’re using machina!’ as an obvious flag that they’re corrupt; we know something was wrong when Yevon falsely slandered Yuna and Co as traitors. And when we find out why, because the entire pilgrimage tradition is all a facade that’s cost the lives of thousands of brave martyrs, that’s more than enough to make them villains. Removing the machina hypocrisy does not lessen their crimes whatsoever.
I’m wondering if the writers did this so the virtuous and pure Yuna would look even better contrasted by such cruel evil, but if so, I think they created the opposite effect. It’s easy rebelling against mustache-twirling villains. Who cares if Doctor Evil has a point if he’s kicking puppies?
But imagine if Seymour and Yevon were like a darker reflection of Yuna, all of them devout people wanting the best for the people of Spira but have surrendered to fear, apathy or anger because good people give in to those every day. They’ve accepted lies and cruelty as just necessity. Yuna having the conviction to rebel against this and keep her oath to defeat Sin no matter what would be much more heroic.
If I remember right, the eldest member of the Blue Kitty Race was a member of Yevon’s inner circle too and apparently he never knew about it either. Which means that apparently one of the Elders of Yevon was kept completely in the dark as to how hypocritical the whole organization is, somehow.
No, Kelk Ronso knew about Mika being an unsent – he comments on how Mika is needed even though he’s dead. What he didn’t know is that Seymour killed his father, Maester Jyscal.
Oh. Ok, I just remembered old blue cat guy being either ignorant or hypocritical about something, which made my brain hurt when we saw him again on the freezey peak place.
“Does Seymour realize that even if he ends up fighting Sin as a Final Aeon, he's going to get facerolled?”
I’m on board with your rant generally. Everything between the ice temple and the Calm Lands is bonkers nonsense. For this line in particular, though, I find it perfectly plausible and not especially requiring of further explanation that Seymour is a megalomaniac who assumes that Yuna will love him with sufficient exposure, and that if all else fails he can terrify her into loving him.
–But if the church wasn’t hilariously corrupt, this wouldn’t be a callback to FF:Tactics! FF branding lives on callbacks and references to the earlier games, that make no sense without that greater context.
–But then it also wouldn’t be a knockoff of Grandia 2, which was a Dreamcast exclusive with similar themes, a deeper combat system, and a leveling mechanic that was obviously the inspiration for he sphere grid, while also being superior in almost* every way.
* Millenia has a lot of great spells, but don’t waste your shared pool of upgrade coins on anything, except for a couple levels of Heel Stop, for the eyeball boss. Likewise the big tough beast dude. I know his triple-hit basic attack seems like something you’ll want to capitalize on, but you would do better to put those points into making Tio less worthless.
I played the Steam version of Grandia 2 recently*, and I’ve got to say I don’t see that much similarity.
Although Breath of Fire did the church thing before either of them. Is there a JRPG with a Church that doesn’t turn out to be evil?
*(No one should ever play the Steam version of Grandia 2.)
I liked the PS2 version of Grandia 2. Haven’t played the Steam version yet, though.
I fought over half the battles at 1/4 speed. Also they don’t tell you what the keys are at any point. Also the Zap spell can crash the game. It’s a really bad port.
I still came out liking Grandia 2 though.
I do remember being shocked Mika was an unsent as well, and it hurt my suspension of disbelief. Seymour’s new and it hasn’t been very long – the very heart of the church seemed…. unlikely.
It would be pretty cool if, instead of all the machina, Kinoc led a band of warrior monks in yarmulkes to stop you. He’s in charge of the Warrior Monks, the Crusaders AND his hand-picked Crimson Squad, in fact. Surely ONE of those groups could serve as the face of the organization? Surely not ALL of these jokers are using scavenged tech, where did they get it all from?
I mean, he’s there. But he and his goon squad are pointing forbidden machina at you instead of busting out the kung fu. In fact, the Fallen Monk enemies in Zanarkand seem to suggest that the Warrior Monks have ALWAYS used machina. If you wanted to work the hypocrisy angle, you could just make better use of the Unsent thing. Have the Warrior Monks serve after death in the secret places in Bevelle like the Via Purifico. Have the living Warrior Monks try to stop the party, then lose and die and GET BACK UP. That’d be cool.
* Yuna says, “don’t kill the party or I’ll jump”
* The baddies lower their weapons, but the party remains standing around the baddies, who haven’t disposed of their weapons, merely lowered them
* Yuna gives everyone, including the baddies, hope that she’ll survive the jump, before the party has reached some kind of safety
* Yuna jumps before the party has reached some kind of safety
* Yuna survives the jump and flies off before the party has reached some kind of safety
* At no point does Seymour say something like “if you jump, I’ll kill them”
Or, the moment she’s jumped and he has nothing to lose, “Kill them”?
