The Ultimate Final Fantasy 9 Iceberg Explained

although this game had the worst sales numbers of all three PS1 greats it's still highly regarded among the fandom with its triumphant return to the medieval fantasy Roots as well as some of the most beloved characters in the entire franchise ff9 serves as a love letter to its predecessors let's dive deep as we patiently wait to hear more about the potential remake right over the horizon this is the ultimate Final Fantasy 9 iceberg [Music] coffee side quest this is a lengthy side quest throughout the game that begins early on disc 1 at the tower near Dolly inspecting the flying replica of the Tantalus leadership will initiate the quest from morid where you find three coffees throughout the game one coffee is found in disc 3 and is easily missed making it unable to be obtained in that game file upon completion the mini Prima Vista ship is sent to the Tantalus hideout in lindblum Doga and une Easter egg these are two recurring characters throughout the Final Fantasy franchise their first appearance was in ff3 as playable characters these two characters names appear in ff9 as doga's artifact and unai's mirror two items that can be purchased through the trino auction house the Easter egg occurs when you possess both items and examine the gramophone at the Black Mage Inn the background music will change to this enchanting song The Doga and une Melody originally from the Final Fantasy 3 soundtrack foreign although old school jrpgs primarily focused on the single player storytelling aspect Final Fantasy 4 and 6 both offered two-player options and ff9 became the first and only of the PS1 FF games to offer this feature Player 1 will control the game during the movement and story progression but players could assign specific characters to control in battle Excalibur 2. this is Steiner's Ultimate Weapon that requires the player to complete a majority of the game in Under 12 hours this is one of the hardest weapons to obtain in not only the game but within the Final Fantasy franchise overall squares triple development by the time ff9 was in development squaresoft had become a monstrous Titan within the gaming industry so much so that they established a game development studio in Hawaii to assist in the creation of their games as well as assisting in the adaptation for the North American audience not only that but the company announced ff9 10 and 11 all at the same time and all three of them were being developed at the exact same time as well each of them with their own goals and play Styles ff9 was developed for the PS1 even being released after the PS2 had launched and Final Fantasy 10 was developed with the introduction of the ps2's upgraded Hardware allowing them to utilize the updated technology and ff11 was designed around internet capabilities that were becoming more mainstream and accessible at that time the split development of the three games was massively contributed to the tremendous developers that worked on each of these projects it all started with ideas and effort put toward them but even before that it was essential for them to have the proper knowledge through education this leads me to today's video sponsor brilliant perhaps you'd like to be a game designer or perhaps you're just simply a lifelong learner like me in either case what's Most Fascinating about brilliant is their Hands-On interactive approach to learning I've long felt that the best form of learning is by doing and Brilliant allows this in Spades it gamifies the act of Education making the process of learning so much more enjoyable and effective brilliant has thousands of courses in math science and computer science related topics ranging from beginner topics to highly Advanced topics and they're adding new content every single month and let's be real here the best fields to get into for education are within the stem Fields science technology engineering and Mathematics and their interactive lessons can help you understand useful Concepts without 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the play instead of blank kidnapping the princess he's shown being executed by the king you must acquire and keep the hammer from the stellasio coin side quest in your inventory to activate these extra hidden scenes asthma this is the super boss of ff9 it appears as a sphere with multiple colors circling it its bottom half is darker and turns counterclockwise spinning faster when using offensive abilities and the top half is brighter spinning clockwise and moving faster when casting supportive abilities the being appears seemingly out of nowhere with no prior appearances or mentions within the franchise it's implied to be some form of idolan even being found inside of idle and cave in the chocobo's air Garden it's said to be a presence quote not of this world and that it's connected to Terra a parallel world it's theorized to be a construct created by humans memories and legends which is believed to be true of all summoned Spirits within ff9 the degradation of Tara's Crystal and its loss of power caused what may have been a more definitive shape or being to lose its form becoming a swirling mass of colors another theory suggests that because summoned spirits take on a form of what people believed they look like since no one knew what osma was he took on an unrecognizable form or in the form of a rivaling planet and in theatrothem Final Fantasy osma is described as a quote metaphysical being that exists without form and is unknowable Untouchable and unattainable at least two other characters in ff9 will also have different dialogue if you interact with them after beating osma Hades and Memoria will be in disbelief on the accomplishment practically afraid to fight you and the friendly Yan also seems impressed by the feat stating reach the round guy huh you already beat him when defeating osma you receive pumice which teaches dagger the ark summon who is also believed to be a Terran eidolon [Music] soft this is a fan favorite scene where is a Don cops a feel on dagger's booty while they were first boarding the Airship together zidane makes a comment while doing it clearly implying it was intentional this dialogue is only on the screen for about two seconds and the Cinematic starts immediately after the dialogue is activated preventing players from keeping the dialogue on screen if you aren't paying attention it's easy to miss this little scene taking off hurry up [Laughter] it's man copter squeeze oh damn bro man's Compton was squeeze he said ooh soft a new Gilgamesh this recurring NPC took a rather large departure from previous incarnations and returned to nine with a much different looking model he also goes by a number of aliases in this game aliway Jack for armed man and brother Gill he initially appears in Alexandria as Alleyway Jack where he teaches VV how to play tetramaster the character later appears in trino to steal money from dagger to which he buys a card and when zidane gains the highest possible Treasure Hunter Rank it is then that aliway Jack will reveal his true identity as Gilgamesh he is also Brothers with a character named inquito who is the one that is said to leave behind the most powerful sword in the game the Excalibur 2. Baker Remember to Remember my algorithm thing from they already know to like to Livescribe and leave a code you are welcome I'm grateful son of a freya's retconned age this refers to freya's age being biffed slightly in her reported age of 21. it is sometimes said that she's been looking for fratley for three years other times it's said to be five years it's believed that Freya began looking for fratley at age 18. their discrepancy between searching for three and five years would be the difference between age 21 or 23. lindblum in the opening cinematic of the game you can see a map of the land including lindblum but when examining it it