Final Fantasy X Part 19: Water You Trying to Say?

By Shamus Posted Thursday Oct 27, 2016

Filed under: Retrospectives 117 comments

As she dies, Yunalesca gives Yuna’s party the name of Yu Yevon. So now they can go to the Maesters and demand some answers.

Outside, Sin is waiting, docile. It was anticipating fighting the Final Aeon, which isn't happening now. Tidus has dialog that indicates that Jecht is driving, but it's clear neither Yu Yevon nor Jecht wants to stomp all over the temple.
Outside, Sin is waiting, docile. It was anticipating fighting the Final Aeon, which isn't happening now. Tidus has dialog that indicates that Jecht is driving, but it's clear neither Yu Yevon nor Jecht wants to stomp all over the temple.

Which makes me wonder: Just how lucid is Yu Yevon? Bahamut makes it sound like Yu Yevon is just this monomaniacal dreamer, unable to think or do anything besides summon Sin. But his actions indicate some degree of forethought. Sin doesn’t attack the Blitzball arena or Bevelle, despite the technology present at those locations. He doesn’t stomp all over the Zanarkand temple, even though the place is totally undefended. His attacks seem deliberately orchestrated to incite a response from the people in the form of summoner parties. He’s certainly not trying to wipe them out. This behavior implies some degree of calculation and foresight.

So what does Yu Yevon need? Does he need new aeons to keep the cycle going? Does Sin “wear out” and require replacement, or does he just do that because it’s the easiest way of dealing with summoners? What would happen if all the summoners went off and raced chocobos for the rest of their lives and left events to run their course? Would Yu Yevon run rampant all over civilization, trying to provoke a final summoning that would never come? Would he withdraw to the ocean, no longer having an incentive to attack? Or would the current incarnation of Sin eventually burn out and leave him with nothing? Maybe the Ultimania guide has something on this, but within the game there’s no way to know for sure.

Yu Gotta Be Kidding Me

Oh hey. Look who suddenly jumped to the foreground and began speaking for the party.
Oh hey. Look who suddenly jumped to the foreground and began speaking for the party.

Surprisingly enough, unraveling Yu Yevon’s weakness and beating Sin turns out to be not such a big deal. Unless you’re in the mood to grind away a dozen or so hours of Monster Arena, we’re really close to the end of the game.

There are two pieces to the puzzle, and both of them are conversations. You need to hear Rikku and Wakka’s suggestion that playing the Hymn of the Fayth might make Sin docile, since Jecht loved the song and we’ve observed Sin behaving in non-rampage-y ways in places where the song can be heard. The other piece is that we need to talk to Grand Maester Mika and squeeze him for information about Yu Yevon and then follow up with another chat with Bahamut.

The extra wrinkle here is that Tidus learns that his dream-fueled existence will come to an end once they win. The story doesn’t explain why killing Yu Yevon will end all Fayth, everywhere. But apparently this is the case. Once he dies, summoning will no longer work in this world. All the Fayth will turn to inert stone and all aeons will vanish. This will end Sin, but also Dream Zanarkand, Jecht, and Tidus.

This also highlights the fact that Yu Yevon is summoning an awful lot of aeons on both sides of the conflict. He’s summoning Sin. He’s summoning Dream Zanarkand. Which means he’s also summoning Tidus, who is fighting Sin. He’s also summoning Jecht, who is Sin.

Tidus doesn’t tell his friends that he’s going to die when the dream ends. This seems like a jerk move, but it’s no worse than the secret they kept from him during the pilgrimage. In fact, it’s pretty much the exact same thing. He faded into the background a bit at the end of Yuna’s pilgrimage, but now that her journey is over he’s in the forefront again. Previously Yuna was the one keeping it a secret that she was going to die saving the world, but now that person is Tidus. During the pilgrimage, the inner cloister of the temples were closed to him. He – and thus the audience – were left outside while Yuna prayed to the Fayth. But when Yuna returns to the cloister in Bevelle to talk with Bahamut, Tidus goes in with her. The old taboos are meaningless to them. Now Tidus is making decisions, getting answers to his questions, and keeping his own secrets from the rest of the party.

Wakka and Rikku

These two have probably the most interesting intra-party relationship in the game.
These two have probably the most interesting intra-party relationship in the game.

I find it interesting that Rikku and Wakka were the ones to come up with using the Hymn of the Fayth to pacify Sin.

Earlier in the story, Wakka rejected Rikku when he discovered she’s an Al Bhed. For the next few chapters he traded barbs with her and blames her people for a lot of their problemsWhich, to be fair, is sometimes correct.. But as the story progressed, he saw the suffering of her people and the cruelty of his own. As his personal faith became unraveled, he warmed up to her. When the Al Bhed Home was destroyed, he was the only one that tried to comfort her. He awkwardly failed to cheer her up, and ended up hurting her feelings. Afterward he seems really upset about it. Here at the end, the two of them have obviously been working together on the problem of how to beat Sin. Moreover, they seem to have developed a rapport filled with playful teasing.

The point is that these two characters share a story arc. Among the secondary charactersEveryone in the party who isn’t Yuna, Tidus, and Auron. they share the most lines of dialog, and of all the relationships in the party, theirs changes the most. Their arc also helps underscore the idea that the conflict with the Al Bhed is purely a thing manufactured and maintained by the teachings of Yevon, and without this false religion these two peoples would be able to live harmoniously.

Anyway, once you’re done hopping around the planet collecting monsters and super-weapons, it’s time to move on to…

Inside Sin

I forgot to get a screenshot of the infinite wading pool inside Sin, so here's a shot just before they jump in. Again, Tidus seems to be taking point.
I forgot to get a screenshot of the infinite wading pool inside Sin, so here's a shot just before they jump in. Again, Tidus seems to be taking point.

The heroes blast Hymn of The Fayth out of the soundsystem that the airship has for some reason, and then have a series of boss fights to blast pieces off of Sin until it’s grounded. Also, Sin can fly. Or it could, until just now.

After that they jump on its back, boss-fight in through its pores, and rummage around inside, trying to find Yu Yevon and / or Jecht.

Sin is… I don’t know what I expected to find inside of Sin, but I don’t think it was a cloudy white void with ankle-deep water.

Water is a major thematic or stylistic element of this story, and it’s omnipresence always made me feel like I was missing something.

Water, Water Everywhere

The afterlife is a waterfall flowing into an ocean with columns of water rising out of it. And also some flowers.
The afterlife is a waterfall flowing into an ocean with columns of water rising out of it. And also some flowers.

When Jecht was transported to Spira ten years ago, he did so by getting “lost at sea”. Tidus begins the story playing Blitzball in Zanarkand, which is played under water. Then Sin arrives and destroys the city with a tsunami. Then Tidus is dropped into watery ruins, taken to the Al Bhed Ocean platform to salvage sunken treasure, washes up in Besaid and even swims part of the way to the village, takes a boat to Kilika, plays Blitzball in Luca, and fights Sin on the coast in Operation Mi'ihen. In the first eight or so hours of the game, the Mi'ihen Highroad is the only area where water isn’t a major component of the scenery.

