ScherzoPrime
Member
My issue is the implication of women succumbing to their own power and needing to be 'protected' from it. I know I must be sounding like a pedant, but to me it's the exact opposite of empowering.
I guess, but it's kinda hard to ignore the gendered implications of a Sorceress requiring a Knight to be 'whole'. It's not about camaraderie in the abstract, but playing into chivalrous notions of being 'protected'.
Like this is from the FF Wiki:
That strikes me as dependency, not interdependence.
"A knight will present you with peace of mind. He will protect your spirit."
If I reverse the genders, the Sorceress/Sorceress' Knight dynamic reminds me of Iron Man and Pepper Potts, or a million other "strong man, and the subordinate woman who helps him and occasionally keeps him in check" dynamics.
So the question would be... Does the narrative itself imply that being a woman is the reason for needing a protector?
I know it's hard to tease apart, being that the game only features female sorceresses.
And it's a rhetorical question on my part, being that I'm headed to sleep
My issue is the implication of women succumbing to their own power and needing to be 'protected' from it. I know I must be sounding like a pedant, but to me it's the exact opposite of empowering.
I guess, but it's kinda hard to ignore the gendered implications of a Sorceress requiring a Knight to be 'whole'. It's not about camaraderie in the abstract, but playing into chivalrous notions of being 'protected'.
Like this is from the FF Wiki:
That strikes me as dependency, not interdependence.
You also have to wonder why women are the only people strong enough to inherit this power, I don't think it's about being empowered it's about being strong enough to carry the burden. And in this world women are the only one's who can, but they need a bit of help along the way.
I don't think the game states that it's a matter of strength. If I recall correctly, why only women can be Sorceresses is because that's where Hyne hid his power ("in women").
If you mean that you see her face to face for the first time at the end of Disc 4, then sure, she comes out of nowhere. But she appears first at Disc 1, and her speech at the end of Disc 1 reveals some information about her motivation.I think the only major thing I didn't like about ff8 was it's main villain. It kind of coems out of nowhere and just checks the box of "world ending mega threat" that the game didn't need.
Simply making the game about the characters and survival of their way of life would have been better.
True, but my mind likes to wonder why Hyne chose women only, did he see something in them specifically? Not physical strength but strength of spirit perhaps? What gives women an affinity with magic? Just my musings.
Ultimecia is an interesting character conceptually, maybe not the best written, but I like the idea of trying to escape destiny only to succumb even more to it.
And how can you say that she is not needed when whole witch hunting and her seeking revenge for it is basically a setup of this game?
My issue is the implication of women succumbing to their own power and needing to be 'protected' from it. I know I must be sounding like a pedant, but to me it's the exact opposite of empowering.
I always interpreted it in a 'power corrupts' way.
Gifted such enormous powers to a till this point 'normal' human is a huge challenge for their character. So the person needs someone to stay grounded. This person just happens to be called ' the Sorceress Knight' in this game. But if I remember correct it is never directly specified it has to be a knight as in 'Male with sword'. Cid is everything but a classical knight. He's more a caring husband to keep Edea grounded. And isn't 'knight' itself more a kind of a role and as such genderless. I think nothing in the game speaks against the possibility of female knights?
I want to so see it this way: The 'knight' is what a sorceress needs to stay connected to this world, something that is so important to her that she doesn't go the 'fuck this world and these filthy humans. I'm a god!' way. This can be a protector, a lover, a caring friend etc.depending on the character of the Sorceress.
Wooooow, Odine's explanation of how we're going to beat Ultimecia is a whooooole lot of nonsense.
To sort of wrap up the Sorcerer's Knight discussion, it'd be one thing if Edea had gone "You need friends to emotionally support you on your journey." That's entirely different from saying "You need a special someone to keep you from turning evil".
And the Oral Legend about Hyne, from what I read on FFWiki, says that Hyne's powers manifested in women because he thought they should be protected. So yeah.
For the longest time this blue spots bugged to me. They are supposed to mark the location of Centra Excavation Site, the place Laguna visits in one of the dreams.
I thought this crater in Trabia was the result of missile launch, but apparently it's the aftermath of Lunar Cry 17 years ago that Laguna also was witness to.
I love this little tidbits of environmental storytelling. One of the best FF8 features is its great attention to worlduilding.
I thought the Trabia crater was where Odine excavated the Crystal Pillar so he could create the Lunatic Pandora for Adel. I assumed that was why it was so symmetrical and even had corners.
Nah, the Luntaric Pandora is from Centra; you explore it as Laguna in the flashbacks.
Same problem exists in Final Fantasy VII.
A lot of the story is weak and really random in the last third/quarter of the game.
It's not bad, but it's not as well done as what came before.
I dunno, Meteor/Weapons/Holy are all tied into the idea of the Planet having a lifeforce that seeks to preserve itself. The theme of how man has perverted nature, and nature is taking its revenge, runs parallel to the party's personal struggle. It's not the 'greatest' narrative, but it's nowhere near as contrived as many of FFVIII's info dumps as of late have been.
