#ff13 screenshots

[caj-v]

[verseleth]

Blinded by Light

[snvxiii]

Serah <3

Screenshots taken by dresspheres.

[windupkaine]

DOMINANTS OF ICE

hraesvelgr and shiva

[buggiesnax]

Please put Final Fantasy 13 characters in Kingdom Hearts I am begging you

Sora needs to talk to Vanille and Fang and realize they mirror him and Riku. but what do I know

[sincerelychroma]

This woman could completely destroy me and I'd go "Thank you"

📸 Screenshot is mine. Please Reblog or Like if you use it for anything.

[fheythfully]

Starting a prayer circle that this expansion will be FF13 coded because look at that city straight out of 13-2, and that one mob straight out of the entire series 👀 And some of those screenshots and art were very much giving Pulse and Cocoon vibes!

[jessjustplay]

Currently Playing Final Fantasy XIII-2: Episode 1

April 29, 2023

I started Final Fantasy XIII-2 today and… wow! Such an intense intro and so many new things!! 😳 But I love this world and I’m looking forward to learning the new stuff, and honestly I’m just very happy that they kept the Paradigm system!! 🤩

Intro

ALRIGHT, THAT INTRO. There's a lot going on. Lightning is kicking ass (as usual) but she is fighting against someone we know nothing about. It seems like she is in some weird end-of-the-world dimension? (We later learn it's called Valhalla.) And in the middle of all this, a guy named Noel randomly shows up and she gives him a mission to find Serah.

But before all that, we get into a couple battles which are CHAOTIC. Moving battles, cinematic battles... it's all...so... NEW! I was very confused but quickly learned the gist of it.

These screenshots will probably come in handy later:

Episode 1

At the end of Lightning's fight, Noel escapes through a gate and we are then taken to Serah. She has a dream, which is the intro we just watched. Her clothes change and she's confused (we're all confused).

Then, you get control of the CRAZIEST camera EVER. It took me awhile to get used to the mechanics of it... it's so... strange! It feels like FF13's camera, but almost like the developers wanted to create a "VR" experience... I don't know how to explain it, but the camera feels like it wants to "pull me in" instead of watching the game through a lens. It was weird at first, but now I'm used to it.

The battles are also different and feel very strange at first, but again, once you get the hang of them, they become more fun. I'm so glad that Paradigms still exist. The Paradigm system is so good.

So anyways, I think the game so far is doing a good job at setting up the new story of this game. But uh... WHERE IS SNOW!?! We learn he is off looking for Lightning, but it's weird that he's not there. Why would he leave Serah? The other NORA members are there (who are very friendly and silly).

Story-wise, what what I understand is that... Noel is from 700 years in the future, but possibly a completely different universe. He is the last of the humans, so he wants to change the future to have more humans living. Cocoon (in his world) doesn't exist anymore... Lightning is believed to be part of the pillar holding up Cocoon (in Serah's world, but Serah doesn't believe this, she thinks Lightning is alive).

We are going to join Noel in finding artifacts (things that don't belong in the present world) and use them to open gates to time-jump between times and universes. I told you, chaotic.

We also have a moogle friend, is who is actually very cute. AND THERE ARE CHOCOBOS IN THIS GAME - THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY RIDE!!

As Serah and Noel get ready to enter a time gate, the camera pans to 2 familiar people (the girl and guy from the intro!). Very suspicious... I wonder what they are doing in "the present" and what they are up to...

[freyayuki]

Final Fantasy Record Keeper Daily Free Draws Part 6

Every day, you get 1 free single draw on the Final Fantasy Record Keeper (FFRK) mobile game. The banner you can do this on is extremely bloated though.

It has basically all the relics on this game and the rates are crappy as always and there are no guarantees, but there is a very rare chance to get something good from this draw.

More often than not though, you’re more likely to just end up with bronze or silver trash.

Sure, I’ve gotten some good pulls from this before but that’s few and far between. It’s so rare that it might as well be nonexistent.

Anyway, a short while or so after Final Fantasy Record Keeper announced that it was gonna end its service on September 29, 2022 (I talk more about that in another post), we also got the news that the daily free single draw will now be a daily free 10-draw until the game closes.

On one hand, this is great news because I want to be able to clear as much of FFRK’s content as I can before the game ends. 

I’m missing a lot of relics though, so I doubt I’ll be able to clear everything unless I can get more useful Soul Breaks.

