Timeline makes no sense in some places

[Makoeyes987]

Sephiroth was created by Shinra.

In essence, Shinra manufactured the ultimate monster that would destroy them and the entire world faster than any of their Mako Reactors.

It's a clear analogue to how such reckless science fueled by a lust for power and profits can end up ruining not just the innocent but even the creators of such dangerous tools of power. Shinra was responsible for everything, even when the threat to the planet grew beyond their corporation. That's what makes it so interesting.

This is mostly the same team that made FFVI and the same theme runs parallel here.

 

[Fade]

I've always thought that FF7's setting really does not hold up to scrutiny.

I agree with this. In some ways, FFVII would be better off if it were set entirely within Midgar, or at least didn't have a world map. Even comparing it to its nearest neighbours, like VIII, its world-building comes off as abstract and the sense of scale is totally absent. VIII managed to create an illusion of a busy, modern world and cities that were larger than a handful of screens while retaining traditional JRPG aesthetics (albeit it still suffered from underpopulation).

Still, as much as old-school RPG fans fetishise the world map, it really does fall apart once you're not telling a narrative derived from Lord of the Rings. That's one reason why XII's sense of scale is one of the best in the series--it creates an excellent sensation that you're only exploring a fraction of the traversable area, even when you're in its huge (for the time) cities. Ejecting the world map is a pretty big part of that.

The world was secondary concern created only as necessary to serve the story. X was the first one to really take a shot at worldbuilding, and even then the plot was more important.

For my money, X still has some of the best pure world-building of the series. Everything just feels so internally consistent, even down to the way it contextualises the usual JRPG nonsense like schizo-tech. And the islander aesthetic makes it almost unique as a fantasy setting. Ironically, X probably could've made good use of the world map, considering it was quite explicitly a hiking story set in an underpopulated world.

 

[ForceStealer]

I don't think you could pack VII's story into one city, but probably one continent.

And yes, I always found X's worldbuilding to be very enjoyable.

 

[Makoeyes987]

...It'd have to be an extremely massive mega continent given the sheer variety of setting.

FFVII features one of the most varied and scenic locations of a FF. You literally see every corner of the world. The depths of the ocean, the jungles of the south, the frozen ice caps, and even space itself. That's something that sets VII apart from a lot of entries.

Limiting the story to just one continent that gives just one sort of climate or scenic type would strip FFVII of one of it's memorable charms that sets it apart. That's precisely why FFVII and IX are considered legendary entries. You see extremely varied and wide swaths of the entire world throughout the story. You're never trapped in one place and it adds a sense of wonder and scope to the setting.

 

[Odysseus]

Given that the game is all about the life of the planet, I think it's good that FF7 is a globe trotting affair. I do wish more time had been spent in Midgar though.

 

[Clement Rage]

Re: FF12
It's been a long time since I played, but we get the political history because that is directly relevant to the player and story.

Raithwall, who rained destruction on the world a long time ago. After that, we get the modern kings, we don't even get Rasler's father's name IIRC. Rabanastre has similar problems to Midgar -it's a giant city in the middle of a desert, how do they feed themselves?

Most everything else is in the menus.

Most internally consistent is easily IX. The Mist breeds monsters, so all the population lives at high altitudes above it. We get tech savvy Lindblum, Burmecia's schism with Cleyra, Alexandria's knightly culture and eidolons, because the summoner jewel was broken and sent to each kingdom. We get history by reading plaques and statues. Cid is Cid IX, which doubles as worldbuilding and a joke.

XV tried to worldbuild, but it didn't really work for me. All this stuff happened, so why am I driving around somewhere that looks like the US South, complete with product placement? Demons come out and murder anything that moves every night, why are all these motels so unfortified? The infrastructure didn't fit the world, and just made it harder to buy into.

 

[Odysseus]

it doesn't have any bearing on the world building any more than never visiting Sector three means that it doesn't exist in universe.