actually reads out as Lind bulm instead of lindblum this spelling difference can also be found in the ff9 ultramania and several other places throughout the game this is because this is how the name was actually spelled in the Japanese version but the spelling change was not implemented in every appearance throughout the game [Music] hate leads to suffering at the end of the game you witness necron speaking these words which happen to be a popular quote from the famous Star Wars character Yoda fear leads to anger anger needs to hate hate leads to suffering unused Cinna graphics the temporary side character Cinna has several Graphics that were not implemented into the game a victory animation as well as a still animation similar to the other characters menu avatars it's presumed that this still image was potentially implemented but during the only part of the game that you play as Cena the menus are not accessible preventing the player from seeing the image there's also theories that Cena was originally meant to be playable throughout other parts of the game but were taken out making these Graphics Obsolete and unused trino fountain there is a fountain in trino that allows you to toss Gill into if you do this once you will feel a bit happier but if you toss 10 Gil into the fountain 13 times you will receive a stellasio coin and if you do it 50 times exit the area and return the thief NPC will boast about all the money he found in the fountain to which he purchased a good Tetra MasterCard if you challenge him to a card battle you can earn this card off of him as well Nero family side quest this was a tedious optional Quest where zadon visits the Tantalus Hideout nine different times throughout the game reporting to various Nero members and reporting that each of them are missing the reward for completion of this Quest is the very underwhelming protect ring it's been commonly stated that this side quest took 13 years to be discovered or at least documented publicly though many people deny this as according to many commenters they achieved this side quest on their very first playthrough all those years ago foreign wall this area is a prominent part of Madame sari where a tribe of Summoners once lived the area is said to be located where the pulse of the planet Gaia runs its most focused it was used by the Summoners who studied the workings of Nature and the use of summoning magic they were the ones that theorized that the idolans served as gaia's guardians manifested from the collected beliefs in myths and legends the idolan wall itself featured many Engravings and teachings of the idolans this area hosts several optional quests most notably the source of Garnet's birth name through a specific set of movements and actions within midan sorry you can unlocks the text that reveals her true name Sarah other Final Fantasy references with ff9 serving as the return to the medieval fantasy setting and as a sort of love letter or homage to the final fantasy series it's no shocker that ff9 had a number of references to other games within the franchise one of the most notable occurs when the player interacts with the sword in the lindblum weapon shop that resembles the Buster sword from ff7 zidane will say quote I remember a guy with spiky hair who carried something like this an obvious allusion to cloud from ff7 there's also another reference to Cloud during the play at the end of the game Marcus brings up his name directly when saying no Cloud nor Squall shall hinder us and Squall obviously being from ff8 and since ff9 was being developed at the same time as ff10 they were even able to make references to it the Ragtime Mouse is a special creature in nine that the party can encounter in various forests it serves as a quiz master who poses a true or false question while the questions themselves are all related to nine the character itself is holding a card with Japanese text on it this barely legible card actually translates to pop quiz ff10's theme is guts true or false Stutter Step the way that Random Encounters work is more or less as follows the longer you walk in an area that has Random Encounters the more likely that you will enter said Random Encounters players have discovered that by taking only one or two steps by rapidly tapping a direction repeatedly instead of holding a direction allows the player to keep that encounter rate to the lowest possible percentage speedrunners discovered that this allows them to avoid Random Encounters altogether saving precious time avoiding loading animations and menu screens ff9 remake leak Nvidia one of the leaders in the hardware and software development industry hosts a platform titled GeForce now which is a cloud gaming service crafty Gamers were able to crack into their servers and find a sizable database of what appeared to be upcoming games many of which weren't even announced yet it wasn't long before this list was confirmed to be a legit database dump that contained a list of games that were at the time perhaps being developed were prepared for being developed or were at least speculative titles Nvidia revealed that just because the title was on the list it is neither a confirmation of nor an announcement of the game not surprisingly Nvidia quickly removed access to the list and the leak contained no confidential game builds or any personal information it was claimed that these speculative titles in the list were simply speculations on behalf of Nvidia as to having future release announcements but many people believe that this was required to be stated in order to avoid legal matters a significant amount of titles on the list would come to be announced and released including the Chrono crossed remaster Kingdom Hearts 4 and the recently released Tactics Ogre remaster one of the only games that wasn't at least mentioned from Square on the list was interestingly a Final Fantasy 9 remake it also specifically claimed that it was a remake and not a remaster like stated for Chrono cross and tactics ogre so it would make sense as to why we've heard such little about this potential title as a full-on remake would require significantly more time to create than a remaster especially if we use the ff7 Remake as an indicator of the direction they may take it's likely that they will Veer off from the original story in slight ways to keep it fresh what do you think is this game in the works just hidden under wraps or was it unfortunately canceled animated series it was revealed in June of 2021 that square would be co-developing and co-producing an animated Final Fantasy 9 series alongside a French studio called cyber group Studios and while many fans rejoiced it was unfortunately short-lived for many as the show is not going to be catered towards original fans of the game and instead is aimed at 8 to 13 year olds looking at other works by the french-based animation studio confirms that the animated series is likely to be a legitimate children's show leading people to believe that square is trying to spread the reach of the title to a new generation of fans most likely alongside their parents who were fans of the original the series was anticipated to begin development at the end of 2021 or the beginning of 2022 in May of this year we were told the Animated Series would be unveiled within a week but before we received this first Peak they went radio silent and nothing further has been announced or revealed many fans are speculating this is because the first look will be given to us alongside the Remake reveal and with the 35th anniversary of Final Fantasy being this year it's been postulated that we may see an announcement for the ff9 Remake alongside the first look at the Animated Series very soon cotton robe trick this is also known as the synthesis trick it allows you to capitalize on the monetary gain from buying raw materials synthesizing them into equipment