Bwahaha, it's so funny to me that, from the perspective of everyone back home in Alexandria, Steiner is some huge rebel with a conscience who left with Princess Garnet, defying the chain of command in favor of following his heart - when in reality he's a complete henchman whose heart's desire is to follow the chain of command and he would have gotten Garnet back home ages ago if he just wasn't so bad at it. Steiner is going to be so offended when he finds out.
Or you could be like me, who managed to choose the WRONG choice EVERY time and get everyone but the king and the high priest killed and feel really shitty about myself but refused to reload because I figured it was good that the game was making me feel emotions.
I suspect Zidane is just... compartmentalizing. He acknowledges that some really bad shit has just happened, and that Freya is broken by the fact that her entire people were just slaughtered at the whims of a mad queen, but he's trying really hard not to think about it so he doesn't break down in some way or another himself, and to get Freya focusing on an actual achievable objective since they're currently in enemy territory.
Honestly, I do think that Zidane is that... not cold, but mission focused. He's seen a lot of shit in the game, and while he sometimes gets a little shouty, he never really loses his cool.
He's dealt with the prima vista crash, him splitting from his gang, heading out with strangers to get back to lindblum, seeing people being made in an assembly line, and pretty much stayed on the ball of all of it.
And whatever terrible thing that happened, laying on the floor in grief was not the smart move, so he gets people to safety before letting them grapple with it. It's just emotional maturity in a role that we often so rarely see in these stories because the protagonist being emotive typically tells the audience how to feel about things.
Really my only complaint is that making even Odin this strong in story (a summon that's usually high tier but not the topmost of summons) feels like it might make summons themselves... kinda lackluster when you can finally use them in battle? Like, if we assume you eventually get Odin back and Garnet can pull him out in every fight, part of me is going to be wondering why every boss can't just be oneshot by Odin going "I cast Gungir Nuke, which is a City Buster".
What a goddamn cutscene, though, it bears repeating. Top notch, I can see why it was burned into your memory.
I suspect Zidane is just... compartmentalizing. He acknowledges that some really bad shit has just happened, and that Freya is broken by the fact that her entire people were just slaughtered at the whims of a mad queen, but he's trying really hard not to think about it so he doesn't break down in some way or another himself, and to get Freya focusing on an actual achievable objective since they're currently in enemy territory.
In fairness, most random battles and even boss battles occur at a range where you are wacking each other with swords. Casting Gungnir nuke at that range seems inadvisable
And yeah compartmentalization and channeling emotion into action is basically my takeaway on Zidane there as well.
Speaking of Steiner and Beatrix, its interesting. Steiner and his knights of Pluto are outside Beatrix's command chain. Given how both he and Beatrix were guarding the queen directly during the play, it appears their positions are about equal to each other. Yet the Knights of Pluto are considered a joke, but one that keeps coming up.
I suspect that the Knights of Pluto are a very old group, the specialists of Alexandria's armed forces. Ones that wouldn't do well under normal leadership. The overall standards must have slipped since its creation but they are still a special group, since they are still directly under the royal family. And the captain at least holds to those guidelines. Steiner is quite strong, taking such a beating during the opening part of the story only finally going down to a point blank Bomb explosion. And as a player character, his offense is no slouch, especially in Trance. I would likely not be wrong when saying that he would be one of Alexandria's top soldiers.
Bwahaha, it's so funny to me that, from the perspective of everyone back home in Alexandria, Steiner is some huge rebel with a conscience who left with Princess Garnet, defying the chain of command in favor of following his heart - when in reality he's a complete henchman whose heart's desire is to follow the chain of command and he would have gotten Garnet back home ages ago if he just wasn't so bad at it. Steiner is going to be so offended when he finds out.
It always felt to me that Zidane was written largely as a response to Cloud and Squall. Rather than being a brooding loner, he's a gregarious extrovert. Rather than being the Party Beatstick he's the Party Thief.
But here? Here you can definitely see some of the same protagonist DNA from his ancestors. He's deep into "shit's real bad, guys, but now is not the time to process it" territory.
