T w e n t y S i d e d
Atop the Pharos, Ashe stands in awe of the Sun-Cryst, holding the Treaty-Blade in one hand and the Sword of Kings in the other.Very unsubtle visual storytelling, just like in the Stilshrine. Vaan passive-aggressively pushes her to destroy the crystal here and now, but she flatly tells him to shut his pansy ass up.
Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she raises the Treaty-Blade high into the air. The blade radiates light, the seas boil, and the sky shakes, the Sun-Cryst exuding incredible mist in concurrence as fiery, angelic apparitions fly about.
This would seem to be a pretty damn clear statement of intent on Ashe’s part, so I guess we know what Ivalice is in for… Until Rasler appears one more time before her, and she completely loses her shit at him. Nevermind the fact that she should have figured out by now that this is definitely not Rasler, but an illusion meant to twist her emotions. She accuses him of wanting her to use the nethicite and destroy the Empire, to which she emphatically cries, “I cannot!”
Excuse me?! Look here, there’s being torn between two extremes, and then there’s just having looney fucking mood swings. Now, standing here with godblade raised before the Sun-Cryst, after climbing a hundred fucking stories, you decide that coming all this way for the stones is utterly repellant to you? Take her! Take her, Rabanastre, you can have your zany she-bitch princess who doesn’t fucking know up from down! Who continues to drag this lunatic plot out for no good goddamn reason and waste everyone’s time! Can anyone else see this?! Am I the one taking crazy pills here?!
From out of the peanut gallery, a voice yells out what the audience is thinking: “Oh, come the fuck on! You can’t just blueball the whole world like that!” It’s *epic drumroll here* Judge FUCKING Gabranth!
Know how he got here? Know how the Archadian managed to blithely elide a gauntlet of trials intended to make sure no one, fucking no one got to the Sun-Cryst other than a single person chosen by the gods themselves once every few thousand years?
He took a fucking airship! He flew his ass to the top of the tower in his fantastical imperial flying-machine!
A ship! That flies! Holy [unspeakable profanity], Balthier, did you know these existed? Did you know that if, in some lofty fantasy we dare entertain only in our most audacious reveries, we possessed one of these ourselves, WE COULD HAVE FLOWN OURSELVES RIGHT THE FUCK ON UP!?
Gabranth cannot even fucking believe it. He calls her right on out, screaming, “It was me! I murdered your lame-ass father! Use the sword and make some new nethicite! Blast the Empire to atoms, I don’t even give a fuck!”
Ashe immediately throws away the Sword of Kings, because they aren’t even pretending she possesses a scrap of principle or self-control anymore. Gabranth is overjoyed to be motivating the plot in a direction that makes any goddamn sense, and gives a hearty, “Goooood! Good, young Skywalker, let the hate flow through you!”
Gabranth marches right on up, passing by and ignoring his brother— the man whom he is sworn by oath and personally desperate to destroy— and risks bringing everyone who played this piece of shit to immediate climax by cleaving Vaan right in two… only to be stopped by Reddas, who catches Gabranth’s blades in his own.
Reddas looks Gabranth right in the eye, and admits something that absolutely no one saw coming: he was none other than Judge Zecht, the man who unleashed the Midlight Shard on Nabudis so Cid could gauge its capabilities! Gabranth, unfazed, reminds him that not only has he not shut up about that exact event in the two years since it happened, but he, as another Judge Magister, already recognizes him personally, so the effect of this revelation might be a bit dimmed.
Ashe, of course, has just been sitting here drooling rather than carving up the Sun-Cryst like a honey ham. Reddas begs her to fight for something more than revenge, saying the past is something to be overcome and forgotten. Gabranth knocks his old ass to the floor and reminds us that we’re listening to the guy who let a single moment in his past shape every decision he’s made since, sticking dogmatically to his instincts even when those decisions could reshape the world for good or ill. He once again cries, “If only you kneeew the POWAH of the Daaahk Siiiide!” and goads her to cut more nethicite.
No, I don’t know why he’s doing this, either. Nethicite being the one thing the Empire has over their enemies, he sure seems eager to plead his worst enemy into taking it all for herself. Come to think of it, the last time we saw Gabranth, wasn’t he being sent to find out whether Ashe truly intended to take the nethicite and try to annihilate the Empire? Didn’t he get his answer, in the negatory, before we knew he was watching? And then he immediately begins this cheesy schtick… uh, why, exactly?
Ashe looks to Ghost Rasler, who is still here, apparently, and who doesn’t even know what the fuck. Then she turns to Vaan, who the game seems to be attempting to set up as the opposition to the Rasler phantom/the Occuria’s will. Vaan was instinctively mistrustful of the Occuria, but hasn’t really offered much of an opinion on the nethicite itself one way or another, as far as I can remember. The look on his face seems to scream, “MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY GIRL GODDAMN!” She gives one last look at Rasler, and cuts right through him with the Treaty-Blade, figuring out at long fucking last that it isn’t really him.
God help Rabanastre and it’s special needs queen. They are all going to fucking die one way or another. They have to. They just have to at this point.
The specter begins speaking with Gerun’s voice, imploring her as the chosen one to stop screwing around and take care of the world’s whole “Empire led by Machiavelli, Oppenheimer, and Satan” problem with the nethicite. One more slash with their own sword, and the Occuria’s illusion is gone for good. And, apart from Venat, that’s the last we’ll ever see or hear of the Undying.
No, really.
