What is even the drawback to being dead in Spira, I wonder
They never really get into it. Does it suck for the dead person? Like, is it painful in some way? 'Cause otherwise we're reaching Twilight levels of no-drawbacks to being undead
What is even the drawback to being dead in Spira, I wonder
They never really get into it. Does it suck for the dead person? Like, is it painful in some way? 'Cause otherwise we're reaching Twilight levels of no-drawbacks to being undead
occasionally a teenager shows up and does an obnoxious dance
I could have sworn that there's a cutscene where Yuna and company are too late to perform a sending, and it results in Lulu, Wakka and the other guardians giving a dramatic speech about how they'll protect her while fiends appear from the pyreflies surrounding a couple dead bodies. With motion blur and closeups and everything!
I cannot for the life of me find it on Youtube though, so it's possibly all in my fevered imagination
I'm not clear that people becoming fiends is a real thing and not just church propaganda
I ain't never seen it happen, even if the person is a huge asshole kind of ghost
We see various malign unsent, but they seem to be able to retain varying levels of self depending on how driven or hate-filled they were in life.
Sendings are kind of a secondary priority for for summoners after Sin, so seems unlikely that it'd be propaganda. Also it's worth mentioning that Zanarkand was the original nation of summoners so wouldn't have bought into Bevelle's propaganda.
As for real world parallels, it's probably based on shinto practices/Japanese mythology.
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
I'm going to share a real FF10 opinion here and it's that the game is frustrating me because I feel it exists in close parallel to a narrative I would personally find very affecting. I find myself thinking about scenes after I've played them, but mostly in the sense of "Man I wish they had done this"
I felt it almost instantly in the scene where Cid blows up Home. The bit where his crew was singing the Hymn of the Fayth didn't make any sense because none of those people are followers of Yevon, they activley reject Yevon, so it doesn't make sense that the Hymn would have any meaning for them. But give it to me anyway! The hymn being used as a dirge is pretty god damn good. But it's only being carried by three fucking people, none of whom can carry a tune in a bucket. Have Rikku join in to bring the harmony together. I was waiting for that during the whole lead-up of that scene, which ended up being her talking. Have some other Al Bhed explain it to them! Have Rikku sing!
The idea here is that since the Hymn represents feelings and values that I find inherently meaningful, you can also use it to convey those same feelings and values about characters I actually care about! We know Wakka is devout, but we never actually see him give an example of acting in a way that illustrates his faith except for when he prays for victory at Blitzball (usually considered bad form in sports for modern cultures that have monotheistic churches) way back at the start of the game. The same's true for Lulu, only we never see her faith illustrated at all. Ditto Kimahri. I don't know if Auron actually believes anything or if he's just willing to fight sinspawn and fiends because the summoners in question are people he cares about. You know what would help with that! Telling me about those characters!
This bit with the ronso being butchered is probably the strongest example of narrative-in-parallel-to-narrative-I-care-about so far. The only acknowledgement I get about the effect this has on Kimahri - on anyone in my party - is Kimahri yelling about ohw he maintains his strength as a guardian. What? Who wrote this? Fuck that! Kimahri is the last survivor of the most complete Final Fantasy genocide since Kefka killed all the espers and all I get out of it is him growling at Seymour and a temporary boost to his strength? Fuck!
Part of the problem here is that the game seems really, genuinely, super reticent to give me any scenes that really flesh out any characters who aren't either Yuna or Tidus. We get flashes of it, snippets, like with Wakka coming to terms with Chappu's death or the mention of Lulu's relationship to Chappu and to the first summoner she guarded, but none of it is ever really capitalized on except in the context of how those relationships illustrate the character's current relationship with the quest, with Yuna. We see evidence of Yuna's faith and the toll it takes on her, we see Tidus's lack of it and the way it changes how he sees the world and the people around him, but we don't get a real look at any of the other characters so far and I am within pissing distance of walking into the Necrohol of Zanarkand over here.
Just
Man what if they took the death of the Ronso and really did somehting with it? What if, instead of them being wiped out off-screen and everybody just continuing on their merry way because the only part of the equation that matters is that Seymour managed to get past them, they actually went back to see? What if Yuna said, "Holy shit, they're all dead! These people gave their lives for us! I have to go do a Sending right now, I can't let their sacrifice end with them all as fiends!" What if Kimahri was reticent about it, asked her not to go, because he can't really face the death of his people, the reality of it, so soon after he had made peace with his former brothers and tormentors? What if they went anyway, because the weight of their debt is greater than the weight of their fucking shame, or because it was the decent thing to do, or because of any reason?
