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The Omicron Plays Final Fantasy Spoiler Thread

Thozmp said:
Do note that the games that shove politics aside for the ancient evil space flea are also console games that required a definitive ending or at least end point. Unless you want the Hamlet type ending that Tactics went with, politics doesn't really end, or resolve in a satisfactory way so ending with your character in a kind of limbo while nations proceed with talks and agreements and compromises which are on going because it's all complicated and messy and there's no real solution to politics.
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I know that you can't end a story with heavy political themes with "and we punched the CEO of racism in the face and made the problem go away," but I don't think that precludes having a satisfying ending to your story.

I think the core of it, at least how I like seeing it, is having main characters making a real, tangible difference in the world and making it better for today, while leaving the door open for future efforts and generations to make progress on the problems we can't solve right now.

So in a bizarro-XVI, I could see a story in the vein of our protagonists fighting against the great powers of the world, and leaving the actual institution of slavery upturned and damaged enough that it's unlikely to be reestablished, along with inspiring enough people to resist the old status quo that there's real space to avoid society backsliding, and to make progress in the future.

Like, "we've done what we can to help today, but we must also entrust the future to those who will come after us" is a perfectly valid way to end a story, and I think it's a shame seeing so many stories flinch at the last second to cart out a giant space flea.

(and honestly, sometimes I think the space flea is worse - I'd rather take a messy ending over "yeah we didn't actually solve any of the systemic racism or institutionalized slavery, but we got to punch god in the face I guess")
 
I guess what I'm saying is that I'd have rather had a story about the American Civil War, the fight to end slavery, and the life of a man like John Brown than a story about an ancient alien manipulating society to become omnipotent with a sprinkling of racism to serve as an entree.

The kind of story that Rockstar would tell if Red Dead Redemption was set before the American Civil War and starred members of the Railroad instead of bandits.
 
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I understand how people don't vibe with it, but by now I just chalk it up to a mix of the Japanese mindset and a "lost in translation" situation. Wasn't there a essay around in youtube about how the "and then you kill god" tendencies shown in FF7 and afterwards answered to the history of exchanging one religion for another harming the people each time, including the current turbo capitalism?

More work in succesfully tying the political and divine plots would be great, though.
 
Connelly said:
I understand how people don't vibe with it, but by now I just chalk it up to a mix of the Japanese mindset and a "lost in translation" situation. Wasn't there a essay around in youtube about how the "and then you kill god" tendencies shown in FF7 and afterwards answered to the history of exchanging one religion for another harming the people each time, including the current turbo capitalism?

More work in succesfully tying the political and divine plots would be great, though.
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I think this is the one you're thinking of:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEUqLL8J4gI
 
Thozmp said:
Do note that the games that shove politics aside for the ancient evil space flea are also console games that required a definitive ending or at least end point. Unless you want the Hamlet type ending that Tactics went with, politics doesn't really end, or resolve in a satisfactory way so ending with your character in a kind of limbo while nations proceed with talks and agreements and compromises which are on going because it's all complicated and messy and there's no real solution to politics.
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...Ehh. I disagree, I think.

On the one hand, sure, politics in general goes on, but specific political conflicts can have definite endings. The peace treaty or the new constitution is signed, the new king is crowned, the feuding families swear a binding oath of friendship, etc.

On the other hand, defeating the Big Evil Guy's final form on a psychedelic battlefield outside time and space doesn't remove the question "What next?". What do the party do with the rest of their lives? The significant NPCs? The surviving nations of the world -- or, if there aren't any, the scattered survivors dealing with the aftermath? There's probably, indeed, a lot of politics happening there!

Consider FFIX, for instance. Kuja's beaten, Necron is refuted, Terra's plan is ended, Gaia is saved!
...Also the Mist Continent is still in ruins (especially Burmecia, which faced an outright genocide, and by the way one of the main people responsible for that is currently still holding high office in Alexandria), the rest of the world is as far as we know barely populated with lots of room to expand but now widely known to people, the mist is gone, destroying those parts of the economy based on it but also drastically reducing the continent's monster population and opening up the lowlands for more extensive settlement... There is a tremendous amount of political aftermath, there; it's just that the credits roll before we see basically any of it.
 