(Assuming these are real guns and not RPG guns that reduce your hit points by 5%. Or I suppose they could be level 999 guns or the equivalent, in place of the normal rule that all soldiers you fight are appropriate to your current level, which would explain why the party is intimidated by them in the first place.)
Yes, that. Why not kill them the minute she jumps? Her threat is null and void at that point.
This bizarre “plan” of Yuna’s bugs me more than any of the points Shamus brought up – the party should be dead :/
Well actually the party SHOULD be mildly annoyed for a moment, then surrounded by corpses. It was rather thoroughly established before this point that the soldiers are using pop guns.
Aye fair enough. With the ludonarrative dissonance firmly in place in this scene, I guess Yuna’s plan doesn’t matter, since Seymour could order his men to fire and it wouldn’t help. I still think she should’ve held out for the party getting away from the guns, but whatever. Sigh.
When I first played this game, I loved it, and I remember actually thinking she’d kill herself to save her friends, and … something feels different now. The way Tidus smiles when he says something full of sadness or fear or shock. I don’t remember the voices being this bad, either. I think I played this game in a haze of nostalgia for previous FF titles the first time, and let all this wash over me.
Tangent, but the only time I remember being really bothered by Final Fantasy logic was in VI(III SNES) where the evil Empire gets its ass handed to it by the Espers, and then acts contrite towards you. It turns out that it’s all a ruse, and they haven’t learned their lesson after all. So, you’re fooled by a conspiracy that includes EVERY member of the Empire, like they sent out one big memo to all of their soldiers and citizens to pretend to be good. You eventually find out when a maid spills the beans to one of the PCs.
Other than that, I usually take Final Fantasy stories in stride.
I love Final Fantasy 4, but “Final Fantasy Logic” really gets to me when I think about that game.
It turns out that the lead character’s dead father is a moon man, who uses the remaining power in his lingering spirit to turn him into a Paladin. This is significant, because his brother is the primary antagonist (at least at this point in the game.) Except the lead doesn’t know the antagonist is his brother, and this turns out to be a major revelation later in the game.
Fine. Except all of this seems to drop out of nowhere for the player. Nothing is said in the game at any point to indicate that the lead character doesn’t know anything about his past, that he doesn’t know what happened to his family, anything like that. It’s just thrown out there to heighten the drama, but without any build up or foreshadowing, it’s rather empty.
It seems like the writers watched The Empire Strikes Back and thought, “Woah, that’s a really good idea. We gotta use that.” The game’s antagonist even looks like Darth Vader.
You could say what happens to Kain is foreshadowing. Kain is a good guy who turns bad so if the bad guys can do that once, isn’t it a logical twist that they’ve done that in an even BIGGER way before? And Cecil just doesn’t have a lot of monologue stuff about his past because old game.
Whats a moon?
A kind of space station.
In FFIV, it is actually a space station.
I disagree with this. The party didn’t trust the Empire fully. But there was no point is fighting them, since (A) it wouldn’t work terribly well and (B), the Espers were now a more significant issue. Additionally, the game actually did sell the idea that The Emperor might be willing to step back given the kind of threat on display, even to the point of imprisoning another (obviously angry) villain, and showing that the soldiers were divided over the idea.
The possibility that the Empire was being treacherous wasn’t out of the picture. They just underestimated just how ruthless and dangerous said “other villain” was, a mistake others also made. It’s important that General Leo was involved, since he was so honest and trustworthy that the party could genuinely trust that he, at least, wouldn’t betray them.
My issue is not whether the party believed fully them, but that the entire empire at least gives the impression that they’re reformed, and all of them (except General Leo?) were just moustache-twirling the entire time.
Been a long time since I got through 6, but I don’t think the doublecross necessarily involves anyone more than Gestahl, Kefka and the closest of their guards.
Even if it is the whole empire, though, it’s not too hard to believe it. It’s a military empire, the emperor says “stop” they stop, the emperor says “start again” they start again.
I can’t recall the role the airship played in the later Final Fantasy games (and I didn’t play past X), but as far as the first few US releases:
Final Fantasy 1: Acquired halfway through the game, it’s purpose is to open up the second half of the game world to you, which otherwise was inaccessible. There is only one side-quest to pursue, but you do have a degree of leeway in the order in which you tackle the remaining two dungeons.
Final Fantasy 4 (2-US): You acquire multiple airships over the course of the game. Variable number of side-quests at different stages of the game; the primary role of the airship is less about world exploration and more about making travel between narrative destinations possible, which have generally been geographically closed off otherwise.
Final Fantasy 6 (3-US): You acquire two different airships over the course of the game. The first time, it serves the same general purpose as in FF4, opening up world locations that were otherwise closed off, or at least very inconvenient to travel between; by this time, you’ve actually seen most of the world. Few side-quests at this stage. The second time you get the airship, it permits you to fully explore the new world. The entire second half of the game is side-quests. Technically, after acquiring the second airship, you can go straight to the final dungeon, although this is not the intended way of playing the game.