Yuna performs the sending by walking on water, while the dead are held beneath the water. Sin always attacks from the water. The boss that guards Jecht’s memory sphere is made of water. When we visit the Farplane, we see it’s basically one gigantic waterfall. When they cross the moonflow, they see an ancient machina city beneath the water. To get to the Al Bhed Home, the party falls through a frozen lake and lands on top of Sin in ankle-deep water. After they’re teleported, Tidus wakes up in a pool of water. When the party is thrown into the execution dungeon, you control Tidus during the underwater section and Yuna during the maze section. To get to ruined Zanarkand, you have to swim through watery caverns and do underwater puzzles. Ruined Zanarkand is right on the coast and most of the ruins are sinking into the water. The final meeting with Lady Yunalesca takes place in a Blitzball arena, which is… you get the idea.

Sure, you could argue that most of the game takes place on the coast, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of water. But this goes beyond just the scenery.

Old Zanarkand is a city built on the water, with water archways overhead, where people play football underwater, and which is ultimately destroyed by a tsunami caused by Sin.
Old Zanarkand is a city built on the water, with water archways overhead, where people play football underwater, and which is ultimately destroyed by a tsunami caused by Sin.

Of the four elements in the game, only three are represented by aeons: Ifrit (fire) Ixion (lightning) and Shiva (ice). But there’s no aeon for water magic. Same goes for the temples. We visit temples themed around fire, ice, lightning, and technology, but none of them are water-based. Is this a deliberate message of some sort? Is the omission of water supposed to mean something? Is Sin the water aeon? Or is the Blitzball temple in ruined Zanarkand supposed to be the “Water Temple”?

Having said all that, I can’t really see a clear message behind this. What is the water supposed to represent? Death? Magic? Aeons? The past? The Al Bhed live on technology instead of magic and they live in a Desert devoid of water. Is that some sort of message, or did the designer just decide we needed a “yellow” environment?

Sure, maybe all the business with water is just the designer trying to show off some new water-rendering tricks in their pre-rendered cutscenes. It’s possible I’m just hunting for meaning amid noise. But there’s something about the way water is used in this story that makes me think the writer is saying something I’m not getting. Maybe I’m just an overly literal engineer and if I was an artist with one o’ them fancy degrees in Literary Symbolism And Shit I’d be able to understand this story in a new way.

The Final Haircut

What the hell is with those wheels, Seymour? Are you trying to destroy the world, or run a gameshow?
What the hell is with those wheels, Seymour? Are you trying to destroy the world, or run a gameshow?

The party is looking for Yu Yevon, but instead they find Seymour. He’s still trying to control Sin so he can destroy the world. He seems to be crazier than ever, and is in need of one last beating. Oddly, he seems like a pushover at this point. I suppose if you go directly from Yunalesca to Sin without doing any of the side-content then he might be a handful, but I’ve found that just a little leveling in the Omega Dungeon is enough to turn him into a speed bump on the way to the end. I actually like that he fizzles out here at the end instead of becoming a next-level threat. We’re on our way to the final showdown and we wouldn’t want this goof to steal the show.

The dialog even shows that Tidus and company have stopped taking him seriously. They have grown in power, ambition, and perspective, and he hasn’t. Seymour isn’t the writer’s pet villain and they’re not afraid to give him the unimpressive end he deserves.

The party pummels him and then Yuna sends him to the afterlife once and for all. Once he’s gone, we are met with the profound realization that – regardless of what happens in the battle with Sin – the natural order of things has been forever altered. With both Yunalesca and Seymour gone, Wakka is now the owner of the most ridiculous hair in Spira.

If nothing else, this quest has done wonders for the overall quality of Spira's hairstyles.
If nothing else, this quest has done wonders for the overall quality of Spira's hairstyles.

We’ll wrap up this series next week.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Which, to be fair, is sometimes correct.

[2] Everyone in the party who isn’t Yuna, Tidus, and Auron.



From The Archives:
 

117 thoughts on “Final Fantasy X Part 19: Water You Trying to Say?

  1. RCN says:

    I think the water is supposed to represent life and cycles. After all, the entire plot of the game is about a never-ending cycle that is keeping an entire planet from moving on and evolve.

    1. Grudgeal says:

      I was thinking ‘change’ myself. Water is often used to represent the malleable, changing, the dynamic in elemental symbolism (although air is often used just as much).

      In-game Tidus is associated with water, the change between life and death is represented with water, and the lack of a Water Temple could represent the stagnation of the cycles. Even the Fayth being frozen in an icy cave could represent how their endless dreaming is keeping real change from occuring, and Yunelesca makes her home in a broken Blitzball arena, both representing the tie-in with Tidus’ origins and her role as an agent of stagnation as well.

      On the other hand, this is used so all-over-the-place (it certainly doesn’t fit the Al Bhed home for example) that I’m just as willing to concede I’m seeing symbolism where none was intended.

      1. KarmaTheAlligator says:

        Change could work. And for the Al Bhed making their home in a desert without any water, it could signify their reliance on past tech, which would be something that hasn’t changed.

      2. tremor3258 says:

        Even Tidus’s ‘icon’ sword is water, so I think you’re onto something.

        1. It’s also the only weapon you get that changes the stats it has without the player intentionally doing anything outside of moving through the story.

      3. MarsLineman says:

        Both ‘change’ and ‘life’ are associated with water in Japanese culture. I missed this thread when posting below (reading iz hawrd), but I think a look at water through a Japanese cultural lens illuminates the symbolism at play.

    2. MrGuy says:

      It’s all about cycles!

      1. Munkki says:

        Spin cycles, specifically. The whole game is actually taking place inside yu yevon’s washing machine.

    3. Fists says:

      I basically thought this as soon as Shamus started listing the set pieces.

      the designer trying to show off some new water-rendering tricks

      The water did look quite good for it’s generation.

    4. Scimitar says:

      Much like the Water Dragon in Jade Empire, water here is, like you said, all about cycles. In a game about breaking a fundamentally bad cycle.

    5. krellen says:

      In Japanese mythology, water represents purity and simplicity – and cleansing. I think Tidus is supposed to be the “Water Aeon”.

      1. Felblood says:

        I think that the association of both Jecht’s version of Sin and Tidus with Water is intended to foreshadow the revelation that they are actually summons.

        There is no way that the lack of a water summon was accidental, as it would have otherwise been among the legion of unlockable bonus summons. They had to mine pretty deep into the canon for some of those.

        However, I think that they other uses of the water symbolism are also valid. It’s entirely likely that Sony came into the writers room during the first brainstorming session and said, “We have hella crazy new water rendering techniques for you guys to show off, so write as many water scenes into this as possible. Underwater, splashing water, looking into water, walking on water, manipulating water, you name it,” and then they all brainstormed different ways that water could be incorporated into the story both literally and thematically.

        Rather than pick one of those water themes to use and throw the others out, they just ran with all of them. AAA development is hectic business, and a writer tends to assume most of his stuff will be cut later in the cycle, so it doesn’t really pay for him to self-edit more than the minimum amount.

        1. Maryam says:

          Don’t forget that the traditional Final Fantasy water summon is Leviathan. Usually in the series it’s depicted as a slender twisty dragon, but there’s another interpretation of the myth: a damn great whale.

