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Final Fantasy XIII Non-Spoiler Thread

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
I blogged through the first two riddle-like chapters of this plot (as well as my thoughts on them) over at http://mr-ite.livejournal.com/679104.html

Here is the story so far based on the YouTube videos and the comments on here and the blog.
There are two planets in close proximity: Pulse and Cocoon. Each world has God-like beings called Fal'Cie, who curse people every once in a while and turn them into l'Cie. When this happens, the Fal'Cie give the new l'Cie orders. If the l'Cie fails, he becomes a Cie'th (shambling undead). If he succeeds, the Fal'Cie reward him by turning him into a crystal statue of himself, to "live eternally."

Pulse and Cocoon went to war a while ago and old grudges are still around. The government of Cocoon, known as Sanctum, is high-tech with robots and stuff. They hate Pulse a lot and will not tolerate anyone who has come into contact with Pulse Fal'Cie. So they set up this exile ritual called The Purge that involves telling everyone they are sending the Pulse l'Cie to Pulse, but really they just kill them.

Serah (Snow's fiance and Lightning's sister) was turned into a l'Cie and given a mission - the details of which we do not know. She was taken from them and put into a Vestige. Lightning presumably retired from the Guardian Corps. of Sanctum at this time, and Snow joined the resistance. Together, Lightning and Snow coordinated an attack on Cocoon that had two objectives. First: Free the doomed people on their way to the Purge. Second: Create a distraction while breaking into the Vestige and rescuing Serah. The operation was successful on both counts, including beefing up their numbers with a bunch of vapid tag-alongs.

We don't know much about the Vestige that Serah was in, except that it was being controlled by a Pulse Fal'Cie. We DO know that Serah's mission was accomplished while talking to Lightning and Snow about saving Cocoon (Lightning and Snow promised to protect Cocoon). We can safely assume that l'Cie are basically pawns in the chess game of the Fal'Cie, and that Serah's mission was not to 'Protect Cocoon' - it was most likely be a catalyst for whatever Lightning and Snow will accomplish.

The party now consists of Lightning, Snow, Vanille, Hope, and a yet unnamed tall sassy black man with hidden paternal instincts who is contemptuous of the protagonist's military history with the evil government - the very same sassy tall black man who, when pushed to challenge his own beliefs, betrays how similar he is to the very organization that he loathes. Since that is a mouthful, and his name has yet to be spoken aloud, I will refer to him as "skinny-Barret" until his name is uttered.

In a fit of rage and panic over the crystallization of Serah, the party attacks the Fal'Cie running the Vestige, who retaliates by turning them all into l'Cie. The Vestige takes heavy fire from Sanctum forces and crashes into the ocean underneath Cocoon city, before turning everything to ice. On its way down, it sends out shockwaves that ravage the city -- looks like protecting Cocoon was not a priority. Either the Fal'Cie are bad prophets, or they aren't thinking ahead. Time will tell.

I'll soldier on at some other point. For now, though, thanks!

Edit: now that I've got a grip on what the hell is going on, I blog LP style here.
 
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Zee

wangxian married
AKA
Zee
I heard there was supplementary reading required to fully understand the plot. That's fine with me, I like reading, but how do I get my hands on that material? Wiki would probably have spoilers galore (as I think this thread probably does too). Should I know more than I do at this point? Is the game going to eventually tell me?

Translation of the prologue novel for XIII is here. Although it does give a better framework for the plot & characters, it's also filled with things that are spoilers. So yeah.
 

tibiquera

Lv. 25 Adventurer
For those who actually bothered with the plot in XIII I have a question: is there any depth and logic to it? Because the only thing I got out of it was that 'these are the bad guys, kill them'. I know FF usually has lots of hidden meanings and stuff, but I just didn't care to go deeper when I was playing.
 

Zee

wangxian married
AKA
Zee
Because the only thing I got out of it was that 'these are the bad guys, kill them'.

...Really? I mean XIII's plot is pretty simple when you got right down to it (and logic gets tossed out the window at the end) but how'd you get "these are the bad guys kill them" from it? They only really come around to a singular goal of "defeat the enemy" more than halfway through. Everything up til then is really more of the characters struggling with personal conflicts. No one except maybe Snow was interested in killing bad guys for the first few chapters.
 

Splintered

unsavory tart
I agree with Zee.

The first part of the game is pretty much all about survival. The only time they really fought was when they forced too. They spend most of their time trying to escape the oncoming sanction soldiers. Only Lightning and Hope wanted to kill something. And their targets weren't exactly logical. Lightning wanted to go after the sanctum just because it was run by fal'cie
even though later this turned out to be the right course of action
. Hope wanted to kill Snow because of anger projection.

But Snow was pretty much waist deep in denial while Vanille and Sazh just wanted to run away and avoid everything.

The entire first 9-10 chapters doesn't even reveal the final boss. The best and most memorable confrontations are between the characters, and hell, themselves (in form of eidolon battles).

It's got a mess of a narrative but I thought one of the biggest complaints is that they didn't have an overaching "kill this" thing.
 
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tibiquera

Lv. 25 Adventurer
Ok, I was over-simplifying things. I meant after all "personal struggles" had been resolved, it was pretty straight-forward. Kill Barthandelus because he's evil kind of thing.

I'm just curious if there was a more compelling story behind it. You know, like when you watch a movie for the second time and understand parts you didn't the first time.
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
I meant after all "personal struggles" had been resolved, it was pretty straight-forward. Kill Barthandelus because he's evil kind of thing.

I don't mean to be difficult....but didn't you just describe every Final Fantasy game? After all the personal struggles are resolved, what do you do in any FF game apart from storm the baddie's place and kill him?
 