But on the other hand, as far as I’m aware, Final Fantasy Record Keeper didn’t change or update the rates or anything. 

We may be getting 10 items instead of just 1 per day, but there are still no guarantees so you’re still really likely to end up with trash as opposed to anything useful.

In fact, that’s exactly what I’ve been experiencing. More often than not, whenever I do the daily free 10-draw, I just end up seeing a combination of 10 bronze and silver orbs, which just feels bad, man.

Sometimes, I get 1 or more 5-star items but these relics have been heavily powercrept by now and most, if not all, of them are now Lensable so it’s just completely and utterly disappointing to get these Soul Breaks instead of a 6-star or a 7-star that could be of use to me.

Heck, there are even 6-stars and 7-stars that are also useless so I really wish FFRK had at least made it so the daily 10-draw guaranteed at least one 6-star item or something. 

Maybe they could have adjusted the rates too or something. I mean, really, why not? After all, the game’s ending soon.

Anyway, decided that I’ll only bother to take screenshots of the results of these pulls if I actually get something that could be classified as either good, useful, or interesting, or something.

One daily free draw gave me 2 5-stars and 1 6-star. The 5-stars were new but was still disappointed to see them anyway so didn’t bother checking who they belonged to.

One was a Glint Soul Break (G) for a Final Fantasy III char while the other was a Burst Soul Break (BSB) for a Final Fantasy VI char. These kinds of Soul Breaks are really outdated and powercrept by now so meh.

The 6-star was new too. It turned out to be the Awakened Arcane Soul Break (AASB) of Garnet Til Alexandros XVII from Final Fantasy IX. Nice.

Pleased to have gotten an Awakening from this pull although this is like my first BDL relic for Garnet so I doubt I’ll be able to use her for endgame content unless I can get more of her Soul Breaks.

Another daily free draw gave me 1 5-star and 1 6-star. The 5-star was a new Super Soul Break (SSB) for a Final Fantasy XIII char. Since it’s a fist-type weapon and it’s from FF13, I’m guessing this belongs to Snow Villiers from Final Fantasy 13.

The 6-star turned out to be the AASB2 of Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII (#ad). Actually really pleased to see this. Never thought that I’d be able to get this Soul Break.

See, the thing is, I actually currently have most of Sephiroth’s Soul Breaks. Before getting his AASB2, I was only missing 5 of his relics.

Three of those are Lensable. The reason why I haven’t bothered to Lens the relics I’m missing for him is because they’re all useless and outdated by now, and I don’t really need them.

Well, I suppose his Arcane Overstrike Soul Break (AOSB) for the fire element is usable enough, but I don’t really need it so meh.

The 2 relics that I’m missing for Sephi that aren’t Lensable are his AASB2 and his Dual Awakening Soul Break 1 (DASB1).

It’s been a long time since Seph’s AASB2 was featured on a banner. Never got the chance to pull for it. Was always hoping that it’d eventually be Lensable but that hope died when the game gave its end of service announcement.

Never would have thought that I’d be able to get my very first copy of Sephiroth’s AASB2 via the daily free draw. Really happy to see this.

Anyway, as for Sephiroth’s DASB1 - a while back (maybe a month or so), we had the Summer Sun Festival 2022 event.

The Summer Sun 2022 Festival banner 3 included a couple of new relics for Sephiroth. I talk more about how my pulls on that banner went on this post. Here, I’ll just say it turned out to be a complete and total disaster.

The entire fest was a disaster, an absolute waste of mythril, and really made me hate this game. I mean, I don’t want it to end but man, the rates here really suck.

Anyway, the point is that, although I spent hundreds of mythril, I failed to get Sephiroth’s DASB1 because eff this game and its crappy rates.

Now I feel like I’ll never be able to get Seph’s Dual unless a miracle happens or something.

I know it doesn’t really matter, and it’s not like Sephi is even my fave char or anything but still. I hate this, especially since I already have most of his relics. If only I’d been able to get his DASB1 on fest banner 3. Sigh.

Another daily free draw gave me 1 5-star and 2 6-stars. The 5-star was a new Glint Soul Break for a Final Fantasy XIII char. Since this is a staff or rod-type weapon, pretty sure this belongs to Oerba Dia Vanille from Final Fantasy 13.

One of the 6-stars was a dupe Ultra Soul Break (USB) that belongs to Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII. Meh.

