What was it?
Most Square Soft games had some in-game lore involving save points. In Xenogears, the "Memory Cube" was actually sending people's data to Solaris.
>>4016320The "records of fate" chrono cross, were connected to the FATE supercomputer as a means to manipulate people and events
In FF13 the savepoints were connected to the "Retail Network" likely via the Fal'Cie Eden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSqbUkK0f2IFF13-2 and Lightning Returns switched to Autosaves, ironically because the Fal'Cie were were all "asleep". One of the first shops is Eden Pharmaceuticals. Which makes you think, when you've played these other games. The Fal'cie probably had other plans besides dropping Cocoon.
Could save points actually be reality-bending sex toys only the playable character can see?
>>4016320Xenogears a shit
>>4016366Good question. Because the moogles record your journey in their books. Like a legend. And legends shape eidolons through the planet's memory. The final dungeon being "Memoria".
>>4016445There's definitely something unspoken between FF9's moogles and Madain Sari.All the plays they perform, that Kuja is obsessed with (besides the power of Eidolons), were written by Lord Avon. There is a first edition of his book in Madain Sari, which suggests he was part of the Horned Summoner tribe. Perhaps he taught the moogles to be scribes as well. There was never an explanation for why Eiko lived there with a bunch of moogles. Eiko appears in World of Final Fantasy, as the guardian of Big Bridge, which is a type of Alexander Eidolon that was "summoned" to the world of Grymoire as a building. Other locations are also Eidolons. Figaro Castle, Castle Cornelia, and Eiko reveals that Balamb Garden is also the "sleeping" Eidolon "Eden".She wakes up Eden, but then Cogna start pouring in through some gate. It wasn't clear to me in the English version of Balamb Garden itself was a gate, or if the act of dreaming was sealing something else away.
>>4016478WoFF is a blending of many concepts. Some of them were probably unused or unrealized concepts. Were the Gardens of FF8 really Eidolons? Probably not. But they were probably caches of ancient Centra technology. The world of FF8 had to communicate through "HD" cables. Remember, this came out in 1999, they weren't talking about HDMI cables. The "Save Points" obviously have a Garden insignia. Except the Gardens have only been "Gardens" for 10 years or so. They were originally Centra Mobile Shelters. So they might have had a secret network that didn't work through radio waves.The Ancient Civilization in FF7 were the "Cetra" hmm another "C" name. FF7's save points have a "C" too. Allegedly for "Checkpoint". If you pay attention to the description of the Cetra in the OG FF7, you'd know they were a nomadic people.
>>4016319Garden Portable System. Hard-link connection to a Garden PC allowing you to record your progress via journal. Selphie's journals on said PC are kind of a vehicle for this.
>>4016494As I recall, Selphie was on Squad 'C' during the Dollet Mission. When you arrive on the beach, they are accessing HD cables, and above them is a Save Point. It's possible they deployed the save point themselves. In Stranger of Paradise, the Lufenia civilization have moved to a higher "dimension" for lack of a better word. It's called "Central".Of course, all the Strangers were assigned crystals that store their memories. And yet there are save 'cubes' all around that restore HP as well as monsters.
>>4016498I don't remember if there was an Astos "Report" on the function of save "cubes". In Type-0, the save points are called "Relic Terminals". They're connected to the Altocrysterium. I assume it's some unspoken transfer network for phantoma. They have a Gate of Etro symbol on them. The harvesting of phantoma is a secret known only to Class Zero and Dr. Arecia Al-Rashia."Alto" is an interesting word. In WoFF, the Cogna can be stored in eld boxes. But the name in Japanese was something like "Alto boxes"
It may or may not be related. But for people who don't know or don't remember. Save Files for the PS1 and PS2 were saved as "boxes" in memory card slots. Chrono Cross's menu was just a reskin of Xenogear's menu. There would be "Other Saved Game" icons in the save file menu, unless if you had Xenogear's save file on the memory.FF8 on the PS1 also had a gimmick with the Pocket Station (a glorified memory card) and the "Chocobo World" data took up a lot of space.
