It's forever the easiest way to get answers to your internet questions, too. Why ask a genuine question about say, history, when you can just go to a history site and start asserting completely wrong facts. You'll be malded into oblivion within minutes, flooded with correct answers and a side of "you ignorant buffoonaramous".Nothing is guaranteed to generate replies faster than being wrong about something on the internet I guess
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
Well, it was -- it was just also a Square title. No worries, though; the name "Super Mario" doesn't exactly scream "Ah, from the Final Fantasy people".foamy said:
Ah, thanks for the confirmation.McFluffles said:
Likewise.
And while his look at FFVII has been and continues to be interesting, I'm still quite eager to see what he makes of VIII and IX.
21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Tecmo's Secret of the Stars, in the corner, crying.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Same, although we need to be patient - there's still quite a lot of game left. I'm really looking forwards to some of it, too - so much interesting stuff coming up.
Unrelated to the above:
Just wanted to say that, in the spirit of internet discourse that was just mentioned, I disagree with most of this. Chrono Trigger has a very peculiar personality as a game that, I feel, doesn't at all match the style of Final Fantasy titles. It's very much its own things, and the amount of stuff that would be necessary to change for me, personally, to consider it a Final Fantasy clone with serial numbers filed off would be so much that the game would be unrecognizable afterwards.
Xenogears is a bit trickier - you'd still need to change a lot of things about it to make it fit the series, but not that much more than you'd need to change to make FFXV a good fit, so I could see the argument on the basis of "well, Square clearly doesn't care about those aspects of the series enough to include them in every title, so it's fine for a Final Fantasy title not to have them", but even with that argument there, some of the late game plot twists are very much against the grain of what Final Fantasy is like. Also, Final Fantasy titles, even pure messes like FFVI, have a level of polish that Xenogears totally lacks. Given that, it barely qualifies as half a Final Fantasy game, and filling in the missing parts in would change the nature of the game enough that it'd probably end up becoming its own thing.
So... my take is that neither of the two is actually really interconnected to the Final Fantasy series, not any more than Vagrant Story is. By wich I mean, some of the same people worked on them (and recycled the occasional name), but that's it. And while Chrono Trigger, like Vagrant Story, is absolutely a masterpiece worth playing for its own merits that I'd recommend without hesitation, and Xenogears is certainly an... let's go with interesting experience to go through, I think none of them is really within the scope of what this thread is about.
I mean, if Omicron wants to make a let's play of any of them, I'd quite likely follow it, but I don't feel this thread would be the right place to post those, they'd each deserve their own separate threads, because they are separate things.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
Oh? Huh. I wonder how much of that is stuff I'm not remembering and how much is stuff I didn't get to at all.Egleris said:
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Usually when I do an update on a single plot beat and it's significantly shorter than a normal update I just keep going with the next parts of the plot, but for this beat I might actually do a short update like I, huh, originally had meant to for Icicle Inn Lore before it spiraled out to 6k words?
AFAIK xenogears was one of the original pitches for FF7 but was rejected for being too dark for a mainline FF. Xenogears also spent time being worked on as a sequel to chrono trigger before it was decided it was too different and Became it's own thing.
Final Fantasy VII, Intermission: Lucrecia's Cave
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game where all evil, inexplicably, eventually, must somehow be traced back to Hojo.
Remember that crater? The one on the Western Continent which was inexplicably formed by… Something, I guess maybe one of the Weapons crashing there? It is actually accessible as early as us getting the submarine, the Black Chocobo just makes reaching it a lot more convenient than locating and navigating an underwater crevice. If it doesn't look like there's anything to investigate there, well then you haven't been paying attention to this Let's Play series - it's an overworld waterfall in a Final Fantasy game, obviously there is something hiding in it. Let's head in…
The moment we enter, a voice echoes, calling out the names "Sephiroth" and "Vincent." Nothing else happens, but that makes it pretty obvious what the next step is - we head out, call Vincent on the PHS and shuffle our party to include him, then head back in.
And there we go. Many hours after joining the party, Vincent is at last getting some dedicated writing. And what writing it is.
Lucrecia, the woman he loved, is curled up in fetal position on the pedestal at the end of the cave - which looks like a place that was built on purpose, as some kind of shrine? When she sees him, she stands up and says his name with surprise.
