Space Travel & Airships – The Canon that Links FFVII & FFX

Shademp

Shademp

420
Over the years it has become a fairly well-known fact that Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy VII share the same universe, with the former taking place in the distant past of the latter, though with the two still taking place in entirely different solar systems.

This piece of canon hold many esoteric and confusing elements, which require extensive analysis to be grasped completely. To help fans spot the difference between the land of knowledge and the land of the unknown, TheLifestream.Net now presents a juicy double feature for your enjoyment.

- Is FFVII connected to FFX and X-2?http://thelifestream.net/canon-of-ffvii/is-ffvii-connected-to-ffx-and-x-2/
Squall_of_SeeD's original article about the canonical connection, which has been the main reference source on the topic, has now been updated and re-arranged, with the addition of the segment 'Narrative Gaps of the Canonical Link' written by Shademp


- Origins of the Sherahttp://thelifestream.net/canon-of-ffvii/origins-of-the-shera/
Shademp clears the confusion to a question that holds contradicting answers throughout the Compilation of FFVII: Was the Shera built by Cid or not?


Both of the above articles can be found in our Canon of FFVII section.
 
U

ultima espio

Pro Adventurer
Hmm, I'm not too sure on the Spirans traveling through Space to the Planet. I'm sure if they came from Space there'd be some record of it, and Ifalna probably would have mentioned it.

I'm sure Dissidia implies that they are all connected by the Void, which is how Gilgamesh gets from one to the other. Think of it like Kingdom Hearts, individual worlds protected by invisible walls, and only select individuals can move between them.

My guess is that someone found a portal to the rift and landed in FF7's world at some point, and got stuck. Sephiroths' line in the flashback supports this, where he says "Those who disliked journeying appeared", almost like they came out of nowhere. If they were Cetra that stopped praying and stuff, he'd have just said it I guess.

Maybe analysing Dissidia would help? I'm sure it was confirmed as canon.
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
@ultima

You raise an interesting point. Nojima only mentions "travel to distant planets" but not the form of travel. How fascinating that I instantly filled in this gap with SPACE SHIPS!!! without considering other interpretations. Further solidifies the need for the section I wrote which points out all the gaps.
As a matter of fact, yes. Shinra quits the Gullwings, receives enormous financial assistance from Rin and uses Vegnagun to extract mako energy from the Farplane. However, he can’t complete the system to utilize the energy in a single generation, and the Shin-Ra Company is built on another planet in the future once travel to distant planets is possible, and stuff like that … Those things happen about 1000 years after this story, though.
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It is not specified if the travel is a traversal by going the distance between A and B or if the "travel" is an instantaneous jump, either via a magic jump through "rifts" or a wormhole (the sci-fi version of fantasy "portals"). I should consider acknowledging this aspect in the article to a greater degree, aside from the portion where I write "The trip could have been instantaneous or even one that took several millennia". Right now I'm suffering a huge headache and need to lay down a bit.


As for opinions on "what Ifalna should have said" and "what Sephiroth should have said", I think these apply no matter what version of the FFX-FFVII connection one adopts. There are too many gaps in this link and fans will widely disagree on how much they are willing to accept. Not to mention the fact that perceived incompleteness in the original FFVII script, in light of the connection to FFX, may largely be blamed on the fact that the FFX story did not even exist when FFVII was being made.
 
The Twilight Mexican

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
Interesting observation about portals. Never even considered that. No idea whether Nojima had either, of course, but one literally has no way to know short of asking.

As for what Ifalna should or should not have said, given what Shademp mentioned (FFX's script wasn't even a twinkle in anyone's eye when FFVII was written), that isn't really a good point. That's similar to the arguments folks make that "an NPC somewhere should have mentioned it, 'cause that's kind of a big deal" -- but those arguments don't make sense to me.

I live in the U.S., which has existed as a nation for less than three hundred years. If aliens settled on a planet more than 2,000 years ago, and most people were descendants of those aliens, do you think anyone is going to be talking about it even if it's common knowledge (and given that no one even remembers the names of the towns that used to be Midgar, I'd bet it isn't)? No, they are not.

I assure you that on a day-to-day basis, no one outside an academic context is talking about European settlers founding the United States, despite how much less passage of time is involved. It's not pertinent to anyone's daily existence, nor is it a topic anyone feels that anyone else needs educating on when everyone shares the common background of being an immigrant or descendant of immigrants.

If we were all descended from aliens and 2,000 years had passed, of course we're going to talk like we've always been here. If it's all anyone knew, no one is going to consider it weird. =P

Similarly, depending on how much time had passed since Spirans showed up and Jenova's arrival, it may not have been anything worth Ifalna mentioning either. Or it may not be pertinent to the questions Gast was asking at the time of recording those videos.
 
U

ultima espio

Pro Adventurer
Yeah I got a bit carried away with that last part. Would have made more sense if it was used in a remake.

What exactly is the Void? Is it possible that it can be used to travel different time periods of those worlds? Is the Historia Crux a part of it?

Dissidia implies that the FF games all happen around the same time in their worlds, so Shinra would have been working on his plans during Advent Children...

Hmm I think we need to know just what is going on in Dissidia/012 to get some more information on this.
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

Donator
TBH, I don't like this bit of canon. I don't see why they need to be physically connected worlds, or even why there needs to be some kind of explanation for the situation that arises in Dissidia. It's cool when they plan out connected worlds in advance, but tagging it on as an afterthought seems kind of silly to me - like those fanfics that try to make all the characters related to each other.