The concept of Save Points didn't exist in the series until FF4. Before that you always just saved on the World Map with tents or at inns. The convention was that you have to go into dungeons prepared. But then in FF4 introduced saved points or "Special Fields". The save tile varied depending on the location. The Faemarch had a Star of David, while the "high" tech Tower of Zot had a blue sphere thing. Ah. So, "Alto" means "High" in Italian. It is possible, in Japanese, they were playing with loan words like "High Tech"
The terms "High Tech" vs "Low Tech" came around in the 60's with advancing computer technology. I think today the word "technology" registers as only "high tech" or mechanical things. Because nobody thinks of pencil and paper or candles as "technology". Because they don't have any moving parts. As if things that move are more advanced. Ok...yes, that is what "advancing" means. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was released on the Gameboy Advance. In Japanese, "Advance" is another loan word they use for commercial branding. So while it technically still means a forward or upward motion, it also has more of a "modern" connotation that isn't shared in English. The Ivalice of FFT was a medieval fantasy world. But Marche in FFTA comes from a "Modern" era. For Japan, calling something modern or advanced could just be a positive or neutral way of saying "foreign". Japan's 1920's era is often called a "Westernization" period rather than a "Modernization" period. Technically "culture" is a social technology. But it's uncomfortable to think of people as cogs in a machine. Now, in the world of Final Fantasy VIII, trains and HD cables are not "modern" inventions. They had airships 17 years ago. They had radio broadcasts. But then the interference signal shut everything down. They had to rebuild all their infrastructure. The trains and railroads in Galbadia are all relatively "new". They had to cut down Timber's forests to build it. But it's not like what they had before. When Ancient lost tech is more advanced than the modern era, maybe it's fair to call it "Alto Tech" rather than "High Tech".
>>4016445Do moogles set the team is lost symbol we see during game over?
>>4016537Schizo tech is a better description
>>4016696Did you hear the story about the kid that built a crystal radio for a science project and the school called in a bomb squad because they had never heard of such a thing.
>>4016699Cool clock, Ahmed
The crystal is typically iron pyrite or galena that form in a cubic matrix. In FF4, there was the lodestone cavern that debuffed characters wearing metal equipment.
>>4016699No, but it reminds me of a movie where a kid built a nuke for a science project
>>4016714The boss in the cave was a "Dark Elf" who was taking advantage of the cave's properties. But he was defeated by the bard's musical styles via "Whisper Grass".The lodestone gimmick would be seen again in FF12. Stilshrine of Miriam (Ward of Steel). The boss, Vinuskar, was a "metal dragon" built maybe during* the Galtean Alliance by the followers of the goddess Miriam. The Galtean Alliance is just another name for the King Raithwall era uniting all the major countries. His decedents were "House Galtea". But they never say "Raithwall of House Galtea" or "Ashe Galtea". It makes it sound like Galtea was more of a place than a people. *there's inconsistencies here with the date. In any case, I wonder if there was more going on with these naming conventions. "Galtea", "Galbana", "Glabados".The Church of Glabados, is a sect that followed Saint Ajora (Ultima). According to the in-game profile, the name means "To obey God". It's not explicitly mentioned, but their religious symbols appear to be a broken sword or sword hilt. In connection with the Kiltias Sect."Gladiolus" is named after a "Sword Lily".
>>4016726I've brought up this mystery before. But the "Garden" institutes have only been around for 10 years. But there's dialogue to suggest that SeeD predates that. When students graduate, they can become SeeD mercenaries, or they can join the Galbadia Military. As if Galbadia were the original SeeDs. After all SeeD's mission was to fight the sorceress, and the only real enemy of Galbadia was Esthar ruled by Sorceress Adel. The flower town, Winhil, is located in Galbadia. It was targeted by Adel on multiple occasions. But Galbadia was an invading army taking over the "Dollet Holy Empire" and occupying "Timber".As far as I'm aware, Galbadia was never a 'place'. It was a navy. Or possibly an airfleet that got grounded 17 years ago. These are details that are only inferred, but never seen.Possibly, another incarnation of the series "Wild Rose" motif. Like FF9's Alexandra "roses" or the rebel army in Final Fantasy 2, that was also an allegiance of nations against the Sorcerer Emperor.
