|
The White Dragon posted:I understand where people get the impression, but I never saw it like that. I've always thought it was more that mankind survives, and that thing at the end shows mankind abandoned the toxic ideology that Midgar represented. also i like red xiii but he's still a dog and he can't land that fuckin airship by himself That is the intended ending. Everyone always forgets about the Lifestream stuff which doesn't at all mesh with a "and then humanity died" ending.
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 01:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 09:49 |
|
|
ImpAtom posted:That is the intended ending. Everyone always forgets about the Lifestream stuff which doesn't at all mesh with a "and then humanity died" ending. I don't honestly believe Square had the balls to end the game like I said, but how does that make sense? The lifestream is basically toxic until you're dead and a part of it. ... and that post grew my neckbeard out a little.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 01:23
|
|
|
Pyroxene Stigma posted:I don't honestly believe Square had the balls to end the game like I said, but how does that make sense? The lifestream is basically toxic until you're dead and a part of it. The ending of the game involves the Lifestream emerging from the ground and pushing Holy and Meteor away from the planet, followed by a shot of Aerith smiling. It doesn't really follow from there to 'and then humanity died."
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 01:25
|
|
|
It's still hard to sit through all the dialog again when they talk so slowly.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 01:36
|
|
|
nuru posted:It's still hard to sit through all the dialog again when they talk so slowly. PS1/early PS2 era JRPGs in a nutshell.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 01:42
|
|
|
fronz posted:Meteors are tough. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 02:35
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:The ending of the game involves the Lifestream emerging from the ground and pushing Holy and Meteor away from the planet, followed by a shot of Aerith smiling. It doesn't really follow from there to 'and then humanity died." Considering all the assholes and nutjobs Aerith had to deal with, she's entitled to a little schadenfreude while watching them all die horrible deaths.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 03:10
|
|
|
See, but neither Holy nor the lifestream attempted to wipe out humanity, so I don't know how much I buy that the Weapons were out to kill humans because they're viewed as a threat by the planet. My theory on the Weapons was that they were trying to send as many lives back to the lifestream as possible. The game had shown that the planet uses the lifestream to heal wounds, and big wounds took a long time and a lot of lifestream to repair. Sephiroth's entire plan hinged on the fact that Meteor would cause an enormous wound to the planet, and all of the lifestream would be sent to that wound. He would then absorb an entire planet's worth of life energy and become a god. So when Meteor was summoned, the planet said "oh poo poo, I'm about to get hit by a bus", and sent out the weapons to build up the lifestream as much as possible in preparation. This would be completely in line with Sephiroth's plan. The Weapons would build up the lifestream by generally rampaging and killing stuff, so that the planet itself might survive. While in theory the Weapons would be attacking all living things and not just humans, it doesn't make for very provocative storytelling to have monsters stomping around on trees, so I think the game focused on the attacks on human cities.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 06:56
|
|
|
Gologle posted:You know, why don't they just summon all the Summons and point them at Meteor to blow the giant meteor up? You telling me King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table can't zantetsuken Meteor into ten thousand Comets to rain harmlessly into the ocean, where their combined radiation will one day form FF7-Godzilla to protect us from all future space threats? On the other hand, they're up against a power that has been summoned by a guy who can obliterate the solar system. Over a period of like five loving minutes. KOTR wasn't fair, but if you didn't steamroll Sephiroth you were punished by having to sit through the longest attack.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 07:15
|
|
|
Did anyone else find it really weird that VII took place in our solar system? Either in the future we have tons of crazy magic poo poo or we had some really cool things in the past before the lifestream came and killed everyone to make room for current humans.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 07:30
|
|
|