Ashe says to no one in particular that not once in Dalmasca’s long history had they ever relied on the Dusk Shard, seeming to take strength in her decision from this fact as she lets the sword fall from her hands. Uh, princess, did Dalmasca even know what the Stone was? You and Basch seemed to have no fucking clue what nethicite was, or that the Dusk and Dawn Shards were nethicite, or that they were anything besides shiny regal trinkets, until you were told. Now you’re acting like this was some sort of conscientious decision on the royalty’s part. Hey, did the Dalmascan royal line— or anyone after Raithwall, really— even know how to use the stones? Do WE, OURSELVES, know how to use the stones? I’m pretty sure we don’t! I’m pretty sure we never asked! Could you ask Rasler or Gerun or whoever how to— oooohhh…
Gabranth! Help me out here! Gabranth yells out that the dead demand justice, but Vaan interjects, saying that the dead don’t give a damn, and that nothing can bring back his brother or anyone that’s passed in this foolish war. Well, Vaan, I’m glad your character development finally kicked in, although I’d have been happier if it had waited another fifteen minutes or so. Ashe concurs, saying that’s what’s passed is passed, and there’s no changing it. To emphasizes her point, she lets the Dawn Shard fall from her hand and roll right over to Gabranth’s feet.
Oh, come the fuck on! We aren’t going to use them ourselves. Fine. I’m at peace. I get it. But one thing we might consider is not giving our superweapons to the enemy! Because, unlike our party, the Empire is still in the good graces of at least one Occuria! And unlike us, they actually know how to use that thing!
Gabranth, reveling in his vantage amid a maelstrom of character collapse, asks the most obvious question yet: how do you intend to fight the Empire? How do you intend to keep your kingdom’s honor when that kingdom is going to cease to exist in a matter of days now?
Basch, addressing his evil twin for the first time this entire scene, says that they will. Not how, mind you; they just will. “Somehow.” Oh Jesus fucking Christ, now we’re channeling Final Fantasy X. We are channeling the portion of Final Fantasy X’s narrative that made the least amount of sense, of all the things they could have drawn on.
Gabranth laughs his ass off at this last point. Basch, as he gleefully points out, has never succeeded in defending a goddamned bowl of Jello, having at this point lost two (2) nationsGabranth politely leaves out Nabradia; Basch and the Dalmascans couldn’t save their neighbor from Imperial clutches, but then again it wasn’t their kingdom to lose. and being one of the most hated fugitives the second has ever known. Reason having utterly disintegrated at this point, Gabranth resolves to simply beat the stupid out of the party, or— at the very least— beat them to death.
At this point, I am cheering for Gabranth as hard as I can, but this battle marks the first of a series of endgame fights with Gabranth, and the game never bothers to make it seem like he has the ghost of a chance. We’ve been slaying Judges left and right already, including one who was both Mako-powered and possessed by the devil. Additionally, we have a Judge in our party who is also a pirate king. So Vader’s pretty well fucked, I’d say.
In fact, I barely even had time to react before Gabranth was at half-health and a cutscene began in which he taunted his dear brother. Gabranth assures Basch that no matter what happens, he will never reclaim the honor he lost when Raminas was slain. I’d argue that, with the truth of Vayne’s plot at Nalbina even now spreading among Rabanastre’s underground and the proven heir of Raminas alive and well to clear his name from any challenge, Basch is pretty well in the clear. But the game has something up its sleeve later to brazenly out-stupid itself once more, and bearing false shame is Basch’s entire character concept, so he merely gives Gabranth an epic, “I am rubber you are glue!”
The battle resumes, and, hilariously, Gabranth busts out a special attack called Guilt. Near as I can tell, it delays his death by a picosecond while the attack executes. Thoroughly whipped, Gabranth tries to mumble out some pithy taunt… when who should appear on a torrent of pure fucking majesty but Doctor Cidolfus Demen Bunansa! Naturally, he’s already picked up the Dawn Shard from the floor while we battled, because sometimes the party’s actions really are as bloody fucking stoopid as they seem. He heaps a bit of well-deserved shame on Gabranth as he strolls in, and the Judge Magister doesn’t even know what the fuck.
Yes, it seems Gabranth had no idea Cid was going to show up, meaning that we had two separate groups of our worst enemies shortcut their way to the top of the Pharos. Incredibly— and I mean that literally, I can’t believe the game itself even remembered this— Doctor Cid reminds Gabranth of what he was supposed to be doing here for Lords Vayne and Larsa, and calls him an utter failure for shitting up the works like he did. Wait, so that whole screed of Gabranth’s trying to get us to take the nethicite and run wasn’t part of some plan of Vayne’s and Cid’s? What the crap is even going on anymore?!
Then Cid drops the biggest bomb of all: You’re fired. GTFO. With Gabranth at once owned and disowned, officially and thoroughly, Cid forgets all about him and puts in his best scenery-chewing dentures. Gabranth isn’t taking his disemployment lying down, though, and raises his sword to cut Cid down… whereupon Venat appears and flings him into a pillar like a ragdoll. *golf clap!* Now if only she had just thrown him a few feet to the left or right and straight off the Pharos, we could have been spared a bewildering portion of the endgame yet to come.Venat might be thrown a little off her game, so deep is her grief for her husband. Oh, you didn’t know? Venat’s English voice actress, Anita Carey, is married to the late Judge Ghis’ English voice actor, Mark Wing-Davey! You can’t prove they weren’t married in the game!
Balthier tells his father that he is only Venat’s tool. But Cid, of course, believes otherwise. The Occuria have, for eons unknowable, treated humans like servants, but Venat appears as a friend and ally, to share power rather than mete it. He even praises Ashe’s decision to reject their governance, but Ashe isn’t charmed, calling him out on just generally being an asshole.