and selling the said equipment pocketing the difference between the cost of materials and the Gill gained after selling the synthesized item the most commonly seen tactic is with the cotton robe where you can purchase a wrist at 130 Gill and a stapled hat for 260 Gill then the synthesis rate is one thousand and after selling a cotton robe from the synthesis you net 610 Gill for each robe synthesized and sold essentially allowing you to create as much Gill as you want Southern tropical outfits these are special equipment pieces that are notorious for being the worst equipment in the game literally reducing the wearer's defense evade magic defense and Magic evasion to zero while also making them weaker to elements the full set includes the Aloha t-shirt the straw hat the Pearl armlet and the sandals unfortunately the outfit doesn't visually display on characters during battles and the tropical part of the set is simply in name only the equipment is primarily an inside joke from the creators most likely inspired during the developers time at the Hawaiian Square Studio the set is mostly sold for decent amounts of guilt or perhaps used to make the game more challenging with a self-imposed handicap Marcus equals AKO Marcus has an important role throughout the first section of the game and while this character may not be playable through the entirety of the game leveling him is not a complete waste as his stats will transfer over to Aiko once she joins the party Blackjack mini game after you complete the game you can access an Easter egg mini game where you play a version of blackjack otherwise known as 21. on the PS1 version the Blackjack minigame is unlocked by doing a specific button input once the end displays on screen with the Prelude music playing in the background subsequent versions allow the player to access this minigame from the title screen after defeating the game sakaguchi's favorite the creator of the final fantasy series himself hironobu sakaguchi has stated that ff9 is his favorite among all of his Creations within the series his reasoning is that it's the closest to what he originally envisioned for the Final Fantasy game to be he stated that ff9 was developed with the intention of capturing the spirit of the first five games with the most cutting-edge technology available hey I'm here with hironobosakuguchi-san the creator of Final Fantasy and he has something very important to say [Music] Final Fantasy 9 is the best well you heard it here uh from the band himself during the production the prolific composer nobua uamotsu requested to be sent to Europe to engulf himself in European castles and architecture to take inspiration for the game's medieval feel upon his arrival he became consumed by the project and worked tirelessly to create the longest Final Fantasy soundtrack at that time this was the final time that umatsu composed at A Game's entire OST by himself and it was said that he poured so much of himself into this game's soundtrack that he simply could not keep up he went above and beyond to add so much character and personality into this soundtrack in fact if you're paying close attention you can hear how different scenes will play the same song but depending on the scene being played the tones May shift slightly to more accurately reflect the mood and vibe that the team was seeking to convey [Music] thank you trino wanted poster the bar in trino has a blurry wanted poster on the rear corner wall while it appears very blurry especially on the PS1 version it does appear to be amarant with his wild red dreadlocks disc 1 Moonstone while the Moonstone isn't exactly the best item in the game it does come as a decent reward for one of the most satisfying minigames in ff9 during the sword fight between zidane and blank near the beginning of the game you're able to score up to 100 out of 100 with the amount of people being impressed if you're able to score a 100 by quickly and correctly performing the correct action inputs it opens an opportunity for Steiner to speak to Queen Braun who was quite impressed with the show she feels generous enough to give Steiner one of the only moonstones in the game she seems like a very nice lady dagger's unusable summons at one point in the game you play a Mini-Game with ramyu that allows you to acquire him as a summon up until this point each of your shamans are completely grayed out not allowing you to summon with dagger but after you unlock ramu you're granted the ability to begin casting your summons in battle as there's not much dialogue about this many players thought that this Mini-Game unlocks the ability to summon at all but in reality it just unlocks ramu as a summon but dagger is actually able to summon before this point in the game she's just limited by her MP pool quina's pronouns the gender of quina was intentionally left ambiguous in the North American version where they referred to the character as she slash he however in the French Spanish and Italian versions of the game the character is specifically referred to as a she but in the German version they refer to queena as a he while the debate rages on the word Queen Aquin is a Japanese play on words that translates to eat and cannot eat the contradictory words do seem to line up with the intention of no specified gender but interestingly enough there is a steam achievement for ff9 that requires you to form a party with queena and three female characters and the achievement is titled femme fatale foreign battle tent this is the very first Final Fantasy game that experimented with different uses for the tent item which normally was exclusively usable at the world map or save points while ff9 allows this method of using a tent to restore HP and MP it can also be used in battle to fully heal a Target however it has an added side effect of having a 50 chance to inflict the target with poison darkness and silence this can also be conveniently used on enemies with its chance to inflict these status abnormalities Resident Evil 2 reference during your time in lindblum Castle you can come across a fountain with an interactive trigger inspecting this has zidane speak about being unable to find a place to insert the metal but this dialogue has no relevance to the game at any point this is because it's actually a reference to Resident Evil 2 where the protagonist uses medallions as part of a puzzle this message is a direct reference to this puzzle the Brady games guide ff9 just so happens to have one of the single most infamous game guide books ever created during this time period the internet was not nearly as prevalent or popular as it is now and unfortunately this guidebook was a product of its era encouraging players to visit Square's newly created play online platform that was used as a way to share RPG news sell merchandise and offer a membership the only problem is that they massively overplayed their hand the guide itself only covered a portion of the game and vague summaries of the information covering bosses quests and items a greater majority of the physical guidebook was ridden with blue boxes that would State the rest of the information could be found online when visiting the play online website need more help with this boss go to play online for additional strategy Freya can learn a new ability at this point in the game if you're curious check out play online for the details you can pick up a couple of items before triggering the boss fight to find out what you must do go to play online and these blue text boxes were on nearly every single page of the guidebook most people didn't even have the internet at that time let alone regular access to it via your phone but even with internet access this was still a huge disappointment for many purchasers it's because of this many people have stated that this is the single worst game guidebook ever created vivi's Japanese quote the