And as a player character, his offense is no slouch, especially in Trance. I would likely not be wrong when saying that he would be one of Alexandria's top soldiers.
I would go as far as to say IX gets to get away with being darker because of its cartoony artstyle. VII has a very dark, serious, realistic aesthetic, all engines and smoke and guns and motorbikes, and a lot of very dramatic stuff does happen in its plot... But, for instance, the destruction of Corell is an off-screen backstory thing that most of the town survives, and the plate drop, while no doubt impressive, doesn't drag things out in the way Cleyra does, the Slum's inhabitants are wiped out off-screen, not on the screen. The player is not given an opportunity to save the civilians only for the game to yank the rug from under them right at the end.
But because IX is cutesy and cartoony and very pretty, it can feature darker plot points because they're wrapped in sugar for both the children playing it and the adults scrutinizing it for an ESRB rating.
This point is especially resonant because right now, I'm replaying Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, a game where most of the story is delivered through talking portraits like this:
When the game wants to get fancy, it'll show field sprites moving around:
It's brightly colored, pretty, and the main cast mostly consists of spunky unmarried young adults. Shipping them gives them stat bonuses. But with the text and limited blocking that the engine can handle, the story manages to create some memorable villains. The first few chapters are about navigating the ruins of a country devastated by war as a fugitive from the soldiers chasing you. The big bad is a necromancer who does some truly fucked up shit with corpses. There are like three or four guys who are Creepy About Women, each in a distinct way. A small child and her parents will be eaten by a giant spider if you're not quick enough to save them.
Out of curiosity, I decided to check the age rating. It's E for Everyone in the US; PEGI 7+ in Europe.
I suspect that the Knights of Pluto are a very old group, the specialists of Alexandria's armed forces. Ones that wouldn't do well under normal leadership. The overall standards must have slipped since its creation but they are still a special group, since they are still directly under the royal family. And the captain at least holds to those guidelines. Steiner is quite strong, taking such a beating during the opening part of the story only finally going down to a point blank Bomb explosion. And as a player character, his offense is no slouch, especially in Trance. I would likely not be wrong when saying that he would be one of Alexandria's top soldiers.
This is basically Beatrix's theme, and is surprisingly simple and beautiful for the theme of someone who commanded an army that engaged in full on genocide. And when I say simple, it really is simple. It's a solo piano piece with an introduction that is, essentially, fragments of the main theme trading off with C major or D minor arpeggios. The main verse is melody on top of block chords, and the B section has melody on top of more arpeggios.
Despite its simplicity, it's still very beautiful. Not all music needs to be complex to be nice to listen to. Uematsu is known primarily for his melodies and this is yet another example of why that's the case.
My only gripe is that for some unknowable reason he stuck a B minor flat 5 (two minor thirds stacked on top of each other, a very dissonant chord) in between two Bb major chords and on a strong beat no less (0:36 in the vid, maybe give yourself a second or two to work your way to it). It's jarring and I have no idea why the hell he did it. Maybe he composed himself into a corner and couldn't think of anything better to use, I dunno. I'm a performer not a composer or music theory nerd.
It's the only blemish on an otherwise great track. The chord progression for the B section is really nice, the stepwise motion in the bass (C=>Cdim=>Dm) is elegant, and the turnaround to the A section feels so natural.
There's always the main set (hoping praying begging for Temur spellslinger Terra please WOTC give her a card that's actually her!) for additional versions of Celes, though it's less likely than Terra since she's not the official protagonist.
The hella-Blue Terra art that ended up being used as face for the commamder deck needs to have come from somewhere, so there's probably a Blue or Red-Blue Terra in the main set that now has art that awkwardly lands somewhere within Red-White-Black, since it originated within the commander deck. There also needs to be some reason why they didn't just use that commander Terra art for the new face card, so it probably depicts her in her bestial state.
The fact that the Celes card that we just got is a bonkers infinite-enabler also suggest that the protagonists-only order came down from management after playtesting, so main set Terra has a decent shot at being some unbalanced nightmare card that dominates the meta and ends up super expensive and hated.
