Queen's Blood (Final Fantasy Thread)

[Ruki]

It is. To be fair to Blitzball, it's number two. No shame in being second best.

[probablyoliver]

Out of interest, which FF games would you consider as having plots which do hold up to scrutiny? I certainly can't think of any - not from 7 through 10 anyway. I've always considered them all pretty 'out there', which has always been part of the charm for me.

I would actually consider the Squall/Rinoa plot to be one of the most well developed stories in the entire series, perhaps only behind the Tidus/Yuna romance in X and the heartbreaking way Vivi finds out about his origins in 9.

IX.

[badotori]

Just going to forget about Necron then, Ollie? I try to.

[Avenged Probably]

Just going to forget about Necron then, Ollie? I try to.

Yeah IX makes sense for the most part until probably the most nonsense thing in any FF game.

I thin overall, FF games are amazing at telling smaller, personal stories but it gets weird when you smash them together. They never really tie the main plot together, more just exist alongside it.

[TKz]

IX's story is boring as shit. Give me time compression any day.

I never understood this IT DOESN'T HOLD UP UNDER SCRUITNY thing.

Do I have to apply a critical analysis to every piece of media I consume? At some point can I not enjoy a story regardless of it's flaws? I'm pretty sure it's okay for me to personally think a story is the best.

[probablyoliver]

Just going to forget about Necron then, Ollie? I try to.

Don't know what you're talking about, Necron makes perfect sense.

He's, um, the, uh, physical representation of, uh, oh fine, they're all fucking ridiculous.

[Skummy]

Out of interest, which FF games would you consider as having plots which do hold up to scrutiny? I certainly can't think of any - not from 7 through 10 anyway. I've always considered them all pretty 'out there', which has always been part of the charm for me.

I would actually consider the Squall/Rinoa plot to be one of the most well developed stories in the entire series, perhaps only behind the Tidus/Yuna romance in X and the heartbreaking way Vivi finds out about his origins in 9.

I've not played 7 in a long time, so it probably doesn't hold up all that much, but it's not even about whether it holds up over time to me, it's how it feels at the time, and FF8 just felt like constantly pulling crap out of their ass....

"The Garden's at war! There's a battle for control between Headmaster Cid and this other guy! Oh, wait, did we forget to mention there was another guy? Well...there is."

"Edea was the head of the orphanage all along! Shouldn't we all have known that? Oh, I guess we forgot. Why? Erm...Guardian Forces? Do you think maybe we should stop using them, then? Nah, we'll probably be fine. Let's never mention that again."

"We need to stop the Sorceress folding time in on itself by...folding time in on itself, and just hoping the outcome's better, I guess?"

While the overall story of 9 might not be my favourite, and has a couple of similar flaws, I think it's probably my favourite for the snippets of story that it gets exactly right, Vivi and the Black Mages in particular. The Black Mage Village is the only part of any Final Fantasy game to ever make me cry.

[gunnar hendershow]

I think that there was this point really up until the PS2 era when you could create that feeling of telling a compelling story just by having it in a game. JRPGs created so many memorable worlds and characters, especially the FF series, where you never really thought too hard about the stories. It's like the storytelling went along with the game development, instead of writing a story out and then making a game for it. So many games have this late game huge exposition scene, where we're bombarded with all these explanations and then a "but to get to the end we have to do these few things first" line. They created so many intriguing parts, but the nature of how you needed to end a game hurt the way the story actually was able to end. It typically worked so well though, because the story was told in snippets you never had time to digest how hokey it was. Xenogears was close to 60 hours of nonstop "holy shit what could possibly be next" and then an abrupt "okay here's the end, thanks for playing." I consider that one of the most well-written games in the genre, and it still suffered from a lack of planning.

But once games started becoming more theatrical you had to provide more background and it became more glaring how weak the writing was early on. So little thought appeared put into how to end a game, instead the thought went into the journey. It's why in hindsight these stories tend to not hold up.

[Bobfoc]

I tend to find that the way in which a video game story is told is usually more impactful than the plot itself. I've mentioned before that Final Fantasy VII is the only game in the series I've played, so I'm in no position to talk about the others, but VII's story was, and let's be honest here, completely barmy. There's a lot of magical sci-fi twaddle that's pulled out of nowhere at any given moment, and leaps in logic aren't particularly uncommon. But I love how it's all executed. I think I might be among the minority who often prefer text-based dialogue because it carries the oft-forgotten power of imagination, and it lends itself well to VII's flashback moments and lengthier expositional scenes in a way that certain modern games with all-star voice casts can't quite match.

That's not to say that I'm always against the more modern take on storytelling, though, and it can sometimes illustrate a similar point. I felt that Bioshock: Infinite's time manipulation story was convoluted and all over the place, but I could forgive much of its shortcomings because of how well it was all presented. I loved the manner in which the plot unfolded through carefully guided, though not too vigorously forced, exploratory sections that were told almost entirely through gameplay-based interactions with the game world itself, and not through constant cutscene interruptions every few minutes. It's for those reasons that I consider it a bad story well told, and that often goes much further than a cohesive, more scrutable story that's told in a completely haphazard fashion.

[Schlitzbrille]

Final Fantasy X in a nutshell:

Interpretative dance saves the world from a theocracy which in a sense worships a flying whale.

Still love the story, and the sending in Kilika still give me lots of feels.

[Benji]

FF9 is 15 years old today!

[MalaCloudy Black]

jesus. I remember, before 9 came out, I used to roleplay in MSN chatrooms (hey, you shut up, you did embarrassing things too) and the chat I frequented was called Mystic Manor. The idea was that it was a giant mansion with a ground-floor tavern, frequented by all kinds of adventurers and owned by a fairy whose true form was a hideous dragon creature. The guy I hung out with there the most - and who I got to know outside of that RP chatroom - was a monkey-man named Zidane. FFIX was released later that year and I realized where his character came from and confirmed it with him on MSN Messenger - turned out he was a huuuuge Final Fantasy superfan, and he had already played the Japanese retail version of IX earlier that year. 

[Bobfoc]

FFIX is one of many games I might get round to playing one day. VII is the only one I've played up to now, but VI and IX look like the most interesting candidates for the second. The only problem is that I have the PSN version of VI, which is supposed to have annoyingly long load times, so I wonder if there might be a better platform to try that on.

[Pizza]

6 is actually pretty good on mobile.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Pizza

[Bobfoc]

I don't actually have a smartphone, so that's out, sadly. I wonder if they'll bring it to PC one day.

[Benji]

VI? I mean, it's already technically out on PC. Not officially, like, but other methods nudge nudge wink wink how's your father etc.

[Pizza]

GBA version is probably the best if you're going to go that route, although the translation isn't as much fun as the SNES. SNES has the Evade bug though. 

[Draevyn]

Has anyone played Final Fantasy XIV? Is it any better than the usual MMORPG? I was never a fan of Warcraft because of all the running around and what I've seen on youtube shows this game as much the same thing.

[Benji]

I tried it briefly but just couldn't get into it.

[Draevyn]

I just watched a bit of gameplay on youtube by a guy who admits he knows nothing about FF which annoyed me but the early stages reminded me of WOW. I just thought it might be better where I know FF much more than I knew the Warcraft series.