I just want to go back to this because it made me think of something. Midgar is where FFVII is at it's best with world building, for exactly the reason you say. It feels like such a huge, lived in city with a lot of things going on, it sticks in they players memory and gives them a strong impression of what Midgar is like despite how little of it Cloud ever goes to. It feels like there's so much more to the city than we ever see.

The rest of VII's world fails to give that same feeling, it feels like there's nothing beyond what we see, not even the implication that more of the world exists besides what we're given. Again, not really a problem, but it has always stuck out to me about the game.

 

[Clement Rage]

It does? It seems we just feel differently. I always automatically assume there's more to the world than we see, because otherwise nothing makes sense.

We can't really argue a feeling. Older games have an advantage in this, because they can show a small thing and hint at the rest, whereas modern games try to show a big thing and do it badly.

 

[Odysseus]

Oh don't get me wrong, I don't blame you for feeling differently than me on this stuff. None of the points I've brought up are anything I was actually thinking about while playing the game anyway, it's just stuff I thought of in hindsight.

Honestly I think the most fully immersed I ever felt while playing a video game was when I played the original final fantasy on NES. It's so bare bones that I made up my own stories as I was playing. Leaving room for imagination is something I think modern games struggle with.

 

[ForceStealer]

...It'd have to be an extremely massive mega continent given the sheer variety of setting.

FFVII features one of the most varied and scenic locations of a FF. You literally see every corner of the world. The depths of the ocean, the jungles of the south, the frozen ice caps, and even space itself. That's something that sets VII apart from a lot of entries.

Limiting the story to just one continent that gives just one sort of climate or scenic type would strip FFVII of one of it's memorable charms that sets it apart. That's precisely why FFVII and IX are considered legendary entries. You see extremely varied and wide swaths of the entire world throughout the story. You're never trapped in one place and it adds a sense of wonder and scope to the setting.

I didn't say it should be, I said it could be.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Ah, fair enough, you got me there!

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

"Leaving room for imagination is something I think modern games struggle with."

Yes.

 

[Clement Rage]

I think it's because video game logic entices players to think 'for what reason did the devs put this here?' and 100pc things to get collectables and trophies. Stuff that is unknown makes them think they missed something.

A world that perfectly fits together usually seems unrealistic to me. Everything tying up neatly reminds me that someone wrote the world, it didn't just grow.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

One of the things FFXIV does on purpose is make sure there are different versions of events learned from different people. Specifically because having everyone in the game regardless of knowledge base know the right answer is unrealistic. One answer that gets trotted out when there seems to be a contradiction is that ""x" person thinks they know what they are talking about, but they really don't because they don't know that "z" event/thing happened". This happens pretty much everywhere and figuring out what is actually going on be comparing biased sorces is... honestly a really important part of the FFXIV plot.

It alsogives some wiggle room for why some information is different from different sources. Sometimes the official answer (Word of God even!) can be that something is really unknown... but that only works for things that wouldn't really be known by a lot of people already.

Not having most people in the cast know how a settings' version of quantum mechanics works? That's fine. Most people IRL don't know how the world scientificly works on a fundamental level either. In fact, if they do know that, they should probably a settings' version of particle physicists who have good reason to know that stuff! There's a reason it's okay for the vast majority of people to not have an idea of how the Lifestream works in FFVII; it's not information most people would make use of in their daily lives.

Not having most people know or remember events that they were likely around for though? That's a problem. People IRL tend to remember shake-ups in the local political structure that effected them a lot. And... that's the kind of stuff that is missing in FFVII so often. Shinra came into power relitivly recently; people should remember what it was like before Shinra. Taking over what should ammount to a few countries worth of land/economics? We should see signs of that everywhere because it would have effected everyone. That we don't makes the FFVII world feel "artificial" in a big way.