Gnorga from A Troll in Central Park would probably be the closest comparison to Brahne.
Weirdly, Bluth's villains were the one thing of his that got better going into the 90s. I mean Jenner, the Sharptooth, and Carface are no slouches, but 90s Bluth's got the Duke of Owls, Rasputin, and The Drej (Titan AE's 2000, but close enough).
Can't think of any Bluth villain who was eaten alive by crows. That did happen to the villain of We're Back! but that was Amblin, not Bluth.
And I can't talk about Bluth and not mention that he had plans to adapt Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Well, until Titan AE bombed he did...
I'm mostly impressed that from what we've seen the rat people seem to be a pretty major part of a sizeable city-state. Normally when I see ratfolk they're relegated to side characters and minor roles.
The High Priest gifts Freya a magical stone that has protected Cleyra for its long history, simply named the Emerald; it can be used as a consumable in battle to restore HP, but also equipped as an Accessory, in which case it teaches Haste (probably to Dagger), MP+10%, and White Wind, an ability for Freya which allows her to restore MP to the whole party. This is, to be clear, a different magical stone than the one used by the harp. I guess Cleyra has several of those. There's also another encounter with the traveling moogle, Stiltzkin, who sells us another package of items at the inn. There are additionally other items to be found by looking around, and then we head down to join up with Zidane and crew.
Something I've noticed about FFIX's Japanese script thus far is how most of the stones and gems which contain mystical powers or such are just referred to as "stones", 石 "ishi". Not 魔石 "maseki", which has thus far only been used to refer to the game mechanical points to assign to abilities.
Occasionally we get 宝石 "houseki" like here, meaning "precious stone", but that just sounds like a subjective value judgment than a proper name for that stone.
It's an interesting trend which may or may not mean anything. I suppose we're just used to more lyrical terms like "gems" or "crystals", rather than just "stone", which brings to mind something looking like a pebble, but on further thought even "crystal" can be mundane, and it's just the frequent use in fantasy stories which makes it sound particularly magical.
Also technically the Emerald here is a お守り "omamori", which does have connotations of "protections", but is usually translated as "protective charm" or "protective talisman". So it's not a special item which could have protected Cleyra as a whole, but rather an old and venerable heirloom believed to have protective powers on a smaller scale.
The English translation seems to have changed Beatrix's personality here for this line. The Japanese text is "finally the preparations are ready", which is less gloating and more just a brief professional satisfaction.
…they are still well below the power curve. Most Type-Bs we face die in single attacks or two at most. We dispatch this one easily, then run up the stairs to help the rest of the town… But as we do, the Maidens who just escaped come running back in, pursued by Alexandrian soldiers!
Not sure if you managed to explore a bit more here, but if we go to the sandpit where we fought the Antlion, we can find the inn Moogle and Stiltzkin (although I don't know if Stiltzkin's presence here is dependent on having seen him in Cleyra's inn prior).
The Moogle Mopli will turn up again later in the Cathedral (they have a Mognet letter), but I'm mostly bleakly amused by how Stiltzkin is also panicking, since he appears to have arrived in Cleyra during his wanderings just in time for a genocidal invasion.
Holding the High Priest at swordpoint, she scoffs that the "pathetic rodents" failed to grasp the true power of the jewel they used to power the sandstorm. She grabs the red stone at the top of the harp and declares herself "through with your city." This, then, was the true strategic objective of the attack, to retrieve an item of power.
While the 宝珠 "houjuu" term does translate to "jewel", I admit I've been thinking about how FFIX has been labelling gems and stones of mystical and plot significance, as I mentioned earlier in this post.
And 宝珠 was one of the descriptions given for the Stones used by the Summoner Tribe in the flashback when Doctor Tot was musing about them.
I'm probably reading far too much into this, and Beatrix probably just called it a "jewel" because it looked like one. But given the overarching plot point about summons, and Odin manifesting at Cleyra, I think it is at least a small coincidence.
Also I don't know if it's just the limitations of the PS1 and its model movements, but Beatrix stowing the red jewel away looks a lot like she's storing it in her cleavage.