What if Yuna performs the sending over the bodies of the Ronso, which the party has prepared for this purpose, and instead of us getting the voice of the Fayth piped in from nowhere we actually just have John DiMaggio sing the Hymn as Kimahri? Just imagine that: Yuna dancing, the pyrflies whirling, and everything is silent except for Kimahri singing his grief. And then another voice joins him. Tidus, or Lulu, or Rikku - imagine what that suddenly communicates about any person who's the first to join their voice to his! Tidus casting aside his lack of faith, Lulu speaking to her sharing of his sorrow, or what it might say about Rikku - and then the rest of the party joins in, bit by bit, until we have a harmony built in layers out of voices we care about. Most voice actors can sing. It's a thing they can do! Use it! USE IT USE IT USE IT USE IT! Make that scene "The Dawn Will Come" twelve years prior!
Something like that could have legitimately been the best scene in the game so far, told us a lot about Kimahri depending on how you handle the end of it, acknowledged their debt to people outside of their immediate circle, given greater weight to everything that comes after it, and actually acted like Seymour's butchery mattered so there's actually weight to the crimes he's committed instead of just... nothing.
Urrrgh! It's so close! It lives next door to a game that would twist me up in knots! But right now it's not doing it for me, it's just going through motions and plot contrivances that aren't amounting to anything so far, it's only giving me two characters in a context that makes me think I'm supposed to care about them! Game! Game stop this, I want to care more than this!
I'm going to share a real FF10 opinion here and it's that the game is frustrating me because I feel it exists in close parallel to a narrative I would personally find very affecting. I find myself thinking about scenes after I've played them, but mostly in the sense of "Man I wish they had done this"
I felt it almost instantly in the scene where Cid blows up Home. The bit where his crew was singing the Hymn of the Fayth didn't make any sense because none of those people are followers of Yevon, they activley reject Yevon, so it doesn't make sense that the Hymn would have any meaning for them. But give it to me anyway! The hymn being used as a dirge is pretty god damn good. But it's only being carried by three fucking people, none of whom can carry a tune in a bucket. Have Rikku join in to bring the harmony together. I was waiting for that during the whole lead-up of that scene, which ended up being her talking. Have some other Al Bhed explain it to them! Have Rikku sing!
The idea here is that since the Hymn represents feelings and values that I find inherently meaningful, you can also use it to convey those same feelings and values about characters I actually care about! We know Wakka is devout, but we never actually see him give an example of acting in a way that illustrates his faith except for when he prays for victory at Blitzball (usually considered bad form in sports for modern cultures that have monotheistic cultures) way back at the start of the game. The same's true for Lulu, only we never see her faith illustrated at all. Ditto Kimahri. I don't know if Auron actually believes anything or if he's just willing to fight sinspawn and fiends because the summoners in question are people he cares about. You know what would help with that! Telling me about those characters!
This bit with the ronso being butchered is probably the strongest example of narrative-in-parallel-to-narrative-I-care-about so far. The only acknowledgement I get about the effect this has on Kimahri - on anyone in my party - is Kimahri yelling about ohw he maintains his strength as a guardian. What? Who wrote this? Fuck that! Kimahri is the last survivor of the most complete Final Fantasy genocide since Kefka killed all the espers and all I get out of it is him growling at Seymour and a temporary boost to his strength? Fuck!
Part of the problem here is that the game seems really, genuinely, super reticent to give me any scenes that really flesh out any characters who aren't either Yuna or Tidus. We get flashes of it, snippets, like with Wakka coming to terms with Chappu's death or the mention of Lulu's relationship to Chappu and to the first summoner she guarded, but none of it is ever really capitalized on except in the context of how those relationships illustrate the character's current relationship with the quest, with Yuna. We see evidence of Yuna's faith and the toll it takes on her, we see Tidus's lack of it and the way it changes how he sees the world and the people around him, but we don't get a real look at any of the other characters so far and I am within pissing distance of walking into the Necrohol of Zanarkand over here.
Just
Man what if they took the death of the Ronso and really did somehting with it? What if, instead of them being wiped out off-screen and everybody just continuing on their merry way because the only part of the equation that matters is that Seymour managed to get past them, they actually went back to see? What if Yuna said, "Holy shit, they're all dead! These people gave their lives for us! I have to go do a Sending right now, I can't let their sacrifice end with them all as fiends!" What if Kimahri was reticent about it, asked her not to go, because he can't really face the death of his people, the reality of it, so soon after he had made peace with his former brothers and tormentors? What if they went anyway, because the weight of their debt is greater than the weight of their fucking shame, or because it was the decent thing to do, or because of any reason?
