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

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So, now that we've reached Xande, I can offer my own idea about him without having to worry about spoilers. And yes, the fact that there was really nothing more to him would have been a spoiler in itself.

Anyway, with the multitude of clones laying around in the final dungeon, my idea was that Xande was, actually, a monster like Doga and Unei, and what Noha did was actually turn him human; as for the why, my two big ideas, which actually work together, are that (1) Noah believed Humans get to some form of happy afterlife, which he thought would be preferable to the eternal cycle of reincarnation Unei and Doga are forced into, and (2) that becoming actually human would offer some possibilities to make experiences that the human disguise the others wear wouldn't allow - on the ground that he thought his best student would enjoy having the chance to make other experiences. It feels like the correct amount of cruelty resulting from paternal benevolence that would best fit my read of the situation.

In any case, I do think that the failure to update Xande at all was one of the DS version's biggest mistakes; there's the root of an interesting character here which just needs some good writing and development to be made into one of the most thought-provoking villains in the series, and instead the rewrite was wasted into give individuality to the protagonist group, a much harder and less necessary task, since the group as a whole has actually more characterization than the FFII team did, even if that characterization is shared among the whole team rather than each member having their own personality. Don't get me wrong, a level of rewrite that actually did give the individual group members an identity would have been great, but it would have taken a lot more work than what the DS remake put in, whereas, if the same amount of effort had gone in fleshing out Xande, it could have done a lot for making the end of the game a more interesting experience.

And, speaking of the end of the game!

Terrabrand said:
Definitely don't think any of the first six fit that description.
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So, are you now ready to reconsider this position? As I mentioned at the time, I disagreed, and the first case of that is definitely FFIII; this is, in fact, often considered the Ur-example of the final boss that comes out of nowhere.

Yes, some noise was made that the darkness was a thing Xande was awakening, but nothing in the plot indicated anything of the "hidden villain" sort, and given Xande's character, it would have in fact made much more plot sense if he was planning to absorb the darkness to regain his immortality, which would have led to a perfectly traditional two-stages boss fight. There's some argument to be made that "thematically, the Cloud of Darkness being its own thing is better", but I think that argument is weak; the only reason is to allow Doga to say "Xande was manipulated" which, honestly, is a weak attempt to make the game's main villain not be the direct force, instead being just another example in the game of somebody manipulated into evil by a malicious advisor. Overall, if an edition of the game was made that didn't have the Cloud of Darkness in it, just Xande doing a transformation by absorbing the darkness in himself, nobody who played the game without knowledge of the Cloud of Darkness' existence would even be able to notice that something had been replaced.

So, overall, I remain my case that FFIII is most certainly a game which feature an eleventh hour final villain coming out of nowhere, and one of the first six games in the Final Fantasy series, demonstrating this has been a thing in Final Fantasy for a very long time.

Kadmus said:
If Desch can survive the nuclear furnace, it makes you wonder what the hell actually did the Ancients in.
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The Wrath of Light; we were told this. It's like the Cloud of Darkness, only the colors are reversed.
 
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Egleris said:
So, are you now ready to reconsider this position? As I mentioned at the time, I disagreed, and the first case of that is definitely FFIII; this is, in fact, often considered the Ur-example of the final boss that comes out of nowhere.

Yes, some noise was made that the darkness was a thing Xande was awakening, but nothing in the plot indicated anything of the sort, and given Xande's character, it would have in fact made much more plot sense if he was planning to absorb the darkness to regain his immortality, which would have led to a perfectly traditional two-stages boss fight. There's some argument to be made that "thematically, the Cloud of Darkness being its own thing is better", but I think that argument is weak; the only reason is to allow Doga to say "Xande was manipulated" which, honestly, is a weak attempt to make the game's main villain not be the direct force, instead being just another example in the game of somebody manipulated into evil by a malicious advisor. Overall, if an edition of the game was made that didn't have the Cloud of Darkness in it, just Xande doing a transformation by absorbing the darkness in himself, nobody who played the game without knowledge of the Cloud of Darkness' existence would even be able to notice that something had been replaced.

