A Final Fantasy Retrospective: The PS1 Era — The Peak of Final Fantasy

last time on our final fantasy retrospective we looked at the SNES Trilogy four five and six and saw the series transition from one of very good classic jrpgs into one of the Premier franchises in all of video games today we plunge into the PlayStation Trilogy final fantasies 7 8 and 9 and we'll see the series enter its high ERA with these three games starting with one of the best and most iconic games of the 1990s [Music] Final Fantasy 7 is the Nexus that the final fantasy series flows into and then flows out of like Resident Evil 4 its staggering popularity and influence have made it more famous than the entire series its famous images and characters becoming a sticy for the series itself and like Resident Evil 4 the discourse 7 often treats it as an entity separate from the rest of the games but I think it's important to play seven in conversation with the other games its Legacy is largely the product of being at the right place at the right time for video game technology and marketability final fantasies 3 5 and six are all about recontextualizing the physical world two four and six feature regret and Redemption as a recurring theme seven fuses both of the these together while adding new layers of nuance and ambiguity to the latter most of the characters in seven have stories built around their pasts in previous games there'd be a few characters who explicitly struggled with their past Leon cesil terara celis but seven centralizes this conflict between past and present by making it the engine for most of the playable characters internal struggles and by making it the focus of the narrative itself the hardcore focus on a main topic is what allows the game to explore a much more complicated relationship between past and present and past and identity than the previous games in final fantasies 2 4 and six the relationship between a character's past and their present self was often linear and simple Leon and cile committed evil acts they regret those evil acts and grow towards Redemption even if there are missteps along the way as we talked about earlier when looking at those games those characters are great but they don't experience the same ambiguity that seven observes consider the relationship between hero and villain and how the villain in seven is used compared to past antagonists unlike KFA who's an emergent threat on the world searo is primarily a phantom a spectre that haunts Cloud our big spiky-haired giant sword protagonist who has become the archetypical Final Fantasy hero despite being the only one in that archetype obviously sephar does pose a threat to the world but very little time is dedicated to his world ending power because such power isn't exactly unique seven has many forces capable of of destroying the world more than the extermination of all life on Earth sephar Roth's role as antagonist is to plunge Cloud into the despair of memory cloud is introduced to the player as a badass mercenary whose power extends far beyond the ragtag eot terror group Avalanche that hires him because of that introduction for most of the game The Player's relationship to cloud is that he's a badass super soldier and searo is even more badass but as the game unravels Cloud himself emotionally unravels and we discover that none of his memories of being a super soldier are true he was by and large a nobody a grunt who couldn't cut it as a Shinra Soldier and it's fascinating to see how the other characters treat his nobody status sephar Roth taunts him showing cloud contextless reconstructions of his memories using the confusion to make Cloud vulnerable to make him lose his sense of self and purpose searo is telling Cloud the truth in these flashbacks but it's often an exclusionary truth fragmented by missing details and seo's desire to break Cloud Tifa Cloud's childhood friend also lies to him but not with maliciousness instead of breaking him she wants to protect him unlike sephar Roth she feeds into Cloud's false memories she knows he wasn't a powerful Soldier and that he was not the hero he remembers himself as Tifa sees feeding Cloud's delusions is Grace if she lets him have his memories she lets him have himself which asks an important question about our Humanity are we ourselves because of our memories or because because of the truth like everyone I've sometimes asked myself if my life is false what if I'm actually a demented old man living in a scattershot collection of Alzheimer's driven memories would I want the truth I don't know but I don't think so I'm me because of my memories not because of some objective observable truth of the world Tifa by sacrificing her memories to allow Cloud to be whole is performing an act of selflessness that for me is the most gut-wrenching passage in the game even more so than the ays plot line that dominates most people's memories of Final Fantasy 7 there is a truth in Final Fantasy 7 the game does have a definable plot that can be mapped out but mapping out the plot reveals little about the game's concerns cloud selfworth is understanding of himself is driven by false memories and questions the value of objectivity as a measure of humanity everyone with no exception has warped memories and these warped memories shape every person in their own way as an example for myself and this isn't part of the script but for some reason every time I talk about and think about and play the original Final Fantasy 7 I have visions of standing in a customer service line at Office Depot trying to exchange a printer and the images of the floor and the scuff marks on it and the smell of paper and ink and General corporate malays and office death just comes into my brain and I don't know why that Office Depot isn't there anymore and the customer service line was next to the the pen aisle so there would be fountain pens and that you could go and scratch on paper to test out and I just remember the smell of that ink I I don't know why I associate it with with specifically in Final Fantasy 7 when you're standing in the Airship and also when sephar Roth starts flying around I don't know why anyways memory being severed from truth is an important distinction to make because it also calls them to question the nature of lying as children we are taught that lying is bad but as we grow we see the edges of this axiomatic truth and even experience times when telling the truth to the best of our fallible memories ability is the wrong thing to do to a small extent searo is more truthful to Cloud than Tia is Cloud's observable past down to his origin and the nature of his being is revealed more to him by sephar than Tifa searo is still a liar and a gaslighter and a [ __ ] [ __ ] but he does set the player and Cloud closer to the path of Truth than Tia does for some logic fail critics Tifa refusing to interject at calm when cloud is recounting his memories of sephar Roth is seen as a major mistake but it's important to view that as a choice made by Tifa at once she doesn't want to relive an event that that nearly killed her as well as Cloud but she also cares for cloud and knows what the truth will do to him and Tia's right to do this we see late in the game that cloud is so destroyed by the truth so overwhelmed by his new more accurate memories that he loses himself to Madness searo by contrast uses the truth or at least fragments of the truth to destroy Cloud's sense of self and take away his identity I know technically it's because of like Mao and life poisoning but you know