T w e n t y S i d e d
Emerging from the jungle, we enter directly into… a glacial mountain range? Yeah, the geography in this game makes no sense. It’s time for the ice level and goddammit an ice level is what we’re gonna get. Bur-Omisace, known the world over as a holy place and an enclave of peace, has attracted a great number of refugees with the war building up, and even as we pass through the mountains a great number of them are on their way. Balthier blames the Empire for their suffering, but Larsa is quick to point out that he’s trying to head the war off, and is certain his father shares his views. But Balthier merely tells him that he can never truly know another, not even your own father.
Well, let’s just check in on the old man, eh? In Gramis’ study, Vayne is meeting with his father. The Senate has determined that Vayne needs to be sent away, but Vayne pleads that whether he stays or goes the Empire’s problems will be just the same. Moreover, he has become convinced that the Senate hates House Solidor unconditionally, and will never stop their games of seizing whatever concessions they can until they can do away with them entirely. To this end, Vayne suggests finding some pretext to have the Senate gotten rid of, just as they use the disaster over Jagd Yensa to get rid of Vayne.
Gramis is tongue-in-cheek about how fast Vayne is to suggest the most ruthless course of action, but, as Vayne points out, it was Gramis himself who established this as standard procedure for the Solidors many years ago. Furthermore, he insists that it isn’t for his sake, but Larsa’s; Larsa can’t contend with the Senate the way he and Gramis can, and they must take action on his behalf so that Larsa doesn’t have to learn the hard way and become as jaded and callous as they are. Gramis is skeptical indeed that Vayne would care about his brother’s innocence, but Vayne, morbidly candid, admits that his hands are already stained with blood, and he has no innocence left to preserve.
The Emperor knows the future is no longer his to guide. His last words are thus: “And so House Solidor lives on.”
Arriving at the foot of the colossal meteora that houses the Kiltias, Bur-Omisace certainly does live up to its reputation. All around are refugees, some from recent conflicts and a few from as far back as Landis’ conquest. The Kiltias themselves manage food lines and attend to those who were hurt on the journey. A handful of the refugees merely see the place as room and board, but to most the Gran Kiltias Anastasis is a person of remarkable reputation and incredible power.
The mountain is also home to many nu mou. Nu mou are… sort of hard to describe, actually. Stubby little orangutan-faced fellers with blue-gray fur and long floppy ears. Nu mou are exceptionally long-lived, and the nu mou Kiltias act as elders to the younger human believers.
Set into the mountainsideNot that this will mean much to most people, but the wyrm philosopher can be spotted early here, looking for the Vyraal in Paramina Rift. is the edifice an ancient temple of white stone and turquoise domes. It seems Larsa has been expected, and we enter through the grand doors into the Hall of Light.
The hall is a short but exquisitely-adorned sanctuary of gold, polished wood, and turquoise. Smoke rises from a dozen censers on the path to the dais of Anastasis, surrounded by many columns and a high statue of— *spit take* Oh shit! Uh, a statue of a seraph, it seems. *cough* The party stands before the ancient, wizened sage, but no words pass between them for a long moment.
The sage (whose race I believe is never mentioned, but think “high elf” and you’ll have it) stands with his eyes closed. Vaan whispers to Penelo that he might be asleep, but before anyone can shush him, a booming voice echoes through their minds. “No, child. I do not sleep; I dream.”
The Gran Kiltias is a “dreamsage;” he explains that, in his eternal waking dream, he observes and meditates on reality and the unseen at once, observing past, present and future as a singular swirl around him.
Ashe begins to introduce herself by her full title, but presumably not wanting to hear her say “B’nargin” (*snicker*) and lose his bearing, Anastasis silences her, saying, “Did I not just tell you I was a sage, ffs, I can know your thoughts before you say them and shit.” Exposition handily disposed of, he grants that Ashe certainly is fit to be queen of the Dalmascan people, prompting Larsa to beg him to recognize her accession at once.
Before he can finish the thought, though, the grave meeting is crashed by a man with olive skin and a thick Spanish accent, wearing sunglasses indoors. Larsa is delighted to see him, offering his hand, but the man pats him on the head and sets himself at once to the getting on of his empyreal swerve. Larsa introduces him as a Margrace, a man of the Rozarrian ruling house.
He whips off his sunglasses, handing them to his pinafore-clad attendant, and takes a knee before the princess, introducing himself as Al-Cid Margrace.Idly, I wonder if “Al-Cid” is supposed to be a name or a title; I’m taking for granted that his name is a lightly re-Arabized nod to El Cid, an epithet for Rodrigo Díaz simply meaning “the lord” derived from the Arabic al-Sayyid. I also can’t be the only one to notice how strange it is we have two characters named Cid in this narrative now, neither of whom is named Cid. Kissing her hand, Ashe gives a slight gasp as all her memories of Rasler evanesce for a moment. From far away, Fran’s keen viera senses can hear Def Leppard drifting on the wind, while in the background Balthier shrivels with envy and Penelo is quite clearly doing everything in her meager power not to sublimate into a rosy mist of lascivious frenzy.
Anastasis is pleased to see members of the three sides of the growing conflict gathered in the name of peace, but unfortunately, Al-Cid isn’t a fan of the idea to put Ashe on the Dalmascan throne. He, Larsa, and Ashe hash out the could-bes and maybes of this action or that, and Larsa assures him that if Ashe, taking the throne, merely gave a word of favor to the Empire and a word of caution to Ondore, he could smooth everything over with the Emperor and stop the war dead right there.
The Rozarrian shakes his head. This had been his hope, too, but things have changed while Larsa was on the road: Emperor Gramis is dead, and by Vayne’s hand.
Thanks to the magic of editing, we are privy to the aftermath: Gabranth pushes through the halls towards the Emperor’s study, even as senators are being dragged out in irons, protesting their fate and proclaiming their innocence. Vayne and the Judges Magister are in uproar as Gramis’ corpse sits lifeless behind his desk; it would seem Senate Chairman Gregoroth has already claimed responsibility for the poisoning, and administered “his own sentence” with his own hand.
Judge Bergan is eager to capture the rest of the Senate before the actors in the failed coup can escape, but Judge Drace is outraged, and not buying any of it for a second. Vayne protests that stripping the Senate of its power and granting autocracy to him— only until order can be restored— was the only reasonable course of action, but Drace tells him to shut his evil mouth and accuses him of the deed himself! Judge Zargabaath gives her a “Whooooaaa now let’s not get crazy here,” and she can’t believe he would buy into such an obvious trick. Tellingly, Zargabaath does not even protest, instead pointing out that, with how precarious the Empire’s situation is what with Rozarria making ready to knock on their front door, they don’t have another choice at the moment.