Vincent rushes towards Lucrecia, but as she does she shouts 'Stay back!' and there's a great flash of light - and then we are exposed to a new flashback. Once again, as so often, to Nibelheim.
We're clearly looking at a younger, pre-vampirification Vincent, sporting the standard Turk suit. We can see him accompany Lucrecia into the Shinra Mansion, then talking to her, then him trying to hold Lucrecia's hand, her wresting away from him, and running from him crying while he just stands there struck speechless. From what we know of Vincent's story, this is most likely the period of time during which he was trying to convince Lucrecia not to go through with the Sephiroth project. This was clearly emotional for the both of them - it's unclear if they were ever a couple but this was more than a secret unrequited love from a colleague in a professional relationship, those two had some kind of feelings for one another and the argument over the Sephiroth project grew passionate and emotionally fraught.
I'm speculating here about their relationship at this stage because the next beat is one of the most hilarious slaps to the face the game has delivered so far, because Lucrecia follows this up by finding comfort and reassurance in the arms of another man than Vincent…
FUCKING HOJO???
HOW
WHY
HOW DOES THAT GREASY FUCK-
Oh my god the beach scene was set-up. It was meant to establish "Hojo is inexplicably attractive to women in defiance of all sense or reason." Everything. EVERYTHING comes back to Hojo!!
This is the worst twist in the history of the game. I hate it. It's hilarious. It's awful. I don't even know what to say.
Flashback!Vincent has his first explicit words, which are "If she's happy then… I don't mind," followed by…
…
Okay. I want to be clear about what's happening here. First, in the shot above, we see Lucrecia, sitting at her desk, rubbing her belly. This is, very clearly, meant to convey the idea that Lucrecia, in that shot, is pregnant. Then, we have Vincent berating Lucrecia and Hojo, saying that experimenting on humans is wrong and that he is 'against' whatever they're going to do next, to which Hojo says 'she and I are both scientists." Then, another fade to black, and Vincent informs us that 'after that, a child was born to Lucrecia… That child's name was Sephiroth…'
I want to be clear about the order of events here.
Because it means that Lucrecia first became pregnant while in a relationship with Hojo, then engaged in the Sephiroth Project to modify her unborn child.
Which means Sephiroth isn't a clone, he wasn't produced from Jenova's cells through artificial insemination. He's a normal human fetus that was modified in utero.
Hojo is Sephiroth's biological dad.
I… Why. Why would you do this to me.
I'm never going to be able to take Sephiroth seriously again. I'm sorry. I can't treat as a legitimate threat to the universe Hojo's son from Vincent Valentine's cuck arc. This is a bad doujin character. No. I refuse. The luster has been destroyed. He will never be cool again.
God. What a twist.
Anyway, we see a scene of Lucrecia walking into her room and then falling over, I'm not sure why, and then Vincent and Hojo are arguing, things get heated, and Hojo shoots Vincent with some kind of tranquilizer gun or sleeping gas or whatever.
Next, Hojo does his experiments on Vincent, who later wakes up, alone, in the basement; Vincent shakes his fists at the skies, screaming in helpless anger.
Vincent: "This body is… a punishment that's been given to me… I was unable… To stop Professor Gast and Hojo… And Lucrecia… I was unable to stop them… All that I was able to do was watch… That is my punishment."
I don't even know what about Vincent's body is meant to be a 'punishment.' Like, the game genuinely never tells us. I call him a 'vampire' because of aesthetic similarities but at no point is there any indication that he has some issue like needing to drink blood or whatever. His concept art makes him look like a conventionally attractive if goth young man. He can fly. What's supposed to be wrong with him? You have to actually tell us that.
Also 'all that I was able to do was watch' you're not fooling me game you know exactly what you're doing-
Wait a minute.
Vincent wasn't sealed in the coffin. Way back in that letter, Hojo said that he had 'put him to sleep and left him in the basement.' I thought that meant Vincent had been put in hibernation in the coffin, but… No. Hojo appears to have done Wacky Science to him and then just… Left him alone. To wake up in the basement. Unguarded.
Now, sure, the basement was locked and Vincent might not have been strong enough to break out, but.