metaphorical readings of events and stories is just more interesting than just summarizing the wiki so I'm I'm giving you the metaphorical reading we see this twice in the game with two of the most powerful examples of diagetic Storytelling in the whole Final Fantasy series Once during a midgame McGuffin hunt cloud is manipulated by sephar ro to give up the McGuffin and the player during this scene takes control of the ghost of young Cloud trying desperately to stop him from giving up the McGuffin later this gets Rift on when the player has to direct Cloud to cut down Aris only for cloud to override the player inputs it's a moment of existential Triumph for cloud but sephar Roth comes down and in the most famous cut scene from 9s gaming kills AIS it's an unbearable taunt a moment of complete domination where sephar Ro destroys both Cloud's internal and external agency that the player has to execute two pointless actions heightens the scenes and makes sephar Roth's domination over clouds Humanity more terrifying the bending of reality and memory and the deprioritization of Truth as an overriding concept for self and Humanity gives seven a strong modernist flavor Final Fantasy 8 will even integrate some modernism into the Aesthetics of the game itself consider the nature of Truth in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying truths in that novel are numerous defined by the memories and the perspectives warped by the warped memories of its many characters these are characters that Define themselves intentionally and unintentionally by their memories and their understanding of their memories Final Fantasy 7 doesn't have the same linguistic complexity at no point does sephar Roth brood that my mother is a fish but the character's different interpretations of the world and consequently our responses to the game are shaped more by perspective than truth Beyond Cloud the question of memory and self affects the other characters particularly Barrett Barrett for me is Final Fantasy 7 his early game rants about the theory and practice of Revolution give way to a personal tale of intense pain where we see the origins of his revolutionary action as a response to the violence inflicted by Shinra against his hometown I've seen some people argue that this makes Barrett seem like a more vindictive character but I think it makes him more powerful as he's able to funnel the pain of his memories into targeted action unlike his mirror dine dine Barrett's best friend takes out his rage randomly and wanly and their opposite directions are beautifully symbolized through the simple decision to have their augmented machine gun hands on opposite arms in Barrett we see The Return of the Divide between body and spirit that we've seen before in four and six Barrett's actions against Shinra carry a ton of collateral damage but it's important to recognize that he unlike Dy contends with the reality of Revolution and allows his memory to drive him to spiritual enlightment instead of physical corruption if Dy is the spiritual opposite of Barrett then Rufus is his physical counterpart many players are critical of Barrett because his actions directly lead to so Much Death while Rufus the president of Shinra is often left off the hook because Rufus is evil and because Shiner is destroying the world and because we are never shown any reason to care for Rufus it's naturalized the evil man is evil but the good man the man we are in the shoes of who is the Vanguard against the slow decay of the natural world commits acts of violence that cause suffering the in congruity is hard to overcome how can good come with suffering evil has cart blanch to hurt as many people as it once but evil is often afforded this even forgiven this because suffering is seen as the nature of evil and evil as a presence is comforting in a rotten sort of way Rufus is there and he reminds us that we are not him we are better than him but what of Barrett are we better than Barrett because we would let Shinra destroy the world and Swoon into Mass death and Extinction with the knowledge that we are morally Superior to Shinra Barrett asks us to confront the central challenge of goodness and Justice what do we do when goodness and Justice need violence to win that his actions take a toll on him that he has to reconstruct and reconfigure his past in order to cope with his violence is why Barrett is such a strong character his speeches and his conversations with Dy are soliloquies as much as they are dialogues it's made even better by the Shinra Executives headed by Rufus and flowing down through heiger scarlet and Hojo all being complete cartoon characters the depth of Barrett's internal contradiction and discourse is in equal proportions to how buffoonish the Shinra executives are they are evil and part of that evil comes from their inability to reflect and hold an inner monologue Hojo for example is a Madman who injects mutated cells into people and blasts them with radi cre ation and tortures his subjects for no reason whatsoever yet he somehow has the greatest depth of character of the Shinra goons because he rises up multiple bikini beach baddies at Costa Del Soul a surprising amount of respect for a character closely tied to Scarlet who receives Supreme disrespect by the game for having her epic scene be a slap fight with Tifa on top of a giant phallic symbol erected by Rufus to fight Ultimate Weapon I get that this series horn dogs for evil girl boss bureaucrats but come on let them suplex each other or something at least Jill and 13 will get it a little bit better there will always be a little part of me that thinks there's a great version of seven that has Barrett and Rufus as the main protagonist and antagonist if cloud and separo are the brain of seven then Barrett and Rufus are the heart especially because the game's iconic physical space the dark city of midgar is defined by Barrett and Rufus the first five odd hours of Final Fantasy 7 are spent in the city of midgard a sprawling Pizza City that isolates and entraps the player before seven there were very few cities that occupied more than a single screen and even fewer still that have vibrant sociopolitical systems that are both understood and experienced the closest precursors to midgar in the series are cerron in three and Zozo in six and compared to midgar it's remarkable how archaic they look in comparison how artificial and gamified it is midgar is so tightly fact that the small sliver of the game was remade into its own 40h hour game with Final Fantasy 7 remake while remake is maximalist as hell it shows how full the banquet is in midgar midgar as a setting is enabled by the series moving from the Super Nintendo to the dis based PlayStation and the intimate detailing of the poverty-stricken slums the villainy of wall Market the Slick Interiors of Shinra headquarters and the rotting industrialization of the scaffolds and plate that hold up the city squeeze every ouns of power that could be harvested from the PlayStation in 1997 many complaints have been made that seven declines in quality after midgar the pacing gets worse the focus is lost and while I didn't experience these problems I see where they come from midgar is so tightly wound so insistent on its pacing and its packed set design that it drives the player relentlessly once the player gets out of midgard the game opens up both figuratively and literally the wide open Skies and Fields of the outside world are so antithetical to midgar that the player can for the first time get truly lost both