<\/div>The game is basically underwater football, and not a single aspect of it makes any sense:<\/p>\n
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- The game is played inside a transparent sphere that contains about 65,000 cubic meters of waterAssuming the field is about 50 meters long.<\/span>. That’s a bit more than the mass of the Titanic suspended in a glass ball. Even if you’re willing to humor that notion, just try to imagine how a limited-technology society could make<\/strong> such a sphere. Imagine the lungpower of that glass blower! And speaking of lungs…\n
- There’s no in-universe explanation as to how these people can stay underwater for so long. Indeed, this little mystery just seems to be part of the setting. Even outside of Blitzball, there are several times where characters end up passed out face-down in the ocean and they seem to recover without difficulty. Do they have gills? Is the water breathable with lungs? Can people hold their breath for hours like whales? Mumble mumble pyreflies space magic? Nobody knows. Which has earned the game the nickname drownball<\/a> among fans.\n
- Not only is the sphere a physical impossibility, but it’s also superfluous! The game as we experience it operates on a simple 2D plane and could easily take place in a standard-depth swimming pool.\n
- The game involves passing around what looks like a beach ball. We can say it’s filled with water to explain why it doesn’t rocket up to the top of the sphere, but that doesn’t explain how players are able to throw it and kick it dozens of meters where it bounces off of things at high velocity instead of coming to a sad, unimpressive stop as soon as the thrower releases it.\n<\/ul>\n
But fine. This isn’t Final Sciency, it’s Final Fantasy, and I guess water has some rather unintuitive properties in this universe? Blitzball is far from the most ridiculous thing the storyteller will ask us to accept.<\/p>\n
Blitzball is a kind of sports management game. As you adventure around the world you can scout out new players, add them to your roster, level up their abilities, and eventually dominate the league. I’m not sure why Square Enix decided to put 60 hours of sports sim into their already<\/i> 60 hour game, but that sort of thing is apparently pretty normal for this franchise. <\/p>\n
It’s silly. It’s optional. It tells us a little bit about the culture of Spira. And for some people it’s a fun diversion from the main quest. My only real gripe with Blitzball is that our introduction to it is unforgivably bad.<\/p>\n
The Tournament<\/h3>\n
One of the plot threads of the first act is that Tidus joins the Besaid Aurochs, which is Wakka’s Blitzball team. As a mandatory part of the main quest you have to participate in a Blitzball tournament. The story is structured like a “heroic underdog comeback” sports story. There are only two matches in this particular tournament, but even in that short span it hits all the notes and story beats to both make you want<\/i> to win and to telegraph that you should<\/i> win, in a storytelling sense. Check out the tropes this story dumps on you:<\/p>\n
<\/div>Hi. We're the smug villains of this story. We even get our own dramatic camera angles and theme music, which is more than Wakka will get at the end of the tournament.<\/div><\/p>\nVirtuous Underdogs vs. Arrogant Jerks<\/b>: Wakka’s Besaid Aurochs are all basically good guys who try hard and love the game. They’re good sports, but not good at<\/i> sports. They always lose. They’re up against the Luca Goers, who are smug, bullying, insufferable assholes that don’t seem to like the game as much as they like looking down on others. Team leader Bickson is basically cut from the same cloth as sports movie villains like Shooter Mcgavin<\/a> – strawmen assholes who exist to give the audience a sense of catharsis when we finally see them taken down.<\/p>\n
Honest Team in a world of Cheaters<\/b>: In the first match of the tournament, you – the player – don’t actually get to participate, because the Al Bhed Psyches kidnap Yuna and try to use her as leverage to make you lose the match. Wakka and his boys have to let themselves get pummeled while you fight to rescue her. Waaka is even injured during the match, and that injury hinders him in the finals. You rescue Yuna just in time, and then Wakka is able to fight back and win despite this cheating. Laying aside questions of why a half-decent team would perpetrate such an audacious crimeAlthough maybe this is just their usual summoner-kidnapping plan, and they were trying to get a Blitzball win out of a kidnapping they already had planned.<\/span> against a team that always loses, this crime is never exposed or punished. <\/p>\n
- There’s no in-universe explanation as to how these people can stay underwater for so long. Indeed, this little mystery just seems to be part of the setting. Even outside of Blitzball, there are several times where characters end up passed out face-down in the ocean and they seem to recover without difficulty. Do they have gills? Is the water breathable with lungs? Can people hold their breath for hours like whales? Mumble mumble pyreflies space magic? Nobody knows. Which has earned the game the nickname drownball<\/a> among fans.\n
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