Drace sees another choice right in her hot little hand, however, and, aghast at Vayne’s boldness, puts her sword at his throat, placing him under arrest for the murder of his father. But she finds a blade at her own throat, with Judge Bergan revealing that it was not even Vayne, but the Ministry of Law itself that granted Vayne his autocracy.Question: Is Vayne not the head of the Ministry of Law? This implies some governing body within the Ministry that apparently doesn’t include Judges Magister Drace and Gabranth. So if you fuck with Vayne, you fuck with the Judges! Drace calls him a puppet, but seems to relent.
Feigning acquiescence, she swings around to assault Bergan, but finds her arm caught in his own; with no real effort, he picks her up by her face and flings her across the room like a toy. Drace is incredulous; Bergan’s strength appears beyond human.
Vayne, unmoved by the scene, coolly commands the stoic Zargabaath to take Bergan with him on the flagship Alexander and retrieve Lord Larsa. Gabranth, silent until now, protests that Larsa was made Gabranth’s responsibility.
…Really, is it now, Gabranth? Have you ever looked after Larsa? Do you know where he is now? Have you made any contact with his retinue, who are getting drunk off fermented nanna’s milk with Supinelu at Jahara right this very moment? Are you not, in fact, an abject failure in this task, and indeed with every task you are allotted over the course of this entire game and its backstory?
Vayne has other reason to be cross with him, though: he knows Gabranth was the Emperor’s stool-pigeon for Vayne’s goings-on, and that places him square on the new boss’s shit list, although there is a job he can do for him this very moment. In this very room, in fact!
Gabranth, you’re a Judge, right? Drace is a criminal now, right? Well, Vayne offers, why not serve the bitch her death sentence?
Zargabaath protests at once, but Vayne and Bergan watch eagerly as Gabranth picks up Drace’s own sword and crouches down over her. He can’t bring himself to kill her, but she gives her consent; she’s sealed her own fate, and Gabranth’s duty now is to Larsa. Gabranth understands, and slides the blade between her ribs.
Vayne cares not even to watch, instead arranging his dead father’s posture somewhat for dignity’s sake, and echoes his words to him: “And so House Solidor lives on.”
Back at Bur-Omisace, Larsa is struck dumb by the news. Yes, Al-Cid grants, the late Emperor Gramis would have at least lent his ear to Ashe, but Vayne? No way in hell. Vayne wants this war, and is canny enough to turn any situation to serve the end of starting it. What’s more, Anastasis knew as much since before we arrived. His visions of the future show Vayne as a major player in coming events, and to begin acting in the open would only draw Vayne’s attention to her.
Al-Cid has intelligence on Archadian fleet movements: The new 12th Fleet is already deployed, the 1st Fleet is ready and will be deployed as soon as the flagship Odin is refit, and the 2nd Kerwon Expeditionary Force is being recalled to fill the gap left by the 8th Fleet’s destruction. The combination will be the largest military force ever assembled.
And that’s not even counting their nethicite, as Ashe points out while mispronouncing “coup de grâce” like a champ. She addresses the ancient sage, no longer about accession but about aid. Accession now would be meaningless, since she has no power to defend her claim or her home.Right, which is what we knew before we left Rabanastre for Jahara. She needs a power sufficient to threaten Archadia, and wants to know if Anastasis has heard of anything she could avail herself of. The Gran Kiltias asks if she means more nethicite, but she protests; now that the Empire has nethicite, she must have a weapon of even greater power.
For the first time, Anastis’ eyes shoot open and he speaks with his own lips, breaking his dream to address her directly: “To wield power against power. Truly the words of a hume child.” Ashe protests; she is a true descendant of Raithwall himself, and who better to forge the future of Ivalice? Anastasis is skeptical, but recommends she seek the other power left behind by the Dynast-King: the Sword of Kings, a blade which can oppose and destroy the nethicite. Why Raithwall would leave such a relic in the care of the Gran Kiltias of his own time and not anyone of his own line— since nethicite was the weapon which won him the Galtean Alliance— is a mystery to Anastasis, but it sleeps now in the Stilshrine of Miriam, to the south of Paramina Rift.
The party turns to go, but Larsa is still too stunned by the death of his father to acknowledge the events around him. Anastasis, returning once more to his visions, muses to himself that his dreams, too, fade into day…
And so the party makes its way to the Stilshrine. There’s little enough to say about it; if you’ve seen one zombie-infested Galtean-era ruin, you’ve seen ’em all, or at least all the ones in this game. Only two things are noteworthy about it, which are: the Galtean architecture is distinctly recognizable, and the mid-boss is one fucked-up creature, being some sort of great metal construct covered in whirling blades and three tentacles with faces on the end of it. Even its bestiary entry is best summed up as “What the shit even is this thing?”The bizarre design of the Vinuskar foreshadows another fabricated dragonoid we’ll see quite late in the game. It also brings back the Magnetism mechanic for the first and last time since Final Fantasy IV, a reference that pairs well the optional Zeromus Esper also found deep in the Stilshrine.
At the bottom, a door bears an inscription for us: “DEY’S GONNA BE A BOSS.” Sure enough, what should lie beyond the threshold but Mateus, the Corrupt! It and its bevy of ice elementals rush the party. Sorry, Mateus, but Espers are passé; I’ve already got one that’ll put you right in your place: Adrammelech, the Wroth.
With a few gigajoules of raw esper lightning pumped through Mateus’ icy veins,Ice often seems to be weak to lightning in Ivalice, for whatever reason. we step through into the Vault of the Champion, where the Sword of Kings rests beyond a series of pylons and within an array of spinning circles, all glowing with a blue light. As Ashe steps forward, the blue light flows into the sword. Aglow with power, it floats down and delivers itself into her hand.
Ashe grasps the hilt gingerly, enthralled by the relic, but the sheer weight of the thing slams it to the ground the moment she touches it. I really must give due praise to the craftsmaship put into the cutscenes; as much as I complain about narrative details, the juxtaposition of Ashe’s awed want of the sword and her abrupt, bathetic inadequacy with it is intoxicating visual storytelling, as is the image of Ashe standing with the Sword in one hand and the Dawn Shard in the other. Vaan pipes up with the bright idea to test the sword on the Dawn Shard.
Everyone laughs and tells him what a fuck-up he is, before they— wait, I’m sorry, they take this idea dead seriously and try it at once. As Ashe heaves the sword high above her head, Dawn Shard in place to receive its terrible thwacking, it begins pissing a bit of mist. It would seem the stone fears for its own existence, and a specter of Rasler appears to Ashe, shaking his head as if to say, “ARE YOU A FUCKING IDIOT OR SOMETHING?” Ashe thinks for a moment and slams the blade down… just to the side of the Dawn Shard. The ghostly Rasler smiles, and disappears to change its translucent trousers. The stone’s reaction seems confirmation enough of the sword’s abilities, and we may as well keep the power of both.
