{"id":53847,"date":"2022-02-18T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53847"},"modified":"2022-02-17T19:04:35","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T00:04:35","slug":"ff12-sightseeing-tour-part-6-the-sand-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53847","title":{"rendered":"FF12 Sightseeing Tour Part 6: The Sand, See?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week The Rocketeer escorts us through the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea<\/a>.\u00a0I love the Sandsea. Well, I love the premise, anyway. This section of the game kinda drags on for a little too long, and there are a couple of annoying “gotcha” enemies in the area that can ruin your day if you haven’t been reading the game designer’s mind.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Gotcha!<\/h3>\n

Back in the old days, a fight in Final Fantasy would start by cutting away from the open world to a little battle arena where you’d fight whatever random nonsense the game designer thought up, like a Malboro, or a big-ass flan:<\/p>\n

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You can see more images from this collection on my OnlyFlans\u00ae site.<\/div><\/p>\n

But here in FF12, fights take place in the open world, without any of that nonsense where you somehow get “ambushed” by immobile foes that don’t have legs.<\/p>\n

This game has the gambit system, where you set up a series of conditional actions. “If someone is injured, heal them. Otherwise, see if they’re KO’ed and if so, revive them. Otherwise, just attack the nearest enemy.” That’s a really fun system and I love it. I never want to go back to the old system. This is brilliant.<\/p>\n

However, with fights happening in the open world, we are now vulnerable to getting jumped by new foes in the middle of a fight. Again, this is not always a bad thing. Unless the foe is massively more powerful than your party and is capable of wiping out the whole group before you realize you’re in a real fight.<\/p>\n

The gambit system. Here are the gambits I set up for Penelo. You don't really need this many gambits. Most characters have, like, three.<\/div>
The gambit system. Here are the gambits I set up for Penelo. You don't really need this many gambits. Most characters have, like, three.<\/div><\/p>\n

Shamus, are you complaining about the <\/b>Salamand Entite<\/b><\/a>?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes I am. That thing is MASSIVELY more powerful than anything else in the area.<\/p>\n

You dolt. That thing won’t attack you as long as you don’t attack it or use magic near it!<\/b><\/p>\n

It’s true. The Entite normally leaves you alone and floats on by without giving you any problems.<\/p>\n

The trick here in the Sandsea is that there are regular enemies around. They will attack you, as per usual. In the ensuing scuffle, you’ll take a little bit of damage. So then your gambits will kick in and your healer will cast healing to fix them up. This use of magic will anger any nearby Salamand Entite, and suddenly you’ve got this angry lens flare one-shotting its way through your party and you have no idea why.<\/p>\n

Like I said: You need to read the game designer’s mind.<\/p>\n

Which, fine. Whatever. It’s a mistake you only make once.Is it? For me it wasn’t at all obvious that I was being attacked for using magic. I dunno. Somehow everyone got that memo but me.<\/span> What I don’t get is why<\/b> the designer would set this trap for the player. What is the purpose<\/b> of these things in terms of game design? Is there a lesson you’re supposed to learn? Is the designer trying to get you to change your party composition? Is this a setup for a boss fight I missed? The game just taught you how to use the gambit system, and now we have an enemy that will punish the use of gambits.<\/p>\n

I don’t know. I realize this is a small thing, it’s just a really weird design decision and it makes me wonder what the thinking behind it was.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to talk about. No, I want to talk about these…<\/p>\n

Abandoned Oil Refineries.<\/h3>\n

Okay, so we don't need oil for energy, but what about petroleum byproducts? Don't we need plastics to preserve food and medicine? What about industrial lubricants? Paving materials? Where do we get floor wax, upholstery, glycerin, paint, and rubbing alcohol? Are you telling me Fran's outfit doesn't include ANY plastics? Please stop and explain how the infrastructure and the entire supply chain of this world operate. (I'm kidding. I don't care.)<\/div>
Okay, so we don't need oil for energy, but what about petroleum byproducts? Don't we need plastics to preserve food and medicine? What about industrial lubricants? Paving materials? Where do we get floor wax, upholstery, glycerin, paint, and rubbing alcohol? Are you telling me Fran's outfit doesn't include ANY plastics? Please stop and explain how the infrastructure and the entire supply chain of this world operate. (I'm kidding. I don't care.)<\/div><\/p>\n

