Skan
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- dief
Just wanted to see what everyone else thinks about the nature of summons and/or if anyone's come up with a comprehensive explanation for how they work.
Summons have been one of the coolest parts of the Final Fantasy series for me, and I was severely disappointed where there was little to no background given on them in the Compilation. Additionally, the summons are often -- well, they're basically just battle tools. They seem to have no personality or individual will, as opposed to what you see in some of the other games in the series.
Meanwhile, what little we can learn about the summons needs to be gleaned from a dummied line in the Japanese version of the game (which you can find on this page if you do a search for "summon": http://thelifestream.net/ffvii-the-original/final-fantasy-vii-the-unused-text-series/part-8/). In short, summons seem to be ancient creatures who were exposed to mako for a long time (does this make them "monsters," then?) and then, for whatever reason, sealed their "life force" in materia.
What is this "life force" exactly? Did they choose to have themselves sealed, did someone seal them into materia, or did this sealing simply occur naturally? Nowhere else is materia used to harbor any sort of "life"; other, more ordinary materia are used to tap into the Lifestream's wisdom to manipulate the natural forces. In this case, are summons just natural forces made physical? Are they monsters that have just grown so powerful that they are likened to natural forces? What is their connection to the Planet? Do they have much intelligence in them or are they simple monsters? Do they lead an independent existence in some other dimension, or do they exist only to be summoned? Can they die in the true sense of the word?
I am also at a loss to try to explain the "summon field" that appears around the summons. One of the guides or vocab lists for the game/Crisis Core (I forget which) says that Bahamut Sin in AC is the only one that manifests without a summon field. The easy explanation is to just pass off this summon field as a game mechanic, but if someone has come up with a plausible explanation for this, I'd love to hear it.
I realize a lot of this will be theorycrafting and headcanon, but that's part of the fun.
My tiny bit of theorycrafting comes almost exclusively from what we know about Leviathan: Apparently the summon was powerful enough to have gained the status of guardian god in Wutai. My imagination leads me to think that at some distant point in the past, Leviathan was a great, big, destructive monster that lived in the waters around Wutai that would eat any ships it encountered. At some point it was sealed into materia (by the Cetra, perhaps?) and became a defensive tool instead. Perhaps this is also true for the other summons (e.g. Zirconiade comes to mind...).
Summons have been one of the coolest parts of the Final Fantasy series for me, and I was severely disappointed where there was little to no background given on them in the Compilation. Additionally, the summons are often -- well, they're basically just battle tools. They seem to have no personality or individual will, as opposed to what you see in some of the other games in the series.
Meanwhile, what little we can learn about the summons needs to be gleaned from a dummied line in the Japanese version of the game (which you can find on this page if you do a search for "summon": http://thelifestream.net/ffvii-the-original/final-fantasy-vii-the-unused-text-series/part-8/). In short, summons seem to be ancient creatures who were exposed to mako for a long time (does this make them "monsters," then?) and then, for whatever reason, sealed their "life force" in materia.
What is this "life force" exactly? Did they choose to have themselves sealed, did someone seal them into materia, or did this sealing simply occur naturally? Nowhere else is materia used to harbor any sort of "life"; other, more ordinary materia are used to tap into the Lifestream's wisdom to manipulate the natural forces. In this case, are summons just natural forces made physical? Are they monsters that have just grown so powerful that they are likened to natural forces? What is their connection to the Planet? Do they have much intelligence in them or are they simple monsters? Do they lead an independent existence in some other dimension, or do they exist only to be summoned? Can they die in the true sense of the word?
I am also at a loss to try to explain the "summon field" that appears around the summons. One of the guides or vocab lists for the game/Crisis Core (I forget which) says that Bahamut Sin in AC is the only one that manifests without a summon field. The easy explanation is to just pass off this summon field as a game mechanic, but if someone has come up with a plausible explanation for this, I'd love to hear it.
I realize a lot of this will be theorycrafting and headcanon, but that's part of the fun.
My tiny bit of theorycrafting comes almost exclusively from what we know about Leviathan: Apparently the summon was powerful enough to have gained the status of guardian god in Wutai. My imagination leads me to think that at some distant point in the past, Leviathan was a great, big, destructive monster that lived in the waters around Wutai that would eat any ships it encountered. At some point it was sealed into materia (by the Cetra, perhaps?) and became a defensive tool instead. Perhaps this is also true for the other summons (e.g. Zirconiade comes to mind...).
(As much of a cop-out that is ... it may actually be true.)
