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The Omicron Plays Final Fantasy Spoiler Thread

I can't believe it's taken me this long to realize that Selphie Tilmitt (FFVIII), a genki girl who speaks with a Kansai accent who Believes In The Power of Violence™, uses the same archetype as Oerba Dia Vanille (FFXIII), a genki girl who speaks with an Aussie accent who Believes In The Power of Violence™. They both even have a tiny-chance-yet-insta-kill Limit Break.

Amusingly, Vanille doesn't have an accent in the native Japanese audio track, much like how Selphie doesn't have an accent in the English text.
 
GilliamYaeger said:
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
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I feel like it's one of those things where in-universe there is not enough research to make any concrete claims, and out-of-universe the writers simply didn't bother thinking about it as much as we are right now.

The question I have is Quistis. From a direct "GF usage causes memory loss" context, Quistis has clearly been using GFs longer than anyone else in the party, since she graduated and became an active SeeD and instructor long before the other SeeDs. But her memory doesn't seem to be noticeably more missing or degraded, and she remembers the orphanage once prompted by Irvine, just like the others.

And from a "GF memory loss is part of the theme about growing up" context, Quistis also should have forgotten more than she does, because according to Quistis, back in the orphanage she looked up to Matron Edea, and wanted to be all mature and grown-up like her. (According to the Japanese script, anyway.) Which explains her "big sister" attitude towards the others, but which should also mean she would have left behind all those childhood memories.

Now, it's entirely possible memory degradation via GFs happens at different rates for different people, or there might be some other reasoning, but that's just us coming up with justifications, rather than anything confirmed by the text. Hence my comment about us thinking about this more closely than the writers likely did.

silentorphan said:
Amusingly, Vanille doesn't have an accent in the native Japanese audio track, much like how Selphie doesn't have an accent in the English text.
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It's kind of fascinating, because Selphie only speaks in Kansai dialect maybe twice: once when she's in despair after seeing the missiles fired at Trabia Garden, and the next potentially when she's talking with the Trabia Garden survivors. (I don't know if she does it in the option Omicron picked; she does do it in the option Omicron doesn't.) Every other time, Selphie speaks Standard Japanese, as filtered through her teenage-ness.

Meanwhile, Vanille in English speaks Australian the entire time, so it's a core part of her characterization. And unlike how it's relatively simple to switch between Kansai and Standard/Tokyo Japanese, it would probably sound weird if Vanille could switch her accent on and off at will.

Part of it might be FFVIII being unvoiced. Kansai dialect is partly in the word choice for the grammar, and partly the slightly different intonations and emphasis on syllables. With just plain text, we can only rely on the first part.
 
Sadly the long running fan theory of rinoa=ultimecia has been disaproved else it would mean that his GF possed his mom to become part of the narative .
 
Adloquium said:
But her memory doesn't seem to be noticeably more missing or degraded
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How confident should we be that it actually isn't, though? The orphanage stuff was only caught because Irvine was also there, and Quistis has spent a lot of time not around any of the others.
 
Reese said:
How confident should we be that it actually isn't, though? The orphanage stuff was only caught because Irvine was also there, and Quistis has spent a lot of time not around any of the others.
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Quistis can cite chapter and verse of the SeeD manual.

Which ties into another question about memory loss: how does the GF junctioning differentiate between memories to degrade? The SeeDs clearly haven't forgotten any of their training, and given the mystery around GF memory issues, they clearly don't affect daily life that much; we don't hear of students forgetting to do their homework because of memory loss.

Selphie remembers junctioning a GF at age 12, but forgot the GF's name. What causes the difference?

It just seems weirdly convenient for GF memory loss to be focused only on "childhood memories" of age five or so, as opposed to any other formative experience that these teenagers have had.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Not disproven in the game itself so death of the author means still viable as a theory
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Yes, it's absolutely disproven by the game itself. There is exactly zero indications, at all, that Rinoa and Artemisia are the same person in the game, not a single line of text or circumstance that even suggests this might be a possibility, and there's plenty of indication that this is not, in fact, the case at all, and that Rinoa and Artemisia are very different people. The fan theory has exactly as much grounding as the fan theory that Squall died at the end of disk 1 - which is to say, it has none.
 
