Real-Time Strategy video games were new in the 90s. The Command & Conquer series were dominating it 1995, meanwhile Squaresoft was focusing on Tactical games like FF Tactics, Ogre Battle. But I have to wonder if Squaresoft ever dabbled in creating an RTS of their own.
>>3906936Of course FF7 had the Fort Condor mini-game. That was more of a literal "Tower Defense" game. You still purchase and place units in battle like an RTS.
>>3906938Condor minigame was an evolution of the moogle defence minigame from FF6
>>3906938Fort Condor got a real glow-up in FF7 Rebirth. But standing back, FF8 was the game that had the most potential for and RTS setting because you had mercenary training academies, with mobile Garden bases, and all these vehicle designs.
>>3906940That's true. Good point. FF6 had the Gestahl Army. And if you're going to make an RTS game, you need armies. FF7 had the Shinra Power Company that made weapons, and were at war with Wutai. But we didn't really see all that in the original FF7. FF Type-0, was all about warfare too. But...idk, they were weird skirmishes and the reason for the fighting was really esoteric.
The conventional mechanic behind of RTS isn't just the deployment, it's resource management. In Command & Conquer this involved harvesting tiberium. FF7 at least has Mako energy. FF8 maybe had had "oil". Locations like the Missile Base and and FH looked more like refinery plants. And there were pipelines. FF9 had "mist" that was not only an energy source for airships, but also in the manufacturing of Black Mage "dolls". In RTS you also have to build bases and factories to train new combat units and progressively unlock better weapons and advantages. In the Ivalice settings. Moogles are the mechanics. You don't see it, but all the airship are manufactured in their factories.
>>3906956Ironically, in FF8, there are no more moogles. They've gone extinct or something. Instead, the furry slave labor was substituted by moombas. It's not clear to me if moombas are a race separate from the Shumi Tribe. Because Shumi go through metamorphosis. It's suggested in a sidequest that they might also become human.The Shumi are a mystery. They live underground, with aquariums, and might be like Octopus. But they were also artisans and craftsmen, that worked with "stone". FF8 had "magic stones", as well as "Draw Points". But aside from the excavation of the Lunatic Pandora, it didn't shine light on their economic significance. Like, "what do they eat?"As potential units in an RTS. I could see the player planting a Shumi Village down in their base, unlocking new units to command.
>>3906960Coincidently. In FF12's Ivalice, the race of occuria also dealt in magic stones and mist. According to development interview, they were originally imaged as mindflayers. Changing shape and color is sort of a naturally ability for octopuses. See? They have a lot of potential for espionage. and psyops. The amnesia plot device in FF8 was kind of pointless. But perhaps, NORG was eating their memories. FFType-0 also had this memory erasure element
FF9 is a good game to make into an RTS. Alexandria, Lindblum, Burmica, Terra, Black Mages, Summoner Tribe, Dwarf like beings, Swamp monsters, Chocabos, moogles.
Another "resource" in Final Fantasy games is CHAOS. Chaos being a kind of dark matter made of memories and the foundation of souls maybe. It's more prominent in the FF13 series. In Lightning Returns, there is an unseen Fal'cie that acts like somekind of Star Trek replicator and converts chaos into food and who knows what else. That's what they eat. Lumina is described as a "witch". But she basically exists for cryptic exposition dumps. Her abilities are a mystery as well. Can she create monsters from chaos? Or do they just conveniently appear to punctuate her scenes with gameplay. Witches a.k.a. Sorceress were also treated as weapons of mass destruction in FF8. Seems like their magic can do whatever the writers need them to do. If Edea can animate gargoyles and hypnotize a city square, why does Adel need a giant tower fortress to call monsters down from the moon?Unless the source of their magic power is emotional based. And they need loosh farms to harvest scream power like Monster's Inc .
>>3906968Originally FF9 was going to have a job class system. I don't know how that would have fit in with the trance mechanic. "Trance" was powered by souls. It was like FFX's OVERSOUL monster. Kuja's Trance form was powered by the souls that Garland's ship Invincible had absorbed from Alexandria. Alexander, being a mechanical magical war machine and summon in the series, started out as a "Accumulated Soul" monster that got mistranslated into "Alexander" and it stuck. Then in FFX, we got SIN, which is another kaiju war monster that's described as an "armor made from the souls of the dead". Probably not unlike the WEAPONs in FF7.
>>3906946Heavens, thought it's fft0, final fantasy tactics 0. Turns out is fft-0. Once again, punctuation makes the difference.