That was thirty years ago. The Shinra Mansion basement saw use at multiple times since then. The Nibelheim Incident happened there! It's where Hojo kept Cloud and Zack for five years! Hojo did, in fact, come back to Nibelheim.
Vincent slept through all of it. Nobody forced him to. Nobody put him in the coffin. He just saw he was locked in the basement, shrugged, went "ah well," went into the coffin and then slept through the next thirty years including his hated nemesis coming back and just hanging out, five feet from his door.
Wait. Except not. That can't be the case because Vincent managed to swap from a Turk uniform to his My Chemical Romance costume. So he was active in some capacity, at some point during that time???
I chose to believe that Vincent did in fact manage to escape the basement, had his Vampire Arc, but failed to find and take revenge on Hojo, got shot with tranquilizers again, and then got put back in the Shinra Mansion basement and he's not bringing it up because it's embarrassing and the whole endeavour amounted to nothing in the end. You could honestly fit a whole prequel spin-off game in the narrative space of "Vincent leaves the basement, comes to grips with his monstrous side, starts listening to The Sisters of Mercy, and is eventually sealed in the basement, choosing not to resist because his actions have led him to believe he is a sinner unworthy of freedom."
God, this flashback has been two minutes long and it's already managed to assassinate two whole characters.
Anyway, back to the present.
Vincent: "Lucrecia… You're alive…"
Lucrecia: "I wanted to disappear… I couldn't be with anyone… I wanted to die…"
Lucrecia: "But the Jenova inside me wouldn't let me die…"
Lucrecia: "Lately, I dream a lot of Sephiroth. My dear, dear child. Ever since he was born I never got to hold him… Not even once. You can't call me his mother… That… is my sin…"
[Vincent tries to approach and Lucrecia shouts.]
Lucrecia: "Back!! Stay back!"
Lucrecia: "Vincent… Won't you please tell me?"
Vincent: "What?"
Lucrecia: "If Sephiroth is still alive? I heard that he died five years ago, but I see him in my dreams so often… And I know that physically, like myself, he can't die so easily. Please, Vincent, tell me…"
[Cloud steps up to answer, but Vincent interrupts him.]
Vincent: "Lucrecia… Sephiroth is dead…"
Fade to black, and we are outside of the cave.
…
What the fuck is going on here.
Like, what happened to Lucrecia. What is this cave. What is she doing in there. Is she trapped? Did someone put her there? Did she put herself there? She mentions never getting to even hold Sephiroth, and we know that Sephiroth thought his mother was a woman called 'Jenova' who died in childbirth, so one can presume that Gast, Hojo or both took Sephiroth away immediately after birth to raise him as an experimental super-soldier rather than an actual child, but then what happened to Lucrecia? I could see Hojo getting rid of her or using her as an experimental subject because he never actually cared about her, but not Gast, right? How did she get to this cave? Is she bound inside it, or can she leave and chooses not to? The 'dreams of Sephiroth' are clearly the Jenova Frequency reaching her, although Sephiroth didn't appear to be aware of her existence at any point, so it's more the passive attraction exerted on Copies rather than his active intrusion into Cloud's dreams, but notably she didn't leave her cave to follow the call to the North Crater.
Wait, she said she 'heard' he was killed five years ago. So clearly she continues to have some kind of human contact. So I guess she does leave her cave from time to time?
I have no idea what is going on here.
I expected Vincent's personal quest to find Lucrecia to amount to a little more than 'one cutscene in a missable cave,' to be frank. Yuffie had far more. Cid had more. Cait Sith too! The fact that all of it is this one flashback and this one brief discussion is so - the entirety of Lucrecia's Cave from start to finish takes three minutes to go through.
Honestly, it just feels like unfinished content? It feels like Vincent's side story was supposed to be bigger and have more answers in it, that there was supposed to be something to dig into with Sephiroth's mother and the fact that he's Hojo's son, but they didn't have time to finish it in time for release so they just grabbed what they had and shoved it into a hidden cave as hidden bonus content.
If we go back inside the cave afterwards, Lucrecia isn't there anymore, the cave is empty.
Did… did Vincent kill her to release her from her state of Jenova-induced perpetual life that she doesn't seem to want? Is that what's happening?
