{"id":33686,"date":"2016-08-18T06:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T10:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=33686"},"modified":"2021-02-19T02:26:25","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T07:26:25","slug":"final-fantasy-x-part-10-guadosalam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=33686","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy X Part 10: Guadosalam"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned earlier in the series, creepy Seymour is a Guado, one of the other races \/ factions of Spira. It’s yet another way that the Final Fantasy distinguishes itself. If this had been written by a western developer, they would have just made them Elves. (And the Ronso would probably be Orcs.) <\/p>\n

Seymour invites the party to his home in Guadosalam for a very creepy dinner of villainous exposition. His servants all praise him, he says vague grandiose things that nobody questions, and it basically feels like you’ve walked into a cultist’s compound. He asks Yuna to marry him. He offers her one justification for the decision, but he also tips his hand as to the real reason he wants to do this.<\/p>\n

His stated reason is to make the people happy. He claims to be a big fan of his father’s efforts to have warmer relations with the rest of Spira. Yuna is the closest thing Spira has to royalty, since a great deal of respect is given to summoners who bring the Calm. Seymour is the leader of the Guado and Yuna is the daughter of the last High Summoner. This would make a pretty good political marriage. <\/p>\n

It’s also a good marriage from the standpoint of public theater. Yuna is the young and beautiful champion of the people, fighting to bring the calm. Seymour is the young new Maester and he’s pretty popular, particularly after the spectacular display of power that saved the Blitzball arena from fiends at the end of the tournament. Seeing them marry each other would make for a pretty good celebrity marriage. <\/p>\n

But his real reasons are (surprise!) sinister and insane. <\/p>\n

Check out this gloriously detailed room. Nearly all of the art assets here are used only for this one scene.<\/div>
Check out this gloriously detailed room. Nearly all of the art assets here are used only for this one scene.<\/div><\/p>\n

I have to praise the environment design, here. Guadosalam is spectacular and it’s impossible to do it justice with just a few screenshots. This is one of those moments where you see just how much love the folks at Squaresoft put into their craft. A tremendous amount of work went into giving the Guado their own clothing, architecture, furniture, lighting, music, character models, and color palette. The whole place makes the Guado feel truly alien. The twisting corridors and layered walkways give the place an appropriately unsettling feel. <\/p>\n

Seymour has a recording of ancient Zanarkand. Or a reconstruction. Or something. Look, the recording technology of this world makes no sense. There are these spheres that are filled with pyreflies, or maybe a special kind of water, and maybe they also have mechanical parts? They hold memories that can be played back like full 3D holographs. The whole thing runs on space magic and there’s no point in asking what the rules are because they’re just a way to deliver visual exposition. Anyway…<\/p>\n

Wait, you can create holographic movies from the memories of the dead? That's some Star Trek level shit right there.<\/div>
Wait, you can create holographic movies from the memories of the dead? That's some Star Trek level shit right there.<\/div><\/p>\n

Seymour has a space magic hologram<\/i> of ancient Zanarkand. He gives the party a tour. His recording shows us Lady Yunalesca and Lord Zaon, who were a husband and wife team who battled Sin. Yunalesca was the first summoner to defeat Sin. <\/p>\n

Yuna was obviously named after her. Seymour tells Yuna he wants to play Lord Zaon to her Yunalesca. If this is your first time through the game then you’ll naturally assume he’s just professing his love for Yuna. It would be like him saying he wants to play the Westley to her Princess Buttercup or the Mario to her Princess Peach. But if you know what Auron and the Maesters know, then you’ll realize what he’s really proposing is, “Turn me into a Fayth and use me to defeat Sin.” He’s proposing they get married and then kill themselves fighting Sin.<\/p>\n

So, more Romeo and Juliet than Westley and Buttercup.<\/p>\n

The Farplane<\/h3>\n

Why is there a door to the afterlife here? Did someone make it, or is it naturally occurring?<\/div>
Why is there a door to the afterlife here? Did someone make it, or is it naturally occurring?<\/div><\/p>\n

I know I already complained about how nonsensical death is in this universe way back in part 4<\/a>, but at the time I skipped over the little detail that in this universe the living can go through a magic door here in Guadosalam and visit the afterlife. <\/p>\n