The other 6-star was a new AASB that belongs to Cidolfus Orlandeau from Final Fantasy Tactics. Nice. Have one of Orlandeau's Synchro Arcane Soul Breaks (SASB) so this Awakening gives me another BDL relic for him and makes him usable.

Another daily free draw gave me 2 6-stars. Unfortunately, both were dupes. The first was a USB for a Final Fantasy X char while the second was the AASB of Hope Estheim from Final Fantasy XIII. It really sucks to get an Awakening only for it to turn out to be a dupe. Eff this game.

Another daily free draw gave me 1 5-star and 1 6-star. The 5-star was a new Legend Materia Relic (LMR) for a Final Fantasy VIII char. Judging from the weapon-type (a staff), pretty sure this belongs to Selphie Tilmitt from Final Fantasy 8.

The 6-star was a new Awakening for Meliadoul Tengille from Final Fantasy Tactics. IIRC, this is like my first BDL relic for Meliadoul.

Another daily free draw gave me 1 6-star and 1 5-star. The 5-star was a Glint Soul Break for a Final Fantasy III char. It’s new but meh.

But surprisingly, the 6-star turned out to be the Awakened Arcane Soul Break  2 (AASB2) of the Emperor from Final Fantasy II. It’s new and this is actually my first BDL relic for the Emperor.

Having only 1 BDL relic wouldn’t make the Emperor usable but thankfully, his AASB1 is Lensable.

Only have a few FF2 relics so more is always welcome, especially since I haven’t cleared the Final Fantasy II Dragonking Dungeon quest yet.

Another daily free draw gave me 1 5-star and 1 6-star. The 5-star was a Super Soul Break for a Final Fantasy VI char. It’s new but meh. Useless.

The 6-star turned out to be the AASB2 of Meia from Mobius Final Fantasy. Hell, yes! Was super pleased when I saw this. What a pleasant surprise.

Some of Meia’s Soul Breaks were featured in a water banner that showed up recently. I really need more water tech, not to mention more Final Fantasy I tech, so I pulled on this banner.

This was after we’d already gotten the news that FFRK was gonna end soon so there was no longer any reason to save my mythril.

I talk more about this in another post, but was able to get a few of Meia’s Soul Breaks, including her Dual Awakening Soul Break (DASB) and her Synchro Arcane Soul Break (SASB). Unfortunately, I missed out on her AASB2.

At least her AASB1 was Lensable although I haven’t gotten it yet since I haven’t had the chance to try out the Final Fantasy I Dragonking Dungeon quest or any other fight that might require Meia and a magical water team.

Meia’s AASB2 is way better than her AASB1 so I’m really glad that I was eventually able to get said Awakening. Now I have multiple BDL relics for her.

Meia is a really good DPS so it feels like my chances of being able to win the FF1 Dragonking fight just went up.

End of Final Fantasy Record Keeper Mobile Game

And that’s it. It’s all over now. At the time I’m writing this part of this post, it’s way past September 29, 2022 so FFRK has just ended its service. Ahh, I still wish that this didn’t have to happen now or anytime soon.

I tried but sadly, wasn’t able to finish all the content in Final Fantasy Record Keeper before the end. I talk more about that in another post.

Also unfortunately didn’t get much of a chance to really use some of the new relics that I just got from all these free daily 10-draws. I wish we got more time before the game ended.

Never got to use Garnet. With only one BDL relic for her, it would have been near impossible to bring her to endgame content but since FFRK was ending already anyway, I wish that I’d been able to try her out in battle even if it’s just against an easy boss or something.

Also never got to use Orlandeau. IIRC, I did get to use Meliadoul like once or twice maybe but that was way back and way before I got her AASB on one of these free daily 10-draws.

After getting her Awakening, didn’t get the chance to try out Meliadoul in battle. Also, I’d been meaning to take on the Final Fantasy Tactics Dragonking Dungeon quest but I ran out of time.

Didn’t get to try out the Emperor in battle either. I’d been meaning to Lens his AASB1 so I’d have 2 BDL relics for him. Then I could have tried the Final Fantasy II Dragonking Dungeon quest but also never got the chance to do that.

At least I actually got to use Meia even if it wasn’t as much as I wanted. IIRC, I did Lens her AASB1. Got to use Meia in battle a few times and she’s really good.

I’d been meaning to try her out in the Final Fantasy I Dragonking Dungeon quest but unfortunately never got the chance to do so.

Meia and the rest of my magical water elemental team did help me beat one of the Bahamut quests though. I talk more about that in another post.

