{"id":32341,"date":"2016-06-09T06:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T10:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=32341"},"modified":"2021-02-19T02:26:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T07:26:26","slug":"final-fantasy-x-part-1-listen-to-my-blather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=32341","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy X Part 1: Favorite Fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Final Fantasy X came out on Steam<\/a> this year. I hadn’t played it in a decade. I wasn’t sure if the game was as good as I remembered, or if I was suffering from long-term nostalgia distortion. I changed careers in the last decade, moving from programming to writing about videogames. (And also still programming.) The indie revolution happened. Today I spend more time playing more games, and more time pondering them after the fact. As a result, probably half of the games I’ve played in my life, I’ve played in the last decade. <\/p>\n

Naturally I wondered: If I revisited FFX, would I see it differently?<\/em> It’s possible my initial perception of Final Fantasy X is hopelessly warped, or simply out of sync with my tastes and standards as they exist in 2016. The only way to know for sure was to play it. So I did.<\/p>\n

I discovered that the good parts were better than I remembered and the bad parts were worse. My initial take on the game was basically correct, but now I think I’m better at drilling down and figuring out why the various parts did or didn’t work. <\/p>\n

I’ll do my best to explain things to those who haven’t played the game, but this series is primarily aimed at people who are already familiar with the material. Obviously I’m going to be spoiling everything. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Final Fantasy Franchise<\/h3>\n

Before we go off to fight Satan, let's just all stop and reflect on how ridiculously we're dressed.<\/div>
Before we go off to fight Satan, let's just all stop and reflect on how ridiculously we're dressed.<\/div><\/p>\n

I’m not an expert on the franchise. FFX was my first experience with it, and since then I’ve played a few others. FFX is my favorite by a long ways. I anticipate the first question from all of the fans of the series will be a run-down of what I’ve played so that they can appraise the degree to which I am full of shit and the extent to which I am hopelessly biased. So here’s a quick take:<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy IV:<\/strong> It was actually an adventure<\/a> getting the hardware to run this game, but in the end I only played a few hours. <\/p>\n

Final Fantasy VII:<\/strong> It’s my second-favorite of the series. It was charming and strange and I liked all of the non-Cait Sith parts. To say more would probably require giving the game its own full write-up. <\/p>\n

Final Fantasy VIII:<\/strong> I found brooding protagonist Squall to be a little too off-putting. I couldn’t tell what the author wanted me to think of him, so I couldn’t even tell if he worked. The story was just a little too strange for me. When we got to the time compression stuff I ran out of space in my brain for random mysterious bullshit and kind of gave up. Then I found out that all foes auto-leveled with you and I lost all interest. I really loved the look of the school \/ airship, though.<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy IX:<\/strong> My playthrough ended when a PS1 memory card diedProbably the same memory card that was part of the FFIV story<\/a> mentioned above.<\/span>. But I think I’d have given the game another try if I’d been able to connect with it emotionally. I didn’t have anything against the game. I just didn’t love any of the characters, and these games live or die on our connection to the characters.<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy XII:<\/strong> I didn’t like this game on my first try. Aside from Balthier, the characters seemed to lack flavor. But I’ve been itching to replay it and see if my opinion has changed now that I’ve absorbed a bunch of other JRPGs. <\/p>\n

That’s it. I haven’t played anything newer than XII. I’ve never played any of the mobile games, or the MMOs, or the really old games, or any of the dozens of spin-off titles, or the board game, the clothing line, breakfast cereal, political party, religion, or whatever else Square Enix has done with the brand. <\/p>\n

Unlike long-standing fans of the series who played them as they were released, I binged on most of these over the space of a few short years, and played them completely out of order. <\/p>\n

The First of its Generation<\/h3>\n

How the HELL did you get up here, Auron? And WHY?<\/div>
How the HELL did you get up here, Auron? And WHY?<\/div><\/p>\n

FFX was the first Final Fantasy of the Playstation 2 console generation. It hit the shelves in North America over a year after the PS2, so it wasn’t exactly a launch title. But it was still an important system-seller and acted as proof that this new machine would be “worth it”. It was indeed a massive step up visually. I’d say the in-game cutscenes look more detailed than the pre-rendered cutscenes of FFVIIIAlthough maybe that’s just due to just the step up in resolution, which was pretty big.<\/span>. Which is astounding, considering the games were only 2 years apart. <\/p>\n

This is more remarkable than people realize. Yes, “The hardware is faster so of course the graphics are better” is the predictable response. But the impressive thing here isn’t just the step up in graphics, it’s the complete overhaul of the entire art pipeline. Between Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy X, you’ve got new tools being used to make new kinds of models that use new animation techniques that key into the new voice acting and lip-sync, not to mention new texturing techniques. So much new technology had to be invented and mastered during this time period. It was a time of rapid change, and it’s amazing this game came out this polished, this large, and looking this good.<\/p>\n

I missed all of the consoles between the Atari 2600 and the Playstation 2. By 2001, I was a diehard PC gamer pretty much by default. I had to keep my machine up-to-date for my work, and so I never saw any reason to spend any money on these odd machines that could “only” play games. FFX was the first game that made the case that I’d been missing outGrand Theft Auto III was the other big contributor to this.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Being a Playstation 2 title also means this is the first Final Fantasy to be fully voice-acted. This was an obvious move for a team that was so enamored of making high-quality cutscenes, but it also created a certain tension with the conventions of the series. One of the long-standing traditions was that you can name the characters as they join your adventuring party. That’s fine when the dialog is text, but creates problems when everyone is voiced. It would be difficult and awkward to try and write the scenes in such a way that nobody ever used anyone else’s name. You’d end up with people referring to each other by job title (Summoner, Black Mage, etc) which would probably make the player wonder why the game bothered. Why ask me to name the character if the name will never be used?<\/i><\/p>\n

But they were perhaps shy of abandoning the practice completely, so they allow the player to name the Aeons – who aren’t really characters – and the main character. So the main character is named Tidus by default. The player can change it, but it doesn’t matter because the name is never used. On the rare moments when someone needs to say his name, they instead call him, “New guy”, or “Star player of the Zanarkand Abes”. <\/p>\n

This means there’s some disagreement on the proper pronunciation of “Tidus”. The cast called him Tee-dus, but most English speaking players will see the word and assume it’s Tie-dus. Voice actor James Arnold Taylor talks about this in one of his videos:<\/p>\n