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Let's Play FFX Part 1: A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Zanarkand
I’ve been wanting to replay FFX again, and considered waiting for the HD rerelease, but 1. Nobody knows the release date for that yet and 2. I don’t have a PS3 or much hope for obtaining one in the future so I decided to go ahead. Many thanks to maclaniaspring, Livvy, and Auronlu for helping me get set up!
This is my most favorite game of all time, so I have a lot to say about it. If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you’ve played it, but I'm doing a fairly detailed recap in case it's been awhile. Also, there WILL be spoilers. One of this game's favorite storytelling devices is foreshadowing future bombshells way in advance, and I'll be discussing major plot elements when they're hinted at early, before they're actually revealed, so we can see how long and intricately woven the threads of the plot are. I’ll be providing my own observations, insights, and analysis with a focus on some characters and relationships that I feel are often overlooked. (Specifically Lulu, Lulu and Yuna, Seymour and Yuna, and Kimahri because I don’t know how everyone manages to ignore the big blue lion in the room, but even the game does this most of the time.) That doesn’t mean I’ll be leaving everybody else out though.
I will also be attempting something I’ve been wanting to do for a while but I’m not sure how feasible it is: a sphere grid swap! This basically entails doing a no sphere grid run until I have a bunch of level 1 key spheres. Then everyone breaks into Kimahri’s sphere grid and out into each other’s, resulting in Auron becoming a deft and nimble thief, Tidus wielding black magic, Lulu commanding an army of unstoppable samurai plush, etc. It’s gonna be awesome.
I’m going to be posting to Dreamwidth to allow for any discussion, but that gets crossposted to LJ, and I will be linking to tumblr. I’ll keep comments open so you can reply even if you don’t have an account. And of course feel free to message me in any of these places if you have something to say. :)
This was my first Final Fantasy game, or at least the one that I was first really able to get into. I have a vague memory of, when I was in the fourth grade, watching other kids at my after school daycare play one of the early games (I guess it was the first one?) on Nintendo. I was too shy to ask to play myself, and I don’t really remember anything about the world or characters except that I was really absorbed by it. I DO remember coming home from school, putting on a hooded sweatshirt over my white nightgown, and running around pretending to be a white mage.
I also played a little bit of Final Fantasy VII when it first came out, and again a few years ago, but I don’t own it so I never really got a chance to get into it. And I’m kind of glad that that wasn’t my first FF game just because it is so famous. One of my friends even referred to it once as “the first one” and I was like “Uhh no I’m pretty sure there were six games before that. Judging if nothing else by the title.” Someday I do want to get around to playing VII (and also VIII) but I haven’t yet.
X came to me highly and personally recommended when I got a PS2. I still only had a vague idea of what Final Fantasy was all about but I was curious. What really drew me in was a time when I was at scissorsappledog’s house and her brother was playing FFX-2. He had the strategy guide open in front of him and he showed me a picture of Yuna and said, “This is you.”
And he was right! Lulu may be my favorite character, but Yuna is the one I relate to most, out of almost every fandom. (She is edged out very slightly by Christine Daaé from The Phantom of the Opera, although there are notable parallels between Christine and Yuna that I will probably expand upon when I get to Seymour.)
I first played the game in 2007-2008, but I didn’t actually get involved in the fandom until just last year. I hadn’t read or written any fanfiction, I hadn’t drawn much art even and what I did I hadn’t put up anywhere. I’m not really sure why. I was holding my love for this game close to my heart like a personal and sacred thing.
And then one day for reasons even I am not entirely clear on, I turned up with a graphic novel I had started writing about Lulu and shoved it under the fandom’s door. I’m still on the fringe of the fandom, occupying a very small corner of tumblr from which I fling art at it from time to time, but I’ve made a few friends there and it is comfy.
So hello! I am the Mintywolf, and I’m going to be playing Final Fantasy X with you.
The most depressing camping trip.
(Rikku really wanted to go to Disneyland but Auron forgot to update the Tomtom and now here they are.)
This scene is of course loaded with meaning that doesn’t become clear until we revisit it later in the game but even at the beginning you can intuit a lot from everyone’s mood, expressions, and this little gesture. Everyone is worried about some unknown but oppressive thing in the future, and when Tidus approaches Yuna and briefly, reassuringly lays his hand on her shoulder, we know that either she is the thing everyone is worried about, she is the one with the particular reason to be worried, or both. (Spoiler: it’s both.) No dialogue is needed.
As my college screenwriting professor would say, “That’s film language!”
They’re all together but they’re all sitting apart from each other, pensive and lost in their separate thoughts. For a moment Wakka looks at Lulu like he wants to say something, or expects her to, but doesn’t.
I don’t actually have a lot to say about the beginning because it opens slowly after the first big cutscene. (Not nearly as much as XIII, though.) Of course, it probably just feels that way to Western audiences. I took a course on international film in college and my professor pointed out that slow pacing at the beginning of a film is a common feature of Japanese cinema, so it could just be a stylistic difference. It starts to pick up (for me, anyway) once we get to Besaid. It could just be because all my favorite characters are on Besaid.