Egleris said:
Yes, it's absolutely disproven by the game itself. There is exactly zero indications, at all, that Rinoa and Artemisia are the same person in the game, not a single line of text or circumstance that even suggests this might be a possibility, and there's plenty of indication that this is not, in fact, the case at all, and that Rinoa and Artemisia are very different people. The fan theory has exactly as much grounding as the fan theory that Squall died at the end of disk 1 - which is to say, it has none.
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Personally, I'd say that there's fairly solid grounding for a theory of someone dying after being stabbed through the chest by a large shard of ice, then falling off a platform with the shard of ice still impaling their chest and thus almost certain to shatter when they fall. I don't personally subscribe to the theory, but it's not as baseless as you say.
 
Valette.Serafina said:
Personally, I'd say that there's fairly solid grounding for a theory of someone dying after being stabbed through the chest by a large shard of ice, then falling off a platform with the shard of ice still impaling their chest and thus almost certain to shatter when they fall. I don't personally subscribe to the theory, but it's not as baseless as you say.
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It is when you're shown the person in question surviving the wound and the primary reason people say "no he didn't" is because they want to pretend that the rest of the game didn't happen. There is absolutely no basis in the text to believe the whole game is a dream of dying Squall. Not the least because, as the let's play showed, a lot of things that happen after Squall was wounded were foreshadowed in the previous part of the story.
 
'That should have killed them' does not on it's own strike me as compelling evidence for a "they actually did die" theory, because... well the game is full of other stuff that really should have been fatal, isn't it?

(Laguna throwing his buddies into the merciless, concrete-like sea scene, I am looking at you.)

-Morgan.
 
Morganite said:
'That should have killed them' does not on it's own strike me as compelling evidence for a "they actually did die" theory, because... well the game is full of other stuff that really should have been fatal, isn't it?

(Laguna throwing his buddies into the merciless, concrete-like sea scene, I am looking at you.)

-Morgan.
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Nah it's alright, the fairies helped them survive. Junctioned bonuses to their defensive stats so they could take the fall, obviously.

As for "Squall is Dead" theories, nah they have about as much grounding as things like Mass Effect 3 Indoctrination Theory, or "every single kids show is secretly purgatory/a coma". Sure, if you connect a bunch of dots with your made up theory you can make it sound real, but you know you're just bullshitting and it's beyond even "the writers didn't intend for this reading" to "you're making shit up to sound deep".
 
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Honestly, I think an answer for the Griever thing is possibly:
Ultimecia found the little charm that Squall gives Rinoa, after it had become old enough to turn into a Guardian Force.
Griever as part of their formation knows about how Ultimecia loses, and thus is her (probably unwilling) source of how SEED destroys her.
 
Adloquium said:
Quistis can cite chapter and verse of the SeeD manual.

Which ties into another question about memory loss: how does the GF junctioning differentiate between memories to degrade? The SeeDs clearly haven't forgotten any of their training, and given the mystery around GF memory issues, they clearly don't affect daily life that much; we don't hear of students forgetting to do their homework because of memory loss.

Selphie remembers junctioning a GF at age 12, but forgot the GF's name. What causes the difference?

It just seems weirdly convenient for GF memory loss to be focused only on "childhood memories" of age five or so, as opposed to any other formative experience that these teenagers have had.
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Probably older memories or not very important memories are swiped first ?

McFluffles said:
As for "Squall is Dead" theories, nah they have about as much grounding as things like Mass Effect 3 Indoctrination Theory, or "every single kids show is secretly purgatory/a coma". Sure, if you connect a bunch of dots with your made up theory you can make it sound real, but you know you're just bullshitting and it's beyond even "the writers didn't intend for this reading" to "you're making shit up to sound deep".
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Which is the basis for complotist theories usually. Make a theory first and then, extend big stretches to find everything which can prove the theory and specially, dismiss everything which invalidate the theory.
 
Adloquium said:
It just seems weirdly convenient for GF memory loss to be focused only on "childhood memories" of age five or so, as opposed to any other formative experience that these teenagers have had.
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On the one hand, yes, but on the other, we still don't know what we don't know. We're not seeing signs they've forgotten anything else, but we weren't seeing signs they'd forgotten the orphanage, either. What's out there that we and they don't know they've forgotten, because there's no one here who does remember?

