FFXIII-2 rant.**WARNING - MAJOR SPOILERS**
Dear friends,
This is an e-mail I've sent to Spoony of the Spoonyexperiment.com after playing and finishing FFXIII-2. Once it was finished I noticed that it became quite the e-mail and figured it would be a loss forever if no one ever read it next to someone who might never respond. As the title says, it contains major spoilers. These spoilers count for FFXIII and FFXIII-2, so be careful!
If it's interests you, have a good read. Otherwise, just ignore it. ;)
Dear Spoony,
I realize that you receive about a gazillion e-mails a day and I’m not expecting a response. But last Sunday I finished the new FFXIII-2 game together with a friend of mine (we have this tradition of taking some days off and crash at my place for several days to play console RPG’s together) and I just have to share my experiences with you.
Because oh boy…..this game sucks more than FFVIII and FFX combined! And I’m deadly serious about that!
First of all, I’m not sure if you played FFXIII. But if not you can find a nice recap of the story on Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIII)
Edit: I just watched your final FFX-2 review and noticed that you’re strongly suggesting FFXIII is next. ;) Laughed my ass off with Spoony-Yuna and Spoony-Sephiroth! Keep up the good work man! I’m really glad you’re back in business!
*** Spoiler alerts ***
My points why this is an extremely bad game:
1. The plot.
This game is all about fixing multiple unnecessary fuck-ups made by a virtually unknown Deity in a universe that seems to contradict its own lore. It has a weak minded disillusioned Antagonist that wields tremendous powers that were given to him for reasons that are unclear at best. These powers apparently can’t be taken away by the same Goddess who gave him this power, nor is she powerful enough to deal with him herself. Even worse, killing this guy kills the Goddess because she gave him her fucking heart! HolyshitstormBBQ Batman! Stuuuuuuuuuupid! Goddess……you’re *SO* stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupid!
It might need some explaining though, so if you’re interested and have enough time on your hands….here it is. ;)
Basically this game takes place 3 years after the events of FFXIII. At the end of that game Fang and Vanille turn into the Ragnarok entity that was destined to destroy Cocoon. Thanks to their travels with Lightning and the others they choose to save Cocoon instead of destroying it however, and turn into a huge crystal pillar to prevent it from falling. It is falling from the sky because the fal’Cie Orphan (who has been slain by the party) can no longer keep it afloat. At the end of FFXIII the other party members awake out of their crystal status on Pulse and find out that their l’Cie brands are gone. A moment later they are all reunited with Serah and the son of Sazh.
According to FFXIII-2 however, once Serah (the damsel in distress in XIII) is reunited with her sister Lightning and the rest of the party. Lightning suddenly disappears. After this disappearance, nobody except Serah seems to remember that Lightning actually woke up next to them and believe that she must have had a wishful daydream and is clearly imagining things. Instead of believing her they all pretty much assume that Lightning is stuck inside the crystal pillar, just as Vanille and Fang.
Because well, investigating the disappearance of a lost companion in a magical world that contains Godlike entities while someone (Serah) claims she (Lightning) was here a moment ago and can actually quote her exact words, was apparently too much work for them. They decide to ignore Serah’s pleas and dedicate their lives to make Pulse more hospitable for humans. So much for trusting and caring for each other guys!
At the actual start of the game we see Lightning fighting some guy named Caius (Antagonist of the game) in a place called Valhalla. This is explained as the realm of death and chaos that’s dislodged from time and home of the Goddess Etro. Who is hardly ever mentioned before in the previous game. (She’s mentioned in two or three datalogs of FFXIII as “The Goddess”, and apparently made sure that the war of Regression came to an end about 500 years before FFXIII. She does this by taking away the power of the Ragnarok entity and seal Vanille and Fang inside a crystal for 500 years. And thus preventing the destruction of cocoon)
This same Etro, according to FFXIII-2 lore, apparently saved the entire party at the end of the first game by removing their cursed l’Cie brands. Due to this Divine intervention of kindness however, a bit of Chaos (reference to FF1?) matter came leaking into the world. This never ever mentioned before “stuff” is described in the Fabula Nova Crystallis as:
Chaos (カオス, Kaosu?) is a matter in the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythos which comes from Valhalla. It is the blessing Etro granted to mankind. However, Chaos is dangerous in the fact that if unbound would turn the world into a timeless wasteland.
