13 and 15 were direct consequences of almost everything else in the company thanks to incompetent executive management. Type-0 was supposed to be a FNC game too if i remember right. There was also FFXIV 1.0 that ate shit. Even KH got a hit, nomura wanted to do some side games on handhelds but wanted to make a console one after Versus released. Didn't they also acquire a bunch of western Ips that the never really did well with around the same time?
>Didn't they also acquire a bunch of western Ips that the never really did well with around the same time?
Not sure. I'd be curious to know since the only ones I can think of doing poorly at that time are Hitman and maybe Just Cause. Not sure what other western IPs they have now HAD, rather before Deusex, Nu-Tomb Raider and the Avengers games.
Early to Mid 2010s was probably Square Enix's lowest point. >FF13 trilogy >No Kingdom Hearts >No other JRPGs >FF Versus 13/15 in development hell >FF14 was a bust >Only real success was Tomb Raider reboot and the sequels never lived up to it.
Tomb Raider wasn't a success according to them because the expected 10M sales in one month or something like that.
I'm sure they changed their mind later because it got two sequels.
No, it's called having standards. Which Fgays and Squareshitters don't comprehend.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Your standards are unrealistic. Simple as.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>wanting good games is unrealistic
2 years ago
Anonymous
No sane game maker should ever create a product with the autistic schizo in mind.
2 years ago
Anonymous
You're right, they should make products with good gameplay in mind. Too bad they have been failing for 25 years outside some expectations.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>no businessman should ever want to make money
Weird flex, but okay.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Are you implying chronically ill pedantic autists suddenly are the market majority? If so, you need to stop poisoning your brain on Ganker.
You're right, they should make products with good gameplay in mind. Too bad they have been failing for 25 years outside some expectations.
They won't make good games paying attention to online autists. That much is a fact.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Are you implying chronically ill pedantic autists suddenly are the market majority?
The overwhelming majority of modern gamers are extremely autistic individuals, and the concept of hardcore gaming is based on exploiting autistic tendencies to begin with.
2 years ago
Anonymous
RPG's aren't e-sports and never should be made with those nerds in mind.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>They won't make good games
I know.
2 years ago
Anonymous
No game exists to pander specifically to you.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Plenty of them do. Even some FF does it. Sadly, they will always cater to casuals and idiots, putting in effort would be too hard.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Post your favorite FF. Be prepared for an autist exchange.
>13 and 15 were direct consequences of almost everything else in the company thanks to incompetent executive management. Type-0 was supposed to be a FNC game too if i remember right.
See the thing is: that's not when it went to shit, it's when people started to notice it.
b'yeah, the result of the power vacuum left after Sakaguchi left for his shamefur movie. Hashimoto & Kitase were left in charge of the franchise and Sakaguchi may have given it his blessing but Kitase wasn't suited for it.
Kitase thought he could move into the producer role like the gooch did but was told to keep that huge money flowing in so we got spinoffs & nostalgia bait while Toriyama who did the sequel to Kitase's last game (X > X-2) was told to go off and make VII again (just like gooch did with Kitase) and not to worry because they had a real hit coming in with Ito & Minagawa's huge ivalice title LOL!
So XIII came out, it was bad, but it's okay they're not going to give Ito another chance and Minagawa can enjoy never, ever doing anything again. Lucky for them they built that fancy game engine which they can use for XIV too! and oh Toriyama's not satisfied with XIII's ending? That's ok, have another go, it's just a small asset dump and we have XIII versus on the way soon along with Type-0!
Unlucky for them. Engine was shit (executive call to keep using it), Type-0 was on the wrong system. Toriyama wasn't actually creative and Nomura's title was delayed so hard it had to become XV and Tabata took over.
Hashimoto is FINALLY gone. Kitase is still there to this day.
Very much so. XIII sucked so much that XIII-2 was basically an apology letter, and everyone was sick of the series by the time Lightning Returns rolled out. Trying to crowbar XV into that mess was one of many poor decisions made by the company.
I believe that was used to explain why Serah was the only one to remember the events at the end of FF13.
According to everyone else, Lightning was part of the Crystal Pillar along with Fang and Vanille.
I think part of the reason FFXV didn't get any sequels or much DLC is because FF13-2 and Lightning Returns would have been too similar.
Lightning as the Savior, collecting Eradia for Bhunivelze in LIGHTNING RETURNS,
is basically the same as Lunafreya absorbing the darkness for Bahamut, in the Dawn of the Future novella.
Seeing where FFXV was going with Bahamut helps make sense of where FF13-2 was going with Caius and his Bahamut Eidolons.
I mean it's practically FF tradition that the final bosses come out of nowhere, like FF9's Necron. But you can usually replay the game and find the connecting theme.
But Caius' incarnate summoning into 3 simultaneous versions of Bahamut makes little sense.
it felt like they pulled "XV's Bahamut was actually evil" shit out of their ass to make Ardyn a "did nothing wrong" character and ruined everything in the process
Evil Bahamut was kind of been a continual thing through 11, 12, 13-2, 14, and now 15. I guess World of FF counts too.
In Type-0 he's part of this giant picture, it's hard to pin a label on him.
Before these games, in 10, 9, 8, and 7 (advent children) Bahamuts have been these used-and-abused summon for evil intentions outside their own.
>FFXV didn't get >much DLC
You having a giggle? FFXV had TOO much DLC. Pivotal character arcs that any game would have had the sense to include in the main game. The game even assigned you homework before you even started playing it with that moronic fricking movie. FFXV was an exercise in pure avarice.
Something that's lost in translation.
The term Cie'th in Japanese is シ骸, using a character for skeleton. So there's this "undead" aspect to it, in English they are instead referred to as undying. They can't cross over.
The same term is used for the daemons in FFXV. Although it's spelled シガイ, it's pronounced the same "shigai" but the textuality is a little different.
It can also be read like "corpse" or "remains".
But daemons are located outside the city, and shigai can mean something like rural, or ghetto, the opposite of mainstream in the sense of a cult classic or "underground".
It's "dark" in the sense of a lack of visibility or recognition. Something being "overlooked".
In English, l'cie are given "brands" which creates the impression that they are livestock.
While in Japanese, it's just a mark or stigma. And they process it in a weird way. When Serah shows Snow that she's become a l'cie she's like "I'm an enemy of Cocoon now, boohoo."
Even though it was a Pulse Fal'cie that marked her, she acts like it was Cocoon that branded her.
More importantly, it was the god "Pulse" seen in FMV that brands everyone. We never really see him again. Your first time playing FF13, you'd think Orphan has a beef against Pulse.
It's not explicit.
But I believe Grand Pulse isn't just the planet named after Pulse. It IS Pulse.
While Lindzei is the moon.
And Cocoon is Etro.
Etro's gate seems to be in the middle of Cocoon.
In some promotional art, you do see another moon behind Cocoon. Although I'm unsure about this continuity. There is concept art of a Lindzei Crystal that looks like Cocoon too, so it's hard to say for certain what the big idea was and if they stuck to it or not.
At the end of FF13-2, Cocoon finally falls and Etro truly dies. Hope helped mankind build a new arc, "Bhunivelze". It's not until Lightning Returns that we learn the significance of the name. That it's the creator of Etro, Pulse, and Lindzei.
I believe the act of creating this new celestial object provided a body for Bhunivelze to possess. In a sense, summoning him. But idk.
It's actually written Gran Pulse, not Grand Pulse. But technically in Japanese it's written with a double hyphen indicating a compound name. So it should be Gran-Pulse
Like jean-claude, or when people marry but choose to hyphenate their name rather than assume their spouse's.
So the question is who-or-what is "Gran" in this cosmology?
It's reasonable to assume "Gran" means "Grand".
There is a Gran Behemoth enemy that is translated as "Greater Behemoth" but if you tame it, the named changes to "Grand Behemoth" so there is something of a translation/continuity here there.
This "gran" behemoth is part of Augusta Tower, 200AF. While in the alternate timeline of Academia, the streets are called Gran Avenue. Or "Grand Avenue". Which sounds like an ordinary street name, like "Main Street". Except this "Grand Avenue" is less of a street and more of a district or block.
In order to view the paradox endings you need to activate the "Paradox Scope" fragment and then fight certain invincible bosses who will then have their buffs removed.
In Japanese, the "Paradox Scope" is called "Grand Cross". Grand Cross is an astrological term that within Japanese pop-culture is an omen of misfortune. As a final boss technique it causes status ailments, but here, the player uses it to remove Caius' Auto-Life that make him impossible to beat normally.
Caius is suppose to be immortal because he has the Heart of Chaos a.k.a. Etro's Heart.
In his fight against Lightning, Caius uses a Meteor spell.
Or as he puts it "Husk of the Wandering Comet!"
Now, Cocoon's fall is similar to FF7's Meteor Fall in a lot of ways. What I propose is that Gran-Pulse is a post-impact name. Where long long ago, a meteor named "Gran" collided with Pulse, and everyone evacuated to Cocoon for a time.
Or, it could be like the world of FFV where the planet can be split in 2...as they did. Leaving the city of Valhalla (origins unknow) in a timeless "rift". Just like there was a city from the merged world of FFV that was frozen in time.
Or maybe Gran-Pulse is a merger of 2 worlds like FF9's Terra-Gaia.
The original game had that unreleased "7th Ark" dungeon dlc, that seemed to suggest the Fal'cie were expecting an invasion or encounter with something from "beyond". But that's all we know for certain.
What I'm thinking is that Caius, by summoning Meteor to Valhalla, he significantly changed the timeline.
Now, throughout the game it's implied the crystal pillar will eventual fail and cocoon with drop. But I'm wondering if a Meteor could have done the same thing. And Serah and Noel were just misinformed.
One way or another, the pillar was to fall in 500AF.
I don't remember seeing this in the game, I'd have to go back an look, but the pillar is still partially visible in New Bodhum 700AF. Which contradicts Noel's story that the pillar disintegrated, saturating the air and earth with crystal particles creating an environmental disaster.
By the looks of New Bodhum, the ocean had evaporated. So something feels off about the whole thing.
It took hours, but I was able to confirm the Behemoth name change.
Not only does "Greater" become "Grand"
But a "Feral Behemoth", once tamed, becomes just "Behemoth". I thought that was a nice attention to detail.
Useless Trivia: the behemoth that appears in this screenshot
What I want to know is if the Dying World 700AF that Noel comes from, is the same time but different place as the New Bodhem 700AF where they finally meet Lightning.
Lightning simply says "this was a world I could not save"
She doesn't really talk to Noel here. It was my understanding that after this scene, Lightning goes to Valhalla and Fight Ciaus (the opening scene). Which is where Noel drifts in (on the near death) then sent to Serah with Mog. It's all so unnatural.
is not an enemy in FF13-2. The colors are a little exaggerated, but I believe it's meant to be a "Behemoth King" which you fight in the first game.
It's a shame. I'd like to capture one.
It's not explicit.
But I believe Grand Pulse isn't just the planet named after Pulse. It IS Pulse.
While Lindzei is the moon.
And Cocoon is Etro.
Etro's gate seems to be in the middle of Cocoon.
In some promotional art, you do see another moon behind Cocoon. Although I'm unsure about this continuity. There is concept art of a Lindzei Crystal that looks like Cocoon too, so it's hard to say for certain what the big idea was and if they stuck to it or not.