Nevertheless, I acknowledge its canonical status. And all kudos to Shademp for the hard work and scholarship he put into this.
 
The Twilight Mexican

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
Yes, major kudos to Shademp. He was adept at "keeping me honest," so to speak, in evaluating my section of the article and ensuring that we didn't publish anything that had not been verified in canon, even if it seemed an obvious detail that fills in the narrative gaps (e.g. the Spiran technology was lost when Jenova launched its attack).
ultima espio said:
Yeah I got a bit carried away with that last part. Would have made more sense if it was used in a remake.

What exactly is the Void? Is it possible that it can be used to travel different time periods of those worlds? Is the Historia Crux a part of it?
Click to expand...

Excellent question. Clearly the Void must allow for travel through not only space, but time as well.
ultima espio said:
Dissidia implies that the FF games all happen around the same time in their worlds, so Shinra would have been working on his plans during Advent Children...
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Recall that Laguna's 27-year-old self is present in the Dissidia conflict alongside his at least 17-year-old son (whose present day is when Laguna himself is approximately 44), and both are present in said conflict with the witch/sorceress whose present day is generations after both have died.

No reason to believe any or all the characters' relative "present" are contemporary when some from the same world aren't even contemporary to one another.
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
Ultima espio's portal theory has been added to the "Space…the Final Fantasy Frontier?" commentary. The rest of the article has been edited to not position the Spirans as "space migrators" but merely have them be migrators or travellers (thus leaving open numerous possibilities). This edit was consciously not made for the questions asked in the first segment of the Space…the Final Fantasy Frontier? segment.
Start asking questions and the narrative tapestry proves incomplete. Why did the Spirans migrate into space in the first place? Was it a journey made out of a desire to explore or to escape impending doom from some threat we have not been told about? Did some Spirans stay behind or did everybody leave? Does Spira still exist during the events of FFVII, continuing on with its own civilization? What happened to the technology that brought the Spirans to the FFVII world? Was the technology destroyed when Jenova attacked humanity or was there a gradual decline in both the knowledge and resources to drive the machines?

A few readers may now have noticed a basic assumption based on Nojima’s statements about the connection between FFX and FFVII. Nojima says “the Shin-Ra Company is built on another planet in the future once travel to distant planets is possible” but nowhere does he specify the form of travel. Because he says that the travel to other planets happen about 1000 years after FFX-2, one imagines the world of Spira advancing their technology enough to build space ships. That is not the logically necessary interpretation however. Spirans might have deloped a form of portal technology to travel from one planet to the other, without even having to fly above the atmosphere of their own planet. The technology used may even be based on magic. Because Nojima does not tell us the form of travel, we can’t know if Spiran space ships ever landed (or crashed) on the surface of the FFVII planet. Even if we assume that space ships were used, we don’t know if the space between planets was painstakingly traversed over tens of thousands of years or if the ship(s) used some form of portal/wormhole technology.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have only begun exploring the narrative gaps and the ways in which fans will often fill in gaps without realizing it.
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Because space travel has been the ubiquitous assumption, I write the above commentary segment to give the same "wow" feeling I had when espio made me realize that I filled in a gap in Nojima's statement.


Ultima has also been added to the Article Credits section.
ultima espio: For the suggestion that portals may have been used to travel from one planet to the other; not space ships.
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Kuja9001

Kuja9001

Ooooh Salty!
AKA
roxas9001, Krat0s9001, DarkSlayerZero
Just for clarification

Does Dissidia say the Void is how everything is connected or is the Indimensional Rift?

I'm going with the Rift because the void has never displayed any of features other than destruction.
 
K

kapdo

Lv. 1 Adventurer
Here's an interesting small detail that wasn't mentioned in the article.

FFVII dialogue in the Shinra Building:
Barret: "...heh heh heh."
Cloud: "Knock it off. You're giving me the creeps."

FFX dialogue on the Thunder Plains:
Rikku: "Eh heh heh heh heh heh heh…"
Tidus: "‘Heh heh heh…’ You’re giving me the creeps!"

Also, in addition to the hidden Buster Sword, in the FFX beta video Tidus is shown to have black hair like Zack.

Reincarnation comes to mind :D
 
T

Tashasaurous

Tash for Short
AKA
Sailor Moon, Mini Moon, Hotaru, Cardcaptor Sakura, Meilin, Xion, Kairi, Aqua, Tifa, Aerith, Yuffie, Elena, Misty, May, Dawn, Casey, Fiona, Ellie
kapdo said:
Here's an interesting small detail that wasn't mentioned in the article.

FFVII dialogue in the Shinra Building:
Barret: "...heh heh heh."
Cloud: "Knock it off. You're giving me the creeps."

FFX dialogue on the Thunder Plains:
Rikku: "Eh heh heh heh heh heh heh…"
Tidus:"‘Heh heh heh…’ You’re giving me the creeps!"

Also, in addition to the hidden Buster Sword, in the FFX beta video Tidus is shown to have black hair like Zack.

Reincarnation comes to mind :D
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Nah, this is not a connection just because four people said similiar dialogue in two different games in different times and in different worlds.

Besides, I seriously doubt Zack is an reincarnation of Tidus. Besides, that's just a beta video. Doesn't mean it was actually in the game itself, since they changed Tidus to blonde, and no, Cloud's not incarnated either.
 
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