  2. Phantos says:

    It’s interesting to me seeing Kihmari’s in-game graphics having actually round metal things on his shoulders. I’m so used to them being octagons due to graphical limitations.

    I figured “HD” just meant sharper textures. I wasn’t aware they updated the character models.

    FFX in general is one of those games that I never thought needed an HD port, until I started looking at the updated footage.

    1. RCN says:

      Actually, it is trivial to “update” character models.

      Really, all they need to do, if they kept the documentation, is to pull the original templates.

      Almost every single model you see in a game is a simplified version of a template the artists created with usually several times the polygon count of the actual model. Then it is scaled down to the precise specs of the game. This is done because it is trivial to scale down a model, but it is a nightmare to scale up, so developers and artists err on the side of more detailed templates just in case the final product can afford to put them in.

      It is the same that happens in PC games where you can lower the graphical specs. Except that Consoles have those locked. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, for instance, had godawful ugly mutant potato-people as models because they chose to put ridiculously low-res textures on the faces of the characters that couldn’t be scaled up no matter how much you increased your graphics specs (I’m sure this has absolutely nothing to do with the console ports…), but the very first mods to improve the faces of NPCs did nothing more than tell the game to use a higher resolution version of the faces it already had in the code.

      1. Phantos says:

        Huh. I figured they just had to make character models with limitations in mind, rather than relying on some system to scale it all down.

        That second option seems like there’s a lot of room for problems to show up from being so potentially random.

        1. RCN says:

          It is not made randomly. Well, not usually, at least. Textures can be scaled down without problem by just saying “scale down X%”, but then you need an artist to go over and see if any essential features disappeared. This can be achieved with trial and error.

          The models themselves just need the artist to go over and start taking out polygons, fixing it whenever there’s something off.

          Adding polygons or creating larger textures, on the other hand, requires the artist to actively create more assets.

          You have to remember that, usually, nothing is set into stone when a game is being made. Midway through development there can be a huge upgrade in specs, or even improvements in optimization, that allow them to use much more complex models. Also, you never know how your budget in graphics memory is going to be used up. If you have a model that’s too complex and ends choking the game in certain areas, you need to scale that down. But if you end up finding out that there’s way too much memory available and you could have used smoother models… well, you pretty much HAVE to upgrade the models then. Which is going to be a huge headache if you didn’t have the models ready.

          Having the models already complex simplifies the process of scaling a lot, because the memory graphical budget is a lot of guesswork and experimentation. You never know how much you are going to be able to use until the final stages.

        2. Felblood says:

          Remember that, if you are planning to port to PC, you’ll probably be asked to include 3 versions of each model, so players can try to tune their graphics settings to their particular rig.

          It’s cheaper to make a script for that than to do every model 3 times by hand, and once your script is well-made enough to serve that function, you might as well use it on everything.

      2. Lachlan the Mad says:

        Although not every HD remake does this. Fable: Anniversary, the X360 HD remake of Fable: The Lost Chapters, is absolutely terrible at art updating. They prettied up the textures but kept the same awful, cartoony animations. Everybody looks like they’re in an obscure early Hanna-Barbera pilot, moving much slower than their ridiculous run animation would suggest.

        1. GloatingSwine says:

          Square have generally been pretty good at updating their games with various releases.

          They’ve had some slipups, the iOS/Steam versions of some of the older sprite ones look a bit wank, but that’s because of a deliberate artstyle choice.

          Even the PS1 era ones in their Steam updates look quite nice, the redone models and textures on 9 especially.

          Which is one reason I’m looking forward to FFXII Zodiac Age, because that was a game that really suffered from the platform limitations at the time (and they’re completely reworking the mechanics to include the job system…)

          1. Well, if I needed any other reason to want FFXII on Steam any more than I already did…

    2. GloatingSwine says:

      They updated the character models for the main characters, secondary characters just got a bit of a tweak and some upgraded textures.

      The PC/PS4 version of the upgrade also has a significant redo of the textures, especially enemy textures in battle, over even the PS3 version and so is even HDer.

      There’s a comparison of all the various versions here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-final-fantasy-x-hd-remaster-on-pc-face-off

    3. MarsLineman says:

      I’m replaying it now, and enjoying the art in a way that I didn’t on PS2 back in the day. It’s really a beautiful game, made much more obvious by today’s large/ high-resolution screens (as opposed to the 20″ CRT I played it on in 2002).

  3. el_b says:

    sin really doesnt make a lot of sense motivation wise. hes essentially a zanarkand superweapon but ignored bevelle who wiped them out. i read on the wiki hes meant to prevent tech reaching a certain level but he wipes out villages that probably dont even have the technology to make pointy sticks while leaving more advanced places alone. maybe hes practicing population control i dont know. honestly i prefer a monster to be mysterious, that and his appearance makes him very lovecraftian. shame the team never has to make a sanity check considering all the shit they go through.

    1. Alexander The 1st says:

      I think the idea with Sin is that Yunalesca’s summon made him less likely to attack Bevelle, which he was going to, and given how high tech they are, led him to attack anyone who was about to develop tech.

      So the villages that he attacks are about to start going up the tech tree, and get attacked if the Crusaders don’t take the time to divert his Sinspawn and other diversionary tactics.

      Combined with Jecht wanting to be closer to Tidus helps explain the less sensible tactics he takes this cycle.

      1. Felblood says:

        I’m pretty sure that Sin’s attacks have little, if anything, to do with tech weapons.

        The Al Bhed and the Guado use tech weapons, and it doesn’t seem to worsen their odds of kaiju attacks. It’s the superstitious human peasants who take the brunt of his wrath.

        I’m more inclined toward the same interpretation as Shamus. Sin seems to behave randomly, becasue he has two personalities warring for control, both of which seem to be planing their own game of Thirty Gambit Pileup. In the time-frame of Titus’ journey, that’s Yu Yevon and Jecht scheming to break/preserve the Cycle.

        In fact, a lot of the strangely plot convenient behaviors attributed to Sin (such as knocking the party out, and dropping them off where the plot needs them to be, rather than kaiju-murdering them), make a lot of sense once you realize that Jecht is manipulating Sin, to keep the party on track, to ensure the his plot succeeds.

        In fact, the whole story (from Auron’s seemingly* callous disregard for the party’s safety and mental health, to the fact that any of this worked at all) seems a lot more plausible once you realize that the party had an Ace in the hole the whole time, without even knowing it.**

        *From the one-sided conversation Titus overhears before leaving Zanarkand, it seems like Auron is just as skeptical of this plan as his critics, but goes along with it out of loyalty to Jecht.

        **Obviously Auron knows.

  4. PhoenixUltima says:

    I think they left out a water-themed temple just because water-themed temples in video games are always the worst. THE WORST. Just ask anyone who has ever played Ocarina of Time.

    1. Phantos says:

      The best thing PushingUpRoses ever tweeted was:

      “Name your favourite water level in a video game”.

      1. Grudgeal says:

        …..

        ……..

        Oh, oh! The first water level in Super Mario 64, because it was my first experience with underwater 3D movement. Sure it’s not that great a level per see (especially that jet-stream Star) but it was my first experience with that new dimension.