All of this just to say that the role of the airship wasn’t set in stone in the series. Yes, the airship “opened up the world” when it was acquired in these games, but this was often somewhat illusory, as there wasn’t any real reason to revisit previous locations.
This perception Shamus talks about may have come about due to the collection side-quests, particularly those related to card games, that came along in FF8 and FF9. In those cases, there was ample reason to revisit old locations because of all the things you could now do/collect/etc. from those places.
Every game in the series as an airship of some kind.
FF3 (nes) has a crapload of them, even giving you one very early, but then breaking them.
FF8 has a Flying School (!!) and a “Spaceship,” but it’s basically the same thing.
In FF10 and FF12, the airship just lets you select your destination from a map, so it’s kinda lame.
In FF13 the airship is just a plot device that takes you down to Pulse and back, so it’s hella lame. It doesn’t actually do the thing the airship usually does.
Cid is also usually either the owner or at least the pilot of the airship in most games. Notable exceptions include FF6 and FF12, where Cid is a crazy scientist instead of a airship pilot/engineer.
In Final Fantasy V you get a flying dragon which can’t cross mountains, an airship which can, and a flying chocobo which can cross mountains not capped in snow, but can only land in forests.
Nah, Balamb Garden can’t cross mountains.
Balamb Garden is definitely more of a boat than an airship.
3 through 6 all gave and then took away various airships throughout the game. As such, I don’t think Shamus’ dilemma was actually a problem; I could see the player flying the airship all around Spira before Bevelle (except the Ronso don’t let you up Gagazet and the ghost old man doesn’t let you in Zanarkand without Yuna), and then the Bevelle assault cripples the airship for the second half when Yuna’s back in the party.
I typically liked getting the airship and class change in FFI before even defeating Kary at the fire temple. Sequence break!
Hm, interesting. I can’t see much in the way of advantage to doing this. Only 1) you’ll have a higher level when traversing the volcano, which is useful given the high HP drain from the lava, and 2) you can take the airship to the volcano rather than having to navigate with that dang canoe.
You can do almost everything else before going to the volcano. You have the airship, you’ve braved the Ice Cave. You can loot various other dungeons for better gear or even take on the other Fiends before Kary. The volcano is a treasure-poor dungeon with lots of unavoidable damage tiles, no reason not to put it off a while.
I hate this airship design as well. It wouldn’t fit with the overall aesthetic (further proof that this probably shouldn’t be a Final Fantasy game), but in order for an airship to look like it’s at least pretending to be capable of flight, it needs either
A) propellers, preferably large ones set into masts with smaller ones to direct flight, or
B) a big-ass balloon with smaller accompanying propellers or other means of forward motion.
Sadly, even the last Final Fantasy that would even fit into (FF12) opted for the “let’s make this look like one of Otacon’s Japanese animes” aesthetic and gave the Grahl wings which wouldn’t even help it fly or stay stable if it WASN’T essentially a VTOL.
FFX’s airship reminds me remarkably of FF8’s Balamb Garden, which was a hoverschool. Methinks someone at SquareEnix reeeeeaallly like their flying disc buildings.
Actual reaction to that ‘airship’: “Hm, the hover text says Shamus can’t believe this thing flies. What thing? I can’t see an airship, it’s someone in junk armour with a big pink rifle, or something. Maybe it’s in the background? No, just a giant steel wall. So where’s the airship… oh. Oh, wow, no, that is not air-worthy.”
Saying the “real game” doesn’t start until the airship is a bizarre unfannish statement to make. Generally, the tightly controlled opening sections of FF games are much more memorable than the “fly around the map and occasionally park for the valet somewhere” sections. What do more people remember: exploring Midgar on foot while fighting Shinra at every step of the way or flying around in the Highwind completing sidequests for Limit Breaks? I’m not saying the latter sections are bad, but this is NOT a “when are they gonna get to the Fireworks factory?!” situation.
I’ve heard “FF VII doesn’t get good until around the six hour mark, when it stops being so linear” quite often, not that I found that myself. Of course, “owning an airship” and “nonlinear gameplay” aren’t really the same thing.
“Then Yuna's guardians ““ all six of them ““ slide down the swinging cables and throw themselves at the enemy.”
Well, more like five of them, really. Lulu just kinda teleports down instead, because really, are you going to try and animate that?
Kimahri carries Lulu down. The sequence starts at about 2:20 in the embedded video; you can see glimpses of her in his arms as he passes the camera.
Kimahri is carrying lulu, but they only get a couple of frames in the video.
That video, along with Yuna and Tidus in the water, is the only part of FFX I saw for years. I haven’t looked at it in a while, but at the time I was really impressed.