In FF1, there was some unexplained relevance between Garland and 'Queen Jayne' mentioned in the epilogue. Jayne gets used throughout the series an allusion. For example, Jill in FF16 uses uses "Jayne, captain of the redwings" as an alias. The redwings were a fleet in FF4. The Ragnarok in FF8 was likely part of a "redwing" series as well. They were modeled after a centra legend about a "dragon ship", but it never elaborated on that. In FF2, the rebel army was based in Altair, which is the name of a star in the Eagle constellation. In FF12's Ivalice, it's said the "Rocs" (giant birds) were natural enemies to the dragons. The thought crossed my mind that the Ragnarok might have been intended to be "Laguna's Roc".And perhaps Adel was originally a "Queen Jayne" that became a sorceress after defeating a sorceress herself.
>>4016726>>4016730>>4016758You know your FF myth is anon. Who put the space station up there? Was Mirage Tower originally a OE? Is Warmech a construction of that race that made both? Do you know what inspired Xenogears?
Anyways. We were talking about save-points. In the first 3 games you'd save on the world map and use Tents to recover. In FF15, you also camp out at tents. But on special fields, "enchanted havens" that ward off daemons. They were supposedly created by oracles and a certain hunter/sorceress. It makes sense that save-points are used to recover.Some games to this automatically, while others require items. In FF8, during the battle of the gardens, a new save point is deployed on the first floor by a supply team. So Savepoints are somekind of "supply". But it doesn't recover health like the save spheres in FFX. You have to use a 'tent' or 'cottage'. Those can only be used on the world map, or at save-points.
>>4016760In FF8, the Lunar Base was created by Esthar Scientists to study the moon and the lunar cry. Dr. Odine was originally a monster researcher - but since monsters come from the moon, that kind of makes him an astrophysicist as well.In the OG FF1, the Mirage Tower and Fortress were created by the Lufenians. But in Stranger of Paradise, you visit a different crystal tower, and you never even visit the desert continent. The 2 major civilizations of FF1 were the Lufenians and the Onrac. Both were felled by the water and wind fiends. The Dissidia games suggest a history where they were at war with each other, and that their combined technologies were what created Chaos. This pattern is repeated across the series, and can also be seen in Xenogears which had a "zeboim" civilization. The Zeboim were a stage of humanity with genetic defects. They hadn't evolved the "Ether" channeling genes to perform magic, they were short lived and infertile. Fei's past life in that era was a researcher named Kim. He created a "nanomachine colony" called Esmeralda. That was his plan to replace humanity with a better lifeform. The "humans" of this world were basically created as tools. The were designed to follow a plan, that plan didn't involve making other tools. Coincidently, this "myth" is repeated in FF8 as well as FF16. The myth itself is largely inspired by the Babylonian myths and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Unlike the genesis story of Abrahamic religions, humans in the Babylonian myth were a kind of open-source project the gods used to do a bunch of different things. Some were never meant to reproduce and some were even created to be immortal. And then we got a variant of the flood story. Gilgamesh went looking for the secret of immortality, and traveled to meet with the equivalent to Noah, Utnapishtim. Unlike Noah's ark, Utnapishtim's ark was a giant CUBE. A cube to save humanity. A SAVE CUBE.
>>4016774Of course, there's a "Noah" in FF3. He left his apprentices, Doga and Unei, in charge of Magic and Dreams. And then he left Xande with the strange gift of mortality. There is a lot that I can't explain about that game. FF14 took a lot of liberties while rehashing it though. With Xande creating an Allagan Empire, enslaving voidsent and primals, like Emperor Gestalt in FF6 harnessing Espers as magicite batteries.