        I also really liked Clanker’s Cavern from Banjo Kazooie thanks to the music:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDlBHbf9C1U

        1. Mattias42 says:

          Does Dead Space series and how it treated vacuum count? Loved that trade-off between having to spend your hard-earned power-cells on either weapons, armor…

          Or to counter the hard-vacuum that can be around the next door, and the monsters doesn’t give a fig about while you see your O2 supply tic down by the second.

          Still, I think that’s a mistake a lot of games with water levels do. You simply don’t get any gear slash upgrades to make that 3D navigation easier and faster, so your stuck moving at that frustrating slog.

      2. Christopher says:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwecH6WvpxM

        But I agree. Nice water levels are few and far between. It’s a good joke!

      3. Will says:

        Uh, all of them, Aquaria.

        (Technically, the Veil has out-of-water sections, but it certainly still qualifies as a “water level”. Also, this is 100% cheating, but I’m sticking to it.)

      4. Syal says:

        I got this! ahem…

        Launch Octopus’ stage in Mega Man X.

      5. IFS says:

        Uh, Aquatos in Ratchet and Clank Up your Arsenal I guess? It has a swimming section, totally counts!

      6. Pinkhair says:

        The cistern in Tomb Raider 1.

    2. Nixorbo says:

      ::eyetwitch::

      1. Parkenf says:

        Actually the water levels in the recent Rayman games are generally quite nice. And the water levels in the PSP Vita version have the nicest music by far.

        1. Lachlan the Mad says:

          Rayman Origins had an UNDERWATER STEALTH LEVEL…

          And it was GLORIOUS. One of the best levels in the game.

    3. Merlin says:

      The biggest problem with the OOT Water Temple was needing to pause the game to put on and take off the iron boots. Aside from that, the temple itself is pretty great. I’d actually really like to play that on the (DS, I think?) remake that eliminates the UI hassle.

      Also, the water levels in Majora’s Mask are some of the best levels anywhere. Even just swimming around as a Zora is one of gaming’s great simple pleasures, like swinging around in Spider-Man 2 (?) or flying in Saints Row 4.

    4. tzeneth says:

      Subnautica. The game is beautiful, especially the terrifying nights (you try knowing something is big, scary, wants to eat you, and YOU CAN’T SEE IT BUT CAN HEAR IT. Then you will know scary). Since it’s a water planet or you’re in the middle of the ocean, it’s a giant water level with only a few real dry places, the busted remains of your ship being the only one I’m aware of, so far.

      1. galacticplumber says:

        There’s also two kinda small islands if you’re willing to scour the world map. Totally places you want to find for agriculture materials to supplement food intake.

    5. Felblood says:

      Currently I would go with Warframe’s Rosalind, or maybe Ariel.

      Really any of the Sealab missions that use special tiles for their objectives are really well crafted.

      Plus the Drekar variants put a fun spin on each of the enemies you know, without completely changing the game. Basically they are a sub-faction that uses better armor and quirky experimental weapons.

  5. Phantos says:

    There is something rather abrupt about Seymour’s last boss fight. Almost like he was supposed to play a bigger part in the finale, and they just kind of… forgot.

    I’m not upset at this, it’s just something I notice about the last dungeon in general. As Pat Roesle pointed out, it feels like that’s the point where Square-Enix ran out of time and money.

  6. Sarfa says:

    On Yu Yevon’s foresight- a lot of that is based on stuff the game doesn’t explain clearly. It essentially takes Yu Yevon some time to get complete control of the new Sin. So some of it is Yu Yevon has low level animal cunning left and some of it is Jecht still having some control. Also, by this point Yu Yevon is running mainly on instinct and is barely sentient- it’s only beaten next week because it’s instinct to possess new Aeons overrides what little common sense it has left.

    But when the party first comes to Luca we’re told that one of the reasons the Crusaders have such a large garrison there is to hurt Sin enough with conventional attacks to convince Sin that attacking these places just isn’t worth it (If memory serves this is something Yuna mentions on one of her “Blitzball is our only hobby” conversations in Luca) As for Bevelle, that is the capital so it’s probably defended at least as well as Luca is.

    On Seymour’s marginalisation at this point in the game- Seymour was always the foil for Yuna. Now she’s not the main character, he is no longer the principal villain.

    1. Syal says:

      You’ve also defeated the source of two thirds of his symbolism now (the Church has imploded and the summoner cycle is broken) and are in the process of battling the real Sin he’s been representing. He’s pretty much just a “Wipe your feet” mat at this point.

      1. Felblood says:

        Yes.

        In so many ways, he symbolizes how these old petty conflicts have ceased to have meaning, and now only the final battles with Jecht and Yevon matter.

  7. Ander says:

    All on home

  8. MarsLineman says:

    I think water’s omnipresence in the story is calling on Japanese symbolism. As an island nation, Japan’s culture is very influenced by water, representing transition, flow, and the life-force.

    “In Japan, under the influence of the indigenous religion Shintoism, water is believed to incarnate the purity and pliant simplicity of life. A spiritual connection with elements like water is believed to be a primary force in the life of a Shinto priest. Likewise, waterfalls are believed to be sacred and standing under one is thought to purify the individual.”

    “æ°´ Sui or mizu, meaning “Water”, represents the fluid, flowing, formless things in the world. Outside of the obvious example of rivers and the lake, plants are also categorized under sui, as they adapt to their environment, growing and changing according to the direction of the sun and the changing seasons. Blood and other bodily fluids are represented by sui, as are mental or emotional tendencies towards adaptation and change. Sui can be associated with emotion, defensiveness, adaptability, flexibility, suppleness, and magnetism.”

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-symbolism-of-water-in-Japanese-culture

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_elements_(Japanese_philosophy)

    1. MarsLineman says:

      To be the cool kid who replies to himself, I’d also like to point out that Tidus seems to be the character most associated with water (even his sword is water). He is an agent of change, as well as a formless being. Sin is also a formless being.

      In a world filled with summoned creatures/ characters, water is the perfect symbol: formless, filled with life, and symbolically dividing this world from the next (given Japan’s island nature).

    2. ChrisANG says:

      Water is associated with purification and the washing away of sin in many different religions, another example being baptism in Christianity. Speaking of Christ, and in keeping with Final Fantasy’s use of the “Creepy Cool Crosses” trope, it’s probably not a coincidence that the scene establishing Yuna’s spiritual role has her walk on water. In fact, the whole point of Yuna’s pilgrimage is to die in order to save the world from Sin….

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_purification

      http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreepyCoolCrosses
      (The Final Fantasy games have a long history of using Christian symbols, for example, Kefka’s angel and devil wings, Sephiroth’s seraph-like final form, and most recently Lightning acting as “the Savior” under an evil Angel-winged God of Light in FFXIII-3)

      1. MarsLineman says:

        I agree that there is overt Christian allegory in the concept of summoners (who walk on water) dying to cleanse the world of ‘sin’. But the ending subverts this interpretation. It isn’t the one who walks on water who dies to save the world, it is the one who *is* water (in the symbolic sense).

        In a way, it almost reads like a Japanese cultural rejection of Christian allegory, in favor of a more Japanese conception. In fact, the church in this game argues the same case as Christianity- that we need to constantly atone for our ancient transgressions, lest our ‘sin’ wash us away.