I just finished playing through FFXIII, and overall I was underwhelmed by the game. Most of all, I thought that it just flatlined through its entire length – in terms of story, characters, and gameplay. Nothing ever grabbed me. The locations definitely looked pretty, but the people and plot in those locations were hollow. It seemed over-produced, like the developers overthought everything and ended up with the most anodyne, please-as-many-people-as-we-can product possible. These most likely aren’t controversial opinions, and you guys have probably been discussing these things for the last 5 years, but I thought I’d just unleash a bit of rage here. There were a few things that seemed to me to be no-brainers from a storytelling perspective: 1. Why weren't Vanille and Fang distraught over awakening 600 years in the future – what about their families and loved ones on Pulse? But until you’re literally walking inside the devastated ruins of their home town 20 hours (game time) later, they don’t mention any surprise about suddenly being in the far-flung future. Even then, their reaction was extremely tepid – more of an ‘oh well!’ than a sympathisable, human reaction. But at least there was another 10 minute cut scene of everyone saying ‘we can do this, we will stick together, I am a hero’ 2. Lightning’s arc I assumed would see her transition from a cold, calculating person who shuns human contact into someone who values the friends around her. There would be, I imagined, some scene of catharsis scene where things get too much for her and she breaks down, temporarily shedding the tough persona – she’d probably reveal how since her parents died young she had been forced to be the strong one, and that the cool attitude she projected was a defense mechanism in order to not get close to anyone any more, etc etc. I wouldn’t have minded this not happening – great storytelling often zigs when you think it will zag – but in place of what seemed to me to be natural plot developments, we got…… nothing. Lightning does not evolve as a character at all, and although she softens slightly it’s hugely understated and basically unnoticeable. She flatlines the entire game. It was the same with all the other characters. 3. For the first 23 hours of the game, I had no idea what ‘Cocoon’ actually was – are we in a space station, are we in a different dimension, are we actually on a planet? It seemed clear that ‘Pulse’ was a separate planet, but even that was a bit murky. Initially I thought this might be a plot point – after we leave Cocoon, it’s revealed that it and Pulse are one and the same – maybe Cocoon is an underground city or something, and the twist is that you’ve all been lied to your entire lives. But instead, upon arriving on Pulse you see some weird half-green moon in the sky: oh well, I guess that’s Cocoon. 4. The decision the main characters had was to either fulfil their destiny and destroy their world, or else turn into monsters. In the Datapad this was at one point described as an ‘impossible’ decision. Really? In that circumstance, I’d think the option to kill yourself would seem pretty possible. Yet no character seriously considered the option (besides the weird Sazh moment), and thus a chance for exploring this truly significant moral and existential problem of finding purpose in a doomed universe went basically untaken. Well that was many words about a horribly mediocre game, but there you go.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 08:21
|
|
|
ImpAtom posted:The ending of the game involves the Lifestream emerging from the ground and pushing Holy and Meteor away from the planet, I didn't think that, I saw it as Holy needing help from the Lifestream to push Meteor away.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 08:35
|
|
|
I just got FFXIII in the steam sale, but I want to jump to where I am in the ps3 version. Does anyone have a save from hopes house?
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 09:31
|
|
|
Deuce posted:On the other hand, they're up against a power that has been summoned by a guy who can obliterate the solar system. Some Japanese goon wrote up a thing a long while back explaining what Jenova is and what that attack is. The TLDR version is that Jenova's main power is some magical deception thing and that Big Bang isn't actually destroying the solar system but showing Cloud et al a vision of the world being destroyed so that it/he/she can take advantage of their hopeless/stunned state. As I recall, the other interesting thing that goon posted in reference to this is that Sephiroth is dead and you're really just following Jenova around, who is using the form of her disciple to wreak havoc and fear.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 10:02
|
|
|
Well the last bit is already obvious since Sephiroth has been chilling in the lifestream for almost the entire game
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 10:28
|
|
|
bloodychill posted:Some Japanese goon wrote up a thing a long while back explaining what Jenova is and what that attack is. The TLDR version is that Jenova's main power is some magical deception thing and that Big Bang isn't actually destroying the solar system but showing Cloud et al a vision of the world being destroyed so that it/he/she can take advantage of their hopeless/stunned state. Yeah this became the modern fan interpretation but was impossible to tell from the initial FF7 translation. Basically Jenova is taking the form of sephiroth and can do so because of ~Cells~ so you never really fight sephiroth until the very end, where he dies in a single hit.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 10:44
|
|
|
Pretty sure that his Supernova attack only shows our Solar System because it's Squaresoft trying to impress the player with their first 3D RPG and it's easier to show a sense of scale when you use something that people already know. It's a "look at how cool this is!" thing, not a "Midgar was actually Berlin in the past" thing.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 10:54