At the end of FF13-2, Cocoon finally falls and Etro truly dies. Hope helped mankind build a new arc, "Bhunivelze". It's not until Lightning Returns that we learn the significance of the name. That it's the creator of Etro, Pulse, and Lindzei.
I believe the act of creating this new celestial object provided a body for Bhunivelze to possess. In a sense, summoning him. But idk.
FF13 is a god awful game that on paper had a lot of potential and it's clear to some degree that they actually fleshed out a world more than any other FF game. But then failed to show that world to you in a non schizophrenic way. I hate all 3 of those fricking games but I'd support and buy a top down true "remake" (as in they fricking change 90%+ of the game) in a heart beat.
>Create one of the most interesting-looking settings in FF history >Don't let you interact with it at all
Truly and genuinely what the frick did they mean by this
Like there is 26 hours in a day. Because 26/2=13. Why have this detail? Idk. What purpose does it serve outside of lore? None. They just thought it was cool
People make fun of the "as you know" style of worldbuilding exposition, but it's a better way to explain things than just throwing in a datalog to reference whenever characters start speaking nonsense.
looking at the translation history of ff, i'm sure the 13 games are meme translations that lose tons of meaning. even games that seem competently translated like 9 end up being absolute clown territory once you play in japanese. i should revisit 13 some time.
>i'm sure the 13 games are meme translations that lose tons of meaning. even games that seem competently translated like 9 end up being absolute clown territory once you play in japanese. i should revisit 13 some time.
XIII's translation was bad iirc because they kept rewriting the script and the errors are there because they recorded the other languages before everything was finalised. It was so bad that it caused square to get their shit together after that and have a real translation workflow.
I watched a Japanese guy play it, he found the setting-specific terminology very difficult to understand (that said he isn't good with technical terms in general).
I think a very underrated aspect to Final Fantasy games is in their intertextuality. Ever since VIII the games have gone fricking insane with abstract concepts and that's something I dig a whole lot. IX is two entirely different games depending on how much you read into archetypes and its visual language.
Where can I get the Japanese version to XIII? I can find XIII-2 and LR no problem, but the original has been proving hell to find for both PC (the Steam version has the original Japanese script removed) and PS3.
Final Fantasy has been very ambitious since the start, but from VIII on it seems like they almost always reach a bit further than what they can achieve. The games attempt to be fun fantasy adventures that reach huge life defining themes by the end, but it all leads to a rushed mess. That's part of the charm though, and it making the games very memorable. People are still discussing the FFVIII ending cutscene, 23 years later.
I think pretty much the only game where the themes and the story mesh consistently is X. It seems almost out of place how well everything is introduced compared to the other games, especially XIII.
Steam version has the whole Japanese script included in the game files. It's just inaccessible. You can get it with the tool Final Fantasy XIII PC Language Changer
What I want to know is if the Dying World 700AF that Noel comes from, is the same time but different place as the New Bodhem 700AF where they finally meet Lightning.
Lightning simply says "this was a world I could not save"
She doesn't really talk to Noel here. It was my understanding that after this scene, Lightning goes to Valhalla and Fight Ciaus (the opening scene). Which is where Noel drifts in (on the near death) then sent to Serah with Mog. It's all so unnatural.
Nomura has to be upset. His talent as a director aside he clearly wanted to and still wants to make whatever the hell verses 13 was gonna be but SE keeps fricking him. If he wasn't a Jap drone he would have left long ago.
Clearly, what with the whole "Verum Rex" thing he's crowbarring into Kingdom Hearts now. Guy means to tell the story he wanted, no matter what he has to do, until they fire him.
This is a very shallow reason but L'cie and Fal'cie are just terrible names for things at the core of the FFXIII mythos. You see these words and they look completely alien to a newcomer, there is nothing about these words that give you any kind of connotation or intuitive hint as to what they mean, then on top of that these two words are extremely similar so you're even more likely to get the two mixed up. It just makes it a pain to try and digest what's going on when something so basic as that is annoying to understand.
13-2 is pretty cool as you travel through time fricking up/fixing the timeline.
LR was just strange but I kinda hate ticking clock gameplay so your own mileage may vary.
>Ticking clock gameplay
They give you so much fricking time though
Unless you’re just standing around in a field for hours, you can finish up before a week has gone by and then the rest of the game is just grinding drops and extinctions
I sorta wish they made a lot more content that could only be accessed later in the timeline
Returns is combat only really starts to click at the final boss. Everything before that is too easy and uncomplicated. Returns is a strange strange bucking game with strange STRANGE mechanics but the combat finally gets used with the final boss and it kinda leaves me wanting more of it.
Some of FF13-2 can be explained with alternate histories.
It's sort of explained by Academia researchers that the past is uncertain until it's defined in the future.
Just...go with it. If someone in the future learns something about the past, then that past becomes a reality. Basically, retro-continuity.
The unseen realm is nothing but Chaos. But we should understand it as the Greek word "Khaos". In the sense that it's a formless mixture of "everything". Like color pigments all mixed together into black. It's all mixed together because -like how Valhalla has no 'time"- the unseen realm has no "forms".
The exception is crystal. Which are memories. Also known as "Fragments".
The meteor spell is actually pulling these crystals out of the unseen realm. The same way eidoliths summon Eidolons from Valhalla.
If you read the fragments, it mentions that the brightest crystal in the unseen realm is "the sleeping" Bhunivelze. So what this is telling us is that Bhunivelze wasn't a thing...until it was. Or rather, it was a thing, it got retconned out of history, and then reintroduced.
We can also speculate that the Temple of Etro was imprisoning Bhunivelze, there are hints that it once imprisoned something.
What this probably means is that there was a time before the Fal'cie. Ancients developed the Meteor Spell, and accidentally introduced the Fal'cie into reality. This act then rewrote history to say that humans were created by Fal'cie. And by "say" I mean "canonized".
hmm, I'm seeing a connection between Snow's Alternative Costume and the Behemoth from Noel's time. But I'm not sure what it is.
So, for the record, Snow has become a l'cie 3 times over.
Once, by the Anima Fal'cie
Once, by the Cactaur shaped Fal'cie
Once, by Pandemonium, the "last" Fal'cie.
Although we don't really see these other two. Interestingly the Anima and Cactaur use a Pulse brand.
Pandemonium was created Bhunivelze himself, so in theory, Snow should have a Bhunivelze brand. But we see a Pulse Brand glow through his sleeve.
If you fight Snow on hard mode he loses his shirt turning cie'th, but when he reverts there's not brand at all, not even a scorched one.
Lightning's Brand is also gone in Lightning Returns. But she sometimes has this crest from the game's logo in the same location.
I think even calling it a "mythos" is a bit disingenuous. It's moronic is what it was. It wasn't a story. It's the kind of world building shit you'd see from a 8th grader scribbling into a spiral notebook except it was done by a late 40 early 50 year old Japanese man who spends more time drawing sigils than his actual video game story. Whatever just happened to a nice simple story of heroism and adventure. You got four magic macguffins, there's a wizard who's a dick and he needs a thwarting. Boom. You're off to the races. There's no reason this shit needs to be convoluted and moronic.
It's a "mythos" because they share a theme of fate, a door to an unseen realm, and in some cases the names of Gods.
To be fair, I think all final fantasy games have the same underlining structure, and the only unique thing fabula nova crystallis had going for it was it's pantheon...or really just Etro.
Etro is mentioned across the XIII series and in Type-0. In FFXV she's not named, but indirectly referenced
When FFXV was still XIII Verses, we saw a promotional trailer of Stella and Noctis in front of a painting of Etro.
Stella got replaced by Lunafreya in XV. But the painting still appears in a similar scene appears in the Kingsglaive film with Lunafreya and Nyx.
In the previous version, Noctis and Stella appear to be meeting for the first time. At a party perhaps. They are discussing a "light" phenomenon that only people who have had near-death experiences can see. We could call these the "eyes of etro" too. They're walking around an aquarium, and on the opposite room is the painting held by a skeletal grim reaper statue.
In Kingsglaive, Lunafreya and Nyx are at a peace treaty celebration. It's accompanied by the same music as the promotional trailer. The painting is in the Aquarium.
Instead of talking about the Etro Legend, they're talking about his security detail and how the person assigned to her previously was killed. A female Kingsglavie member named Crowe, who Lunafreya never got the chance to meet. Nyx gives Luna a hairpin that Crowe was suppose to give her. It's in the shape of an eye. Nyx just thinks it was a birthday present, but later realizes it was a tracker.
It's hard to say for certain what other differences XIII Verses would have have. In XV, and mostly in Kingsglavie, they're inside the city of Insomnia, which is protected by a magical wall. Shortly after this, the wall and city are attacked by a fleet of airships. Luna ends up on one of these ships, along with an Ultros daemon.
So in FF8, there is the SeeD Graduation Ceremony, following the Dollet Invasion. This is where Squall and Rinoa meet for the first time under a shooting star. Afterwards, Squall and Quistis go to the "Secret Place".
There isn't an actual "wall" to speak of. But it's clear from this scene that Squall is only isolating himself from other people's problems. Quistis was removed from her instructor position for questionable reasons. But Squall doesn't want to listen. It's a beat echoed in FFXV.
Now, Quistis was an underdeveloped character. Outside the Dollet mission, her role in the story is practically non-existent. Dollet, likewise, was lacking a duke to go with it's dukedom.
It's strongly speculated that Quistis had a much more significant connection to Dollet. Like, perhaps she was secretly a dutchess. Once Dollet lost it's communication tower to Galbadia. Quistis lost her usefulness to the Garden. They pushed her to the side and established new relations with someone that we can be describe as a Galbadia "Princess". Rinoa. So Quistis has more than one reason to be bitter towards Rinoa, because gosh darn it, Squall has eyes on...her.
We know from developer interviews that Rinoa wasn't originally planned to be the sole love interest. Or the sorceress. Conventionally, all the nations were lead by their own sorceress. Dollet, indeed, has a fountain with a sorceress statue (no knight).
When Quistis was dismissed for her "leadership", this could be a remnant of a plot thread where she was a candidate to become a sorceress, or even succeed Adel or some other sorceress.
Hidden in Dollet's cardplayer room is a journal about a woman that saved her daughter from drowning, but ended up drowning herself. As well as some other bits about Anaconda wine. Ultimately the game when nowhere with this.
But drawing from Gau's backstory in FF6, you can imagine a scenario where Quistis was the girl, and being partly responsible for her mother's death, she was abandoned.
Quistis and Rinoa only have 1 significant moment in the game, where Quistis shoots her down during their mission to trap the Sorceress in the Gate.
Etro's Gate? It's not named. But then again, "Deling City" is named after the president. That can't be the city's real name either.
It's likely modeled after Paris. With the gate resembling Arc de Triomphe "Triumphal Arch of the Star"
"The Star" being where it sits in the middle of a 12 way junction.
It's also a memorial site for The Tomb of the Unknown Solider.
In FF8 you have to go, to the Tomb of the Unknown King before continuing in Deling City. But since it's all waterways and canals, it a fair guess that the Tomb and the City were all connected.
In both FF14 and FF15, they call the planet "this Star".
FF15 has a lot in common with FF14. They're not called Fal'cie, but the primals can enthrall humans.
In FF15, there is a fallen star or crystal meteorite that's been there since pre-history. It gives off heat, which the nearby populace uses for thermal energy. According to legend it was caught and held up by Titan - The Earth Astral.
