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What if you're being rude by killing someone?
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
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- Let's Play
Didn't expect quite this many histrionics over one admittedly very yikes line (that you have to go out of your way for and isn't in the actual game), but that's the way of it, I guess.
Anyway:
Well, that Ramuh knows of, anyway. We also know that the whole reason they sealed themselves off in the first place was so that humans couldn't take their power, and that wouldn't have happened willingly either. I have a bit of a headcanon that maybe helps this a little, but even with that there's no denying that this whole thing is, as someone else said 'undercooked'. I think on some level this is partially... fitting in (for lack of a better phrase) with the sort of high melodrama that FFVI goes for. Shit goes wrong for bullshit reasons all the time in theater.
And with this, we are ready for one of the best pages (no spoilers on this page, but there will be if you read others) of Captain SNES:
That garbled battle screen? Barely an exaggeration of what used to happen with that bug.
This scene with Kefka, taken with another one later, does actually add up to something, but I'll have to talk about that when we get there.
In your defense, Leo's in-game sprite legitimately had a lighter skin tone on the SNES:
Anyway:
Well, that Ramuh knows of, anyway. We also know that the whole reason they sealed themselves off in the first place was so that humans couldn't take their power, and that wouldn't have happened willingly either. I have a bit of a headcanon that maybe helps this a little, but even with that there's no denying that this whole thing is, as someone else said 'undercooked'. I think on some level this is partially... fitting in (for lack of a better phrase) with the sort of high melodrama that FFVI goes for. Shit goes wrong for bullshit reasons all the time in theater.
And with this, we are ready for one of the best pages (no spoilers on this page, but there will be if you read others) of Captain SNES:
That garbled battle screen? Barely an exaggeration of what used to happen with that bug.
This scene with Kefka, taken with another one later, does actually add up to something, but I'll have to talk about that when we get there.
In your defense, Leo's in-game sprite legitimately had a lighter skin tone on the SNES:
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- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
Look, bagpipes may be my second favorite instrument (after accordion but before fiddle go away violin you're somewhere in the pile with all the other instruments that I love but love less), but I like them most when they're being saucy, not sweet, and relm's theme has been uninspiring since the first time I heard it.It's got bagpipes as the melody trying (and failing) to sound sweet, how could you not love it
In other words, with a great deal of ease
... but yeah, Leo. The thing I remember most about Leo is the old "FAQ" stuff surrounding all the (entirely, incredibly fake) ways to resurrect him/keep him alive. That stuff got wild. Eventually folks got around to making romhacks that let you keep 'im as a party member, heh. Folks frikkin' loved shock and the way he doled out attacks.
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- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
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To be fair, Leo's original sprite had Stock NPC Skin Tone, so if you didn't happen to open the menu at this point you could easily never realise that he's meant to be black.
Emy
Artificial Defender
If there's a yikes line and people go 'yikes', that's not histrionics, that's just engaging with the content.
And "isn't in the actual game", do you mean to suggest that Omi hallucinated it or something?
Well, to be fair the other version of the line is in the actual game, it's just in the Japanese version. So really it's one of those cases of the English translator taking liberties because "whoa what the hell this is really sus and I don't like it".
Which, you know, props to them, seen people complain over similar things in Fire Emblem before. And sometimes translation complaints are valid, but other times when it's a single Yikes line that drags down an otherwise fine character? I won't be complaining about "muh censorship".
Probably what happened, honestly. You get a whole 10 second window to even see and remember General Leo's menu portrait, so it just went right over my head. Plus most of my original playtime with this game was the GBA version not the SNES, which means even tinier screen to interpret it off of.
People aren't saying 'yikes', people are saying
So yeah, histrionics. Over a line that, unless one of you is from Japan, you had no idea existed until you either read it here or looked up a fucking translation somewhere. That is, you didn't see that in the game, you saw the good version of this scene, which is the only one we need to worry about. Like, do we not get that that line was not written by the same people? We don't have to take that in the same continuity. It's some weird bad fanfic as much as you have to care.
Edit: Like, Edgar isn't the only one who got 'fixed' in the English version. I'm given to understand that Kefka's actually a lot more boring in the original script than he was in Woolsey's rendition, and so it was really in the west that Kefka became a favorite villain. We got the good version. It's okay.