IIRC, some early criticisms of FFX-2 lore was that the political "look" and power structures of a post-FFX world bounced between "things are divided way too neatly between factions for it to be only 2 years later" and "who are all these clowns, why have we never heard of them before, and why should we care now?"
 
Reese said:
Consider FFIX, for instance. Kuja's beaten, Necron is refuted, Terra's plan is ended, Gaia is saved!
...Also the Mist Continent is still in ruins (especially Burmecia, which faced an outright genocide, and by the way one of the main people responsible for that is currently still holding high office in Alexandria), the rest of the world is as far as we know barely populated with lots of room to expand but now widely known to people, the mist is gone, destroying those parts of the economy based on it but also drastically reducing the continent's monster population and opening up the lowlands for more extensive settlement... There is a tremendous amount of political aftermath, there; it's just that the credits roll before we see basically any of it.
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I'm... not sure if you are criticizing the finale here, or saying that it's one example where they did it right?

Because to me, FFIX is the game with just about the smoothest transition from low-level politics to fantasy god-slaying that is possible to have.

The initial problem was that Alexandria was going on an imperial rampage, but that was resolved when the ruler of Alexandria died and was replaced with a new ruler who immediately made peace with the primary surviving power that Alexandria had conquered, to which it restored independence and which became a trusted ally. While the other two countries that were attacked weren't re-settled during the game (with one being impossible to re-settle due to having being destroyed), what has to be one of the two most important military figures of Burmecia has the ear of the new ruler of Alexandria, so it's in the perfect position to negotiate a reparation deal, while that country's prince also has an in with both Alexandria's ruler, and the most important diplomat/representative of a smaller but significantly powerful nation from outside the Mist continent. The new ruler's consort even helped save some people from both kingdoms, so there's less enmity there. And the final cutscene has all of these people congregating in Alexandria, clearly showing that some form of peace has been achieved; we just aren't given details on the reparations, but considering the personality of the new ruler of Alexandria, it can be assumed reparations of some form have been made.

And yes, it's true that some of the military class of Alexandria that participated in the war against those two nations didn't face any punishment whatsoever, but seeing as those people played a key role in installing the new ruler, and considering Japan's specific attitude on punishing war criminals, that's not very surprising. Unsatisfying, perhaps, but nowhere near the same level of "what the hell?!" as Advent Children was for FFVII.
 
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It's been a while, but isn't there just one named Alexandrian who a) participated in the war and b) doesn't end up overthrown and/or dead?
 
Yes, but it's about as high-profile of one as you can get without being the ruler, so the complaint is fair.
 
Egleris said:
I'm... not sure if you are criticizing the finale here, or saying that it's one example where they did it right?
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Oh, neither. On reflection I suppose what I was saying may depend on the finale being good (which I think it is), but I didn't have the quality consciously in mind at all there, IIRC; I was just talking about how the final boss is (at least on the surface) very much a GSFfN, but there'd logically be considerable political aftermath too.

Unsatisfying, perhaps, but nowhere near the same level of "what the hell?!" as Advent Children was for FFVII.
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Well, "unsatisfying" is tricky, I think, given it's fiction and thus we can see interesting complexity added to the character and potential plot seeds without it being a real person who got away with enthusiastic participation in a genocide (granted, her character can be interpreted as having been less enthused at the time and repentant after, but I think looking at what she actually says and does without the bias of "She's with us now so she is Good"... well, it's at least pretty easy to interpret her qualms about the genocide to have basically been interservice rivalry and her changing sides as remaining fanatically loyal to the legitimate government of Alexandria but changing who she thought that was). I do think Beatrix is a neat character (with great music -- though I like a lot of the music from FFIX, really, actually got the soundtrack back in the day IIRC).
 