A side effect of Bhunivelze creating the fal'Cie in the Visible World, Chaos manifested in the Invisible World by the time Etro entered the realm and met Muin in her final moments. Taking Muin's place in protecting the world balance, Etro placed a piece of Chaos inside each human. This act, giving humanity a heart, restored the world balance while Etro held the rest of Chaos under her control within Valhalla.
I would like to mention that the Fabula Nova Crystallis was released in 2011, about two years after the release of the original FFXIII game. This suggests that the mythos wasn’t finalized when they released FFXIII, and thus conveniently added this Chaos matter as a plot device for FFXIII-2. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fine to expand an existing world with interesting mythology. But why on earth would you create the main plot around something that was never mentioned before in such a clumsy way? But…we’re getting to that part.
So……..by saving this really small group of people, the Goddess manages to endanger the entire world by changing their fates cast upon them by the other fal’Cie. (Who change the fates of people all the time by actually making l’Cie in the first place, but hey, I’m just a simple gamer) But fair enough, even a Godlike entity can’t think of every possible cause and effect right? So, instead of hiring/summoning a clean-up crew using her Godlike powers to prevent the spread of this Chaos matter in the world, She, in all her brilliance turns back time itself to seal the Chaos again. Because well…..traveling back in time and changing the past of the entire universe can’t possibly be more damaging to the world then changing the fate of about 6 people right?
*sigh* seriously, who gave her a “God” permit?
Goddess fuck-up count: 1
Unfortunately for Lightning, she’s consumed by Chaos right after she was being saved by Etro; hence her disappearance. (Talking about the wrong place at the wrong time) Because of this she somehow gets caught by the attempt of the Goddess to fix everything and is effectively deleted from the current time-line at that moment. This causes a time Paradox (not sure why, since…well….it’s not like there is a real contradiction going on) which completely screws up the existing space/time-continuum. In the meanwhile Lightning is dragged to Valhalla where she stumbles upon the shrine of the Goddess Etro.
Goddess fuck-up count: 2
(The disappearance of Lightning is shown in a FFXIII-2 movie that happens right after/during the ending of FFXIII. I believe the idea is based on the events that happened in FFXIII - episode 1, a novel by Jun Eishima which I didn’t read, but read about. According to the novel however, the disappearance of Lightning happens much later than the original ending. So they didn’t completely copy it)
Within Etro's shrine, Lightning stands before the Goddess's throne and sheds silent tears. Then her Guardian Corps uniform disappears and a suit of armor materializes on her body. This means that she has been “promoted” to be Etro’s protector against a man called Caius, who wants to unleash the Chaos upon the world.
The existence of Caius once more proves how incompetent the Goddess really is. At some point in history he became the guardian of Yeul, a female seeress who has a gift called the “eyes of Etro”. This “gift” shows her major changes in the timeline that still need to happen. Each time she has such a vision however, it takes away a part of her life-force, which effectively means she will never reach her twenties. (All her incarnations seem to be girls of about 15-16 years old, but knowing the Japanese, she’s probably supposed to be 18 or 19 or so…..) When she has such a vision, it’s her job to store this vision on something that’s called an Oracle drive. This is basically a hard-drive with a projecting function.
It’s interesting to note that it’s forbidden for the seeress to act upon the things she sees, which makes her “gift” one of the worst curses one could ever get. It seems really cruel to me to show someone something terrible in the future, take some of her life and forbid her to do anything about it! WTF Etro!? What were you thinking?!