personal character quotes that are shown in graphics each display one meaningful and relevant quote to each character each of the characters Japanese to English translations were more or less the same all except for Vivi the English quotes for Vivi States how do you prove that you exist maybe we don't exist but the Japanese translation seems to be a bit more profound roughly translating to if you can't show proof that you're living it might as well be the same as being dead perhaps the quote was altered to be more appropriate for Western audiences and censorship requirements early concept art most of the characters early concept Arts show fairly accurate sketches for the final designs some interesting notes come in the form of slightly altered designs for Garnett while her body type is fairly accurate her face and hair appear slightly different in several pieces of art one bigger change is that of amaranth who almost has a spike Spiegel sort of look to him in his early drafts some other interesting character art shows a character height comparison with each of the main playable cast minus zidane's face with the addition of blank perhaps this indicates that blank may have been intended to be a more notable character within the game we also see another size comparison chart with what appears to be a white-haired Garnette Kuja also appears to have a slightly modified face as well early designs for Queen Braun also show a monstrously sized cat that she uses as a sort of Throne some theorize that this cat was actually changed into the bandersnatch for the final game [Music] cut balloon minigame this was a mini game that consists of VV Gathering balloons around the square in town and returning them to the starting NPC the game still exists within the game files but is inaccessible to the normal player most people speculate that it was removed simply because the minigame was not very fun the French Zidane we learned in an interview that the name for zidane in France was changed to avoid an association with a famous French soccer player Zinedine Zidane instead they changed the Z making it appear as jidon instead unused Ates there are a number of unused assets dialogues scenes and mini-games some include the Mughal debug menu entry the previously mentioned cut balloon minigame and a handful of active Time Event scenes that have only been accessed with the hack that was released later specifically to access these hidden dialogues foreign partnership between the years of 1999 and 2001 Square teamed up with Coca-Cola for several Japanese marketing campaigns the first campaign featured ff7 and ff8 collectible figurines attached to Coke bottles the next wave would feature figurines for ff9 as well and then on March 6 2000 Japan began airing a partnership commercial between the two business Titans featuring an ff9 CG animation produced by squareshaft in a manner similar to the in-game fmvs the commercial featured zidane chasing a Coca-Cola bottle cap eventually being joined by dagger VV and Steiner German amaranth DBZ reference amaranth's name in German is mahogany which is short for mahogany a reddish brown color Mahogany's no mercy skill had its name changed to mahaga Meha which is a reference to the Kamehameha from Dragon Ball Z it is notably appropriate for the skills animation Arc inspiration the summon Arc was directly inspired by another Square title that just so happened to be the first game nobua uamatsu wrote music for a Japanese sci-fi Mecca RPG titled Cruise chaser blasty Skywalker sound partnership ff9 is far from the only game in the franchise to reference Star Wars but there was so much more that George Lucas would indirectly contribute to this game Skywalker sound the company behind the Masterworks sound design for many Hollywood Blockbusters was recruited to assist in creating the top-notch sound design for ff9 this would become the very first video game that the company would work on they would also go on to assist with the now Infamous movie Final Fantasy the spirits within and while it definitely wasn't the sound design that made the film an abysmal mess this would be the last project Skywalker sound would work on within the Final Fantasy franchise foreign ER the very first Chocobo can be seen within the first few minutes of the game though it can be easy to miss after defeating Baku in the introduction tutorial your team will be led to a side room the lower left hand corner of the screen features a Shelf with a chocobo decoration standing at the top the same room also has what appears to be a map on the back wall behind Baku when comparing it to the world of ff9 it definitely does not line up but interestingly enough it appears to have a closer resemblance to the geographical map of Earth what are your thoughts on this early thievery leveling the skill thievery is dynamic in that it has fixed damage based on zidane's speed stat as well as the number of successful steals that zidane has accomplished it has the potential to be one of the single strongest abilities in the game bypassing both the target's defense and the protect status and it's particularly effective against strong enemies and bosses especially osma who has a brutal mini status effect this even allows zidane to be placed in a back row for increased protection as well as the ability to use any weapon effectively which allows zidan to utilize Soul blade which is unable to be used with daggers equipped the only issue is that it can take quite a while to power up to the point of it being a valid attack however players have learned that this hidden steel counter actually starts at the very beginning of the game even before the thievery skill has been acquired not only that but successful steals done by Marcus blank and Cinna also count towards this counter even if your inventory is full preventing you from attaining the item stolen so begin stealing early and steal often unused music tracks knowing that uamatsu went all out on this game's soundtrack there were not surprisingly several tracks that were replaced through the game's Journey including new themes for the black Waltz as well as a different version of the main theme vv's instruction manual appearance the original PS1 version of Final Fantasy Origins featured both ff1 and ff2 the instruction manual for ff1 Featured this beloved character as the chosen name for the Black Mage it also featured Cloud as the name for the warrior Sabin as the name for the Monk and Rosa as the name for the White Mage physical Tetra Master game in 2001 a physical version of the Tetra Master game was created and launched in Germany the game box included 120 cards two 10-sided die a double-sided playing field 20 counters and an instruction manual luckily they opted to provide all of the cards in one purchase instead of booster packs with only a handful like many collectible card games use Tetra Master games run for several hundred dollars on eBay Dark Crystal inspiration the developers were committed to having the series return to their medieval fantasy roots with ff9 however with the previous two entries within the series taking such a drastically different route they were aware of the risks involved with having such an Abrupt change of setting and tone but they felt that the risk was worthwhile so as to keep the series fresh and different and that returning to the same style of Graphics as ff7 and 8 would potentially leave audiences growing fatigued or bored this was especially a challenge as they'd yet to return to the medieval fantasy setting with the PlayStation's updated Graphics capabilities in order to assure the most aesthetically pleasing characters would not look too cartoony and looking cheesy as a result so in order to work within these criteria the Arts team would turn to a number of sources for inspiration for ff9 the First Source would be frank Oz who most notably worked