Alright, I’ve got an extra long episode for ya this week.
I ran into a little trouble in one of the fights, but it was mostly that once you get into this set of missions, it’s hard to stop! There are a couple things here that show some weaknesses of the storyline, a bit too much happening off-screen at times, but overall it’s really strong. This is where things definitively Take A Turn, plotwise.
It is kind of funny for a game that already has magic and wizards all over the place to take a turn where things get really supernatural, but I think it works. There’s kind of a wall up between the gameplay and plot in that way. Normal magic is one thing, but an actual being from another dimension? Well, that’s something different.
I suppose there’s always a tension between how close or far a speculative world is from our own. Ivalice seems to operate as a less-mythological and magical present for a world that was much more fantastical in the past. There used to be all these wild things going on, airships flying around, gods and demons walking the earth. But not now, this is the age of reason and rationality, it’s only in the distant, misty past where such things can exist. Just ignore the goblins and skeletons attacking travelers, haha.
It is mentioned in this video I think, or maybe a later one, but this is a first attempt at like… bringing all of Final Fantasy into the same fictional world, even if it doesn’t really make sense. This was carried forward with Final Fantasy XIV, the MMO, where they love making extremely specific references to events from past games, or just incorporating chunks of them directly into the world or plot.
The Beige Moth 