I could try and take this and turn it into further Wild Speculation Hour. The problem is I don't want to? My entire reaction to this can be summed as "BUT WHY." Those are my true and profound feelings. Gast and Ifalna's house in Icicle Inn at least gave a number of conclusive answers and more informations about other mysteries. Lucrecia's Cave only raises more questions.
And the information I have… is that Hojo… is Sephiroth's dad.
That is enough Final Fantasy for today. I usually keep these going until I hit full update length but… No.
I am going to let all of you sit with this one for a bit like I had to.
Hojo.
Thank you for r-
…
WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE.
Jenova is consistently gendered as female and Sephiroth believes she is his mother, and while Lucrecia is his biological mother, in a sense Jenova is also his mother, directly contributing her genetics to him.
So.
Hojo and Jenova-through-Lucrecia had a son.
Gast and Ifalna, the last Ancient, had a daughter.
Hojo, who is fundamentally a parasitic being who feeds off the innovations, discoveries, and bodies of others around him, had a child with Jenova, the parasitic infiltrator from outer space. Gast, the scientist who tried (howevermuch he failed in the end, due to acting on incorrect information) to find harmony between human thriving and the life of the Planet, had a child with Ifalna, the last of the Cetra, a people defined by their symbiotic relationship with the Planet with which they lived in harmony.
All of this. THIS ENTIRE THING. Is a cyclical repetition of the conflict thousands of years ago.
Jenova destroys the Cetra. Sephiroth kills Aerith.
But her death is not the end, because all of this - the entire plot of the game - is about them. About Sephiroth and Aerith. About Gast and Hojo's proxy war over whose worldview and outlook on the nature and purpose of science is the worthier one. Yes, Sephiroth did kill Aerith, but that was never the end - right now Aerith's friends are all headed to the City of the Ancients to find what Aerith was doing, to work out her plan and finish it for her, to win the victory she set into motion and couldn't finish.
This whole thing is Hojo and Jenova's son and Gast and Ifalna's daughter fighting to bring a final resolution to the conflict that started three thousand years ago between Jenova and the Cetra. It's all been Aerith vs Sephiroth, this whole time, even after her death. Sephiroth killed her boyfriend and now the new boy bearing his memories is going to kill him for her. Even in freedom and self-actualization, Cloud remains the instrument of a higher design, only this one wants the best for him.
I hate this. I hate that it makes sense. I hate that it is actually a coherent theme. Because that means I can't even be mad about Hojo being Sephiroth's dad even though I AM EXTREMELY MAD ABOUT IT.
…
What does it say about this story and its themes that women are always victims? Lucrecia, fooled into loving Hojo, used as a mere vessel to bear Sephiroth. Ifalna, an escaped science experiment who died seeking freedom. Aerith, who was beginning to look towards the future and was on the verge of saving the Planet before being brutally murdered. Even Jenova, the engine between all these tragedies, is a corpse in a vat whose alien intelligence is presented to us only through the medium of Sephiroth, with the question of who is truly in control left deliberately ambiguous - but either way, Jenova doesn't have a voice; even under the most extreme interpretation of Sephiroth as Jenova's finger-puppet with an atavistic grudge against Cloud, he's still the one speaking for her. Also? We're going to murder whatever's left of her by the end of the game anyway. Is this a commentary on patriarchal power structures and the use and abuse of women by men with ambition and ruthlessness, or an unconscious replication of these same patterns? I don't have the answer to that question.
Lucrecia's Cave is a baffling sequence with unexplained twists that raises more questions than it answers and most of these questions are probably never going to be answered and any speculation is mostly just making shit up because the whole thing feels half-baked and unfinished, and also it contains one of the most important elements to the core thematic throughline of the game that reveals what the entire story has been about, AND IT'S A FUCKING MISSABLE HIDDEN CUTSCENE AGAIN.
Alright. That's enough. My third eye has been opened. I have seen the shape of the Wheel.
I'm going to bed.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: We resume the actual plot.
