I'm actually going to talk more about FF13 and FF16.But it starts with FF8. What they all have in common is a creation myth that humans were created as tools. They were tools that created other tools. Naturally you think man made machines. But if you stand back, it's perhaps machine made men.
In FF8's creation myth with Hyne, he creates man to remove a mountain while he slept. The humans had children. When Hyne woke up, he tried to get ride of the children, but the humans fought back. It seemingly has nothing to do with overall plot of FF8. Except for the curiosity of Seifer's dialogue about "dreams" in the Dollet Mission Demo, which were described as "goals" In FF13, the Fal'cie are "machines surrounding crystal". They make tools out of humans to complete tasks that are beyond their purpose. Their task, like a "goal", is called a "Focus", which comes to them as a dream vision.
>>4120247The gods that created the Fal'cie also went to "sleep". Or retreated into "the realm of the gods". That might be thought of as a dream world. The Fal'cie want the Gods to return. To stop "dreaming", in a sense. Which was kind of the setup with the Fayth in FFX.
>>4120241never stop
>>4120250There is a lot that could be said about how FF15 leans into this. But I'll FF15 had a complicated development, so I'll shelf those thoughts for now.
Then in FF16, we are told by Ultima that humans were also created as tools (and other life forms). And they too "slept" inside the mother crystals while humans evolved. Humans then developed "consciousness" to think and set goals for themselves. Which makes you wonder what the Ancients without "consciousness" were like.
Ultima calls this consciousness "sin". In the sense that tools aren't supposed to make plans and act for themselves. So there was a kind of retribution
So if we go back to FF8, I think this Hyne mythos was incomplete and was later reimagined in later games. And it's not all originating from FF8, I think it's rooted in its sister SaGa series.In FFX-2.5 novella, it is revealed that the Al Bhed were originally created as a magicless artificial slave race. In RPG terms, let's say they had high intelligence stats, but no MP. Coincidently, in FF8, there is no "MP". In the lore of Unlimited Saga, the human player race aren't the original humans. The original humans (created by god "The creator") were silver haired "Arcanians". They in turn did all these life experiments, creating beastmen, espers, the undead, and just the plain humans we think of as human. And really, these subraces are mutable. A human can become a vampire. Or a beastman. Or an Esper. Even a "robot". In SaGa 3, it's implied that the Airship CPUs were originally human brains.
>>4120489In FF13, when a L'cie completes their focus they are transformed into a crystal, in a "crystal stasis". In the novella, that person's neural patterns are also crystalized, and can be read digitized into a VR environment. So at the end of FF13, while the party was fighting the final boss, the reason Cocoon hadn't fell yet was because a Digital copy of Cid was assuming control of Eden's systems
>>4120493Cid being a robot, or a human that turned himself into a robot, has happened more than once in the series. The catch with being a robot is that they don't "sleep" or "dream"
>>4120497Cid is usually an inventor. Associated with machines or airships. In FF8 his role as head master is not as pivotal as the other Cid incarnations across the series.
>>4120510But perhaps he was meant to be...more?
>>4120510>>4120512This scene in Japanese is worded differently. Almost the complete opposite of what he's saying in English. In the English version, Cid is interrupted by this staff member with other business. In the Japanese version, he's starting to tell them he doesn't want them to follow orders, but the staff member shows up and he can't explain himself in front of them so he just says "...for various reasons."Then, in the head office, when he is congratulating everyone for becoming SeeDs he's about to tell them "The other side of being SeeD is..." and he's cutoff again by a staff member. So in that Japanese version, there was a mystery surrounding Cid and the true purpose of SeeD. This doesn't come up in the English version until the D-Prison torture chamber scene on Disc 2. When Squall finally returns to the Garden. He meets the Garden Master NORG, while Cid goes to the infirmary. But why does he go to the infirmary? There's optional dialogue flags here if Rinoa is in the party and got a tour of the garden. You'll talked to Dr. Kadowaki outside of the library who was looking for Cid. Why was she looking for Cid? "He's working too hard"Actually she says he is "overworked" - a serious condition in Japan, implying that he isn't sleeping. Coincidently, inside the library is Ellone...
>Can we talk about the mail please? >I've been dying to talk about the mail with you all day.
"If only I could go back 10 years and warn myself not to trust NORG..."Yeah. That, and sleep at the same time...if only he knew someone with that power...Normally, I say Disc 3 is where the story really falls apart. But the plot threads were starting to snap at this point in the story too. The "Laguna Dreams" never come up. It was obvious at this point that SeeD's mission was to defeat the Sorceress. Ok. But then who shows up? Edea's SeeDs, to take Ellone away. Squall is like (Ellone from the dreams?)And Cid is like. "Yes. You're right. Squall. You know Ellone. Go get her."And Squall doesn't question any of this.