So, overall, I remain my case that FFIII is most certainly a game which feature an eleventh hour final villain coming out of nowhere, and one of the first six games in the Final Fantasy series, demonstrating this has been a thing in Final Fantasy for a very long time.
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Nope. I just don't agree that this is a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere. *shrug*
 
Rule 3: Be Civil - Accusing someone who you simply disagree with of "denying reality" is simply uncalled for
Terrabrand said:
Nope. I just don't agree that this is a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere. *shrug*
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Fair enough; denying reality is a choice, and there's not really much that can be done to change the mind of people who do. I apologize if my attempt bothered you.
 
Suffice to say, there's a reason his XIV incarnation fused Xande with Emperor Bowie and added a dose of nihilism, rather than playing him straight in a different context the way they did for some of their other cameo characters

There just wasn't enough to work him into the story without adding in another villain to him

Fun fact: Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, a mobile gacha game with every FF character ever in it, didn't bother adding Xande until its third story arc, years into release. Even Desch was added over a year before he was.
 
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Zap Rowsdower said:
Suffice to say, there's a reason his XIV incarnation fused Xande with Emperor Bowie and added a dose of nihilism, rather than playing him straight in a different context the way they did for some of their other cameo characters

There just wasn't enough to work him into the story without adding in another villain to him

Fun fact: Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, a mobile game with every FF character ever in it, didn't bother adding Xande until its third story arc, years into release
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I believe there has been some interviews and talks where a number of the senior staff of FFXIV's development team (I think including Naoki Yoshida) mentioned that FFIII was their favourite Final Fantasy, and to be honest my first reaction is "why though".

Like, I know taste is a personal and subjective thing, but between the original NES problem of not being able to save through the boss gauntlet of the Crystal Tower, and the rather lacking motivations of the alleged final villain Xande, I'm assuming the high regard FFIII is being held in is presumably for non-story reasons.
 
Terrabrand said:
Well the whole Too Much Light thing apparently.

I can only assume this came in the form of the sun itself jumping down to earth and angrily fist fighting them one at a time. :thonk:
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The Wrath of Light would definitely need to be something on this scale, yeah. Or maybe the Sun caught them when they weren't wearing their nuclear-proof jumpsuits?

That or it's some sort of mystical thing that they had no defence against, but the Sun 1v1-ing every single Ancient to death personally is just much funnier.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Suffice to say, there's a reason his XIV incarnation fused Xande with Emperor Bowie and added a dose of nihilism, rather than playing him straight in a different context the way they did for some of their other cameo characters

There just wasn't enough to work him into the story without adding in another villain to him

Fun fact: Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, a mobile gacha game with every FF character ever in it, didn't bother adding Xande until its third story arc, years into release. Even Desch was added over a year before he was.
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Emperor Xande suffers from a similar problem to Original Flavour Xande, which is that he exists as part of a 24-people Alliance Raid storylline, so while there is a lot more background exposition going into his backstory, motives, and current state of mind, as an actual on-screen presence he's there for a two-sentence cutscene (can't be longer, there are 23 other people waiting for you to finish so they can start the gameplay), and maybe some in-combat dialogue that I can never parse because of the disorienting explosion of color and chaos of mechanics I have to focus on to survive, then he dies.

But insofar as his background is fleshed out, he's definitely got more going than OG Xande.
 
Egleris said:
In any case, I do think that the failure to update Xande at all was one of the DS version's biggest mistakes; there's the root of an interesting character here which just needs some good writing and development to be made into one of the most thought-provoking villains in the series, and instead the rewrite was wasted into give individuality to the protagonist group, a much harder and less necessary task, since the group as a whole has actually more characterization than the FFII team did, even if that characterization is shared among the whole team rather than each member having their own personality. Don't get me wrong, a level of rewrite that actually did give the individual group members an identity would have been great, but it would have taken a lot more work than what the DS remake put in, whereas, if the same amount of effort had gone in fleshing out Xande, it could have done a lot for making the end of the game a more interesting experience.
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Personally, if I were writing an FF3 remake? I'd have scrapped the other three Warriors of Light entirely. Instead there's just the one good-hearted orphan - which the original game basically treats the party as anyway - and the other three party members are phantom clones summoned whenever a fight starts.
 