|
|
|
Schwartzcough posted:See, but neither Holy nor the lifestream attempted to wipe out humanity, so I don't know how much I buy that the Weapons were out to kill humans because they're viewed as a threat by the planet. My theory on the Weapons was that they were trying to send as many lives back to the lifestream as possible. The game had shown that the planet uses the lifestream to heal wounds, and big wounds took a long time and a lot of lifestream to repair. Sephiroth's entire plan hinged on the fact that Meteor would cause an enormous wound to the planet, and all of the lifestream would be sent to that wound. He would then absorb an entire planet's worth of life energy and become a god. That's not a theory, that's canonically what they're intended to do. DoC was all kinds of terrible but it did expand on the role of the Weapons somewhat. Not to mention iirc someone actually states that in FFVII itself.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 12:12
|
|
|
Mmhmm. The weapons were intended to destroy all mako reactors to stop the lifestream drain and send as many people back to the lifestream as possible to cover for the energy lost to the reactors.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 13:50
|
|
|
ozza posted:Well that was many words about a horribly mediocre game, but there you go. You don't have anything on Tim Rogers http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=630 who wrote more than 18,000 words about how it's just OK.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 13:56
|
|
|
YIKES Stay Gooned posted:You don't have anything on Tim Rogers http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=630 who wrote more than 18,000 words about how it's just OK.  For one thing all the images on his site inexplicably look like someone's last known photo.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 14:07
|
|
|
Every Tim Rogers article is absolutely insufferable. FF13 probably has less text than that loving article does.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 14:20
|
|
|
Why does he think that looks OK? I'm pretty sure if you submitted that to the NYT or something, they'd submit you to the optometrist and probably unemployment.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 14:21
|
|
|
kirbysuperstar posted:Every Tim Rogers article is absolutely insufferable. FF13 probably has less text than that loving article does. quote:Also, if I can be a jerk for a few seconds: I’ve seen too many mainstream reviews of this game that boil down to “it was too serious” or “it was too dark”, written with the poise of someone who studied literature on the back of a box of Lucky Charms. This is, ultimately, why I must award the game four out of four stars.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 14:22
|
|
|
Doesn't he post on this website, or has in the past
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 14:39
|
|
|
I guess a better way to put it would be that FFXIII was criticized for being too serious because it was being seriously bad. I mean, FFX was easily one of the most ~serious" games in the series but it still had more comedy than FFXIII did. Sometimes you just need a break in your 40 hour-long video game. Maybe some sort of....town?
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 14:53
|
|
|
YIKES Stay Gooned posted:You don't have anything on Tim Rogers http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=630 who wrote more than 18,000 words about how it's just OK. Hahaha holy poo poo, this is magical.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 14:55
|
|
|
YIKES Stay Gooned posted:You don't have anything on Tim Rogers http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=630 who wrote more than 18,000 words about how it's just OK. I'm all for indepth analyses of stuff, but that's ridiculous. Especially with that's guy's turgid writing style, and the walls and walls of text. It makes me laugh that he has a shorter version too - if he can make his point in 1500 words, why bother with 18,000? poo poo like: quote:Enemies in Final Fantasy XIII have literally hundreds of thousands of “hit points”. For the uninitiated, “hit points” are a key element of role-playing games: they represent an enemy’s life force as a numerical value. When the number reaches zero, the enemy is dead (“terminated”, “neutralized”). In Final Fantasy XIII, you will never see the total number of an enemy’s hit points, though you sure as hell will see the poo poo out of the amounts being subtracted from that hidden number. 12 paragraphs of unrelated |
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 15:00
|
|
later posted:
|
Pesky Splinter posted:poo poo like: The best part is that he's wrong about not seeing HP, since IIRC after you Libra an enemy you can examine their total (and maybe current?) health at any time. Well, the best part is that he spent 18000 words to say about FF13 what most people would say in one: "Meh."
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 15:12
|
|
|
The whole website is filled with poo poo like that. Another highlight is the extremely long Diablo 2 review where the majority of the review is spent praising it and then in the last paragraph he says "but I probably spent too long doing this so it ruined my social life for a period of time. Zero stars."