Unfazed, Cid drops the other shoe like the stone cold villain he is: we’ve just completed his own plan for him. He casts all three stones, Dawn, Midlight, and Dusk, into the air, and Venat begins using the Sun-Cryst to supercharge all three of them!
Cid immediately begins rubbing it in like a champion, namedropping something called “Bahamut” as part of their plan somehow…
With the Sun-Cryst offloading more mist than could ever exist anywhere else, it’s all the party can do to even stand their ground against its force while the Doctor floats in the air, laughing like a madman and achieving the triune apotheosis of troll, ham, and mad scientist, exulting in poetic meter to commemorate his victory over the Occuria’s careful plans for humanity… chillingly reminiscent of the Occuria themselves.
Balthier thinks the same, and accuses his father of merely wanting to steal the Occuria’s power and become a tyrant-god himself, and Cid heartily agrees. Cid can only feel regret that his son wasn’t on the same side to enjoy it.
Having had enough of his audience, Cid sets his hand to wiping out the party himself. I love this fucking character, but I am still super-pissed that no one had to pay the toll to get up here but us, and if there’s anything I can do to push the trials of the Pharos on him, I will. And lucky for me, I have just the thing.
Hashmal, Bringer of Order, I choose you!
Once again I sandbag here, content to watch a crab-armed wolf-demon fistfight a mad scientist with a magitech chaingun, because this game occasionally offers in consolation what it lacks in competence, and because Doctor Cid really may be the single best thing about this entire fucking trainwreck.
To prove it, Cid indulges in the ultimate blasphemy: a shard of manufacted nethicite binding an esper of his own. That’s right, it’s time for a goddamn Satanic Pokémon battle.
Doctor Cid sends out Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud!
Hashmal, use Roxxor! It’s not very effective…
Enemy Famfrit uses Waterja! It’s not very effective…
Hmm, it seems that these Espers are actually totally shit at fighting each other, and unlike our useless summons, Famfrit’s power makes Cid invincible until we take care of it. So what can Famfrit do? Well, he can tank and heal for Fran while she pops off some bone-scorching Firagas and leave Famfrit’s shit in ruins.
Hey, you ever wonder why you black out when all your Pokémon faint? It’s because the other trainer and his killbeasts beat you the fuck up and rob you. It’s time for us to honor tradition all over the good Doctor’s skull.
As Doctor Cid finds himself too weak to lift his rifles, he collapses and his Esper is ours. Oddly, despite Cid having made a big show of summoning Famfrit from a small red shard of manufacted nethicite, after the battle we see a large, translucent blue crystal with Famfrit’s symbol inside it shatter, same as every other Esper.
Balthier steps forward to speak to his father one last time. Venat prepares to intercept him, but Cid gives him permission. The Doctor and the Undying exchange one last friendly farewell, and Balthier— Ffamran, to his father— struggles to put words to his turmoiled feelings. Eventually, he settles on, “Was there no other way?”
Cid won’t hear any remonstration, but has no strength to protest. He seems to wish his son well, in his own condescending way, as he fades into pyreflies and seems to be absorbed by the Sun-Cryst.
…I’ll level with you, I’m not actually sure what the hell just happened, and judging by the look on his face, Balthier doesn’t either. Maybe Cid just blacks out and wakes up at the Pokémon Center in Archades.
Sensing the audience’s bemusement, Fran throws together a distraction by collapsing!
It seems the intense mist has her all tuckered out, despite being utterly unaffected while it was so strong no one could move and during the battle she practically soloed. Balthier rushes over to check on her, and she warns that Very Bad Things are happening with the Sun-Cryst and if we were smart we would all GTFO right this moment. She seems to act as though they’d have to leave her there, or as though she were dying; I have no idea what she’s on about really, but she can rot for her next comment: “You’d best fly away. That’s what you do, right? You’re a sky pirate.”
No, Fran. No, we take the elevator. That’s what Balthier does. That’s what we all do, because no one, and I mean fucking no one in this party, is or shall ever be a sky pirate. Can everyone just stop bringing this up?!
Fran’s right, though; the Sun-Cryst seems to be putting out greater and greater power, and we’re all screwed if it reaches some sort of critical mass while we’re all right here at ground zero. Ashe and Vaan seem eager to stop it somehow. Hey, if the nethicite shards each have the power to level a large city and the Sun-Cryst is a Volkswagen minibus-sized boulder of pure nethicite, bearing as much mist as it could gather in tens of thousands of years of enrichment, won’t this thing leave a crater on the planet the size of France? Work quickly, guys! Or don’t, this could be interesting.
Ashe and Vaan attempt to advance on the crystal, Vaan with the Treaty-Blade in hand and Ashe with the Sword of Kings. Now, Ashe I can sort of understand; that blade is meant to destroy nethicite, even if trying to do so now is at least as likely to set off the exact cataclysm they’re aiming to prevent. But Vaan? What is he trying to do here? Cut the massive exploding crystal into several smaller exploding crystals of equal total mass, each of which could surely annihilate us on their own, even if the attempt didn’t set it off immediately?