>>4016775The crystal tower in FF14 was created by Xande, who tried to summon the Cloud of Darkness in a blood pact. His blood (and his decedents) have control over the tower. FF12 almost had a sequel game called 'Fortress', with a similar concept. Where Ashe, as the sole blood heir to Raithwall, was needed to reactive the magicks of this fortress to defend against an invading flood from a sea king. You were supposed to play as Basch - who had assumed the identity of his twn brother Judge Gabranth, who's real name was...
>>4016779Basch and Gabranth were originally from small nation called 'Landis' - sounds like "Atlantis". The game's ending, according to the rumors, had Ashe marrying Larsa, and Basch replacing the sea king, like some kind of Yu Yevon SIN cycle. Although, my guess is that these sea invaders were something like FF4's Lunarians, and Basch was always half Lunarian. The game was supposed to have a nordic Skyrim aesthetic. Like the dragonborn, chant with me: "FU - SO - YA".If you've heard about FF12 development, you'd know that Vaan was originally meant to be an older character "blue mage" character named Aqua. I'm guessing they were going to reimagine Basch off that.Of course, Clive, in FF16 is also something of a "blue mage". In that he absorbed the abilities of the other dominants. Kuja and Zidane in FF9 were also brothers with half-alien origins and designs to genocide humanity.
>>4016774Zeboim is us “20 minutes in the future” trope anon. They gleened all their tech from the gunwhale of the Eldridge. Irl, Takahashi was jonesing to have a colony drop motif.
>>4016775wtf is wrong with his head?
>>4016838I don't see an issue.
>>4016834That's optimistic. Kim's "nanobot colony" was essentially realians in Xenosaga. But they wouldn't be compatible with the Deus system.Humanity was already on the verge of extinction at that time. The-powers-that-be gambled that a nuclear winter would mutate survivors into more viable breeding stock. Did I mention their shortlife spans?That might have been the designs for FFX's "Seventeen" concept. Infact, the Gazel Ministry might as well be "unsent" Yevon Maesters. There are so many close parallels with FF7, 9, and 10. But then you look at FF8, and there's hardly anything there. Not without taking be leaps, like speculating that maybe monsters on the moon are just nanobot colonies. FF8 had robots, F.H. engineers could be something like the Al Bhed, but there wasn't an anti-ai church. After playing Lost Sphere, I can see Seifer having been actually been "executed" and recycled into a combat android like Ziggy in Xenosaga. There was a line, Cid mentioned that he didn't want SeeD to be "robots". Maybe there was more to read into that. Like the robots that appear in D-Prison were actually former prisoners. Although Watts and Zone supposedly watched their own parents be executed by President Deiling. That was probably the darkest part of the game. It would align with the Cogna invasion arc from WoFF even if it was blended with elements from FF7.
>>4016838'Sperg. Please understand.
It's interesting because outside of the manga adaption there is no concept art for Noah. In English he was a great mage or 'Magus' in Replito (Saronia), the summoner/Evoker village. However in Japanese it's "majin". So beside "magic person" it could also be a demon or jinn. This sometimes includes ogres and giants. Presumably Noah died. He would likely have been buried in the Saronia catacombs where Odin is. I have the thought that Noah and Odin were meant to be the same character. Because, again, it's weird we don't have concept art of Noah but we do have art for Odin. Noah was the one that put leviathan and Bahamut on the floating continent. But there's nothing about Odin.
From here I could talk about Odin as a mage. In Norse mythology, Odin discovered the secret of magical rune craft from the Norns that live below Yggdrasil. In some plays he has a daughter, Brunhilda, that he magically puts to sleep. A root, if not original source, to the classical Sleeping Beauty story.