Remember that crater? The one on the Western Continent which was inexplicably formed by… Something, I guess maybe one of the Weapons crashing there? It is actually accessible as early as us getting the submarine, the Black Chocobo just makes reaching it a lot more convenient than locating and navigating an underwater crevice. If it doesn't look like there's anything to investigate there, well then you haven't been paying attention to this Let's Play series - it's an overworld waterfall in a Final Fantasy game, obviously there is something hiding in it. Let's head in…
The moment we enter, a voice echoes, calling out the names "Sephiroth" and "Vincent." Nothing else happens, but that makes it pretty obvious what the next step is - we head out, call Vincent on the PHS and shuffle our party to include him, then head back in.
And there we go. Many hours after joining the party, Vincent is at last getting some dedicated writing. And what writing it is.
Lucrecia, the woman he loved, is curled up in fetal position on the pedestal at the end of the cave - which looks like a place that was built on purpose, as some kind of shrine? When she sees him, she stands up and says his name with surprise.
Vincent rushes towards Lucrecia, but as she does she shouts 'Stay back!' and there's a great flash of light - and then we are exposed to a new flashback. Once again, as so often, to Nibelheim.
We're clearly looking at a younger, pre-vampirification Vincent, sporting the standard Turk suit. We can see him accompany Lucrecia into the Shinra Mansion, then talking to her, then him trying to hold Lucrecia's hand, her wresting away from him, and running from him crying while he just stands there struck speechless. From what we know of Vincent's story, this is most likely the period of time during which he was trying to convince Lucrecia not to go through with the Sephiroth project. This was clearly emotional for the both of them - it's unclear if they were ever a couple but this was more than a secret unrequited love from a colleague in a professional relationship, those two had some kind of feelings for one another and the argument over the Sephiroth project grew passionate and emotionally fraught.
I'm speculating here about their relationship at this stage because the next beat is one of the most hilarious slaps to the face the game has delivered so far, because Lucrecia follows this up by finding comfort and reassurance in the arms of another man than Vincent…
FUCKING HOJO???
HOW
WHY
HOW DOES THAT GREASY FUCK-
Oh my god the beach scene was set-up. It was meant to establish "Hojo is inexplicably attractive to women in defiance of all sense or reason." Everything. EVERYTHING comes back to Hojo!!
This is the worst twist in the history of the game. I hate it. It's hilarious. It's awful. I don't even know what to say.
Flashback!Vincent has his first explicit words, which are "If she's happy then… I don't mind," followed by…
…
Okay. I want to be clear about what's happening here. First, in the shot above, we see Lucrecia, sitting at her desk, rubbing her belly. This is, very clearly, meant to convey the idea that Lucrecia, in that shot, is pregnant. Then, we have Vincent berating Lucrecia and Hojo, saying that experimenting on humans is wrong and that he is 'against' whatever they're going to do next, to which Hojo says 'she and I are both scientists." Then, another fade to black, and Vincent informs us that 'after that, a child was born to Lucrecia… That child's name was Sephiroth…'
I want to be clear about the order of events here.
Because it means that Lucrecia first became pregnant while in a relationship with Hojo, then engaged in the Sephiroth Project to modify her unborn child.
Which means Sephiroth isn't a clone, he wasn't produced from Jenova's cells through artificial insemination. He's a normal human fetus that was modified in utero.
Hojo is Sephiroth's biological dad.
I… Why. Why would you do this to me.
I'm never going to be able to take Sephiroth seriously again. I'm sorry. I can't treat as a legitimate threat to the universe Hojo's son from Vincent Valentine's cuck arc. This is a bad doujin character. No. I refuse. The luster has been destroyed. He will never be cool again.
God. What a twist.
Anyway, we see a scene of Lucrecia walking into her room and then falling over, I'm not sure why, and then Vincent and Hojo are arguing, things get heated, and Hojo shoots Vincent with some kind of tranquilizer gun or sleeping gas or whatever.
Next, Hojo does his experiments on Vincent, who later wakes up, alone, in the basement; Vincent shakes his fists at the skies, screaming in helpless anger.
Vincent: "This body is… a punishment that's been given to me… I was unable… To stop Professor Gast and Hojo… And Lucrecia… I was unable to stop them… All that I was able to do was watch… That is my punishment."
I don't even know what about Vincent's body is meant to be a 'punishment.' Like, the game genuinely never tells us. I call him a 'vampire' because of aesthetic similarities but at no point is there any indication that he has some issue like needing to drink blood or whatever. His concept art makes him look like a conventionally attractive if goth young man. He can fly. What's supposed to be wrong with him? You have to actually tell us that.