        But critically, this is shown in the game to be an utterly corrupt lie.

        1. Sarfa says:

          In terms of mythological allusions, the story of Final Fantasy X borrows heavily from the story of the Yamato-no-Orochi. Simplified form being:

          Susanoo (Tidus) is banished from his home in the heavens (Dream Zanarkand) to the mortal world (Spira) where two earthly deities are weeping due to their having to sacrifice their daughters (Summoners) to the Yamato-no-Orochi (Sin) in return for it not destroying their society. Susanoo decides to save their eighth daughter (Yuna) by getting the Yamato no Orochi blind drunk with wine (the Hymn of the Fayth) and then killing it while it’s docile.

          1. MarsLineman says:

            Thanks for this. I’ll just add that the river Hii plays prominently into this tale (Susanoo finds the couple by following the river upstream) and Susanoo is sort of a storm god (also named for his impetuousness). More water symbolism/ ties to FFX

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamata_no_Orochi

  9. MrGuy says:

    I think the bit here with Seymour would be much improved if you DIDN’T need to fight him again.

    He’s really here for a lore dump – the reveal that his plan all along was to destroy the world, and that he wants to control Sin to bring that about. And then die.

    Imagine if, rather than fight him, you find him here doing much the same that you’re doing – trying to find a different way to battle Sin that doesn’t involve the Final Aeon (because Yuna rejected him, so he couldn’t do that route). Except in his case, he wants to become Sin, not destroy Sin.

    Rather than you shooting Sin out of the air (which as you mentioned doesn’t make a lot of sense), you encounter Sin in a battle with Seymour, which he is losing badly. You play the hymn and knock Sin down, and encounter the bested-and-dying Seymour, who tells you his plans as he dies. You then get to send him, and enter Sin as before.

    If the battle with Seymour isn’t going to be a climax, why have it?

    1. GloatingSwine says:

      Because Seymour deserves all the beatings he gets…

      1. Felblood says:

        Hear hear!

        Because after all the trouble he gave me at Ronso town, I need to kill this fucker HARD.

        Also, the party needs this easy win, against an established threat, to showcase how strong they are, so that Jecht and Sin seem awesome for giving them a challenge.

    2. Syal says:

      Because it’s Power Fantasy 10, and personally eliminating a recurring villain is highly cathartic.

      I’m still upset I never got to fight the Lake Yeti a second time, and that guy had no significance.

      1. Ninety-Three says:

        Funny, I found that Seymour deeply undermined the power fantasy. This asshole keeps coming back despite being killed, the game never explains how, and the party member skilled in making sure dead things stay dead doesn’t do anything to keep him down. The circumstances of Seymour’s recurrence made it feel like either the author was a cheating bastard, or the protagonists were complete morons who kept forgetting to Send the guy.

        It undermines any sense of player/protagonist power: either the protagonists are idiots who can’t accomplish a simple and obvious task, or they’re powerless in the face of a cheating author who keeps effortlessly undoing their past victories.

        1. Syal says:

          That’s every Final Fantasy recurring boss. I can forgive that kind of thing when it ultimately ends in a one-sided curbstomp like here.

          1. Ninety-Three says:

            Usually the writer at least bothers with having the villain survive your fights so that it makes sense when he comes back. When the other games have a villain die and come back, it’s a trick used sparingly, unlike Ed The Undying here.

            1. Syal says:

              Thinking about it, I think the reason I’m okay with recurring bosses who logically should die earlier, is because the point it would make sense for the character to die is usually the same point they stop affecting the plot. Seymour should have logically died in Bevelle, but his only plot importance past Bevelle is giving an excuse for why Maester Kelk never shows up again. Otherwise its just bossfights and themes.

            2. GloatingSwine says:

              FFX does quite a good job of explaining why dying isn’t much of an impediment to Seymour though.

              Like it’s part of the whole lore and setup that dying doesn’t actually mean you [i]have[/i] to stop.

              1. Ninety-Three says:

                Yes it tells us that there are unsent (although it goes into as little detail as possible about what that means), but it also tells us that you can perform a sending to fix that, and the party doesn’t. Maybe the guide tells us that Seymour is a level fifty-seven Unsent Prime who can teleport away when he’s KOed to escape being sent, but the base game presents us with a problem, hands the protagonists what appears to be an obvious solution, and then he keeps respawning because they don’t use it. Either the party are morons, or there’s more to it than what’s visible and the game has done a terrible job of explaining itself.

                1. GloatingSwine says:

                  It’s not like they don’t try and send Seymour though. That was part of Yuna’s whole plan with the wedding.

                  In the first fight they have to run away, the second is in the middle of running away already, and after the third he flies off a mountain.

                  They clearly know it’s an option, and there are just as clearly reasons in the story why it doesn’t happen.

        2. Shoeboxjeddy says:

          Seymour is that random henchman from Austin Powers 2. “WHY WON’T YOU DIE?!”

  10. MrGuy says:

    Also, it’s weird to me that Seymour seems to go back and forth between being a thoughtful villain with a specific and consistent (if misguided) plan, and Ultros from FFVI, a recurring semi-comic-relief character you fight several times for questionable reasons other than “he showed up here somehow,” just because apparently the designers thought it would be good to throw in a boss fight around here, and “throw Ultros/Seymour in there again!” was the only idea they had.

    There’s no gorram reason for the last two Seymour fights to exist.

    1. Christopher says:

      Do you not fight other main Final Fantasy villains multiple times? I haven’t really played any, I just got the impression that you fought guys like Kefka, Jenova/Sephirot and Kuja more than once.

      Having said that, 4 times seems excessive. Like at least one of those times could have been given over to some kind of underling.

      1. The Rocketeer says:

        Most recurring villains in Final Fantasy history are secondary villains, whose presence and competence is a commentary on the evolving situation. They either grow in power from relatively minor threats to represent the deepening gravity of the narrative, or they show up as an overwhelming threat early on and are overcome far more easily much later. These are villains like Golbez, Gilgamesh, Jenova, Seifer and Edea, and Seymour. Beatrix is another, but personally, I say she doesn’t fulfill the same thematic purpose.

        Main villains are fought more than once only very, very rarely. When they are, it’s usually to illustrate or punctuate some sort of major change in their fundamental nature. Kefka is the obvious example: you fight him multiple times pre-ascendance, only one of which is a real battle, and then he waits indomitably in his tower after securing ultimate magical power, to be fought only once more. Exdeath is another; you fight him twice before the finale: once in a scripted story battle that ends badly, followed by a reckoning at his castle, where he is overcome. However, Exdeath manages to both complete his plans and recover completely, and is not fought again until the finale, in which he attempts to merge with the Void itself, with… mixed results. And Emperor Mateus of Palamecia, whom you kill, only for him to return from the Underworld as a dark god. Hell, you could even count Garland and Chaos, though I flatly do not.