Emerging from the Stilshrine, the airship Alexander and its entourage fly above, seeming to head away from Bur-Omisace. At its helm, Judge Zargabaath shakes his head and mourns, “The Empire’s debts grow legion.” The party sees a great plume of smoke rising from the temple environs, and hurry back to find a tragedy. The Imperials did not retrieve Lord Larsa with a light touch, and, led by the bloodthirsty Bergan, slaughtered any who would stop them from occupying the temple itself. Though it would seem the Alexander has left, there are still a small number of troops left behind in the temple, where Anastasis pleads with them.
Hurrying inside, the party finds the cloister wrecked, with Gran Kiltias Anastasis sleeping the sleep of death at the feet of Judge Bergan.
It would seem he anticipated their search for the Sword of Kings, and demands they hand it over to him, for, “Too late and to their sorrow do those who misplace their trust in gods learn their fate.” Behind him, the same specter that seemed to have possessed Mjrn floats, its eyes gleaming in the black void. The Judge glows with a radiant power, and the party realizes that he is empowered by nethicite. Fran believes he is possessed as Mjrn was, but Bergan only laughs.
The power of this new nethicite, he says, is the power of mankind, and Vayne, wielding such power as the Dynast-King could never have hoped to, shall become the new, true Dynast-King where Raithwall could only beg scraps from the table of the gods who permitted his rule. With it, he shall place “the reins of history back in the hands of man,” the first of many times we shall hear this phrase from now on.
With nethicite set about his very bones and some inscrutable entity lingering in his mind, he is infused body and spirit with their incredible power. My God, Bergan, are those… mako eyes?! If we will not hand over the sword willingly, we must die, then.
BRING IT! Now, Bergan always kicked my ass in the past, so I say with not a little satisfaction that Vaan brought him down almost to death with a single lucky four-hit combo from his greatsword. And then the rest of the way. So there.
Bergan’s death fixes little, though; Larsa is taken back home, and the Gran Kiltias is dead. It would seem some great power is at work, unknown to us, and even the great powers we do know have set their hands dead against us.
Al-Cid Margrace stumbles in with the help of his aide. It would seem Larsa went willingly with Judge Gabranth, to avoid causing just such a tragedy, yet Bergan flew into a frenzy and began striking down the Kiltias no sooner than Larsa had departed. Al-Cid was badly wounded in battle with Bergan himself, yet managed to flee for his life after Anastasis took his attentions.
He pleads with Lady Ashe to return with him to Rozarria. Their military favors a preemptive strike, and the Empire’s actions have them all but ready to begin their campaign. Ashe’s words could, if nothing else, ensure that his is not the country that starts this great war.
Ashe refuses, though; with the Sword of Kings in hand, she has a weapon that can counter their greatest weapon, and if any bargain can be made, it is best done after the Dusk Shard is splintered at her own hand.
Margrace is skeptical, but Balthier has a good lead on where the Empire’s deifacted nethicite might be: Draklor Laboratory, the seat of Archades’ military research. It seems Balthier’s intense hateboner for all things Draklor will keep him with us for at least a while longer, then. Al-Cid takes his leave, returning to his country to do what good he can. He wishes Ashe luck, and leaves us with some well-wishing from Larsa.
I adore the whole Paramina section. This might be the best the game gets. It’s also the last part of this fucking game that makes any sense.
The Travelog continues next week.
Footnotes:
[1] Not that this will mean much to most people, but the wyrm philosopher can be spotted early here, looking for the Vyraal in Paramina Rift.
[2] Idly, I wonder if “Al-Cid” is supposed to be a name or a title; I’m taking for granted that his name is a lightly re-Arabized nod to El Cid, an epithet for Rodrigo Díaz simply meaning “the lord” derived from the Arabic al-Sayyid. I also can’t be the only one to notice how strange it is we have two characters named Cid in this narrative now, neither of whom is named Cid.
[3] Question: Is Vayne not the head of the Ministry of Law? This implies some governing body within the Ministry that apparently doesn’t include Judges Magister Drace and Gabranth.
[4] Right, which is what we knew before we left Rabanastre for Jahara.
[5] The bizarre design of the Vinuskar foreshadows another fabricated dragonoid we’ll see quite late in the game. It also brings back the Magnetism mechanic for the first and last time since Final Fantasy IV, a reference that pairs well the optional Zeromus Esper also found deep in the Stilshrine.
[6] Ice often seems to be weak to lightning in Ivalice, for whatever reason.
How to Forum
Dear people of the internet: Please stop doing these horrible idiotic things when you talk to each other.
Juvenile and Proud
Yes, this game is loud, crude, childish, and stupid. But it it knows what it wants to be and nails it. And that's admirable.
Blistering Stupidity of Fallout 3
Yeah, this game is a classic. But the story is idiotic, incoherent, thematically confused, and patronizing.
The Witch Watch
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
How I Plan To Rule This Dumb Industry
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
Here we see that Vayne could have been a great villain, but it would be difficult to fix everything wrong. Most FF villains are stupendously pure dagnasty EBIL-level bad guys, to the point of pure nihilism. Vayne actually does have things he cares about, but unfortunately we’re actually never clear about his real goals or motivations. Is he trying for global domination, or is that some kind of means to his real aim?
Hard to fix without spending more time on him, and the FF plot structure makes that tough.
RHO: “Most FF villains are stupendously pure dagnasty EBIL-level bad guys, to the point of pure nihilism.”
Yeah, I don’t know why Squenix is so obsessed with villains whose motivation can be summed up as “I’m so emo, I want the whole universe to kill itself.” It’s stupid and lazy. I blame Sephiroth, personally.
I tend to refer to villains whose plans are nonsensical, but succeed anyway because the universe warps to their whim, “Final Fantasy villains.”
And yet here’s Vayne, getting shit done with his own hands! You go dude, let’s have some old-fashioned villainy that makes sense!
ROCKETEER: “I adore the whole Paramina section. This might be the best the game gets. It’s also the last part of this fucking game that makes any sense.”
…Oh. Well.
I mean, it’s not really that different from the SNES era? I haven’t really played III but i have to go as far back as II to find a motivation that isn’t “destroy everyone because crazy”
I suppose Exdeath and Kefka weren’t as dour and filled with angst as Sephiroth.
Exdeath sounds like the name for a mediocre heavy metal band.
It’s not. Though often there’s a kind of build up to the final reveal of the world-ending villain, usually with a secondary villain who has the equally-cliche’d-but-still-plausible motive of World Domination.
And in both V and VI there’s at least point in the story where the villains achieve what they want – and the world doesn’t actually end, even though there’s something close to an apocalypse.
(Doesn’t stop them threatening to destroy the world for reals this time during the final boss fights, though.)
While I’m all for dunking on Sephiroth, I’m not sure the problem is him so much as the writing of the games in general. I just got lost in the latter stages of VII, VIII and IX – I could tell you stuff that happened, but I definitely couldn’t tell you *why* it happened.
The fact that Sephiroth, Ultimecia and Kuja have weak motivations is to me a symptom, rather than a cause.