GilliamYaeger said:
Personally, if I were writing an FF3 remake? I'd have scrapped the other three Warriors of Light entirely. Instead there's just the one good-hearted orphan - which the original game basically treats the party as anyway - and the other three party members are phantom clones summoned whenever a fight starts.
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May I say how incredibly funny it is how the orphans of Ur are like, if not children, then at most teenager, and their most emphasized qualities are child-like ones like innocence, kindness, and easiness to bond and form friendships, and other characters' dialogue often emphasizes their youth, meanwhile the mechanics for the latter classes in the game are like "put on this suit of plate armor and pick up these two spears, one of which drinks the blood of your enemies" or "make a pact with this cursed armor in order to wield this blade of darkness to slay demons," and Amano's own idea of what this game's Warrior of Light and friends looks like is this:


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"I heard that the Orphan of Ur has an 8-pack. I heard that he is shredded."
 
Age-wise, the remake describes its named cast as teens, but also has the airship crash too long ago to remember as ten years prior, so that rather firmly puts them at thirteen or fourteen, assuming the Onion Knights are the same age as Luneth et al.
 
Makes sense to me. There's a specific scene I'm going to cover in the next update that lands these characters pretty well in the 13-15 age range for me.
 
The Orphan of Ur there is clearly just Elric of Melniboné, complete with soul-drinking sword.
 
Adloquium said:
I believe there has been some interviews and talks where a number of the senior staff of FFXIV's development team (I think including Naoki Yoshida) mentioned that FFIII was their favourite Final Fantasy, and to be honest my first reaction is "why though".

Like, I know taste is a personal and subjective thing, but between the original NES problem of not being able to save through the boss gauntlet of the Crystal Tower, and the rather lacking motivations of the alleged final villain Xande, I'm assuming the high regard FFIII is being held in is presumably for non-story reasons.
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It might very well be that nostalgia goggles are involved and III was the FF that hit them harder as an overall game, when they were young monkeys playing with their NES.
 
In my experience, your 'favourite Final Fantasy' tends to be the first one you played as a kid, when you were too young to critically analyse it or pick out all the problems and were just amazed at this strange new genre you'd just discovered and the fact games had, like, a cool story and characters and holy shit did you see the size of that guy's sword?

(FF7 was mine, in case you can't tell.)
 
Kadmus said:
In my experience, your 'favourite Final Fantasy' tends to be the first one you played as a kid, when you were too young to critically analyse it or pick out all the problems and were just amazed at this strange new genre you'd just discovered and the fact games had, like, a cool story and characters and holy shit did you see the size of that guy's sword?

(FF7 was mine, in case you can't tell.)
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"So you're telling me this brooding loner with a badass scar and a sweet coat has a sword that is also a gun and he can steal fire magic from his enemy's soul and them bind that fire magic to his fists so he has fire fists and all of that is taking place at a school that teaches you how to be an awesome wizard-soldier?!?"
 
Omicron said:
May I say how incredibly funny it is how the orphans of Ur are like, if not children, then at most teenager, and their most emphasized qualities are child-like ones like innocence, kindness, and easiness to bond and form friendships, and other characters' dialogue often emphasizes their youth, meanwhile the mechanics for the latter classes in the game are like "put on this suit of plate armor and pick up these two spears, one of which drinks the blood of your enemies" or "make a pact with this cursed armor in order to wield this blade of darkness to slay demons,"
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Pretty tangential, but there is a TRPG called Magical Land of Yeld, which is heavily inspired by Final Fantasy (almost uniquely among TRPGs, complete with job system allowing you to switch between classes... in a rather awkward fashion that doesn't take advantage of TRPG as opposed to video game nature of the game) as well as modern portal fantasy cartoons like the Owl House, Amphibia, etc.

