| The Fury said: While I'm mainly on Runa216 side of things. I understand the points you make and why. The comparisons of racism placed into a populations minds to outcast those who were different, in this case Pulse l'Cie and Pulse inhabitants in general but the same thoughts were distilled in the mind of the Pulse inhabitants when they existed all those years ago. It's mentioned in the stories and datalogs, is it not, that there was a war between the 2. While a clever plot point, it is how it's explained that is what lacks here. No matter how good of a story, if it's not told in a good way, people watching it/reading it will not view it as good. Many previous FF games you didn't have to know everything or read through datalogs to understand the history of the world as it was simple yet explained as you went along, when you arrived at a location or if required. This game started going on about Fal'Cie this and l'Cie that and I didn't know what any of it was just that apparently it was bad at this time I had to go forward to progress the story in the hope it would be explained, adding their focus just confused things more (especially the amount of times they said it). The underlying story about the god like beings and what not is good, the extras about each person's involvement and this l'Cie stuff just confused things for me anyway. I agree with you on exploration, most FF games start with a linear path, follow the path to progress story but allowed for freedom of movement between locations via the world map, a distinct missing factor in this game. The Paradigms were preset, I don't remember being allowed to choose 3 I wanted to specialise in and when the other options opened up for each character, they were so more expensive they weren't really options. I tried playing the game again recently. I completed the story once for the sake of it but did so because I felt I had to, starting to replay it again I got really bored doing the first 1hour just pushing X and running toward the next enemy, pressing X again. Graphics are pretty though...so pretty. |
Could it be that you mean the Crystarium instead of the paradigm? The Crystarium is preset and you can only follow the path with minimal choices. In the end it is similar to the FF XII system but in FFX III not everyone could learn everything possible.
Spoilers Ahead!
The war between Gran Pulse and Cocoon was setup. The Fal'Cie hoped that Cocoon would be destroyed during that war. Fang and Vanille were chosen to become Ragnoraok, Vanilla however choosed not to fulfill her Focus and so Cocoon was only damaged 500 years before the events of FF XIII. Barthandelus realized the situation and made a plan. He built the ark and put the crystallized Fang, Vanille and the Pulse Fal'Cie inside just to be set free 500 years later.
His master Plan was to incite fear and let these fear transform into hate for 500 years. He wanted to create a civil war so that the people destroy Orphan themselves. His Plan B was that he could convince the L'Cie to destroy Orphan. Either way, he had 2 plans at the same time, so he was not totally relying on the L'Cie to destroy the Orphan.
He set the L'Cie free and made sure whole Cocoon was aware of it. Literally all events on Cocoon were set, so that the L'Cie are under permanent stress. A key scene was when he hunted them down in Palumpolum and at the same time let them be rescued. The escape from the airship was also set up... The key scenes to understand the story are the ones with Barthandelus... He really was a clever devil...
The clever thing about the plot is, that Barthandelus found a way to destroy Orphan without having to convince L'Cies. He used hate and fear and let them thrive for 500 year. And then using a Pulse relict and media reports of Pulse L'Cie on Cocoon to slowly incite a civil war on Cocoon.
FF 7 also had a very complex story. I had to play it through a second time to fully understand what actually is going on with Cloud, what Zacks role in the game really was and why Sephiroth had Powers over Cloud. The key scene to understand everything was the secret scene down in the shinra villa in Nibelheim. Don't let the complexity of the story make you think that it was weak. I had to think much about it until it finally everything made sense. I am sure that you could enjoy the story better in a second playthrough, now that you know the role of Barthandelus, Vanille and Fang from the beginning.
@ Exploration. There was a worldmap, but it was not really there for exploration. Most of the time you had only 1 location to go further and the map was limited by rivers, mountains and water at every side. The only purpose of it was to show different undergrounds that determine which enemies you will encounter (forest, mountain, beach or grass, etc). Only FF 12 really had some large maps, that had several entries. There were also maps, that you could visit a second time and gain access to new areas, which is rather uncommon. The world map wasn't that impressive graphically anyway, since it reused the same patterns everywhere.
I understand, that some people are upset that you gain access to new abilities halfway through the game. But really, how much abilities did you have in FF 7 until you left Midgar? Most of the time you had to simply attack by pressing X. Since you had to level up your materia, it took you a while to get the real strong abilities. Or Final Fantasy 9, where you had Zidane as main Character. Since he was a thief, you could only use attack, steal or item.... not much choice too, but nobody cared. FF 13 is not much different to other FF9, since they varied from game to game. Some had more customization, some not. Some had specialized characters and some had characters, that could learn almost every single ability. Some had more secrets, some had less. And While FF XIII did not change that much, the way JRPG are reviewed had changed very much.