All this talk about airships is really making me wish there were more games inspired by Skies of Arcadia. That was a really fun game if you c*RANDOM BATTLE*
It also makes me wish Overworks didn’t decide to recycle a lot of the plot elements in Valkyria Chronicles. I mean, fair’s fair; Valkyria Chronicles it’s a really fun game, but plot-wise… A cast of happy-go-lucky airheads and a plot centered around ancient civilizations’ doom-weapons works a lot better in a steampunk setting inspired by the Age of Sail than a setting based on the Second World War.
Maybe I’m saying this in the context of post-Spec Ops but the game’s tone and story didn’t click for me at all. It seemed almost disrespectful in a way.
Anyway, Skies of Arcadia is still great. Lots of open world exploration, a quirky yet lovable cast and a rather predictable but still well-paced story… And, of course, one Random Encounter every five steps.
Yeah, I was watching someone LP Valkyria Chronicles and I thought the idea of following a group of drafted civilian soldiers to be really interesting, especially since all of their individual quirks had advantages.
But then all the anime magical girl powers showed up and, yeah, it really clashed and took away from the grounded tone of normal people being forced into war.
Then the story added in the discrimination of the Darcsens which ended up having cues from the goddamn Holocaust. Especially when a Darcsen character pointlessly dies to teach anime characters about how bad racism is.
Yeah, no, no no no no no you do not mix all those things together in a blender without thinking because that is, as you said, incredibly disrespectful to the issues involved. It just ruined the game for me.
Also because I think Faldio shooting Alicia was actually 100% justified and villainizing something that saved the war got on my nerves.Kind of grateful I couldn’t get past the emperor’s Super Tank to get to those bits, I guess.
… Sort of? It was pretty annoying at the time. But in hindsight… yeah, better to fail the game while I was still enjoying myself up until that point.
The bit I like the most about this whole scene is that, apparently, the whole ‘first kiss’ is a bigger deal in the more conservative Japanese culture and being kissed without consent is a much bigger no-no in their society.
So not only is Seymour an eeeeevil dastardly villain trying to destroy the world, he’s also a scoundrel that – gasp – stole her first kiss! That monster! All he needs to say is ‘I have you now my pretty!’ and he’ll just implode in on himself for being just so evil.
Which would be funny in nearly any other game, but considering that Seymour is insane from immense psychological trauma and actually-pretty-justified nihilism it’s such a waste of a character. His story is very similar to Yuna’s; a devoted half-breed summoner who was willing to give his life for the people of Spira. But unlike Yuna, he learns about the cruel pointlessness of it all after someone he loved was turned into a monster. And unlike Yuna he was hated for being a half-breed and had just lost his only emotional support. Unsurprisingly he went crazy.
That’s who he should have been written; a dark omen of what happens to summoners who fail and what Yuna easily could have been. And if he actually did love Yuna, and also wanted a bit of romantic happiness before his inevitable death at Zanarkand, then this whole scene would be sad and tragic instead of so ridiculously goofy.
Minor nitpick: it’s not about the airship, it’s about exploration and roaming. In FF7 and 9 for example you get the airship very late in the game, but you have access to the world map very early on, with huge spaces to explore and side things to find. You also get chocobos to make it easy and fun. That’s why FFX feels so constrictive and linear in comparison, not because “where’s my airship?”
I dunno if it’s been said already, but I think that every time the game shows the world map during travel it’s supposed to represent “days pass”. (Or weeks, IDK.)
Right. Only notable days and nights get their own cutscene.
That’s a natural assumption to make, but it doesn’t actually fit with what the game shows. It’s actually showing the path you’re about to follow. When it returns from the map, you’re still in the same spot at the same time of day. If it’s supposed to be a time cut, it’s a time cut where everyone stopped traveling even though they weren’t at an inn.
I think it makes a lot more sense if you assume resting at a save sphere is just an abstraction for camping, and that calling the airship similarly takes at least a good few minutes. I mean… Come on. If these people had the magitech chops to make spheres of immediate, perfect healing do you honestly think they’d have problems conquering the path to the final aeon such that most any summoner party could knock it out without risk?
A lot of people assume that the whole pilgrimage took months. It in fact took at most 2 weeks, so Shamus’ time lapse here is on point.
Kinda feels like Deus Ex or Vampire: Bloodlines taking place in one night.
Oh well, I guess that’s kind of the disadvantage of the save spheres healing you fully: you just don’t rest at inns as often as other FF games.
EDIT: Come to think of it: the game’s being narrated by Tidus, so it’d make sense for him to just skip sections of “and then we just followed the road for a couple of days without anything important happening.”
No, Titus clearly doesn’t skip, he has to tell us about every. single. time. he got knocked on his ass by lightning in the Thunder Plains. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
To be fair, he does skip over the weeks of hospitalization after each of those strikes.