{"id":34684,"date":"2016-10-20T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T10:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=34684"},"modified":"2021-02-19T02:26:25","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T07:26:25","slug":"final-fantasy-x-part-18-breaking-the-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=34684","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy X Part 18: Breaking the Cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lady Yunalesca breaks the bad news to Yuna by explaining that she needs to choose one of her friends to die with her. She tries to soften the blow by explaining that death is the final release from pain. We know that’s nonsense in this world, but more importantly this isn’t the first time we’ve heard someone talking about ending pain through death. I think Yunalesca’s creepy speech is the last puzzle-piece needed to explain Seymour, because he stood in this same spot and got the same sales pitch. <\/p>\n

Seymour’s Plan<\/h3>\n

Okay, but who chose your outfit?<\/div>
Okay, but who chose your outfit?<\/div> <\/p>\n

Sure, Seymour is a crazy, creepy, goofy-haired, omnicidal cult leader, but we can actually see how he got this way.<\/p>\n

His father was a Guado who married a human, hoping to bring the two races together. This didn’t seem to work very well. Even among his own people, Seymour was an outcast. Then mom – who the story hinted was dying – pushed Seymour through summoner training. <\/p>\n

Summoners are trained that it’s their job to ease the suffering of Spira. It’s a job for people bursting at the seams with empathy and compassion. It’s a terrible<\/i> job for traumatized, isolated pre-teens with identity issues and animosity towards the world. Mom dragged little Seymour to Zanarkand so the two of them could kill themselves for the good of the world that had rejected Seymour.<\/p>\n

The only person Seymour cared about was his mother, and she was turned into a Fayth so that he could summon her and defeat Sin. Remember the disturbing thing Seymour summoned back in part 6<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Are you my mummy?<\/div>
Are you my mummy?<\/div><\/p>\n

Yeah. That freakshow is the aeon created by his mother’s spirit. Evidently, after Yunalesca turned mommy dearest into a fayth, Seymour left without fighting Sin and set mom’s fayth up in an abandoned temple on the edge of Dream Zanarkand. When Tidus first arrived in Spira, he landed right next to it. The story never explains how a ten-year-old boy got his mother’s entombed remains to the other side of the world, but I guess we’re not supposed to notice details like that.<\/p>\n

Some of this is revealed in visions we see on our approach to the city, while the rest of it can be inferred. While I appreciate getting some backstory on our secondary villain, we’ve killed him three times now. As far as the player knows, Seymour is done for good. Which means this feels a little late.<\/p>\n

Once he reached Zanarkand, Seymour probably listened to Yunalesca’s nihilist pep talk about how everyone was happier in death. Seymour is no dummy, and recognized that if this is actually true, then everyone else is thinking WAY too small. If it really is his job to ease the pain of Spira, and if Yunalesca is right that death ends suffering, then obviously<\/i> the goal of a summoner should be to annihilate everyone in Spira.<\/p>\n

This means that Seymour has successfully completed the pilgrimage. He could, I suppose, go and take a shot at beating Sin anytime he wanted. His problem is that when he defeats Sin, he wants to do so as the Fayth, not the Summoner. <\/p>\n

It turns out that Seymour’s goal is actually kind of plausible. For the last thousand years, heroic summoners and their guardians have fought their way here to Zanarkand. The guardians are turned into Fayth to create the Final Summoning, which is used to defeat Sin. Then Yu Yevon turns around and takes control of this new Final Summoning. Thus every incarnation of Sin has the soul of a guardian. <\/p>\n

It's bad enough she drags her son to the end of the world to enter into martyrdom together, but did she need to give him THAT HAIRCUT?<\/div>
It's bad enough she drags her son to the end of the world to enter into martyrdom together, but did she need to give him THAT HAIRCUT?<\/div><\/p>\n

Yu Yevon wants to attack the fringes of society so that people will be upset enough to send more summoners. The guardian – no doubt a heroic figure with an iron will – really doesn’t want to wipe villages off the map. In fact, they gave their life to prevent that sort of thing. So it’s reasonable to assume that Yu Yevon really has to wrestle with them to make Sin do what he wants. This could help explain why Sin often seems so capricious in its behavior. <\/p>\n

But what if Seymour becomes Sin? Yu Yevon would find himself with a bear on a leash. Instead of fighting to force Sin to destroy a small village, Yu Yevon would have to fight just to get Seymour to pause his rampage. All Seymour would need to do is stomp all over the Zanarkand temple containing Yunalesca. No more pilgrimages. No more Final Aeons. There would be nothing left to challenge him.<\/p>\n