…Oh, right, that was exactly 3’s motive. Zande gets “blessed” with mortality and decides if he’s going to die then so is everyone else. And then Dark Cloud shows up as the incarnation of doom or something.
So I guess 9’s ending is an homage to 3.
The Japanese name of IX’s boss is a bit closer to III’s boss in Japanese (it translates as “The Eternal Darkness” there; “Necron” seems to be purely a translator’s invention)
The big bads for most of FFXIV are people who are trying to destroy the world, but it’s only a means to the end of resurrecting their god. Civilization-ending catastrophes are a repeated occurrence on that world.
[spoiler]Sure, but that’s until you get to the latest expansion. Fandaniel resurrecting Zodiark in order to suicide himself and the planet certainly fits, but so do the depression zombies and the long list of other planets that killed themselves. It very much plays the whole theme straight.[/spoiler]
Yeah, I cannot believe they followed Emet-Selch, one of my favorite villains in all of media, with Fandaniel and Meteion, both of which suck. My favorite part was when Zenos shows up to final battle and is like “I thought something as trivial as despair would be beneath you”. I know Zenos, that is what I have been saying for the past 20h, I am glad we are on the same page.
I dont know how media got the idea that nihilists, people with depression or other types of mentally broken characters make for great villains with grand schemes taking ages to complete.
Actually maybe I do, its just backwards thinking. Writer goes, hey, I want a villain who wants to destroy the world, I wonder what his motivation could be. But if they started with, hey, this character is kinda over the whole existence thing, wonder what his goals would be, I don’t think they would arrive at years long scheme for world destruction
Typo for “MacGuffin”.
It’s seeming like this story is suffering from the usual linear “And then this happens” approach? Or are there any arcs or foreshadowing?
Second typo, “the edifice an ancient” seems to be missing “of”
The apparitions of Reks are leading up to something, as is the supernatural strength of the judge, and some of the drama amongst judges.
In that sense there are arcs (but it’s not leading anywhere good).
No-one in the party really has arcs left, outside one or two confrontations. They really are in the ‘and then another thing happened’ rut
This section does sound good. It’s not complicated, it sets up some decent stakes, the plot marches forward steadily and what the party are meant to do is clear at the end of the day.
We get a simple MacGuffin hunt (and a MacGuffin. Presumably that magic sword has some decent properties), the bad guys purge their ranks of any decent characters – this is the kind of simple, grand, melodramatic storytelling the series is good at.
Glad that the Grand Kilitas died, though. Bullshit ‘wise men’ in stories irritate me.
The Gran Kiltias had promise. Wise Old Sage type, supposedly above it all, who is nevertheless very clearly playing politics, can lead to some fun dramatic tensions. Not here, though.
Question: We hear a lot about the Grand Kiltias. Do we ever hear about regular or lesser Kiltiases?
Most— possibly all— of the Kiltias are the nu mou mentioned above. They don’t talk very much about their actual faith; it’s sort of generic medieval fantasy reverence for some sort of vague higher power of goodness and light called Faram. Mostly, they talk about conditions on the mountain, what they’re doing to help out the refugees, bracing themselves for even more soon to come as a new conflict takes shape.
So a Kiltias is basically a bishop?
The religion is called the Light of Kiltia. “Kiltias” refers to the adherents of this faith, and more specifically to its clergy. We don’t really get a breakdown of their heirarchy other than that Anastasis is at the top as Gran Kiltias. I think the nu mou may be called “acolytes,” but that’s about it.
Correction: it’s not the Grand Kiltias, it’s the Gran Kiltias. This wizened old man is apparently a grandmother.
I forgot this section of the game even existed. I had to Google the ice level and even after seeing a screenshot I have no memory of it.
So little of what you actually do in this game has any bearing on the plot that’s going on. It’s like if in FFX you never visit Luca or Kilikia or witness the Battle of Mi’Hen. Instead you spend the game running around Mt Gagazet and when you reach the top someone says ‘Oh Sin had a massive battle in this other place, time to run around the calm lands for a bit’.
In this section of FFXII you get a brief interaction with a judge, and that’s about it in terms of being actively involved in the plot. And even then the major plot point happened elsewhere and was just described to you, and even the important thing the judge you meet does happened offscreen and was described to you.
Instead of Luke seeing Obi Wan’s death, Luke finds his robe and then Wedge comes in and describes what happened to Luke. And Obi Wan isn’t a mentor but some guy you met five minutes ago. And he wasn’t killed by Vadar, he was killed by the person in the silver stormtrooper helmet from the sequels.
Ashe wouldn’t be able to get an audience with the main bad guy of this game, she’d have to meet with his secretary.
On my first playthrough, that fight with Bergan convinced me that whoever was producing that nethicite was trying to destroy the empire. Taking a respected figure who was presumably capable of discharging his duties normally and replacing them with a berserker who slaughters their allies for no reason and can’t hold a rational conversation is changing them from an asset to a huge liability.
Yeah, the crazy-berserker-syndrome thing kind of cuts the legs off of all the interesting things they are trying to do with the Prometheus subplot.
It is like they had 5 writers sitting around the table, and one hated the game and wanted it to fail.
“With it, he shall place “the reigns of history back in the hands of man,” the first of many times we shall hear this phrase from now on.”
Doesn’t Dr. Cid say this earlier in the game? While muttering to “himself” before going to see Vayne?
Dear Rocketeer,
Do the young people of today even know who Def Leppard are, and, if not, what can we do about this tragedy? Young people ought to be familiar with all the bands I personally know of and it terrifies me that maybe they aren’t. I’m going to write to my Congressman today about the sorry state of our nation’s classic-rock education programs.
Sincerely,
An Old Person
Def Leppard? Do those cats play like the Tennessee Ramblers or more like the Fruit Jar Guzzlers?
I personally think it’s a tragedy that leppards are going def, and someone should start a collection to do something about it.
A Concerned Young(ish) Person
I feel like parts of this sequence, particularly Vayne’s murder of his father, is one of the obvious parts of Matsuno’s idea that remained intact, and yet still comes off as having been written by someone else. The outline is clearly there, but it’s far more melodramatic in its delivery than his own execution. Nonetheless, politics, honor, and knives in the back or ribs (or both!) are definitely his thing.
Yeah, there is really good stuff going on there, especially the dying emperor telling his son that the dynasty must go on. However, it would be improved with more ambiguity. Have some say his son did it, some the Parthians, some a cabal of senators, and never give a definitive answer. Giving Vain full autocratic power, but only as regent for his brother would also me good. They should have done more with Judge Milf.
I agree, but they gotta keep it T-Rated.
I don’t see what the problem would be, and the storylines practically write themselves.
*Judge Milf investigates reports of a disloyal governor.
*Judges Milf and Gabranth are put in charge of fighting an epidemic of pirates
*Judge Milf sent to improve border fortifications
*Judge Milf assists a senator trying to solve a grain shortage
****with sexy results
This post is great. I’m torn – I could spoil the innuendos / implications so that people with English as a second language get it*, but explaining jokes ruins them and it’d also somewhat lower the tone of the thread.