In FF8 the Earth G.F. are the Minotaur Brothers in the Tomb of the Unknown King.
The streets of Deling City are full of steam from the waterway below, a heat source isn't verified. However, we know Galbadia was briefly at war with Timber, burning their forests. Why they stopped was never explained either.
Coincidentally, FF11's Windurst also sits on ancient water canals and is located near a site with shooting stars. This is likely connected to the underground Fullmoon Fountain where the Avatar Fenrir is sealed.
In FF13 Titan was a mountain sized Fal'cie.
It was considered the biggest.
Until FF13-2, when they casually mention there's actually a bigger Fal'cie, Fenrir, floating around in space and occasionally eclipses the sun.
I think that's interesting because Deling City is also this perpetual night zone with no explanation.
FF9 has a similar city, Treno, that is in perpetual darkness as well. One explanation might be the Eidolon Ozma, floating Chocobo's "Air Garden" to block out the sun. Placed there by the mole summoner tribe. Because they're moles and like dark places I guess.
Ozma's big attack is a meteor like "Doomsday" spell.
Ozma also appears in FF14, involving Diabolos and Voidsent.
Diabolos in FF8 does a gravity attack. He's a genie in a magic lamp you get from Cid. So...random.
Diabolos was also planned to be a Fal'Cie in FF13. He's got a lot of interesting concept art, but it all went unused. There's multiple versions of him swinging a guitar.
This might be significant because Diabolo's voice actor in World of FF is also the voice of Genesis in Dirge of Cerberus, in english. In Japanese, Genesis was both voice and designed after Gackt. A Japanese musician.
But Gackt's voice acting and singing career is probably over now because he developed a disorder in his vocal cords.
In FF13-2, if you read the fragments, it's suggested that Etro's Temple in valhalla might have been to house some forgotten prisoner. But ultimately, it never went anywhere with that either.
In FF13-2, while Serah was running around with Noel. Snow was off on his own little adventure.
According to him, Lightning sent him a vision in his dream. But I don't think Lightning ever acknowledges Snow doing anything.
You pick up these Gravity Core fragments for Hope, which will be used to levitate a new cocoon. The fragment data for these contain messages from Snow. He's like "I guess I'm leaving these behind where ever I go. I don't know what they're for but I think you'll need them for something".
Alyssa also had a dream where she believes she died during The Purge in the first game. She's laid a trap for Serah and Noel, where they go through a gate and end up trapped in their own dream world.
It's assumed that Alyssa was working with Caius (because who else would it be?)
But gravity cores and dreams? Diabolos fits in so easily.
Additionally, the fragments tell us that Caius Ballad isn't his real name. He assumed the name of someone who almost defeated him. There's a fragment message from Fang saying they've heard of "Caius of the Ballads" and he's a real bad dude. But this doesn't tell us if this "bad guy" is the Caius we're fighting now or the Caius that he took his name from.
I think they were planning on follow-up games, given that both X and XII had direct sequels. However, I think that initial reactions to XIII definitely influenced them, given that XIII-2 tried to fix everything people hated about XIII, and Lightning Returns gave a lot of the initial elements of the trilogy a wide berth.
I've read it all. Supposedly the development of Versus was changing every 3 months. So there was no "true" fully conceptualized plot.
But, even if everyone is making it up, they all stay true to FF lore. And there are certain things that were consistent.
Like, there where crystals. There was a goddess Etro. There was an armored "Garland" type character.
But if you go back to FF1, there was it's own mystery. Who the frick was Queen Jayne? She didn't have a role in the story, but in the epilogue there is the implication that she did.
This is just like Mwynn. She barely exists, but she's also at the center of it all.
I've read so many "leaks" about Versus 13, but they can't all be true.
Like Noctis wasn't really "royalty" so much as part of a mobster family. They secretly had a "crystal of the void" which kept the the city in perpetual night. They sold a drug called "Luna" which created a dream-like hallucinations. Noctis was addicted to it, and it was the only way he could see Stella. Nobody else could see her. >I've been having these weird thoughts lately >Like is any of this for real or not
There was also one where Noctis was essentially the antichrist. Satanic rituals. Too dark, too violent.
But I call B.S. on that.
FF13 needed a lot of things but in particular they shouldn't have told all of the lightning/serah/snow/fat filipino party animal captain guy shit in flashbacks.
There should have been a short section at the beginning where you play as Lightning going on a routine patrol or whatever and learning about the world before Serah gets branded and shit hits the fan. However they wanted Lightning to be the female Cloud so they needed to start in the middle of the action and ended up fricking up bigtime. >Lightning and fat party animal guy and Biggs go on a small mission to investigate reports of a suspicious person near a minor fal'cie >they run into a pulse cie'th >biggs is a moron so Lightning has to explain to him the difference between pulse and cocoon fal'cie, what a l'cie is, and how they become a cie'th >you get an easy boss fight with 3 party members and learn about role switching >then the actual story starts
it wouldn't fix all the problems with the game but it'd be a start
I think Square had a case of the Galapagos syndrome.
That's a term Japan uses to describe their business practices. Where they make products suited for their marketplaces, their lifestyles. And not the rest of the world.
They tell an incomplete story on purpose. And then sell *supplemental* companion novellas.
They don't think about the cost of translating it, of printing it, of marketing it.
FF13-2 came out in 2012 basically. The novellas Fragments Before and Fragments After weren't officially released in English until 2019. By that time, everyone who gave a frick had already learned the story through the grapevine. Are they going to buy the book anyways just to collect? No.
I mean, they might have if Square was smart and compiled them into a single book. This where where the Galapagos syndrome shows it's ugly head. $15 for a sub 200page book? And there's 3 different books? Using first person narration.
Shove it up your ass.
I think every final fantasy game loses coherency in the 11th hour final dungeon.
FF13-2 is the same way. The final "dungeon" is Academia 500AF. The world of the future. Sky Scrapers and floating gold platforms made out of some advanced fal'cie crystal tech...
But no, there's a sound bite that easy to miss. Noel is like "The chaos is seeping through. Everything is becoming more and more like Valhalla."
So the gold platforms were not some kind of future tech. I think they recorded the lines before they reached a final design, because it looks nothing like Valhalla.
As you hop around the maze of floating platforms you get stopped by this shadow-yuel that's never really explained. And "her" motivations don't make sense.
Telling Noel and Serah "Don't go this way", when they're not really anywhere in the first place. You get to the end of the platforms and Sazh shows up with an airship and flies them...elsewhere?
I'm just saying, realistically, Sazh could have picked them up at any point in this open-air dungeon.
And if Yuel wanted to stop Noel, it would make more sense in Valhalla.
There's a battle with some "rift monsters". Fire and ice giraffes. ~random~
Yuel is speaking during this battle, but frick if anyone knows what she's saying because they don't adjust the audio levels or anything.
I think, this whole area was meant to be inside the rift. Similar to FF13's final dungeon inside Eden. But since they kind of cut Eden out of the story, maybe this was what they were left with.
I'll jump in and add that Caius' monster hoard was another plot detail they glossed over.
In the opening cinematic, there's a monster swarm that the eidolons are fighting in Valhalla while Lightning focuses on Caius.
Then at the end of the final dungeon, he summons another swarm of monsters. I guess this is to keep Hope and the rest of Academia busy.
The thing that I get worked up about is how Sazh and Dajh are there. Just for show. They're not doing anything special. Dajh hasn't aged a day. They pick up Serah and Noel, when there's a dozen of identical ships in the fleet that could easily to the same. The ship is also the battle field against Caius and Chaos Bahamut. So it's taking a beating. By the end of the scene their ship is literally on fire. But they act like they were never in any danger.
Noel has never met Sazh before. He looks at Serah like "Friend of yours?"
When they return from Valhalla, Sazh catches them in the air. And Noel is like "It's Sazh!", as if they're old friends and he didn't just learn his name 15 minutes ago.
It's been years since the first game moron
you think they never fricking mentioned him for that whole time to her?
They're also 2 of the 3 black people on the planet, and she already knows Gadot it's not like he's hard to identify by sight alone
I think the monster deal was meant to be connected to Snow's Story. He's not actually the time traveler in the novellas that the Gravity Core Fragments make him out to be.
In the novella he leaves New Bodhum on his way to Cocoon to look for Lightning. This is where he befriends the Cactaur Fal'cie who doesn't know it's a fal'cie. It's memory loss is never explained.
Then he finds a camp with former PSICOM men who can't live anywhere else because of their crimes during the purge. They're attacked by a bunch of Behemoth Kings. This is where Snow figures out the Cactaur is a Fal'Cie because it saves everyone. The camp honor it by carving Cactuar Statues which are also meant to scare off behemoths too. >That's the Story behind the Cactaur statues in archylte steppe.
There's some boring inbetween parts explaining how it's obvious that Lightning isn't in the pillar with Fang and Vanille but for "political reasons" people needed a Cocoon Resident to be a hero too.
Snow visits the ruins of Eden. (This was an unused concept in the game)
There's monsters and chaos everywhere because they're coming out of the Ark. I think the Colosseum was meant to be the ark. Not sure. Snow + Cactaur end up in a weird timespace where he sees Serah die, so he asks the Cactaur to make him a L'cie.
This is kind of dumb because magic is accessible to everyone now, not just L'cie. So all it does is let him summon Shiva, I imagine. Then a time gate opens for him, and goes to the Sunlith Waterscape with the Flan monster, where we meet him in the game.
But we never see him summon Shiva. Also, just before Serah and Noel arrive the Flan monster tossed the Fal'Cie Cactaur...somewhere...and we never see it again.
It's just lazy writing to be honest.
Unless it hitched a ride with someone it technically mean's there's a Pulse Fal'Cie running around Cocoon, until it collapsed. If it died, like the anima fal'cie, it would have crystalized the area an reinforced the pillar.
After Sunlith, Snow just goes back to the Colosseum where he can't leave until the "day or reckoning"; which is implied to be a battle between Bhunivelze and Mywnn.
In the game, Serah perceives a shadowy-Yuel standing behind Snow.
This could be Mywnn. It's said that Etro looked like Mwynn, and Yuel is said to look like Etro. So Yuel must look like Mwynn as well.
So the combatants in the colosseum could be fighting for Mwynn, potentially.
Mwynn could have been the "prisoner" in Etro's temple, mentioned in the fragments. But the fragments also had some other prophecies that never really came to pass.
Jihl Nabaat appears in the colosseum in the game, but she's not mentioned in the novella. She's also not in the ending cutscene as Snow explains he'll be staying with "these guys". (Gilgamesh, Pupu, Ultros ect...)
It's not explicitly confirmed. But Alyssa was probably meant to be Jihl in the beginning.
The game doesn't explain the paradox surrounding Alyssa's survival during the purge. It just says she survived, but wasn't suppose to. What the circumstances are, we don't know.
There's also the missing Hope Episode that was cut from the game. But where/when this episode would have happened is hard to say.
In the novella, after Alyssa gives Serah and Noel the Fragment "trap" she got from Caius, Hope and Alyssa go to Augusta Tower. Hope discovers Alyssa's research on paradoxes. They also dug up some history on Caius, how he's a paradox that should have been corrected but never disappeared. This is the reason she agreed to side with Caius. She's certain that she'll cease to exist if Serah and Noel continue to solve paradoxes. She's less afraid of being dead, and more afraid of not being remembered. Having all her accomplishments go to someone else.