Kaiju in an RTS sounds strange to me. But I just remembered a PC game called Black & White, where you had a giant animal do your bidding. It was partly an RTS. But also partly a virtual pet sim. It's like in Game of Thrones, The Kingdom with a fleet of dragons is going to rule the world, but then you also have to feed the dragons. In FF9, Burmecians were the one's with the Dragons. But this is kind of a dropped story element. The Dragons disappeared for some reason, which is why they were vulnerable to the black mage army. Otherwise, we would have gotten an epic Eidolon vs Dragon army FMV. At least we got Bahamut vs Alexander.
>>3906983Tactics-0 would be Bahamut Lagoon.
>>3906992No, that would be Tactocs Ogre
>>3907000That T0O
>>3907000>Tactocs>>3907008>T0OHeh...
It's surreal that the only Final Fantasy I'm attached to enough to even entertain discourse is the one that was latched onto by a schizophrenic piece of shit that will not stop taking the barest minimum to tangent into 20 other fucking games.'FF8 had two large icons on the field, ergo strategy...'If we all got one murder for free in this life, you would be mine. Not anyone genuine evil, but I would blood eagle you in front of your own fucking mother and then do the same to her for raising you as this.
>>3907024>If we all got one murder for free>proceeds to describe twoWhat did he mean by this
>>3907033The first one is free, the second is pure malice.
>>3907033He's bad at counting, calculating and... All the other things.
>>3907275>>3907500He was given credit for the first one.He redeemed it on the second.His schizo ramblings have now given me an idea for a dystopian shit-shtick:>Due to uncontrolled over-population the government has issued the entire population with kill cards allowing individuals to be forgiven for a single death, intentional or unintentional, they would otherwise be held responsible for. Our story follows a cardless detective (insert tragic backstory here) hunting a homicidal 'influencer' who uses his kill card as a means to coerce innocents to kill on his behalf.
>>3907617>Due to uncontrolled over-population the government has issued the entire population with kill cards allowing individuals to be forgiven for a single death, intentional or unintentional, they would otherwise be held responsible for. Our story follows a cardless detective (insert tragic backstory here) hunting a homicidal 'influencer' who uses his kill card as a means to coerce innocents to kill on his behalf.Cool. Grok or gemini? It's a neat idea, but it needs some spice.>what made the goverment do that?>what happened first after that?>how do criminals use this>exceptions for kill cards?>market?
FF8's development was pretty short though. It had most of the ingredients for a real time strategy game. Although I've said in the past, it's missing Galbadia's navy fleet. We never see any ships besides The White SeeD ship and the assult boats in the Dollet FMVs. In theory there should have been defunct aircraft carriers. Or something like ships in Xenosaga. The Thames and the Ethos Transport Ship. The "Battle of the Gardens" ended happening on land. But in the prototype map, they had it planned out at sea.
>>3907622>Grok or gemini?Neither, shit came off my own back.>what made the government do that?Overpopulation - what's a quick and simple way to pull a thanos... a one kill per person policy.>what happened first after that?After the initial wave of anarchy, revenge killings and setteling of personal vendettas, people decided to hold on to them 'just in case'; drive home drunk and kill someone, just a DUI, no manslaughter... >how do criminals use thisCards are petty much used in lieu of violence, "Give me all the cash or I'll kill you!", "If you divorce me for my sister I'll kill you", it's actually had the effect of reducing violent crime in society by eroding the middle ground between live and die. Manslaughter's gone though the roof with all the self-defense killings but that's expected.>exceptions for kill cards?>market?Laws are still in effect but kill cards effectively 'remove' the victim, so you can still be charged for crimes that happened as a part of your kill. So, if you break in to someones house and shoot them with an unlicensed firearm, you could still be done for the breaking and entering and not having a license but there would be no murder charge. So while there is a black market on murder-for-hire that's technically illegal, it's difficult to restrict, and ironically, put a lot of professional hit-men out of work.For 'high-society' they typically reserve their card, go to court and fight the charges, only pulling it out if they're found guilty (legal fees don't mean squat to them). Then they get a bunch of armed guards to avoid the retaliation from the victims family/society*.And of course there's now legal death match fights on tv. That's your tragic backstory - Rich guy and his mate goes out on a bender and runs over our detectives wife and kid, goes to court, found guilty and uses their cards as a literal get-out-of-jail, our detective uses his card for revenge, but only gets one of them.This is shit. But I wrote it so you read it
>>3907665The Thames was essentially a "Floating City".I believe it was indirectly suggested in interview talks about Rinoa's development that they thought about her coming from a "Floating City" like F.H. They never specified if floating meant on water or in the sky. Of course The Galbadia army wasn't actually a country. It was a military navy fleet that moved onto land, occupying Timber. Galbadia was possibly a reimagining of FF7's Jeuno Republic. It was elaborated in FF7 Rebirth that they were originally a bunch of ships that were forced onto land after Shinra's Underwater Mako reactor created monsters that kept damaging their ships.