Yu Yevon and Seymour might play tug-of-war for a few years, but I have to imagine that Seymour would have the upper hand. It only takes a few minutes to blast a town off the map, but rebuilding cities and having babies takes decades. Even if Yu Yevon could force Seymour-SinJust imagine the haircut that thing would have.<\/span> to hold still 90% of the time, his murder spree would still far outpace Spira’s ability to recover and rebuild. <\/p>\n

Anyway. Getting back to Yuna and her friends…<\/p>\n

Breaking the Cycle<\/h3>\n

Note the framing of this shot. Everyone on the left supports the pilgrimage. Everyone on the right is against it. Auron - who is secretly here to destroy the pilgrimage - is standing far off. Yuna, who is the one to choose between these two viewpoints, is positioned right in the center.<\/div>
Note the framing of this shot. Everyone on the left supports the pilgrimage. Everyone on the right is against it. Auron - who is secretly here to destroy the pilgrimage - is standing far off. Yuna, who is the one to choose between these two viewpoints, is positioned right in the center.<\/div><\/p>\n

Yunalesca doesn’t seem to notice that Auron is a returning customer. I bet she doesn’t see many of those in this job.<\/p>\n

Yunalesca tells Yuna the deal and asks her to choose which of her friends she wants to use in this death-pact. Lulu and Wakka volunteer right away, and you can see how this pilgrimage might have ended if things had gone normally. If Tidus, Auron, and Rikku weren’t here trying to break the cycle, then headstrong Yuna would go through with her plan. Wakka, Kimarhi, or Lulu would become a Fayth, and the cycle of death would grind on for yet another generation.<\/p>\n

But Seymour’s treachery has revealed the rotten core of Yevon and shaken everyone’s faith. Tidus and Rikku have never been faithful followers of Yevon, and they’re here to try and talk her out of it. Auron has been sowing seeds of doubt the entire time, making sure that when the moment came, Yuna wouldn’t just blindly act without thinking.<\/p>\n

When most summoners get here, they think they’re going to fight “Sin”, and that maybe it will “come back” somehow. But this time Yuna knows she’s not fighting some abstract recurring monster. She’s fighting Jecht. She’s fighting the charming, heroic man who guarded her father. She’s fighting the father of the guy she loves. And when Sin rises again, it will be the trapped soul of someone she loves, dooming them to a cursed existence until the next summoner can free them, and doom the next.<\/p>\n

Tidus, are you still there? You seem to have gotten lost in the background of "your" story.<\/div>
Tidus, are you still there? You seem to have gotten lost in the background of "your" story.<\/div><\/p>\n

The futility and cold-blooded indifference of the Final Summoning are clear to her in a way that previous summoners couldn’t see. All of this pushes Yuna over the tipping point and she’s able to refuse this deal, even though she’s spent most of her life working towards it and she’s sacrificed everything<\/em> to get here. <\/p>\n

As soon as Yuna makes it clear that she’s not going to go through with it, Yunalesca announces that she will “free you before you can drown in your sorrow”. She makes it sound like a humanitarian move, but it’s obvious she’s just murdering a group of people because they’re not doing what she wants. Is she doing this to be spiteful, or is she trying to keep them from sharing the Big Secrets she’s just revealed? If the latter, then would she have finished off the rest of the guardians once Yuna had defeated Sin? It’s hard to say. <\/p>\n

In any case, Yunalesca attacks the party and it’s time for another boss fight.<\/p>\n

This Fight Sucks<\/h3>\n

Yunalesca is sort of hanging from this giant serpent \/ tentacle monster, as if it was attached to the top of her head. Which means this entire boss monster might technically qualify as a hairdo.<\/div>
Yunalesca is sort of hanging from this giant serpent \/ tentacle monster, as if it was attached to the top of her head. Which means this entire boss monster might technically qualify as a hairdo.<\/div><\/p>\n

The conversation with Yunalesca is a two-stage scene. The first part ends, and you’re free to move around. You’re probably really into the story at this point, so your natural inclination will be to run forward to the next room and see what happens next. You want to see what Yuna decides to do.<\/p>\n

Do not do this.<\/b><\/p>\n

Instead, backtrack one room and save the game<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy X is not a hard game. It’s actually pretty breezy by the standards of the series. Outside of extra challenges like the Monster Arena and the stuff to gather up the super-weapons it’s mostly light, sugary fun. But once in a while it nails you with difficulty spikes in the form of gimmicky boss fights that catch you unprepared, and it usually prefers to do this after a long, unskippable cutscene. <\/p>\n