What if Yuna performs the sending over the bodies of the Ronso, which the party has prepared for this purpose, and instead of us getting the voice of the Fayth piped in from nowhere we actually just have John DiMaggio sing the Hymn as Kimahri? Just imagine that: Yuna dancing, the pyrflies whirling, and everything is silent except for Kimahri singing his grief. And then another voice joins him. Tidus, or Lulu, or Rikku - imagine what that suddenly communicates about any person who's the first to join their voice to his! Tidus casting aside his lack of faith, Lulu speaking to her sharing of his sorrow, or what it might say about Rikku - and then the rest of the party joins in, bit by bit, until we have a harmony built in layers out of voices we care about. Most voice actors can sing. It's a thing they can do! Use it! USE IT USE IT USE IT USE IT! Make that scene "The Dawn Will Come" twelve years prior!
Something like that could have legitimately been the best scene in the game so far, told us a lot about Kimahri depending on how you handle the end of it, acknowledged their debt to people outside of their immediate circle, given greater weight to everything that comes after it, and actually acted like Seymour's butchery mattered so there's actually weight to the crimes he's committed instead of just... nothing.
Urrrgh! It's so close! It lives next door to a game that would twist me up in knots! But right now it's not doing it for me, it's just going through motions and plot contrivances that aren't amounting to anything so far, it's only giving me two characters in a context that makes me think I'm supposed to care about them! Game! Game stop this, I want to care more than this!
Wyborn, that actually touches tangentially on a post I'm planning on writing today or tomorrow.
FFX has a great ensemble cast, but it fumbles the use of them. A lot of development is given to Yuna and Tidus, but the other members suffer for it. The other characters who do have character arcs have them resolved in hasty and/or trite fashions. And, well, some unfortunate characters don't really have arcs at all.
Hell, some of the stuff I like about Rikku may not have even been intentional, but a coincidence of plot elements and dialogue that allowed me to interpret things in a way the writers didn't think about.
There's a lot of missed opportunities to make the audience care about the rest of the cast, which is why I totally understand when I hear people say FFX has one of the worst casts in the series.
EDIT: It almost feels like a story that was made with plot reveals and setpieces in mind, with little consideration with how characters would interact with those events. Which may explain why, to me, its aesthetics and support of its themes are its strongest elements. The world and the message they wanted to tell with the story was decided first, and then characters were slotted in willy-nilly.
I feel with most FF games there at least two characters who get screwed over in character development halfway through the game.
In FFX it would be Lulu and Khimari.
FFIX, Freya and Amarant.
FFVIII, Quisits and...well, pretty much everyone besides Squall and Rinoa.
For FFVII it would be Yuffie and Vincent, being optional party members. But it could be argued that Tifa also lacks resolutions to her own personal, non-Cloud related story beats (she was supposed to reunite with Zangan, for instance).
The most infuriating thing about FFX to me is that Rikku is a main character in both games and never has an actual character arc.
Thinking back, she's pretty similar to Tifa in that the bulk of her role is tied down to another character's story (Yuna).
I still appreciated it since we rarely see two family members in the same party. FFX's cast as a whole represents Yuna's family, and Rikku being the only one who's related to her by blood kind of gives her exclusive importance over the others. It's a character motivation that's easy to emphasize with.
Also, fun little factoid (ending spoilers):
In the original Japanese, Yuna says "I love you" to Rikku when they have their tender (but not definitive) goodbye, and she says "Thank you" when saying goodbye (for real) to Tidus.
In the English version, "I love you" and "Thank you" are reversed for both scenes.
Personally I wish they kept "I love you" for both.
If Yuna went back and did a sending for the ronso this game would have shot a couple places up my FF masterlist
Other things that would do it for me: Yuna doing a sending on Seymour while he's busy fighting the party. Or, even better, Yuna doing a Sending on Seymour while Bahamut puts him a headlock
If Yuna went back and did a sending for the ronso this game would have shot a couple places up my FF masterlist
Other things that would do it for me: Yuna doing a sending on Seymour while he's busy fighting the party. Or, even better, Yuna doing a Sending on Seymour while Bahamut puts him a headlock
For me Yuna was too busy summoning INFINITE OVERDRIVES.
Posts
They never really get into it. Does it suck for the dead person? Like, is it painful in some way? 'Cause otherwise we're reaching Twilight levels of no-drawbacks to being undead
occasionally a teenager shows up and does an obnoxious dance
I'm not clear that people becoming fiends is a real thing and not just church propaganda
I ain't never seen it happen, even if the person is a huge asshole kind of ghost
i mean, seymour becomes fiends
...that look like seymour
.....and then he becomes seymour again
I..,am completely making that up, I gots no idea. I missed a great deal of FFX's B story I'm realizing
It's probably one of the few things the church isn't lying about.
