{"id":33111,"date":"2016-07-14T06:27:31","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T10:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=33111"},"modified":"2021-02-19T02:26:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T07:26:26","slug":"final-fantasy-x-part-6-meet-the-maesters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=33111","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy X Part 6: Meet the Maesters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blitzball is so important to the people of Spira that most of their religious and cultural leaders show up for the tournament. Now that Tidus has made a few friends and has a long-term goal, the storyteller starts explaining how this world works. Note how this is backwards from Mass Effect, where you’re thrown face-first into expositional cutscenes and most of your team doesn’t join until after the major details are filled in. Either way is valid, although you’re probably not going to be shocked to hear that I’m more a fan of details-first style stories.<\/p>\n

Meet the Maesters<\/h3>\n

On the right is Maester Mika. On the left is our secondary villain, Seymour's haircut.<\/div>
On the right is Maester Mika. On the left is our secondary villain, Seymour's haircut.<\/div><\/p>\n

Spira is apparently a theocracy under the religion of Yevon. We never hear about any secular political leaders, even on a local level. Yevon is controlled by four guys called Maesters. We meet two of them here.<\/p>\n

Grand Maester Mika is a very tiny old man and seems to be more or less the Pope of Yevon. He’s been Maester for fifty years. <\/p>\n

Maester Seymour is the young new Maester, having inherited the position from his father who recently died of COMPLETELY NATURAL AND UNSUSPICIOUS CAUSES. Seymour has this strong vibe of Commodus from the movie Gladiator. He comes off as unstable, creepy, and sketchy as hell. He’s also the proud owner of the second<\/strong>-most ridiculous haircut in all of SpiraCredit where due: He’s really working hard for first place.<\/span>. <\/p>\n

We see a few of the Blitzball teams arriving before the big game. For some reason, the Luca Goers also arrive by boat, even though this is their home city? I’d assume that they were getting back from an away game, but the announcers make a point of saying this tournament is the start of a new season. Maybe they’re returning from a trip to their ancestral home on the Island of Intolerably Smug Dickheads?<\/p>\n

In a details-first story like Mass Effect, the writer might sit us down for a long conversation about how the political power works in this world, what the Maesters do, and what people think of them. Then maybe we’d get a codex entry or two about famous Maesters of the past, and about how the current Maesters get along with each other. But this is a drama-first story, so the storyteller does everything through characters. <\/p>\n

What are we doing? We're bowing? WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME WE'RE BOWING?<\/div>
What are we doing? We're bowing? WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME WE'RE BOWING?<\/div><\/p>\n

Brash iconoclast Tidus – who knows nothing about Yevon – is flippant about the Maesters, because all of this pomp and fanfare feels strange to him. Devout Wakka rebukes him for not showing respect. Everyone else bows deeply. Maester Seymour bows deeply to Maester Mika. In just a few seconds of screen time, the storyteller tells us what we need to know for the purposes of this story.<\/p>\n

How do the court systems work? What about taxes? Are there any elected positions in this world? Are all Maester positions hereditary, or is Seymour an unusual case?<\/i><\/p>\n

It doesn’t matter! The world is not the star of this story. We’re tourists in Spira, and the world is just a backdrop for the main attraction, which is the story of Yuna’s pilgrimage.<\/p>\n

Seymour Saves the Day<\/h3>\n

The story never explains how all the sinspawn got INTO the stadium. I'm going to go ahead and assume it was orchestrated by Seymour, who probably gave them tickets to the game.<\/div>
The story never explains how all the sinspawn got INTO the stadium. I'm going to go ahead and assume it was orchestrated by Seymour, who probably gave them tickets to the game.<\/div><\/p>\n

As the tournament ends, Sin attacks. Tidus and Wakka get to fight some Sinspawn in the Blitzball sphere, and no I’m not going to theorize how they got in there since it would just lead to difficult questions about how anyone<\/i> gets in or out of a glass sphere with no visible airlock or openingThe Zanarkand stadium at the start of the game seemed to use a forcefield that somehow held water but allowed people to pass, but this one in Luca is depicted as being an actual sphere of some glass-like substance.<\/span>. <\/p>\n

Auron – who we haven’t seen since Zanarkand – shows up and gets a few moments of cutscene badassery. <\/p>\n

But despite how awesome and tough our heroes are, the sinspawn really do seem to be overwhelming the stadium. Apparently Maester Seymour has summoner training, and apparently he’s pretty good at it, because he shows up and calls a massive creepy Aeon that solves the entire problem with a few terrifying shrieks.<\/p>\n

Wow. That guy is a badass! I sure hope we never have to fight him!<\/i><\/p>\n

It turns out Yuna knows Auron. He guarded her father Braska during his pilgrimage ten years ago. Then he vanished. Tidus knows Auron as the guy who showed up in Zanarkand (the awesome one of the past, not the ruined one of the present) ten years ago. So they each know the same guy, but from different worlds.<\/p>\n

This does sort of make it odd that people – most notably Lulu and Wakka – continue to doubt Tidus about being from Awesome Zanarkand. They could just ask Auron. Or Tidus could tell them to ask Auron. The writer gets away with this because Auron’s arrival is a really big deal so there are lots of more important things to talk about right now. And nobody thinks to bring it up later.<\/p>\n