Come to think of it, what exactly is the difference between the two swords? They’re both just swords capable of cutting nethicite, right? Which must be a unique property, otherwise we could just waltz up with a woodsman’s hatchet and cut ourselves as many stones as we wanted. What makes the Sword of Kings a sword that “destroys” nethicite? Does it de-power it as it cuts, or something? How? Is it enchanted? What is that sword made of, anyway? Could we maybe have studied it? Tried to replicate it somehow? That kind of plan has been working gangbusters for Archadia. But actually, we’ve never had any idea what this sword does— and yes, I mean the cast and the audience. It’s supposed to be our ace in the hole against a weapon we know only as a bomb, or at most an incredibly high-density energy source. We never articulate a plan for how we might use it to outwit our counter the Empire; the sword itself is forgotten after the sacking of Bur-Omisace and we never have occasion to use it before now to demonstrate any special properties it might possess. We also lose the sword after this scene, in which it’s used to arguably no effect, thus we won’t have it when at long fucking last we take on Archadian nethicite weaponry directly.
So maybe if we’d wanted to destroy the Sun-Cryst or render it unusable, we really could just use the Treaty-Blade to mince it into thousands of tiny pebbles and throw them all over the edge of the world, and have no easier a time than with the Sword of Kings. I mean, the edge of the world is right there, apparently; Basch could probably manage the throw from right here at the top of the tower…
All these questions and more will go unanswered, since neither of our party members are able to advance another step against the billowing torrent of mist coming from the stone. At this moment, Reddas remembers he’s a badass pirate king and takes the reins (of history! (back in the hands of man!)).
While the party gawps helplessly, he takes the Sword of Kings in hand, and easily runs right up to the Sun-Cryst. Eh, I can accept that; he was like four levels higher than the party average. Then he leaps at it, and hangs in the air right in front of it for a good ten seconds while he yells out some regretful rot about Nabudis. Okay, that strains my credulity, but- OH SHIT! He drives the Sword of Kings straight into the heart of the massive crystal!
And wouldn’t you know, this sets off exactly the sort of disaster I reckoned it would, causing an epic explosion and utterly atomizing everyone present.
…I mean, since Reddas was the only one present at the time, I guess just him. Oh, what’s that? What about all our party members and Gabranth? Oh, you didn’t see them slip out? They slipped out, you see, in the twentieth of a second after Reddas struck the stone but before it exploded in a ball of light so bright it was visible from the other edge of the continent of Kerwon beyond the entire Naldoan Sea. Actually, there’s a little cutscene of all the non-human races at various points across Ivalice turning to see the explosion. Nice of the game to acknowledge they exist for a few seconds.
Yes, after the little Small World montage, we cut to the party all aboard the Strahl, gazing up at the annihilated upper reaches of the Pharos, as Vaan utters Reddas’ name mournfully. I have no idea what happened to Gabranth; presumably, he was blasted off Team Rocket style, as he is and shall continue to be ludicrously indestructible. I imagine he spent a few awkward days in the clinic wondering whether to get cracking updating his résumé or trust that Venat won’t blab about Cid firing him.
I’ve got nothing.
The Travelog continues next week.
Footnotes:
[1] Very unsubtle visual storytelling, just like in the Stilshrine.
[2] Gabranth politely leaves out Nabradia; Basch and the Dalmascans couldn’t save their neighbor from Imperial clutches, but then again it wasn’t their kingdom to lose.
[3] Venat might be thrown a little off her game, so deep is her grief for her husband. Oh, you didn’t know? Venat’s English voice actress, Anita Carey, is married to the late Judge Ghis’ English voice actor, Mark Wing-Davey! You can’t prove they weren’t married in the game!
The Best of 2015
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2015.
Gamers Aren’t Toxic
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
Crash Dot Com
Back in 1999, I rode the dot-com bubble. Got rich. Worked hard. Went crazy. Turned poor. It was fun.
A Telltale Autopsy
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
DM of the Rings
Both a celebration and an evisceration of tabletop roleplaying games, by twisting the Lord of the Rings films into a D&D game.
Am I the only one who hates the trope of the villain who encourages the hero to kill him (or, as it might be, to use “the weapon of the enemy”)? It makes sense in a few works of fiction, sure. When the Joker does it to Batman it’s because Joker’s entire goal is to ruin Batman’s persona by turning him into a killer, and he’s a madman, so he doesn’t care about dying. It makes sense, sad to admit, in Final Fantasy XIII, because being killed will allow the villain to ascend to a new plane to further his goal (what doesn’t make sense is the heroes actually going along with this plan, as I’ve meticulously complained about several times).
But this has become such a silly overused trope that it keeps showing up in places where it doesn’t make any sense. What does Gabranth win by asking this of Ashe? She’s not some sort of incorruptible paladin of light who refuses to use violence. This would be like Joker showing up to the Punisher and saying “Come on, do it! Kill me! Turn into the monster you swore to fi-” *gets his entire cranium blasted into goo by a triple-barreled shotgun*
Of course, she ends up refusing because the plot demands it, not because it makes any freaking sense, which is an entirely different problem.
Yeah I totally agree. It was like in game of thrones, after Ramsay’s plot armor finally stopped working. He’s gloating to Sansa about how she’s a killer now or whatever like he won… But that wasn’t ever his character. He was never even hinted at as trying to corrupt her or turn her to his side. He was just a crazy asshole trying to get power and what not.
If the other person is killing you, you definitely did not win. That is pretty much the ultimate loss condition. There’s some leeway for the insane and nonhuman, but it’s way overused for cheap drama.
“I am bleeding, making me the victor!”
“Behold my POWER, of bleeding to death on the FLOOR!”
(Endgame spoilers for Zero Time Dilemma)
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can ima…no, wait, stop, I’m trying to explain here about….AHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Revenge against the Empire that destroyed his homeland.