Like, the animation of creatures dying (the little orbs of light floating away) is the same animation you see during a sending.
Which, granted, is a tenuous connection, but it does feel like a deliberate design choice to me.
I cannot for the life of me find it on Youtube though, so it's possibly all in my fevered imagination
I remember how back in the day my sister's nickname for Seymour was "Evil Sasami" because of his hair.
I still kind of see it.
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None. Or infinite.
Your memories are all an illusion. You were created in a laboratory yesterday. Sorry you had to find out this way.
Why I fear the ocean.
I just checked with a doctor, and he said it's legit.
Admittedly, the WHO called him a crackpot, but hey. If King Country trusts Ravi Chakrabarti, so do I!
Why I fear the ocean.
If we wanna go down this rabbit hole, the 'un' in 'undead' implies that a death happened but was then reversed in some way
ZOMBIES!!
We see various malign unsent, but they seem to be able to retain varying levels of self depending on how driven or hate-filled they were in life.
Sendings are kind of a secondary priority for for summoners after Sin, so seems unlikely that it'd be propaganda. Also it's worth mentioning that Zanarkand was the original nation of summoners so wouldn't have bought into Bevelle's propaganda.
As for real world parallels, it's probably based on shinto practices/Japanese mythology.
The first time I played ff10 I spent most of the game thinking Seymour's tattoo things were some real weird chest hair.
I felt it almost instantly in the scene where Cid blows up Home. The bit where his crew was singing the Hymn of the Fayth didn't make any sense because none of those people are followers of Yevon, they activley reject Yevon, so it doesn't make sense that the Hymn would have any meaning for them. But give it to me anyway! The hymn being used as a dirge is pretty god damn good. But it's only being carried by three fucking people, none of whom can carry a tune in a bucket. Have Rikku join in to bring the harmony together. I was waiting for that during the whole lead-up of that scene, which ended up being her talking. Have some other Al Bhed explain it to them! Have Rikku sing!
The idea here is that since the Hymn represents feelings and values that I find inherently meaningful, you can also use it to convey those same feelings and values about characters I actually care about! We know Wakka is devout, but we never actually see him give an example of acting in a way that illustrates his faith except for when he prays for victory at Blitzball (usually considered bad form in sports for modern cultures that have monotheistic churches) way back at the start of the game. The same's true for Lulu, only we never see her faith illustrated at all. Ditto Kimahri. I don't know if Auron actually believes anything or if he's just willing to fight sinspawn and fiends because the summoners in question are people he cares about. You know what would help with that! Telling me about those characters!
This bit with the ronso being butchered is probably the strongest example of narrative-in-parallel-to-narrative-I-care-about so far. The only acknowledgement I get about the effect this has on Kimahri - on anyone in my party - is Kimahri yelling about ohw he maintains his strength as a guardian. What? Who wrote this? Fuck that! Kimahri is the last survivor of the most complete Final Fantasy genocide since Kefka killed all the espers and all I get out of it is him growling at Seymour and a temporary boost to his strength? Fuck!
Part of the problem here is that the game seems really, genuinely, super reticent to give me any scenes that really flesh out any characters who aren't either Yuna or Tidus. We get flashes of it, snippets, like with Wakka coming to terms with Chappu's death or the mention of Lulu's relationship to Chappu and to the first summoner she guarded, but none of it is ever really capitalized on except in the context of how those relationships illustrate the character's current relationship with the quest, with Yuna. We see evidence of Yuna's faith and the toll it takes on her, we see Tidus's lack of it and the way it changes how he sees the world and the people around him, but we don't get a real look at any of the other characters so far and I am within pissing distance of walking into the Necrohol of Zanarkand over here.
Just
Man what if they took the death of the Ronso and really did somehting with it? What if, instead of them being wiped out off-screen and everybody just continuing on their merry way because the only part of the equation that matters is that Seymour managed to get past them, they actually went back to see? What if Yuna said, "Holy shit, they're all dead! These people gave their lives for us! I have to go do a Sending right now, I can't let their sacrifice end with them all as fiends!" What if Kimahri was reticent about it, asked her not to go, because he can't really face the death of his people, the reality of it, so soon after he had made peace with his former brothers and tormentors? What if they went anyway, because the weight of their debt is greater than the weight of their fucking shame, or because it was the decent thing to do, or because of any reason?