For daily life, it's not that surprising they don't seem affected; they'd presumably only need to remember homework for a week or so at most, and the Garden environment presumably includes frequent reinforcement for longer-term projects, upcoming exams, etc. Probably also frequent reinforcement for their combat training.

...Which. Actually, the memory loss could be actively useful to NORG and his followers. His child supersoldiers' memories fade at a highly accelerated rate, and he has extensive control over what gets heavily reinforced. That'll tend to emphasise in them what he wants them to remember and deemphasize what he doesn't.
 
Egleris said:
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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A real shame, because Doomtrain is such a fuckin cool summon.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09EWchLSeH4

I love it so much. The railroad crossing. The fires lighting in sequence. The shot of the smokestack blowing as the searchlight turns on. The sheer concept. It's like a refugee from an unmade episode of the Ghostbusters cartoon.

"How about a ghost train."
"We've done that."
"No, we did a train that carries ghosts. I want a ghost train."

God I want it to show up in FF14 somewhere.
 
Kuja said:
A real shame, because Doomtrain is such a fuckin cool summon.
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I swear I've seen a video of Doomtrain interrupt or something. Like, it goes through much of the same animation, but at the last minute gets punched into oblivion or something? Did I hallucinate that?
 
Thozmp said:
I swear I've seen a video of Doomtrain interrupt or something. Like, it goes through much of the same animation, but at the last minute gets punched into oblivion or something? Did I hallucinate that?
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Something similar does happen to Odin in this game but I don't think there's a Doomtrain version.
 
Reese said:
On the one hand, yes, but on the other, we still don't know what we don't know. We're not seeing signs they've forgotten anything else, but we weren't seeing signs they'd forgotten the orphanage, either. What's out there that we and they don't know they've forgotten, because there's no one here who does remember?

For daily life, it's not that surprising they don't seem affected; they'd presumably only need to remember homework for a week or so at most, and the Garden environment presumably includes frequent reinforcement for longer-term projects, upcoming exams, etc. Probably also frequent reinforcement for their combat training.

...Which. Actually, the memory loss could be actively useful to NORG and his followers. His child supersoldiers' memories fade at a highly accelerated rate, and he has extensive control over what gets heavily reinforced. That'll tend to emphasise in them what he wants them to remember and deemphasize what he doesn't.
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Which is kind of the issue. For all we know, part of GF memory loss includes stuff like "what I had for breakfast three weeks ago", but that's also entirely forgettable for regular people.

And given what we know about the rest of the game (since this is the spoiler thread), if the party members have forgotten anything else due to GF memory loss, it was clearly not important enough for the narrative to point out. As far as I know, the only narratively important memory loss is the orphanage, which as mentioned just needed a prod by Irvine to bring back the memories.

Given the status of GF memory loss as more or less a rumour rather than known researched facts, I also highly doubt any of Garden's curriculum was deliberately focusing on reinforcing on the assumption of widespread memory loss, above and beyond the regular reinforcement of general education. Would there even be a meaningful difference?

The confusion is in the narrative treating the GF memory loss as special, more so than regular memory loss that everyone goes through in life. But the mechanisms by which this happens are entirely unknown, and seemingly targeted at the memories that have narrative impact Doylistically, rather than any Watsonian link. And for the rest of the game, they don't even do very much with it.

So it comes back to the Doylist question of "what is the point of this reveal, and how does it serve the greater story". Because, as noted, we know almost nothing about the Watsonian circumstances around the GF memory loss, and every attempt to make sense of it just raises more contradictions and questions.
 
As others have said, that's Odin. If you look for "Seifer vs Odin" videos, it should be easy to find.

That said, it would not surprise me if somebody made a fan-based variant of the scene, editing in Doomtrain's summon rather than Odin's; it's the kind of thing that I would expect somebody to make fanart of.
 
GilliamYaeger said:
It was in ARR, it's the name of the underground Garlean logistics train that supplied the Praetorium.
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No, that's also a reference to the aforementioned train that carries ghosts; the Phantom Train and Doomtrain are similar in both being paranormal trains but they're different entities and I'm specifically talking about Doomtrain here.

Edit: I saw your edit too late. :V
 
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