Goddess fuck-up count: 3
To protect the Seeress (not sure against what exactly) a guardian is assigned to her. It’s told that this guardian figure was originally a l’Cie bestowed with this task. But when Caius managed to defeat the previous guardian and became a l’Cie himself, the Goddess thought it would be a great idea to reward such a competent person. So she decided to not only remove his l’Cie mark, (Which did not release Chaos matter in the world this time for some reason) but also gave him her actual heart (of Chaos) granting him tremendous powers and immortality! Wheee!
This way he can protect Yeul against….ehm…..”something” forever! Most other people would sense that it’s kind of cruel to link an immortal man to a girl who dies every 15 years for eternity. But HEY, she’s a Goddess and probably knows what’s best for humanity right?
Goddess fuck-up count: 4
It’s also mentioned in the game that he acts as the guardian of time, but since there was nothing wrong with the timeline in the first place until Etro made a major fuck-up, I believe he just took up this role because every major event in changing timelines causes Yeul to die a bit sooner.
It’s not surprising to learn that Caius eventually loses himself and his values with each dying Yuel. In the year 700 AF, when all of humanity is reduced to three people he finally realizes that the Goddess is one cruel biatch and decides to release Yeul of this burden forever. In my opinion it’s kind of strange that Yeul still dies at an early age at this stage. Because well, what great events in time still threaten humanity that could trigger her visions?
Instead of confronting the Goddess why she bestowed them with such a cruel fate however, he decides that he should create a time and place where she can live in peace for eternity. To realize this, he wants Chaos to enter the mortal realm so that it will turn into a place like Valhalla, where time does not exist. Because there is no time, there’s no future and thus Yeul won’t suffer her repeating cruel fate. I don’t believe Caius actually considered her feelings or opinion on the matter or wondered how “alive” a person would actually be in the realm of death and chaos. But he’s completely fucked up so he doesn’t care about such “insignificant” matters anymore.
He hatches a plan to use the knowledge that Yeul shared with them over the centuries to create a series of time paradoxes to shape the future and create the right circumstances to execute his plan. He seems to do this from Valhalla itself while fighting Lightning, because the Caius that the Protagonists encounter during the game believe that Serah and Noel are responsible for the paradoxes now present in the timeline. There are also several encounters with a fake Caius that’s basically a hologram created by the human-made fal’Cie. As far as I can remember, they don’t meet the real -bad guy- Caius until they reach shadow Valhalla and later Valhalla at the end of the game.
Why he needs a series of time paradoxes to complete his mission isn’t explained in any way. In my opinion he could just kill himself, Etro would cease to exist and Chaos would enter the normal world anyway. The only time he ever opposes this is idea by saying something along the lines as: No, you can’t kill me yet. The time isn’t right. Sure, I can imagine that you might need a window of opportunity to catch the Goddess unaware. But surely the best window is right before the protagonists start their journey to fix everything.
As far as I can tell from the game, the paradoxes Caius creates to plan the downfall of Etro is a direct result of the Goddess saving Lightning and the others at the end of FFXIII. Otherwise the paradoxes should have appeared before that time as well.
Anyway….. While Lightning is fighting off Caius to protect the Goddess in the intro movie, Noel reaches Valhalla from 700AF through the Goddess. With the help of Lightning he’s being sent to 3AF to meet with Serah and solve all the by Caius created paradoxes to restore the timeline.
I believe this summed up the point I tried to make quite nicely. ;)
2. How the story unfolds.
In one word….terrible. The places you visit during your travels are hardly linked to the main story-line at all. In fact, it feels like you’re constantly doing sidequests in a game where you expect a decent story. (Although that has changed over the years with FF games I guess, as your own reviews have proven)
A meteor drops down into the sea next to the Pulse town of New Bodhum in the year 3AF. Serah wakes up and discovers that she’s wearing a much sexier outfit than before. (which is never explained I believe) At first, she seems to be walking in a dreamworld version of her house as her vision is somewhat blurred. (Actually a Paradox effect) Once she walks outside however, her vision returns to normal and she finds the entire town in chaos fighting off weird and never seen before monsters. A mysterious boy (Noel) appears out of nowhere, hands her a moogle that transforms into a bowsword (gunblade anyone?) and they start saving the day together by killing all the monsters. Take into account that Serah supposedly has no combat experience at all (she’s a teacher!) and that her friends can’t seem to get rid of these fiends using friggin’ machineguns!