directionally and in the sauce There are a small handful of optional minor activities in midgar but on the outside world there are dozens of hours of side quests in mini games the player can spend just as long if not longer breeding chocobos and defending Mount Condor and playing golden sauc or mini games than the player ever spins in midgar if skipped the game keeps its midgar and pace up but if the player chooses to pursue everything on the menu then the Garian tendrils of seven spread out in every direction even so the shadow of midgar looms large because of how intentional and claustrophobic the space of midgar is the playable characters that join in midgar Cloud Barrett Tifa and AIS are the characters that dominate the game each character has their fans but all of the post midgar characters catchy Sid and the optional yui and Vincent don't leave the same impact not only are the the midgar characters with the player longer the player has to get familiar with the world that these characters lived in Costa Del Soul rocket town and the golden saucer are all interesting areas with fascinating design but they come and go as points on the map leading to sephar Roth the player is a passer by in these towns they can indulge in all they have if they want but midgar forces the player to live there the last character I want to talk about in detail is the only one I haven't mentioned at all red 13 he is the one character in the series I renamed and red 13's circumstances make him a conundrum for customizable names I gassed up customizable names as a feature when looking at Final Fantasy 2 as one that I don't take enough advantage of and still don't in the present tense of me writing this section I haven't customized names in Chrono Trigger and Chrono cross which I'm playing for a video that may come out before or after this one I don't know but the one character I did change the name of was red 13 I named him scooter when bared and gang are trashing Shinra headquarters they discover red 13 a doglike creature being prodded and tested and pumped with moo and electrodes by Hojo red 13 is his lab name and when he joins he tells the player that Hojo has named me red 13 a name with no meaning whatsoever to me call me whatever you wish I felt bad for red 13 tortured and abused for God knows how long and I thought he was a badass jumping on Hojo and ripping his neck out that went hard so I re named red 13 he deserved a real name not a serial number but at the same time naming red 13 is a choice given to Cloud that's co-opted by the player Cloud's facade of cool calculation and disengagement at this point in the story would lead him I believe to keep the label red 13 on the other hand no name selected for red 13 fits with his story like Barrett cloud and Tifa red 13 story revolves around his past and his relationship to it his relationship to his hometown of coso Canyon to his father Seto to the wise sage bugenhagen and to his own name when the player arrives at Cosmo Canyon red 13 contends with the memory of his father he considers setto a coward thinking that he ran from his duty my Brave mother fought and died here red 13 says but my cowardly father left her this is a false memory that defines red 13 and seeing a different version of this past the one where his father didn't run changes him the Petrified husk of stto is his monument and his Mausoleum a remnant of the past forever carved into the present and it redefines red 13's relationship with himself helping him Embrace a different version of himself that new self is called nanaki his name by birth many returning players name red 13 nanaki because even though it's a coincidence of cosmically improbable proportions that cloud would unprompted and unknowingly call Red 13 naniki the ability to name red 13 identifies the player with that character and to many players red red 13 will only ever be nanaki the problem is that red 13's story is defined by this him learning and then accepting his true name and his Heritage is the deuma of his story and that seven doesn't mechanically reflect this change in any way as a mised opportunity at reflecting his story giving the player the opportunity to rename red 13 after he sees stto would enrich his story even further but as it is now red 13's narrative feels ever so slightly undercooked by the systems of the game Final Fantasy 8 will get rid of the option to rename most of the playable cast which is fair I would have renamed Squall selfie and zel as fart ass and poop if given the chance to see the era of customizable names begin to close is not something I expected to care about or write about and certainly not as much as I have in this video speaking of changing names some people are likely mad that I keep referring to AIS as AIS and not aith her name is spelled wrong in the English version because of either a mistranslation or a glitch or something other reason I I haven't checked I have a suspicion that whatever answer I find will somehow be misinformation and the last thing I want to do is hide meaningless misinformation in a six-hour final fantasy video and besides I'm going to call AIS AIS because I go by the text of the game it's more pure that way it's why I still refer to tsio Mizuno and tomoyuki Taki as the executive produces if I had more space to talk about seven I'd like to talk a lot more about AIS it feels wrong to not dedicate more time to her but also so many people have said so much that there is a wealth of discussion about her to devour but you know we must move on maybe my favorite detail about her and the way her spirit reverberates throughout the game is on the menu where her party slot is left undisturbed and empty for the second half of the game that's really awesome well awesome and like an attention to detail kind of way because I'm a sick freak I love stories about broken characters suffering the horrors of past and present simultaneously between Cloud Barrett Tia sephar Roth and the other characters I didn't focus on found Final Fantasy 7 is all about memories and how they shape us and this theme will only become more personal as PS1 Final Fantasy Marches On [Applause] [Music] [Music] as much as I was loving the series up to this point my curiosity gazed outward towards the games Beyond seven when you look at the reception of the series with fans every game from 8 onwards is steeped in constant critical turmoil each individual entry Garners more defis of discussion than all of one two three and five get combined the idea that Final Fantasy gets bad after seven is treated as some sort of artistically objective observation a universal truth so powerful that series motifs go from the fun parts of Final Fantasy to shark jumping moments for example futuristic technology and space are Staples in Final Fantasy from the beginning at the end of the first game you travel to a Go's Lapita inspired future civilization in the sky in four you fly a whale to the Moon in five you teleport to an alien planet and in seven Sid's major character Arc is reenacting the plot of Armageddon one year before Armageddon released you attempt to blow up a meteor in space to stop it from destroying Earth yet the games to follow including 8 are treated as if they took the left turn into Crazy Town this isn't because of Any inherent truth about Final Fantasy 8 but a product of it coming after s the cultural impact of seven was so massive that seven has become Shakespeare's Julius Caesar a spectre that haunts the series through sequels prequels remakes movies and stubborn cultural iconography