 

[Roger]

One of the things FFXIV does on purpose is make sure there are different versions of events learned from different people. Specifically because having everyone in the game regardless of knowledge base know the right answer is unrealistic. One answer that gets trotted out when there seems to be a contradiction is that ""x" person thinks they know what they are talking about, but they really don't because they don't know that "z" event/thing happened". This happens pretty much everywhere and figuring out what is actually going on be comparing biased sorces is... honestly a really important part of the FFXIV plot.

It alsogives some wiggle room for why some information is different from different sources. Sometimes the official answer (Word of God even!) can be that something is really unknown... but that only works for things that wouldn't really be known by a lot of people already.

Not having most people in the cast know how a settings' version of quantum mechanics works? That's fine. Most people IRL don't know how the world scientificly works on a fundamental level either. In fact, if they do know that, they should probably a settings' version of particle physicists who have good reason to know that stuff!

I can see what you are driving at but I KNOW the rain is an Allegan conspiracy and you cannot tell me otherwise.

 

[Fade]

One of the things FFXIV does on purpose is make sure there are different versions of events learned from different people. Specifically because having everyone in the game regardless of knowledge base know the right answer is unrealistic.

I actually love unreliable narrators and framing narratives for this reason. It really helps to position fans as historians rather than gatekeepers of what "really" happened, and the endless canon wars that inevitably ensue. In the Elder Scrolls universe, for instance, fans can say that accounts differ on a certain event, and point to this or that source as being perhaps more authoritative than others.

It also opens up interesting possibilities. For instance, that Arazlam Durai is just as biased in his account of the War of the Lions as anyone that came before him. Final Fantasy Tactics might well have not "really" happened as it's portrayed in the game.

It's an excellent Get Out of Jail card for an author, too! I mean, which would you rather? Being able to say that there are conflicting accounts or that you fucked up?

 

[Clement Rage]

What the characters know and what the player knows are different. I'm sure Yuffie or Garnet could tell us a lot about the history of their kingdoms, Cloud and Tifa know stories about the history of Nibelheim, etc. We don't get to see a lot of that, though, because if you drive through a town and talk to people, they don't say 'hi, stranger. This town was founded in 1852 when...'

I could understand wanting to know more history of the world, but it's not actually a problem unless there's a contradiction or some reason they should talk about their history.

 

[Torrie]

Either this is another timeline hiccup, or I'm misguided.

So we've got this:

[ ν ] – εуλ 0001

Autumn
Zack goes on an investigative mission to the abandoned mako mining facility in Modeoheim. During the mission, he meets Cloud and the two become friends.

+

[ ν ] – εуλ 0002

1/16
A SOLDIER force including Zack is dispatched to destroy an AVALANCHE base near Icicle Lodge. Zack attends to his fellow SOLDIER comrades, Essai and Sebastian, as their deaths approach. With the exception of Zack and the assigned Turk, every member of the operation is annihilated.

The latter event had been shown in BC before CC came out and revealed that one flashback from Tseng DMW when Zack and Tseng visit their grave.

Z: It's been a long time... Sebastian, Essai.
T: Zack, I'm sorry... Our dealings with Avalanche resulted in SOLDIER casualties...
Z: Don't worry about it. In the end they returned to their senses. And I can see them anytime I come here. We're doing all right on our side. So rest easy. Don't worry about us. See you later.

Are we supposed to assume that the visit takes place during the Modeoheim mission because it uses the Modeoheim mountains asset, which means the official timeline is screwed? Or are we supposed to think that it was another random mission much later which, by a mere coincidence, had both Zack and Tseng involved, and situated on the Northern Continent, and not mentioned anywhere?

 

[Makoeyes987]

Zack has the Buster Sword when he revisits Essai and Sebastian's graves. He doesn't have that sword during his mission in Modeoheim. I dunno how you got that DMW memory scene during Chapter 6 or before Angeal's death since it's only supposed to appear during the conclusion of Chapter 7 and beyond, but there's no inconsistency; it's a memory of Zack revisiting their graves once he's acquired the Buster Sword and has done that mission in 0002. That's either a glitch or something. Certain DMW scenes are meant to unlock as the story progresses.