Once the battle is over, Noel claims to be from the future and that they need to find artefacts in order to travel through time by using portals to fix the shattered timeline. I can imagine the artefacts being there because of Caius, but why on earth would there be visible portals everywhere? That just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, you could say Lightning placed them there, but why would she make it so difficult for the protagonists to travel through these portals? I personally believe the Goddess herself placed them there and made it hard for them to access them. Yep! It sure sounds like her!
Anyway, of course this somehow works and they start traveling to the future and alternate dimensions where they experience one “adventure” after another. With that I mean they travel from zone to zone (often being copies of the same zone in another time) solving stuff that’s barely sidequest worthy in other games.
You basically do this by moving on a time grid. Which works fine in itself I guess, but it removes all the feeling you have with the world you’re trying to save.
For example, take the start of Lost Odyssey. (a J-RPG I really like) At the start of that game, you’re the only survivor of a huge battle. To get back to the main city, you first walk a lot, then are taken to a station by car, and then travel per train to a huge city. In the 5 minutes that this journey took you know that the battlefield apparently wasn’t located close to the city, you have a general idea of what their technology is capable off, you pick up some of the culture, etc. When shown a map a tad further in the game, you realize the continent you’re on must be huge. A part of the graphics you see during that first journey never return, and are basically there as an informative introduction. Because of these small details the world comes “alive” for the player, and because of that you’re drawn into the world, the characters and story more easily. In my opinion this is really one of key parts for a successful game, and it’s too bad not too many games fail to apply this simple formula.
What seems to be the most important piece of information you receive in your travels, is that the crystal pillar that contains Vanille and Fang will one day collapse, which causes Cocoon to fall.
At first, there’s a hopeful (no pun intended) plot going on with Hope Estheim to prevent Cocoon from falling. Good plan right? No falling, no problem. He plans to do this by creating an advanced AI that is used to create a man-made fal’Cie to keep Cocoon afloat however. (Since it’s build with fal’Cie technology) Which would have been fine if it was a just a simple machine emulating the power source of the fal’Cie. But no, they’re planning to make it intelligent and all. Since the fal’Cie used to bend people to their will and wielded the powers of the Gods. I considered this a terrible idea when I was confronted with it. (The game will fortunately prove this point)
When this plan fails, Hope gets the idea of building a new Cocoon to replace the current one, but made with man-made technology. This sounded like a nice plan at first. I mean… to evacuate the people from Cocoon to an artificial Cocoon. But after a few seconds I realized…..Why on earth would you build a SECOND cocoon for that?! WTF! There’s PLENTY of space on Gran Pulse! In FFXIII Pulse is described as a harsh place for humans to live. But in the future it’s proven that people can live just fine on Pulse! Hell, the fucking coolest and most modern city is on Pulse and the people are extremely happy to live there.
*sigh* Instead of building the Deathstar in their backyard. They should have spent their efforts in making an even greater part of Pulse habitable. Then you’ll NEVER EVER have to face the danger that an entire world might drop from the sky at a certain moment.
Next to these small adventures you run into Caius every once in a while, but as I mentioned before it’s seldom the real culprit.
This section should actually contain the bashing about the ending as well, but I’ll come back at this later.
For now, let’s skip to the following point.
3. Character interaction
My God, I wonder if anyone worked on this game that ever experienced human interaction with actual human beings, because this game definitely doesn’t show it.
Throughout the game, I remember being extremely bothered by the fact that Serah calls her sister Lightning all the time. She has a REAL name you know! And since the two of you grew up together it would be slightly more normal to refer to her as sis, big sister or by her fucking real name (Claire) instead of some nickname she received in the army!
The relation between Snow and Serah is equally awkward. Snow has been missing for 3 years, and Serah is his Fiancé. They meet each other somewhere in the future, yet they don’t kiss, hug etc. They’re not even sounding emotional! At the end of the minor part where they actually see each other in this game they say goodbye to each other and that’s it! My God what a failure!