I assume you're referencing FFVI? I only got as far asSame problem exists in Final Fantasy VII.
A lot of the story is weak and really random in the last third/quarter of the game.
It's not bad, but it's not as well done as what came before.
I assume you're referencing FFVI? I only got as far asWith that in mind, I felt the narrative of FFVI had some major issues. The tone of the game was all over the place and a lot of plot elements were forced. It made it too hard to take the more serious portions of the game seriously when it felt like something random would happen every other cutscene.Dinner with the emperor, although I know how the game ends.
I dunno, Meteor/Weapons/Holy are all tied into the idea of the Planet having a lifeforce that seeks to preserve itself. The theme of how man has perverted nature, and nature is taking its revenge, runs parallel to the party's personal struggle. It's not the 'greatest' narrative, but it's nowhere near as contrived as many of FFVIII's info dumps as of late have been.
FF7's info dump at the end of the game is a convoluted mess. Had they not really spelled things about with supplementary material (crisis core, advent children) a lot of it wouldn't make as much sense as it does now.
We're talking about FFVII
He said 'The same problem exists in FFVII. Not as well done as what came before."
I think he meant the latter 3rd of Final Fantasy VII is not as good as it's opening section.
True for all 3 of the ps1 masterpieces tbh
All the FF games lose steam in the last 3rd except FFXIII.
I dunno, Meteor/Weapons/Holy are all tied into the idea of the Planet having a lifeforce that seeks to preserve itself. The theme of how man has perverted nature, and nature is taking its revenge, runs parallel to the party's personal struggle. It's not the 'greatest' narrative, but it's nowhere near as contrived as many of FFVIII's info dumps as of late have been.
I assume you're referencing FFVI? I only got as far asWith that in mind, I felt the narrative of FFVI had some major issues. The tone of the game was all over the place and a lot of plot elements were forced. It made it too hard to take the more serious portions of the game seriously when it felt like something random would happen every other cutscene.Dinner with the emperor, although I know how the game ends.
I'm somewhat of a latecomer to the FF Fandom. I played FFX around the time it came out, but truth be told I never completely beat it (I'm stuck on Jecht's Final Aeon on the PS3/PSV version and only up to Kilika in the PS4 one). Other FF met a similar fate; I made it to the final dungeons of FFXII, XIII, and IX only to peter out, and with VI I only made it as far as the World of Ruin.In fact, the first and so far only FF I've beaten is FFVII, which I started and completed in about a two week frenzy of excitement immediately following its remake's announcement last June. Despite my lack of nostalgia (I was only 5 when it came out originally), I was really impressed with the game, primarily its strong characterizations (Materia junctioning was pretty neat too)
It's with that background I've begun playing FFVIII.
I actually have played bits of FFVIII before over the years, as well as FFVII, through emulation, before finally purchasing both within recent years for the PSVita. My introduction to FFVIII was rather inauspicious, through Spoony's lengthy teardown of the game. But as I read up on it, mainly through wiki and through friends who've played it, it always sounded fascinating to me, even if the plot goes pear-shaped down the line. Most of that is due to...
SETTING
(Fanmade map: http://ms-06f.deviantart.com/art/Galbadia-Intelligence-Directorate-World-Factbook-352948855 ; some deviations from canon)
This may be a bit pedantic, but one of the weakest elements (to me) of FFVII was its worldbuilding. Midgar, off course, is this fantastically realized Dieselpunk setting, but ass soon as you leave it the first village you encounter is Kalm, a quaint pastoral mining town. And this is true for most of the world map; once you leave Midgar or Junon (and perhaps Costa del Sol), all the villages you run into are small and pre-industrial. There's really no need for such massive exploitation of Mako because so much of the world are small farming or mining towns that wouldn't have been out of place in an earlier Final Fantasy.
And obviously there's a reason for this; this was the first 3D FF after all. There's a 'throw everything against the wall and see what sticks' mentality, especially in creating 3D models. There is obviously an undeniable charm of fighting an evil robot house, but the end result is a rather haphazard setting
Now, I'm not going to claim that FFVIII has the most grounded setting, but there's a certain relatability, to both its geopolitics and society, that makes it the most 'realistic' of FFs (up until XV at least). There's something familiar about a military dictatorship (which ostensibly styles itself as a Republic) oppressing its neighbors while locked in a cold war with an foriegn power it treats as an existential threat. Child soldiers are still a somewhat silly concept (more on that in Characters), and the ultimate reason for why SeeD exists is dumb, but the factions as first appear make sense within the world the game has crafted. There's a much greater sense of cohesion here.
But even more impressive is how it tries to create a society that is familiar to ours. Certain aesthetics on things like buildings and vehicles veer towards the weird and overdesigned, but how people are presented living their lives and just, well, being people, goes a long way toward making FFVIII feel like a fully realized world.
