Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: FFVIII]

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wetodet said:
Ah yes.
"Fighting for what is just" and "not submitting to authority."
These are definitely things being a diehard SeeD, a merc-for-hire where one of the requirements to pass their initiation exam is to obey your CO unflinchingly even when their orders go against your stated objectives, represents. Definitely.

Edit: Oh, and "standing your ground" is a bit of a hoot, too, considering the events of the Dollet sequence end with you leaving them to rot.

Edit 2: That's not to say these aren't qualities Squall and the party might have... though if they do they haven't demonstrated much other than maybe bravery... but, like. These aren't qualities SeeDs as trained by the Gardens have that we've seen, and in fact they're ones that SeeDs are strongly discouraged from having simply due to the nature of their training and profession. They're child soldier mercs trained to follow orders to the letter and no further. "Fighting for what's just" and "standing your ground" don't come into it at any point.
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Seifer: Do you feel like a hero yet?
 
Balamb Garden has deep-cover operatives embedded within Galbadia's maximum-security political prison just so they can know to cut your pay if they see you being a pussy.
 
cB557 said:
Balamb Garden has deep-cover operatives embedded within Galbadia's maximum-security political prison just so they can know to cut your pay if they see you being a pussy.
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It's all one big inside job, Seifer, Edna, Rinoa, they're all in on it. Every single plot point from Timber onwards was just part of one giant extended actual final exam to see if Squall and company properly qualify as SeeD.

Really, Omi was doing pretty good in staying on the Company Loyalty route and siding with Cid, up until he gave in to the torturer. Guess we don't get the Awesome Bad Ending now.
 
Bit belated at this point, but that was an interesting interrogation scene. I mean, messed up, torture and everything, but it does portray Squall's response to it in a way that feels pretty raw and more complex than you'd expect from the average in media.

The plot's certainly getting more... ominous? Honestly, even Laguna's flashback kind of has this ominous air to me, not just in how the tone of his inner conflict seems but in all the information we're not hearing due to these dreams being so out of context for the cast in the present.
 
ZerbanDaGreat said:
A lot of JRPGs would get very interesting very quickly if the party's bodies could withstand getting nuked by Firagas and shit significantly better than their clothes.
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I believe this is called Senran Kagura.

Morganite said:
Then the game sends you through a sequence with a party consisting of two Reyvateils. Because of how the system works, this deprives you of all your combat tools, so the battles have to be so easy that you can't really lose, but even then they're still slow and boring. But the thing is? One of them carries a sword and is supposed to be pretty good at using it. But did they have her get in front and show it off for a while when it would be handy, and make the segment more interesting on a gameplay level? Of course not.
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Probably because it'd be somewhat difficult to code Vanguard!Cloche in a way that makes sense. You'd almost certainly need a separate character, and if you want to share levels or anything that's going to be a heck of a pain. Like, does she keep her equipment?
Story-wise, it's not like Cocona doesn't exist. Or basically the entire party in Ar Tonelico 3.
Tragically they never actually developed a Reyvateil that can be used as a singer or vanguard, gameplay-wise.

Also Ar Tonelico Manga my beloved, makes that sequence... interesting. Lethal Pasta indeed.
It makes basically every sequence interesting. The AT manga gets wild. In... a different way from the usual way Ar Tonelico is wild.
 
Deathwings said:
Um, I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure feeding the interrogator a line of bullshit instead of insulting him is an immediate SeeD rank-down on your next paycheck.
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cB557 said:
Balamb Garden has deep-cover operatives embedded within Galbadia's maximum-security political prison just so they can know to cut your pay if they see you being a pussy.
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Omicron said:
Squall: "...Flower."
Warden: "What did you say?"
Squall: "The true… goal of SeeD… To spread… seeds all over the world… Fill… the world w… with flowers."
Warden: "Yeah right…!"
Squall: "I… It's the truth. See… Seeing flowers… Takes… away people's will to fight."
Warden: "What then? SeeD wants to bring love and peace to the world…? Ha haha hah! Don't make me laugh! You can't fool me!"
Squall: "W-We… steal the will to fight… Then we in… invade…"
Warden: "...What?" (He calls another warden off-screen.) Hey!!! Watch him!"
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Warden: *Looks around to see if the coast is clear and dials into phone.*
Warden: Headmaster, Leonheart wussed out from being electrocuted for several hours.
Cid: *Glasses shine ominously as he adjusts it.* ...I see. Dock his pay then.
 
Listening through the songs of one of my fav video game music remixer again, and its fun to be like "oh I actually know the context for this song now" every time I reach a Final Fantasy song, thanks to this thread.
 