The point of this scene is it’s a “twist” where it turns out that Gabranth actually still really hates the Archadean Empire, despite having joined its army and risen in its ranks. He’s not trying to “Joker” Ashe into getting her hands dirty, he’s genuinely hoping she pulls the trigger here and wrecks the Empire.
Like, this scene has lines like:
And, damn, dude, projecting much?
I think his words to Ashe here paint a pretty-clear picture of Gabranth’s character: when his kingdom was broken, while Bashe went and did the idealistic thing, joining the weak to help defend them from the strong, Gabranth pursued power, and the most convenient path to power happened to be up through the ranks of the Archadean army.
And his words to Basch… well, it’s not like he’s exactly being coy about his motives here.
—
One might argue this “twist” comes out of nowhere (it’s not like Gabranth was going to mutter “it’s a good thing they don’t know I hate their guts” to the camera in his scenes with the Imperials), but I don’t think it really does, it’s an answer to a question that the player aught to have been asking the whole time: “Why is Gabranth so okay serving the the empire that destroyed his homeland?” (Answer: he’s not.)
Yeah, if they’d leaned into the “who is Gabranth actually loyal to” angle they were establishing, this could have worked. But… they didn’t.
I’m not really sure how more they could have “leaned into it” more. Arguably a big point of having most of the Empire cutscenes be Gabranth-centric was to raise this question and keep it in the mind of the audience. It’s not like Gabranth is mentioned once at the beginning of the game and shows up at the end of the game out of nowhere – he’s a fairly prominent character throughout.
—
As far as I’m concerned this scene does work, unmodified.
The whole question of this scene is whether one’s duty is to the dead or to the living, whether or not to get fixated on revenge, and it looks at this with four characters simultaneously:
We have Vaan, who has already decided to move on from the past saying “What would change? I can’t help my brother now, he’s dead,” and Basch who apparently moved on from this revenge deal years ago, while on the other side we have Gabranth who made the opposite choice saying “the dead demand justice”, and in the then we have Ashe who stands at the crossroad and is struggling to make the choice.
I’d actually call that fairly clever. Sure “revenge is bad” is pretty cliched ground to tread, but, still, having a villain with basically the same backstory as the protagonists, but who made a different choice, is honestly pretty good as JRPG villains go.
Not cutting the legs out from under it in the Emperor’s assassination scene would have helped. And if his loyalty is to the dead of Landis, that needs to come up more than once. And, y’know, some actual actions would help; this is the first time he’s actually done anything since Nalbina.
And the timing is atrocious. We’ve been building up to Ashe’s big decision this whole time, and suddenly at the climactic moment the audience has to put that thread down and figure out what the hell Gabranth is going on about. Maybe if Landis’ conquest was nethicite-related, it would make sense, but it wasn’t.
…Actually, you can probably fix this by just not having Gabranth ask anything. He comes up immediately after Ashe decides not to do anything, and he just charges in to grab the Treaty Blade and make himself a weapon to avenge Landis. Because what does he need Ashe for? She’s got no connection to Landis whatsoever. And he should damn well know they’re going to fight him anyway. I’ve known it since his introduction.
Yeah, I feel like we’re on entirely different pages if you think Gabranth just showing up and fighting the party with no preamble would be an improvement here. To me that would seem to turn Gabranth from an interesting foil to Ashe to just another random boss fight at the end of a dungeon.
I’d argue that if you go through the whole game being constantly puzzled about this guy’s motivations then the twist does come out of nowhere. A proper twist should be foreshadowed. There should be clues leading to its revelation.
I think it depends on how big the twist is, the more radical the plot twist, the more groundwork should be laid for it ahead of time. Like if we were talking about a twist where we get to the top of the tower and suddenly Penelo pulls a kinfe out and stabs Ashe and pushes her off the tower, yeah, that kind of twist would require foreshadowing to not feel like an asspull.
But I don’t think “guy whose entire country was destroyed by Empire is secretly still salty about it” is a particularly radical twist and really require much groundwork. I’d say this barely even counts as a twist: arguably the counterfactual – that Gabranth really was completely loyal to the Empire – would be the more surprising plot point.
I think much foreshadowing would risk moving this from “minor twist” to “blindingly obvious”. And if his loyalty act wasn’t highly convincing, he never could have gotten away with it.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t played the game, your argument makes sense and I can see how judge Galbladder (or whatever) can only have limited screentime and there just isn’t enough cutscene budget to give him the proper nuance, like having him follow Larsa but disappearing at weird moments making us question what the young lord is actually up to when in reality the judge is playing his own game. In a better written game this probably would be a “oh, of course, this is obvious” moment at even a slight hint of his actual motivations. Far as I can tell (again, haven’t actually played it) in this game people just do things because they either know the script or because the plot demands more padding so we just shrug and accept that “this guy does this now, whatever”.
The implication here being that he would care, as if traitors weren’t a thing. It’s really not hard to believe someone would happily join the people who destroyed his country. Hell, it’d be easy to think he was on it even before it happened. It is, after all, a thing that happens.
I feel this is mildly contradictory. Either his act was very convincing or there was no doubt he wasn’t loyal. You can’t have both.
The point is, there should have been some foreshadowing for this, and they could have done it without making it obvious. Maybe there could be a developing background story about a particular family that the Empire destroyed and we’re led to believe that Gabranth was part of the force who went against them, but at this point in the story it’s revealed it was his family, killed behind his back and that he’s been secretly plotting the Empire’s downfall since the moment he found out about their deaths. It’s not Shakespeare, but you can see how you can foreshadow something without making it obvious at the time of the reveal.
