Dissidia 012 Review and Story Analysis

Going back to my Final Fantasy XIII comparison from the beginning of this review, I actually cried more than once during that game’s story. That’s not meant to be a clever insult of it either, by the way. I genuinely got choked up a couple of times.

The one scene in Dissidia 012’s new story that came anywhere near hitting me in that way (more on that soon) didn’t even happen when anyone was in any danger.

While we’re talking about powerfully dramatic moments, by the way, remember all of those intense scenes between the warriors of Cosmos and their respective nemeses during the Destiny Odyssey chapters from the first game? Don’t look for such things here.

There was genuinely exciting spectacle in those, but nothing close to it in Dissidia 012’s new story mode.

So that this review can’t be accused of unbridled negativity, I will take this moment now to acknowledge that I do appreciate this prequel explaining certain lingering questions from the first game (e.g. why certain warriors died permanently in the past cycles of Dissidia’s war and why warriors who are dead at the end of one cycle don’t have memories of previous cycles during the next), as well as the characterization of most of the newcomers.

Kain is the conflicted hero of the story who saves the day through questionable means, while Lightning serves as his literary foil and the leader of the game’s new heroes. Tifa finally gets a chance to shine a little bit in a story that doesn’t have her role in it revolve entirely around Cloud, even while still emphasizing the qualities (loyalty and compassion) that make her who she is.

Vaan also needed this opportunity. I actually like him now, and certainly much more than I did in FFXII. Through his dialogue (especially his interactions with Laguna), going out of his way to save Terra, and his kindness toward the Onion Knight, he comes across in his own way as quite the badass among the males in the cast.

This perception I’ve taken of him is, perhaps, emphasized by contrast to Laguna, who — portrayed every bit as cheerfully optimistic, clumsy and inspiring as you’d hope for — is himself among the most wonderful depictions in either Dissidia game.

Yuna is the only new cast member who I didn’t feel really benefitted from her appearance here. Her part of the story also has the least synergy with the rest of it. Though, to be fair, I suppose that shouldn’t be entirely surprising given that the main purpose of her chapter of the game is to set up Tidus’s repositioning to Cosmos’ side in the thirteenth cycle of the war, as well as Jecht’s abduction from Team Cosmos to Team Chaos.

For that matter, when compared against Final Fantasy X-2 (which she starred in), it can’t be held against this rather short chapter that it doesn’t take Yuna on a grand quest of development.

Having said all that, I must admit that her sorrowful reunion with Tidus here tugged at my heartstrings. That entire sequence was quite well executed. This is that scene, by the way, which almost had me choked up — though I imagine my emotional reaction was largely informed by my prior knowledge of FFX and X-2.

There’s also a certain tragic irony that my fellow TLS staff member MakoEyes and I picked up on with Yuna in Dissidia 012. As in Final Fantasy X, she begins her quest with a guardian of sorts — Jecht, who was her father’s guardian. Also as in FFX, she’s willing to sacrifice herself to bring an end to a seemingly endless cycle. And, once again, as in FFX, she knowingly walks to what should be her doom with the intention of creating hope that a cycle of sorrow might end.

Unlike in FFX, however, Yuna quickly loses any guardian other than herself or her aeons. Also unlike FFX, Yuna actually does die here while Tidus survives.

In Yuna’s story in 012, we see parallels and mirrored images of her story in FFX. This is, admittedly, pretty clever on the writers’ part, as is the irony of Firion being killed in this game by Kain Highwind in order to protect him. In Firion’s original game, Final Fantasy II, another dragoon, Richard Highwind, sacrificed himself to save the lives of Firion and a couple of their friends.

I’ll even acknowledge that Dissidia 012’s writers improved Terra over her previous Dissidia characterization, though the tally of the number of male characters who have had to save or emotionally support her now stands at five. Rescue: Warrior of Light, Onion Knight, Cloud and Vaan. Emotionally support: all of the previous four but Warrior of Light, with the addition of Cecil.

While she was sickeningly demure throughout all of the first game, she does show the strength we would expect of her here in the story segment of Report 2, where she chooses to protect Cosmos, her enemy, from the manikin army sent to kill her — all for the sake of protecting Vaan, who she knows would fade if Cosmos perished. Despite the tragedy of Terra going down battling manikins in order to save Vaan, who is killed anyway, it is a thematically satisfying send-off for Terra, given her subplot in Final Fantasy VI.