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ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
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I can assure you Omi found the line sus all on its own and said as much on Discord as he wondered how he was going to talk around that bombshell of a line as an update-ender. I remarked offhand that I was pretty sure the 'original' translation (read: pre-Pixel Remaster) line was Edgar saying "see you in 8 years", which it turns out I was thinking of the more directly translated GBA script (and iphone/original PC version) rather than the initial SNES localisation. This prompted Omicron to search for himself, landing on the original Japanese version of the scene. You can see as much here in this handy-dandy collection of all the pre-Pixel Remaster versions.
Additionally there's nothing weirder or less relevant about investigating and discussing this aspect of the game than stuff like what the DS version of FF4 changed or that the guillotine got turned into a funny big ball or whatever. Far more weird is trying to spin it like it's unreasonable to talk about the elephant in the room that is Edgar as originally written looking at a 10-year-old party member then turning to camera and saying "dear federal agents this is not a joke I am considering landing myself on the sex offender registry".
Additionally there's nothing weirder or less relevant about investigating and discussing this aspect of the game than stuff like what the DS version of FF4 changed or that the guillotine got turned into a funny big ball or whatever. Far more weird is trying to spin it like it's unreasonable to talk about the elephant in the room that is Edgar as originally written looking at a 10-year-old party member then turning to camera and saying "dear federal agents this is not a joke I am considering landing myself on the sex offender registry".
Emy
Artificial Defender
To be clear, I don't think a line from another language's version of the game is a game ruiner, but this LP series has looked at version differences in the past and is undoubtedly going to do so again, so people are going to continue reacting to the game content as presented to them, including that from other versions of the same title. It's not out of scope.
I'm not saying it's unreasonable to talk about. I think the differences between localizations is pretty fascinating, actually. I am saying that it's unreasonable to let that ruin a character for you when the one that we see in-game is the 'fixed' version.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
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Listen, the 'don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining' principle holds true whether it's about a core party member decloaking as a child predator, a game's romantic prospects being about 90% incest or a game series making le epic comedy scenes out of homophobia and transphobia - an informed consumer is perfectly within their rights to say "go fuck yourself, throwing a sheet over it in localisation isn't good enough".
- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
... interesting thing to note that I can't remember if I ever knew about or not: We've now seen all the characters in FF6 that makes a cameo appearance in, of all things, Secret of Evermore. They aren't the only ones: FF4's Cecil shows up in that game, too.
The game's completely unconnected to the Final Fantasy series, other than apparently being somewhere characters from multiple FF games can travel to, so.
The game's completely unconnected to the Final Fantasy series, other than apparently being somewhere characters from multiple FF games can travel to, so.
- Location
- Canada, probably
@SerGregness I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're using the less-common meaning of "histrionic" as merely dramatic or theatrical, rather than the much more common meaning of exaggerated and insincere dramatics to get attention.
In which case, yes, my post expressing my loathing for Kefka's Super-Duper Bullshit "I Win" Button was written to be theatrical. I was able to wring some fun out of something I despise, which is a nice trick when you can manage it.
In which case, yes, my post expressing my loathing for Kefka's Super-Duper Bullshit "I Win" Button was written to be theatrical. I was able to wring some fun out of something I despise, which is a nice trick when you can manage it.
The third reference there is probably persona? No idea about the second one. Anyway, I'd hardly call the change 'throwing a sheet over it'. I think it was McFluffles who points out that the 'Edgar is actually a predator' doesn't fit with the rest of his characterization in the first place, and so the line as it exists in the English version presents a more consistent character with him taken aback after she has railroaded almost every adult in the cast.
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I'm disappointed that they had Gestahl be an illusion in this scene. It could have been an important, tragic moment for Leo to see that even the person he thought was a person worthy to serve is really just as bad as the rest of the Empire. That he dies realizing that there was never a good or noble side to the Empire. Instead, it turns out to just be Kefka again, and I think that spoils the moment.
Actually, it would have been an interesting twist if it turned out that Gestahl was an illusion the whole time - not just for this scene, but for the whole game. The history we know would complicate that, but it could still be made plausible (maybe Gestahl died at some point after Kefka was experimented on). To me, this would be a fitting twist, as it would really show that there is no good side to the Empire; instead, Gestahl and Kefka are simply two sides of the same coin.