>>4017483Speaking of Odin. There are no save-points in the Centra Ruins. It was basically a Prototype Cloister of Trails that we'd see in FFX. I would take that to mean that the save points are not ancient Centra-tech. They could instead be an invention of Cid. Cid is usually an inventor, but honestly he's kind of pointless in FF8. In FF9, he is married to Hilda, who knows enough magic to transform him into a bug. "Hilda" is something of a call back to the Hilda of FF2, but it could just as easily come from "Brunhilda"Brynhildr is a Eidolon in FF13. Cid in FF3 was also married, to a "Mrs.Cid", living in Canaan. Another biblical reference.
>>4016320anachronox had the time minders
>>4017587>anachronox had the time mindersPlease, anon, don't (re)mind me. I'm still waiting for the sequel, any day now.
>>4016774>But in Stranger of Paradise, you visit a different crystal tower, and you never even visit the desert continent.Wow, that's gay.I'm glad I don't accept some faggot's retcon to a 30+ year old video game.
Never saw this one commented online: In FFX, when the party is making their way through Zanarkand Dome and the intense pyreflies are causing them to relive the memories of past pilgrimages, they see a memory of Braska, Jecht, and Auron just before they are about to enter the Cloister of Trials. During the memory scene, Braska activates the Save Sphere next to the door and it glows:https://youtu.be/1TZaVqiz0lE?t=682The memory of the pyrefly activating the sphere made the sphere in present time light up as if someone present were interacting with it.
>>4017667Jack's game is kino, you shut your mouth.
>>4017667Yeah it's supposed to be the Crystal Tower from FF3. But it's honestly pretty dim, and instead of being in the middle of the desert, its like where Elfheim is supposed to be, I think?The elves, the dwarfs, the mermaids were all removed from the world by the Lufenians, supposedly for "stability" in their new world order. The world, was also duplicated/copied in the Dissidia games. Ruled by Chaos and Cosmos, and then later Spiritus and Materia. Spiritus and Materia kind of have the same dynamic as Odin and Alexander in FF11 Online. Where their rivalry and perpetual conflict is vital to the health of the planet. In FF11, it creates an "Astral Wind", which I always imagined like a magnetic field that keeps the void/cloud of darkness at bay.In the case of Spiritus and Materia, the energy their conflict creates feed Shinryu/Planesgorgers. It's a bit strange and abstract, like what do you call them...a "Loosh" farm, coined by Robert Monroe in "Far Journeys" Except Dissidia doesn't name the energy.In FF Mobius, the world is bound by this law and prophecy into order to accumulate "Hope" Which they then (allegedly) fire off into the multiverse to "share" their bounty. On a meta level, it was probably that any money FFMobius made was used to develop other games. Although the only "real" games we got after it was canceled, 1/3rd of the FF7 remake, SoP, and FF16. But I suppose the FF11 and FF14 servers are still running.
>>4018840The manga/anime Log Horizon had the same concept. Although the emotional energy they harvest is stolen through memory or "data". I suppose that's the case of FFDissidia. Warriors get summoned to play out a kind of Hunger Games tournament. And they just get memory wiped, to start the cycle over again. The world of Type-0 is also in a cycle, or spiral, with history getting reset in a semi-repeating pattern of events. It is possible FF8 had a dropped plot similar to this. Then, of course, Xenosaga's big deal was the "Eternal Recurrence" With history repeating itself under the guidance of Wilhelm A.K.A. Cardinal "Heinlein" Interesting name choice: "Hein". The sorceresses were "Descendant of Hyne"
>>4018851Wilhelm had a few tools to help him keep history repeating itself. There was the "Compass of Order" which looks like a save-point, if you ask me. If you told me the save points in FF8 were a floating rose compass, I'd believe you.
I tried to make a case that Sorceresses being "Descendants of Hyne" were modeled after Heinlein's female characters. But honestly, the model of superhuman women is so ubiquitous in media I don't think anyone would credit him for anything.However his main characters reinventing themselves via a time loop paradox is pretty evident in FF8. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of his novels, "A door to summer" features cryogenic sleep, and a cat named Pete.