that cast a deep Shadow over every Mainline entry like Brutus the more the series tries to kill Caesar the more like Caesar it becomes I was eager to see the latter half of the series because a lot of its online reception has been based on the spoony Ones reviews of 8 10 and 13 and like a lot of long form Point BYO internet criticism torn between comedy and genuine critique I had the suspicion that spoon's reviews were shallow readings of the games and their lasting impact the product of being popular during the formative years of YouTube I just had to see for myself I write this introduction to eight having been initiated into the fires of Final Fantasy discourse back in the dark days of YouTube long before I'd been able to play many of the games and as I became aware of during this journey the reception of the postf Final Fantasy 7 games has changed over the last decade as the series elongates through time the goalpost change the dividing lines move the haters filter out and fans and critics are left to build new retrospective consensus 9 10 and 14 have emerged as consistent fan favorites but Eight's reputation Still Remains fraught all these years later I say all this to explain both why I looked forward to eight as it loomed Over the Horizon and that I understand why some people don't enjoy this game understand being the key word because I'm about to spend most of this section lapping sick praise onto this game as for me it's one of the Great accomplishments in the series and one of its storytelling Peaks just to cover the most basic of bases I will start with the gameplay of eight because it's the hiccup that the rest of my analysis must contend with all of this is for not when a smart guy says yeah but the game sucks as if the purpose of criticism is to regurgitate the most simple-minded reactionary thoughts produced by our lizard brains basically the YouTube comment section like all public forms sucks anyways while final fantasy's reputation for radical change between entries won't become truly standard until 11 when MMO fever in the fading of turn-based combat from critical favor reached its cultural Zenith eight is the biggest break that any game up to this point has had from its previous entry the new character progression system junctioning and all its attached features fundamentally alter the linear character progression that's defined growth in this series it's a system that's often criticized and fairly so for being obus to new players spells like fire and water and sleep can be attuned to buff stats and to acquire those spells you need to draw them from enemies you must suck them dry of their spell charges to get more spells because the more copies of an individual spell you have the better the stat Buffs but also these copies of the Spells are your ammo for those spells eight Fanatics will be able to Rattle off all the different ways to acquire spells more efficiently but the point is that all methods feel like grinding or feel out of the way it's not a great system and that's about all the time I'll spend on it since endless ink has been spiled over Eight's gameplay but for all these systems do to change the formula after seven for all eight does in its Quest to be different from Seven 8 enters into deep conversation with final fantasy's oldest ideas Final Fantasy 8 revisits the ending of the first game and riffs on that game's idea of a time travel Loop and fading identity the world of eight is under threat from the future and like the nameless Warriors of light who are anonymously sent to their deaths time and time again to defeat chaos Squall Eight's black clad belt Enthusiast protagonist is reared in a Child Soldier Factory a warrior of Light Factory ironically called the garden with the purpose of killing the evil sorceresses that quest to enslave the world even through the impenetrable blankets of space and time although Squall and his playable compatriots zel Kea selfie and Irvin have personalities they don't have identities being raised as mercenaries for combat and Wars of geopolitics and Cosmic horror strips them of their identities in much the same way as Final Fantasy is unsteadily trying to discover itself after being thrust into gaming hegemon Squall is trying to figure out who he is is and how he can connect with those around him the only connection he does have is to the garden and therefore his only self- knowledge is his place in the private military war machine like in seven memory is the Bedrock of identity during Eight's tutorial the information about Guardian forces the game's equipable summons mentions how the use of Guardian forces can cause memory loss but that is best not to think too much about it the red flag raised by that piece of deep Garden propaganda does end up paying off as we discovered that the party's memories except for Irvin because he's special were lost through extended Guardian Force radiation the information is delivered during the game's Infamous orphanage scene it's a story beat of total contrivance that is deeply profoundly thematically resonant but it doesn't quite work dramatically this video has primarily been an analysis but I think strictly analyzing this scene thematically would flatten its complexity my reaction to it as a viewer is different from my reaction as a thinker that dissonance is rare in the series and whenever it does happen in Final Fantasy or elsewhere it signals some deficiency in a scene the issue is that the inference for most of the game is that these characters have grown up with each other Squall selfie zel and Kus are all about the same age and live in a boarding military Death School adding all these extra steps and Hoops to reveal that their childhood memories have faded feels unnecessary as it adds very little to the characters that wouldn't have otherwise been present If This Were the kindergarten for the garden dramatically what this scene does is establish the character's old caretaker edia as the evil sorceress they're trying to kill it's to Eight's credit that it gets a lot of power out of a scene that can be easily written off as simply contrived the exposition dump is delivered by Irvin a character that is already felt like an outsider because he's from a different Garden than the rest of the party he has all of his memories and knows of the childhood they all had together he knows that he's trying to kill his adoptive mother and it isolates him Irvin's perception of reality is different because he has memories no one else does and he knows that all of their memories and even his will continue to fade with their Guardian Force use it's a rich scene with how it develops vvin and for how it mirrors Seven's idea of memory and identity in seven Cloud's intense suffering is a product of his memories being lies from him not being the person he thought he was in eight Squall has no idea who he is he looks back and sees nothing but Darkness his suffering is a product of developing an identity rather than losing one Squall discovering his own identity is important because his internal conflict is his inability to connect with others and in Final Fantasy 8 a person must develop a sense of self so they can connect to another person and developing that sense of self requires experience both firsthand and vicarious and how to love and how to suffer in a way the memories Irving give Squall are vicarious Squall may know facts about himself and of his past life but their third person memories given to him and this divide between first and third person experience recurs