Also, I feel like Gabranth’s twist just doesn’t gel with his previous actions in the game. They could have made it as if he was unwillingly leaving clues for the team but it’s then revealed he’d been doing it on purpose.
What I’m trying to say here is: I think the “Well, of course he betrays them, they destroyed his country, duh!” excuse in a story full of political intrigue is a bit too weak.
“Also, I feel like Gabranth’s twist just doesn’t gel with his previous actions in the game. They could have made it as if he was unwillingly leaving clues for the team but it’s then revealed he’d been doing it on purpose.”
This is the part that bothers me. This would be a fine point to reveal that some of Gabrath’s past actions were motivated by a desire to destroy the empire that, for the record, has committed genocide purely for the fun of it. But Gabranth hasn’t done anything except make every possible effort to build up the power-base of the exact people behind that one specific event.
He literally stabbed his own twin brother to make Vayne’s schemes come true. He’s gone out of his way to make sure that Vayne and Cid get everything they want. And now he shows up to tell us that… nah dawg he’s cool letz just burn it all. It just doens’t work because his actions are directly opposed to what he now tells us are his goals.
I can think of several ways to make this work, but you’d need to do some re-writing from the beginning.
I’m actually going to say it makes less sense because Barthandelus tells the heroes that his plan is to get killed
It’s easy to imagine a way to make the heroes hate him without telling them his plan is to be defeated by them. Just imply that he’s somehow infiltrated the highest ranks of Cocoon government (rather than the government being Fal’Cie run from the start), make the heroes think that they’re foiling his plans by trying to stop him, and only drop the “I want to die” bombshell near the end if at all. It’s even implied that the Pulse Fal’Cie are in on it so one can even imagine a plot where the Pulse Fal’Cie goad the heroes into a “rebellion” that turns out to be a false flag.
Instead, we have a villain who says “YES! You hate me now! Doesn’t that make you want to do everything I want you to do?” And the heroes say “of course” and it works out for them anyway.
I firmly believe that Dreadjaws meant that the motivation of “I wanna be killed” makes sense, not the execution of the plot leading to it because that was just terminally stupid.
Definitely silly and overused. Instead of treating the villain like they’re the (demented) protagonist in their own mind, this fully leans into the concept of the character being aware that they’re the antagonist in someone else’s story. Which is just weird when you think about it.
It’s also complete bullshit unless the plot of the story is explicitly centred on the emotional cost of killing someone.
It makes sense* in Star Wars, because emotionally-resonant Space Magic is a central part of the setting. Killing leads to the Dark Side, because The Force says so and the Force is a metaphor.
It makes sense for Batman, because not killing people is a big deal for that character.
But in most other settings, it’s a grotesque simplification of a complex problem – often an offensive one.
*Sigh* no, the action hero putting down that unrepentant murderer won’t make them just like him, you jackass.
You know what DOES make him like the bad guy, though? All those nameless mooks he cut down earlier in the film. But you didn’t think about that, did you?
*For a given value of the word ‘sense’, naturally.
Speaking of Batman, one of the best parts of the new Batman movie is when one of the more idealistic villains learns that Batman doesn’t share his moral assessment of the things he’s doing…and he’s shocked by this revelation. Aren’t we both just trying to strike at the corruption that’s ruining Gotham here?
I must confess I almost never got in the habit of using them in VI either. Partially because most of them are inferior to other options you have, partially because they fall into Too Awesome to Use territory since they can be used only once each battle and you can’t swap them out, but mostly because the game is so damn easy most of the time that it’s just not necessary.
My memory of VI is that Espers could be used EITHER to fight for you OR to teach spells to the holder, but not both at the same time. In other words, if you summon the esper, you forfeit any spell points you’d have learned from that battle, which is usually a bad trade.
It’s been awhile, and I may be incorrect about the Esper mechanics (or might have been wrong at the time), but I recall that being the reason I never summoned them.
I don’t believe thats correct. However, they are only marginally useful. Some of them can drop useful party buffs, but most of them attack with basically the same magic they teach. No point in spending 40 MP for a slightly stronger Fire attack than Celes would chuck for 6 MP.
Correct. Also, although technically wrong, ContribuTor’s point might actually work in the sense that you’re frequently more concerned with advancing the learning on a specific spell (and thus having equipped the appropriate Esper to teach that spell) rather than having the right Esper equipped for a battle. And any of the boss battles where it might be useful to have a specific Esper equipped to use their ability is likely also one that gives a 10 MP reward that you’d prefer to obtain for learning spells.
I remember some of them cast effects that you couldn’t get anywhere else, like a massive Water-elemental attack, or casting Reflect on the entire party in one turn. Those guys were useful, though they were rare.
Yes, the real standout espers were the ones with an effect that couldn’t be replicated by a spell. Palidor having the entire party use Jump at once is the first that comes to mind for me.
I think Golem also cast a defensive buff on everyone in your party. Still, I seldom messed with a lot of the Esper abilities they same reason I seldom messed with many of the abilities in the game:the game is usually so easy that there’s just not much need to mess with it since you can win most battles in the first round of combat, maybe two.