She pulls a gun on Hope. But when she pulls the trigger, she aborted herself from the timeline apparently. She can't kill Hope, because she is a paradox. If Hope lives, he would have researched a way for Alyssa not be erased with the timeline. By resolving to kill "hope", literally and figuratively, she had no future (thus, no past) once Serah and Noel inevitably fix the timeline.
As she's fading away, she's like "REMEMBER ME". But they don't. The timeline replaces her with this other girl.
For starters there's Serah, a staple in every series.
In FF1, she has a younger sister rather than an older sister.
Lightning's real name is Claire.
In FF9, Garnet's real name is Sarah.
Following the conventions that princesses marry princes, the only other prince in this game is the cursed elf prince of Elfheim.
This loosely fits with Snow Villiers. In the Dissidia world map, the area is covered in snow.
digression: Villiers could be a play of "billards"...as in "Snow Balls"
In FF1 there is a Hint Giving NPC, the Dancer Arylon. Her knowledge of what to do next could be seen as clairvoyance. Connecting her to Yuel. Her name might also be connected to Ellone in FF8.
The Temple of Chaos/Fiends is likely related to Etro's Temple in Valhalla. Explaining the power over chaos and fiends. Caius' "true name" is never mentioned. It's just said that he took the name of someone else. It's probably Garland. Like a flower garland.
The game doesn't really show that Yuel loves Caius back. She just loves "Singing, Dancing, and Flowers"
In the novella's all the Yuels are basically simpletons. They're kept away from society and not spoken too. So when they do start speaking and using words nobody she couldn't have heard from anyone else, it's evidence that they're having visions.
Yuel describes her visions using flower metaphors. Like Cocoon is a "frozen flower"
Fireworks are "sky flowers". She never mentions Caius in her visons. But she does see Serah and Noel again and again, recognizing them as traveling the timeline.
So alternatively Noel = Garland.
The Farseers don't just see the future, they see other points in history as well. I believe this Yeul, describing things as flowers in the novella, was the one in Oerba 200AF (I'm not sure if she was actually from 200AF herself, because she and Caius exit through a rift)
It's hinted that the future - or rather, history - that this Yeul was MEANT to see was one where Serah and Noel solve the paradoxes and create a new Cocoon .
When Serah gets stuck in the "shadow realm" valhalla, and meets various Yuels, one even says Serah was meant to solve the paradoxes, "...and perhaps, you did".
The moment that changed everything was here, Oerba 200AF, when Serah touched the oracle drive.
It took me a couple playthroughs to figure out what was happening in this scene. The moment Serah touched the drive it recorded her memory of the previous history. Making it a prophecy. >If you change the future; you change the past
Instead of thinking of a single timeline with past, present, future.
You might think of it as 3 different timelines, but their order keeps shifting around: "previous", "current", and "next".
Before leaving Oerba, Noel pauses and says something is wrong, maybe he forgot something. This could be his memory being rewritten. Or he could be sensing that this Caius of 200AF(allegedly) shouldn't recognize Noel or know anything about their time together in 700AF.
But in Noel's defense, time travel is weird and our language isn't really equipped for future-past tenses. So when Caius says "I'm no longer the Caius you once knew"
Noel should be like "Wait -- don't you mean, you're not yet the Caius I know you will be? "
I've been thinking >tfw all of the Final Fantasys exist because of time traveling Lightning just wanting to frick around after getting drunk in France >Lightning cancelled XV's DLC and fricked with FF7 Remake >Remake Cloud is actually just blonde Lightning
I think they were modeling Snow after Volt, from Square's PS2 fighting game The Bouncer. Volt had a leather jacket with a cactaur on it.
In ff13-2, they're all a sort of bouncer/gatekeepers by protecting Etro's gate. Idk.
The whole Cactaur Fal'cie thing bugs me because they didn't really go anywhere with it.
It might be connected to The Abandoned City of Haerii.
Haerii or Hari in Japanese translates to Needle. In FF13-2 they mostly focus on The city of Paddra. The ancient history of Pulse is too fuzy to explaining, on top of The Paradoxes which are implied to have been a thing across all the ages, and not just "After Fall".
Haerii is mentioned in the Fragments. With prophecies of other Farseers (Not Yuel) who are named Clotho Lachesis and Atropos (Greek Fate Sisters) In "The Book of Haerii"
The Farseer Relic in The Dying World could be related to them. This area could be on or around the ruins of Haerii. The area is full of cactaurs too. Would kind of makes sense given the "needle" association.
The history of the Farseers, the reincarnated Yuel, and her guardians is really fuzzy.
In Lighting Returns it's said that Etro wasn't given any powers or the ability to make Fal'cie. Because she looked too much like Mywnn. Whatever powers she has came from Mywnn after entering The Unseen Realm where Mywnn tasked her with keeping the balance.
However, in FF13-2, it's said that Yuel's guardian is a kind of L'cie. In fact there are a few unique Cie'th that were unused in FF13, that appear in FF13-2. In one case, there was a Cie'th in FF13 that had a tentacle body. You accept the Mark to go fight it in the Haerii Ruins, but when you do, there's a cutscene where a Tonberry shanks it. Then you fight the Tonberry instead.
This tentacle Cie'th could be related to an Unused Fal'ce concept, that looked like Ultros.
So before Caius was immortalized by the Heart of Chaos, the guardians were just ordinary l'cie. Or maybe psudo-l'cie. Because it seems, in one case, a Guardian asked to turned into a Cie'th as punishment. But what Fal'cie existed to do this?
The unnamed Fal'cie head that recorded the Farseer vision in an oracle drive was placed there by Pulse. The Cactaur Fal'cie also uses a Pulse Brand. And in this concept art, we see Ultros, that might have been a Fal'cie.
There are fragments named "Ultima Brand, Omega Brand, and Chaos Brand" that are collected in The Dying world. They all have a picture of Caius clutching his heart.
Because Ultros and Omega appear in the Colosseum, I have to wonder if there were different types of brands, and l'cie, other than Pulse and Lindzei.
Kind of like how there are different types of summoning. You can summon a regular eidolon, or you can sacrifice your life and become a type of summon fusion. This is what Caius did when he was just a regular guardian, but he came back with the heart of chaos. Fang and Vanille also sacrificed themselves to become Ragnarok, but the goddess intervened then too.
I LOVE SERAHHHHHHHHHHH >LOUDER
I'M IN LOVE WITH SERAAAAAAAAHHHH
OH LET IT GO NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW OHHHHHHHHHHHH WHOAAAAAAA WHOAAAAAAAA OOOHHHH WHOAAAAAAAA OHHHH OHHHH OHHHH OHHHH WHOAAAAAAA NOW NOW NOW NOW NO NOW
>I'M IN LOVE WITH SERAAAAAAAAHHHH >OH LET IT GO NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW OHHHHHHHHHHHH WHOAAAAAAA WHOAAAAAAAA OOOHHHH WHOAAAAAAAA OHHHH OHHHH OHHHH OHHHH WHOAAAAAAA NOW NOW NOW NOW NO NOW
There might have been some connection between Academia in FF13-2 and the Akademeia in Type-0.
It's possible mog even came from Type-0's world of Orience. Although there a few difference between Mog in 13-2 and the other moogles in Type-0.
Mog has a crystal pom-pom, which according to a fragment creates an anti-gravity field that lets him fly.
The moogle pom-poms in Type-0 are all round orbs, although they are different colors and have decorations. The moogles all have gear motifs.
It was a mystery if Mog in 13-2 was a kind of Eidolon or Fal'cie because he could shapeshift into a Sword and Bow.
In one of the fragments, mog says his "true form" is inside his clock-scepter.
I had a theory that the Fenrir Fal'cie is an alternative version of Etro. It doesn't make much scene for it to be looking for "the door" meaning etro's gate, when Etro must have already found it. Right?
>Was the whole fabula nova crystallis "mythos" a bust?
It was a pipe dream made worse by the fact of Square's piss-poor management & creative incompetence, how they boasted about this anthology of then new Final Fantasy games carrying common themes about "defying fate," l'Cies, fal'Cies, people turning into crystal, the afterlife, the goddess of death, etc. Despite all of that, most of the games turned out to be underdeveloped and/or lazily written crap. The lore was always more vaguely interesting than the actual gameplay in all of them. XIII should never have been a trilogy, Type-0 was too melodramatic for its own good, and Versus XIII ended up getting repurposed as the unfinished FFXV. The whole idea ended up as wasted potential, which is an all too common trend with Square over the past 10+ years.
>originally planned to be the future of the franchise with several spin-off titles >said spin-offs were announced alongside the first game in the FNC series, then went directly to development hell >XIII comes out to mediocre reception that got worse over time, within a year it was considered the worst FF >first spin-off comes out on PSP in Japan only. Sales are too mediocre for SE to consider an international release immediately >XIII sequels make improvements to first game in the series but are still decent at best and XIII is a toxic brand at this point so no one cares >internally directors and staff get shuffled as SE's attempt to create a decade-long FF epic storyline franchise crashes and burns. Nomura's brainchild Versus XIII remains in development hell and he isn't able or allowed to touch it, the world's only Lightening simp takes control of the project, and SE cuts the funding and scope of the project by pretty much 100% >Eventually Versus XIII becomes FFXV and Type-0 releases in overseas after years of it being emulated. XV has nothing to do with the XIII universe and Type-0 is marketed as a completely standalone game. >To this day the XIII is considered the worst FF and the only time people talk about it is in moronic threads like these where OPs ask dumb questions everyone already knows the answer to
Square Enix circa 2009 to 2016 was run by actual morons and nearly everything they put out was just laughably bad with the exception of Crisis Core, Dissidia, and the original Bravely Default. Although one can argue that except for Dissidia those are both flawed games. Fabula Nova Crystallis was just the epitome of their lack of self-awareness in an industry that at the time wasn't interested in Japanese games (especially JRPGs, which were the butt of the joke around 2010-2011), led by a team that had no clear vision of what they wanted this project to be beyond something they could all work on for 10 years.
>an industry that at the time wasn't interested in Japanese games (especially JRPGs, which were the butt of the joke around 2010-2011)
Do you have any more insight about this? I was really insulated from "WEEB BAD" thanks to having Ganker/weeb friends but I did notice the swing toward westernshit and still have no idea why it happened.
...Who?
The only prominent element that stood out was the "gate".
The sentient crystal gods were very distant.
Like, we don't see a mural until Lightning Returns, accompanied by a legend told by Fang.
Like, why wasn't this in the very first game?
Yea. It attempted to be a whole overarching trilogy that ended up being squandered thanks to 13 and 15's development.
13 and 15 were direct consequences of almost everything else in the company thanks to incompetent executive management. Type-0 was supposed to be a FNC game too if i remember right. There was also FFXIV 1.0 that ate shit. Even KH got a hit, nomura wanted to do some side games on handhelds but wanted to make a console one after Versus released. Didn't they also acquire a bunch of western Ips that the never really did well with around the same time?
>Didn't they also acquire a bunch of western Ips that the never really did well with around the same time?
Not sure. I'd be curious to know since the only ones I can think of doing poorly at that time are Hitman and maybe Just Cause. Not sure what other western IPs they have now HAD, rather before Deusex, Nu-Tomb Raider and the Avengers games.