The entire population of Burmecia and Cleyra has been reduced to the King of Burmecia, the High Priest of Cleyra, Flower Maiden Sharon, Water Maiden Shannon, Dan's widow and orphans Learie, Jack and Adam, Tree Oracle Wylan, and Sand Oracle Satrea. Everyone else… Claire, the Moon Maiden who played the harp during the ceremony, Nina, the Star Maiden who sold us items, Donnegan, the Night Oracle and innkeeper, Wylan, the Tree Oracle who was one of the two guards at the cathedral's entrance… All named characters, however brief their time on the stage. All dead.
Trivia: the two children are named Cabb and Cobb (カブ and コブ) in Japanese.
Remember when we were looking at how literally everyone else in Cleyra had names apart from the King of Burmecia and the High Priest of Cleyra, and we were thinking "surely this is not a foreshadowing", and as it turned out, well.
It's kind of a jarring bit, this, because Zidane is reacting to the death of an entire people and one party member like the enemy team got a goal in before half-time. Or like relatives of a murder victim in crime shows react to news of the death of a loved one. Briefly mildly upset, then immediately back to full function. And that wouldn't necessarily be weird if he was the only one to react (the reason characters on crime shows have such subdued reactions to murder is so the plot can get on with it and because it's not supposed to be that big of a deal to the audience so spending too much time weeping would be frustrating), if there wasn't Freya right there, reacting with entirely realistic grief at her total failure to protect her people by falling to her knees in despair, totally shutting down, and no longer even thinking about any objective she may have had coming here.
Freya's line in Japanese is a bit less mired in complete despair: "Could you please leave me be for a while?"
Although I can believe it's the sort of "a while" which will last indefinitely, and Freya isn't just asking for a moment to collect herself, but rather that's the only thing she can think of now and forevermore.
Which still does make Zidane seem rather callous; he doesn't give Freya the chance to sort out her emotions at all. It's a bit understandable, given they are on enemy territory, but I do think Zidane did not need to be such a jerk about it.
I wonder if Zidane suddenly being all "let's get this mission going, now now now" is his way of coping, particularly the part where he has to drag everyone else into this "only the mission matters" pace. Anyone else who isn't up for shoving their emotions to the side right this moment is a chance for those emotions to break through Zidane's desperate ignoring of the trauma.
Beatrix: "That was ridiculous…" [She walks over to the railing.] "My troops alone would've been more than enough to take Cleyra. Why does the queen insist on using black mages and eidolons? I didn't train all these years so I could take a backseat to anyone…"
This is a major difference between the English and Japanese text.
I'll just write down the general translation of the Japanese text, to illustrate that difference:
Beatrix: "Why did Queen Brahne need to utterly destroy the settlement of Cleyra?" Beatrix: "Why did Queen Brahne use Eidolons and Black Mages?" Beatrix: "I did not polish my skills for this sort of thing."
Beatrix is clearly feeling the moral compunctions for participating in Cleyra's destruction. She still did it, so she bears quite a lot of the blame, but she does go off and soliloquize to herself about "woe is me, what is this pain I am experiencing, could it be guilt".
Later, when the Black Mages are passing by:
Beatrix: "Just like those people without hearts, I too am unable to act for myself." Beatrix: "At this rate, I am no better than the still-missing Steiner."
Apparently Beatrix has not gotten the news that Steiner is in Alexandria's dungeons. Which is notable, since he was being guarded by Alexandrian (female) soldiers, who are presumably part of Beatrix's overall command.
From this monologue, we learn Steiner's sheer inflexible "Just Following Orders" mentality is well-known and notorious in Alexandria, and Beatrix comparing herself to it is humbling. She's going "I've only been following orders without question so far. Who am I, Steiner? Ick."
Which does lead to a fascinating hypothetical: what if Steiner was in Beatrix's place? What if Steiner was commanded to invade Burmecia and Cleyra, and commit genocide on the inhabitants? Would that be enough for Steiner to go "no, that is wrong and I refuse to follow these orders", or would he be like Beatrix, committing atrocities while internally wondering why?