The Yunalesca fight has a really annoying trick. She hits characters with the “zombify” attack. Sometimes she nails one person, sometimes the whole party. Then the next turn she follows up with a huge cure spell. Cure spells are inverted for zombies, turning healing into damage. Which means this huge cure is an insta-KO. So a smart, quick-thinking player will try to use this to their advantage. When someone gets zombified, then you either cure the zombie status ailment on them or swap them out for another character. When Yunalesca’s turn comes around she’ll still use the cure spell, and you’ll get a free full heal! <\/p>\n

Except…<\/p>\n

It's a three-stage fight: First you defeat Yunalesca. Then she lifts up and reveals the tentacle monster. Then the tentacle monster lifts up and reveals a gigantic Medusa face. You can't see it from this angle, but bikini-clad Yunalesca is still riding atop this thing.<\/div>
It's a three-stage fight: First you defeat Yunalesca. Then she lifts up and reveals the tentacle monster. Then the tentacle monster lifts up and reveals a gigantic Medusa face. You can't see it from this angle, but bikini-clad Yunalesca is still riding atop this thing.<\/div><\/p>\n

As she enters the third stage of the fight, she casts Mega Death, which insta-kills everyone. The way to avoid this is to have someone in your party already under the “zombie” status effectOr you can be fighting with an aeon. Either way, you need foresight or luck to be in a position to survive this.<\/span>, since zombies are immune to Death. (No the game never explained that to you. You just need to intuit it in the middle of a complex three-stage battle.) The zombified character can then revive the others and you can continue the fight.<\/p>\n

It’s a stupid “gotcha” moment that punishes people for clever thinking, and it pretty much guarantees you’ll have to do the fight more than once. Doing the fight more than once is fine, but you’ll also need to sit through the big cutscene where Yuna rejects Yunalesca’s deal, Auron gives a rousing call to action, Lulu says something vaguely un-hateful, and Wakka abandons his faith forever. <\/p>\n

It’s a great scene, but viewing it twice as a punishment for not reading the game designer’s mindOr these days, the wiki.<\/span> is a horrible idea that turns a great emotional moment into an unwelcome chore. And it’s twice as bad if you didn’t backtrack to save between cutscenes. If you don’t backtrack to save, then you’ll have to re-watch 13 minutes<\/em> worth of movie to get back to the fight. If you backtrack and save, you can spare yourself 7 minutes of that.<\/p>\n

The End of The Final Summoning<\/h3>\n

Note Auron, facing away.<\/div>
Note Auron, facing away.<\/div><\/p>\n

When Yunalesca falls, the world of Spira is changed forever:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Without Yunalesca, there is no longer a way to obtain the Final Aeon. The cycle has been broken.\n
  2. Seymour now has the title of Most Ridiculous Hair in Spira.<\/ol>\n

    The conversation after the fight makes it clear just how irresponsible everyone has been. They’ve broken the cycle, but they have no idea what to do about Sin. <\/p>\n

    Tidus has been fading into the background of the story for the last couple of hours. This moment was about Yuna and the end of her pilgrimage. It was about her choice to profane and destroy the faith she’s followed her entire life. To a lesser extent, it’s also been about Auron and his plans. By the end of the fight, both of them have accomplished their goals.<\/p>\n

    An earlier flashback reveals that Auron was killed ten years ago by Yunalesca. On one hand, he attacked her. On the other hand, maybe she provoked the fight when she needlessly told him that his friends had just died for nothing. This might have been part of her ongoing program to dispose of leftover guardians once Sin was defeated, in order to protect the various secrets.<\/p>\n

    It’s not clear whether he was out to end the pilgrimage, or if he was just driven by the need to get revenge on Yunalesca. Either way, his quest just ended. Now that Yunalesca was dead, he’s lost. From here his machinations end and he falls into line behind the others.<\/p>\n

    This is where Tidus begins to re-assert himself. While everyone is still reeling in shock and asking, “What have we done?”, he steps up and says their next goal is to beat Sin without the Final Aeon. He’s here as a catalyst for change, and this world is finally broken out of its thousand-year rut and is ready for that change. He’s too reckless and foolish to entertain the thought that they’ve just doomed the world by taking away the only means to beat Sin. He’s young and idealistic enough to just assume there must be another way.<\/p>\n

    This is also where Tidus seems to finally get a grip on the world. He figures out that Auron is an unsent, and even figures out who killed him. It took a while, but our whiny Blitzball player is finally developing some understanding and agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Lady Yunalesca breaks the bad news to Yuna by explaining that she needs to choose one of her friends to die with her. She tries to soften the blow by explaining that death is the final release from pain. We know that’s nonsense in this world, but more importantly this isn’t the first time we’ve […]<\/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-34684","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\/34684","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=34684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51856,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34684\/revisions\/51856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}