as a puppeteer for the original live-action Yoda from Star Wars and Oz famously worked alongside another famous Puppeteer Jim Henson who served as the creator of the Muppets both of these individuals also worked on Sesame Street and would gain massive notoriety for their work but the most notable piece of inspiration that squares art team would draw inspiration from was that of Dark Crystal a dark fantasy film directed by both Jim Henson and Frank Oz the team would take note of how the two puppeteers were able to make seemingly blank entities take on a certain degree of realism making them appear as breathing life-like creatures this film was studied and absorbed by Square's art team and would directly Inspire and influence many of the settings characters and tones that were aimed at the young adult demographic a according to a retrospective interview it's been said that the world of Dark Crystal helped the team to create ff9's world full of Mystique while still being innocent and full of awe and in almost childlike Wonder salamander this was the original Japanese name for amarant he has salamander tattoos on his shoulders though they disappear when he goes into trance salamander in this case refers to a mythological reptile that's believed to be able to breathe and resist fire this is the root of amaranth's moniker the Flaming amarant or the Flaming salamander it's believed that his name was changed due to a name character limit similar to the naming situation that occurred in ff6 which if you haven't seen my video on you can find the link below edible boss there is only one boss in the game that quina can eat the Earth Shrine Guardian is edible allowing quina to eat it and learn earthquake unused Shrine Guardian battles while we're on the subject of the earth Shrine Guardian near the end of the game you split into four teams to defeat the four Shrine Guardians this in itself is a reference to the four fiends from the original Final Fantasy Lich Kraken Tiamat and Maryland however you end up only fighting one Guardian with zidane and queena the battles with the three other Guardians were originally included in early versions of the game not only that but it was revealed that you would have had to defeat all four Guardians again at a later point in the game except the second time would be in a marathon Mega man-esque fashion though they may have been deemed too challenging while this would follow the formula set by the four fiends in Final Fantasy it's believed that these second battles were removed so as not to artificially bloat the game's playtime by double dipping boss fights it's still unknown why the other three Guardians first fights never came to be but you can still fight all four later after Kuja used the crystal memory to recreate them scrapped endings the developers of the game had apparently changed the ending of the game seven different times as they could not agree on how the game should properly end on an earlier version of the game Hades was reported to be the game's end boss instead of necron what other endings would you have liked to see foreign ly critical strikes when a party member attacks another party member they will deal more damage than they would if they had attacked an enemy this is because your attacks on other players will be treated as a pre-emptive strike causing 1.5 times the normal attack damage ff9 was almost a spin-off game ff9 took on such a departure from the seven in eight games that they originally considered not even including this game as a main entry to the series it was originally meant to be an anniversary non-numbered game that was chock full of callbacks to the original games however they decided against this and chose to end full circle with a game that mirrored the original installments of the game though some argue that sakaguchi didn't necessarily want it to be a spin-off as depending on how you perceive them every game after six except for nine are all spin-offs as radical departures from the series roots and nine was the final true quintessential Final Fantasy experience Memoria project ff9 memoriam project is a non-playable non-profit passion project serving as a love letter and tribute to the original 2000 game several videos images and gifs have been revealed to Showcase an updated version of ff9 rendered entirely in Unreal Engine 5. while there hasn't been a whole lot revealed it's awesome to see how passionate some fans can be and we look forward to seeing more of what they create [Music] unused bad ending there are several unused lines inside of the game's code that state this about the world Fusion the IFA tree could not be stopped Gaia and Tara's Fusion caused Global chaos destroying many cities and taking many lives people have theorized that this would occur after dying to a particular boss much like the bad ending that occurs after you die to Lavos in Chrono Trigger Ruby Easter egg during one of the opening cut scenes the player will receive a choice between assuring they were kidnapping Queen Braun or princess Garnett if you select Queen Braun you will have an option to choose again if you incorrectly choose Queen Braun 64 times in a row the Tantalus actress Ruby will run into the scene scolding zidane on his stubbornness Japanese version differences not surprisingly there are a number of differences between the Japanese and English versions of ff9 some differences are cultural While others are just flat out changes some examples include the noble and pressing sword fighting minigame if you impress all 100 of the Nobles and queen Brawn you don't earn the 10 000 Guild that you would in the English version another reward difference occurs when you purchase all of stiltskin's items where the Japanese version does not reward you with the ribbon throughout the Japanese version there exists a stronger connection between the relationship of trance and Gaia and Terra high tide in English is actually knowledge of the full moon in Japan VV often refers to dagger as onichan in the Japanese version which means big sister and unlike the English version where zidane calls Steiner Russ D Japanese zidane refers to Steiner as pops or old man and this is done primarily because the Japanese Steiner speaks in a more archaic form of Japanese speaking in a very formal Ye Old Japanese style it's also believed that the Japanese version of queena actually portrays a caricature of a Chinese person this can even be seen each time the character speaks each of the characters in the Japanese version have a distinct way of speaking or a certain dialect so you can determine who is speaking without any context or script knowledge quina ends all of their speech with a specific sound that is often found in Mainland and Beijing Mandarin Chinese not only that but it's also common to see China often associated with the world of cooking and restaurants and Japanese manga and queena and the coup people are all obsessed with food and many argue that Queen's grandfather Quan appears to be Chinese as well anti-privacy protection some people have stated that there exists a brutal form of anti-piracy protection on the original PS1 disc though I couldn't find anything other than anecdotes to solidify this but the claims are that the final save point in a pirated version of the original PS1 ff9 disc is programmed in such a way that it corrupts the save file completely and after this the player is unable to load or use that save data in any way after restarting the game Ragtime Mouse hidden message we mentioned this character earlier but there's actually a bit more to the character than a simple ff10 reference first the character's name is thought to actually be a mistranslation from mouth to Mouse which would make more sense since the character has a gigantic mouth as a face but what's perhaps more interesting is that the money and experience received from the character