Early to Mid 2010s was probably Square Enix's lowest point.
>FF13 trilogy
>No Kingdom Hearts
>No other JRPGs
>FF Versus 13/15 in development hell
>FF14 was a bust
>Only real success was Tomb Raider reboot and the sequels never lived up to it.
>Tomb Raider
they published it. They weren't developing it.
Tomb Raider wasn't a success according to them because the expected 10M sales in one month or something like that.
I'm sure they changed their mind later because it got two sequels.
>was probably Square Enix's lowest point.
They were always at a low point. The majority of Square's output is trash.
>t. reductionist contrarian
No, it's called having standards. Which Fgays and Squareshitters don't comprehend.
Your standards are unrealistic. Simple as.
>wanting good games is unrealistic
No sane game maker should ever create a product with the autistic schizo in mind.
You're right, they should make products with good gameplay in mind. Too bad they have been failing for 25 years outside some expectations.
>no businessman should ever want to make money
Weird flex, but okay.
Are you implying chronically ill pedantic autists suddenly are the market majority? If so, you need to stop poisoning your brain on Ganker.
They won't make good games paying attention to online autists. That much is a fact.
>Are you implying chronically ill pedantic autists suddenly are the market majority?
The overwhelming majority of modern gamers are extremely autistic individuals, and the concept of hardcore gaming is based on exploiting autistic tendencies to begin with.
RPG's aren't e-sports and never should be made with those nerds in mind.
>They won't make good games
I know.
No game exists to pander specifically to you.
Plenty of them do. Even some FF does it. Sadly, they will always cater to casuals and idiots, putting in effort would be too hard.
Post your favorite FF. Be prepared for an autist exchange.
LR.
>LR
You've got balls for picking that.
I picked that just to drain my balls.
FF has better coomer games.
>FF has better coomer games.
Name your top 5
1-5
I liked that they were low enough to make Nier and give Drakengard another spin.
>13 and 15 were direct consequences of almost everything else in the company thanks to incompetent executive management. Type-0 was supposed to be a FNC game too if i remember right.
See the thing is: that's not when it went to shit, it's when people started to notice it.
b'yeah, the result of the power vacuum left after Sakaguchi left for his shamefur movie. Hashimoto & Kitase were left in charge of the franchise and Sakaguchi may have given it his blessing but Kitase wasn't suited for it.
Kitase thought he could move into the producer role like the gooch did but was told to keep that huge money flowing in so we got spinoffs & nostalgia bait while Toriyama who did the sequel to Kitase's last game (X > X-2) was told to go off and make VII again (just like gooch did with Kitase) and not to worry because they had a real hit coming in with Ito & Minagawa's huge ivalice title LOL!
So XIII came out, it was bad, but it's okay they're not going to give Ito another chance and Minagawa can enjoy never, ever doing anything again. Lucky for them they built that fancy game engine which they can use for XIV too! and oh Toriyama's not satisfied with XIII's ending? That's ok, have another go, it's just a small asset dump and we have XIII versus on the way soon along with Type-0!
Unlucky for them. Engine was shit (executive call to keep using it), Type-0 was on the wrong system. Toriyama wasn't actually creative and Nomura's title was delayed so hard it had to become XV and Tabata took over.
Hashimoto is FINALLY gone. Kitase is still there to this day.
Very much so. XIII sucked so much that XIII-2 was basically an apology letter, and everyone was sick of the series by the time Lightning Returns rolled out. Trying to crowbar XV into that mess was one of many poor decisions made by the company.
When did she even get the Eyes of Etro anyways?
Why did she have the eyes of etro?
I believe that was used to explain why Serah was the only one to remember the events at the end of FF13.
According to everyone else, Lightning was part of the Crystal Pillar along with Fang and Vanille.
I think part of the reason FFXV didn't get any sequels or much DLC is because FF13-2 and Lightning Returns would have been too similar.
Lightning as the Savior, collecting Eradia for Bhunivelze in LIGHTNING RETURNS,
is basically the same as Lunafreya absorbing the darkness for Bahamut, in the Dawn of the Future novella.
Seeing where FFXV was going with Bahamut helps make sense of where FF13-2 was going with Caius and his Bahamut Eidolons.
I mean it's practically FF tradition that the final bosses come out of nowhere, like FF9's Necron. But you can usually replay the game and find the connecting theme.
But Caius' incarnate summoning into 3 simultaneous versions of Bahamut makes little sense.
it felt like they pulled "XV's Bahamut was actually evil" shit out of their ass to make Ardyn a "did nothing wrong" character and ruined everything in the process
Evil Bahamut was kind of been a continual thing through 11, 12, 13-2, 14, and now 15. I guess World of FF counts too.
In Type-0 he's part of this giant picture, it's hard to pin a label on him.
Before these games, in 10, 9, 8, and 7 (advent children) Bahamuts have been these used-and-abused summon for evil intentions outside their own.
Bahamut's oldest incarnation goes back to the first FF1 game where he provides the Class Upgrade.
But taking a step back, you have to wonder why Bahamut and the rest of his dragon kin weren't doing anything about the fiends and the temple of chaos.
Why lift a finger when the Light Warriors are going to do it for you
Presumably because the problem had its roots in the race of men, so he felt men ought to be the ones to solve it.
can you really count 12 since it was a superweapon named Bahamut and not the actual dragon god?
yes
still not the dragon god. Just a floating pile of scrap
>FFXV didn't get
>much DLC
You having a giggle? FFXV had TOO much DLC. Pivotal character arcs that any game would have had the sense to include in the main game. The game even assigned you homework before you even started playing it with that moronic fricking movie. FFXV was an exercise in pure avarice.
Only thing missing is a guy like Hope whispering into Luna's ear acting like he's Alex Jacobson from Deus Ex.
Something that's lost in translation.
The term Cie'th in Japanese is シ骸, using a character for skeleton. So there's this "undead" aspect to it, in English they are instead referred to as undying. They can't cross over.
The same term is used for the daemons in FFXV. Although it's spelled シガイ, it's pronounced the same "shigai" but the textuality is a little different.
It can also be read like "corpse" or "remains".
But daemons are located outside the city, and shigai can mean something like rural, or ghetto, the opposite of mainstream in the sense of a cult classic or "underground".
It's "dark" in the sense of a lack of visibility or recognition. Something being "overlooked".
In English, l'cie are given "brands" which creates the impression that they are livestock.
While in Japanese, it's just a mark or stigma. And they process it in a weird way. When Serah shows Snow that she's become a l'cie she's like "I'm an enemy of Cocoon now, boohoo."
Even though it was a Pulse Fal'cie that marked her, she acts like it was Cocoon that branded her.
More importantly, it was the god "Pulse" seen in FMV that brands everyone. We never really see him again. Your first time playing FF13, you'd think Orphan has a beef against Pulse.
It's not explicit.
But I believe Grand Pulse isn't just the planet named after Pulse. It IS Pulse.
While Lindzei is the moon.
And Cocoon is Etro.
Etro's gate seems to be in the middle of Cocoon.
In some promotional art, you do see another moon behind Cocoon. Although I'm unsure about this continuity. There is concept art of a Lindzei Crystal that looks like Cocoon too, so it's hard to say for certain what the big idea was and if they stuck to it or not.
At the end of FF13-2, Cocoon finally falls and Etro truly dies. Hope helped mankind build a new arc, "Bhunivelze". It's not until Lightning Returns that we learn the significance of the name. That it's the creator of Etro, Pulse, and Lindzei.
I believe the act of creating this new celestial object provided a body for Bhunivelze to possess. In a sense, summoning him. But idk.
It's actually written Gran Pulse, not Grand Pulse. But technically in Japanese it's written with a double hyphen indicating a compound name. So it should be Gran-Pulse
Like jean-claude, or when people marry but choose to hyphenate their name rather than assume their spouse's.
So the question is who-or-what is "Gran" in this cosmology?
It's reasonable to assume "Gran" means "Grand".
There is a Gran Behemoth enemy that is translated as "Greater Behemoth" but if you tame it, the named changes to "Grand Behemoth" so there is something of a translation/continuity here there.
This "gran" behemoth is part of Augusta Tower, 200AF. While in the alternate timeline of Academia, the streets are called Gran Avenue. Or "Grand Avenue". Which sounds like an ordinary street name, like "Main Street". Except this "Grand Avenue" is less of a street and more of a district or block.
In order to view the paradox endings you need to activate the "Paradox Scope" fragment and then fight certain invincible bosses who will then have their buffs removed.
In Japanese, the "Paradox Scope" is called "Grand Cross". Grand Cross is an astrological term that within Japanese pop-culture is an omen of misfortune. As a final boss technique it causes status ailments, but here, the player uses it to remove Caius' Auto-Life that make him impossible to beat normally.
Caius is suppose to be immortal because he has the Heart of Chaos a.k.a. Etro's Heart.
In his fight against Lightning, Caius uses a Meteor spell.
Or as he puts it "Husk of the Wandering Comet!"
Now, Cocoon's fall is similar to FF7's Meteor Fall in a lot of ways. What I propose is that Gran-Pulse is a post-impact name. Where long long ago, a meteor named "Gran" collided with Pulse, and everyone evacuated to Cocoon for a time.
Or, it could be like the world of FFV where the planet can be split in 2...as they did. Leaving the city of Valhalla (origins unknow) in a timeless "rift". Just like there was a city from the merged world of FFV that was frozen in time.
Or maybe Gran-Pulse is a merger of 2 worlds like FF9's Terra-Gaia.
The original game had that unreleased "7th Ark" dungeon dlc, that seemed to suggest the Fal'cie were expecting an invasion or encounter with something from "beyond". But that's all we know for certain.
What I'm thinking is that Caius, by summoning Meteor to Valhalla, he significantly changed the timeline.
Now, throughout the game it's implied the crystal pillar will eventual fail and cocoon with drop. But I'm wondering if a Meteor could have done the same thing. And Serah and Noel were just misinformed.
One way or another, the pillar was to fall in 500AF.
I don't remember seeing this in the game, I'd have to go back an look, but the pillar is still partially visible in New Bodhum 700AF. Which contradicts Noel's story that the pillar disintegrated, saturating the air and earth with crystal particles creating an environmental disaster.
By the looks of New Bodhum, the ocean had evaporated. So something feels off about the whole thing.
It took hours, but I was able to confirm the Behemoth name change.
Not only does "Greater" become "Grand"
But a "Feral Behemoth", once tamed, becomes just "Behemoth". I thought that was a nice attention to detail.
Useless Trivia: the behemoth that appears in this screenshot
is not an enemy in FF13-2. The colors are a little exaggerated, but I believe it's meant to be a "Behemoth King" which you fight in the first game.
It's a shame. I'd like to capture one.
FF13 is a god awful game that on paper had a lot of potential and it's clear to some degree that they actually fleshed out a world more than any other FF game. But then failed to show that world to you in a non schizophrenic way. I hate all 3 of those fricking games but I'd support and buy a top down true "remake" (as in they fricking change 90%+ of the game) in a heart beat.