Beatrix, right now, is at the stage of Cecil having invaded Mysidia to loot their Crystal. It is thus far unclear if it would take something like the Bomb Ring At Mist incident for her to finally go "if queen and country demands I do this, then queen and country do not deserve my loyalty". Clearly the devastation inflicted on Cleyra is Bomb Ring level, and Beatrix hasn't denounced Brahne yet, so presumably there are other factors required.
At this point, an Alexandrian soldier appears, ordering three of the Black Mage dolls to head to the "telepod" and return to Alexandria. This helpfully indicates that it's the jars themselves that enable teleportation, rather than an innate power of the black mages, which will be relevant soon.
"Telepod" is an attempted correction of the English translation, I assume.
In Japanese, we are supposed to see how the big jars are involved in the teleportation tech, and so it should be obvious in hindsight when we learn the name of the mechanism: テレポット, ie Tele-Pot.
Possibly the English translation decided this was too goofy after the horrific events we have just witnessed at Cleyra.
It's Vivi who comes up with the solution. He tells everyone to follow him, and we head back to the telepods (after briefly doubling back to find a moogle and exchange letters and save).
This does remind me of one odd bit of gameplay mechanics in FFXIV (and several other games): why are there Moogles everywhere?
In a gameplay sense, the answer is obvious: Moogles provide game interface services, like saving in FFIX, or delivering mail in FFXIV. However, due to the need for these services at frequent and important points in the story, this leads to Moogles just being there, sometimes with the barest of excuses to justify their presence, and sometimes they just hang out in their assigned spot while all the other NPCs pretend they're not there.
In this case, this is an airship reserved for the Queen of Alexandria, and the mobile operations center for a series of invasions of Burmecia and Cleyra which ended in genocide, filled with secret Black Mage automata weapons, with both Queen Brahne and General Beatrix on board... and there's this Moogle fluttering around receiving and sending mail via stowaways.
It reminded me of Ul'dah in FFXIV, which bars all "beastmen tribes" from the city on racist grounds, and Moogles are known "beastmen" (albeit mostly found near Gridania and Ishgard)... but there are still Post-Moogles hovering around, ready to deliver mail to players, and nobody points them out.
FFXIV tries to handwave it by claiming Moogles are invisible when they want to be, and sometimes can only be seen by Special People (of whom the player is one, although a few other NPC types can do so too), but I don't know if FFIX has anything like that.
I mean... There's a chance that they didn't think they'd survive, and that this place with all the memories they've made would be the best place for them to die.
Yeah. In the times when we can control a character and explore Cleyra, Sharon and Shannon are the NPCs located at the observation deck at all times. They're the ones who get startled by Quina in that ATE where Quina goes looking for food; if Zidane talks to them after that ATE, they'll be wondering what the "odd person with the apron" is supposed to be.
I was going to say they're "always there", but I realized the same can be said for most other NPCs and their assigned locations.
So making them decide to stay at the observation deck because they feel a connection to it is a bit of ludonarrative integration.
Minor question: where does the "Loss Of Me" title come from, out of curiosity?
From what I can tell, the "official" English title of the song is Roses Of May (very spoilery scenes in the video, I'm mostly posting it because it's from Square Enix's official music channel), which is a pluralization of the katakana transliteration ローズ・オブ・メイ.
So I can certainly understand "Rose Of May", since that's literally what the katakana transliteration would be, but "Loss Of Me" has me at, well, a loss. Is it another version of the same track somewhere else?
Oh, damn. I've been exposed as a fraud. I always just assumed that We're Back was a Bluth film because, well, look at it. I'll amend my claim: We'll know that Brahne is Bluth-coded if she gets crushed by a giant mechanical rat made by Burmecian refugees.
That's exactly where my mind went as well. One of the best examples of Summons as devastatingly powerful weapons of total destruction, and it's cool to see FFIX starting from that same thought.
Interesting to see Odin being the one to do it here though, I tend to think of him as more of a "fuck that guy in particular" Summon rather than a "raze a postal code to the ground" one.