This. A major thing that bugs me about FF games is how I’ve been hearing my whole life about this or that cool ultimate mega-summon, but summons suck. The MP costs are ridiculous, like, 1/3 to 1/2 of your entire max amount ridiculous, in a game where the standard for the longest time was non-regenerating magic (so the underlying mechanical test is always efficient resource management) and they often don’t even one-shot random level appropriate battles. The only reason to use summons I’ve found (having played 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10) is when a primary healer is allowed access to attacks via overpriced summons- allowing for occasional situations where they can blast the party out of a wipe or accelerate dps by chugging ethers. The rare summons that do things like party-wide versions of spells you can’t do any other way are useful, sure (sometimes double edged swords, or even producing interesting tradeoffs in high priced immunity vs healing reserves), but those aren’t what people raved about- it was always Knights of the Round this, Odin that, just cool looking damage spells.
The oh-so-cool attack summons are themselves infinity 1 swords that you don’t need because the most difficult challenges were in getting them in the first place. They’re just style points: you’ve already proved your level grinding and resources (or game guide use) are high enough to curbstomp the entire normal endgame, so now you can do it with an exclusive real gamers only animation. Yay?
The system used in FFX was a welcome shakeup, effectively giving you a stable of monsters with various immunities that would tank for the whole party, by shoving them off the field and locking you to a much more limited offense- an offense which when totaled up over the turns if far, far more devastating than previous “summons,” if you use them well. Shoving the party off the field solves the basic summoning problem (incidentally demonstrated above) of anything strong enough to fight a boss is inappropriate for adding to the rest of the party (unless a game actually demands you summon to survive), and the summons in FFX can be quite fragile and need to be revived after KO so they’re not just infinite grist for the mill. I don’t know how crazy the uber summons are in that game, but being essentially a whole different combat system that’s far less of a problem (I’m also aware, though I’ve never actually finished the game, that you have to fight all your summons at the end so the uber summons do have a real cost to them. Still want to go back to that replay sometime).
Hee hee. In 8, not only are summons free to cast, they also tank hits for the caster. You can nearly reach the final boss without figuring out the Junction system, because summons will carry you. (And then the final boss one-shots them. Hope you learned the Junction system!)
In 5 they’re just spells specific to the Summoner class. And 2 didn’t have them yet.
And here I specified because I was expecting a response that in 8 you can break them in half, but it turns out to be the opposite!
I only played 8 for a little bit, but my main memory is “Cast Summon to Insta-win battle….well, not instantly, because you’ll be stuck watching that animation. Ok, so cast summon to win the battle at the cost of wasting more of your time.”
I’m realizing, the reason my first run ended at the first boss of Disc 4 was because that’s the first real anti-summon boss; there’s a target you’re not allowed to hit and all the summons hit all targets.
But Discs 1 through 3 allow for pure summon spam. They’re just… so overpowered in 8.
The worst thing about summons in 8 is that they’re ultimately not more powerful than abusing the junction system, but they’re the more obvious strategy and the animations add so much time to battles. And then there’s Boosting which may be one of the worst mechanics in the entire series (because it so heavily incentivizes doing something obnoxious)
If you don’t know how to break the game it’s non-stop QTEs and if you do know how to break the game, then you broke the game.
In late-game FFVII, I had more sources of MP recovery than I knew what to do with. (And I still didn’t use them, even when I needed them!) Something like Knights of the Round was pretty useful for defeating any of the four or so enemies in the game tough enough to make it worthwhile (except for the ones who were already dead by the time you got it).
Your memory is playing tricks on you. Espers were basically just elemental spells. They’re fine at the start of the game, but they become less and less useful to summon as you learn more powerful spells from them.
To be slightly fair to Ashe at this point, this is literally true. As Rocko has pointed out many, many times, Ashe is incapable of using nethicite to destroy to Empire because she has absolutely NO IDEA how to use it.
Sure Rocketeer, you post all this with your “logical analysis” and your “noting obvious plot contrivances” and “asking literally what the heck is goin on at all anymore”, BUT (!) there’s one thing you forgot!
…
The Dark Side is a pathway to many plot threads some consider to be… goddamn stupid.
Yeah, I know that feeling. And I’ve played this game before too. I think there’s a reason like, none of it stuck in my memory
So as nonsensical as this thread makes it seem, the actual scene is worse.
Rocketeer suggests Gabranth flew to the top of the tower. The game does not establish this. In fact, Gabranth here gives extreme “Darth Vader in the Training Tree” vibes; the Rasler Carrot illusion isn’t working, so the Occuria bust out the Gabranth Stick illusion. And then it turns out to be the actual Gabranth, and what the hell is he doing here, and why why why.
A line Rocko didn’t bring up; when Ashe finally turns down the Occuria, she says Rasler wouldn’t want her to take revenge. I will now remind you all, that the only thing we ever saw Rasler do, was die in a suicide charge while shouting “For Revenge!” (paraphrased). I kind of love the idea that the Occuria’s plan fell through because they badly overestimated how well Ashe knew Rasler.
And then Cid shows up, and it becomes painfully clear that the FF12 team is out of time and money, and the Deadline of Damocles has finally come crashing down, and this finale is just going to be a series of shoving the loose ends into the six-sided scissors that is our party. Because there is no good reason to be fighting Cid here. Like, Venat came from here, right? It’s not like he has to follow us or something. There is absolutely no reason for him to have not come here first, if he can come here now. We’ve changed nothing. But the Deadline has been reached, and we don’t have time for Cid’s finale to make sense.
I guess the reason for Cid being here is because he need the shard we still have to channel the power… although it would have been trivial for him to obtain it before this point, could maybe be improved if he needed to use the treaty sword instead. Yeah the whole scene is just trying to wrap as many loose plot threads as possible in one feel swoop with no regard to the plot coherence. Although, to be fair to the writer, if someone has gotten this far they’ve probably long accepted that nothing make sense anyway, so why bother trying to fix the plot at 11:59?