So instead, I’ll just add to them!
*Someone in the Archadian army possesses a magical spear. Judge Milf is sent to find out who!
*Judge Milf is on a diplomatic mission. What will her reception in the Land of Azure Stones be?
*Judge Milf welcomes the new Viera ambassador to Archadia into the fold.
*plus, they’re not THAT complex
Yours are easy enough, but bobbert’s go over my head. Is the joke about “
erectingimproving fortifications”?Yeah, that one puzzles me a bit too. I think it’s (as you guessed) a play on the way buildings can be called ‘erections’, but also that the borders of a country could be described as the ‘outskirts’.
Well, that’s the one that made the slightest bit of sense to me. I got nothing on the rest.
Pirates could be a reference to men of the sea?
Improving border fortifications could make them impregnable?
And maybe the grain shortage requires sowing some wild oats?
I am very grateful that all of you enjoyed them. Let’s see if I can say this without ruining the fun for others.
The joke is that there is no joke. I dislike dirty jokes on religious grounds. I just think that characters with stupid joke-names doing serious reasonable things is very funny. The missions are (lightly tweaked) from the life of Pompy the Great, rival and son-in-law to Caeser. They seemed like reasonable things for a Roman VIP with command authority to be asked to do.Thinking about it, ‘Judges Milf and Gabranth are given unprecedented, sweeping, unconstitutional powers to end the pirate epidemic, no matter the cost.’ is a gaiden game I would very much like to play.
Wow, that’s not what I was expecting.
It might well say more about me than you, but the idea of
someone called ‘Milf’* dealing with an epidemic of pirates (a type of seamen)NOT being an innuendo intentionally was something I hadn’t considered.*You might not know this acronym?
I spent all day trying to figure these out, and only figured out the grain one:
the best way to fix a grain shortage is to sow some oats, ifyaknowhatiwowwow. Maybe erect some silos.Well, having looked at the other three and (apparently incorrectly) deciding that they were setups for porn scenarios, I just assumed that Judge Milf used her a ‘special’ persuasion technique on the governor to restore his loyalty…
“Someone’s been a baaad viceroy.”
Could also be improved with more moving parts. Final Fantasy Tactics has a big house-cleaning scene as well, but the assassinations are carried out by multiple people in multiple locations, and so despite the mass simplification there’s still some complexity. So instead of having one scene with Vayne destroying the Emperor and the Senate together, have two scenes, one with Vayne in the Emperor’s chamber dealing with the Judges, and one with Killer Number 2 in the Senate chambers killing off the Senate.
Now that’s what we call “Going Godfather”
Yeah, just doing that would help.
So despite two superweapons grabbed by the heroes the Empire still has the initiative.
Honestly in Suikoden this is where you’d be going for a strategist to go with the big ideals but the party seems to still be brushing them off.
In fairness, one of the super-weapons is out of battery and the other is, as far as we know, not so much a “super weapon” but… well… a sword that can break super weapons if you hit them with it.
The first is not a threat, and the latter can be dealt with by the cunning ploy of… holding your super weapon out of melee range. (Something I suspect the villains will still fail at)
The party is not exactly flush with power here.
They’ve basically spent half the game chasing superweapons that each turn out to be totally useless if it weren’t for a series of highly unusual circumstances that they have no way of knowing about at this time.
Which is why I gave up on the game. I realized I was looking for a McGuffin to replace my previous McGuffin and I didn’t actually care about any of it.
I had forgotten their current superweapon was tuckered out.
Though the other one is a sword in a Japanese production, I wouldn’t be surprised if it can fire anti-superweapon beams.
Also a question how much the Empire knows about both these things but honestly they seem to be remarkably well-informed on most goings-ons.
I was trying to bite my tongue so as not to do vocab or grammar corrections, bit this bothers me.
I believe in this context it’s “reins”. A king reigns, but he leads his horse by the reins. As in, here:
“the reigns of history back in the hands of man,”
I don’t know if that’s an accurate transcription from the game but it is driving me bonkers.
Ah I see you’ve decided to reign on Rocketeer’s parade? Well, maybe it’ll serve to rain him in…
…I should have seen that coming my way.
I have a friend who’s a translator (he comes from Italy). He describes English as ‘three different languages stuffed into a big coat’, and I think he’s right.
I am going to need to steal that one.
Only three? There’s the original Germanic base, which absorbed the majority of the word roots of both ancient Greek and Latin. Then everything changed when the French nation attacked. Then Britain built the first global empire, exposing English to a veritable treasure trove of new words to absorb from all around the world…
I feel, as a first approximation, it is fair to combine the Latin & French influences. A learner from some 5th language won’t notice the difference for a long time. All the Greek must stick out like a sore thumb, though.
Regarding the geography, Paramina Rift is a mountain pass, and the idea that there’s some mountains between the Jungle and the giant mountain temple doesn’t seem too implausible. (I think in the screenshot you can kind of see this area in the bottom right corner?)
… but yeah, geography of these games always gets weird. We’ve gone through three fairly small areas (“plains -> forest -> pass”) and apparently covered an entire “continent”. Even ignoring the obvious “video game” scaling of the areas… how far are we supposed to imagine the party has travelled?
I mean, clearly when they say “continent” they don’t mean that in the same way that we do[1], I can’t imagine this is the party walking from Istanbul to Barcelona (and back) through only three biomes. It feels like even the idea that these “continents” are the size of the UK or perhaps the main Japanese islands is probably still being generous, but it’s really hard to say what the intended scale was.
Really, this is a fantasy issue in general – in an infamous example, A Song of Ice and Fire’s map famously looks like “Britain but upside down”… but George R.R. Martin has claimed that it’s actually supposed to be the size of South America.
[1] Not a translation issue, though – the underlying Japanese uses the same word for Ivalice continents as is used for our continents.
Ah, GoT…
“How long does it take the army to march from one major settlement to another?”
“As long as the plot demands.”
Problem with almost all epic fantasy: The author wants a world-endangering threat, but without a world anywhere near the size of our own, because the logistics of traveling thousands of miles and having to coordinate hundreds of nations and thousands of kings or equivalent leaders tends to be a little narratively unwieldy. “King Richard, an evil Lich is raising an army of the dead in the Philippines. Shall we march?”
It’s also why most fantasy stories are stuck in feudal monarchies. A country governed by a council, or elected body like a parliament is just too unwieldy and complex.
Meanwhile that King, or Emperor, or whatever, is one character, and much easier to wrangle.
“A cabal of warlocks is busy trying to summon the Demogorgon to turn the country into a demon-infested wasteland, should we send the army out to stop them?”
45% of the parliament votes no, 10% abstains.