If Omicron manages to pick up Doomtrain, do you think he'll immediately make the connection between Trains and War and logically junction it to Selphie?
 
Adloquium said:
If Omicron manages to pick up Doomtrain, do you think he'll immediately make the connection between Trains and War and logically junction it to Selphie?
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Where do you get Doomtrain from? I'm only up to the very start of disk three, so haven't run into the GF yet. Did end up nabbing Odin and Tonberry King though.
 
Mizu said:
Where do you get Doomtrain from? I'm only up to the very start of disk three, so haven't run into the GF yet. Did end up nabbing Odin and Tonberry King though.
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It's still some time and plot away. The item to get it is obtainable around mid-late Disc 3.

It's also one of the GFs that require either a guide or some mind-twisting to match the logic of the game; there are hints, but filtered through FFVIII's general obtuseness in hinting.
 
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Yeah, to clarify, the hints are in the "Occult Fan" magazines. There are four of them, and the third issue (the one that is only obtained by speaking with the Master Fisherman and is thus permanently missable, and which was referenced in update 18.5 of the let's play) specifically identifies the item that you need to use to obtain Doomtrain (similar to how you need to use the Magical Lamp to get Diablos), and then adds "you need 666 items to activate it".

Every item in the game is capped at 100 units of it, so "666 items" is supposed to be understood as strange, and thus a hint; each of the three other issues, number I, II, and IV, vaguely identify three specific items, and you need to have 6 copies of each of those items to be able to summon Doomtrain. Only, the references are increasingly obscure, enough so that, if you didn't know already what the item called for in Occult Fan IV (which is also permanently missable, by the way, even if less so than issue III) was, you're never going to figure it out - as the necessary item is the Remedy +, which can exclusively be obtained by using the "Med Lv UP" refine ability (meaning you also need the right GF, which is one of the drawable, and thus missable, ones).

Honestly, if anybody ever managed to obtain Doomtrain without looking it up or having somebody help them, they deserve a medal.
 
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Egleris said:
Yeah, to clarify, the hints are in the "Occult Fan" magazines. There are four of them, and the third issue (the one that is only obtained by speaking with the Master Fisherman and is thus permanently missable, and which was referenced in update 18.5 of the let's play) specifically identifies the item that you need to use to obtain Doomtrain (similar to how you need to use the Magical Lamp to get Diablos), and then adds "you need 666 items to activate it".

Every item in the game is capped at 100 units of it, so "666 items" is supposed to be understood as strange, and thus a hint; each of the three other issues, number I, II, and IV, vaguely identify three specific items, and you need to have 6 copies of each of those items to be able to summon Doomtrain. Only, the references are increasingly obscure, enough so that, if you didn't know already what the item called for in Occult Fan IV (which is also permanently missable, by the way, even if less so than issue III) was, you're never going to figure it out - as the necessary item is the Remedy +, which can exclusively be obtained by using the "Med Lv UP" refine ability (meaning you also need the right GF, which is one of the drawable, and thus missable, ones).

Honestly, if anybody ever managed to obtain Doomtrain without looking it up or having somebody help them, they deserve a medal.
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Yeah tbh someone is going to have to explain how to do the unlock, because it is not what I would call a 'fair' puzzle. Plus even if you know the solution it's not that easy to execute. Both the Steel Pipes and the Malboro tentacles are an absolute pain to farm out without very specific knowledge of enemy drops and which levels, along with Level Up/Down and good junctions.
 
I mean, I'm 100% going to badger Omicron to meet the Malboro in the Esthar Plain, because getting a TPK against it is such a quintessential FFVIII experience, and the FFVIII Malboro is the most powerful incarnation of the monster, so it deserve to have the time to shine.