>>3907671Excuse me, "Junon" not "Jeuno". That's FF11, but conceptually they are very similar as a sea port. You get to explore the Junon ships in Rebirth on Chocobo. That's where you fight the Mindflayer. And if you go all the way back to FF1, there's the "Onrac" civilization that was sunken by the Water Fiend.
>>3907674And it's interest. In Stranger of Paradise, instead of fighting the Water Fiend in the "Sunken Temple", the level was replaced by FF7's Underwater Reactor.
>>3907665The absence of aircraft in FF8's world struck me as weird, there are ICBMs but no planes.
If there were unused concepts in FF8, they were likely recycled in FF10. FF10 does indeed have a sunken temple. And salvage ships. And "Floating Cities" (that aren't floating anymore).In FF9, Alexandria is the country with the navy fleet. It's easy to forget, because on the world map Alexandria is up in the mountains. But you can visit the sea port with a hydraulic lift that tunnels through the mountain. There's like 1 npc that acknowledges the feat. And there's all this buried lore with their Knights of Pluto and the castle's giant sword. FF8's Trabia Captial was also supposed to be a castle. But we never see it, unless it was turned into Ultimecia's Castle. Which is a floating castle. Perhaps Trabia was meant to be a floating castle town all along? With a troubling infrastructure if the airships were grounded because of the Radio Interference. >>3907685 It's because of jamming signal created from Adel's Tomb. If you play the HD remake, when Laguna and Co. are in the mountains filming their movie, and they see the Lunatic Pandora in the distance. You can actually see some lights that I think are supposed to be airships firing on it.
>>3907685>there are ICBMs but no planes.There's the Rag.But you know what, in all my years, I never once failed the base mission. Didn't know this cutscene existed until this year:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhIvfslNZA0
>>3907690And I've brought this up before. But in Chrono Cross, there rendered stills of aircrafts in a glacier region, while it's talking about how the FATE supercomputer sealed the Dragon Gods. It's like - what are we looking at? Where/When is this supposed to be? And then, in Xenogears, there's Shevat fallen in the snowy region.SE was pumping out so many games, so quickly, I've speculated there had to be cross development where they were just making assets to be used anywhere anyhow.
>>3907665>FF8's development was pretty short thoughUnlike today where everything needs 3y minimum. Competence crisis.>>3907668Huh? Wdym you thought of it? The ideas came from like the void???>just in caseGood, use that! Everyone is under constant threat!>self defenseHow does this work when everyone is constantly stressed and under life threatening danger>death tvAlso good.Your fist worldbuilding? Better than 95% than anything I found in any worldbuilding place. Some things are still missing. How's everyday life? Tell me more about government and the first phase.
>>3907697In FF13 and FF13-2. There's Cocoon, Bodhum and New Bodhum. I hate the FMVs in FF13 because everything happens so quick, with shaky tilted cameras, you can't appreciate all the design work. The "Pulse Vestige" that turned out to be a Fal'cie, that ended up branding Serah, originally came from Oerba. There's concept art of it in Oerba. But it's original function is "unknown". It has chains and water elements. A lot like Anima in FFX (Which is also the name of the Fal'cie inside the Vestige)
>>3907701In FF13-2, Cocoon is held up by the crystal pillar and New Bodhum is nearby. At "present", they were still constructing a transport elevator between Pulse and Cocoon. They talk about it, but we never see it. Ironically everything is flying ships anyways. Jump to the future, and suddenly there's Augusta Tower with the Adam Proto-falcie that is just a palette swap of Anima. It's not clear where this was supposed to be in relation to everything else. "when" is a tricky question, because it's not about the year, it's the circumstance that create it, as well as the paradoxes surrounding it. The academy was investigating an anomaly in the Bresha ruins, involving a giant mech called Atlas. From mythology, Atlas was a titan that held the world on it's shoulders. We could assume that Atlas was meant to hold up Cocoon before the crystal pillar failed. Or at least help construct whatever structure they needed.
>>3907698>How's everyday life?, How does this work when everyone is constantly stressed and under life threatening dangerSame way it does everywhere else. Society is wearing a shallow veneer to hide the stress and paranoia that comes with such a system for fear of angering the wrong person, most relationships are shallow and fleeting, everyone pretends life is ok. But a kill card doesn't mean the victim has take it lying down, people still have a legal right to self-defense, and there's plenty of violence happening in its name. Crocodile tears flood courts where wives claim their men was going to card them, the morgue, filled with husbands.Society rolls on, the gangs of police roaming the streets may be heavily armed but at the end of the day they're just trying to do their job. They want to make it home like everyone else. So yeah, they may have itchy trigger fingers, they may shoot first, and every once in a while, if they've had a long day and pop an innocent by mistake, they'll use their card so they don't have to deal with the paperwork, they're only human.
