Final Fantasy Q&A

[Omegaflare]

well different people, different opinions. For me I like my FFs being more epic and powerful and complex. XIII-2 was a good game in terms of gameplay and content but story and presentation-wise its not in XIII´s league.

And while I like FF XIII, it also has several flaws (mostly gameplay and content wise) that despite its great characters and moments places it not in the same league as such masterpieces like FF VII, IX or X. Story and characterwise XIII is about on the same level as VIII for me though content and gameplay in VIII are superior. But I´d put XIII pretty much in the same league as VIII (which others might probably consider heresy lol) but FF VII, IX and most of all X are a league of their own that FF XIII doesnt even graze.

 

[Ehren]

And now to actually answer the questions that were asked.

The time gates:

Spoiler

Are implied to exist already, somewhere within Valhalla. They appear in the Visible Realm whenever time becomes skewed or shattered, and can be used to travel time in order to fix whatever went wrong. It's mentioned that fal'Cie did not have the power to travel through time using the gates, and that they could not make those blessed with that power into l'Cie in order to use time travel as a tool to their own ends. The opening of Serah and Noel's story together seems to imply the gates crash to the planet encased (at first) in an unknown material. This is likely Chaos Crystal, and it would seem either the Gates activate anyway after a period of time or were all activated by Noel and Serah's initial activation in 003AF.

Noel's paradox victory over Caius:

Spoiler

A major plotpoint of the game is that to destroy the Heart of Chaos (thus killing the Goddess) your own heart must be sufficiently strong. Striking a killing blow on the one who holds the Heart of Chaos without being strong enough will simply have the Heart pass to them and they will take on Caius' role of protecting Yeul. By contrast, Noel at the end of the game has gone through so much that he's strong enough to destroy the Heart rather than inherit it.

Keep in mind also that the "Dying World" that you visit should not, in fact, be the real Dying World. Like Serah's false New Bodhum, this area would only be a dream crafted by Caius as a trap to keep Noel and Serah out of the way while he tried one of his other plans. Even if their defeat of Gogmagog brought them to the real Dying World, during Noel's solo battle with Caius you're still in the dream.

As a last aside, the Datalog (Autoclip in Japanese) is an in-story device that records things as they happen. The information contained within them will line up with what your characters know or have experienced, and in XIII the only things present in the datalog that aren't present anywhere else should be the Locale descriptions and the Analects. Most everything else is talked about in-game and then recorded or (in some instances) expanded upon with information that would have been a bit unwieldy to get naturally into the conversation. (A common issue with RPGs, particularly older ones) In XIII-2, information in the Fragments is essentially unknown to Noel and Serah except for the Fragments that come in the form of letters such as those from Noel and Sazh. This would be why, despite there being a canon way for the knowledge in a fragment to be known, Noel and Serah do not have the story-spoiling information contained in many of them. This also appears to be why, unlike the Analects (which you physically find in XIII) Fragments are contained in a menu outside of the Datalog.

 

[Omegaflare]

yes I think it would be

what you said about being emotionally connected to Journey - thats how I feel about FF X. My heart and soul belongs to that game, its world and characters. Its the first game where I ever cried at the end and gave me the most emotionally powerful gaming experience of my life. Nothing has ever matched that experience ever since. FF X is my alpha and my omega. I love it down to every little detail.

FF VII has an amazing mythology that extends way beyond FF VII, making it pretty much the most epic of all FF stories. It has easily the greatest cast in the series as well as the greatest villain and some of the biggest most iconic moments and designs in the series. That game is so beloved for a reason. It also remains the highest rated FF alongside FF VI (94 %) as well as the highest selling FF of all time (10 Million units sold worldwide). Someone once wrote that Final Fantasy VII is the Beatles of RPG haha. Thats actually pretty accurate. Today of course the outdated graphics kind of taint the experience a bit. VIII and IX despite being on the same console have far better graphics that dont impact the experience of the games while I find that the graphics of VII actually do rob it of some of its power and magic these days after we got so used to HD graphics. But once you get past the graphics it still is one of the crown jewels of the series in every way.

FF IX is probably the most perfect medieval-fantasy installment of the series. Event oday I find the graphics gorgeous and fantastic. story, characters, humor, design, music, gameplay - its all nearly flawless. Its Sakaguchis (FF creator) favorite game in the series and the one that represents his vision the best. Often I find myself torn between VII and IX for the top spot of the PSOne era. VII has such an epic world, mythology and characters and is so tragic and deep but IX is so magical, fun, gorgeous and perfect in content and gameplay. Its a hard choice.

