<\/div>(It’s pronounced operation mee-hen. For some unfathomable reason. I guess you’d have to ask Tee-dus.)<\/p>\n
The Crusaders are kind of the military arm of Yevon. They’re in charge of fighting sinspawn while waiting for summoners to do their thing. Most of their power is concentrated around Luca, because the Blitzball stadium is there. That sounds kind of messed up, but the way Wakka describes things it makes some kind of sense. Blitzball is their way of taking their mind off of the horrors of Sin. It’s the main coping mechanism of their entire society. If there’s one place they all collectively want to defend, it’s the stadium. <\/p>\n
Yevon forbids the use of technology. Sort of. The rules seem pretty arbitrary and there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for it other than, “Technology is bad because the Maesters say so, the Maesters say so because the teachings say so, and the teachings say so because technology is bad.” Technology like the stuff used to run Blitzball is allowed, while weapons technology and most labor-saving devices are forbiddenThe real reason – as pieced together from the Ultimania guide and fan conjecture – is that Sin deliberately targets any area that looks too advanced. Yu Yevon is probably wary that some fancy weapons program would find a way to kill Sin if he let their technology run unchecked. He wants to keep the population reliant on magic and summoners.<\/span>. <\/p>\n Everyone in the party has a different take on this. Tidus notices that this doesn’t make a lot of sense, but is gainsayed by the ever-faithful Wakka who accepts it without question. Auron seems to know how nonsensical the rules are, but he’s also wise enough to know that arguing is a waste of time. Lulu never once advocates for the teachings, and I was surprised at the end to find out she was apparently a firm believer the whole time.<\/p>\n The Al Bhed are the only people in Spira who don’t follow Yevon, and they spend a good part of their time salvaging old technology and trying to figure it out. Here the Crusaders have teamed up with the Al Bhed. Everyone is arming themselves with technology – guns, mostly – and are going to take a crack at beating Sin with conventional weapons.<\/p>\n The twist here is that the Maesters seem to be giving their blessing to the operation. Instead of ordering the Crusaders to throw down the Forbidden Weapons and drive the Al Bhed away, Maester Seymour (this seems like a guy we can trust!) is present and encouraging their efforts.<\/p>\n Sin shows up and basically kills everyone while taking no appreciable damage itself. Afterward, Auron observes what a win this is for the Maesters: People who doubted the teachings are dead. The survivors are more likely than ever to embrace the teachings (and thus the word of the Maesters) without question. The Al Bhed weapons were shown to be futile. A bunch of Al Bhed died, which should help keep their numbers low. <\/p>\n Seymour presented the operation as an effort to be open-minded and unite people under their common desire to fight Sin, but it was actually a ruthlessly calculated maneuver to consolidate power, winnow out doubters, and cull rivals. <\/p>\n Despite the failure, I have to wonder if the effort was really as futile as the Maesters assumed. Laying aside the fact that I’m pretty sure the author was trying to definitively say that technology can’t help against Sin, I think you could make a pretty good case that victory would be possible just based on what we’re shown in the cutscenes.<\/p>\n Certainly it was a complete massacre this time, but a big part of that defeat was that everyone’s tactics were terrible. <\/p>\n The soldiers ran down to the beach and engaged the incoming sinspawn directly, which put them within range of a vaporizing attack. Next time maybe they could build (say) bunkers or trenches and let the sinspawn come to them.<\/p>\n The Al Bhed had a doom laser. But it was up on an easily-destroyed pole which made it unstable. Some better engineering might solve that problem. The laser couldn’t punch through Sin’s shield, but it seemed to come pretty dang close. Maybe three or four lasers would burst the shields? Elsewhere in the story they have an airship that can fire massive salvos of missiles. Maybe combining that with the doom laser would be enough for a knockout punch?<\/p>\n On the Other Hand…<\/p>\n We eventually learn that Sin is the result of a war fought 1,000 years ago. It came down to summoners vs. technology. Since the technology was mostly destroyed and Sin is still here, then you could make the case that Sin trumps technology. If the massive technological armadas of the past couldn’t beat Sin even when wielded by their creators, then certainly the leftover scraps of technology in the hands of the ignorant aren’t going to do any better.<\/p>\n On the Gripping Hand…<\/p>\n At the end of the game our heroes basically defeat Sin by hitting it with their swords. Yes, they had a Secret Technique to make Sin hold still for a bit, but maybe that same technique could have been used here to make the doom laser more effective.<\/p>\n It seems to be a staple of Final Fantasy that:<\/p>\n The pattern is clear enough that I’m sure it’s not a coincidence, but I don’t know what the trope is for. Is it to establish how powerful the rival is before you fight them? Maybe the goal is to show you how high their stats are and how far they outclass the rest of your team? I don’t know.<\/p>\n At any rate, Operation Mi’ihen is our chance to team up with Seymour. While the Crusaders are being devoured in their frontal assault on Sin, our party is left to mop up the sinspawn that slip through. The game has you do the same boss fight twice in a row. The first time you face it with access to your entire team. The second time everyone is scattered in the chaos and you’re left with just Yuna, Auron, and Seymour. And sure enough, the second fight is usually easier even though your options are more limited, because Seymour’s stats are pretty badass.<\/p>\n There are a lot of guides that can help you though these fights, but here is my go-to strategy:<\/p>\n The fight takes a long time to win like this, but you have to take into account the advantage of watching Seymour repeatedly set himself on fire. <\/p>\n Seymour also has to talk Yuna out of trying to help. When things go pear-shaped, Yuna offers to summon. Apparently now that all of the fighters are dead, she wants to take a few more useless potshots at Sin. This would be suicidal. Sin is leaving. It’s not retreating<\/em>, mind you. It’s just done stomping on this particular anthill and doesn’t feel inclined to chase down and squash every individual ant. But if Yuna began pestering it with one of her aeons, it might decide to squash her on the way out.<\/p>\n Seymour talks her down. This seems like a nice gesture until later you realize he’s only doing it because he needs Yuna alive for his plans. He didn’t encourage anyone else to hold back, after all.<\/p>\n We’ll talk more about Seymour’s schemes later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our first chapter (Besaid Island) showed us how nice the world is when it’s not being ruined by Sin. The next chapter (Kilika Island) showed us how bad Sin is. The following chapter shows how the world copes with it. (By watching Blitzball and praying a summoner defeats Sin soon.) This next chapter anticipates the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51867,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33255\/revisions\/51867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On One Hand…<\/h3>\n
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<\/div>Seymour!<\/h3>\n
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