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Re: Final Fantasy Megathread
Old 07-12-2020, 12:03 PM   #244
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Default Re: Final Fantasy Megathread

Nope, couldn't do it. Spent a couple of days choosing to do other things than play XIII. When I finally got myself to jump back into it after a while I just felt grumpy and frustrated that I was playing it. Clearly I wasn't enjoying myself. The pacing, I think, is really the thing. The repetition is one thing, of course, but also the battles just take too long and too much effort? They're not hard, but you can't just blow your past most of them. In most FF games the random/usual battles are over pretty quick - a round or two. Those are meant to be more of a war of attrition making sure you can survive the gauntlet and through to the boss. If you run into really challenging enemies you've ever gone into an area too early or maybe you're in the final dungeon.

I think the way XIII battle system is designed they were kind of forced to make the random battles more substantial in order to prevent concerns that the game just played itself (which was a concern with XII's Gambit system, if you recall, but of course with XIII you don't even have that Gambit preparation). You only can provide direct orders to the party leader (although "Auto-Battle" seems pretty encouraged); nothing for the other two characters in the battle. The only influence you have overall is Paradigm system where you choose what roles each character plays. For that system to come into play, you have to have a reason to swap roles mid-battle and to give a reason to do that I think SE felt forced to make generic battles longer and more involved than they had been traditionally.

The system itself, honestly, can be fun. I had fun with it with boss battles and in earlier portions of the game, but when you're fighting more or less the same battle with the same pattern for the 50th+ time it starts to wear really thin.

There are also smaller frustrations with the system being quasi-real time in a turn-based shell that by themselves can be forgiven or ignored, but again when you're encountering them near every battle so many times over a 40+ hour experience those small pet peeves become real aggravations eventually. Thinking about how, like, enemies have attacks that affect an AOE. They swipe a claw and any character in the path of that claw will take damage. Presumably, this would be part of a system where you have to strategically position your characters to avoid attacks like these. Except you don't have any direct control over where your characters go and they sure like to bunch up together. Maybe you could switch to ranged spells to keep out of reach, but the characters won't necessarily back off and, again, they tend to bunch together needlessly. The game would say get a Sentinel on the field to draw the enemy attacks, but when your other character refuse to break away from the Sentinel everybody gets hit anyway. Things like this don't happen every battle and it doesn't always impact the end result (with everyone going back to full strength at the end of battles), but over that 40+ hour game it happens enough.

I think if they had cut down the amount of "random" battles dramatically and focused on fewer, more strategic battles rather than dozens of drawn out peons every chapter the pacing would be much improved and the game much more enjoyable.

******

Doesn't address the story issues, though. I was feeling a little more positive on the story in my last post, but push a little further ahead and ran into some further narrative issues that played a part in my not wanting to push through and finish the game.

So, the first and maybe biggest concern I have is the Sazh suicide fakeout. The narrative is deliberately deceitful here for no purpose other than to artificially and briefly heighten the drama. It is cheap and it pulls me out of the game more than draws me in. A reminder of the scene:

After finding out some heavy info about the fate of his son, Sazh puts a gun to his head, the screen goes blank, and there's a bang. By itself this scene is whatever. Its a play for emotions and pretty obvious that Sazh didn't likely actually shoot himself when you take that scene as is. An moderately experienced audience is going to recognize the narrative trick for what it is, but its whatever. However, immediately following is a somber scene showing the bad guys carrying Sazh off in a coffin. This narratively confirms he is dead. It comes off as almost a play on narrative tropes. Like it wanted you to think it was faking you out, but then said "No, we went there." This would be kind of impressive if that were the case. Problematic a bit that the only Black character (and only second Black character in FF after Barrett, I think?) would be the one to kill himself, but the idea of a party member committing suicide is new territory and heavy stuff.