So, the basic premise is that you play as young children (ages 7-12*) who got trapped in another world and now must find a way home while wielding powers of legendary heroes.

Most classes are what you'd expect from an FF knock-off. Black Mage, White Mage (who also has summoning), Knight, etc. Some are a lot more edgy, however, considering that you may be seven years old, like soul thief, who gains extra actions by murdering foes and, well, stealing their souls.

And then there is the witch hunter:


This kid has seen some shit. This kid has done some shit

their description includes the following:

A Friend who takes on the Heroic Job of Witch Hunter knows better than to trust the treacherous magics of Yeld. A Witch Hunter knows that a Monster can be killed and that a Vampire Prince is still just a man. These are not the real threats his Friends face. It's magic that has trapped them in Yeld. It's magic that transforms them into Monsters on their thirteenth birthdays! Magic is the enemy!
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They are Not OK.

Anyway, hope it's fine to share here since the game is heavily inspired by FF, so it's sorta on-topic. I know you have some interest in TRPGs, and the Magical Land of Yeld is... interesting to look at, at the very least.

*The game is supposed to take place over years of in-game time, so it's possible to reach age 13 and above. This must be avoided at all costs because reaching 13 years turns you into a monster, and every monster archetype comes with a mechanic that forcefully turns you into the worst players. Such as inability to tell a straightforward truth, even about trivial subjects, without suffering a curse. Jesus fuck, vampires are the best monsters to be even though lore-wise they're the most evil, because they just need to perform a special attack once every couple of days or even harmlessly drink blood from consenting targets.
 
illhousen said:
vampires are the best monsters to be even though lore-wise they're the most evil, because they just need to perform a special attack once every couple of days or even harmlessly drink blood from consenting targets.
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I mean, having never heard of this game before... this seems like it makes perfect sense? If they're those who have the easiest time of all NOT acting evil, and yet they act evil anyway, then any evil vampire would almost by definition be more evil than any other monster who doesn't really have a choice in the matter, surely?
 
Omicron said:
"So you're telling me this brooding loner with a badass scar and a sweet coat has a sword that is also a gun and he can steal fire magic from his enemy's soul and them bind that fire magic to his fists so he has fire fists and all of that is taking place at a school that teaches you how to be an awesome wizard-soldier?!?"
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As an angsty teen taciturn and brooding Squall was well calibrated to appeal to me.

In retrospect I can only be grateful that I went through that phase before Naruto became ubiquitous and entered by awareness, or presumably I may have become a Sasuke fangirl, lamentable fate that that is.

Connelly said:
The Space Flea From Nowhere accusations against the series (at least some of of the games) have irked me since FF9. Sure some are less justifiable than others but one of these days Imma put on paper search for a TED talk about how they are actually appropiate thematic conclusions to the thesis of each main villain, because hot damn most people seem to just stay with the surface reading of "wtf".
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It's less about theming (although sometimes that too), and more about story role. FF absolutely does have a problem with reaching the dramatic climax, the resolution of the story and character arcs, the tragic downfall of the villain...and then fucking Shaun from off-screen shows up, basically because the designers wanted you to have another bossfight, or stretch things out some.

There's a scale to this, obviously. FF3 isn't at the far edge of this, because the Cloud of Darkness was technically mentioned earlier in the game. It's still pretty far over to that side though, given the CoD is not responsible for any of the plot events, has no personal connection to any of the party or their history, or even any npcs, and isn't even a resolution of the villain's arc (inasmuch as he even has one).

You can argue that with how thin the early FF games are on the story front that there wasn't much to work with, and that's true, but it's not like they even made the effort. It's almost a 'Party lucked into beating your boss in one round, so as DM you now have to scramble to pull something out of your ass for them to do instead' moment.
 
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