There are some stats for the female Duggles player with the braids going around on this hologram thing. Not answered: what the heck is a Duggle.
All these kids are dressed not just like Zanarkand Abes players, but like Tidus in particular, in their goofy bezippered overalls. Aww. Also there’s either a set of twins or some lazy character design.
Our hero. On other playthroughs I have (lovingly) named him Doofus, This Guy, and Bob. My cousin called him KUMQUAT!! (sic) which was way more hilarious than it should have been.
(Between this and admitting to not having played FFVII I probably just lost all my FF street cred.)
Clearly not here for the blitzball. Tidus kind of just takes it in stride that a mysterious child only he can see materialized behind him and is talking to him.
Tidus I am going to be so sad if they don’t re-ducky-fy your doofy face in the remake. Blandly Handsome New Tidus is just not as endearing to me.
Chill out, little guy!
If I could have fit this in the name box, I would have.
This will have to do. (Also, one of the few NPCs to address Tidus by name. These kids have a better memory than Yuna, apparently, who ends up vaguely referring to him as “him” forever. Because this was the first FF game with voice acting, it was also the last one with the name-your-character feature, meaning that nobody with a voice could ever address him by name, so it’s unclear if Yuna even ever KNEW his name. But hey, these blitzball fans probably have Waffles memorabilia up in their rooms at home, which Yuna doesn’t. Although she would if she had the chance. At least until Lulu made her take it down.)
Foreshadowing that something bad is about to happen. Wakka expresses a similar complaint later when Sin is near. Proximity to Sin seems to cause general malaise as well as memory problems. Also Tidus you probably shouldn’t stand so close to that guy.
Zanarkand Duggles vs. Zanarkand Abes. If anyone can tell me what either of those mean, I would be very happy. Otherwise I am going to have to assume that this is a grudge match between honest dead Presidents and some kind of burrowing rodents.
I was too slow to screencap the next scene with any efficiency, but you’ve all seen it. Here it is from youtube:
And I have to say this is one of the most exciting opening sequences to any game I’ve ever played. Now, I hate all sports indiscriminately, so I was kind of like “Oh great,” the first time but then it’s like GROWLY METAL! MYSTERIOUS COOL GUY!! GIANT SEA MONSTER WRECKING THE HECK OUT OF EVERYTHING!!!
I think Auron probably has the best introduction in the game. We first see him just hanging out calmly watching the approaching monstrosity as it rises out of the sea. And he raises his jug of nog and toasts it. Clearly he has some kind of connection to it, but we don’t know what it is yet. Friend of his? Did he summon it? Is he in cahoots with it? (Yes/No/Maybe.)
Then he just strolls, purposefully and unhurried, back to the stadium while everyone else is running around rightfully losing their heads. Also I really love the shot of the water floating up out of the puddle as he strides through it. I think the FMV sequences in this game STILL stand up to the cutscenes of most modern games.
Being told not to cry by a creepy immaterial ghost child just gives me reason to believe that there really is something worth crying about.
I don’t think we see this little dude again until Bevelle, but it’s kind of interesting that he starts out as Tidus’ spirit guide. He helps lead him to the real world of Spira because he wants him to, ultimately, destroy Yu Yevon and end the dream of the fayth, freeing them but destroying Dream Zanarkand and himself in the process. He later says that he believes Tidus has the power to do this because he (and Jecht) have been touched by Sin and become more than just dreams. But Tidus is, right now, Sin-free and presumably so was Jecht before he went out to sea to train that day and got warped off to Spira.
I think Bahamut’s fayth must have led Jecht so Sin as well, bringing him to Spira, where he led him towards the same goal, but when it failed and Jecht became Sin, he tried again with Jecht’s own son so he could exploit the bond between them. At any rate, there seems to be a lot more to him than is first apparent and I’ve no doubt he has some ulterior motives.
This is an interesting turn of phrase from Auron here. It implies that “Sin” is not its inherent name, but one given to it by the people of Spira, probably originating with the Yevon clergy. In essence, the monster is just a pure destructive force, like a hurricane or a volcano, but the Church of Yevon projects the concept of sin onto it, thereby holding the people responsible for its existence. We learn later that Spirans are taught that Sin is the embodiment of punishment for their, well, sins, and that the only way to be rid of it is through atonement and obedience to the teachings. (Which is, we learn even more later, not true.)
There is a lot of quite sophisticated deconstruction and criticism of organized religion in FFX. The physical/allegorical Sin has shades of Catholicism, but we will see that Yevon has Shinto and Buddhist influences as well.
Look at this winner. Don’t hurt yourself, Waffles.
What a pretty monster! Sinspawn are often really beautiful in a really monstery way. I like the spiral design. (Also fits in with the spiral motif that recurs throughout the game.)