But then, just a few scenes alter, we see Sazh alive and well and a brief flashback explaining he was only knocked unconscious by some other character. This is deceitful and manipulative. Acknowledging that deceit and manipulation are legitimate tools to use narratively, these are not used effectively or with good intentions. There is no benefit to believing that Sazh is dead for 15 minutes. None of the characters are under the impression that he's dead. The people present during that scene see that he doesn't kill himself, and nobody else experiences that moment in the same way we the audience do. It changes nothing. It means nothing. It is wasted.

That puts a bitter taste in my mouth and it really stuck with me after my initial playthrough. It was the first time I was thinking I didn't like the game originally, but knowing it was coming I was trying to forgive it this time and find things to appreciate it.

However, the second piece that really rubs me wrong narratively is the drama around Vanille and Fang and their history. They were from the "enemy", Pulse, and supposedly completed their mission centuries ago and placed into stasis. They awoke recently which is the backstory that kicks off the game's events. Throughout most of the game, they each state they don't remember what happened centuries ago or what their focus was. They're not just saying this to the rest of the team, they're saying this to each other.

There is a "Datalog", like an ingame encyclopedia about the world and characters. I remember the first time I played the game I received an update to the Datalog and found under Vanille's entry new information that she had turned into Ragnarok 600 years ago and heavily damaged Cocoon. This was big info and it was new and it was delivered via an encyclopedia entry rather than in the story itself. And then the characters all acted like they knew this information, no big deal. Then plot twist! It was revealed in the story that actually Fang had turned into Rangarok. I hated this. It felt, again, like a false plot twist. I wouldn't have known that Vanille was suddenly claiming about being Ragnarok except I looked in the datalog. It felt lazy and the twist felt untrue since the datalog presented the lie as fact - not a story that was being told by Vanille.

In the years since, I learned there is an optional cutscene where Vanille lies about being Ragnarok. I questioned why this would be optional, but okay. I was resolved ot make sure I saw that scene and see the story unfold as it was meant to be. Unfortunately, the Datalog still updates before that scene is available and reveals (in a factual manner) that Vanille was Ragnarok. Okay, I said, they made a mistake and unlocked that Datalog entry early. Let's find the scene. So I found the scene and it was... nothing? I mean, a scene is there, but Vanille only casually mentions it. This should be a big plot reveal and its treated like offhand information. I was still left with the impression that I was missing something and it pulled me right out of the narrative.

And again I got to the scene where the truth is revealed, but it fell flat again, maybe even harder this time, because this whole secret and plot twist is just thrown out there without any weight or heft. We don't know the info long enough to be impacted by the fact it was a lie. It, again, feels like false drama rather than just telling the story.

*****

So, frustrated with the game and no longer really enjoying myself I decided to stop with XIII and move on. I ended up deciding not to get back into XIV right now. I'd really end up just fiddling about. I'm not spending another 6 months going through the story lol. So, I'm jumping ahead to XV.

I remember enjoying XV overall, but having some concerns with the story - this time using the narrative as a hook to get the player to buy DLC and a movie. I guess it worked because I bought the Windows Edition which comes with all that. I also didn't get into the anime and movie when it originally came out. This time I watched the anime, Brotherhood, and the movie, Kingsglaive, hoping they'll provide a little more context to the story I didn't have the first time. The anime was good. I liked the shorter episodes focused on the characters. The party is the strongest aspect of XV, so it was nice to see a little more of their backgrounds.

The movie is not good. It looks really good and its fun that the action scenes kind of looked like a cinematic version of how the game actually plays, but I didn't care anything about the movie specific characters. It did provide some background to stuff that I didn't have before. I started the game and have gotten into Chapter 2. The end of chapter 1 is when they show a brief clipshow of the movie that provides basically no info. Its like a trailer. I remember being confused and having to read a wiki on the events of the movie (refused to watch it then out of principle). I don't feel confused this time, so that's nice.

Its still early but I feel a lot better playing XV than I did XIII, so looking forward to continuing through it.
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