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

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Omicron said:
He's proud, conceited, ashamed at the same time; perpetually consumed by loneliness and social awkwardness and embarrassment. He has none of the stability or happiness or peace that White or Green bring. All the inventivity of Blue, the ruthless power of Black, and the fiery determination of Red are combined in his ideal model of himself and it's driving him miserable. But he is very, very good at killing things.
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I'd argue that Squall isn't very Blue at all. Unless it directly pertains to his mission, he really has no desire for extra information and knowledge. Even when it does pertain, he often isn't particularly interested. Squall is, however, very White, even - perhaps especially as a New SeeD. New SeeD Squall wants everything to fit into nice, organized categories: Enemies are enemies, and the why doesn't matter. They go in the box. Superiors are superiors and to be obeyed, subordinates are subordinate and to do the obeying. Arguably, Early Squall is pure White, shading into Boros towards the midpoint.

As for other FFVIII Characters ...

Zell is Blue/Red. Very pure Izzet, a whole lot of passion and a whole lot of knowledge, good with his hands and machines.

Selphie ... maybe pure Red? Not sure what else says, "I'm gonna drive this train full of rocket launchers off the tracks and see where it takes me!"

Quistis is definitely some flavor of Blue/x. Not Black, probably not Green. Don't know that she fits pure Blue, but she might.

Seifer is Red/Black in all its selfish, romantic glory.

Rinoa is Red, maybe Red/Green?

Laguna is definitely Red, might be Red/Blue.

Kiros is Blue ... maybe a combo?

Ward doesn't get a whole lot of screentime, but ... maybe White?


FFVIII, as a teen romance, is going to like its Red characters, so you could argue that all the younger characters are Red/x.
 
NotYourParents said:
Yeah, I think Jenova is too close to the Eldrazi in concept and even action sometimes for me to see them as anything but Colorless. Note I'm not a Magic guy and don't have too much experience, but it feels right to me.
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The Eldrazi are implied to have some ineffable cosmic purpose, Jenova is just some fucker who eats planets. She's physically weird but her motivations fit within normal circle of life, predator-parasite stuff the color pie represents all the time, just on a grandiose scale.
 
On the Villians side I would argue that Kefka, the man that no longer is a man, is Red/Black, impulse, power given form selfish, but he has no deeper desire , just destruction for its own sake as he lashes out. While he has the hints of white in how he presents himself and blue in how he empowers himself, those are just trappings, not what he is about.
 
FelOnyx said:
The Eldrazi are implied to have some ineffable cosmic purpose, Jenova is just some fucker who eats planets. She's physically weird but her motivations fit within normal circle of life, predator-parasite stuff the color pie represents all the time, just on a grandiose scale.
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Though I feel like "ineffable cosmic purpose" does usually end up boiling down to "some fucker who eats planets."
 
Dekutulla said:
colorless isn't eldritch, and eldritch isn't colorless. the eldrazi are colorless for very specific, unique reasons
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Normal generic colorless costs aren't. But the specific mandatory colorless symbols are, to my knowledge, only used for Eldrazi and so definitely have a that vibe of being separate from the normal colors. They are somehow alien, which is what I was going for in suggesting the same for Jenova as a big thing for her is how alien she is.
 
cB557 said:
Though I feel like "ineffable cosmic purpose" does usually end up boiling down to "some fucker who eats planets."
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Pretty much it's just "they also make new planets!"

Which isn't that ineffable really but as long as they don't come out and directly say that that's the entirety of their deal it it's easy to fill in some vague greater deepness.
 
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Cosar said:
Normal generic colorless costs aren't. But the specific mandatory colorless symbols are, to my knowledge, only used for Eldrazi and so definitely have a that vibe of being separate from the normal colors. They are somehow alien, which is what I was going for in suggesting the same for Jenova as a big thing for her is how alien she is.
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this is wrong. wingdings aren't exclusively for eldrazi, eldrazi are just the most common wingding users.