throughout eight and it's seen Through The Eyes of others that squa begins to understand himself periodically during the story Squall is transported into the consciousness of Laguna a mysterious man from the past who's a stranger to squall frequently in these scenes we read squalls in her monologue overlaid on Laguna's real life literal dialogue and it's this self-reflection through the life of another that Squall begins to realize his own identity at the end of one of these flashbacks in what I'd say is the second best individual scene in the series Squall is told by Laguna's adoptive daughter alone about the death of Laguna's wife and her adoptive mother when I was kidnapped Uncle Laguna went on a journey to find me but because he did Uncle Laguna wasn't able to be by rain's side when she died rain wanted to show Laguna her newborn baby rain kept calling out for lagona so no matter what I wanted lagona to stay in the village but it didn't work I could no longer make it back to that moment Laguna's love for his daughter and his love for his wife enables this moment of suffering that pours straight out of Hemingway and McCarthy if Squall wasn't developing an identity he wouldn't be able to connect with others and wouldn't be able to feel the love and the pain of this scene by experiencing this pain vicariously through the memory of lagona he discovers himself when he comes back to at the bedside of his girlfriend in aomo renoa he laugh es out in pain and anxiety desperately searching for a way to save renoa renoa is The Game's other playable character unlike the garden soldiers she wasn't raised for war and when her homeland of Timber Falls to Imperial might her Quest is to rebuild her Homeland instead of herself because as long as she has her memories and her culture to keep alive she has herself and also her dog Angelo who she shoots out of a rocket launcher the romance between renoa and Squall is often seen as the divisive feature of this game's narrative this is partly because romance is a genre is feminine coded in a medium that was still very masculine coded in the '90s and 2000s but also because literal reactionary readings of eight cannot get over how bad Squall should have fumbled renoa because of how unreceptive he is to her for the first half of the game Squall doesn't have that raw animal magnetism of Sid who managed to pull the baddest goth girl in space and time and steal a bunch of money from norg but such criticisms can reduce the bizarre intricacies of individual human behavior to logic boxes and fail to see the muddy depth of this romance squall's desperation to save R NOA at the moment everything seems lost is because all at once he discovered how to love and how to suffer squall's Arc reveals how interconnected the spectrum of human emotions are and how all emotions need each other the climax of the relationship is the best individual scene in the main series it's a slow haunting scene where Squall floats through the cold empty void of space to grab renoa as the life support systems fail [Music] desperate to prove itself different from seven eight takes aerys's iconic death scene and replaces it with one that is slow peaceful and while it ends happier much more painful unlike the sudden violent and extraordinary end to ais's life a space sequences a representation of the slow fading of life and the Fate most of us will share life doesn't explode in narratively impactful deas it Slips Away sand into eternity transitioning one second over another the hot blood of life into cold nothingness it's when Squall experiences this personal Universal existentially terrifying near end of a life he loves that he fully discovers himself [Music] [Music] I wish I had something deep to say about Cipher I got bad vibes off this guy from the beginning and I never let my bias be challenged my animosity was expressed mechanically during the early game amphibious invasion of Timber Cipher demands at all experience point go to him because he is him Final Fantasy 8 gives out asymmetrical experience with the Lion Share going to the character that landed the final blow on an enemy I went out of the way to make sure Cipher didn't kill any enemies so that he got the least experience of anyone on the team I know that that pettiness made the game technically Harder by a very small degree because of how this game does the level curve but I don't regret it and I'll do it again ciphers cut scenes are the closest I came to completely zoning out during the series I used my power as a reader to actively disrespect him by ignoring him and that's the beauty of it all no one has a gun near your head demanding that you read a book unless you're trying to avoid looking like a dumbass in class [ __ ] it who cares don't read [ __ ] I was tempted to not read anything Cypher had to say although I did I was a good little video man and read everything and I think my irritation with him was because I was so invested in Squall that I began to internalize his apathy towards Cipher like Rufus and seven Cipher is a secondary villain that acts as a foil to a main party member Cipher is an extraordinary foil to squa because he is the most intellectually deficient Final Fantasy character which is my kind way of saying he's dumb as [ __ ] squa may be the most intellectually gifted of all Final Fantasy protagonists his inner monologue is by far the most complex and imaginative in the series partly that's the product of perspective 8 along with 10 and 16 creates an intensely personal narrative driven by a singular voice with many of the game's extensive cutcenes being viewed and meditated upon by Squall Squall is often criticizing for being a whiner and a little [ __ ] and that's certainly true it's also true of Hamlet the fascination with this personality is the split between his Persona and his thoughts when he kneels over the comos renoa we see him develop through his own thoughts through that disconnect between the way he's carried himself and the way he wants to be and the way that he thinks Cipher by contrast may have an actual rock for a brain he goes tit fortat with Squall countering squall's metacognition with petulance and arrogance and stubbornness perhaps Cipher is more complex than I give him credit for our view of him is myopic but other characters with limited perspective relative to squall namely Irvin and Kus show more sensitivity in depth and I should say that Cipher is Well written in this regard the game is peculiar in modulating how it depicts its characters based on their own imaginative capacities Squall is the most complex followed closely by renoa while zel and selfie are more limited more emotionally blunt and writing like this allows the characters to develop rather than unfold I'm not saying that Cipher is lacking any depth but his Simplicity reflects his character more strongly than any deep speech would ever accomplish to give him his due Cipher struggle stem from Deep rudimentary insecurity squall's Odyssey to find himself is internal and cognitive ciphers is outward and violent he feels the need to prove himself physically Superior to others his emotions and his inability to control himself let Squall beat him in combat and steal Cipher's girl but there's no capacity for reflection no self-improvement his posi fujin and ren are subjected to his abuse because the only way Cipher can understand people is through the dynamic of domination and subjugation fujin and ren are final fantasies Rosen cran and Gilden Stern if Rosen cranon Gilden Stern followed around I don't