(Also man Type-0 would be the best Final Fantasy game ever if it was able to consistently live up to the hype of that cutscene)
I phrased that wrong - you have to remove 90% of their health before they Escape.
Really my only complaint is that making even Odin this strong in story (a summon that's usually high tier but not the topmost of summons) feels like it might make summons themselves... kinda lackluster when you can finally use them in battle? Like, if we assume you eventually get Odin back and Garnet can pull him out in every fight, part of me is going to be wondering why every boss can't just be oneshot by Odin going "I cast Gungir Nuke, which is a City Buster".
I think Advent Children and some of the cutscenes of the later game ask us to believe that the battles of Final Fantasy are actually (at high level, at least) high-octane anime battles that can span several miles and involve jumping across the landscape and delivering spells that can level small buildings, it's just that the turn-by-turn row-based battle system does a poor job of showing it...
...except with summons, which historically have been absolutely ridiculous, with Eden and Zero Bahamut firing explosions visible from space, it's just that we've generally handwaved that with explanations like "it's happening in a pocket dimension" or something. But I guess Odin shows us that, uh, sometimes they do just Do That.
An interesting parallel I think would be the trailer for Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, which gives us an interesting glance at how the Warrior of Light might "canonically" fight (spoilers in the link, obviously), and it involves sword clashes that literally blow away the clouds, attacks whose knockbacks send characters flying hundreds of yards and carving grooves in solid rock, blowing straight through cliffs, performing teleporting jumps hundreds of miles above the ground that might as well amount to flying, and shockwaves that shatter the ground to hundreds of yards.
Meanwhile, the actual gameplay of FFXIV (I picked a video of the fight against the same boss shown in the trailer) consists largely of running to a position and then tapping certain buttons in the right order to perform some light interpretative dancing in the general direction of the boss, then running to a different spot to avoid an AoE and resume interpretative dancing.
There's a layer of mechanical translation at work.
Interestingly I don't think anyone has ever brought up Type 0 when asking which games in the series I would be playing. Is there a particular reason it's not a mainline numbered entry?
Not sure if you managed to explore a bit more here, but if we go to the sandpit where we fought the Antlion, we can find the inn Moogle and Stiltzkin (although I don't know if Stiltzkin's presence here is dependent on having seen him in Cleyra's inn prior).
The Moogle Mopli will turn up again later in the Cathedral (they have a Mognet letter), but I'm mostly bleakly amused by how Stiltzkin is also panicking, since he appears to have arrived in Cleyra during his wanderings just in time for a genocidal invasion.
I did find them! Seeing the cool and unflappable traveler Stiltzkin be rattled definitely added to the "oh we're fucked" dimension of the scene.
While the 宝珠 "houjuu" term does translate to "jewel", I admit I've been thinking about how FFIX has been labelling gems and stones of mystical and plot significance, as I mentioned earlier in this post.
And 宝珠 was one of the descriptions given for the Stones used by the Summoner Tribe in the flashback when Doctor Tot was musing about them.
I'm probably reading far too much into this, and Beatrix probably just called it a "jewel" because it looked like one. But given the overarching plot point about summons, and Odin manifesting at Cleyra, I think it is at least a small coincidence.
Now that's very interesting. You're not reading into it; this is actually foreshadowing for a plot beat that will be revealed shortly, though in order to have that information at the earliest you need to make the sub-optimal decision of going into the wrong direction and waste time talking to NPCs during a timed section that tells you to go as fast as possible or Garnet will die.
This is a major difference between the English and Japanese text.
I'll just write down the general translation of the Japanese text, to illustrate that difference:
Beatrix: "Why did Queen Brahne need to utterly destroy the settlement of Cleyra?" Beatrix: "Why did Queen Brahne use Eidolons and Black Mages?" Beatrix: "I did not polish my skills for this sort of thing."
Beatrix is clearly feeling the moral compunctions for participating in Cleyra's destruction. She still did it, so she bears quite a lot of the blame, but she does go off and soliloquize to herself about "woe is me, what is this pain I am experiencing, could it be guilt".