I started reading this thread with Final Fantasy VII, and then went back after it finished to read all the others before following onto Final Fantasy VIII. That was partly because there were a fair number of references to older games in the FFVII playthrough that I had only hazy or second-hand knowledge of, and wanted to be fully refreshed on. It's also partly because FFVIII is the only Final Fantasy game I both played and have genuinely negative memories of, so I wanted to be (re)approaching it from a place of knowledge.

As a consequence, I've not been posting here at all, because Live Reaction: Some Shit Omi Said Years Ago is a weird message to bottle and fling into the inexorable river of time, opened by readers native to the distant future of the thread. However, I'm now caught up and ready to move on to Triple Triad and the weird storymode they attached to it.

This culminated in reading the Advent Children review, a movie I have been a dedicated hater for ever since actually experiencing it through a medium other than Linkin Park AMVs watched on loop in my school's IT room because I didn't have an iPod. All this to say that this entire pre-amble is to explain why I'm suddenly slipping in with an ice-cold take from the start of the year.

@Omicron mentioned The Rise of Skywalker at the end of the review, and I'm glad you did, because it made a connection that I'm not sure I ever consciously did before, or at least not to the same extent. Advent Children is just the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

We know we can't live up to Darth Vader/Sephiroth... but we know fans want Darth Vader/Sephiroth, so we'll introduce a cheap copy of Darth Vader/Sephiroth to act as the antagonist. It's fine, though, it's intentional, it's a statement, because he knows he's just a knock-off and he's actually mad about it! That's clever commentary, almost. Also he'll obsess over the head of the previous antagonist, which survived for some reason, to draw the connection as explicitly as possible.

We know that the Empire/Shinra was absolutely destroyed and the Rebellion/Planet was ready to establish a new democracy/way of life... but we know that fans recognise the Empire/Shinra. They recognise Stormtroopers/Turks, and an Emperor/President, and Star Destroyers/Midgar. We can't not have these things, so they just survived, or came back, with no clear explanation for why our protagonists would have let them do so. They needed to, because otherwise we wouldn't have those familiar, comforting visual beats.

We know that Han Solo and Leia/Tifa and Cloud had a big character arc which left them in a very different place from where they started out and functionally ended the will-they-won't-they stage of their relationship... but we know fans remember these characters for their earliest iconic scenes and as broad archetypes or time-blurred memes. Leia/Tifa needs to go back to running an underdog rebellion/Midgar bar, and Han Solo needs to go back to wandering around as a rogue smuggler/brooding mercenary loner, no matter how this makes them look like they just collapsed into a mid-life crisis once the credits rolled and never clawed their way out.

Messages, themes, and defining events established by previous stories suddenly invert, or lose all narrative weight and traction, suspended like a fly in oil. The path trod by these characters - and their audience - is now a treadmill, offering only the illusion of movement, progression, and achievement. Nothing can ever really change. Nothing can ever really be accomplished. No-one's ever really gone.

You will always come back to Aerith's goddamn flower garden - to a desert world where a young orphan receives an unintended message carried by a droid. Not because the church or desert worlds are themselves of cosmic importance, but because you remember them. Look! Luke's old lightsaber! Look! Sephiroth's one wing! Look! A shiny set of keys! Jangle jangle jangle.

The key ways that the sequel trilogy and Advent Children deviate from each other - aside from the much greater scope of the former, absolutely outstripping the degree of preparation afforded it - are rooted in the fact that the latter is dredging up a video game property, with wholly animated actors. It can afford to do nothing but wallow in its fanservice and establish that these oil fields are now very much ripe for drilling, over and over, both literally and figuratively. It can also afford to set itself two years after the game, instead of reflecting the real-life passage of eight years (or 12 years for Complete), further reducing the sting of stasis.*

Star Wars Episode VII-IX, on the other hand, is trying to open up those same veins of revived profitability for a live action property, whose actors have aged. No amount of digital corpse-puppetry will get around the need for a new lead cast that can accept the torch passed by the previous generation - which forces it to juggle competing impulses. Everything has to be the same as you vaguely remember, because fans love these old characters and places, but also these old characters need to die, figuratively or literally, for their successors to thrive and establish a future for the franchise - and since we've had to walk back all their victories and growth in order to keep things the same, your Old Favourites are all observably total failures who achieved nothing and need these new characters to succeed where they retroactively didn't. At least, until the well needs tapping again.