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 15:15
|
|
|
Mega64 posted:Well, the best part is that he spent 18000 words to say about FF13 what most people would say in one: "Meh." Yeah, that's true  YIKES Stay Gooned posted:The whole website is filled with poo poo like that. Another highlight is the extremely long Diablo 2 review where the majority of the review is spent praising it and then in the last paragraph he says "but I probably spent too long doing this so it ruined my social life for a period of time. Zero stars." Haha, wowwww! quote:But why zero stars? The article comes with this illuminating picture: 
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 15:38
|
|
|
video games are inherently meaningless and only exist to satisfy our dumb ape brains - a man who runs a video game review site
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 15:51
|
|
|
the zero stars thing is actually funny and is supposed to annoy people who take star or numerical rating systems seriously. he praises thegame in the review who cares how many stars he gives it. if I remember correctly, he did 2 reviews of ffvii...one with zero stars and one with 4 stars. I dont like Rogers but I dont think he takes himself or game reviews seriously even tho he makes it seem like he does by writing overly long and complicated articles.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 16:00
|
|
|
Tim Rogers writes 6300 words about FF7, ironically opened with comparing the word count on Wikipedia pages for FF7 and Shakespear: http://kotaku.com/5939487/i-love-final-fantasy-vii-now-watch-me-pretend-i-hate-it
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 16:08
|
|
|
bloodychill posted:As I recall, the other interesting thing that goon posted in reference to this is that Sephiroth is dead and you're really just following Jenova around, who is using the form of her disciple to wreak havoc and fear. This part specifically was debunked by the design team in the Ultimania Omega. In fact, they stated the exact opposite: that Jenova has basically been subsumed into Sephiroth's psyche, so that all of her actions are done by his will. The quote itself is "The Sephiroth clones seen in various locations continue gathering for the Reunion. Seemingly, the will of Jenova as a human is the result of it consuming Sephiroth's spirit; in actuality, Sephiroth is controlling Jenova." Also, I think it's demonstrated pretty clearly that Jenova's primary power is the ability to take on the appearance (and perhaps memories?) of other creatures. She's basically The Thing. I mean, I don't doubt that she has some kind of illusory power as well (considering we see that exact thing happen when the crew first goes to the Northern Crater) but her ability to shapeshift is obviously her main thing.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 16:11
|
|
|
TommyGun85 posted:the zero stars thing is actually funny and is supposed to annoy people who take star or numerical rating systems seriously. he praises thegame in the review who cares how many stars he gives it. he can be funny. that website isnt active anymore though, I wonder what he's up to these days.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 16:48
|
|
|
I just sigh whenever I see that guy being brought up.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 16:49
|
|
|
CeallaSo posted:This part specifically was debunked by the design team in the Ultimania Omega. In fact, they stated the exact opposite: that Jenova has basically been subsumed into Sephiroth's psyche, so that all of her actions are done by his will. The quote itself is "The Sephiroth clones seen in various locations continue gathering for the Reunion. Seemingly, the will of Jenova as a human is the result of it consuming Sephiroth's spirit; in actuality, Sephiroth is controlling Jenova." I don't know what an Ultumania Omega is but yeah, it's pretty obvious Jenova and Sephiroth have had their souls/cells/whatever fused somehow. Anyway, those reviews are amusing but nobody has time for 18000 word joke reviews.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 17:04
|
|
|
bloodychill posted:I don't know what an Ultumania Omega Japanese only books, written and published by SE, mostly full of behind the scenes stuff, concept art, general guides, and sections which attempt to explain and clarify polt points, character motivations, story intentions and the like. Ranges from interesting, to plain over-explained absurdity that would have been better if they hadn't brought it up.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 17:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 09:49 |
|
|
It's largely a waste of time. Back in 2004 when Advent Children first came out, I was embroiled in teh Jenova vs. Sephiroth argument with a lot of my fellow lifeless nerds and we turned to the translated Ultimanias to settle the dispute. I sided with Jenova absolutely at the time because...I dunno why. These days, I don't really care. Also, while I appreciate the effort Squall_of_SeeD and others put into translating the FF Ultiminaias, I wish someone would translate Chrono Cross' Ultimania. There's a game that actually needs a giant "this is what really happened" guide. Also, in case you were wondering, the Ultimanias really are loving useless. I talked to Squall_of_SeeD on MSN years and years ago and he told me the FFIX Ultimania offers absolutely no explanation for what exactly Necron was or where he came from. So that whole topic is still open for discussion.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2014 17:19
|
|