>Create one of the most interesting-looking settings in FF history
>Don't let you interact with it at all
Truly and genuinely what the frick did they mean by this
Like there is 26 hours in a day. Because 26/2=13. Why have this detail? Idk. What purpose does it serve outside of lore? None. They just thought it was cool
People make fun of the "as you know" style of worldbuilding exposition, but it's a better way to explain things than just throwing in a datalog to reference whenever characters start speaking nonsense.
looking at the translation history of ff, i'm sure the 13 games are meme translations that lose tons of meaning. even games that seem competently translated like 9 end up being absolute clown territory once you play in japanese. i should revisit 13 some time.
>i'm sure the 13 games are meme translations that lose tons of meaning. even games that seem competently translated like 9 end up being absolute clown territory once you play in japanese. i should revisit 13 some time.
XIII's translation was bad iirc because they kept rewriting the script and the errors are there because they recorded the other languages before everything was finalised. It was so bad that it caused square to get their shit together after that and have a real translation workflow.
I watched a Japanese guy play it, he found the setting-specific terminology very difficult to understand (that said he isn't good with technical terms in general).
I think a very underrated aspect to Final Fantasy games is in their intertextuality. Ever since VIII the games have gone fricking insane with abstract concepts and that's something I dig a whole lot. IX is two entirely different games depending on how much you read into archetypes and its visual language.
Where can I get the Japanese version to XIII? I can find XIII-2 and LR no problem, but the original has been proving hell to find for both PC (the Steam version has the original Japanese script removed) and PS3.
Final Fantasy has been very ambitious since the start, but from VIII on it seems like they almost always reach a bit further than what they can achieve. The games attempt to be fun fantasy adventures that reach huge life defining themes by the end, but it all leads to a rushed mess. That's part of the charm though, and it making the games very memorable. People are still discussing the FFVIII ending cutscene, 23 years later.
I think pretty much the only game where the themes and the story mesh consistently is X. It seems almost out of place how well everything is introduced compared to the other games, especially XIII.
I think you mean VII.
*now raise for the Rocket Launch Pad Area National Anthem*
Steam version has the whole Japanese script included in the game files. It's just inaccessible. You can get it with the tool Final Fantasy XIII PC Language Changer
Thank you.
no, it was shite
Yeah because Toriyama is a talentless hack who I continue to believe has been blackmailing Square Enix executives for decades.
Frick that guy and his waifu shit.
What I want to know is if the Dying World 700AF that Noel comes from, is the same time but different place as the New Bodhem 700AF where they finally meet Lightning.
Lightning simply says "this was a world I could not save"
She doesn't really talk to Noel here. It was my understanding that after this scene, Lightning goes to Valhalla and Fight Ciaus (the opening scene). Which is where Noel drifts in (on the near death) then sent to Serah with Mog. It's all so unnatural.
Remember how before 15 became 15 it looked like a Mercedes commercial directed by Christopher Nolan?
Bizarre.
Nomura has to be upset. His talent as a director aside he clearly wanted to and still wants to make whatever the hell verses 13 was gonna be but SE keeps fricking him. If he wasn't a Jap drone he would have left long ago.
Clearly, what with the whole "Verum Rex" thing he's crowbarring into Kingdom Hearts now. Guy means to tell the story he wanted, no matter what he has to do, until they fire him.
This is a very shallow reason but L'cie and Fal'cie are just terrible names for things at the core of the FFXIII mythos. You see these words and they look completely alien to a newcomer, there is nothing about these words that give you any kind of connotation or intuitive hint as to what they mean, then on top of that these two words are extremely similar so you're even more likely to get the two mixed up. It just makes it a pain to try and digest what's going on when something so basic as that is annoying to understand.
Anon no offence but your post in particular makes you look like someone with a low iq
about to buy FFXIII trilogy, the only one i really want to play is lightning returns because the gameplay seems intriguing, how about the others?
XIII sucks, XIII-2 is alright.
13-2 is pretty cool as you travel through time fricking up/fixing the timeline.
LR was just strange but I kinda hate ticking clock gameplay so your own mileage may vary.
>Ticking clock gameplay
They give you so much fricking time though
Unless you’re just standing around in a field for hours, you can finish up before a week has gone by and then the rest of the game is just grinding drops and extinctions
I sorta wish they made a lot more content that could only be accessed later in the timeline
Returns is combat only really starts to click at the final boss. Everything before that is too easy and uncomplicated. Returns is a strange strange bucking game with strange STRANGE mechanics but the combat finally gets used with the final boss and it kinda leaves me wanting more of it.
~The unseen realm~ oooooo
Some of FF13-2 can be explained with alternate histories.
It's sort of explained by Academia researchers that the past is uncertain until it's defined in the future.
Just...go with it. If someone in the future learns something about the past, then that past becomes a reality. Basically, retro-continuity.
The unseen realm is nothing but Chaos. But we should understand it as the Greek word "Khaos". In the sense that it's a formless mixture of "everything". Like color pigments all mixed together into black. It's all mixed together because -like how Valhalla has no 'time"- the unseen realm has no "forms".
The exception is crystal. Which are memories. Also known as "Fragments".
The meteor spell is actually pulling these crystals out of the unseen realm. The same way eidoliths summon Eidolons from Valhalla.
If you read the fragments, it mentions that the brightest crystal in the unseen realm is "the sleeping" Bhunivelze. So what this is telling us is that Bhunivelze wasn't a thing...until it was. Or rather, it was a thing, it got retconned out of history, and then reintroduced.
We can also speculate that the Temple of Etro was imprisoning Bhunivelze, there are hints that it once imprisoned something.
What this probably means is that there was a time before the Fal'cie. Ancients developed the Meteor Spell, and accidentally introduced the Fal'cie into reality. This act then rewrote history to say that humans were created by Fal'cie. And by "say" I mean "canonized".
hmm, I'm seeing a connection between Snow's Alternative Costume and the Behemoth from Noel's time. But I'm not sure what it is.
So, for the record, Snow has become a l'cie 3 times over.
Once, by the Anima Fal'cie
Once, by the Cactaur shaped Fal'cie
Once, by Pandemonium, the "last" Fal'cie.
Although we don't really see these other two. Interestingly the Anima and Cactaur use a Pulse brand.
Pandemonium was created Bhunivelze himself, so in theory, Snow should have a Bhunivelze brand. But we see a Pulse Brand glow through his sleeve.
If you fight Snow on hard mode he loses his shirt turning cie'th, but when he reverts there's not brand at all, not even a scorched one.
Lightning's Brand is also gone in Lightning Returns. But she sometimes has this crest from the game's logo in the same location.
I think even calling it a "mythos" is a bit disingenuous. It's moronic is what it was. It wasn't a story. It's the kind of world building shit you'd see from a 8th grader scribbling into a spiral notebook except it was done by a late 40 early 50 year old Japanese man who spends more time drawing sigils than his actual video game story. Whatever just happened to a nice simple story of heroism and adventure. You got four magic macguffins, there's a wizard who's a dick and he needs a thwarting. Boom. You're off to the races. There's no reason this shit needs to be convoluted and moronic.
It's not even complicated
how are you this stupid
>It's not even complicated
t. someone who wasted hours of their life reading the in-game encyclopedia
It's a "mythos" because they share a theme of fate, a door to an unseen realm, and in some cases the names of Gods.
To be fair, I think all final fantasy games have the same underlining structure, and the only unique thing fabula nova crystallis had going for it was it's pantheon...or really just Etro.
Etro is mentioned across the XIII series and in Type-0. In FFXV she's not named, but indirectly referenced
When FFXV was still XIII Verses, we saw a promotional trailer of Stella and Noctis in front of a painting of Etro.
Stella got replaced by Lunafreya in XV. But the painting still appears in a similar scene appears in the Kingsglaive film with Lunafreya and Nyx.
In the previous version, Noctis and Stella appear to be meeting for the first time. At a party perhaps. They are discussing a "light" phenomenon that only people who have had near-death experiences can see. We could call these the "eyes of etro" too. They're walking around an aquarium, and on the opposite room is the painting held by a skeletal grim reaper statue.
In Kingsglaive, Lunafreya and Nyx are at a peace treaty celebration. It's accompanied by the same music as the promotional trailer. The painting is in the Aquarium.
Instead of talking about the Etro Legend, they're talking about his security detail and how the person assigned to her previously was killed. A female Kingsglavie member named Crowe, who Lunafreya never got the chance to meet. Nyx gives Luna a hairpin that Crowe was suppose to give her. It's in the shape of an eye. Nyx just thinks it was a birthday present, but later realizes it was a tracker.
It's hard to say for certain what other differences XIII Verses would have have. In XV, and mostly in Kingsglavie, they're inside the city of Insomnia, which is protected by a magical wall. Shortly after this, the wall and city are attacked by a fleet of airships. Luna ends up on one of these ships, along with an Ultros daemon.
So in FF8, there is the SeeD Graduation Ceremony, following the Dollet Invasion. This is where Squall and Rinoa meet for the first time under a shooting star. Afterwards, Squall and Quistis go to the "Secret Place".
There isn't an actual "wall" to speak of. But it's clear from this scene that Squall is only isolating himself from other people's problems. Quistis was removed from her instructor position for questionable reasons. But Squall doesn't want to listen. It's a beat echoed in FFXV.
Now, Quistis was an underdeveloped character. Outside the Dollet mission, her role in the story is practically non-existent. Dollet, likewise, was lacking a duke to go with it's dukedom.
It's strongly speculated that Quistis had a much more significant connection to Dollet. Like, perhaps she was secretly a dutchess. Once Dollet lost it's communication tower to Galbadia. Quistis lost her usefulness to the Garden. They pushed her to the side and established new relations with someone that we can be describe as a Galbadia "Princess". Rinoa. So Quistis has more than one reason to be bitter towards Rinoa, because gosh darn it, Squall has eyes on...her.
We know from developer interviews that Rinoa wasn't originally planned to be the sole love interest. Or the sorceress. Conventionally, all the nations were lead by their own sorceress. Dollet, indeed, has a fountain with a sorceress statue (no knight).
When Quistis was dismissed for her "leadership", this could be a remnant of a plot thread where she was a candidate to become a sorceress, or even succeed Adel or some other sorceress.
Hidden in Dollet's cardplayer room is a journal about a woman that saved her daughter from drowning, but ended up drowning herself. As well as some other bits about Anaconda wine. Ultimately the game when nowhere with this.
But drawing from Gau's backstory in FF6, you can imagine a scenario where Quistis was the girl, and being partly responsible for her mother's death, she was abandoned.
Quistis and Rinoa only have 1 significant moment in the game, where Quistis shoots her down during their mission to trap the Sorceress in the Gate.
Etro's Gate? It's not named. But then again, "Deling City" is named after the president. That can't be the city's real name either.
It's likely modeled after Paris. With the gate resembling Arc de Triomphe "Triumphal Arch of the Star"
"The Star" being where it sits in the middle of a 12 way junction.
It's also a memorial site for The Tomb of the Unknown Solider.
In FF8 you have to go, to the Tomb of the Unknown King before continuing in Deling City. But since it's all waterways and canals, it a fair guess that the Tomb and the City were all connected.
In both FF14 and FF15, they call the planet "this Star".
FF15 has a lot in common with FF14. They're not called Fal'cie, but the primals can enthrall humans.
In FF15, there is a fallen star or crystal meteorite that's been there since pre-history. It gives off heat, which the nearby populace uses for thermal energy. According to legend it was caught and held up by Titan - The Earth Astral.