Anyway, there are plenty of other examples. But since the e-mail is getting quite big already, I’ll leave it at this. ;)
4. General cheapness
I have to admit that the game looks great. But it definitely has the same amount of cheapness regarding re-used graphics as FFX-2. But, as expected from the FF development crew, they brought the amount of cheapness to a whole new level in this game. Copy/pasted levels, only 2 characters and an arena you can’t use without DLC!
This game surely has a lot of re-used enemies and landscapes. What FFX-2 didn’t have though, are landscapes that are being re-used without shame in different timelines. This means that the like 30 to 40 zones in the game are actually 10 unique zones or so that are copied and thrown into a blender with some new textures. As a finish, add a pack of sugar and ingredient X (cactuars) and voila, new lame zones are born!
For a game that has a weak story and an ever weaker way of actually telling it, one should think that they spend a lot of time in creating new environments. Especially if you take a look into consideration how long this game was in development.
I also think it’s kind of sad that you only have two characters to play with. Don’t get me wrong, a monster in your team is kind of a cool idea. But not as a character replacement! So for the next game, why not do it like the monster team in Dragon Quest 8? (that was AWESOME) But this feels kind pretty cheap as well. As if the developers didn’t have the inspiration to write another personality to match the team. And that while the two we’re stuck with are already shallow at best. Hmmmmz, saying this makes me realize I should probably thank the developers.
Then there’s the arena that you unlock fairly soon in the game. This might be slightly more hurtful for me personally, since I simply love arena extra’s. The slow unlocking of items while testing ones might against the strongest beasts of the world. (Yeah, I’m kinda sad that way ;) But still, I was thrilled when me and my friend unlocked the arena square. It wasn’t accessible yet, but this is quite normal in most games. As you get further, challenges are usually unlocked during the progress of the game. So needless to say, every time when we progressed story-wise, I went back to the arena looking for a fight….but there simply were none.
When we unexpectedly hit the end of the game and finished it,I was completely convinced that I could finally test my well-oiled war machine against every possible FF enemy or hero ever. Because that’s still kind of normal right? Fighting über stuff at the end of a game. But….as you have probably guessed (or read at the summary above) you just can’t use the thing UNLESS you BUY DLC for it! That’s right, they put an arena into the first couple of hours in the game which you can’t use UNLESS you PAY for DLC! Talking about a major cocktease! Wouldn’t it be nicer to include the arena with a series monster you’re downloading instead of putting it right in your face while you can’t do anything with it?! What a load of crap!
.....RAAAAAAAARGH!
Slotmachines…..tape…the only way……..sucky minigame………….faints…
5. The so called ENDING and the alternative endings.
You’re probably aware of the fact that this game advertises that it has multiple endings. I have to admit this is technically true, but it’s as cheaply done as the rest of the game. With pretty much every other game in existence, multiple endings literally means that the ending you’ll be getting at the end of the game is based upon the choices you made during the game.
Here however, they basically expect you to finish the game first. (save for twobad endings, who scream “don’t do it!” in your face when you get the choice to reach them) Once you’ve done that, you’ll get a special savegame that allows you to unlock ending that might have happened if you had solved the time paradoxes differently.
Strangely enough most of these endings don’t even seem a reward. Of the 8 possible extra endings, 5 of them end bad for the protagonists and some of them don’t even make sense. (If only we had these endings for FFX with Tidus)
Example:
In one of the first zones of the game you have to fight a war machine called “Atlas”. To win this at the start of the game, you have to weaken him by using some sort of control device on him, otherwise he’ll beat you to a pulp before you can say: WTF. After you finished the game, you can unlock an alternative ending by not weakening him, and destroy him at full power. Normally you would expect that you would be rewarded by actually defeating a more difficult version of a boss, but no sir, not in FFXIII-2. This is the summary of what happens:
Both sides of the Pulsian civil war, which will eventually bring down Cocoon's pillar, unleash an army of Atlases on the Archylte Steppe. Serah and Noel are trapped in the middle of the war, and resolve to take down each one. The last shot is of a downed Atlas with both Serah and Noel's weapons lodged in an unbroken crystal atop the beast's head.