Even got 2 new Magicites after beating Bahamut. These Magicites are so much more powerful than the ones I already have and helped me beat even more content. I really wish that I had the time to do even more before it was all over.

As for Sephiroth - well, he’s on my physical fire elemental team and that’s the party I use basically all the time so I did get to use him a lot. But I don’t think I really got the chance to try out his AASB2 though.

Since I have plenty of other BDL relics for Sephi and since those Soul Breaks are way better than his Awakening 2, I prioritize casting them. I’ll only really use his AASB2 after I’ve already used up all of his other BDL relics, and that’s assuming the fight is still ongoing.

Decided to Lens the rest of Sephiroth’s relics that I’m missing and that are available in the The Record Lab. After all, there’s no point in saving anything anymore.

Now the only thing I’m missing for Sephiroth is his Dual Awakening Soul Break 1. Still so, so, so upset that I failed to get said relic. Eff this game. I really wish that I’d gotten the chance to try it out. Sigh.

Another thing that’s really upsetting is the way Final Fantasy Record Keeper ended. Its end feels so anticlimactic. Truly a letdown of epic proportions. The game could have tried to do more before everything ended.

But instead, even before the end, FFRK felt dead already. We stopped getting any new events long before the end.

We got a special banner and some tickets that we could use to pull on said banner. I talk more about that in another post, but we’d get like 1 ticket per day as part of some login bonus campaign or something.

That only lasted for like 30 days or so though. But why couldn’t they have made it last until the end? Why couldn’t they have given us more free pulls?

Why couldn’t they have adjusted the rates or something? Why couldn’t they have made it so that these daily free 10-draws would give us at least 1 6-star or 7-star Soul Break or something?

They didn’t even refresh the Realm and Elemental banners or given us more mythril and Realm/Elemental x11 tickets.

The game could have gone out with a bang but it feels like it all just ended in disappointment.

Conclusion

So, what about you? What relics did you get from the daily free draws? What do you think about the daily free draw banner? What do you think about the fact that Final Fantasy Record Keeper is all over now? Feel free to share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below or by reblogging this post.

Notes:

screenshots are from my Final Fantasy Record Keeper game account

[uneplumesombre]

▬ oerba ruins

[caj-v]

every day i ask myself that same question little man

[blackestnight]

together we will find the break of day

[givelightningherharem]

FF13 TRENDING ON TWITTER IN JAPAN

[crownedcroweprince]

Taking back control Defeating a devil a day A slight insinuation to divide and conquer Crowd control You’re snug as a bug in a rug It takes some interdiction to divide and conquer Give me a throne, leave us alone Preaching the ways of the dead

[thewrongexecution]

thinkin’ ‘bout final fantasy

I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!

I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.

...Eventually.

Spoiler Warning:

Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15

Content Warning:

Discussion of death

Cussin’

Length warning:

5621 words

13 sections

16 digressions

Let’s dig in.

- - - - -

Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.

FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.

((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.

((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))

This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.

((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))

And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.

And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.

((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))

- - - - -

Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.

Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.

Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.

Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.

((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))

Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.

Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.

- - - - -

Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:

Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.

People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.

((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))

The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?

((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))

The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:

(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])

That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.

Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.

((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.

((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))

The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.

((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))

- - - - -

But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.

Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.

Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.

Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.

Right up until the Leviathan fight.

See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--

((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))

Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.

You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.

Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.

Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?

if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.

((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))

now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!

((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.

((inhale...

((exhale...

((and move on.))

We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.

But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?

Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?

- - - - -

Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.

See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.

((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!

((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.

((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))

But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:

“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”

- - - - -

Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.

The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.

This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!

Boundless, terrifying freedom.

From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.

So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?

Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.

For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.

And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...

Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.

((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))

So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!

Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!

Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?

- - - - -

Aerith dies.

If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.

Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.

Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.

((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))

And that’s the problem with answering that question.

See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.

Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.

- - - - -

But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.

If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.

And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?

And then on top of that, it’s 2020.

I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.

Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?

- - - - -

So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.

FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.

...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?

Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?

Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?

Hey, how come--

- - - - -

Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:

And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.

Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.

At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.

At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.

Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.

Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.

All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,

The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.

So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?

- - - - -

One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.

and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.

((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.

((but, still.

((Really?))

So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:

- - - - -

At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.

Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.

This is Sephiroth’s plan.

- - - - -

Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.

Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.

Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.

On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.

And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.

((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))

Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day

[luny15]

Lightning