know corilanus that's that's a deep cut right there when Squall gets sliced up by Cipher in the opening cut scene it establishes them as Inseparable foils as connected people that go in two opposite directions if we fused them into one person Gogeta Style just wouldn't work out throughout this video I've made several references to the Romantic hero archetype and what makes Cipher and squa interesting is that they both fit into this archetype but Cipher is unique in his thoughtlessness his ramp paging violence carries the legacy of Ahab Edmund Dantes and heathcliffe while Cipher certainly Broods enough to cosplay those latter to Ahab is his closer companion when introducing the white whale Ahab is described as shouting with a terrific loud animal SOB like that of a stricken moose his blind animal rage is questioned by the first mate Starbuck Vengeance on a dumb brute that simply smoked theee from blind Instinct Madness to be enraged with a dumb thing Ahab responds with intense delusional rambling all visible objects man are but as pasteboard masks but in each event in the living act the undoubted deed there some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask if man will strike strike through the mask how can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall Ahab yaps for another whole page but we see the roots of Cipher in this ramble Cipher is tormented by his self-defined inadequacy his only option is to punch through the walls to punch through Squall and to find purpose and peace through domination he does in fact punch through Squall or slice through him however you want to verb it in the opening cut scene there's some important story stuff in the opening not a whole lot to really analyze or anything but since we're already here forever I might as well talk about it because I leaped out of my seat citizen can CL to nobody and how highly concentrated this opening is with '90s cheese we got mysterious text overlays the gun blade flying in from nowhere into a badass closeup mimicking the Buster sword in seven Coral chance the title ff8 flashing on the screen it's so dumb and I treasure it dearly no matter how many fancy quotes and old books and literary merit I tried to assign to these games they are still at their core games with incredibly silly Aesthetics that are worth cherishing but so too is all the serious content the question of self and how the self is developed and expressed we'll continue to run through the rest of the series but it's an eight where this question is most tightly focused and where the series Finds Its bleakest and most radiant moments [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] final f Fantasy 9 is often relegated to the Hallmark world of homage after the Cyber fantasy cycle of final fantasies 6 7 and 8 nine returned to the world of the NES Trilogy fantastic Voyages of swords and sorcery lands of white Mages and wooden airships because of the aesthetic similarities with the simpler 8bit games the reception of nine often focuses on the surface level throwback and the game is seen as a less mature work a deviation because its primary function is to celebrate to the Series this puts it in conversation with five but unlike five nine is mid I'm not here for Mid no uh uh like five9 is a funnier game than both its immediate predecessor and successor all the games even seven with all its fatalistic lugubriousness have comic relief but nine has Pratt Falls and a funny man in a suit of armor that suffers Pratt Falls there's an old man that calls an underage girl babelicious well uh actually that part's not so so uh funny anymore Baku is probably going to jail it's okay to call Lulu or Fang babelicious because they're adults or cloud of Darkness because she's alits but also you probably shouldn't call anyone babelicious because you're not 12 anymore despite its reputation as a game for haha laughs the truth about Final Fantasy 9 is that it's the philosophical Summit of the series ever since cil's Lamentations in the opening hours of Final Fantasy 4 the series has explored existential ideas beginning with the simpler conflict of choosing right versus wrong and four and quickly developing the more complex questions about memory identity and self nine takes these existential questions to their Zenith it's about as close to a philosophical video game as a mainstream tent pole release from a major studio in a major series can be like the highly relevant to the stranger or the not relevant Animal Farm Final Fantasy 9 explicitly deals with philosophical questions on its surface rather than burying them in subtext Allah Final Fantasy 7 and 8 Albert Kimu in his essay the myth of Copus argues that the fundamental question of philosophy is judging whether life is or is not worth living and this is the basic question that grounds Final Fantasy 9 the assumed position of all the previous games is that life is always worth living cile celus cloud and Squall all have Muses that conf front them with the inherent value of life and in the case of seven the clash between man and nature reinforces the value of life as an all-encompassing concept contrasting the spirituality and Harmony of nature with the cold violence oppression and steel of modern technology in nine there is no such obvious universal truth about life and its value for a game with a reputation is a light-hearted fantasy ROM this is the Final Fantasy where life is the most disposable we see the blood thirsty Queen braa and super [ __ ] cuoa raise cities and we watches people fruitlessly Flee for their lives before dissolving into the nothingness of PS1 Ram optimization it's a level of on-screen death that would make kefa and sephar Roth blush and it's only rivaled by the massacre of mist in four but that Slaughter was the basis of cil's character Arc a moment of cosmic significance that sets into motion the restoration of the world the deaths in nine are without meaning they are the passive reality of a world that the characters have to contend with they have to choose to live in spite of the violence not because of it the obliteration of Clara is the hardest individual seen in the series to stomach when Beatrix the game's Vegeta Kaiba redeemed hero watches the destruction she laments about black magic being used to destroy the city instead of letting her and her troops sat Clara it's disquieting and hard to know how to feel about Beatrix not just because we stay on a bloodthirsty Queen once again apologies to Vivian Aladin for me stealing her wording but because Beatrix isn't a villain in the same obvious vacuous way Rufus or kefka are they kill and dominate because subjugation is what they want they Revel in destruction they Revel in death Hojo laughs evily when injecting his test subjects with test fluids Beatrix can't even see the suffering the value of life in Final Fantasy 9 is so obscured that not even the game's temporary turncoat villain can see it Beatrix wants to demonstrate her skill and her leadership of the Pluto Knights death and destruction are invisible to beatrix's eyes because the world of Final Fantasy 9 doesn't assume an inherent value of Life beatrix's eyes are inward struggling so much with finding purpose and fulfillment that it makes the world invisible finding a purpose in life or even an identity are more difficult to nine because it's not inherently clear to the characters if there's value Beyond eating [ __ ] and dying like a swarm of locusts finding a meaning to even live is the central conflict for most of the cast The Myth of Copus famously