        Most other main villains have some sort of lair they’re either imprisoned within or just prefer to rule from, acting through the aforementioned secondary villains. Or, they either remain unknown or too powerful to face directly until relatively close to the final battle. Chaos, Xande and the Cloud of Darkness, Zemus, Sephiroth, Ultimecia, Kuja, Yu Yevon, and Vayne and Venat”” the majority of the series’ archvillains. Again, I’m not counting Necron from FFIX, because… *sigh* well, because “Final Fantasy frickin’ IX,” basically.

        1. MarsLineman says:

          Rocketeer, I really enjoy your commentary. Do you mind clarifying what you mean by your last sentence? I enjoyed FFIX back in the day, and was planning to revisit it after I finish FFX. But I don’t remember much, and you seem to think it’s an outlier among Final Fantasies. What makes it so different?

          1. There was literally no mention of Necron being anywhere close to a thing before the fight with Necron. In my own experience, I was expecting the game to end after killing Kuja (finally) and then it’s like “lolnope, here’s another boss that’s never been mentioned anywhere in the main story or in any of the lore or side stuff.”

          2. Syal says:

            Final Fantasy 9 was a big callback game. One of the callbacks was the Final Boss Outta Nowhere that 1 through 4 (arguably 5 and 6 as well) all had, only it was even more outta nowhere than usual. Like, “I can’t tell if this thing is supposed to have had any plot impact, direct or indirect, at any previous point in this game history” outta nowhere.

          3. The Rocketeer says:

            To briefly generalize a can of worms I dread contemplating, I have come to view Final Fantasy IX as a a very broad-scope, very deliberate thematic rejection of the preceding series, sardonically wallowing in its superficial aesthetics. Therefore, when contextualizing the game within the rest of the series, it often stands either as a direct counterpoint to its brethren, or appears willfully indifferent to them.

            Understandably, Necron takes a lot of heat for seeming to come from nothing, and from nowhere. I’m not quite as bothered; I see Necron as a sort of hyperbolic, though fitting, capstone to the thematic weave of the game. As a literal conclusion to the narrative, Necron is a nonsensical contortion. But I somewhat defend Necron as an almost totally non-literal interpolation of the heart of the game itself.

            Oh, and: thanks for the kind word.

            1. MarsLineman says:

              Thanks for the great replies guys. I do now sort of remember there being a weirdly anticlimactic ending to FFIX. And I definitely remember the game being suffused with callbacks.

              Rocketeer, I’ll be looking for thematic rejection when I play FFIX. Interesting stuff

            2. Supah Ewok says:

              I recall reading that there is evidence that the semi-hidden optional boss Hades was planned to be the actual final boss of FFIX. The most likely scenario to me is that they ran out of time and money to work Hades into the narrative, so they put him on the shelf as an optional boss. Left with nothing to work with, the designers assed in Necron to attempt to make up for the lack of build up with sheer audacity. So… I wouldn’t try to read into Necron thematically tying in to the rest of the game too much.

              1. Felblood says:

                “Good intentions marred by last-minute decisions and general half-assedness,” would also be a good summary of the themes of FFIX.

                As to Rocketeer’s assertions, as always, I find his perspective interesting, erudite, well-supported, well-conveyed and utterly unacceptable.

                IX isn’t so much a reaction to the series as a whole as a reaction to FF VIII in particular. Every sequel is a response to it’s predecessor, but there is a particular fire of condemnation here.

                While you will find fans with room in their hearts for both, as one’s passionate love for one grows, their love for the other is likely to do the inverse.

                IX was totally unashamed to stand up in public and say, “Final Fantasy 8 is a blight and a blasphemy to our name! VIII is not the direction we should be taking. It is leading us astray into an unsustainable graphical arms-race, when we should be leveraging our core strength which are simple, dramatic story beats, combined with deceptively deep, archetypical characters and cute, iconic, high-quality artwork.”

                The fact that it stumbled in a lot of places trying to make that point meant that the throwback art-style was gone, until the handheld remakes, but the type of story it wanted to tell (if not succeeded at telling) definitely had an impact on the kind of story that was written into FFX. In many ways it was the rowdy, weed-fueled student protest, that launched the properly organized non-profit, that saved some of the series’ best ideas from the vaults. It was a mess on it’s own, but there were enough brilliant moments in there for someone to recognize the raw ore of something beautiful.

        2. Henson says:

          The problem with Seymour, in comparison to all these other sub-villains, is that Seymour is the main villain of FFX. Yu Yevon may be responsible for the whole cycle, and your goal may be to stop Sin, but Sin and Yu Yevon are really just forces of nature. They’re not villains, they’re tsunamis. This is why Seymour exists at all, to have some villain in this game who the player can oppose, but the mix between ‘Main Villain’ and ‘Shirtless Ultros’ really puts him in a weird place, functionally.

      2. Syal says:

        Exdeath and Kefka are the only main villains you fight more than twice; Kefka was a fakeout main boss who is presented as comic relief for the first half of the game, and Exdeath arguably isn’t the main antagonist of 5; once you beat him the history very heavily turns to how dangerous the Void is and Exdeath is effectively reduced to gatekeeper.

    2. Syal says:

      I really think there should have been at least one SinSpawn battle in the late game; Sin’s threat level is nonexistent after Mi’ihen until the pilgrimage is completed, it would have been nice to have a booster shot of main villain somewhere in there. Replace Seymour Gagazet with a Sin flyby or something.

      1. potatoejenkins says:

        Weren’t the Calm Lands created during battles between Sin and other Summoners? It is no booster shot and maybe not direct enough but I found this to be a good or … not bad way to show again how much of a threat Sin is.

        It’s no battle against Sin spawn or Sin itself though. Don’t know if that would’ve been better or if it was an opportune moment to focus more on the group and their very own problems.

        I should play this game again.

  11. Christopher says:

    It’s almost certainly a coincidence, but It’s a little weird to me that Zelda, Mario and Final Fantasy all went with a tropical island setting in their 2001-2003 games. I guess they all wanted to do something different and just ended up in the same place. As far as trends go, that was a pleasant one.

    1. guy says:

      It’s probably because that’s the exact moment when water effects became decent.

    2. potatoejenkins says:

      I remember Mumbles having a very enlightened theory about this.

    3. Philadelphus says:

      Speaking as someone who lives in Hawaii, and was once employed somewhere that dealt with tourists (the Visitor Information Station on Mauna Kea): Japanese tourism to Hawaii is huge. Like, over 40% of people visiting the station were from Japan, according to a census some University of Hawaii students conducted for a statistics project. The Japanese love Hawaii, which is probably partly why the newest Pokémon game is set in a Hawaii-analog and is infused with Hawaiian imagery and words. It might also help explain those tropical islands.

      Edit: Wow, I went and looked up the official Pokémon Sun and Moon site, and it is even more full of references than I thought.

      1. Christopher says:

        Good point! I was vaguely aware that there is a lot of Japanese tourists in Hawaii, but not the extent of it.

        On a somewhat related note: Final Fantasy 9 seems to have been largely developed in Hawaii, while X was made by the FF7/8 team. Maybe they were envious of their coworkers.

        1. GloatingSwine says:

          Square’s Hawaii studio is where they do all their CG animation. It’s a specialist studio they opened for the purpose.

          FF9’s visual style is intended to be more of a throwback to the older games, hence having Yoshitaka Amano back as the character designer and featuring a lot of things inspired by his art.