In FF8 the Earth G.F. are the Minotaur Brothers in the Tomb of the Unknown King.
The streets of Deling City are full of steam from the waterway below, a heat source isn't verified. However, we know Galbadia was briefly at war with Timber, burning their forests. Why they stopped was never explained either.
Coincidentally, FF11's Windurst also sits on ancient water canals and is located near a site with shooting stars. This is likely connected to the underground Fullmoon Fountain where the Avatar Fenrir is sealed.
In FF9 Fenrir and Titan are Eidolon Duo.
In FF13 Titan was a mountain sized Fal'cie.
It was considered the biggest.
Until FF13-2, when they casually mention there's actually a bigger Fal'cie, Fenrir, floating around in space and occasionally eclipses the sun.
I think that's interesting because Deling City is also this perpetual night zone with no explanation.
FF9 has a similar city, Treno, that is in perpetual darkness as well. One explanation might be the Eidolon Ozma, floating Chocobo's "Air Garden" to block out the sun. Placed there by the mole summoner tribe. Because they're moles and like dark places I guess.
Ozma's big attack is a meteor like "Doomsday" spell.
Ozma also appears in FF14, involving Diabolos and Voidsent.
Diabolos in FF8 does a gravity attack. He's a genie in a magic lamp you get from Cid. So...random.
Diabolos was also planned to be a Fal'Cie in FF13. He's got a lot of interesting concept art, but it all went unused. There's multiple versions of him swinging a guitar.
This might be significant because Diabolo's voice actor in World of FF is also the voice of Genesis in Dirge of Cerberus, in english. In Japanese, Genesis was both voice and designed after Gackt. A Japanese musician.
But Gackt's voice acting and singing career is probably over now because he developed a disorder in his vocal cords.
In FF13-2, if you read the fragments, it's suggested that Etro's Temple in valhalla might have been to house some forgotten prisoner. But ultimately, it never went anywhere with that either.
In FF13-2, while Serah was running around with Noel. Snow was off on his own little adventure.
According to him, Lightning sent him a vision in his dream. But I don't think Lightning ever acknowledges Snow doing anything.
You pick up these Gravity Core fragments for Hope, which will be used to levitate a new cocoon. The fragment data for these contain messages from Snow. He's like "I guess I'm leaving these behind where ever I go. I don't know what they're for but I think you'll need them for something".
Alyssa also had a dream where she believes she died during The Purge in the first game. She's laid a trap for Serah and Noel, where they go through a gate and end up trapped in their own dream world.
It's assumed that Alyssa was working with Caius (because who else would it be?)
But gravity cores and dreams? Diabolos fits in so easily.
Additionally, the fragments tell us that Caius Ballad isn't his real name. He assumed the name of someone who almost defeated him. There's a fragment message from Fang saying they've heard of "Caius of the Ballads" and he's a real bad dude. But this doesn't tell us if this "bad guy" is the Caius we're fighting now or the Caius that he took his name from.
>It's a "mythos" because they share a theme of fate, a door to an unseen realm, and in some cases the names of Gods.
Themes are not stories. This is all world building without a world.
Now you know why it's called a mythos and not a story.
Or maybe you don't.
It's a narrative form. A form, as in construction. Like, what you pour concrete into. Do you know any carpenters?
It's asinine.
>Do you know any carpenters?
Several.
Even for FF only the five games, FFV and under, are like that.
I thought the sequels were afterthoughts no? Hard to believe they planned anything else the way 13 ended
I think they were planning on follow-up games, given that both X and XII had direct sequels. However, I think that initial reactions to XIII definitely influenced them, given that XIII-2 tried to fix everything people hated about XIII, and Lightning Returns gave a lot of the initial elements of the trilogy a wide berth.
bro just go to
with your headcanon and fanfics
I've read it all. Supposedly the development of Versus was changing every 3 months. So there was no "true" fully conceptualized plot.
But, even if everyone is making it up, they all stay true to FF lore. And there are certain things that were consistent.
Like, there where crystals. There was a goddess Etro. There was an armored "Garland" type character.
But if you go back to FF1, there was it's own mystery. Who the frick was Queen Jayne? She didn't have a role in the story, but in the epilogue there is the implication that she did.
This is just like Mwynn. She barely exists, but she's also at the center of it all.
I've read so many "leaks" about Versus 13, but they can't all be true.
Like Noctis wasn't really "royalty" so much as part of a mobster family. They secretly had a "crystal of the void" which kept the the city in perpetual night. They sold a drug called "Luna" which created a dream-like hallucinations. Noctis was addicted to it, and it was the only way he could see Stella. Nobody else could see her.
>I've been having these weird thoughts lately
>Like is any of this for real or not
There was also one where Noctis was essentially the antichrist. Satanic rituals. Too dark, too violent.
But I call B.S. on that.
Type-0 is probably the best example of FNC in practice. Honestly FFXV would have probably been better if they didn't cut out the FNC mythos.
FF13 needed a lot of things but in particular they shouldn't have told all of the lightning/serah/snow/fat filipino party animal captain guy shit in flashbacks.
There should have been a short section at the beginning where you play as Lightning going on a routine patrol or whatever and learning about the world before Serah gets branded and shit hits the fan. However they wanted Lightning to be the female Cloud so they needed to start in the middle of the action and ended up fricking up bigtime.
>Lightning and fat party animal guy and Biggs go on a small mission to investigate reports of a suspicious person near a minor fal'cie
>they run into a pulse cie'th
>biggs is a moron so Lightning has to explain to him the difference between pulse and cocoon fal'cie, what a l'cie is, and how they become a cie'th
>you get an easy boss fight with 3 party members and learn about role switching
>then the actual story starts
it wouldn't fix all the problems with the game but it'd be a start
I think Square had a case of the Galapagos syndrome.
That's a term Japan uses to describe their business practices. Where they make products suited for their marketplaces, their lifestyles. And not the rest of the world.
They tell an incomplete story on purpose. And then sell *supplemental* companion novellas.
They don't think about the cost of translating it, of printing it, of marketing it.
FF13-2 came out in 2012 basically. The novellas Fragments Before and Fragments After weren't officially released in English until 2019. By that time, everyone who gave a frick had already learned the story through the grapevine. Are they going to buy the book anyways just to collect? No.
I mean, they might have if Square was smart and compiled them into a single book. This where where the Galapagos syndrome shows it's ugly head. $15 for a sub 200page book? And there's 3 different books? Using first person narration.
Shove it up your ass.
I think every final fantasy game loses coherency in the 11th hour final dungeon.
FF13-2 is the same way. The final "dungeon" is Academia 500AF. The world of the future. Sky Scrapers and floating gold platforms made out of some advanced fal'cie crystal tech...
But no, there's a sound bite that easy to miss. Noel is like "The chaos is seeping through. Everything is becoming more and more like Valhalla."
So the gold platforms were not some kind of future tech. I think they recorded the lines before they reached a final design, because it looks nothing like Valhalla.
As you hop around the maze of floating platforms you get stopped by this shadow-yuel that's never really explained. And "her" motivations don't make sense.
Telling Noel and Serah "Don't go this way", when they're not really anywhere in the first place. You get to the end of the platforms and Sazh shows up with an airship and flies them...elsewhere?
I'm just saying, realistically, Sazh could have picked them up at any point in this open-air dungeon.
And if Yuel wanted to stop Noel, it would make more sense in Valhalla.
There's a battle with some "rift monsters". Fire and ice giraffes. ~random~
Yuel is speaking during this battle, but frick if anyone knows what she's saying because they don't adjust the audio levels or anything.
I think, this whole area was meant to be inside the rift. Similar to FF13's final dungeon inside Eden. But since they kind of cut Eden out of the story, maybe this was what they were left with.
I'll jump in and add that Caius' monster hoard was another plot detail they glossed over.
In the opening cinematic, there's a monster swarm that the eidolons are fighting in Valhalla while Lightning focuses on Caius.
Then at the end of the final dungeon, he summons another swarm of monsters. I guess this is to keep Hope and the rest of Academia busy.
The thing that I get worked up about is how Sazh and Dajh are there. Just for show. They're not doing anything special. Dajh hasn't aged a day. They pick up Serah and Noel, when there's a dozen of identical ships in the fleet that could easily to the same. The ship is also the battle field against Caius and Chaos Bahamut. So it's taking a beating. By the end of the scene their ship is literally on fire. But they act like they were never in any danger.
Noel has never met Sazh before. He looks at Serah like "Friend of yours?"
When they return from Valhalla, Sazh catches them in the air. And Noel is like "It's Sazh!", as if they're old friends and he didn't just learn his name 15 minutes ago.
It's been years since the first game moron
you think they never fricking mentioned him for that whole time to her?
They're also 2 of the 3 black people on the planet, and she already knows Gadot it's not like he's hard to identify by sight alone
I think the monster deal was meant to be connected to Snow's Story. He's not actually the time traveler in the novellas that the Gravity Core Fragments make him out to be.
In the novella he leaves New Bodhum on his way to Cocoon to look for Lightning. This is where he befriends the Cactaur Fal'cie who doesn't know it's a fal'cie. It's memory loss is never explained.
Then he finds a camp with former PSICOM men who can't live anywhere else because of their crimes during the purge. They're attacked by a bunch of Behemoth Kings. This is where Snow figures out the Cactaur is a Fal'Cie because it saves everyone. The camp honor it by carving Cactuar Statues which are also meant to scare off behemoths too.
>That's the Story behind the Cactaur statues in archylte steppe.
There's some boring inbetween parts explaining how it's obvious that Lightning isn't in the pillar with Fang and Vanille but for "political reasons" people needed a Cocoon Resident to be a hero too.
Snow visits the ruins of Eden. (This was an unused concept in the game)
There's monsters and chaos everywhere because they're coming out of the Ark. I think the Colosseum was meant to be the ark. Not sure. Snow + Cactaur end up in a weird timespace where he sees Serah die, so he asks the Cactaur to make him a L'cie.
This is kind of dumb because magic is accessible to everyone now, not just L'cie. So all it does is let him summon Shiva, I imagine. Then a time gate opens for him, and goes to the Sunlith Waterscape with the Flan monster, where we meet him in the game.
But we never see him summon Shiva. Also, just before Serah and Noel arrive the Flan monster tossed the Fal'Cie Cactaur...somewhere...and we never see it again.
It's just lazy writing to be honest.
Unless it hitched a ride with someone it technically mean's there's a Pulse Fal'Cie running around Cocoon, until it collapsed. If it died, like the anima fal'cie, it would have crystalized the area an reinforced the pillar.
After Sunlith, Snow just goes back to the Colosseum where he can't leave until the "day or reckoning"; which is implied to be a battle between Bhunivelze and Mywnn.
In the game, Serah perceives a shadowy-Yuel standing behind Snow.
This could be Mywnn. It's said that Etro looked like Mwynn, and Yuel is said to look like Etro. So Yuel must look like Mwynn as well.
So the combatants in the colosseum could be fighting for Mwynn, potentially.
Mwynn could have been the "prisoner" in Etro's temple, mentioned in the fragments. But the fragments also had some other prophecies that never really came to pass.
Jihl Nabaat appears in the colosseum in the game, but she's not mentioned in the novella. She's also not in the ending cutscene as Snow explains he'll be staying with "these guys". (Gilgamesh, Pupu, Ultros ect...)