My list would probably go:

1. Final Fantasy X
2. Final Fantasy VII AND IX
3. Final Fantasy VIII AND XIII
4. Final Fantasy VI (the ultimate SNES FF!)
5. Final Fantasy X-2
6. Final Fantasy XIII-2
7. Final Fantasy XII
8. Final Fantasy IV
9. Final Fantasy II
10. Final Fantasy I
11. Final Fantasy V

I never played III (Nintendo-exclusive), XI and XIV (dont like MMOs)

 

[Omegaflare]

Not the response I was hoping for to be honest....So I am just supposed to hold back my thoughts, emotions and response just because you suddenly are too afraid to continue? sometimes conversations about something organically become something else, thats how conversations work.

 

[Azuardo]

Not the response I was hoping for to be honest....So I am just supposed to hold back my thoughts, emotions and response just because you suddenly are too afraid to continue? sometimes conversations about something organically become something else, thats how conversations work.

The topic's gone pretty off-topic, that's all. I'm sure you can create a thread to carry on the discussion - perhaps ask a mod to move the above posts to it - or send a message to Sap.

 

[Omegaflare]

@Azuardo: Why are you suddenly involving yourself in this? Please stay out of it.

 

[Ehren]

@Azuardo: Why are you suddenly involving yourself in this? Please stay out of it.

If you want to have a private conversation, I suggest you take said conversation to private messages. Cut the attitude, please, as you're reacting a little too strongly. You have a habit of going off-topic (which is fine, not against the rules that I'm aware), and Sap was only trying to make sure neither of you got into trouble. That response of yours was pretty rude, and Azuardo was only trying to show you Sap was looking out for you and not trying to silence you.

Maybe we should carry this discussion to the Favorite FF thread so we don't have to worry about going off-topic, ya?

The Favorite FF Thread would be the home for this, yes, but I just wanted to say that to my knowledge a small off-topic tangent is fine as long as you eventually return to the thread topic. Also, as a general rule we don't delete posts here.

 

[Ehren]

If there are any more FF questions, I'll do my best to respond to them. The freshest in my mind are the XIII series, III, and XII at the moment for reference.

 

[Omegaflare]

Lightning wasnt a PSICOM soldier, wasnt she a member of the Guardian Corps?

 

[Ehren]

Alright, got another question then. This answer might be obvious but I'm not seeing it right now. What is Cid Raines' relation to Lightning? I'm not talking about romantic, just that he and maybe Rygdea seem to be more familiar with her indicates, to me anyway, that they might have served under the same unit or maybe her skills were noticeable. In the NPC dialogue on the Lindblum he specifically calls her out and tells her it's her job to take down the Primarch (obviously it includes all of them) and I thought maybe he was a past instructor?

Always thought it was interesting. Also, does anyone else find it weird that almost none of the PSICOM soldiers seem to have nearly as much skill as Lightning? Except for the Huntresses in the Palamecia and Eden, for the most part Lightning seems to be the fastest, strongest, and most versatile soldier out there. We don't get to see all of the PSICOM soldiers, and of course Lightning is the main character, but still...makes you wonder who she trained under.

To my knowledge, there is no confirmed connection between Cid and Lightning. However, Cid is one of the higher-ups of the Guardian Corps that Lightning is enlisted with, meaning he would have access to her personnel files and service history pretty easily.

As for PSICOM, this was mentioned toward the beginning of the game when Sazh remarked that it sounded like a regular soldier had more training than the special forces. This is because PSICOM was created specifically to deal with potential Pulse threats, and their low-rung soldiers have had little to no field time clocked. As Lightning says, "Their grunts may be green, but PSICOM's elites are cold-blooded beasts. If they hit the field, it's game over." Furthermore, Lightning (along with the other members of the party) are l'Cie and are therefore much more powerful, agile, and all-around-tougher than your standard human. Becoming a l'Cie appears to refine the abilities one already possesses, making Lightning (an already decorated soldier) still a cut above the rest.