posits this question as one of suicide and explores to what degree death is a solution to the pain of living in an absurd World Vivi the game secondary deuteragonist in a game of deuteragonists directly asks Kimo's question of suicide as a manufactured Black Mage with a short predetermined lifespan he questions why it's worth even trying to live and Find meaning and help help the world and overcome his internal turmoil if he's just going to die the episode that sees Vivy question the value of continuing his small painful existence is when the player discovers the Black Mage Village a sanctuary for the black Mages who have fled lives of warfare and weaponization two of the black Mages explain to Vivie the cemetery that they've constructed and talk about the Black Mage buried there Unsure how to process or understand their death Mr 36 is buried under the ground now but I don't understand why he's going to come out again one day right when he does I'm going to wash him off in the pond the inability to understand the permanent state of death isn't simply a product of the black mage's new found self-awareness but the Terror at the core of Consciousness we may understand on a factual level that death is permanent but death is so impossible to imagine for a conscious being that it seems unreal a fellow his hands cupping the neck of his sleeping wife Des Demona observes that once put out thy light thou cunning pattern of excellent nature I know not where is that Promethean heat that can thy light relume it seems as if life should be Eternal that there should be a Promethean flame somewhere that can resurrect the body and soul and this clash between the impossibility of death and the terror of life forms the backbone for the Ark of many characters in nine for the black Mage Village this fear drives them to be complicit in the atrocities of kuoa the main antagonist for most of the game because he promises them an escape from physical death in exchange for Spiritual death it's important to note that Kimo's definition of suicide doesn't just include the intentional Act of physically killing oneself but also the act of throwing one's life away for a cause because as he claims anything worth living for is also Worth Dying For the spiritual suicide of the black Mages by selling themselves to kua's cause of destroying the world does accomplish the goal of Expediting death but it's in exchange for an empty meaningless life this isn't the same conclusion that Vivy comes to when he decides to fight to save his friends and the world instead of destroying everything and that presents something of a problem for the characters there's no demonstrably obvious factually correct choice on a moral level we may object to C's destruction of the world but formulating a philosophical argument for why it's ethical that conscious suffering life should continue isn't exactly cut and dry coa's reasoning for destroying the world isn't compelling to anyone except himself but it's easy to see why he acts in a globally suicidal way we learn late in the game that kua's motivation comes from him discovering self-awareness and if we consider kua's self-awareness from Kimo's perspective that beginning to think is beginning to be under mind the worm is in man's heart then we can understand why it's easier for kuoa to destroy the world than it is for Our Heroes to save it Steiner final fantasy's Undisputed Riz Lord and mindlessly faithful Knight of Alexandria is a mirror image of Kua throughout the opening hours of the game Steiner carries out his sworn Duty as a protector for princess Garnett are willfully kidnapped heroin with great Fidelity in many traditional moral Frameworks this Fidelity is his great strength but it's mindless Steiner acts as an antwood ignorant of the contents of both those around him and himself his shift from mindless tight wde to self-directed existential tight wad isn't completed under pressure from heroic speeches but through personal reflection his change truly begins during his Soliloquy in trino what in the world am I doing I'm assisting thieves in committing a crime no I must be patient protect the princess escort her back to the castle focus on your duties trust the queen she would never commit an atrocity there must be a good reason no thoughts of my own nonsense how can I a lowly Knight understand the Queen's thinking I need not worry about the ramblings of a criminal just think about escorting the princess home I'll probably never see him again he was the culprit he pulled the princess and me into his intrigues like any good Shakespearean Soliloquy Diner has a a complete conversation with himself here overhearing each and every one of his imagined syllables moving from questioning himself to flimsy justification to acknowledging himself and to ultimately blaming zadon the games often criticized protagonist from getting him wrapped up in the minations of Nine's plot in his questioning and in his denial Steiner slowly pieces together an existential purpose in a world that denies him one the key here is that his self-discovery is different from Vivy and the rest of the cast at large there is no big easy answer to the meaning of life in Final Fantasy 9 every character's unique circumstances require a unique answer to Kimo's question of suicide both physically and spiritually you continue making gestures commanded by existence for many reasons the first of which is habit writes Kimu premeditating Steiner's internal monologue dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized the absence of any profound reason for living the insane character of that daily agit and the uselessness of suffering what's important to emphasize here is the many reasons for actions and the lack of an overarching purpose for life that wide canvas opens up a multitude of questions about an absurd World which every character cooa included answers differently Final Fantasy 9 doesn't paint all of the options as inherently valuable Kua does ultimately lose as villains tend to do in Final Fantasy which is why I chose Kimu as the philosophical basis for this analysis the conclusion at the end of the myth of Copus is that the absurdity of a meaningless world full of suffering must be confronted and struggled against rather than submitted to Kimo's victory for Humanity mirrors the ultimate conquest and nine of life and experience over destruction not for some Grand narrative as it would in kirkgard and his optimism unlike the pessimism of schopenhauer and nche is what enables Our Heroes to Triumph even in the face of constant failure even though nine has the reputation of a light adventure story this is probably the Final Fantasy game most defined by failure it's endemic just how much losing the party does in this game and even the victories often feel fic right up until the end the craziest part of all the failures is that the villains also get in on the action they take as many l as the player bopper you dumbass I hear you spew the villains always lose in Final Fantasy of course they take L's what grips me about the specific flavor vals the villains Tak in nine is that they happen across the entirety of the narrative even when the player struggles and loses in fights against those same villains failure and struggle extend backwards in time far outside the confines of the canvas one of the major villains Garland created Kuja and zadon and an entire race of empty vessel people so that he could perpetuate his people's existence into eternity he has been trying and failing in his task for Millennia