Luckily, the warlock cabal was also democratic, and a Private Member’s Motion to hold off on any summoning until someone went to get coffee and donuts got passed, 7 votes for, versus 6 against.
The leader of the cabal suspects that there may be traitors in the ranks…
The numbers of troops in epic fantasy are always fun. In order for a battle to be truly epic you need epic sounding numbers. And so the armies that get arrayed for the fantasy battles are many times the size that could be fielded by a medieval kingdom.
The Slaver’s Alliance arrayed against Daenerys in Mereen is something like 70,000 soldiers. Meanwhile you go back to Tolkien and Theoden brings around 6,000 to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
Interesting article from Historian Bret Devereaux that states that even though the series has Medieval Feudalism trappings, the size of the armies and destruction they cause is more appropriate to the Renaissance where there would be large professional armies instead of feudal levies.
I was thinking that going directly from jungle to glaciated mountains could pretty well describe going from the Amazon to the Andes, or possibly India into the Himalayas (I’m not so familiar with the exact geography there). It almost seems like there’s a bit of the latter with the imagery surrounding the Grand Kiltias seeming more “Eastern” and him being more like the Dalai Lama than the Pope. Of course, I’m sure the transition in reality (in both places) is a lot longer than your typical video game transition. (I still remember watching a Let’s Play of Horizon Zero Dawn and seeing Aloy traverse a mountainside where it went from “snow clad” to “hot, rocky desert” in the space of about 50 feet…)
You are more correct than you realize. In ancient times, the Ganges valley used to be horrible jungle until it was cleared to farmland. Throw in a few foothills and the game is golden.
Thanks for the information!
Jungle to mountains, you say?
Almost as ridiculous as taking the elevator up from Earthen Peak to the Iron Keep.
This is complicated even further by the way zones interconnect. You can’t, for example, assume a large distance of off-screen travel happens between the Dalmasca Westersand and the Sandsea, or you then have to explain how the Zertinan Caverns stretches from the Sandsea back to the Westersand (and the Ozmone Plain)
Ok, I’m annoyed now. So.. I tried to look up Ashe saying coup de grâce like mentioned
.. .. turns out this game taught me how to pronounce it wrong too! I’ve been pronouncing it the way she did, cause this was apparently the first time I’d heard the term spoken. This game just got way worse in my impression. HOW DARE IT MAKE A FOOL OF ME
For anyone also afflicted, it’s apparently not ‘coo de grah’, it’s ‘coo de grass’, more or less anyhoo
No, both are correct. It just depends on whether you’re using French or English. The former, in most Anglo-American contexts, probably sounds more than little pretentious.
Here, it’s a fairly well-done element used to depict Ashe as aristocratic. Obviously we know this, but her usage implies that she would be the kind of person who studied French if she were English. Yes, I know that sentence doesn’t really make any sense in the abstract, but it’s used as an element that pulls on the viewer’s cultural knowledge and assumptions. It used to be that the British Upper Crust commonly spoke French, and would pepper their books with random French quotations in an *intensely* *annoying* bit of social posturing.
No, I’ve never had to wade through this nonsense while reading old books about the Civil War and been infuriated by having to Google translate French text randomly dropped into an English book so the author could look good in front of Oxford grads. Why would think that?
To be fair, sometimes the idea you want just sounds better in another language, or English just doesn’t really have a saying that encapsulates it quite as well. C’est la vie, I suppose. Que sera, sera.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Mispronouncing French? What a forks pass.
Oh no, I’m sure the pronunciation is tray beans.
Sack Ray Blue!
Sadly, this is still the standard for history books written by European authors. “Both belligerents exhausted, they signed the Treaty of Podunk. Here is the full text of the treaty, in its original French, without annotations:”
Funny, I’ve always heard it said ‘coo de grah’ (in English at least), while I know it’s ‘coo de grass’ because I’m French. I always assumed that was one of those ‘English speakers can’t properly say it, so they say the closest thing’.
I’m honestly curious, is this perhaps a case of the pronunciation changing over time? Like, that’s how it was pronounced when the Normans invaded England, and it’s stayed fixed that way in English over time? Or how it’s pronounced in a Norman accent, different from the rest of France? I know next to nothing about French so I have no idea how plausible either of these are.
From everything I can find, it seems to be an overcorrection by English speakers, who assume the -ce (which is a -s sound) isn’t said like in many other French words that end with -s.
Yup this is listed as a hyperforeignism, a specific kind of grammatical hypercorrection (like using “you and I” in places where “you and me” is actually correct)
I’ve never heard it said coup de grass, I’m very surprised that’s the correct pronunciation.
Well, it’s pronounced ku? d? ??r??s, but I dunno if WordPress accepts IPA.
Edit: well, now I know it doesn’t.
Doesn’t it turn the ‘strike of grace’ to the ‘strike of fat’?
When The Bacon Hits The Pan.
Yes, pronouncing it “coo de grah” makes it sound as if you’re saying coup de gras, which I think means “a slice of fat.”
Edit: no, that would be “tranche de gras”, coup de gras is a blow of lard.
“You see, you are defeated, your ‘majesty!’ You armies lie in ruins, your allies have fled, and now, I will deliver the strike of lard!”
“Don’t you mean the strike of gra—” *splat*
So this is actually the point in the game where I stopped playing when it was first released for well over a year(quite a shock to me as I had finished every FF game I played before). Before that point I though maybe I was just too dumb or didn’t understand English well enough to follow the plot but the whole sword of king part really made it clear that the game just didn’t make any sense.
We show up at the pope door with no clear plan, he then randomly tell us to go find a sword and then the game act like this is some kind of massive game changer… yet it obviously isn’t. The empire is absolutely massive and has a massive army, what good is a sword that can destroy nethicite will do? They didn’t win the war by using nethicite, they won because they have a massive fleet and a big technological advantages. Even if we could personally find a break every single nethicite they have (something pretty ridiculous, it would almost certainly be easier to simply assassinate Vayne to have Larsa take his place), you’d still need the help of Rozarria to win, which at this point seems to be in a very strong position regardless of where the sword is. The travelogue made use of a cold war reference earlier, so let me use one, if Castro had a sword that could break nuclear bomb/reactor, the whole bay of pig incident would have been no different. How do I know that for sure? We already live in a world where a sword can break nuclear device, in fact any sword can! Hit a nuke enough with a sword and it’ll break, at most you’ll trigger the conventional explosive but almost certainly in the wrong way and the nuke won’t actually achieve fission/fusion, you might even survive it. Case in point, until the sword of kind was mentioned I never even though that nethicite was unbreakable. So this entire subplot seems pointless when its presented to us (little do we know that… its actually is completely pointless and could have been effortlessly removed from the game).
On the other side, the empire takeover seems like a massive event… except it isn’t, we start the game with the empire the evil bad guys and, after this massive shift, the empire is the evil bad guys. I don’t see why the emperor being alive would have made any difference seeing as he was already in charges when the war started in the first place. It’d be like if Darth Vader killed the emperor in the middle of empire strike back, nothing would have changed. FF12 is a game where you could skip all the content after the early level (say the sewer level) all the way to the final dungeon and the story would be no different.