      2. “The Japanese love Hawaii…”

        Must…resist…Pearl Harbor…joke…..the struggle is real

  12. Darren says:

    One small detail: you can recruit Anima, Seymour’s Aeon and arguably the most powerful in the game (the Magus Sisters are probably more powerful overall, but that’s three Aeons as opposed to Anima’s one), in a sidequest before this point. Anima’s fayth is Seymour’s mother, and if you summon it for this fight he responds to it, one more bit of salt rubbed in the wound of his final defeat.

    Seymour definitely isn’t the writer’s pet villain, but I think they’ve done a good job of rounding him out so that, despite being batshit insane, he still feels like a developed character and not just a sneering roadblock for the player to overcome. X-2’s international version actually briefly revisits Seymour in one of its monster recruitment quests, and has a not-entirely unsympathetic take on him.

  13. Traagen says:

    Of the four elements in the game, only three are represented by aeons: Ifrit (fire) Ixion (lightning) and Shiva (ice). But there's no aeon for water magic. Same goes for the temples. We visit temples themed around fire, ice, lightning, and technology, but none of them are water-based. Is this a deliberate message of some sort? Is the omission of water supposed to mean something? Is Sin the water aeon? Or is the Blitzball temple in ruined Zanarkand supposed to be the “Water Temple”?

    Why is ice considered a different element from water? That seems odd to me when ice IS water (at least on Earth. I suppose you can claim this is methane ice or some such, but then this must be a damn cold world).
    I’ve never played Final Fantasy or any other JRPG. Is this a normal distinction? If not, does it change how you understand the world and the story if ice and water are the same element?

    1. Syal says:

      Definitely normal in Final Fantasy and other Square games for Ice and Water to be separate elements. In 10, the four major elemental spells are Fire and Ice, and Water and Lightning, three of which get Aeons.

      Probably better to think of Ice as Cold.

    2. Xeorm says:

      That’s pretty standard. Think of all the ice queens in European fiction (or ice kings). Winter as whole is an important factor for any locale that can get harsher winters, and cold itself can be seen as an element on par with fire. Most forms of “cold” that we can see and deal with are forms of frozen water, hence ice, but there’s a large difference between ice as water and ice as cold.

      Or put another way, fire + water = steam. Still technically water, but changed. Steam won’t have the same connotations as flowing water does. Similarly, water + cold = ice. Major change, if not bigger than fire+water.

      1. Mephane says:

        My impression is that in western fiction,where the ancient Greek 4 elements earth/water/fire/air are referenced all the time, ice usually takes the place of water (and often the caption for it is still “water”). When a fictional setting has magic divided into these four elements, usually water-magic is often essentially just ice magic, which is something I find rather annoying because the other elements typically get a more varied treatment:

        * Fire: flames, explosions, meteorites, lava.
        * Earth: rocks, sand, crystals, glass.
        * Air: wind, flight, thunder, lightning
        * Water: ice, ice, ice and ice.

        And whenever the water element is represented by liquid water, it’s usually takes the form of some water-healing magic, whereas ice magic us typically destructive, disruptive (and, of course, freezing). A relatively recent example here is Guild Wars 2. The elementalist class is not just a mage that uses the 4 elements, the entire class is designed around them, with the character only ever being able to use spells from 1 element and being able to switch between “attunements”. The water element here has spells that are literally ice and do damage, and liquid water that is used for healing.

        I find this all a bit sad because water is the most interesting of the four elements to me, with it being so flexible and ubiquitous a substance, and would in theory allow for quite the interesting magic abilities. I still remember Neverwinter Nights 2 having spells where you could either fill an enemy’s lungs with water so they drown from the inside, or pull the water out of their body so they dry out (and an advanced version of the spell let you create a water elemental spirit from another person’s body water).

    3. Paul Spooner says:

      It is kind of odd, until you look at “elements” as phases of matter, instead of the atomic elements we think of today (and in that case, water is molecular, not elemental).
      The classical Earth, Water, Air, Fire map nicely to Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Plasma.

      Of course, that just moves the problem, because then the Earth and the Ice “elements” are overlapping.

      1. Mephane says:

        I’d love if magic systems would move away from themes like the four Greek elements. Like, why not use actual concepts in physics instead? Instead of four arbitrary elements, you’d get certain forces you could control, plus their many combinations:

        * Electricity
        * Magnetism
        * Kinetic energy
        * Pressure
        * Mass
        * Gravity
        * Time

        I am sure there are fictional settings that do just that, but they are certainly the exception.

        I’ve got this idea in my head for a long time for a fantasy setting where while the rest of the world believes in mystical powers, four elements etc. as the source of magic, the actual wizards would have none of that and perform their magic by manipulating these directly. (They’d just let the rest of the world in ignorance of their secrets.)

        As a consequence, some standard spells we have grown used to in fantasy settings to would be among the most complex ones, for example to create a fireball you’d need to make or gather some sort of combustible gas mixture, contain it into a spherical shape, heat it up to ignite it, and accelerate on the desired trajectory. Only the most experienced master wizards could do all of these things combined*. In fact in my setting, a wizard’s power would be primarily defined by the complexity of things they can do, and only secondarily by the sheer amount of energy they can manipulate at a time.

        *And these things would usually be used rarely and only as a show of power. You don’t need a fireball in combat anyway, it’d be much easier and more effective to heat up the target directly from within. So most uses of magic would be as subtle as most physical effects themselves, no flashy effects.

        1. Sleepyfoo says:

          That’s really cool, and I’d like to read a story like that.

          That said, there’s a lot of thematic/symbolic shorthand inherent in the classical elements as demonstrated above. This can be used in a variety of ways to convey parts of the story without drawing attention to them or establishing the symbolism yourself.

          Plus, a significant portion of the population has at best a tenuous grasp on those concepts; which will further increase the difficulty of getting the story across to the audience.

          Peace : )

  14. Syal says:

    We’ve been skipping over Tidus’s changing relationship with Jecht, but one thing I never would have noticed without this series; the fight with Outer Sin is the first time Tidus refers to Jecht as ‘Dad’ instead of Old Man.

  15. potatoejenkins says:

    I don’t remember: Is the Farplane called the Afterlife by people in-game or was this determined by FF10 lore/ the writers?

  16. Muspel says:

    For what it’s worth, the absence of a water-based summon isn’t really all THAT unusual. The Final Fantasy series generally doesn’t treat water like a major element– you have the “big three” of fire, lightning, and ice, and then a random smattering of other stuff (which generally includes holy and dark).

    And even in the games that do have water magic, it’s usually not one of the standard “black magic” spells.

    Siren, who is generally the water summon/aeon/eidolon/whatever they’re calling them in that particular entry, has only shown up in like three main series games that I’m aware of.

    1. MilesDryden says:

      Siren? When has Siren ever been associated with water? Her only appearances I can remember had her use music or status effect magic.

      I think Besaid is supposed to be the water temple in this game, but admittedly Valefor doesn’t fit with that. I always thought Leviathan was the closest thing FF had to a “water” themed summon. There’s also Bismarck from FF6 but I don’t think he shows up again.

