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

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daniel_gudman said:
You know it occurs to me that depending on documentary evidence, Historians might just think that like "Corpse Brigade" refers to Ramza's Party Of Castle Cleaner-Outers, and not the rando rebellion group that was the first Brigade his team Corpsed.
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Well, you gotta call Ramza's running crew of killers and ne'er-do-wells something
 
Cypocryphy said:
Anyways, Omi, if you're considering more Matsuno I gotta shill for Vagrant Story again. It's not perfect, but it *is* a fascinating mixture between a dungeoncrawling fantasy action-RPG and stylish cinematic political noir thriller set in not-France where the MC wears assless chaps.
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Vagrant Story is the most incredible game that is also simultaneously incredibly painful to play. I love this game to death and I would not recommend anyone play it without heavily emphasizing that its battle systems are obtuse and you will spend an absurd amount of time fussing about in menus and a further insufferable amount of time transferring stuff to and from boxes and also saving.

But the music is beyond hype and the storytelling is really neat.
 
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I got Orbonne Monastery in my roulettes tonight and found that coincidence very amusing.

"History repeats, the first time as JPRG, the second as JRPG."
 
Marla said:
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Now that we are at endgame, I feel like Orran is actually absolutely insane trying to exonerate Ramza's reputation when they are only true with the inclusion of actual demons. Otherwise, Ramza's status as a fucking monster of a person, besieging 6 of the 7 Ivalice territory castles, the Fort Besselat and the high seat of the Church of Glabados and won is basically stuff you whisper in the dark night. Actual boogieman personified. Ramza is much more terrifying than the monsters borne of the Fifty Year War.
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One of the things I love to think about? There is at least one barman, who is looking at the wanted paper for the Heretic Ramza, detailing all of these slaughters attributed to him, and thinking....

"And he ordered a glass of milk."

Thozmp said:
It's crazy to think that Ramza is some sort of super heretic, killing machine, with a body count equivalent of depopulating small towns. Like, over the course of a year or two, if one ascribes all the Lucavi's kills to him, he's got something like a four digit kill count.
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Er.... really depends on Fort Besselat and all. He basically dropped a flashflood through the frontlines of the largest battle in the War of the Lions. PSX I swear mentioned at least half a million soldiers involved in it, so.... he probably hits four digits just from that.
 
Alcor said:
Could have been Boco and their numerous progeny who were ejected from the party.

"But they were kicked before a lot of this went down, how could they tell-"
"Shhhhh"
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Listen, those birds were trained by some of the most elite fighters in the realm and also Mustadio. Eventually there were enough of them to form their own all-chocobo mercenary outfit, complete with commando divisions.

If anyone could have shadowed Ramza's party for months spying on them and living to tell the tale, it's them.
 
If you can just learn this sort of shit from ghosts wouldn't that also make the truth of what happened widely accessible to more people than just Orran? I guess we're back in deliberate Glabados coverup territory
 
wetodet said:
Except for all the things Ramza was there for that the rest of the group wasn't.
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What exactly the rest of the group was/wasn't there for is made deeply ambiguous by the fact that most of the relevant characters vanish into the Recruit Zone, but I think there's a reasonably straightforward reading that at least one of Delita, Agrias, or Mustadio has been present for every battle in the game so far? Nobody's been there for everything but you can get it down to a pretty small minimum number for full coverage, even disregarding the generics.
Parzival said:
There's quite a lot of scenes where Ramza wasn't there too, yeah?
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Also, yeah, this. Insofar as we apply the Durai Papers framing device to the entire contents of the game, it's entirely impossible for them to exclusively consist of a secondhand recounting of any one individual's experiences. And once we allow them to incorporate synthesis and/or extrapolation, it's extremely easy to construct theories of their origin that don't depend on any given person providing testimony.
 
Wiadi said:
What exactly the rest of the group was/wasn't there for is made deeply ambiguous by the fact that most of the relevant characters vanish into the Recruit Zone, but I think there's a reasonably straightforward reading that at least one of Delita, Agrias, or Mustadio has been present for every battle in the game so far? Nobody's been there for everything but you can get it down to a pretty small minimum number for full coverage, even disregarding the generics.

Also, yeah, this. Insofar as we apply the Durai Papers framing device to the entire contents of the game, it's entirely impossible for them to exclusively consist of a secondhand recounting of any one individual's experiences. And once we allow them to incorporate synthesis and/or extrapolation, it's extremely easy to construct theories of their origin that don't depend on any given person providing testimony.
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... Do you think the entirety of Ramza's little alliance was stuffed into that chapel where he had a talk with Delita which would have never made it into any official historical record just offscreen?
 
wetodet said:
... Do you think the entirety of Ramza's little alliance was stuffed into that chapel where he had a talk with Delita which would have never made it into any official historical record just offscreen?
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Did you miss the part where Delita himself was a part of my minimal "there for everything in aggregate" list?
 