It's not explicitly confirmed. But Alyssa was probably meant to be Jihl in the beginning.
The game doesn't explain the paradox surrounding Alyssa's survival during the purge. It just says she survived, but wasn't suppose to. What the circumstances are, we don't know.
There's also the missing Hope Episode that was cut from the game. But where/when this episode would have happened is hard to say.
In the novella, after Alyssa gives Serah and Noel the Fragment "trap" she got from Caius, Hope and Alyssa go to Augusta Tower. Hope discovers Alyssa's research on paradoxes. They also dug up some history on Caius, how he's a paradox that should have been corrected but never disappeared. This is the reason she agreed to side with Caius. She's certain that she'll cease to exist if Serah and Noel continue to solve paradoxes. She's less afraid of being dead, and more afraid of not being remembered. Having all her accomplishments go to someone else.
She pulls a gun on Hope. But when she pulls the trigger, she aborted herself from the timeline apparently. She can't kill Hope, because she is a paradox. If Hope lives, he would have researched a way for Alyssa not be erased with the timeline. By resolving to kill "hope", literally and figuratively, she had no future (thus, no past) once Serah and Noel inevitably fix the timeline.
As she's fading away, she's like "REMEMBER ME". But they don't. The timeline replaces her with this other girl.
Here's your FF13-2 villain.
>Correspondences between FF1 and FF13
For starters there's Serah, a staple in every series.
In FF1, she has a younger sister rather than an older sister.
Lightning's real name is Claire.
In FF9, Garnet's real name is Sarah.
Following the conventions that princesses marry princes, the only other prince in this game is the cursed elf prince of Elfheim.
This loosely fits with Snow Villiers. In the Dissidia world map, the area is covered in snow.
digression: Villiers could be a play of "billards"...as in "Snow Balls"
In FF1 there is a Hint Giving NPC, the Dancer Arylon. Her knowledge of what to do next could be seen as clairvoyance. Connecting her to Yuel. Her name might also be connected to Ellone in FF8.
The Temple of Chaos/Fiends is likely related to Etro's Temple in Valhalla. Explaining the power over chaos and fiends. Caius' "true name" is never mentioned. It's just said that he took the name of someone else. It's probably Garland. Like a flower garland.
The game doesn't really show that Yuel loves Caius back. She just loves "Singing, Dancing, and Flowers"
In the novella's all the Yuels are basically simpletons. They're kept away from society and not spoken too. So when they do start speaking and using words nobody she couldn't have heard from anyone else, it's evidence that they're having visions.
Yuel describes her visions using flower metaphors. Like Cocoon is a "frozen flower"
Fireworks are "sky flowers". She never mentions Caius in her visons. But she does see Serah and Noel again and again, recognizing them as traveling the timeline.
So alternatively Noel = Garland.
>recognizing them as traveling the timeline.
Wait a minute..
Take your time. Thinking isn't for everyone.
The Farseers don't just see the future, they see other points in history as well. I believe this Yeul, describing things as flowers in the novella, was the one in Oerba 200AF (I'm not sure if she was actually from 200AF herself, because she and Caius exit through a rift)
It's hinted that the future - or rather, history - that this Yeul was MEANT to see was one where Serah and Noel solve the paradoxes and create a new Cocoon .
When Serah gets stuck in the "shadow realm" valhalla, and meets various Yuels, one even says Serah was meant to solve the paradoxes, "...and perhaps, you did".
The moment that changed everything was here, Oerba 200AF, when Serah touched the oracle drive.
It took me a couple playthroughs to figure out what was happening in this scene. The moment Serah touched the drive it recorded her memory of the previous history. Making it a prophecy.
>If you change the future; you change the past
Instead of thinking of a single timeline with past, present, future.
You might think of it as 3 different timelines, but their order keeps shifting around: "previous", "current", and "next".
Before leaving Oerba, Noel pauses and says something is wrong, maybe he forgot something. This could be his memory being rewritten. Or he could be sensing that this Caius of 200AF(allegedly) shouldn't recognize Noel or know anything about their time together in 700AF.
But in Noel's defense, time travel is weird and our language isn't really equipped for future-past tenses. So when Caius says "I'm no longer the Caius you once knew"
Noel should be like "Wait -- don't you mean, you're not yet the Caius I know you will be? "
I've been thinking
>tfw all of the Final Fantasys exist because of time traveling Lightning just wanting to frick around after getting drunk in France
>Lightning cancelled XV's DLC and fricked with FF7 Remake
>Remake Cloud is actually just blonde Lightning
I think they were modeling Snow after Volt, from Square's PS2 fighting game The Bouncer. Volt had a leather jacket with a cactaur on it.
In ff13-2, they're all a sort of bouncer/gatekeepers by protecting Etro's gate. Idk.
The whole Cactaur Fal'cie thing bugs me because they didn't really go anywhere with it.
It might be connected to The Abandoned City of Haerii.
Haerii or Hari in Japanese translates to Needle. In FF13-2 they mostly focus on The city of Paddra. The ancient history of Pulse is too fuzy to explaining, on top of The Paradoxes which are implied to have been a thing across all the ages, and not just "After Fall".
Haerii is mentioned in the Fragments. With prophecies of other Farseers (Not Yuel) who are named Clotho Lachesis and Atropos (Greek Fate Sisters) In "The Book of Haerii"
The Farseer Relic in The Dying World could be related to them. This area could be on or around the ruins of Haerii. The area is full of cactaurs too. Would kind of makes sense given the "needle" association.
The history of the Farseers, the reincarnated Yuel, and her guardians is really fuzzy.
In Lighting Returns it's said that Etro wasn't given any powers or the ability to make Fal'cie. Because she looked too much like Mywnn. Whatever powers she has came from Mywnn after entering The Unseen Realm where Mywnn tasked her with keeping the balance.
However, in FF13-2, it's said that Yuel's guardian is a kind of L'cie. In fact there are a few unique Cie'th that were unused in FF13, that appear in FF13-2. In one case, there was a Cie'th in FF13 that had a tentacle body. You accept the Mark to go fight it in the Haerii Ruins, but when you do, there's a cutscene where a Tonberry shanks it. Then you fight the Tonberry instead.
This tentacle Cie'th could be related to an Unused Fal'ce concept, that looked like Ultros.
So before Caius was immortalized by the Heart of Chaos, the guardians were just ordinary l'cie. Or maybe psudo-l'cie. Because it seems, in one case, a Guardian asked to turned into a Cie'th as punishment. But what Fal'cie existed to do this?
The unnamed Fal'cie head that recorded the Farseer vision in an oracle drive was placed there by Pulse. The Cactaur Fal'cie also uses a Pulse Brand. And in this concept art, we see Ultros, that might have been a Fal'cie.
There are fragments named "Ultima Brand, Omega Brand, and Chaos Brand" that are collected in The Dying world. They all have a picture of Caius clutching his heart.
Because Ultros and Omega appear in the Colosseum, I have to wonder if there were different types of brands, and l'cie, other than Pulse and Lindzei.
Kind of like how there are different types of summoning. You can summon a regular eidolon, or you can sacrifice your life and become a type of summon fusion. This is what Caius did when he was just a regular guardian, but he came back with the heart of chaos. Fang and Vanille also sacrificed themselves to become Ragnarok, but the goddess intervened then too.
I LOVE SERAHHHHHHHHHHH
>LOUDER
I'M IN LOVE WITH SERAAAAAAAAHHHH
OH LET IT GO NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW OHHHHHHHHHHHH WHOAAAAAAA WHOAAAAAAAA OOOHHHH WHOAAAAAAAA OHHHH OHHHH OHHHH OHHHH WHOAAAAAAA NOW NOW NOW NOW NO NOW
Anon please calm down.
>I LOVE SERAHHHHHHHHHHH
>I'M IN LOVE WITH SERAAAAAAAAHHHH
>OH LET IT GO NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW OHHHHHHHHHHHH WHOAAAAAAA WHOAAAAAAAA OOOHHHH WHOAAAAAAAA OHHHH OHHHH OHHHH OHHHH WHOAAAAAAA NOW NOW NOW NOW NO NOW
There might have been some connection between Academia in FF13-2 and the Akademeia in Type-0.
It's possible mog even came from Type-0's world of Orience. Although there a few difference between Mog in 13-2 and the other moogles in Type-0.
Mog has a crystal pom-pom, which according to a fragment creates an anti-gravity field that lets him fly.
The moogle pom-poms in Type-0 are all round orbs, although they are different colors and have decorations. The moogles all have gear motifs.
It was a mystery if Mog in 13-2 was a kind of Eidolon or Fal'cie because he could shapeshift into a Sword and Bow.
In one of the fragments, mog says his "true form" is inside his clock-scepter.
I had a theory that the Fenrir Fal'cie is an alternative version of Etro. It doesn't make much scene for it to be looking for "the door" meaning etro's gate, when Etro must have already found it. Right?
>Was the whole fabula nova crystallis "mythos" a bust?
It was a pipe dream made worse by the fact of Square's piss-poor management & creative incompetence, how they boasted about this anthology of then new Final Fantasy games carrying common themes about "defying fate," l'Cies, fal'Cies, people turning into crystal, the afterlife, the goddess of death, etc. Despite all of that, most of the games turned out to be underdeveloped and/or lazily written crap. The lore was always more vaguely interesting than the actual gameplay in all of them. XIII should never have been a trilogy, Type-0 was too melodramatic for its own good, and Versus XIII ended up getting repurposed as the unfinished FFXV. The whole idea ended up as wasted potential, which is an all too common trend with Square over the past 10+ years.
>originally planned to be the future of the franchise with several spin-off titles
>said spin-offs were announced alongside the first game in the FNC series, then went directly to development hell
>XIII comes out to mediocre reception that got worse over time, within a year it was considered the worst FF
>first spin-off comes out on PSP in Japan only. Sales are too mediocre for SE to consider an international release immediately
>XIII sequels make improvements to first game in the series but are still decent at best and XIII is a toxic brand at this point so no one cares
>internally directors and staff get shuffled as SE's attempt to create a decade-long FF epic storyline franchise crashes and burns. Nomura's brainchild Versus XIII remains in development hell and he isn't able or allowed to touch it, the world's only Lightening simp takes control of the project, and SE cuts the funding and scope of the project by pretty much 100%
>Eventually Versus XIII becomes FFXV and Type-0 releases in overseas after years of it being emulated. XV has nothing to do with the XIII universe and Type-0 is marketed as a completely standalone game.
>To this day the XIII is considered the worst FF and the only time people talk about it is in moronic threads like these where OPs ask dumb questions everyone already knows the answer to
Square Enix circa 2009 to 2016 was run by actual morons and nearly everything they put out was just laughably bad with the exception of Crisis Core, Dissidia, and the original Bravely Default. Although one can argue that except for Dissidia those are both flawed games. Fabula Nova Crystallis was just the epitome of their lack of self-awareness in an industry that at the time wasn't interested in Japanese games (especially JRPGs, which were the butt of the joke around 2010-2011), led by a team that had no clear vision of what they wanted this project to be beyond something they could all work on for 10 years.
>an industry that at the time wasn't interested in Japanese games (especially JRPGs, which were the butt of the joke around 2010-2011)
Do you have any more insight about this? I was really insulated from "WEEB BAD" thanks to having Ganker/weeb friends but I did notice the swing toward westernshit and still have no idea why it happened.