In western stories, magic typically precludes technology. The idea is that mages, wizards, clerics, and other practitioners of hoodoo are so effective that society never bothers to invent engines, computing machines, mass media, internet porn, or any of the other hallmarks of the modern age. So the world ends up trapped in this eternal middle ages, unable or unwilling to mechanize.<\/p>\n

Slightly less common is the idea that modern society collapses and magic arises in the post-apocalyptic chaos that follows<\/a>. Magic has apparently been here all along, but we never noticed it because we were too busy watching our TVs and playing arcade games to notice, man.This sort of ignores all the effort people spent looking for magic before modern technology, but whatever. The whole point of fiction is to make sure the truth doesn’t get in the way of a good story.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there’s my wife’s favorite genre, urban fantasy. If not for digital books, my house would be hip-deep in dog-eared urban fantasy novels. In these stories, magic and technology exist side-by-side. While your car is at the mechanic, you can walk next door and chat with the elementalist about the gnolls infesting your neighbor’s garage.<\/p>\n

But the one thing I never see is what Final Fantasy XII is doing, where technology became obsolete not because it was wiped away by an apocalypse, but because magic was just straight-up better<\/b>.<\/p>\n

(This doesn’t explain why the Empire is clanking around in suits of armor and stabbing people with swords. Firearms exist in this world, and magic doesn’t change the fact that firearms are the universal hard counter to knights. But look, if you’re not willing to tolerate anachronistic weapons for the sake of style, then you really need to stay far away from Final Fantasy games.)<\/p>\n

Like I’ve said in the past: I’m an interloper to this genre. I imagine people are going to jump down to the comments and give me the exhaustive list of all the stories that did the “magic makes technology obsolete” schtick before FF12. But the idea is new to me<\/b>, and I really dug it.<\/p>\n

A Likely Story<\/h3>\n

Raithwall apparently looked like a golden Santa.<\/div>
Raithwall apparently looked like a golden Santa.<\/div><\/p>\n

This part of the game tells us about Raithwall, the Dynast-King. As the game tells us, he was a big deal a thousand years ago. He united the world and brought about centuries of peace.<\/p>\n

Once again demonstrating my inability to parse this genre, I actually thought this was going to turn out to be hogwash. It seemed like such an obvious setup. The story told us about how this guy basically conquered the world and brought about a thousand years of peace. Usually people who (try to) conquer the world are not good guys, regardless of their motivations. I really expected that we’d get a twist somewhere down the line where we discover that Raithwall was actually a bastard and all of our current problems are somehow the result of poor planning or a faustian bargain on his part. Also: I figured he was still around, perhaps lurking as a great big boss fight skeleton in a mountain somewhere.<\/p>\n

Even his name sounds vaguely innsideous. Raith sounds like Wraith<\/a>, the likeness of someone after death, which is typically malevolent in nature. Once again, my western expectations were leading me astray. If this game was made by English speakers then yes, a name like Raithwall would probably be an indicator of villainy\u00a0 like General Grievous<\/a>, Cruella de Vil, or Count Puppykicker.<\/p>\n

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Want to see more bunnygirl pics? Subscribe to my OnlyFrans\u00ae!<\/div><\/p>\n

But this game was written by Japanese speakers. Maybe they chose the name Raithwall because it sounded cool, or maybe he had a totally benign name in Japanese and the translators just bluntly anglicised it without thinking about how it might sound to English speakers. Whatever. You’ve got to keep your wits when consuming a translated work, because you don’t know how many layers of misunderstanding and obfuscation stand between yourself and the words you’re hearing. Maybe an English speaker bent the meaning of a word for artistic purposes. A Japanese person heard it, liked the way it sounded, and decided to use it in his story. He smashed it into Japanese phonemes and used it slightly improperly. Then a translator got hold of it, tried to “fix” the spelling, and handed it off to a voice actor who pronounced it wrong. Then someone like me blunders into it and tries to parse the word using various western expectations and assumptions and ends up comically off-base.<\/p>\n

So yeah. The plot twist is that there is no twist. The heroic conqueror was actually a hero and not another villain with good PR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week The Rocketeer escorts us through the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea.\u00a0I love the Sandsea. Well, I love the premise, anyway. This section of the game kinda drags on for a little too long, and there are a couple of annoying “gotcha” enemies in the area that can ruin your day if you haven’t been reading 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-53847","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\/53847","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=53847"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53871,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53847\/revisions\/53871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}