that name hopefully sounds familiar to all the chaos Killers out there because Garland takes his name from the villain of the original final fantasy nine has little nuggets like this all over the place with names like pandemonium but Garland is the most substantial reference Rising above reference and becoming a capital A illusion that us literary types get brain horny over his story isn't a one-to-one translation from Final Fantasy 1 Garland but the subtext is brought over like Garland Garland is searching for eternal life which is common for fin fantasy villains many are searching for eternal life or infinite power this specific story of a race of beings using another world to perpetuate their own dying civilization will be reprised in Final Fantasy 16 and what we see in these stories and in many villains that thirst for eternity is that the difference between heroes and villains is a willingness to die death is necessary for Humanity in Final Fantasy to develop a moral Consciousness and personality Vivi and the black Mages who accept death become IND visuals while the black Mages that pursue eternal life lose themselves in the cogs of kua's anill for Vivi zadon and other Final Fantasy characters like The Heroes of Light Titus and noctis a confrontation and acceptance with death lets them develop as complex people by accepting death as part of physical existence they reject Kimu spiritual suicide and Embrace Life as a struggle against unfeeling impersonal horror Kua and zadon continue the legacy of great Final Fantasy foils in this regard Kua deemed a failure by his creator Embraces spiritual suicide and pursues the destruction of Life while zadon constructed for the same purpose as Kua rejects his creator by embracing life and seeks to protect it in spite of the terror that comes natural with the suffering caused by living and dying zidon saves the life of amarant and Kua even though neither deserves to be saved in a karmic sense the stupid [ __ ] both characters do would get them killed in a Shakespearean tragedy but zidan's Embrace of Life against spe rual suicide is so strong that he can't leave them to their dramatic Fates viewers of course love Bloodshed I love Bloodshed but perpetuating violence against those who deserve it isn't on the menu for a game with caman philosophical optimism that optimism the game exudes in the face of each existential nightmare it produces also helps us understand the part of Nine's narrative that is most consistently criticized necron necron is a final is often criticized for being random and out of nowhere and he is dramatically random like the hate mob Maro imagines at the end of The Stranger nekron is an idea as much as he is a literal figure in the plot like The Cloud of darkness nekron is an older primordial force that represents Kimu spiritual suicide after Garland and Kua the physical threats that terrorize the world are defeated their infectious philosophy that Embraces spiritual death must be destroyed that threat being nekron and berserk Excalibur Steiner dropping Max damage on nekron is pretty cool I don't have actual footage of Steiner doing that so here's a picture I took of my steam deck I think I accidentally turned on the supercharge buff that's in the remaster but it's more awesome to imagine Steiner just diagetic becoming him when faced with nekron it isn't the slaying of an evil dragon but the Conquering of the existential crisis that defines Human Experience is very cool and Final Fantasy 9 is a cool game I recommend it I'm not high on the entire game though for a lot of players Final Fantasy 9 is that hidden Masterpiece in the series at least as hidden as a game that sells 5 million copies can be still compared to sales and Legacies of six seven and 10 nine is relatively Anonymous as an example the phrase is considered one of the greatest video games of all time or similar variations appears on the Wikipedia pages of 4 6 7 and 10 but not for poor nine what prevented nine from rising to the same Heights is the previous games is a doldrum section in the mid game where the player is introduced to Aiko and amirit two characters that did less for me than just about any other character in the series with comparable screen time both characters are fine but they seem trapped in Final Fantasy 4 dragging the game narratively while offering little more than Elementary explorations of the game Central themes without the same personal complexity as Vivy Steiner dagger or even the woefully underexplored Freya who the game disrespectfully excludes from the cover in favor of amarant but I'm in a good mood today so let's not dwell on it instead let's pop in on the gameplay for a quick second because I do think that nine has the best gameplay of the PS1 Trilogy unlike most Final Fantasy games that sometimes struggle with implementing the new gameplay features as well as they could with multiple attempts at iterating the same ideas nine has some of the most synergistic features in the series the gimmick with nine is the new ability system each piece of equipment has abilities the character can learn and each character has a limited number of ability points to equip these abilities each major boss fight especially towards the end of the game is significantly impacted by abilities importantly because skills are learned slowly and because the game has a forging system with old equipment players are motivated to keep hold of their equipment instead of selling everything off which pays off in the long run because most pieces of armor have elemental immunities and damage reductions it's just like dark souls for sure and often times the strategies to deal with bosses aren't to outat them but to be properly equipped for status and Elemental defense it's a synergistic system that has much more strategic Clarity than the Materia and junctioning systems had in seven and8 everything from item usage acquisition and hoarding plays into making sure the player always has enough resources to beat bosses without simply grinding the problem away as with five problems can be grinded away but it's never necessary if anything the most remarkable part of nine is its collection of side quests what I love about this era of Final Fantasy that extends from 7 to 10 is how unhinged the side quests are they're almost all terrible but they're irresponsibly terrible each one offering a unique flavor to engage with the world unlike the copy and paste Waypoint side quests that would come later in nine chocoo hot and cold is the type of time waster that I love at least in the abstract because it's a self-driven treasure hunt that uncovers the material secrets of the world or there's the Excalibur 2 side quest where the player has to speedrun the game to get Steiner's worthlessly powerful ultimate Ultimate Weapon I certainly did not bother getting it I didn't bother doing most of any of the side quests same for the following game and also the previous game at its best Final Fantasy 9 is the most thoughtful experience in the series of this High era of Final Fantasy that stretches from 6 to 10 nine is the most optimistic despite plunging deeper into death than any other game in the series [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Happ for

Channel: Professor Bopper

Views: 12,609

Keywords: final fantasy, ff7, rebirth, remake, final fantasy 7, final fantasy 8, final fantasy 9, final fantasy vii, final fantasy viii, final fantasy ix, ff8, ff9

Id: flvIMcUEsJ4

Length: 63min 42sec (3822 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024