With all the talk of main character, I do think that the story might have made more sense if Vayne was actually the point of view character with Cid along for the ride and the entire idea of “taking the rein back in the hand of history” actually being the main plot point. It’s clear FF12 consider the Occurian to be the bad guys (for some reason, they appear to have no ill will toward human), so why not go all the way rather than literally forget the plot even existed.
And it’s such an easy fix. We have oil rigs from the pre-Dynast King days*, ruins from the pre-Dynast King days. And eventually we have our party realize there’s no post-Dynast King tech. And then we meet the Occuria, and they tell us they’ve prevented technology developing because it’s more peaceful that way. And all the talk of putting the reins back in men’s hands is about letting them develop new technologies, which Cid is doing with abandon now that Venat is protecting him from the other Occuria. Moral conflict, established motives for the Occuria and Venat with no clear villain.
Tales of Berseria did it in, like, a sentence. “I cannot abide… this frozen world… these frozen people.”
*(And if they weren’t, we push them back until they are.)
What a good idea.
What makes it even better is that it gives Ashe the potential to realize that she’s deciding events BEYOND the Empire and Rabanastre; looking forward into the future of humankind.
Defend what you want and value, or think bigger. The Empire won’t last forever and neither will Rabanastre. In time Vayne will just die, the Empire might even end up in Larsa’s hands or even someone better.
By using the Occuria’s power, she gets to be queen and get revenge, but also locks humanity back into the rails set out by the Occuria – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing…
I know Final Fantasy doesn’t really do multiple endings and moral choices, but that’s a great place to put one.
The talk of deadlines makes me think back to something from last week’s conversation:
The Pharos isn’t technically the final dungeon, but everyone I’ve ever seen weigh in on the subject agrees that this is a sort of honorary final dungeon. Which actually sucks when you consider that it’s only a final dungeon in retrospect. Which means that you don’t have the sense of anticipation or foreboding an actual final dungeon would give you; you just reach the end, hit the final beats of the plot and think, “Wait, that’s it?”
I want to note that, in the screenshot beneath which Shamus avows himself a casual player, he has deleted 40% of the boss’s health bar in a single volley.
Is Cid just a less interesting Kefka?
No villain is less interesting than Kefka.
I like Kefka as a “deconstruction” of the big bad evil guy, he literally succeed at everything and now he’s just… bored and has nothing to do, he almost seem happy when the party show up at his doorstep to challenge him again.
Villian triumphant – now bored to tears one year later, is one of the best* parts of FFIII’s story.
*Heroine’s conception on screen was also pretty bold.
Lies, because Sephiroth exists.
Also: I’ve seen Marvel movies. Guardians of the Galaxy in particular.
Also, does Cid have kickass theme music?
Cid’s behavior and motivations don’t even resemble Kefka’s at all as far as I can tell. The story is thin on discussing him but I always got the feeling that he wants to do things for SCIENCE and isn’t just killing or harming people for its own sake.
What you suggest might be the more conventional thing to do: Vayne, the leader driven by his philosophy, and amoral genius Cid accompanying him for the chance to pursue his research for its own sake. To the contrary, Cid is Archadia’s ideologue-in-chief. The whole idea of mankind throwing off the yoke of Occurian handholding seems to have been masterminded by Cid and Venat after they met, or at least proffered to Cid by Venat and adopted by him so strongly that it becomes his driving motivation, and thereafter pitched to Vayne.
I’ve said it before, but he’s Hojo. And Venat is Jenova.
I can’t remember Hojo’s motivations at all from my experiences with VII. Wasn’t he just a scientist who had been driven mad by Jenova?
I didn’t get the impression Jenova had anything to do with it, but Hojo was obsessed with showing up his old boss (the guy who made Sephiroth), and had no compunctions about silly things like ethics. Cid doesn’t have an old boss, but he does have the Occuria.
I think that does Cid a bit of a disservice. He’s got stakes in the opening story (the warring kingdoms), acts as a bridge to the larger story (The Occuria) and has a coherent if slightly-deranged motivation.
At least as interesting as Kefka IMO – Kefka was a very simple idea, done well; Cid seem like a good idea, bungled.
What a sad epitaph for the game.
Given the title Rocko gave this post, I guess I am required to start making Eggie jokes.
Once again an NPC accompanying the party takes the most significant actions.
FFXII is DM of the Rings, with 5 Gandalfs.
Oh, man.
I was promised nonsense, and dammit did this story deliver.
– Didn’t we already fight Gabranth once already? What happened, did he run away? I’d genuinely forgotten that this guy existed. In either case, he appears to have stolen Vayne or Cid’s role in the story – why is THIS chump our reoccurring bad guy?
– It seems like it might be useful for someone (possibly Fran, giggidy giggidy) to write ‘YOU HAVE AN AIRSHIP’ on a stick, and periodically beat Balthier with it. Just so he remembers.
– Wait, can we keep track of how many ‘deus ex machina’ moments the party have, where they just unaccountably survive something that should clearly have killed them?
I can think of two so far, but there must be more:
1. Falling into a pit while hanging onto Basch’s cage in the beginning.
2. Teleporting off the summit of a 100-story tower to safety before Reddas blows up the Sun-Cryst.
Nah, this is the first time we’ve directly interacted with him at all. If not for cutscenes that the party isn’t privy to, this would be his first appearance since the Basch dungeon breakout.