Nandemoyasan
Standing guard
- AKA
- Johnny
I was playing through the PSX version of FFT, and I had a mind to stop near the end (before going to the Murronde Holy Seat battle sequence) and start up a game of War of the Lions instead. I guess I've just been in a FF Tactics mood for a while now. I'm of the opinion that it's really the best, highest quality "Medieval Fantasy-Styled" Final Fantasy that we are ever going to get (until SE proves me wrong, which, well, they've still got time).
I happened on the pinned comment for the video, saying that certain people feel that the game's story is demonizing towards Christianity. I'm of the mainline Protestant (as opposed to evangelical protestant) sort myself, though I have sort of popped in and out of churches of all various styles over the years.
Now, I will say that right out of the gate, I immediately thought "People offended by FFT's representation of Christianity ("The Church of Glabados"/"Saint Ajora" are stand-ins for The Catholic Church and Jesus Christ, respectively) are probably not very familiar with the Spanish Inquisition, and also are probably Fundamentalist Evangelicals." (A layperson needs only think of Helen Lovejoy squealing 'won't someone PLEEEZE think of the children', to get what I mean).
As far as mainline doctrine goes, I think FFT is recasting the theory that the Church had merged the stories of Jesus of Nazareth and Judas of Gamala (a Jewish Revolutionary of the time) in order to build a religion around Jesus Christ being the living incarnation of God, having used the fear that would generate in people ("Disobeying me is basically disobeying God") to build its power. You can read about him, here.
The writings of a Roman Senator named Tacitus and a Jewish Scholar whom had earned patronage in the Roman Empire (thus viewed as a traitor by contemporary rabbinical teachings) do mention Jesus-who-was-called-Messiah a couple of times (they aren't exactly kind about it, he was not popular so much as infamous), so there is in fact historical evidence and corroboration for Jesus' existence and the reliability of the gospels' non-supernatural recordings of events, if you are interested. Link cuz I'm cool like that.
But what gets me is that not only is Final Fantasy Tactics based on the same historical events as Game of Thrones ("The War of the Roses"), they also came out around the same time (Tactics originally released June 20, 1997. A Song of Ice and Fire originally released August 1, 1996). It's kinda weird, that two writers, one from America and one working for a videogame company in Japan, would both seize on this one historical event to base their narratives off of, and come up with two wildly different fantasy stories as a result.
I have no opinion about this stuff, I just find it all very fascinating. Books good. Read stuff and get smart.
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