>>3907711Fal'cie have the ability to brand humans. A forced magical conscription of sorts, to complete a task. And if they don't complete this task they turn into Ceith. The Proto Fal'cie Adam seemed to skip the branding process and just turn people directly into Ceith. It's not addressed in-game, but Adam seemed to be out-of-time, acting through a paradox, which might explain why people were immediately turning into Cieth. In FF8, Trabia allegedly had the ability to "conscript" all it's citizains in a time of war. We know Selphie is from Trabia Garden, and she's obsessed with trains. But if you stand back and see all the instance of trains in the final fantasy, you get the impression that Selphie and the rest of Trabia were potentially enthralled by magic and put on a train.
>>3907763This Phantom Train "wonder" is in Final Fantasy Tactics, and there's further text expanding it, saying it was the "court mage" Witch Matoya that invented this enthrallment. So potentially Trabia had it's own sorceress to fight back against a Galbadia invasion.In FF13, the branded are called L'cie and their task is called a "Focus". In FF8, there is dialogue talking about "dreams" as if they're a foreign word or concept like a "Focus" that is achieved through battle. Becoming a L'cie came with the bonus of wielding magic and summoning Eidolons. In FF8, for non-sorceresses, magic is achieved though junctioning. In Balamb, they use G.F.s to stock magic. But in Galbadia they used Dr. Odine "brand" magical device or "box". Trabia may have had it's own system similar to the Kingsglaive in FF15. Their magic power is channeled or linked to the king, who in turn, received his power from the crystal.
>>3907775Of course the only "royal family" that gets mentioned in FF8 is related to the Occult Fan article about Solomon's Ring and it's implied connection to the Doomtrain G.F. They are possibly dead. or Undead. Trains in the FF series seem to have that quality connecting them to ghosts and vampires. The other mystery concerning Selphie is her confession that she had junctioned a G.F. while on a field trip to the Centra continent. Most of the signs point to the Tonberry King G.F. Does junctioning him make you a kingsglaive?
In Xenogears and in FF16, the magical power is a genetic trait to channel ether. In Xenogears, most of the "muggles" were culled in an event called "The Diabolos Collapse", to rapidly propagate it, while nanomachine "limiters" were set in place to keep their powers from getting out of hand, until they would all come together to form "God" in "REUNION" events. In FF16, this was a eugenics program to turn the human race into hosts for an ancient race. Although I don't know if "race" is the right word. By crossing people that can channel aeither, with people who had high resistance to aether, they bred dominants capable of transforming into Kaiju Eikons WEAPONS. Once again, forming the body of God, but who is the god head?
Ok. I guess I can talk about this "Blood Eagle" nonsense now while keeping it somewhat FF related. It was probably an invention/mistranslation/exaggeration by Christian scribes. It's sensationalized as a ritualistic execution where they pull the lungs out someone back to look like bloody wings. As a sacrifice to the norse god of victory, Odin. But realistically, it was probably just a "keening", a metaphor taken too literally, and all they did was leave an opponent for dead, face down in the dirt, for the birds to pick at. It's part of the story of the Vikings, Ragnar's Sons, who avenged his death (thrown into a pit of snakes) by raising a "Heathen army" and slay King Aelle in battle. The historic accuracy of any "Christian Saga" is very dubious. But we can give the vikings a "noble savage" treatment for vicious and cunning strategy.
>>3907815*cracks beer*Ok. So. Ragnar was thrown into a pit of venomous snakes for doing what Vikings allegedly do. Raiding and pillaging and otherwise being an uncivilized...what's the word?...a nigg- *cough* A Klingon!Yes, because like Klingons, the Vikings are all battle horny barbarians that want to die gloriously in combat to get into Valhalla. Dying in pit of snakes...not a warrior death. Ragnar referred to himself as an "Old boar", if only his pigglets knew how he suffered. Apparently King Aelle took this as his final request and informed his family. And his family chimped-out when they heard the news. Hurting themselves in autistic rage, before plotting a genius revenge strategy. From a literary standpoint, being thrown in a pit of snakes was an ironic death for how he lived. But I can say for sure what personality they associated with snakes. Except these are Christians, so will go with treachery and spoiling their pathetic excuse for an idyllic paradise. They want the finer things in life, moral standards. Standards like the Roman Empire (I'll come back to this) the pinnacle of civilization.Obvious Ragnar's family disagreed and saw King Aelle as a hypocrite. They knew where he'd be. And they knew what he'd do. He'd be "pillaging" the corpse of the Roman Empire by shacking up in their old city forts (tsk-tsk. You shouldn't steal from the dead.) And he's so high minded, he would never stab people in the back if they ran away. (So they feinted a retreat knowing he'd chase them down and fall into their trap). And they won and left the spoils of war spoil because fuck their not-so high and mighty society.