Splintered

unsavory tart
Ok, I was over-simplifying things. I meant after all "personal struggles" had been resolved, it was pretty straight-forward. Kill Barthandelus because he's evil kind of thing.

I'm just curious if there was a more compelling story behind it. You know, like when you watch a movie for the second time and understand parts you didn't the first time.
Personal struggles don't get resolved until more than halfway through the game. :X Fang's doesn't really get resolved until The end.

You mean like overarching theme?

Erm, I guess in my personal opinion: environmentalism as VII, love as VIII, mortality as IX, religious theocracy as X, and nuclear deterrence as XII.

I would maybe put down XIII as heavily inspired on the War on Terror? Stop looking at me like that, hear me out.


The entire game we are bombarded that as much as the fal'cie are to blame for causing a lot of shit, the population of Cocoon didn't just allow to happen, they demanded it.

The first time you hear it is in a newscast where an overwhelming poll accepted the purge, you hear it in Nautilus when people just want to purge an entire city for having been near a L'cie, Dysley mentions it. And Yaag Rosch endlessly wanes on about it and you can't get him too shut up.

Basically, it's the problem when you've got widespread paranoia and hysteria on a subject people don't understand, but are willing to give the government overwhelming power to take steps that eventually hurt the people themselves.

If there were ever advice that would have fixed a good portion of the game it would be, "calm the fuck down"

Other than that? There are other things, mostly inherently found in other games.

-government dependency. You get a lot of monologues, especially in the beginning, on just how much advice and support fal'cie gives them, including light, food, and probably wiping their ass
- Freedom of choice (ironic that they did everything Dysley wanted them to do, but because they had the will to do it on their own terms- they were free. Too bad this point was so convoluted, it led to the worst shitfest of an ending). Ties into human self determination
-Theocracy- apparently Cocoon is. Awkwardly done though, X's did it better
-xenophobia
- inability to properly cope with trauma.
- Also all the other self-struggles of the party members. Running away without confronting the issue, giving up, projecting anger to someone else, willingness to do whatever it takes to keep someone safe- even at the expense of other people's lives, denial.

I don't see how you can separate the character's issues from the theme of the game. What would VII be without Cloud's issues, or Tifa's insecurities, or Barret's anger, or Aerith's ancestry?

EDIT;

lol.

Did you just come to troll this thread because of Username?

*slow clap*
 
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tibiquera

Lv. 25 Adventurer
Thanks Splintered, that's what I was looking for.

When I was playing the game I thought they were touch xenophobia like they did in X, but it doesn't quite get there.

EDIT;

lol.

Did you just come to troll this thread because of Username?

*slow clap*
Initially yes, but then I suddenly got curious if it was my fault that I didn't get the point of the story or if the story was just bad.
 

Kikyou

just a fleeting memory
AKA
M-Mira, crackitlackin, Izaya Orihara, SAILOR NARU, Sharon Rainsworth, Mara, Brosuke Hanamura, Commissioner Gordon, Santa Claus, Lenneth Valkyrie
Take off Splintered's pants and then we'll find out.
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
Dudes... this game is pretty bad...

And it's such a shame, because as a first draft the story has a lot of potential. There's some really awesome stuff in here, but boy oh boy...

edit: at final battle and my opinion stands.
 
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Avalanche87

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Bakito/Marak/DJMarak
Hi all. (now that I've got the right thread)

I'm generally quite late to the party so to speak, sooooo I've just started FFXIII I'm about 4 hours in aaaaaand so far, I'm pretty happy.... totally blown away by the clips! I enjoyed the opening sequence, I'm enjoying how the party has come together and so forth. The lore and stuff is a little tricky to follow so far, but I'm sure it will develop the more time I spend in it all.

I LOOOOOOVE the little chocobo chick in the dude's afro! SO FUNNY!!!

Although, I really don't know what's going on with Vanille's voice... is she almost trying to sound Australian some times?

Everyone bags the hell out of FFXIII, but me, I always try to see the upside in things :)

Peace :D
 

JechtShotMK9

The Sublimely Magnificent One
AKA
Kamiccolo9
I liked XIII (GASP SHOCK I CAN'T BELIEVE HE SAID THAT)
I mean, it has it's problems. Vanille's VA is a bit....awkward, especially if someone else is in the room, lol. I'm not a big fan of all the side quests being in one area of the game, nor of that side quest basically being a dumbed down version of XII's. I don't mind the linearity as much as some (the games are all linear, let's not kid each other), the battle system is fun (it's not "press X to win" go away you're wrong), and the game is fucking gorgeous. Oh, and the music is fantastic.

I actually prefer XIII-2, but the trilogy as a whole is, in my opinion, worth playing. I'd buy a PS4 collection up in a heartbeat.
 

looneymoon

they/them
AKA
Rishi
I don't even remember 90% FF13s plot, but that Leona Lewis song still makes me cry about lesbians.

Wait, wasn't there a scene in 13 where someone starts crying over some shit in a past life they don't recall exactly? That's me and FF13.
 

Fangu

Great Old One
The person with memory loss was Fang, or? Never saw her cry?

Wait, Vanille probably had some amount of memory loss too? And she did certainly cry...

XIII was confusing :lol:
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
The person with memory loss was Fang, or? Never saw her cry?

Wait, Vanille probably had some amount of memory loss too? And she did certainly cry...

XIII was confusing :lol:

Fang had memoryloss, Vanille pretended to likewise have memory loss but in actuality very much remembered Fang turning into Ragnarok, destroying battlefleets and breaking Cocoon's shell.
 

Fangu

Great Old One
Yeah, that's what I seemed to remember as well.

But then there were no other memory losses, or? Please enlighten us o/
 
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