Imagine a version of Advent Children where Cloud's actor was too old, so the entire story was focused on New Hero Denzel seeking out Cloud Strife, who has been living as a depressed hermit for years, in order to overthrow a fully resurgent Neo-Shinra, led by President Rufus' clone and Kadaj. Then Cloud disappears into the Lifestream after half a fight with Kadaj, giving Denzel the chance to fight and really defeat Sephiroth.

No matter how well you write and direct and animate that story, it will provoke abject fury from the specific audience you've built it around pulling back in. I have no doubt that a lot of the people infuriated by the sequel trilogy would gesture at Advent Children as the way to do it "right", despite how similar they are in fundamentals. The movie gets away with so much shit that nakedly undermines the original story just because it can afford to do a pure fanservice rehash, instead of serving two masters.

* I will acknowledge for the sake of completeness that Episode VIII tried to do something distinct from a retread with both Luke and the Emperor stand-in, but a) that leash was firmly yanked before the film even ended, b) it's not hugely relevant to the overall point, c) ain't a Nobel Prize for trying.
 
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Revlid said:
Imagine a version of Advent Children where Cloud's actor was too old, so the entire story was focused on New Hero Denzel seeking out Cloud Strife, who has been living as a depressed hermit for years, in order to overthrow a fully resurgent Neo-Shinra, led by President Rufus' clone and Kadaj. Then Cloud disappears into the Lifestream after half a fight with Kadaj, giving Denzel the chance to fight and really defeat Sephiroth.
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I'll be honest, I'd watch that and probably have a pretty good time doing so. Sounds like a riot.
 
Revlid said:
As a consequence, I've not been posting here at all, because Live Reaction: Some Shit Omi Said Years Ago is a weird message to bottle and fling into the inexorable river of time,
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No but I endorse doing this 100%, at all times. Feed me.

@Omicron mentioned The Rise of Skywalker at the end of the review, and I'm glad you did, because it made a connection that I'm not sure I ever consciously did before, or at least not to the same extent. Advent Children is just the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
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This was a really interesting analysis! Thank you for posting it, it expands on many things I noticed myself in the process of watching this movie and my own opinions on the "sequel trilogy," while remarking on where they diverge which I hadn't really thought about. Very good post.

There's only one way I can respond here, only one thing to say, and this is in a comment that was not, in any way whatsoever, calculated to make everyone, everywhere as mad as possible:

* I will acknowledge for the sake of completeness that Episode VIII tried to do something distinct from a retread with both Luke and the Emperor stand-in, but a) that leash was firmly yanked before the film even ended, b) it's not hugely relevant to the overall point, c) ain't a Nobel Prize for trying.
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Final Fantasy VII: Remake is The Last Jedi of FF7. I will not elaborate.

Anyway, I started a new Quest because I hadn't been writing anything narrative in a long time and that was weighing on me, plus a bunch of IRL stuff putting disorder in my plans and schedules and needing to refocus, but this thread should be back on track with our regularly scheduled updates resuming by the end of the week.
 
There is probably a comparison to be made between Crisis Core and something Star Wars, but I don't know enough about Star Wars to make it myself. And also Omicron hasn't played it.
 
Omicron said:
Final Fantasy VII: Remake is The Last Jedi of FF7. I will not elaborate.
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Admirably attempting to subvert/riff on well-known tropes and narrative structures, but doing so in such a ham-handed and unsatisfying way that the next entry ruined itself with it's reactionary knee-jerk overcorrection and total creative bankruptcy? Honestly, like 90% of the changes and "pump ups" of the VII Remakes are stuff I enjoy or at least can appreciate what's being attempted. It's the last 10% that make me roll my eyes and think that they might not have understood what made the original version work so well. I like to blame Kazushige Nojima, as should we all.

Speaking of being a knee-jerk reactionary, thank god for the WEG/d6 Star Wars RPG allowing me to defy reality in some small way and pretend that the Star Wars Holiday Special was still the worst thing to ever happen to the IP as a whole. Anyway. Glad to hear you're doing well Omi, and please don't ever think you're obligated to churn these things out for those of us trying to vicariously relive playing through their favorite middle-school weeaboo cringe games for the first time.
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EDIT: We should stop comparing ambitious-but-flawed sequels that attempt to subvert expectations to The Last Jedi, and start comparing them to Alien 3 instead. Because I like Alien 3.

EDIT x2: After thinking about how good the Alien TTRPG is, and how good (some) of the Star Wars TTRPG's are, and how fun (not good, but fun) Dark Heresy 1e was, I'm ready to make the bold claim that the only valid & worthwhile continuance of intellectually exhausted tentpole Sci-Fi IP's is via tabletop roleplaying games.
 
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