What if Yuna performs the sending over the bodies of the Ronso, which the party has prepared for this purpose, and instead of us getting the voice of the Fayth piped in from nowhere we actually just have John DiMaggio sing the Hymn as Kimahri? Just imagine that: Yuna dancing, the pyrflies whirling, and everything is silent except for Kimahri singing his grief. And then another voice joins him. Tidus, or Lulu, or Rikku - imagine what that suddenly communicates about any person who's the first to join their voice to his! Tidus casting aside his lack of faith, Lulu speaking to her sharing of his sorrow, or what it might say about Rikku - and then the rest of the party joins in, bit by bit, until we have a harmony built in layers out of voices we care about. Most voice actors can sing. It's a thing they can do! Use it! USE IT USE IT USE IT USE IT! Make that scene "The Dawn Will Come" twelve years prior!
Something like that could have legitimately been the best scene in the game so far, told us a lot about Kimahri depending on how you handle the end of it, acknowledged their debt to people outside of their immediate circle, given greater weight to everything that comes after it, and actually acted like Seymour's butchery mattered so there's actually weight to the crimes he's committed instead of just... nothing.
Urrrgh! It's so close! It lives next door to a game that would twist me up in knots! But right now it's not doing it for me, it's just going through motions and plot contrivances that aren't amounting to anything so far, it's only giving me two characters in a context that makes me think I'm supposed to care about them! Game! Game stop this, I want to care more than this!
Oh, don't worry.
You will.
FFX has a great ensemble cast, but it fumbles the use of them. A lot of development is given to Yuna and Tidus, but the other members suffer for it. The other characters who do have character arcs have them resolved in hasty and/or trite fashions. And, well, some unfortunate characters don't really have arcs at all.
Hell, some of the stuff I like about Rikku may not have even been intentional, but a coincidence of plot elements and dialogue that allowed me to interpret things in a way the writers didn't think about.
There's a lot of missed opportunities to make the audience care about the rest of the cast, which is why I totally understand when I hear people say FFX has one of the worst casts in the series.
EDIT: It almost feels like a story that was made with plot reveals and setpieces in mind, with little consideration with how characters would interact with those events. Which may explain why, to me, its aesthetics and support of its themes are its strongest elements. The world and the message they wanted to tell with the story was decided first, and then characters were slotted in willy-nilly.
He really really wants to like things. For instance, this was his running commentary on Other M:
"Oh boy time to start the new Metroid"
2 hours later: "Hmm the controls here aren't very good"
Next hour: silence
5 hours later: "I'm not having any fun"
It breaks his heart every time.
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In FFX it would be Lulu and Khimari.
FFIX, Freya and Amarant.
FFVIII, Quisits and...well, pretty much everyone besides Squall and Rinoa.
For FFVII it would be Yuffie and Vincent, being optional party members. But it could be argued that Tifa also lacks resolutions to her own personal, non-Cloud related story beats (she was supposed to reunite with Zangan, for instance).
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Auron get's his, and there is actually an in-universe reason given why his are....sparse.
Completly right on the rest though.
FFX has a nasty habit of going, "And here's an important facet of character X's life!"
And then completly ignoring it for the rest of the game.
Also, completly ignoring my TidusXLulu ship. DON'T LET ME SHIP IN GAME AND NOT FOLLOW THROUGH MAN.
Thinking back, she's pretty similar to Tifa in that the bulk of her role is tied down to another character's story (Yuna).
I still appreciated it since we rarely see two family members in the same party. FFX's cast as a whole represents Yuna's family, and Rikku being the only one who's related to her by blood kind of gives her exclusive importance over the others. It's a character motivation that's easy to emphasize with.
Also, fun little factoid (ending spoilers):
In the original Japanese, Yuna says "I love you" to Rikku when they have their tender (but not definitive) goodbye, and she says "Thank you" when saying goodbye (for real) to Tidus.
In the English version, "I love you" and "Thank you" are reversed for both scenes.
Personally I wish they kept "I love you" for both.
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And Freya gets a pretty big section of IX, if I remember correctly.
Other things that would do it for me: Yuna doing a sending on Seymour while he's busy fighting the party. Or, even better, Yuna doing a Sending on Seymour while Bahamut puts him a headlock
I think the issue is that those doing the sending have to somewhat want to be sent.
It's why(HUGE ASS SPOILER).
Seymore was a summoner himself, so it makes sense that he can somewhat resist being sent.
Heck, it's practically a callback to "Protect Rydia while she summons".
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For me Yuna was too busy summoning INFINITE OVERDRIVES.
God Yuna was such a hoss in that game.
Yeah that didn't go over well, the HUGE ASS SPOILER has nothing to do with Seymore butts.
Am I remembering something wrong? I thought Seymore being a summoner was stated from like, his introduction.