You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth<\/h3>\n

Auron is so badass.<\/div>
Auron is so badass.<\/div><\/p>\n

Since he served the last High SummonerThat is, the last successful summoner.<\/span>, Auron is automatically called Sir Auron. It’s not like he was knighted or anything, and I actually suspect that “Sir” is really a stand-in for a Japanese honorific<\/a> with no direct English analogSama? Sensei? Sushi? I dunno. I barely speak English, so don’t ask me about Japanese.<\/span>. He offers to be a guardian for Yuna, which is a huge honor according to how they do things here in Spira. His only requirement is that Tidus comes along.<\/p>\n

We’re something like five or six hours into the game and we’re just now settling in. Our party is formed, we have a goal, and we’re about to be turned loose for our first “real” travel sequence where we’ll be doing a lot of fighting. Previously, combat sections have been very brief. The party is finally complete in a mechanical sense, in that now we have a dedicated character for each of the major monster archetypes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Elemental foes made of fire, water, ice, etc.<\/strong> Lulu handles these.\n
  2. Armored foes that have incredible damage resistance.<\/strong> Auron can bypass their armor with his sword. Kimari can also use piercing weapons if you choose to give him one. I’ll talk about wild-card Kimari later.\n
  3. Flying foes that can easily dodge melee attacks.<\/strong> Wakka can hit these with his beach ball. Of course, Lulu could also blast them with elemental attacks, but you often need to spend her turn on the elemental foes.\n
  4. Fast-moving foes with high evasion.<\/strong> Sometimes you run into really evasive foes that even Wakka can’t hit, but fast-moving Tidus can. Again, Lulu could kill them with magic, but her turns are usually best spent elsewhere.\n
  5. Huge foes.<\/strong> Sometimes you run into something really big, and you can bring in Yuna to call an Aeon.\n<\/ol>\n

    Like I said at the start of the series, I haven’t played all of the Final Fantasy games, but FFX is the only one I know of where you can hot-swap people in and out of your party during combat. This is mystifying to me, since doing things this way solves a ton of problems. Final Fantasy is an RPG where you usually control three people out of a seven person party. If the player can’t hot-swap, then you can’t make the enemy types too diverse because you can’t count on the player having a particular group composition. Without hot-swapping, you’re asking them to choose what three tools they want to use to accomplish an unknown task. <\/p>\n

    You can solve this by making most of the characters mechanically similar, so that choosing a group is more about picking your favorite three and leaving the rest on the bench. This makes group composition an aesthetic choice instead of a strategic one. That’s not bad, although it does create odd moments where characters you haven’t seen in hoursHi Cait Sith!<\/span> show up in cutscenes and act like they’ve been part of the proceedings all along. You also end up with a lot of same-y fights where you use the same attacks in the same order, regardless of enemy composition.<\/p>\n

    You have three people at a time in the fight, but when someone's turn comes up, you can swap them for one of the people currently sitting on the bench.<\/div>
    You have three people at a time in the fight, but when someone's turn comes up, you can swap them for one of the people currently sitting on the bench.<\/div><\/p>\n

    The FFX system keeps everyone involved and gives you more choices during combat. You get to hear bits of in-combat banter between various combinations of characters. It creates little puzzles where you have to figure out what characters to use in what order to bring down the enemy as quickly as possible:<\/p>\n

    “This Fire WidgetNot a real foe. Invented for illustrative purposes.<\/span> is really dangerous and can KO fragile Lulu in one shot. I want to take it out quickly with Lulu, but Lulu is already in the party and her turn doesn’t come up until after<\/em> the Widget. I could bring in Tidus and have him quickly clean up this attack dog, and just hope the Widget doesn’t target Lulu, or maybe I should bring in Yuna and have her cast Null Fire on the party. Or do I bring in Wakka and have him expend his super-attack and gamble that he can end this whole fight in one move?”<\/em><\/p>\n

    I loved it. Too bad they never used it again. Also too bad it’s in the same game with the sphere gridWe’ll talk about the sphere grid later.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

    Awkward Laugh<\/h3>\n

    Even in the HD Remastered version, there's still no SKIP CUTSCENE button.<\/div>
    Even in the HD Remastered version, there's still no SKIP CUTSCENE button.<\/div><\/p>\n

    I suppose I need to stop and talk about the most infamous scene of the game. It’s used as casual shorthand for “LOL look how awkward and dumb Tidus \/ FFX is.” The laughing scene.<\/p>\n

    Yuna has a conversation where she talks about how part of her job is bringing joy to Spira. It won’t do if people see their summoner miserable on their pilgrimage. So part of her duty is to feign happiness. The people should feel joyful to see her go. She wants to ease their suffering, not saddle them with guilt.<\/p>\n

    This is a continuation of an earlier conversation where loud-mouth Tidus talks about how sometimes when he’s frustrated he’ll let out a scream to make himself feel better. Yuna is offering a counter idea, which is that she thinks about how her moods and words impact the people around her. She’s explaining why she doesn’t leave her emotions on the outside the way Tidus does. <\/p>\n

    Tidus is a livewire. His emotions are out there on the surface where anyone can see them. Yuna is so quiet and reserved that it’s not until much later in the story that we realize just how much she’s holding in. Both of them are dealing with some pretty intense emotional stuff right now. So she challenges him to try things her way and pretend to be happy. This results in a bunch of awkward, self-conscious fake<\/i> laughter. Then the exercise to pretend to be happy devolves into real<\/i> laughter as they are overcome with how silly they both feel.<\/p>\n

    Which is to say that yes, the scene is awkward. But it’s awkward on purpose and shows a very teenager-ish way of dealing with uncomfortable emotional challenges. James Arnold Taylor – who is an amazing voice talent – even has a video where he talks about this scene:<\/p>\n