CHARACTERS
Unfortunately, this is an area where FFVIII clearly lags behind VII. Whereas VII more than makes up for its haphazard setting with compelling characters, VIII in contrast centers around characters who feel comparatively less colorful and flat, at least so far. I understand what they are going with in Squall, especially contrasting his apathy and precociousness with Seifer's romanticism. But apathy is a poor substitute for Cloud's boastfulness, and create's a barrier that keeps the player for really feeling for him, even as he displays questions about what he's actually fighting/living for.
The rest of the cast so far has felt similarly undercooked. Quistis seems to be the Team Mom, a proto-Lulu of sorts in terms of a relatively young woman being placed into a position of authority. But where as Lulu's pressures are handled pretty subtly, Quistis's anxieties border on incompetence. At the point I am just at in the game, Quistis mid-mission decides to abandon her post to go apologize to Rinoa; which is flagrantly petty and unprofessional. Rinoa herself obviously seems to be a proto-Yuna (with maybe a little Tifa perhaps?), though I haven't gotten a good feel for her yet to be completely honest. Zell and Selphie have yet to rise above being an irritating spaz and klutz, respectively, and I find it doubtful that they ever will.
The point overall is there's a certain flatness so far to how the characters feel, especially in regards to FFVII. I think at least some of that has to do with...
WRITING
I heard that, following complaints about FFVII 'liberal' translation, FFVIII was the first FF where the localizers had access to the plot and characters while the game was in development. I don't know if this is true or not, but there is a definite difference in the tone of much of the dialogue. Not to oversell it, but there is definitely a more restrained feel to a lot of it. Not to say there still aren't plenty of silly moments, but overall there is less of a comic vibe to the proceedings.
Unfortunately, the lack of color does not come with a corresponding increasing in depth, or at least enough to compensate. There feels like there's overreach going on; that the creators want a more serious, grounded (can't really comment on the time shenanigans yet) narrative but don't know exactly how to go about it. There is a sense of a lot of ambition here that they are falling a bit short of, which is a shame, but obviously each game created is a learning process. I think it stands out to me though because it encapsulates a lot of my anxieties about FFXV; will Tabata and his fellow creative directors have the narrative and character writing chops to realize the realistic setting they're trying to create? That's an open question as far as I'm concerned.
And... finally...
DRAWINGGAMEPLAY
It's alright. I mean, that's how I felt about FFVII as well. Drawing is a little tedious, but the flipside people don't often talk about is that it eliminates the need for level grinding. I think it's a less elegant system than Materia Junctioning, but it's an interesting system it's own right. I'd be interested in feedback into how best manage my GF and Magic, as it's somewhat overwhelming. But the actual combat is completely acceptable, if slightly thoughtless. Compared to the long slog of grinding I'm facing down to complete Persona 3 though, the snappiness of encounters and short length of dungeons is rather appealing to me. So again, it strikes me as just fine, if unexceptional.
CONCLUSION
All in all, I'm somewhat less impressed by VIII than VII or IX. It lacks the strong characters that made those two games so memorable. But the setting, and snappy clip the narrative is going at combined with relatively minimal grinding, has kept me engaged with the game in a way that I feel compelled to keep playing, even if I know on some level the plot payoffs will probably be somewhat underwhelming. I still hold out hope that there might be more depth to the characters than generally acknowledged, but the hokey nature of some of the plot twists later on that I've been aware of dampen my confidence. Still, I've enjoyed the ride well enough so far, so I hope to beat it before XV releases, so I might compare it with this early stab at 'Fantasy based on Reality'.
I dunno, Meteor/Weapons/Holy are all tied into the idea of the Planet having a lifeforce that seeks to preserve itself. The theme of how man has perverted nature, and nature is taking its revenge, runs parallel to the party's personal struggle. It's not the 'greatest' narrative, but it's nowhere near as contrived as many of FFVIII's info dumps as of late have been.
One of worst and most boring FF created.
Yeah I've always found FF7's narrative a mess from disk 2 onwards. Back in the day I had to read up on whether Cloud was a clone or not because I just couldn't follow it. (in my defence I was like 11 at the time) But even on replays It only makes sense because I know. And where exactly did the large materia/black materia get mentioned before we suddenly had to go look for it?
I love FF7 but it does have issues in it's presentation of the narrative, especially when it doesn't bother to tell you anything. I don't remember having to visit every available location to try and trigger a cutscene of some kind in the other FF's. And that's because the game doesn't give any clue about what comes next. I don't need spoon feeding but I also don't expect to need a guide to look up how to trigger the next story section. Even in something as open as the Witcher, you know where the story triggers are.
Midgar being a technological but horribly classist society in the middle of a ton of "backwards" low tech towns is an intentional visual reference to the nature of Third Worlds and Class.
Midgar is run by a bunch of exploitative mass murdering technocrat capitalists who are resisting a grass roots terrorist group fighting for their own right to self determination of land and resources.
It's a story been told over and over since the 1950s.
I'd argue ffviii is not info dump central
hints and world building and even story elements are scattered all over the world
First it is boring because the characters are uninspiring without any charisma to the point some NPCs or the coadjutants are more interesting than the main cast with maybe Irvine being the only exception.Why?