Also 'all that I was able to do was watch' you're not fooling me game you know exactly what you're doing-
Wait a minute.
Vincent wasn't sealed in the coffin. Way back in that letter, Hojo said that he had 'put him to sleep and left him in the basement.' I thought that meant Vincent had been put in hibernation in the coffin, but… No. Hojo appears to have done Wacky Science to him and then just… Left him alone. To wake up in the basement. Unguarded.
Now, sure, the basement was locked and Vincent might not have been strong enough to break out, but.
That was thirty years ago. The Shinra Mansion basement saw use at multiple times since then. The Nibelheim Incident happened there! It's where Hojo kept Cloud and Zack for five years! Hojo did, in fact, come back to Nibelheim.
Vincent slept through all of it. Nobody forced him to. Nobody put him in the coffin. He just saw he was locked in the basement, shrugged, went "ah well," went into the coffin and then slept through the next thirty years including his hated nemesis coming back and just hanging out, five feet from his door.
Wait. Except not. That can't be the case because Vincent managed to swap from a Turk uniform to his My Chemical Romance costume. So he was active in some capacity, at some point during that time???
I chose to believe that Vincent did in fact manage to escape the basement, had his Vampire Arc, but failed to find and take revenge on Hojo, got shot with tranquilizers again, and then got put back in the Shinra Mansion basement and he's not bringing it up because it's embarrassing and the whole endeavour amounted to nothing in the end. You could honestly fit a whole prequel spin-off game in the narrative space of "Vincent leaves the basement, comes to grips with his monstrous side, starts listening to The Sisters of Mercy, and is eventually sealed in the basement, choosing not to resist because his actions have led him to believe he is a sinner unworthy of freedom."
God, this flashback has been two minutes long and it's already managed to assassinate two whole characters.
Anyway, back to the present.
Vincent: "Lucrecia… You're alive…"
Lucrecia: "I wanted to disappear… I couldn't be with anyone… I wanted to die…"
Lucrecia: "But the Jenova inside me wouldn't let me die…"
Lucrecia: "Lately, I dream a lot of Sephiroth. My dear, dear child. Ever since he was born I never got to hold him… Not even once. You can't call me his mother… That… is my sin…"
[Vincent tries to approach and Lucrecia shouts.]
Lucrecia: "Back!! Stay back!"
Lucrecia: "Vincent… Won't you please tell me?"
Vincent: "What?"
Lucrecia: "If Sephiroth is still alive? I heard that he died five years ago, but I see him in my dreams so often… And I know that physically, like myself, he can't die so easily. Please, Vincent, tell me…"
[Cloud steps up to answer, but Vincent interrupts him.]
Vincent: "Lucrecia… Sephiroth is dead…"
Fade to black, and we are outside of the cave.
…
What the fuck is going on here.
Like, what happened to Lucrecia. What is this cave. What is she doing in there. Is she trapped? Did someone put her there? Did she put herself there? She mentions never getting to even hold Sephiroth, and we know that Sephiroth thought his mother was a woman called 'Jenova' who died in childbirth, so one can presume that Gast, Hojo or both took Sephiroth away immediately after birth to raise him as an experimental super-soldier rather than an actual child, but then what happened to Lucrecia? I could see Hojo getting rid of her or using her as an experimental subject because he never actually cared about her, but not Gast, right? How did she get to this cave? Is she bound inside it, or can she leave and chooses not to? The 'dreams of Sephiroth' are clearly the Jenova Frequency reaching her, although Sephiroth didn't appear to be aware of her existence at any point, so it's more the passive attraction exerted on Copies rather than his active intrusion into Cloud's dreams, but notably she didn't leave her cave to follow the call to the North Crater.
Wait, she said she 'heard' he was killed five years ago. So clearly she continues to have some kind of human contact. So I guess she does leave her cave from time to time?
I have no idea what is going on here.
I expected Vincent's personal quest to find Lucrecia to amount to a little more than 'one cutscene in a missable cave,' to be frank. Yuffie had far more. Cid had more. Cait Sith too! The fact that all of it is this one flashback and this one brief discussion is so - the entirety of Lucrecia's Cave from start to finish takes three minutes to go through.