“Are you sure? This is the one you want? It’s not too late to go back and get that one Duggles player or something. She seemed to have it together.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Send him on up.”
“All right, here he comes. Try not to screw this up, Jecht.”
I heard that the Zanarkand Abes logo is means to incorporate Jecht and Tidus’ initials, and you can see it here. Who knows what their logo was before those two became star players, though. (Probably an Abe, whatever that is.) We see this stadium inside Sin with the flaming Abes symbol again much, much later.
Next time: Waffles makes a bad impression on everyone he meets at Baaj Temple (including a passing seagull).
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And Yuna with the Waffles memorabilia until Lulu makes her take it down.
Also the WORST CAMPING TRIP EVER yes. i thought that scene was going to be a postapocalyptic world where the whole world is destroyed thanks to our heroes' colossal cockups (not realizing this had been done in VI. and V. and to some extent VII.) And I thought these were the only survivors.
My Mom was utterly convinced that Auron was the villain of the piece summoning a monster to destroy the city and then leading it through the streets causing mayhem in his wake. And yes, that is a truly awesome FMV even today.
The mental image of you in a sweatshirt and nitghtie being a white mage is adorable.
I had failed to notice the young Abes fas wearing zipper overalls like duckyface. Awww. (Also don't be too hard on Yuna. She's one of those people like me who doesn't catch someone's name when first introduced and gets to know them for YEARS AND YEARS and is then too embarrassed to say "I didn't catch your name" and is reduced to sneaking out after the mailman goes by peeking in their mailbox to find out shoot his name is Mr. Kim of COURSE it is Kim they are Korean but what is his first name and what is his wife's first name who shoves Korean bbq at me over the fence we share?!)
Creepy Kid is usually hovering in the background of Tidus' hallucinations and dreams, although I've never spotted him in the "My old man?" sequence you screencapped above with the flaming Abes symbol. (I had forgotten it was a J/T. We must compliment the prescient who picked that logo when Tidus was a little boy, if not earlier, since Jecht has it tattooed on his chest.)
New headcanon: Creepy Little Kid is actually Wantz, who hovers around trying to snap photos of Yuna. Or else they are in cahoots somehow. The Spying On Our Protagonists duo.
er, hello tangent. Back to Zanarkand! I also had never noticed the spiral motif on the first boss monster. (And your dialog for Auron is spot on and I think Duggles must be something drawn by Ursula Vernon who is an artist you would probably like.)
I had forgotten Auron's "we called it Sin" phrasing. A very good point about Yevon church being the ones to come up with the name, interpretation, and identification of the monster.
I still want to know what those sinscales are. Dandruff? Lice? nevermind. This game is too shiny to imagine ickg things like that (unlike XII, which makes monsters that Cthulhu seems to have blessed.)
Sorry about incoherent jumping-around babble, but I'm loving this.
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And I love Ursula Vernon! I really enjoyed Digger. I especially loved all the underpinnings of different mythologies, combined with her own. I can picture a Duggle in her art style.
Hahaha maybe the Creepy Kid is a blitzball fan after all and that's why he's stalking Tidus.
I had all kinds of reservations about Auron too the first time I played. I definitely thought he was in league with Sin somehow or was responsible for bringing it there. (Which is maybe what we're supposed to think, but that suspicion is never played up later, so maybe not.) Haha I was also REALLY suspicious of Lulu in the beginning but I'll get to that when I get to Besaid.
Haha all the stuff sloughed off of Sin should be really gross but it's all so ornate and shiny. This game has some attractive monsters. (Unlike, yes, XII, where even the wolves and coeurls are unforgivably ugly horrors. Although weirdly the marlboros were kind of cute, with their little hats. And all the wyrdhare class critters were ADORABLE.)
I am excited! All my irl friends who were interested in this game had already played it and kind of gotten over it by the time I got here so I haven't had anyone to really discuss it with. So I am glad to have the chance. :D
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(Gracious, I was babbling earlier. Evidently a bit of an upswing after several days of gloom.)
I am very intrigued to hear that you thought Lulu was a villain. I look forward to that installment! (Hilariously, I was so offended by the fanservice that it took me a while to warm up to her.)
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I'm glad to hear you're feeling better!
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I'm going to add you too, I hope you don't mind. I like your art that I've seen around.
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Will be watching and enjoying!
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I've seen 'Sin' spelled as 'Shin' [meaning 'spirit'] - so it could be they went with Sin for a Western audience.
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I would assume that the focus on atonement is still there though, since that is such a major part of the plot. But an evil spirit is something external you ward off, rather than sin being something internal that you have to atone for.
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So yes it was Auronlu's headcanon but I like it.
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I am probably going to laugh every single time a screencap includes the word "Waffles."
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Elsweyr would be an excellent setting for Elder Scrolls 6 (and a fun climate contrast after Skyrim!). I've also got my fingers crossed for the Black Marsh someday, and LIZARDS AND HIST EVERYWHERE.