 
Egleris said:
- Where the English translation says that Artemisia is "fearful", the Italian translation use a terms that would be better understood as "fearsome"; I suspect this is some Japanese' word with multiple meaning, with the different translations emphasizing different aspects.
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No, just a straight mistranslation. The word is 恐ろしい, which directly translates as "frightening" or "fearsome". I don't know where the English translation gets "fearful" from.

Egleris said:
- Amusingly, the scene of the movie that Laguna is shooting is renamed to "witch's despair", rather than the English "death of the witch".
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The Japanese text is 魔女絶体絶命, which translates to "the sorceress's last stand", in the sense of being cornered desperately with no hope of escape. (Yes, technically "witch", but I'm using FFVIII's insistence on "sorceress" for 魔女.) "Death of the Sorceress" is a valid localization, but perhaps extrapolating a bit further than intended.

Also there's no quotation marks for that phrase, which makes me think it's less the title of the scene, and more just a quick description of the scene, which is properly just "Scene 12".
 
Fearful can also means "which incites fear," as in "a fearful storm." It's not a mistranslation, just a word that could be misinterpreted, but from the context it seemed apparent to me that it was used as synonymous with "fearsome."

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hand of the living god, etc.
 
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Entropy Judge said:
Rinoa is Red, maybe Red/Green?
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I'd say probably pure Red. Rinoa's impulsive and passionate to the point where I don't really feel she has that much of the chilling effect of White's focus on order and community or Green's harmony and peace with nature. Maybe you could make a case for these if she talked more specifically about her motives for joining the Forest Owls, but she doesn't, and so for all we know she just decided to commit terrorism out of a combination of a personal need to prove herself and just really feeling in her heart that it was the right thng to do.

After she becomes a Sorceress, I could see Izzet with the Blue only just being there to represent her magical powers and push her into the spellslinging colors. And of course she's Partners with a Boros or Rakdos Squall who gets buffed by all the spells she's throwing around.
 
My Cid list
1: not a real person. Only shows up in Dissidia, where he spends most of his time disguised as a moogle.

2: Blue/White, pretending to be Blue/Black. Engineer who helps refugees and defends against evil empire, knight of a fallen kingdom, pretending to only be in it for the money

3: Blue, solid blue. Blue. He's an engineer. Thats... about all you get.

4. Blue/Red. Genius inventor, driven by intense passions and mad whims, cares more about the people he's emotionally close to than little things like "politics" or "broader geopolitical implications of his inventions" or "profit".

5. Blue/White. Genius inventor, cares deeply about doing the right thing and something of a natural leader

6. Blue/Black, more Black than Blue. Adds some Red later when his love for his adoptive granddaughter starts overriding his fascist loyalties.

7. Black/Red. Selfish ass driven by his passions, not nearly as much of an engineer as his predecessors (he's a pilot instead)

8. Mono-White. Bureaucrat and military leader, also not really an engineer (he provides the airship via historical knowledge instead)

9. Blue/White. Kingly leader and genius engineer.

10. Blue/White/Red. Gearhead, leader, freedom fighter trying to save family even when it'd be more practical to let Yuna kill herself pointlessly

11. I do not know 11.

12. Blue/Black/Red. (Well intentioned) Evil, selfish, brilliant.

13. Black/White, the color of corrupt officials

14. Blue/White/Red, much like 10 but with more "comrades" than "family" and leaning more on the techie than the leader

15. Monoblue. He may have had secondary colors in his youth but he's too old for that shit these days, now he just does automobile work.

16. 16 is not out on PC yet
 
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Zap Rowsdower said:
My Cid list
1: not a real person. Only shows up in Dissidia, where he spends most of his time disguised as a moogle.

2: Blue/White, pretending to be Blue/Black. Engineer who helps refugees and defends against evil empire, knight of a fallen kingdom, pretending to only be in it for the money

3: Blue, solid blue. Blue. He's an engineer. Thats... about all you get.

4. Blue/Red. Genius inventor, driven by intense passions and mad whims, cares more about the people he's emotionally close to than little things like "politics" or "broader geopolitical implications of his inventions" or "profit".