>So I go down to Carol in HR. >I'm knocking on her door, "Carol! Carol!" >But there's not a single desk in that office.There is no Eiko Carol in Balamb Garden.
Some oddities that exist in both Eng and JP versions. Cid went to NORG to help him "construct" Garden. We know that Balamb and Galbadia Gardens were repurposed Centra Shelters. So, they didn't construct them so much as give them a paint job and stock them. But we don't know anything about Trabia Garden. Given that the Shumi Village is near Trabia, and Trabia was the first the first to be hit by missiles. We could entertain the possibility that Trabia Garden was not a Centra shelter, and was actually "constructed" by Cid. Even Selphie claims that Balamb Garden is much bigger than Trabia. But even I have trouble swallowing that, because it shares that ring structure that the other Gardens have. Also, Trabia was mentioned in the Demo Disc version as well. The watercrafts evidently belonged to Trabia, and they were working with Balamb as joint mission. Potentially, Selphie was never a "transfer student". She would have gone back to Trabia and joined later, with Quistis assuming her place in the party. Actually, it would make a lot of sense if the entire graduation ceremony and dance had happened at Trabia. Presumably the dance room was in the "Quad", but we never visit it outside of the cutscene. And there's the whole thing with the Forest Owl's base. Rinoa was there the night before. Their base is a train. Yet they make us take a different train to get to her.
>>4120969That's assuming Rinoa was really "there" or not.
>>4120976That's the thing with Noctis and Stella in Versus 13, if you can believe the leaks. Stella was some kind of dream girl that only Noctis could see. Because Noctis had an addiction to painkillers that make you dream while awake. Rather than being a "prince" in Insomnia, he was part of this Mafia family that worshiped this Goddess of Death, Etro. They sorta recreated this scene in Kingsglaive between Lunafreya and Nyx, during a peace treaty. And then the crystal gets stolen. It would make a lot more sense in FF8, if the dance was also a "peace treaty". Meaning Rinoa was there with her father, General Caraway.
>>4120252I lost track of all his schizo theories
Do Final Fantasy Resonance
>>4121591Ho-hum. It's based off of Brave Exvius "Season 1" or "Arc 1" (whatever that means).Similarities to FF8 include the summon Siren. Trains, one dungeon/stage was called "Timber Tracks". Of course Squall is an obtainable "Vision". So the game imagines a "Farplane" as a rift between worlds. In that rift the thoughts and memories of heroes from other worlds crystalize into "visions". Equipping visions is essentially like junctioning G.F.s in FF8, Or magicite from FF6, that you can learn abilities through "Mastery Points". If you haven't played the demo, Resonance opens with a war between Mages and Machines. The game has "Espers" that Fina can summon. The demo showed Bahamut in the prologue. Siren is obtainable in the demo. Shiva, Ifrit, and Ramuh are known from trailers. Idk why they call them "Espers". They're more like Eidolons or Fayth/Aeons that are sealed in statues. Based on prologue, the crystals are likely "sealed" witches too. Which is weird to say, because some of the visions crystals are also original job class characters. The apparent baddies are these armored guys shattering the crystals. "The Sworn Six". Perhaps they're like Knights of the Round from FF7, The Judges from FF12/Ivalice, The Kings of Lucis FF15. Or even the Ex-Nine Knights in World of Final Fantasy. I HOPE Resonance rewrites some plot twists into an alternate continuity.
>>4122455The fan wiki is like "Hey guys, we're treating the TRUE identity of the Dark Knight as a spoiler."Plz. So we could probably include FF8's star wars references to the list.
I'm hoping what "based on Arc 1" means, is that the rest of the game goes off in a different direction. But to give Final Fantasy some credit, I think it was doing some stuff BEFORE Star Wars did it.
I'll use that to segue into character archetypes. Because the human condition only touches on a limited number of experiences. Those experiences will shape people into recognizable forms. In storytelling, characters that are used in a particular way fall into "archetypes". There are "archetypes" within human psychology too, originally Jung called them "Dominants of the collective unconscious". I don't think the FF series started to dig into the idea of consciousness and the mind until FF7. And that's what makes FF8 stand out, because there was this plot device about transferring consciousness, and G.F. occupying the mind causing memory loss. But ultimately it drops all that for "Time Compression".There's also an incredibly lack of diversity in the party members. They're all orphans, they're all roughly the same age, they're all military/mercenaries. They were being groomed, trained, conditioned, as "fated" children. The final boss battle is strange because Ultimecia draws "The strongest G.F." from Squall's mind. There's a lot of ways to interpret that. Obviously her main objective was time compression. But how do we know that Griever wasn't also a pet project of hers? That's what Kuja was doing in FF9. He wasn't just collecting the power of Eidolons, he was shaping the legends that manifested them. The difference is that Kuja was semi-immortal and could eventually reap what he could sow; while Ultimecia was just in a the future-present manipulating the past.