is actually a Japanese language pun your party receives 59.63 for each party member and writing this number phonetically in Japanese translates to good job your party also receives 59 630 in Gill another derivative of the phonetic pronunciation of good job Star Trek reference the supervisor near the air cab station has a distinct dialogue that is directly in reference to a famous recurring catchphrase often used by several different characters throughout the Star Trek variations I'm a doctor not an engineer I'm a doctor not an escalators I'm a doctor not a coal miner unsettling beta renders beta renders for the character cast conveyed a darker expression on both zidane and dagger's faces both of them seem more Grimace dagger seems distraught and zidane seems like he's upset in both cases many question their design choice for AKO it's said that she's supposed to be wearing a tight-fitting one-piece pair of pants of a color that just so happens to be remarkably similar to her skin tone although it doesn't appear this way in game glitched Tetra master rank in tetramaster you gain a score based on the number and quality of cards you collect this score will increase and it determines what rank you are with titles given to each rank at 1690 you're labeled as a pro at 1698 you're granted the title of Master and at 1700 you would be given the title of the collector but the game is glitched and upon attaining the maximum score of 1700 the display glitches out preventing you from visibly attaining this elusive Max rank title vv's kids it has been confirmed that Vivi died shortly after the final fight of the game the dialogue displayed at the end of the game doesn't State its origin in the English version but the speech patterns match that of VV and the Japanese version and what's even more unfortunate is that VV ceased functioning and wasn't even aware that zidane actually survived and therefore was unable to say goodbye to his dear friend but on a brighter note we do see vv's replicants clones children whatever you'd like to call them while it's never been directly confirmed it's assumed that the VV Offspring were also manufactured at the dolly Factory what's more speculative however is that these black Mages were designed with a sort of self-awareness while also being informed of their finite lifespan as do not suffer an existential crisis like Vivi had to endure hope fully when if we see a remake we learn more about this VV was supposed to be in Dissidia NT Kuja and zidane are the only playable ff9 characters in Dissidia NT but Vivi was originally considered as an option despite not making the cut for the game he still has appearances in theatricum Final Fantasy Kingdom Hearts 2 as well as world of Final Fantasy [Music] original Hades fight as mentioned briefly before Hades was at one point going to serve as the game's final boss before necron was decided upon Hades would eventually be changed into an optional boss but luckily we've been given some concept art for this battle we can see that the background cylinder that we fight is still in use during the necron fight examining Hades you can see several Eyes located throughout the character model this theme matches the blinking eyes that appear in the battle background for the fight with necron developers want a sequel according to an interview of ff9's character artists during the game's 20th anniversary devs have expressed an interest in creating a sequel saying quote Final Fantasy 9 is loved by the fans but it's also very loved by us the development team I would be delighted if respecting the wishes of the original development team there could one day be the opportunity to continue the story of Final Fantasy 9 which meant so much to all of us so between the devs love and support and the Remake rumors it's very possible that we see this beloved game return once more scrapped job system with the return to the series classic fantasy Roots after its departure into the more new age and fresh styles of ff7 and 8 the original plan was to include the familiar job system that had been utilized in earlier entries within the franchise we were even fortunate enough to see concept art for some of the job system some of the job classes included in this concept art were scholar Bard Dragoon Archer Viking Elemental user Dark Knight and light magician while the system would be scrapped we do see at least some association with the classes to the characters especially with Freya fitting the role of Dragoon Freya and fratley were exiled by the king after the invasion of burmesha Freya and fratley were both exiled from their Kingdom and community that is why throughout the remainder of the game they both serve as free agents with Allegiance only to friends Amano character designs the primary character designer for Final Fantasy 1 through 6 yashitaka Amano only served as one of the several designers for ff7 through 10. his artwork would become ubiquitous within the early works of Final Fantasy he would create several designs for each of the characters within ff9 and they have a very similar aesthetic and visual style to his early designs his designs for ff8 would at least somewhat resemble or at least give a good bit of inspiration to the characters that appeared in the final product but for ff9 his designs would appear radically different than the final results that appeared in game while it's clear that square was seeking to take a different artistic route with the PlayStation FF games many argue that the Amano artworks for ff9 were actually superior to the final results and would have preferred a style more closely resembling his Works what are your thoughts on the Amano designs free movement battles it was ff12 that first officially introduced real-time battles to the mainline series while the reception has been mixed it's become the standard for the series ever since its introduction however the idea of a more free style of movement during battles may have initially been considered in ff9s development we would eventually discover early design documents that displayed a battle menu option called eight-way run players have deduced that characters could move around during fights though perhaps more in a manner of Chrono Trigger or Parasite Eve Square lost the source code after game launches especially in the early days of game development it was not uncommon for game companies to simply not keep track of their Source codes there wasn't much consideration to reuse them at the Time Square struggled to Port over the game due to losing its original source code and this can also be said for ff8 ff9 is connected to ff1 with this being such a homage to its predecessors it's no surprise that ff9 paid tribute with several different nods to the game there are two main characters named Sarah there is a major villain named Garland in both games and to top it off the first character composition is similar to The Classic ff1 Party dagger is the White Mage VV is the Black Mage Steiner to fighter and zidane to thief and of course the previously mentioned four fiends who return in the form of the four Guardians cut stealth mini game at one point players are trying to get into a lindblum castle occupied heavily by alexandrian guards the final game has us speak to a specific NPC and we automatically gain entry into the Zone but the original plan was to have a much more extensive section where zidane would be forced to sneak past guards in a sort of stealth mission unused zidane dream after zidane and the crew crashed the Tantalus in the forest zidane is trying to decide what to do while so worried about Garnett there's a short scene that was removed where zidan is laying in bed tormented with concern over her the screen shifts to Black and Garnett is seen running around zidane's mind and not surprisingly in an unfinished scene we see bits and pieces of vivi's Graphics as well