5. Blue/White. Genius inventor, cares deeply about doing the right thing and something of a natural leader

6. Blue/Black, more Black than Blue. Adds some Red later when his love for his adoptive granddaughter starts overriding his fascist loyalties.

7. Black/Red. Selfish ass driven by his passions, not nearly as much of an engineer as his predecessors (he's a pilot instead)

8. Mono-White. Bureaucrat and military leader, also not really an engineer (he provides the airship via historical knowledge instead)

9. Blue/White. Kingly leader and genius engineer.

10. Blue/White/Red. Gearhead, leader, freedom fighter trying to save family even when it'd be more practical to let Yuna kill herself pointlessly

11. I do not know 11.

12. Blue/Black/Red. (Well intentioned) Evil, selfish, brilliant.

13. Black/White, the color of corrupt officials

14. Blue/White/Red, much like 10 but with more "comrades" than "family" and leaning more on the techie than the leader

15. Monoblue. He may have had secondary colors in his youth but he's too old for that shit these days, now he just does automobile work.

16. 16 is not out on PC yet
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16 Cid is solid red. A career soldier who once worked for a major villain, but now is dedicated solely to leading a guerilla war against basically the entire world in order to free an oppressed people, willing to overturn the entire established order and potentially destroy the world in the process for the sake of bringing freedom to all. Has a rather dim view of those in authority.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvkSLmT1QRs

This scene shows him off pretty well.
 
Omicron said:
Setzer: You cannot make me care enough about Setzer to give him a color identity. Blue, I guess.
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Giving Setzer an entry just to tell us how much you don't care about him wven as you completely omit several party members is very funny.

Shadow: Am I a joke to you?

Entropy Judge said:
I'd argue that Squall isn't very Blue at all. Unless it directly pertains to his mission, he really has no desire for extra information and knowledge. Even when it does pertain, he often isn't particularly interested.
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Squall pressing skip cutscene as hard as he could has drained all Blue out of his soul and in fact has retroactively made his world less Blue in general.

Seas dried, Squall. Hope you're happy.
 
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The part about the Universes Beyond sets as a whole honestly can be emphasized with the new Bloomburrow set.

I'm admittedly first getting into the game properly, but the contrast between theoretical "Redwall MTG cards" and "Redwall inspired MTG plane" stands out to me, because Bloomburrow is much more magical than most "small animal against a massive world" stories. It feels like what I think of as MTG, even with just a high level knowledge of the setting, very nicely.

That said I am new enough to paying full attention to MTG to be dumbfounded that the zombie drama was something they covered in those. Most of the ones I'd heard about were at least somewhat more related to having the color pie applied.


Honestly, I'm sort of more interested in what the other staples of Final Fantasy end up. What color is Ultima, and what texts does it get? How are the various summons stated up.
Does Squall get a mechanic that represents Junctioning, or do the GFs work as Aura Enchantments? Materia artifact equiptment?
 
Omicron said:
Universes Beyond
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For a more in-depth look at this concept which runs through similar themes in greater detail, I recommend this Spice8Rack video:

View: https://youtu.be/m9AvT6mS0xE?si=OVbh2RJ7gvbic2ki

Remember, you don't have to play MtG to watch multihour videos about its design history by a passionate anarchist and twink.

Omicron said:
The Warriors of Light: White/Blue/Red/Green

Failing that, and following from the above treatment, I would portray the Warriors of Light not as individual characters, but as a single party - Warrior, Thief, Black Mage, White Mage, maybe. As a collective entity, they represent all colors but Black, which is too selfish, too nefarious to be represented among them; rather they are all colors working together in concert against the apocalyptic designs of Black-aligned entities.
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Hm, strange, that's not how I remember it. No, my extensive research using third party materials led me to a very different understanding of these characters, namely:

  • Fighter: Red/White. A fun-loving free spirit with a passion for swordplay and adventure, Fighter's behaviour is shaped by a genuine sense of morality and what's right, which he imposes by force, whether that manifests on a personal scale of how to treat one's friends, or grander ideals of what it means to be a hero. He is, unfortunately, so mind-blisteringly stupid that it qualifies as a psychic assault on anyone who engages with him for more than five minutes, allowing his far more selfish and/or openly deranged party members to twist this sense of right and wrong into a pretzel, which they then typically proceed to wrap around their necks and choke themselves to death with.
  • Thief: White/Black. An utterly selfish and remorseless con artist, convinced that his natural place is to rule over a species whose natural place is ruling over all other species. Thief, despite his profession, places great emphasis on legal contracts and the "proper order" of things; it simply happens that legitimate law and correct procedure, as he sees it, unwaveringly favours his own aims and ego, and any deviations from this experience are aberrations to be stamped out as quickly and forcefully as possible. While he is a trickster, he's fundamentally too incurious for Blue; he already knows everything of worth, after all.
  • Red Mage: Blue/Red. While his obsession with rules and systems may suggest White, it's important to realise that Red Mage is interested in rules only insofar as he can find out how to abuse, evade, or outright break them, preferably while lording his superior mastery over others. He's a seeker of knowledge for the sake of guaranteeing his own freedom, convinced to a religious degree that the right loophole will liberate him from all restrictions and limits - of class, of balance, of law. His sheer self-obsession also suggests Black, but frankly the characters who truly warrant Black plumb such depths that it bleaches most others by comparison. Speaking of which...
  • Black Mage: Black. One of the few mono-colours amongst Final Fantasy protagonists, a man so pitch-Black that he actually develops deeper, darker shades of Black which he then obnoxiously seizes the rights to and squats atop exclusively for his own artwork, shades which make his day-to-day behaviour look positively Red by comparison. But no, he's just Black, a whole spectrum of Black, be it an abyssal void of howling ink or the grubby dark sludge of an uncleaned gutter. Perhaps his one redeeming feature is that it makes him almost as miserable as everyone else he has to deal with, and he'll never really figure out why.
 
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Omicron said:
What Color Is Each Final Fantasy Protagonist?
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Genuinely I think the only conclusion I disagree with is Jenova - I would put Jenova as an Eldrazi, either Colourless outright or Jund-Devoid. I think Jund (BRG) rather than Indatha (BWG) is the colour identity closest to Jenova's methods, but as an entity she's an Eldrazi down to the bones. For those who don't play Magic, Jund's defining characteristic is that they eat their own children; the absolute archetypal Jund tactic is spewing out about a thousand low-cost Red creatures, sacrificing them all with Black spells and feeding them to a centerpiece Green creature which becomes so buff that it can obliterate the enemy player in like two hits at most. It is the colour identity of sacrifice effects, of on-death effects, of life leech, of destructive spells, and of big stompy creatures that are fed by all of these things. What is Meteor, but one giant sacrifice effect to give a single entity unimaginable power? And what is Sephiroth, by the end, but Jenova embodied? As for the Eldrazi, they are your classic Outer Gods - unimaginably powerful beings whose very presence warps the minds and bodies of people, animals and the very world itself to serve them. Again, very, very Jenova. They're primarily Colourless (any Mana can be used to cast them) or Devoid (they cost coloured mana to cast but aren't themselves coloured) to represent how they're from outside of the world or how they have corrupted earthly things to be like them respectively.

EDIT: Hojo, I'd have as an altered Docent of perfection. Phyrexian mana Blue/Black, flips to Colourless. Flipped effect modifies a tribe, or maybe a keyword; "all Mako-Enhanced gain +2/-1 and Devoid" or some such.
 
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Revlid said:
Hm, strange, that's not how I remember it. No, my extensive research using third party materials led me to a very different understanding of these characters, namely:
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God I love 8-bit Theater, and if anyone here has not read it then they owe it to themselves to read it. Gutbustingly funny parody of Final Fantasy 1.
 
Made a mockup of that Hojo card; here it is. (Disclaimer; no idea how fair this thing is, I don't actually play much MTG.)

 
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