Honestly, it just feels like unfinished content? It feels like Vincent's side story was supposed to be bigger and have more answers in it, that there was supposed to be something to dig into with Sephiroth's mother and the fact that he's Hojo's son, but they didn't have time to finish it in time for release so they just grabbed what they had and shoved it into a hidden cave as hidden bonus content.
If we go back inside the cave afterwards, Lucrecia isn't there anymore, the cave is empty.
Did… did Vincent kill her to release her from her state of Jenova-induced perpetual life that she doesn't seem to want? Is that what's happening?
I could try and take this and turn it into further Wild Speculation Hour. The problem is I don't want to? My entire reaction to this can be summed as "BUT WHY." Those are my true and profound feelings. Gast and Ifalna's house in Icicle Inn at least gave a number of conclusive answers and more informations about other mysteries. Lucrecia's Cave only raises more questions.
And the information I have… is that Hojo… is Sephiroth's dad.
That is enough Final Fantasy for today. I usually keep these going until I hit full update length but… No.
I am going to let all of you sit with this one for a bit like I had to.
Hojo.
Thank you for r-
…
WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE.
Jenova is consistently gendered as female and Sephiroth believes she is his mother, and while Lucrecia is his biological mother, in a sense Jenova is also his mother, directly contributing her genetics to him.
So.
Hojo and Jenova-through-Lucrecia had a son.
Gast and Ifalna, the last Ancient, had a daughter.
Hojo, who is fundamentally a parasitic being who feeds off the innovations, discoveries, and bodies of others around him, had a child with Jenova, the parasitic infiltrator from outer space. Gast, the scientist who tried (howevermuch he failed in the end, due to acting on incorrect information) to find harmony between human thriving and the life of the Planet, had a child with Ifalna, the last of the Cetra, a people defined by their symbiotic relationship with the Planet with which they lived in harmony.
All of this. THIS ENTIRE THING. Is a cyclical repetition of the conflict thousands of years ago.
Jenova destroys the Cetra. Sephiroth kills Aerith.
But her death is not the end, because all of this - the entire plot of the game - is about them. About Sephiroth and Aerith. About Gast and Hojo's proxy war over whose worldview and outlook on the nature and purpose of science is the worthier one. Yes, Sephiroth did kill Aerith, but that was never the end - right now Aerith's friends are all headed to the City of the Ancients to find what Aerith was doing, to work out her plan and finish it for her, to win the victory she set into motion and couldn't finish.
This whole thing is Hojo and Jenova's son and Gast and Ifalna's daughter fighting to bring a final resolution to the conflict that started three thousand years ago between Jenova and the Cetra. It's all been Aerith vs Sephiroth, this whole time, even after her death. Sephiroth killed her boyfriend and now the new boy bearing his memories is going to kill him for her. Even in freedom and self-actualization, Cloud remains the instrument of a higher design, only this one wants the best for him.
I hate this. I hate that it makes sense. I hate that it is actually a coherent theme. Because that means I can't even be mad about Hojo being Sephiroth's dad even though I AM EXTREMELY MAD ABOUT IT.
…
What does it say about this story and its themes that women are always victims? Lucrecia, fooled into loving Hojo, used as a mere vessel to bear Sephiroth. Ifalna, an escaped science experiment who died seeking freedom. Aerith, who was beginning to look towards the future and was on the verge of saving the Planet before being brutally murdered. Even Jenova, the engine between all these tragedies, is a corpse in a vat whose alien intelligence is presented to us only through the medium of Sephiroth, with the question of who is truly in control left deliberately ambiguous - but either way, Jenova doesn't have a voice; even under the most extreme interpretation of Sephiroth as Jenova's finger-puppet with an atavistic grudge against Cloud, he's still the one speaking for her. Also? We're going to murder whatever's left of her by the end of the game anyway. Is this a commentary on patriarchal power structures and the use and abuse of women by men with ambition and ruthlessness, or an unconscious replication of these same patterns? I don't have the answer to that question.