 

[Omegaflare]

Yes but Lightning was already far more skilled and powerful than the usual PSICOM soldiers before she became a L´cie. Of course L´cie are way more powerful than a normal human being. But Lightning is generally one of the most powerful fighters. This of course is also due to her being the main character and being intended as a female version of Cloud Strife, who is quite powerful himself as we all know (Bahamut SIN anyone?^^)

 

[Omegaflare]

"their post" ?

But I am just one guy

 

[Ehren]

Again, the PSICOM grunts like those on the train are completely inexperienced, whereas Lightning is (I believe) a Sergeant. If they go by US army ranks, that means she's something like the second-in-command of a squad OR a member of a four/five-man strike team. The only truly ridiculous things Lightning did during the fight involved using the gravity-manipulation device; Everything else could easily be achieved by someone with the level of military training one would have to have to make it to that rank. Most of her disarming kicks were only successful because the PSICOM soldiers rushed her (rather than staying behind cover), and the initial flip used the guard's body to follow through rather than being fully under her own power. There's still video game physics at work here, of course, but for the most part it means that Lightning is a well-trained military operative put up against poorly-trained ones.

I checked the Wiki Sap, and it says that Amodar was her instructor.

 

[Chaos]

This might be an odd question, it was something I read online, but never actually saw confirmed or denied.

Basically it was saying that in Advent Children the reason the main cast doesn't use materia anymore is that they found out (or where told) that using materia actually hurts the planet. That materia draws out power from the lifestream or the lifestream it's self thus they're sort of like tiny mako reactors?

So is this true? or is it just fan speculation? Like I said I've not found anything saying if it's true or not, but I'm a pretty bad researcher so here's hoping someone else knows.

 

[Tsukiyomi]

This might be an odd question, it was something I read online, but never actually saw confirmed or denied.

Basically it was saying that in Advent Children the reason the main cast doesn't use materia anymore is that they found out (or where told) that using materia actually hurts the planet. That materia draws out power from the lifestream or the lifestream it's self thus they're sort of like tiny mako reactors?

So is this true? or is it just fan speculation? Like I said I've not found anything saying if it's true or not, but I'm a pretty bad researcher so here's hoping someone else knows.

Something about that rings a bell with me. I thought they stated that in the movie itself but i'm not sure.

 

[Aether]

The spherical materia you see in the movies and that they equip in the game are materia manufactured by ShinRa - much like a diamond, the company compresses Mako energy until it crystalises.

The older materias - the black and white materias - are actually naturally expelled through natural mako fountains, like the one that Sephiroth points out to the group when they are on the way to the Nibelheim reactor.

So technically as members of AVALANCHE by using the round materia they are hurting the planet as it's brought up by ShinRa through the reactors.

 

[Omegaflare]

@Aether: This is an interesting notion. In FF VII its never mentioned if the materia they use is manufactured by ShinRa. Was this something established in Crisis Core? I always thought that the materia the characters use is exactly what Sephiroth describes on the way to the Nibelheim Reactor - simply crystallized mako energy. But they never say anything about characters using ShinRa-manufactured materia. Could you name a liable source for that information, please?

in Advent Children Cloud has a whole box of materia in the church though and Yuffie later brings a bunch of materia with her too (obviously intending to use it) so I am not sure if the characters really dont use materia anymore.

 

[Omegaflare]

I thought you havent completed FF VII yet ? You watched Advent Children before playing FF VII? Not the best idea

 

[Omegaflare]

I still think its a bad idea to do it that way. Reading about it on wiki and other sources will never be the same emotional experience as playing it. There is a whole different emotional resonance and understanding of things if you play VII first and then watch the movie. So I would seriously suggest for you to watch the movie again after completing VII (also watch the Directors cut of the movie - its 30 minutes longer than the normal version and features lots of new scenes and action. the final battle is also heavily extended and much more brutal in the longer version)

 

[Omegaflare]

Thats where owning a PS3 (or PSP/Vita) comes in handy since you can just download FF VII for 10 dollars from the US Playstation Store. Same with FF I, II, IV, V, VI, VIII and IX. The original disc versions are hard to get or very expensive. I dont have them as disc versions anymore myself. But one of the first things I did after getting a PS3 was download the digital versions of FF VII, VIII and IX from the US Store.

If you choose a 360 or Wii instead - well thats your loss then. But there is no such thing as "I couldnt get it". In todays digital age you can get anything. There is no such thing as "no way"

or to quote Clark Gregg from the new TV show "Agents of SHIELD":

"Dont ever tell me there is no way"