In Final Fantasy Type-0, they were essentially in a time spiral, repeating history, the same wars, with slight variations, hoping for a special soul to emerge called the Agato. Under the direction of Arch Sorceress Arecia.
>>4122621I remember reading, before they had locked Rinoa in as Squall's romantic interest, that there would have been multiple sorceress candidates. So besides, Quistis and Selphie, there was also a "secretary" character. My hunch is that this eventually became Dr. Kadowaki. She doesn't look like much. But not only is she the first person to speak in the game, she's got to have way more dialogue than most other NPCs.
>>4122636When Squall becomes commander, it's Dr. Kadowaki giving him guidance, not Cid. It's a wonder they don't call her "Mother".
>>4122644>"Heroes" resonate across worlds
Kojima posted something near a year ago, that to understand the FF7 remake trilogy you need to read into Jung's collective unconscious and the Buddhist yogacara.With the new trailer for Revelations, a few people think the numbers on the Sephiroth Clones are related to the 82 dharmas of Phenomenal Reality.I don't know if I'd go that far. But Sephiroth in Rebirth was essentially doing his own kind of "Time Compression", by merging timelines and realities. The yogacara concepts use agriculture metaphors like imagining the 8th Consciousness as being "seeds in a storehouse" - I think you could just call it a cache of sorts. Or like FF Resonance's Farplane, where thoughts are stored as vision crystals. Or FF9's Memoria. Or FF13's unseen realm, where the crystal "Fragments" are crystalized space-time realities. It's mentioned in FF13-2 that ancients learned to summon "Fragments" with the meteor spell. These essentially reshape their reality and timeline.In Kingdom Hearts, THE Kingdom Hearts is a union of everyone's heart. And a memory of this unified world of light, exists within people's hearts. I suspect FF8 was attempting to do something similar with "time compression". Although I have other suspicions it wasn't meant to touch "time" at all.
>>4124392Go on
>>4124542Dissidia NT is also a world between worlds, shaped by "memories" of the various FF games. If you ever watched Adventure Time: Fiona and Cake, the multiverse is connected by a dimensional tree, and below it or encompassing it, is the "undergrowth". I think it's safe to call that the 8th Consciousness as well. That's where the Karmic Worm lives. The equivalent to that is The rift dragon Shinryu. But again, I wouldn't go so far as to say The Rift is a plain of consciousness. A number of games in the series touch this interdimensional rift. The world of Dissidia is a copy of the planet of FF1, they call it World B. But aside from the the various fighting stages from other worlds, the cast seem to suggest it's mostly a wasteland. And "maybe" it'll grow flowers one day. Stranger of Paradise is also a kind of copy of FF1. Since it's also an amalgamation of other worlds, I'm not sure if it was meant to "World B" as well. FF8, like FF1, has this time loop, and for the ending FMV Squall is seen wandering this wasteland too. In fact the area outside of Ultimecia's Castle is called "Wastelands" but Disc 4 has practically no dialogue outside the final battle, so there's no commentary on what this Different Future is. And that's the weird part with Final Fantasy, you can have a memory of a future that never was. Or perhaps was, then, never more.
>>4125063In FF7 Rebirth, Aerith is like "There's no such thing as forever." And Sephiroth says something like, "...but there will be."From the very start of Remake, Cloud was seeing Sephiroth and Whispers, and visions of things that haven't happened yet. And there were deviations from the original game. The question is, is fate real, does the future exist somewhere. In Kingdom Hearts, there are "data" worlds, created with knowledge of future worlds that don't exist yet. At what point does it become real. And can destiny be erased?In FF13-2, the oracles drives are the same way. They're powered by these paradox fragments, once a future is "observed" via an oracle drive, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it's like, who's consciousness is "observing" it anyways?
In Stephen King's The Langoliers, a plane flies through a time rift leaving everyone who was asleep in this walk of echoes sort of shadow dimension. You could say they were some minutes in the past. But, conceptually, here the past doesn't exist infinitely. Reality is unraveling.They deduce that only people that were unconscious survived through the rift. Being conscious created some kind of paradox that disintegrated everyone awake. Everything has this dull soulless quality to it, flames don't give off much heat, fuel won't burn unless it stays near them, like their life force imbues everything. And beyond them, space-time is being devoured by something. Like "the nothing" from The Neverending Story. But it manifests as this man's childhood boogieman monster that his father made up. Furry balls of teeth that eat lazy people who drag their feet. The Niblets in Lightning Returns must be based off of Langoliers.
Maybe Griever was a Langolier, and Junctioning with it is what gives Ultimecia the capacity to absorb time in the first place.