Steiner and Beatrix were once the same character in early stages of the game Steiner and Beatrix were originally designed to be one character possessing all of the traits roles and responsibilities of both characters however the devs decided to split them up and give many of the more positive endearing aspects of Knighthood to Beatrix and the negative almost oh fish aspects to Steiner but both of them experienced character progression and it's interesting to see how their different sides of the same coin out of the blue boss there exists a divide in people's reception to the final boss of the game necron some people feel that the character serves as a subpar boss as we have little to no build up of the character he's not mentioned or directly referred to throughout the entirety of the game there's barely any other character that could be theorized to be necron but another group of people think that he was an ideal and meaningful boss the ultimenia states he was quote awakened by kuja's fear Despair and hatred which called out to it as he learned of his mortality just as his Ambitions were Within Reach people will argue that necron is the personified will to end everything necron sensed kuja's will to end it all including himself and was manifested as a result but with that said sound off in the comments about your thoughts on ff9's Final Boss necron is soul cage Theory during your fight with soul cage the character tells you a good amount of information even informing Vivi of his existence as a creation of the Mist Soul cage also stated that he's seen the moment of his 1000 year death and knows that you cannot kill him there he also mentions that if you defeat him the Mist will stop the only talk of his death is that it is not then and there and he seems very forward with this information and confident in his delivery then after he States it's futile to even try to kill him the party quickly uses a life or Elixir to One-Shot it and then he's gone Without a Trace we learn later that Garland simply created an illusion or a back door of the true beast and memoria's entrance is directly above the IFA and necron sort of shows up in the same manner as Soul cage and necron is also tied to and souls perhaps it's possible that Soul cage would amalgamate with the Terran fears of death and Oblivion and then by utilizing the power within the IFA tree it brought forth necron though if what necron states after defeating him is true that he is actually Eternal as long as there is life and death this goes directly against the reported one thousand year lifespan of Soul cage even taller characters the early Renditions of the series featured very short and stocky characters mostly due to technological limitations but in ff7 they only kept the short stocky characters and open world movement but battles would feature more realistic looking characters in ff8 the battles would feature taller characters than seven and the trend continued with tall characters in ff9 battles however it was revealed in an interview that the developers originally planned to make the characters even taller than they were in the final game Beatrix was corrupted by the Mist we learned that certain creatures that are exposed to the Mist would become aggressive with stimulated fighting instincts this is a theory as to why Beatrix was allowing of Queen bronze horrendous acts it wasn't until she was faced with the queen harming her own daughter that she had her eyes open to this this Theory doesn't hold up perfectly however as burmesha is literally within the Mist yet the entire population doesn't appear to have been corrupted to that extent and with zidane Freya and frightly having spent so much time in the Mist they also would have likely been corrupted but that doesn't seem to be the case Steiner was a War Orphan both of Steiner's parents were killed right at the end of the war in 1771. he was only five years old at the time but this gave him the motivation and drive to become a knight of Alexandria at the age of 16. gold chocobo bug the early beta versions of the game included an Infamous bug revolving around the gold chocobo the bug would allow players to completely skip a greater majority of the third disc players would acquire a gold chocobo just after accessing the blue narcissus but before getting the Hildegard 3 Once a gold chocobo was attained through upgrading a chocobo into its final form with the topographs the player would simply go to the chocobo's paradise or Sky Garden this would skip a large section of content including several annoying boss fights like Arc and Grant automatic access to the Hildegard 3. though you won't need it with the flying golden Chocobo the bug also has some side effects and the process of the skip you lose access to a ribbon and pumice piece which are very useful items and you cannot recover item from the Desert Palace but perhaps the biggest con of the skip was that dagger will be forever stuck in her depressed state meaning she'll fail to follow commands in battle this bug was patched before the game went live though some people claim that very early pressings of the North American PS1 version still have the bug in it Freya is the only female in the burmesian army from what we've seen throughout the game every female burmesian except Freya is wearing the light traditional female garments we learn in the ultimania that she is the only female in burmesha's military not only that but we learned that she joined the military because she wanted to get closer to fratley CEO me the very first vocal theme in the Final Fantasy series came to us in ff8 with eyes on me but for ff9 the music piece Melodies of life would serve as Square's second foray into a vocal theme for their games instead of hiring a professional writer for ff9's vocal song like they did in ff8s the team relied on the game's director hiroyuki Ito to write the lyrics it all worked out as the song would go on to become a fan favorite for many interestingly enough the director would opt to not be credited under his own name instead he chose to go buy the Alias xiomi this Alias would continue to be credited on the musical Works published throughout the years faces of oil vert perhaps one of the most intriguing and mysterious areas of the game is visited during your play time in oilvert it's one of the few locations that originally existed on Terra but would be transferred to Gaia when Garland failed to merge the two planets Kuja sends a Don here to retrieve the gulag Stone since there exists an anti-magic barrier preventing people from using magic inside of it this applies towards every character including your own encouraging the player to build a physical damage based team upon zidane's entry the player finds out about its Terran history but it's the way in which the player learns its big history that is most peculiar a room full of stone faces lining the walls will speak directly into the player's Minds recounting the record of their civilization the song playing in the background is titled chamber of a thousand face suggesting this might be the name of the actual room they're located in before the party can even grasp what it all means zidane insisted on leaving to save their friends preventing the player from learning anything further about the stone faces and after the party returns from Terra oil vert becomes completely inaccessible from the IFA root blocking its entrance we're left to mostly speculate as to what it was that was speaking to the team the faces mentioned that they were constructed to preserve the history of their people and it's not uncommon to see a preserver of history or knowledge used throughout various plot lines but some argue that there is more to these faces than meets the eye one of the fundamental things that fans point to is just is the Striking similarity between the stone faces and the face of necron