Kuja, as well, is much better characterized than in the first game. In fact, the subplot of Report 1, the game’s longest Report, is entirely about Kuja — and my personal favorite part of the game.

And if I’m going to concede good things about Dissidia 012, there’s one word that must be said: Gilgamesh. Love him. Especially the scene with him, Squall, Zidane and Vaan in the second story segment of Report 8.

Hilarious because, in his personal line of time, he hasn’t yet met them, while Squall and Vaan can’t remember having met his future self. Though Zidane notices the resemblance between him and the Gilgamesh of Final Fantasy IX, he decides he’s not the same person because the number of arms don’t match. Brilliant.

I’ll also acknowledge that, despite most of the returning characters not getting much spotlight, the smaller cast and mandated order in which to play their chapters made for a more tightly focused story. Making this choice for players further helped to build up the sense of urgency as the story of the twelfth cycle marched towards its inevitable outcome, even if they did blow out a tire on that last lap.

It’s also something of a breath of fresh air that SE had the cajones to murder their most popular characters in this game at all. Sure, it’s not permanent, but it’s still a pleasant surprise given they couldn’t even find the balls to kill off the new Turks at the end of Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII.

So kudos for that, SE.

Despite these compliments to which Dissidia 012 is due, there are still some serious competency issues at work, not the least of which is that the structure of the narrative relegates half of the story to the Reports — isolated segments of story that might as well be the deleted scenes section of a DVD or Blu-Ray. Yes, it is a slight improvement over the Datalog of FFXIII, but it’s still no substitute for pacing and transitions that include all the vital elements, many of which are, indeed, just in the Reports.

There’s really no excuse for this method being employed in most cases, such as with both cutscenes included in Report 3. They both take place at the end of Chapter 4, and could easily have been included with it.

For that matter, there are still text-only segments to the Reports which cover the setting’s backstory — likewise with the text-only Museum Character Files.

Again, 012 is an improvement over the Datalog, but we’re still dealing with far too much of the story being told to us instead of shown to us. This is a practice that SE has come to rely on far too much over the past few years, and it needs to stop.

The first time they did it, with Final Fantasy VIII’s Tutorial, it was awesome. It was a nice little reference for certain details of the setting that didn’t need mentioning even in scenes to which the topic was relevant. It genuinely helped flesh out the world, and was a nice diversion for the player.

Same is true of Final Fantasy XII. There’s a right way to do this and a wrong way to do it. If — in order to understand what’s going on in the main events of the game — the player requires text-only accounts that the writer probably scribbled on toilet paper with one hand while wiping with the other, we have a problem.

So far we’ve mainly looked at the game’s squandered — and, where applicable, it’s much more rarely realized — potential. Let us turn now to the real meat of our coverage of Dissidia 012: a plot analysis FAQ.

Those familiar with our work here on TheLifestream.net may recall that we once did a similar FAQ for the first Dissidia. If Dissidia 012 is both a prequel to and remastered version of the first game, then this article is similar, being something of a sequel to and remastered version of the original FAQ.

Read on now to find the full plot of the Dissidia Final Fantasy series dissected and (hopefully) arranged in an easily digestible manner for you. You may find confirmation here of things you were already thinking, illumination on something you missed somewhere, or maybe you won’t learn anything new at all but will still enjoy reading it.

Or maybe you’ll neither learn anything nor enjoy it. Won’t know ‘til you read.

You may also see me defend the plot in a few places. Bet you weren’t expecting that.

So, without further ado, click on this link and welcome to the Dissidia 012 Plot Q&A!

Finally, with our review of Dissidia 012’s story pretty much complete, let’s take a moment to revisit our predictions for the plot, as posted last September 27 in an article entitled “Predictions and Conflict Over the Plot of Final Fantasy Dissidia 012 (Duodecim),” and see how they turned out.

First, as predicted, 012 continued to hammer home that the FF heroes and villains featured in the Dissidia series were the authentic articles, not manikins. According to his in-game profile under the Museum, Sephiroth even tests this theory with himself by committing suicide:

“A warrior uninterested with the battle of the gods, Sephiroth is only concerned with regaining his lost memories. After regaining some of his memory and learning of the manikins, he hypothesizes that he may be a copy himself and takes his own life to test this theory.

However, Sephiroth is purified like the other injured warriors and revived to take part in the thirteenth cycle.”

As detailed in our Q&A above, Dissidia 012 also explicitly says on more than one occasion that the Warrior of Light was the only manikin among the warriors of Chaos and Cosmos, so hopefully that particular debate can now be put to rest for good.