Wiadi said:
Did you miss the part where Delita himself was a part of my minimal "there for everything in aggregate" list?
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Do you really think Delita would ever have confessed to that meeting happening, even in the privacy of his own journals, much less those of Orran Durai, a man we last saw having had the shite beaten out of him by Delita's men?
 
wetodet said:
Do you really think Delita would ever have confessed to that meeting happening, even in the privacy of his own journals, much less those of Orran Durai, a man we last saw having had the shite beaten out of him by Delita's men?
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And yet the framing device of the story claims that this is a recounting of the true story of Ramza's life as told by Orran Durai, yet the story we are seeing includes scenes of Delita's life that Ramza has no way of knowing happened, such as the scene in which Delita's church confidante/double agent turned on him.

If one is going to claim that Ramza must have survived the ending of the game because there is nobody else at several points in the story who could have told the story of what happened there, then one must also claim that Delita did, indeed, confess that those events happened to Orran.

Else, one would have to assume that the events told by Orran may not have been derived entirely from firsthand accounts, and as such may not have come from a surviving Ramza in truth. They may have been pieced together from circumstantial evidence, supposition and eyewitness acounts of other actors in the area, such as knights within castles who survived grievous wounds but were cast out for rantings of demons, witnesses in cities who witnessed these two figures fighting Church officials within a public city where people could have seen the events from a distance, and others who travelled with Ramza for a time and may have given testimonies to Orran.

You cannot claim simultaneously that the ending must have Ramza survive and tell his story to Orran because this is the only explanation for the framing of the story, and also that Delita would take his secrets to the grave and never confess them. One of these two things must be wrong.
 
Tempera said:
You cannot claim simultaneously that the ending must have Ramza survive and tell his story to Orran because this is the only explanation for the framing of the story, and also that Delita would take his secrets to the grave and never confess them. One of these two things must be wrong.
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... I'm not the one claiming Ramza has to survive the ending, I'm just stating there's parts of the game inconsistent with the assertion that it could be any single member of Ramza's army besides him whose testimony is the source of the Durai Papers.

Would it be more clear if I said Ramza has to have been a contributor to the Durai Papers because of scenes like the chapel conversation, as it is unlikely Delita would have confirmed such an event happened because it would have been proof of him conspiring with a heretic wanted across the whole nation for butchering entire castles?
 
illhousen said:
I feel like people are overthinking the logistics of Orran learning the truth in a world where ghosts exist.
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From this, I'm mostly imagining Ramza heroically sacrificing himself in the fight against High Seraph Alma, and then neither of them have anything better to do with their afterlives than haunt that one astrologer in particular.

Durai: "Well, I guess I might as well write a book"
Ghost of Alma: "Make sure you include the part where I totally bullied Ramza into tagging along to Orbonne!"
 
Gillian has really step up her game to protect Mustadio. She even unlocks a magical girl class by the power of love, which allows her to purify any opposition.

"In the name of Love, I'll purify you ! (Don't you dare to hurt my dear Mustadio)"
 
Me, I don't think we have to examine the details of the framing device that closely. Like, it's interesting to muse about, but if people are having arguments about it, it's probably a case of reading a little too much into it.

We see what we need to see to make a coherent story. If you really want to think things through for a no-prize, perhaps our future historian is also extrapolating from other sources like historians do, contrasting with the commonly known story of Delita the Hero, etc, etc. But I feel like the 'telling the player what is going on' is the main driving force of the scenes that might not logically make it to some years-later account.
 
It's a bit of a shame that the framing device isn't a bit more apparent in the narrative, after all the groundwork it laid initially. It makes me think about Bastion, which is quite notable for having a fully-integrated narrator character who you can also interact with back at the hub, but relevant to the discussion the imperfections of his viewpoint are highlighted once you hit the last level and catch up with his account. He can only admit he has no idea what's going on while you go pursue your final objective, reducing to hoping and speculating while you the player get to see the facts and make choices.

We're extrapolating from the game to make jokes about how the Durai Papers were an unhinged manifesto detailling an international conspiracy of bodysnatching demons substantiated by nobody but a man who was named Public Enemy Number 1 by the Church then unpersoned, but we genuinely have no idea what if anything beyond solely Ramza's perspective Orran was able to glean before publishing the Durai Papers and the game seems totally uninterested in enlightening us.
 
The Wojak Modern Ivalicean Historian: "Muh muh muh, we think maybe a historical event that might have been called the War of the Lions by some of the participants took place somewhere in this hundred year stretch of time (mewing wet cat noises)"

The Chad Orran Durai:
"I will now recount for you the exact words of the dramatic monologue Dycedarg Beowulve delivered at his secret treason meeting with the Templar Formav."
 
Wade Garrett said:
The Wojak Modern Ivalicean Historian: "Muh muh muh, we think maybe a historical event that might have been called the War of the Lions by some of the participants took place somewhere in this hundred year stretch of time (mewing wet cat noises)"

The Chad Orran Durai:
"I will now recount for you the exact words of the dramatic monologue Dycedarg Beowulve delivered at his secret treason meeting with the Templar Formav."
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Orran:
 
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