The farplane is a rock platform floating in clouds of pyreflies and particle effects. If you think about someone who is dead, then a peaceful apparition of them will appear nearby. The image doesn’t talk or interact, but it’s “real” inasmuch as it can be seen by people who didn’t know them. So it’s not just an image in your mind. The image will only appear if the person is actually<\/em> dead, regardless of whether or not you know \/ think they’re dead. <\/p>\n

I’m surprised this place isn’t more popular. I’d expect there to be a line out the door of travelers from all over Spira, come to see this natural wonder. Imagine if you could visit the grave of someone you loved and they would appear in front of you so you could talk to them. It’s also a great way for testing to see if a missing person is dead. <\/p>\n

A magical floating platform overlooking a horseshoe-shaped waterfall plunging into a valley of flowers swarming with Christmas-light fireflies. This is the kind of crazy shit that keeps people coming back to the franchise.<\/div>
A magical floating platform overlooking a horseshoe-shaped waterfall plunging into a valley of flowers swarming with Christmas-light fireflies. This is the kind of crazy shit that keeps people coming back to the franchise.<\/div><\/p>\n

The rules of death were already pretty dodgy, but now they’re about to evaporate entirely. The ghost of Lord Jyscal – Seymour’s fatherwho was certainly given a proper sending ceremony!<\/span> – comes crawling back out of the Farplane portal and drops a physical object<\/i> that Yuna picks up.<\/p>\n

While I’m a big fan of Final Fantasy X, it’s not really my favorite style of fiction. I’m usually a details-first kind of guy, so it’s really hard for me to not stop and spend thousands of words explaining how absurd this all feels. I’m going to just accept this and move on, but I hope you’ll appreciate just how difficult this is for me. <\/p>\n

Jyscal dropped another recording \/ memory sphere gizmo. In this one he accuses his son of his murder from beyond the grave. Yuna views it, but doesn’t share it with the rest of the party. Instead, she gets the genius notion to confront Seymour about it in private. She hopes to use the wedding as leverage. I think her angle is that she’ll marry him if he submits himself to the authorities for his crime. I suppose she’s trying to weed out this corruption while minimizing the damage to Yevon. The problem is that she’s vastly underestimating Seymour’s ambitions and power. She probably assumes he killed his dad so that he could become Maester, but Seymour doesn’t give a garm’s ass about political power. This whole thing is part of his plan to destroy the world, so to him the murder of one guy is a trifle. <\/p>\n

At any rate, Yuna announces to the party that she plans to marry Seymour. <\/p>\n

We’re going to skip a lot of story here, because it’s all character-based stuff. The pilgrimage plot kind of stalls for the next few hours and instead we spend time watching various people react to Yuna’s decision. Her guardians obviously don’t like the idea, but she’s the boss as long as she’s on a pilgrimage to fight Sin. Tidus hates the idea because he loves Yuna, hates Seymour, and he’s probably spent the entire voyage thinking that he and Yuna can start dating once she beats Sin. The general public loves the idea because to them it’s a storybook wedding to gossip about. <\/p>\n

Wait. Anti-magic technology exists in this universe? Because I can think of about a thousand times when that would have come in SUPER useful.<\/div>
Wait. Anti-magic technology exists in this universe? Because I can think of about a thousand times when that would have come in SUPER useful.<\/div><\/p>\n

The only other noteworthy thing in this chapter is that the Al Bhed assault the party on the way to the next temple. They bring a tank<\/i> this time. Afterwards that awful racist idiot Wakka seems to think people are bad just because they try to murder you with a tank. He finds out Rikku is an Al Bhed and gets upset. Tidus talks him down by saying that “Rikku is just Rikku”.<\/p>\n

Yes Tidus. The Rikku that enslaved you and then tried to murder you in a submarine after kidnapping the woman you love for reasons that haven’t even been explained to you yet. That<\/strong> Rikku.<\/i><\/p>\n

The writer keeps showing<\/em> us the Al Bhed are bad guys and telling<\/em> us they’re good guys. Thankfully, this is the last of that nonsense. We won’t see the Al Bhed again for a couple of chapters, but the next time they show up they will be sympathetic good guys and everyone will forget about the whole LOL MURDERTANK business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned earlier in the series, creepy Seymour is a Guado, one of the other races \/ factions of Spira. It’s yet another way that the Final Fantasy distinguishes itself. If this had been written by a western developer, they would have just made them Elves. (And the Ronso would probably be Orcs.) Seymour […]<\/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-33686","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\/33686","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=33686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51864,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33686\/revisions\/51864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}