Next up, in a surprising turn of irony, with Dissidia 012, our predictions about the nature of Chaos and Cosmos — as well as their origins — were confirmed; however, so were those of the people we had been debating and disagreeing with. Chaos and Cosmos have turned out to be simultaneously the creations of Lufenian scientists, as well as anthropomorphic embodiments of abstract concepts born of the human mind.

It’s almost like Square Enix trolled us all on that one. I kind of have to tip my hat to them for it. If you’re going to troll your fans, that’s the way to do it.

(You may be asking yourself what isn’t the way to do it. In a word: nanomachines. In another: OtaconxNaomi.)

It’s become rare to be able to accuse SE of doing something classy while going in a completely unexpected direction. It’s nice to be able to say it again, if only for now.

Moving on, as our expectations for the origins of Cosmos and Chaos didn’t quite pan out exactly as we’d envisioned, our understanding of Garland’s origin consequently didn’t either. We are now left with quite the mystery as to where Garland came from, despite getting it spelled out for us exactly who the Warrior of Light is. Rather ironic given that our prior understanding was precisely the opposite scenario.

As to our other predictions:

• As expected, the warriors of Cosmos all perished in cycle 012, and several among them (e.g. Tifa and Kain) did not come back. Shantotto and Gabranth also made their way out of the war, though not in any anticipated manner
• Kain’s allegiance in Dissidia 012 was, indeed, unclear for a while
• Sephiroth did little more than annoy Cloud in cycle 012. He certainly didn’t manage to bring about despair in him as I was expecting, though. Seph also failed to kill Tifa
• Cycle 012 did turn out to be the first round in which the manikin army was utilized
• It’s unclear whether Kuja was ever a warrior of Cosmos. The Dissidia 012 trailer shown at the 2010 Tokyo Game Show may have been meant to mislead us fans. That being said, he was trying to help Cosmos’s side win, and he did end up losing the memories most precious to him after dying in this cycle — so it wouldn’t have really been that misleading after all.

  Personally, I think that — though he wasn’t confirmed to have been a warrior of Cosmos during cycle 012 — it’s heavily implied that he had been at some point. If you’ve read the Dissidia 012 Plot FAQ linked above, you know why I believe this. If not, then go read it!

  In any event, I’m going to say the important part of the prediction about Kuja proved accurate: he was one of the good guys

• The game was, indeed, quite the downer at times. That being said, it was rather hopeful at the same time — even when the members of Lightning’s team were hurling themselves to their deaths
• Though this isn’t addressing a prediction from the prediction thread, I would like to claim bragging rights that Dissidia 012 vindicates my position in the “Final Fantasy’s Definitive and Absolute Power Level Tier List” article from more than a year ago that the Onion Knight should be considered second only to the Warrior of Light. A story segment from Report 9 features the Warrior of Light and Onion Knight sparring, with the WoL commenting afterward that OK is a respectable opponent. Added to that, there’s OK’s Museum profile, which says: “When he is able to mature and transform his pride into strong motivation, he will become a knight like no other, one fit for his title.”
  —

If you’re still reading this article at this point, I must thank you for going on this journey into Dissidia Final Fantasy with us. We hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Really, thank you for reading. I put more time into this article than I’d care to admit, so I’d like to thank you for taking the time to humor me in the notion that my geeky endeavours aren’t altogether pointless.

Before closing, I’d like to be altogether clear that I did enjoy several aspects of Dissidia 012’s story. In fact, I do like it. It’s a good story. Not what the Peter Travers inside me (that doesn’t sound quite right) would call spellbinding, but it’s good.

I find its presentation to be far less impressive than the first game’s, but the things about it that I like (e.g. Kuja’s subplot, Kain and Lightning’s relationship, Vaan and Laguna’s bromance, Gilgamesh’s appearance) I genuinely love.

I’m also very pleased to see that we weren’t presented with a prequel that can’t even fit into the same continuity as the original game. I stop short of saying that I’m impressed by the fact, however, as such things should never have to be in question in the first place.

For the past several years, waiting to see if a Final Fantasy spin-off’s plot is consistent with that of the original material has become something remarkably like waiting to see if that cute waitress — you know, the one you left your number with when you paid your bill at the bar and grill the other night — gives you a call.

She actually called this time. This is the best job SE has done with continuity in quite some time.

Is it too late to fix the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII?

… Yeah, I thought so.

Oh well.

Thanks again for reading!