but outside of this we're not left with much to go off of when were these faces made who made them why are so many faces destroyed or was it intentionally made that way find out on the next episode of Final Fantasy unused Desert Palace death scenes in the current game when you die after using region Sid you face a standardized game over however modders discovered that each individual character had their own death scenes where they had their own specific dialogue before Kuja threw them into a fire pit the scenes were removed from the final game although some people insist that these scenes are actually present within the original non-greatest hits version of the game Ruby was once a drag queen early concepts of the game indicated that Ruby was simply a member of the all-male crew of Tantalus that chose to be a drag queen and the rest of the team ran with it it wasn't all too uncommon for men to run drag in older performance arts as they didn't see women as good at performing this was confirmed in one of the 20th anniversary interviews where a character designer implied that the original intent for the character was to be a male but it was scrapped choosing to make her a biological female instead IFA tree statues in several sections of the game including the end game cinematic you can see what appears to be an army of stone soldiers wielding Spears and some even claimed to see at least one dog in the mix as well we're not given any context around them and no indicators as to what they might be and they're on the screen for only about a single second during the final cinematic there are several prominent theories as to their identities it's presumed that they may have been an army that was petrified and forgotten and completely forgotten about some suggest that it was a Terran Army prepared to finish off any guy and stragglers after absorbing their Crystal but were petrified after the absorption failed people will combat this Theory saying that the Terran people were implied to be much more civilized and not likely to use weapons in this manner others think that they were actually a more recent Invasion from lindblum and burmissions that met an unfortunate end some people think that they were simply placeholders that Souls would have gone into and given life to start a war against Gaia what are your thoughts vivi's Soul controls gaia's life flow in Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia BV mentions that if he stays away from his own world gaia's life flow will stop some people argue that this indicates that vivi's Soul has become important even quintessential in the life flow of Gaia is this what Vivi was referring to when he said my memories will be part of the sky why Kwon raised Vivi Quan had a more Sinister intent for raising Vivi in this cutscene it reveals that Kwan was fishing from the Mist for food when he caught Vivi from the sky he mentions that he's not big enough to eat yet and Vivi even mentions that Quan said he wasn't growing properly it's commonly accepted that Quan actually raised Vivi to thicken up and eat blank is artificial when examining blank's character model you can see stitches over various parts of his body even his face this theory states that he is actually an artificially created humanoid similar to Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas or perhaps genome from Super Mario RPG was he like Frankenstein's monster created by stitching together various body parts of different corpses this might make sense especially as his name in the French version of the game is Frank or did he suffer a brutal accident and need serious repair if he was an artificially created being it would also help to explain the name blank as in a blank slate able to have its purpose inscribed into it perhaps this was why he was so willing to sacrifice himself for the others in the forest though others theorized that he was a War Orphan and suffered traumatic burn wounds that would be nourished with very questionable skin grafts and some even go so far into this Theory to state that the burn events were so traumatic that he developed Amnesia where shortly after Baku adopted him and dubbed him blank as in a fresh start others believe that blank simply is in reference to him being blind and that's why he wears a belt over his eyes which Soul was zidan given we learned that zidane was a genome just like the rest of the genomes he eventually Encounters in the game the genomes exist as empty husks of beings that are normally created as adults but zidane was created as an infant and through this process of growing up he was able to develop complex emotions we learned that the genome's existence is not considered complete until they receive a soul to occupy its body and until then they feel little to no emotions the collective genome existence is dedicated to the preparation and acceptance of a soul this theory postulates that the genome that would become zidane actually took on the soul of dagger's mother Jane this would potentially explain why zidane would have such an instant fondness of dagger and more importantly it would explain the shared memory with dagger and her mom genomes were normally meant for Terran Souls but since Kuja kicked out zidane at such an early age perhaps the Terran Soul had yet to be implanted especially since the dawn's genome originally started as an infant perhaps it would have been easier for Garland to raise a genome baby over a Terran baby or perhaps he wanted the body to mature to an adult age to ease the transition for the Terran Soul zidane was born in September of 1783 and Sarah was born in January of the following year both characters were 16 during the events of the game zidane was four when Kuja deposited him on Gaia while Sarah was six when her mother died so theoretically zidane could have been an emotionless husk of a baby for two years before this specific soul of Jane entered his body after her death the saddest ending one Theory suggests that the ending we witness for ff9 is not nearly as happy as we all think it to be at the end Kuja mentions that Gaia would be destroyed and that the fusion of the two planets cannot be stopped but we clearly see the cast minus Vivi living happily on Gaia at the end this theory postulates that Kuja used the IFA tree to destroy gaia's Crystal and the Two Worlds really did fuse the IFA tree was already wrapped around the crystal to begin with and the cinematics even show its roots violently reacting even spearing through itself with the crystal destroyed even though the physical world of Gaia exists its Crystal was replaced with teras which is still on the verge of dying and what's even worse than this is that when the Terran Crystal with then Gaia perishes it won't be turned into a new planet the world of Gaia will slowly become a lifeless Planet as will every other planet until life no longer exists and that is when necron's statement comes true as well he exists as long as life and death exist when the universe is empty he too will perish and that's it for this video the algorithm compels you to like And subscribe so do that I've got a couple more Final Fantasy videos on the way but let me know what other topics you'd like to see covered as well a big shout out to today's video sponsor brilliant as well as the channel members that support the creation of our content every month and thank you for watching maker out

Channel: Maker

Views: 242,795

Keywords: final fantasy 9, final fantasy 9 ost, final fantasy 9 music, final fantasy 9 melodies of life, final fantasy 9 ending, final fantasy ix, final fantasy ix ost, final fantasy ix soundtrack, final fantasy ix review, final fantasy ix ending, final fantasy ix speedrun, final fantasy ix gameplay, iceberg, iceberg explained, final fantasy, JRPG

Id: bZMhm9tipsc

Length: 80min 11sec (4811 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2022