I'd probably feel more empathetic towards Leo's death if it actually had any meaning - either by having his death serve as a tragic message on the Empire's fully evil nature, as I mentioned earlier, or by having him actually accomplish something meaningful during the last stand. Maybe he could help at least a couple of the Espers escape, or be the reason why the party was spared after Kefka knocked them out. But even if he started to take a stand at the last minute, it was too little, too late, so he never truly redeemed himself.
The overall theory I've heard is that after Cid witnessed the Espers turning themselves into magicite, the Empire started researching that process and came up with a way to do it forcibly.
Admittedly, this wouldn't be the first time for the Empire to make a breakthrough on something that wasn't possible before. Nothing we've heard about the War of the Magi seems to indicate that they had a way to transfer Espers' magic into humans or weapons. The Empire didn't base their designs on ancient technology like the Lufenians or Ronka, they built theirs from the ground-up. So I never found it too surprising that they found a way to reverse-engineer magicite inducement. That said, it would have been nice if someone had made a slight hint about it during the Imperial banquet arc.
Though also, I think Kefka's exponential power growth could embody a key theme of FF6: evil prospers when people do nothing to stop it. If we had stopped Kefka in our of our earlier encounters instead of letting him get away, or if Leo had reined Kefka in, Doma wouldn't have been poisoned, and the Espers wouldn't be magicite. And the same can be said for the Empire as a whole. If someone had taken a stand against them early on, when they were still a fledgling empire still trying to find a way to harness the Espers' power, maybe none of this would have happened. But even as the Empire expanded, places like Narshe and Jidoor still tried to be neutral. And when we tried to give the Empire a second chance in the wake of the Espers, we made a fatal mistake.
On another note, trying not to spoil anything, but before you finish the next big challenge that's going to pop up next, you should take the time to settle any other unfinished business you have left - check out the towns the Empire abandoned, get that water move for Mog, try to beat that invisible monster I told you about earlier, etc.
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- Location
- Canada, probably
That could have be interesting, but I think it falls apart because the game doesn't let you stop him. You go to the battle screen with Kefka… what, 3 times? 4? And every time he just cheats and fucks off. It feels like some kind of bizarre accident, like the writers are saying "Oops! No, you can't fight Kefka yet, we still need him, we'll just take him back thanks."
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
I work with kids that are 6th-12th grade on the regular which means I am 100% not surpised by any of the words coming out of Relm's mouth. The whole point of comments like that is to try and provoke a reaction; kids will push boundaries and this is no exception. So by and large I find her antics utterly hilarious.
On the other hand,
On the other hand,
This is peak GODDAMMIT JAPAN. Death of the author, it's dumb so just ignore it, etc.
Now that you've finally gotten to this point I can finally air a pet Theory of mine on about how Locke wasn't surprised about Terra just busting out Fire until Edgar pointed it out.
Now that we have explicit confirmation that Magic can run in Bloodlines, and that the People of Thamasa likely have, well They're an Isolated and Xenophobic village. I posit that Other Groups of Mages went and decided to join the rest of society rather than be hermits. However they couldn't just advertise that they had Magic to other people due to the whole War of the Magi. Instead after Generations and weakening Bloodlines they start passing it off as Monastic orders and Esoteric fighting Styles, see Sabin and His Blitzes, Cyan and his Sword Arts, Leo and Shock. Weakened Effects that become stronger via dedicated Training and Regimens. Then you get cases of Atavism like say Gau, random kid who is just an out and out Blue Mage.
It's not that Magic Went Away, it just Weakened without the Warring Triad Creating more Espers, and Mage Bloodlines thinning out, and those in the know finding ways to deflect attention.
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To nitpick, if it's in the actual text then 'Death of the Author' doesn't apply. Your overall point still stands of course
Muder is actually considered very rude in Japan!
It goes against the traditional concept of "ikiru", which means that people deserve to live. It's a beautiful uniquely Japanese belief that you should respect.
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- Te Ika-a-Māui
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Ah but see, the murder is just according to keikaku*.
*Translator's note: keikaku means plan.