>>4027900I love how any thread on Final Fantasy can spawn FF schizoid.
>>4027900Who is Zeno Gias?
>>4018851>Interesting name choice: "Hein".>The sorceresses were "Descendant of Hyne"Interesting indeed...
>>4020779>were modeled after Heinlein's female characters. But honestly, the model of superhuman women is so ubiquitous in media I don't think anyone would credit him for anything.Specialization is for insects.
>>4016493I personally think that was meant to be an abstract floppy disk.
>>4033347Maybe that's what Sorceresses are.
>>4033953The Dune series also had "witch" like characters that would be possessed by other consciousnesses.But rather than someone from the future, it's a genetic memory thing.
>>4033866>floppy diskThe only thing that gets harder as it gets smaller, and softer as it gets bigger
>>4033953Sorceresses who refuse to relinquish their magic become corrupted. This is shown in Edea's claws and forehead veins, Adel's bodily transformation, and Ultimecia's hands and feet. The Sorceresses that you have pictured are all located in Ultimecia's Castle. They have the option to succeed their magic (to Ultimecia, who's forced every sorceress spiritual bloodline to converge on her for Time Compression) or mutate. If anything, these bitches are fuckign heroes and became abominations to save space and time.Quit feeding the fucking schizo, you worthless faggots. You can find explanation and meaning for everything INSIDE THE GAME. Quit outsourcing your thinking to 'but the writers might have read all this golden age American sci-fi'. No. Shut the fuck up and actually play the game, think about the universe and stakes, think about it like a story and not a grab back of 'remember this?!'
>>4034315>think about the universe>think about it like a story Pick one. A story isn't real. There's a creative process to it's construction. If full of things like ironies and allusions. Like "Cid Kramer" Headmaster to a school of witch hunters. IRL, Heinrich Kramer was a famous inquisitor and author of the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) manual.If FF8 had an in-universe religion, it would have likely had a Pope. Like Pope Innocent VIII. Because every FF game after VII would repeat the title number within the story. Speaking of Germans. Rinoa's father, Fury Caraway, required a palette swap for localization, because he looked like a Nazi. Back in 1998, you could make short hand characterizations (stereotypes) without the character needing to say or do much of anything.
>>4034590What if Adel was supposed to be Adolf?
>>4016319Could be nothing. But the save point is 2 concentric circles. The only place with something similar to that is the Sorceress Memorial. In the Japanese version, it goes by another name. Something like the Esthar's Sealing Research Facility. It was always an odd point that Adel would have something like this around. Like a country of werewolves manufacturing silver bullets.But I don't think it was meant to seal sorceresses, but to store magic in boxes or capsules. And, back in 1998, saving data was all about compression rather than transcription.
>>4034590'A story isn't real'.You worthless free associating nigger, you are the epitome of everything wrong with this site. Thank GOD none of your words are preserved and no one actually gives a FUCK about what you have to say. All you do is limit or just prevent the discussion of the titles, killing discourse and any chance of genuine engagement. You deserve to die and if I had a time machine, I'd stomp your mother to death in her 3rd trimester.
>>4034604"Memory" is just "Time Compression"As you know, Disc 4 is the Time Compressed world, or rather, the world in the process of Time Compression. FF9's final dungeon was also "Memoria" or "The place of memory" in Japanese. The collective memory of Planet Gaia, that kind of came out of nowhere, which then lead to the Crystal World. Which was the "source of memory".I didn't really understand what it was getting at, at first. It's a world of memory - ok. Everything living has the capacity to remember. There was a point where we saw the planet being born. But how is that possible? Who - or what - was alive to witness the birth of a planet? That's the "origin" After playing FF16, we can look back at FF9 like "Oh. The planet's crystals are "Mothercrystals". The Mothercrystals were Ultimas - the first primordial life on the planet. Necron is an Ultima.