This is all so true. And it never gets better or changes, if anything it all gets worse from here.
I’m not entirely clear on the latter half of this.
Does the Empire know Larsa is gallivanting with the party?
Did the Empire know they were here? If so, how? Or is it just a coincidence that they came after the Sword and found Larsa?
How does the Empire know about the Sword of Kings?
If the Empire knew about the Sword, why did they wait until now to go after it?
These questions and more will be answered never.
So much plot to complain about, all in the same post.
Well, guess I’ll start by instead bringing up the Elder Wyrm. The final boss of the Golmore Jungle is basically an animated hillside that turns out to be the long-dead body of a dragon. This is pretty much right after our last boss fight in the Henne Mines, which was a live dragon. So, two dragons in rapid succession. The Elder Wyrm is the far more dangerous of the two, because it’s got a bunch of status effects as well. It’s probably the hardest mandatory boss in the game (apart from the late-game “I’m invincible for two minutes now” jackasses.) When defeated it collapses back into the same spot it rose from, presumably to munch on the next travelers who try to pass here. If not for being like five minutes after the last dragon fight, this would be a really cool encounter.
So, throne scene. It’s a good scene, and would have made an a fine introduction to Drace, Bergen and Zaarabanth; they’re all interacting with known character Vayne, they’re establishing their personalities to the point of coming to blows, it’s all you need for these characters.
The problem is that this is the end of all the political scheming, which on my end at least was the most interesting part of the game so far. After this, Vayne is uncontested; the Emperor is dead, the Senate is dead, Larsa’s supporter is dead, and the standing question of Gabranth’s real loyalty is forcibly resolved. The Empire is entirely Vayne now, and I think it’s to the story’s detriment.
The Sword of Kings scene is both a great scene and a stupid scene. Vaan’s suggestion of using the sword to destroy Ashe’s only proof of royal lineage is tremendously stupid, and I can’t believe Ashe entertains it, but all the other characters are actually reacting quite believably here; Basch is following Ashe’s lead, Penelo is following Vaan’s, and Balthier is the only character to actively criticize Ashe’s unwillingness to destroy the stone, implying he actually wants to see the Shards destroyed. So once you get over the initial idiocy it works pretty well.
(Sidenote: you’re supposed to be around Level 30 for the Stilshrine. You’re supposed to be around Level 40 for Adrommelech the Wroth. It was mentioned before, but Rocketeer is vastly overleveled here.)
The Bergan fight is mindboggling. Vayne sends two Judges to Bur-Omisace; Judge Madman, and Judge Bland. Standard tropes foretell that Judge Madman will give a speech that makes us hate him, then escape as we kill Judge Bland. Enemy established, personal stakes dealt in, game continues with some urgency. But instead, we kill Judge Madman immediately, and not only does Judge Bland escape to bland another day, but our party never even sees him. So we set up Bergan as this superhuman villain, and then after this encounter he’s dead and our party is back to not having much interest in what’s happening. I don’t understand why you would do this.
You can actually avoid its chamber. It says a lot that this is considered a good idea by many people, given the alternative is dashing your way through the southern corridor full of overleveled Hellhounds screaming “you aren’t supposed to go this way yet!” only to then slip your way through the first section of the Feywood to find the alternative entrance to the Paramina Rift.
Yeah, I’d be interested on more details (though I know this is based on like a decade-old play-through) on some of the details here. Could just have done a lot of grinding, but I know there’s also clever tricks you can do with stealing to get overpowered weapons.
Apparently guns are commonly used for this because gun damage is entirely determined by the gun itself. (Which is why my white mage comes with a side of dakka: can focus entirely on magic stats, but still do a bit of physical damage when it’s useful)
As I mentioned before going to Jahara, the game actually opens up quite a bit in terms of what you *can* explore, even though in story terms you’re just headed through Rainy Giza and Ozmone. For instance, there’s a semi-hidden way to enter the Mosphoran Highwaste early. There are also harder, optional areas of earlier dungeons like the Barheim Passage that you can open up through sidequests, but I’m not as sure when these com available. This segued into my section on the bazaar, because more so than just gaining levels, fighting tougher monsters earlier means getting rarer loot earlier, which means getting later-game equipment through the bazaar well before you’re intended to.
I mention in this update that Vaan is wielding a greatsword. Specifically, he’s wielding a Save the Queen, which you can technically make as soon as you’ve finished Eruyt and can cross into the Feywood Early. Aside from the Sword of Kings, we aren’t meant to have greatswords at all until concluding the next (very long and gameplay-heavy) story arc, and we’ve skipped over a couple of them. Save the Queen has an attack power of 92; for comparison, the most powerful weapon you can buy at Bur-Omisace after the Stilshrine is the Murasame, with a power of 62. And that’s not even my strongest weapon; recall that I also mentioned that Ashe basically soloed the boss of Henne Mines. This was despite having to switch off from her main weapon, the Ame-no-Murakumo, third most powerful katana in the game with an attack rating of 96, as the boss absorbs the katana’s wind-elemental attacks.
Aside from obtaining the loot itself, any grinding I’ve done was not for levels, but more for money to afford these very pricey later-game toys. Especially since I remember starting to unlock the Monographs around the time I rolled into Jahara, which are bank-breaking purchases in themselves.
Relying heavily on guns is more for low-level playthroughs; guns not only deal damage irrespective of your stats, but ignore enemy defense, and still have their damage increased by stats like Bravery and Berserk, which also mitigates guns’ main drawback: their very slow attack speed. They also give you a range advantage and deal knockback, and always have perfect accuracy.
Gold hasn’t been much of an issue for me, after a few hunts you can get Cat Ear Hoods accessories from the clan shop in Rabanastre, which turns LP into gold (20 x character level). They’re a *little* pricey, at 50000, but they pay for themselves pretty quickly… once you have a few and you’re getting 500-1000+ gold every time you kill a trash mob, it seems like gold becomes basically a non-issue.
They even work on your non-active party members, (which makes some sense since non-active party members still get LP) so you can pick up 3 and not even sacrifice any combat efficiency. (Though for non-boss encounters, it really doesn’t hurt to run 6)
And honestly, it seems like LP is very quickly an over-abundant resource, especially if you use Golden Amulets (x2 LP) to compensate for some use of Cat Ear Hoods. It’s not that I’ve unlocked everything on both license boards… but pretty close to almost everything worth having.
I’m reminded of the Basic Instructions comic about How to Sound Wise.
The presence of a paradox often accompanies a deep truth. The fact that it can be successfully parodied does not invalidate the underlying pattern. That is kinda funny though!
I’ve always preferred the ‘re-arrange your sentences’ approach to sounding wise…
Very clever it can make you sound, even when ridiculous things you say.