Lucrecia's Cave is a baffling sequence with unexplained twists that raises more questions than it answers and most of these questions are probably never going to be answered and any speculation is mostly just making shit up because the whole thing feels half-baked and unfinished, and also it contains one of the most important elements to the core thematic throughline of the game that reveals what the entire story has been about, AND IT'S A FUCKING MISSABLE HIDDEN CUTSCENE AGAIN.
Alright. That's enough. My third eye has been opened. I have seen the shape of the Wheel.
I'm going to bed.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: We resume the actual plot.
Muhkat Lomorki
Draconic Sorcerer
Hojo and Vincent are basically this but in reverse:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEwj1ZR5EGo
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEwj1ZR5EGo
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Sure it does -- it gives him kindof bad limit breaks that take control away from you, the player (and implicitly, from Vincent). Being trapped in your own body while it berserker-rage-transforms into horrific monsters and does unspeakable things outside your control is bad.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
he could just not get into deadly life-or-death fights that trigger his uncontrollable beast rage
maybe set up a coffee shop or something
Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
I think the most interesting thing about this flashback is how it changes the relationship between Cloud and Sephiroth. Because, all along, Sephiroth wasn't some genetic uber baby made in a tube from an ancient alien. He's just a completely normal person, one with probably the worst genetics imaginable since he's fucking Hojo's son. Hell, he's little different than Cloud now that they've both had Jenova juice injected into them.
His delusions of grandeur have never had any basis in reality.
His delusions of grandeur have never had any basis in reality.
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I absolutely love that Sephiroth is presented as this ultimate cool bishie villain with the impractical sword, long white hair, and cryptic dialogue, and then the game systematically works to shatter that viewpoint into a billion pieces. He's not cool, he's Hojo's NTR fetish baby who spends the entire game malding over some dork nobody ganking him five years ago. It's just, it's magnificent. He truly is one of the villains of all time.
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
With what we see shopkeeps in this game get up to? Down that road does not lie a peaceful life.
Kemayo
A Certain Cheerful Tone Of Voice
- Location
- Missouri
I dunno, having to deal with customers might not help one avoid the beast-rage.
I mean, either Hojo has some kind of dark and inexplicable sexual charisma, or there's a subset of women on the Planet with just, apocalyptically shit taste.
It's still horribly funny either way.
It's still horribly funny either way.
- Pronouns
- Him/He
Probably just your typical average-for-the-time misogyny. You've mentioned before how good Tifa and Aerith actually are as characters and how they very much don't really fit the archtypes that women are still forced into for so much of media, but 'surprisingly good for it's time' doesn't mean it doesn't fall into tropes about assumed agency and narrative focus. Much like FF6, the times it does hit makes it more glaring when it then misses on issues and just reverts to average on things.
I know it's terrible storytelling, but I love it in the way you love half-baked movies where you can pick apart where they had to half ass a scene because of weather or reshoots or actor scheduling issues.
Plus, the sense of actually discovering something you know you could have missed that ties in directly with the actual plot is something only video games can really do. Having side quests be, well, side content not required to get what's going on makes sense if you want to ensure everyone actually gets the story your telling, but doing three seemingly unrelated optional things (Get Vincent and the related puzzles, get a way to get to the cave, actually finding it and investigating purely because you might find something) to find this out is an amazing feeling.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Remake further foreshadows this twist by modeling Hojo and Sephiroth's faces very similarly.
It's not immediately obvious, because Sephiroth is young and pretty and white haired while you can smell Hojo's hair dye through your screen, but looking at the structure of the cheeks, the lips, and their hairline reveals the hidden relation.
Sephiroth looks a sculpted version of his father, one filled out by a master artisan trying to make an ugly client look good lest they get their head cut off.
It's not immediately obvious, because Sephiroth is young and pretty and white haired while you can smell Hojo's hair dye through your screen, but looking at the structure of the cheeks, the lips, and their hairline reveals the hidden relation.
Sephiroth looks a sculpted version of his father, one filled out by a master artisan trying to make an ugly client look good lest they get their head cut off.
I mean, you're kind of ignoring Cloud, Cloud-but-with-black-hair, etc.
- Location
- Australia
Yeah, if I had what happened to Vincent happen to me, I'd stick to that coffin and patiently wait until everyone who ever knew me died of old age before I ever thought of putting my face back into society again.