I have to admit I don’t remember if they were actually trapped in that place, but daaamn. You get rewarded by the suggestion that the protagonists horribly died while fighting off these constructs.
So unless you want to see the hero’s come to a tragic end most of the time, it’s not really worth putting effort into these “endings”.
Furthermore there’s one special ending that gets unlocked if you’ve managed to gather all of the fragments that you can find in the game, but it’s really just more non-saying crap.
This brings me to the actual ending of the game, which just just knocked the air right out of my body when I was confronted with is. This is what happens:
After Caius is defeated, Serah, Noel and Mog return to Pulse at 500 AF, where the new Cocoon named "Bhunivelze" rises into the sky. After Serah thanks Noel, she has a vision and then abruptly dies. Noel weeps for her as Hope arrives from Academia to greet them. Hope asks Noel why Serah is dead since they both returned fine, and Noel tells him why it happened: Serah was a seeress just like Yeul, and a seeress is forced to see the future whether or not they want to. This may very well end in the seeress's death and that's what happened to Serah.
Goddess fuck-up count: 5
Then the world suddenly goes dark and Mog grows weak, saying that the goddess is gone. Noel remembers Caius's warning about Etro and the Heart of Chaos to them, previously thought to be a bluff. Bhunivelze and everything on Pulse begin to emit chaos as a giant seal opens in the sky. Valhalla appears within the world with Etro's temple somehow intact, and a crystallized Lightning is seen sitting on the goddess's throne. Then, of all times and without warning, these words appear on the screen:
“To be continued..."
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!!?!?!
You have to be FUCKING kidding me?! That’s the ending?! I just couldn’t believe it, heck, I still can’t believe it. I remember immediately googling the shit out of the internet to see if there’s a special ending in game that would properly end the story instead of the above bullcrap!
I quickly found the ending that one gets when you finished the game by gathering all fragments and alternative endings, but that just adds the following:
After obtaining all the paradox endings and 160 Fragments, a secret ending, "The Goddess Is Dead", plays after the end credits. It shows Caius in the Void Beyond, sitting on Etro's throne from which he leaves and uses Ragnarok, causing chaos to emerge, wanting to create a new world without Etro where Yeul doesn't die. This scene also alters the opening scene where Caius is seemingly shown talking to the player.
I just couldn’t believe my eyes. As far as I know there was never ever mentioned that this was going to be a 2-parter. Or I at least I never heard FFXIII-3 being mentioned anywhere. When I googled further it turns out that the developers themselves don’t even know (or don’t want to share this information) if there will be a sequel or possible DLC to complete the ending.
WTF Square! This feels like watching the first LOTR movie without knowing that’s part of a trilogy! You just CAN’T do this to people! Seriously! The ending actually seemed kind of promising with Serah dying after saving the multiverse. In fact, I think it would have been a sad but beautiful if the game would end like that. But damn…. I felt so incredibly betrayed. It’s an FF game, a once respected line of games with moving storylines and well written characters. (FF6 FTW) You EXPECT it to have an ending! Unfortunately, the gaming industry nowadays is slow but surely turning in the following picture:
Anyway……there’s a lot more to complain about regarding this game. (The upgrade grid, the slot machines at the casino, the smooth but flawed battle system, etc.) But I think I managed to write most frustration down now. I hope that you somehow enjoyed reading this mother of all FFXIII-2 e-mails and who knows, perhaps some parts of it might even be useful for the now suggested review of FFXIII. ;)
I’m sure I could write another extensive e-mail about that game as well. ;) (I mean seriously. Datalogs should be optional flavor to an existing story, not necessary to understand what the hell is going on) But seeing how I already took far too much of your time if you managed to read this far, I’ll leave it at this. =)
Keep up the good work regarding your show!
Kind regards,
Rob Koerts