“The album was a beautifully polished turd” in the comic is a really bad example, though. To me, it sounds like it has a very clear meaning: they spent a lot of effort on superficial details, but it doesn’t help because the album is inherently shit.
And now you’ve got me thinking about The Sphinx
“For if you do not learn to master your rage-”
“Your rage will become your master? That’s what you were gonna say, right?”
“When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.”
It’s too bad the search feature at his site doesn’t work great. My wife printed out one of the quarter panels his strips, and I can’t find it again since I don’t remember the title.
I never got why so few folks care about geography in their stories. It adds such a sense of verisimilitude if you get it right. Heck, it can even help you write the dang plot.
And I mean, this is a world with magic. You can totally make some really, really cool side-stories and world-building about why an area that DOESN’T seem to make sense, actually does, according to the rules of the world.
Like, say, that the ice area used to be more jungle, but it’s infested with ice elementals. Or an ice dragon has decided to roost there, and you can still see the jungle flora and fauna as twisted forms in the ice…
Heck, I know a lot of people make fun of that moment in Dark Souls 2, but you riding an elevator UP from the poison mines windmill, only to end up in a half melted castle half sunk into magma? That’s some seriously mind-screwy ‘show, don’t tell’ on the whole time and lands being convoluted and twisted thing. So even ignoring geography can make for cool scenes, if you just…
You know. Put some dang effort into your story telling. :(
I mean, I grew up staring at Mt. Rainier, an ice-covered volcano surrounded by forest.
I mean, fair enough, but games or even movies quite often don’t play up those types of spectacular contrasts.
And even with just pure visuals getting a lot better in even that regard, it’s still a dang rare story where geography actually SHAPES the plot or lore.
Like… one of the few examples I can even think of, off the top of my head, is Lord of the Rings. Where the whole reason they go through the Mines of Moria in the first place, is because they just nearly broke themselves going over a couple of SMALL mountains, and the ones that dangerous short-cut would take them through are even higher and more treacherous. That sort of thing.
“Dream sage”, huh? There’s this phrase from some Lovecraft short story that somehow stuck with me: “dream sages who dwelt in the city of old, and who were too wise to ever be born in the waking world”. So obviously, the thing in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance where Ivalice is the dream of a Final Fantasy fanboy is actually canon!
Or Anastis sucks at being a dream sage.
Well, see, he clearly wasn’t wise enough because he let himself wake up, and that’s about when all the unpleasantness started happening…
And this is now just past the furthest I ever got in the game. I remember the elf village and kinda sorta the mines afterwards, but around that point is, I assume, when the Hunt for Greg* unlocks. I know I went back to the Bhujerba mines and beat him the first time, but I don’t recall finishing the second fight, Greg beating me up, or anything else in the game after that.
* Gilgamesh for the uninitiated. Hildibrand Manderville is in a world of his own.
Man, can you imagine what the history of Ivalice would look like if anyone other than our protagonists was interested in collecting and using all these superweapons that are apparently just lying around? I know they’re guarded by boss monsters or whatever, but it feels like the same problem the Fallout games have: you’re telling me it’s been hundreds of years and I’m the first looter to hit this tomb?
The game actually mostly averts this: the travelog doesn’t happen to mention it, but the Sword of Kings requires you to already have nethicite before you can claim it – you can’t get deeper than the main entry without touching a magic pedestal while holding the nethicite.
Amusingly, the itself actually enforces this – normally this would just be a cutscene detail, but no, you actually have to equip the nethicite into the accessory slot of whatever character you’re currently controlling and have them touch the pedestal. (Which is kind of annoying as the nethicite drains your MP, but I guess you can always head back out to the save crystal to top off)
Plus, an NPC at the door mentions that the front doors only open in the first place for someone who has the “blessing of the Gran Kiltias”, (which is how the game railroads you into the plot before allowing you to loot the dungeon for superweapons).
—
I’m not sure, but I think the Tomb of Raithwall seemingly had something similar about only being able to be claimed by a descendant of Raithwall, hence why the empire waits for us to grab it rather than storming in themselves.
But maybe I’m misremembering and it was just supposed to be a secret location only known to the royal family? Security through obscurity isn’t great, but maybe when we’re talking about an ancient ruin in the middle of a continent-sized desert with multiple bosses it’s okay.
The catch with the Tomb of Raithwall is that someone bearing the Dusk or Midlight Shards would be able to pass through the tomb unharmed. Presumably, they might be able to warp straight to the nethicite, or the monsters don’t attack, they don’t have to solve puzzles, etc. Our party has recently had its Dusk Shard stolen, so we’re obliged to brute force our way through the tomb. The Empire knows where the tomb is and that the Dawn Shard they desperately want is in it, and they allow our party to do this dangerous work for them even though they’re the most powerful military on the planet with waves upon waves of expendable troops… and also have access to the Dusk and Midlight Shards which would grant them safe passage.
You make this sound like a plot hole, but come on.
“Hey, those Dalmascian assholes are about to attempt the Raithwall Tomb death gauntlet.”
“Oh, we’ve got the Dusk Shard, should we stop them and save them the trouble?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve made popcoryn. Look, they’re about to hit the second demon wall!”
Well, super overworked this week so I’m only now able to read these. Grumble grumble.
At the very least, if there’s anything this whole travelog accomplishing is making this game seem ridiculously long. The way we switch from location to location with very little in the way of backtracking to previous areas makes the whole thing look like a “planet of the week” TV show going in its third season now. Contrast with FFXIII, which is painfully linear with literally no way to come back to previous areas yet it never manages to make it look like we visit as many different areas as this one. Instead, it only feels excruciatingly long because we follow a group of insufferable buffoons.
Also, man, I’m so sick of the trope where the protagonists leave a valuable person in the care of someone else when they go do something else and that’s the moment the enemy decides to attack and take them away. I mean, this sort of thing would make a bit more sense if the enemy was watching in secret and just wait for the moment heroes to stupidly go away and leave that person in care of a vastly inferior defense force, but it rarely happens this way. Usually the enemy decides to attack and it just happens to be the moment where the heroes are away.
This happened in Mass Effect 2 as well, as Shamus gracefully pointed out in his analysis, where the Collectors decided to kidnap the ship’s crew right when the entire attack team of the Normandy was away for inexplicable reasons. I’m sure there’s a name for this trope, but I’m not going to go look for it now.
Yaaay!
I was worried you were going to miss an article and break your unbroken streak of mentioning FFXIII. Gotta meet the challenge!
I suppose Final Fantasy XII gets a bit of a pass in that no-one expected the Archadians to attack the *Kiltias*. It’s basically the equivalent of someone attacking the Vatican and killing the Pope, which seems like it’d be pretty taboo in this world…
I’ll settle for a cup of coffee, but you know what I really need….
….Sorry. I refer you to my screen name.
Edit: I can’t use emoji in these comments? Le sadface.