Later, when the Black Mages are passing by:
Beatrix: "Just like those people without hearts, I too am unable to act for myself." Beatrix: "At this rate, I am no better than the still-missing Steiner."
Apparently Beatrix has not gotten the news that Steiner is in Alexandria's dungeons. Which is notable, since he was being guarded by Alexandrian (female) soldiers, who are presumably part of Beatrix's overall command.
From this monologue, we learn Steiner's sheer inflexible "Just Following Orders" mentality is well-known and notorious in Alexandria, and Beatrix comparing herself to it is humbling. She's going "I've only been following orders without question so far. Who am I, Steiner? Ick."
Which does lead to a fascinating hypothetical: what if Steiner was in Beatrix's place? What if Steiner was commanded to invade Burmecia and Cleyra, and commit genocide on the inhabitants? Would that be enough for Steiner to go "no, that is wrong and I refuse to follow these orders", or would he be like Beatrix, committing atrocities while internally wondering why?
Beatrix, right now, is at the stage of Cecil having invaded Mysidia to loot their Crystal. It is thus far unclear if it would take something like the Bomb Ring At Mist incident for her to finally go "if queen and country demands I do this, then queen and country do not deserve my loyalty". Clearly the devastation inflicted on Cleyra is Bomb Ring level, and Beatrix hasn't denounced Brahne yet, so presumably there are other factors required.
Oh, that is huge. It definitely poises Beatrix as a character who might soon undergo a heel-face turn in a way the EN script doesn't really suggest. If she does turn on Queen Brahne, it might feel like it's coming out of nowhere as a result, and if she ends up committed to her mistaken loyalty it'll be missing a component of her struggling with doubt.
Definitely wondering why the EN translators went that way now.
Imagine if his amnesia had just been Freya-specific, though. We'd be reaching maximal levels of 'God hates this woman specifically and wants her to suffer'.
My very unfair suspicion when I played the game was that Fratley actually skipped town and is only pretending to be amnesiac, because he didn't have a healthy way to actually turn the girl down, couldn't figure out how to say "it's not you, it's me."
Interestingly I don't think anyone has ever brought up Type 0 when asking which games in the series I would be playing. Is there a particular reason it's not a mainline numbered entry?
In my case it's because I completely forgot it existed at the time, tbh.
If I remember right, it's one of the FF games that was created to be a part of the Final Fantasy 13 Cinematic Universe they were trying to make a thing for a while, and when FF13 failed to spawn its own juggernaut of a franchise the associated games were sort of awkwardly shuffled off into their own areas.
Type-0 was also a PSP game, so it not being on one of the big consoles might've had something to do with it?
Thinking on it, I'm curious how well it would work in this thread. I mostly remember the game for a half dozen really interesting ideas and impactful scenes, with the actual connecting gameplay and narrative kind of blurring away. The kind of game that can be interesting to talk about but not so much to play through.
BTW this reminded me of something, "sweet sand" is actually a real thing, in gardening; it's the sand component of soil, which is low in salt, but still has a pH above neutral because of the presence of alkali carbonates, particularly Magnesium and Calcium. (BTW, if you ever see an English-language placename that refers to "sweetwater", it's for the same chemical reasons -- the local groundwater has high permanent hardness from alkali carbonates, but doesn't have much sodium chlorine salt.)
I kind of doubt that this is a direct translation in meaning, since I'm not sure that Japanese has this same semi-archaic use of "sweet" when referring to the ground.
BTW this reminded me of something, "sweet sand" is actually a real thing, in gardening; it's the sand component of soil, which is low in salt, but still has a pH above neutral because of the presence of alkali carbonates, particularly Magnesium and Calcium. (BTW, if you ever see an English-language placename that refers to "sweetwater", it's for the same chemical reasons -- the local groundwater has high permanent hardness from alkali carbonates, but doesn't have much sodium chlorine salt.)
I kind of doubt that this is a direct translation in meaning, since I'm not sure that Japanese has this same semi-archaic use of "sweet" when referring to the ground.