However, the Steel Pipe and Malboro Tentacles aren't really that hard to obtain, because you can refine them through CardMod. Six Elastoid cards and twenty-four Malboro cards might take a bit to collect, but compared to obtaining them from drops, it's not much - and Omicron still has to complete the Club CC quest, so there'll be plenty of opportunity for him to grind cards.
 
Egleris said:
I mean, I'm 100% going to badger Omicron to meet the Malboro in the Esthar Plain, because getting a TPK against it is such a quintessential FFVIII experience, and the FFVIII Malboro is the most powerful incarnation of the monster, so it deserve to have the time to shine.

However, the Steel Pipe and Malboro Tentacles aren't really that hard to obtain, because you can refine them through CardMod. Six Elastoid cards and twenty-four Malboro cards might take a bit to collect, but compared to obtaining them from drops, it's not much - and Omicron still has to complete the Club CC quest, so there'll be plenty of opportunity for him to grind cards.
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TBF it's faster to mug the Steel Pipes off Wendigoes, you can get up to 4 per enemy and in the dry land around Deling City you can meet two of them at the same time often enough.
Malboro Tentacles are a pain either way, either you spend quite a lot of time farming for the cards or you spend time farming the enemy. Encounter rate on the Esthar Plains is low, though it's somewhat reliable on the Grandidi Forest.
 
Hidden monster fucko forest is da way.

No I'm not proud of the time I've spent farming those shits there.
 
I mean, the encounter rate is lower, but killing Mesmerize is both faster and more productive (since the Mesmerize Blade can be turned into Regen spells) than dealing with the encounters in the Grandidi Forest. High level Forbidden can actually cast Death, and having to keep Status Defense against that active interferes with the anti-Malboro setup.

Not to mention that, while Grandidi Forest is reachable right now, the Solomon Ring is found in Esthar at a time when you can't leave it, so it's more practical to go for the Malboro Tentacles at that time, rather then collect them beforehand, especially since if they are lv 30+, a single Malboro is worth 8 tentacles, enough to completely cover the summoning costs.
 
Broken25 said:
Explain?
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You know the shitty movie Laguna acted in during the fourth dream sequence?



Seifer's entire fighting style is derived from a shitty movie he saw as a kid about a Sorceress's Knight. Starring Squall's goober hero dad.

Adloquium said:
I'm reminded of the discussion back in FFVII about the difference between "kioku" and "omoide" memories, when Tifa was doing therapy to Cloud in his mind. Memories you know, and memories you really know deep down. Given the comments about how FFVIII was trying to one-up FFVII for Big Story Twists, I wonder if this is a continuation of the same theme.

Something this sequence reveals is apparently junctioning GFs doesn't erase memories. They just kind of put a lid on those memories, and it does not seem to take much to bring them back; just Irvine bringing it up, describing the events and location in summary, and suddenly everyone remembers everything.

Taking that into consideration, how serious is GF memory loss, objectively? The memories are clearly there to be recalled, but not available at the moment, until consciously thought of, perhaps with an effort. This implies keeping a diary to reference would have solved these alleged memory issues, but that might have been too much to ask for a child freshly enrolled into Garden who now has to list out their entire life history so far, just in case some small detail from when they were five years old turns out to be significant.
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I'm pretty sure that my theory about it accelerating memory degredation rather than erasing memories is correct, since one of the game's themes is growing up and moving past your childhood, which is basically spelt out with Ultimecia's final words which weren't fucking translated right aaaargh
English: "Reflect on your... Childhood..."
"Your sensation... Your words... Your emotions..."
"Time... It will not wait..."
"No matter... ...how hard you hold on. It escapes you..."
"And..."
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Japanese: "Have you remembered something?
Something from your childhood
A sensation
The words from back then
The emotions from back then
As you become an adult
You leave something behind, throw something away
Time will not wait for you
Even if you cling to it
It slips away the instant you open your hands
And..."
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The sequence with everyone remembering that they all knew each other from kids has the same energy as two dudes in their fourties meeting in a bar and going "oh wait shit we went to school together didn't we?!"
 
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