      1. Henson says:

        Siren was partly associated with water in her summon for FF8. The image is the Greek archetype of the sirens on the jagged rocks in the sea.

        1. Destrustor says:

          In FF5, Siren was a very early, very minor boss that had a living/undead gimmick that was probably intended to teach you about how undead are hurt by healing spells.

          So, not much connection to water there.

      2. Syal says:

        Yeah, Leviathan was in every Final Fantasy with summons even before the games had summons, and has always been a Big Wave water attack. So they added Water as a basic element for 10, but removed the relevant summon.

        Water Flans only show up in the Via Purifico in Bevelle I believe, so if anything was a water temple it was probably a scrapped part of Bevelle. But there’s more water-themed bosses than any other element so I’d say Sin is Leviathan here.

        1. MilesDryden says:

          Basic water flans show up on Besaid island, so…

    2. potatoejenkins says:

      That’s Leviathan. Like MileDryden wrote.

      Siren is the “distribute nasty status effects” equivalent to Doom Train. With boobies.

      Edit: Bismarck returns as a boss in FFXIII, I believe. Excuse me: “Fal’Cie”. Now I want herring. Dammit.

      1. MilesDryden says:

        I do remember Bismarck being a Fal’cie in 13, but I don’t think you fight him. Unless that was in one of the XIII sequels/dlc’s that I haven’t played yet.

        1. potatoejenkins says:

          Entirely possible. Playing that game I stopped paying attention at one point. Even though I do not think it was as bad as the majority seems to think it was.

          And pardon, *Miles. Not Mile.

          1. MilesDryden says:

            I actually really enjoyed 13 for the combat system, even if the story was just meh. And while “it gets better after the first 20 hours” isn’t exactly a strong defense for the game, it really does get better after the first 20 hours.

            1. potatoejenkins says:

              Agreed. The combat system was not bad (though FFXII’s will probably forever be my favourite) and the world below Cocoon was fun to explore. Had fun reading through the Index as well. Even though most of it sounded like pretentious fantasy nonsense.

              Too bad most of the characters were very annoying. “Serahhh!! SERAAAAH!!!” SHAAAWN!!

            2. GloatingSwine says:

              FF13’s combat system would have been great if it ever let you use it.

              Unfortunately you have to beat the final boss before it gives you access to all the really cool abilities, and most of the story is spent with a version of the system crippled by only having two characters at once.

              It was an unpleasant trend in that generation of JRPGs to massively slow roll the systemic complexity so you were 2/3 of the way through or more before you were actually playing the whole game. Eternal Sonata did it, Last Remnant did it, etc.

    3. Felblood says:

      Black Mages specifically,* use Fire/Lightning/Ice, but Summoners, Blue Mages, Red Mages, Sorcerers, Illusionists Etc. generally expect to have access to the entire suite of elements.

      There are even games with characters or jobs who specifically never learn any Fire, Lightning or Ice magic, but still rely on spell damage to function.

      Spells like Areo, Bio and Water are often powerful trump cards, in a dungeon where foes have poor magic resist, but absorb, resist or nullify the more traditional elements of Black Magic.

      *Usually. e.g. Lulu gets lots of cool toys like Bio and Ultima.

  17. MilesDryden says:

    Not that it’s relevant to this part (I forgot to mention this when back when Shamus got to Djose) but it always bugged me that Ixion replaced Ramuh as the Thunder summon in this game. Ramuh has been in the series just as long as Ifrit/Shiva and has actually had plot relevance in at least 2 of the previous games. Ixion is cool, but it always seemed like the odd one out as the only summon other than Valefor who was more beast-like than humanoid.

  18. nemryn says:

    And all that water symbolism, of course, is why “Tide-us” is clearly the correct pronunciation.

    1. ThricebornPhoenix says:

      I’ll always prefer “Tedious”.

    2. cloudropis says:

      The VA already confirmed the correct pronunciation is “Tee-dus”. The water theme wasn’t intended as much as the Sun theme (Tida meaning Sun in Okinawan, direct contrast with Yuna’s moon symbolism, yellow color scheme, the Sun equipment for the Celestial Weapons etc).
      The fact that the English transliteration of his name makes a water theme make sense as well due to Tide-us being a possible pronunciation is a fortunate coincidence.

      1. Syal says:

        I’m going to have to rename him “Sunny” next time and see if it changes anything.

  19. Magicnubs says:

    Consider that, rather than water-themed, Zanarkand must be “thunder” themed, because then you would get the Sun Crest (a piece needed Tidus’s celestial weapon) literally Beyond Thunderdome.

    From FF Wikia :

    “The Sun Crest is found at a place called The Beyond in Zanarkand Dome after defeating Yunalesca.”

    I rest my case.

    But for real, I wonder if Tidus was named so to continue a theme? Cloud/Squall/Tide?

    Also, it’s nice to finally know where the hell Caladbolg came from.

  20. cloudropis says:

    This is why I’ve grown to resent FFX’s story. It’s the ultimate glorification of the shonen idealistic anime protagonist who decides that the status quo is bad and he wants to change it… Except the status quo isn’t even that bad (two lives + casualties to not have Thursday Tidal Wave for a decade? Sign me up), and the protagonist doesn’t even know how he’s gonna change a mechanism who worked for a millennium. Seriously, Tidus candidly admits he has no clue and keeps repeating “he’ll think about something”, EVEN AFTER HE KILLS YUNALESCA AND BASICALLY DOOMS THE PLANET WITH NO BACKUP PLAN. And no party member seriously confronts him about it!
    And yet here there are a lot of plot contrivancies and DEM dumped on his lap to save the day and proving him right. Those other pragramatist suckers should’ve believed harder.

  21. James says:

    Ooooh, re: water symbolism in FFX, would you believe me if I told you I wrote my college admissions essay on it? And actually got in?

    Anyway, the first thing that comes to mind when dealing with water is as a symbol of birth and rebirth – the water of the womb, of course, and also the rejuvenating properties of rain (i.e. the ending of Lion King).

    FFX’s all about that motif, specifically as an anvilicious takedown of the Christian gloss on it. They’re not exactly subtle about it, with messianic figures sacrificing themselves to defeat Sin, then being reborn as the new Sin. That sacrifice is treated as both morally illegitimate and also ineffective – Sin just comes back ten years later, while our hero’s solution is for good. Given the heavy Catholicism vibes one gets off of Yevon, and the shall we say anticlerical tone of the rest of the game, I think that’s probably a play on how Christ was executed for being a strident critic of legalistic purity-based ethics and wound up the symbolic figurehead of a religion more or less defined by that kind of Pharisaism.

    Water’s connected to that life-death-rebirth in Christian mythology in a couple of different ways – extratextual treatments almost always depict the crucifixion as occurring during a storm, for example. But the biggest is baptism – commonly done in water, and meant to be a sacramental recapitulation of the life-death-rebirth thing. You start as a sinner, you go underwater and symbolically drown, and you emerge rebirthed dedicated to Christ. The Ironborn from Game of Thrones are much more hardcore about it but the symbolism is the same. I haven’t given too much thought to how that specifically applies to each of the instances you’re talking about, but at the very least that the party makes a final break from Yevon while underwater and then is reborn into a desert is probably playing off of the baptism imagery.

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