477 - The Final Corridor

Preowned Experiment: The Sinister Six 6/6
The Final Corridor

I want to paint a scenario for you.

You just walk into your favourite diner to grab something to eat. Inside a couple are having a heated argument about something controversial, I don’t know there son came out as Gay or whatever.

Half the diner is shouting homophobic slurs while the other half is shouting LGBT in what erupts into a civil war within the confines of this diner. Everyone has an opinion and letting their voice be heard. However here you are, arriving at the tail end of the conversation and not privy to the details or what has transpired to reach this violent war of the words and are unable to decide who’s in the right.

That is basically my experience with Final Fantasy 13.

I was fully aware of the games bipolar reception online; from linear corridors to paste eating simplified battle mechanics. Critics’ praising the game while hardcore fans blasting the game leaves me in a highly awkward position as guy with little experience with this franchise.

While I have faint memories of playing a SNES Final Fantasy game in a waiting room at a hospital (I think it was a FF game) I haven’t really delved into a Modern FF title (except for the Lighting Returns demo) and decided to dive head first into this series with the most controversial title.

Meaning I don’t have some sense of wounded betrayal or moral outrage over dumbed down mechanics so I’m only going to tell you what I think looking in as an outsider. Why did I never fully play an FF game in the 90’s you may ask? Well this little chap you may have heard of called Sonic the Hedgehog took up far too much of my spare time.

Think of this as penance for my HDG to RPGs (yeah sorry about that but hopefully we’re over that by now) and trying to wipe the slate clean. Then again I have a feeling if I praise this game I’ll be curb stomped by the die hard RPG fans anyway so I’m buggered either way.

Okay let’s stop pussy footing around and slide all the way in shall we?

Final Fantasy 13 is not bad… It’s just, well? Boring. Playable, but boring.

Allow me to expand.

I can say for a guy more into FPS than RPG that I didn’t outright loathe the battle mechanic. This is one of those rare moments I didn’t mind the game holding my hand and telling me what to do and how to play. Naturally I hate it when say Ubi-Soft tells me “Hey did you know if you press A next to a wall… YOU CAN CLIMB!!!??” Which makes me want to take them behind that wall and slit their throat. However if Square-Enix handed me this battle system and said “have fun baka gaijin!” without explaining it I’d be more fucked than Gary Glitter after losing his trial.

TOPICAL REFFERENCES!!!!

This so called Paradigm System is there so you can construct your party members on how they need to battle. I guess that makes sense Square but I’m okay with just controlling them myself if you like. I did begin to notice the game liked to play itself on occasion, where all I found myself doing was pressing A a few times while it slayed what looked like a cross between the Hellghast and Ultron, while I checked my Facebook messages, had a cup of tea and eat some Pizza.

Did I miss something with JRPGs? I can recall games like Mega Man Battle Network, Pokemon and my all time favourite Phantasy Star Online not being this one sided or shallow. The corridor remarks did confuse me when playing the game for the game did occasionally change direction so it’s NOT complete straight line corridors as the internet makes them out to be.

That will teach me to believe everything I read on the Internet.

Speaking of misinformation, I can’t really say the characters in Final Fantasy 13 were “Emos” because they seem to act like anything but Emos. The only one who comes close to that at all is Hope but his anger is somewhat warranted in all honesty. Really all I saw was a group of characters aged 19-29 who just don’t seem to like each other very much. It was like watching an episode of Dawson’s Creek expect on this occasion Dawson and his friends busted out some moves from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

As somebody who owns 6 volumes of Dragonball Z , the complete work of Azumanga Daioh, watched Ghost in the Shell and sat through the first season of Haruhi Suzumiya (Take that to those who call me an Anime Hater) I could not even begin to understand what in the name of Iggy Azalea’s inflated bagside was going on.

Maybe its cus I’m not a FF fan but this game throws EVERYTHING at you in hopes 28% of the audience understands it completely. So here is my take on whatever in the fuck was going on.

Right, so in this huge Neo Arcadian city, people are being hunted down Logan’s Run style by a highly oppressive government (basically David Cameron but if he actually gave a fuck) for being something called l'cie. If you’re one of those things you have a task to complete like slay a monster or make me a sandwich. Failure to do this turns you into a Devil May Cry monster but completion of this quest turns you into a crystal of some descript. So your life prospects are be killed by Dante or be displayed in a Gangsta Rapper’s crib.

Cut to a train scene where our main Angstagonist “Lightning” and Will Smith are on a daring mission to…. Well it doesn’t bother to tell you this right away.

Cut to a scene straight out of the opening to Transformers: War for Cybertron, where rebel factions are fighting the Hellghast as Snow appears. He helps the rebels escape from…. Well it doesn’t tell you. He mentions he’s looking for his wife to be, then a bridge explodes, a 13 year old Milf dies, her son mopes about it and we go back to Lightning and the Fresh Prince.

Who were those people? Why were they on the run? What caused this drastic culling of the populace? Game. Doesn’t. Tell you. Or to the point it doesn’t want to tell you cus it would rather impress you with pretty CGI it no doubt spent the entire budget on. Yes these cutscenes are very nice and all but it seems you've taken the "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" philosophy a bit to literally!

I know my good friend VelocityEleven has been very helpful in explaining the games mechanics to me (if she’s reading thank you for that I appreciate it) is not interested in RPG stories while my other RPG aficionado PrinceOfMoose does. I’m kind of a half and half but as I pointed out with my critique of Resident Evil 6, questions must be answered and this Inquisitor has a million of them and fucking wants them to be answered!

The game clumsily tries to explain the backstory as you progress down the road. By that point it merely repeats or sheds light on information you already digested. Can you imagine if In Star Wars when Obi-Wan Kenobi said “Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force” and then didn’t answer Luke’s inquiry to what the Force was? Your story would be lost on the audience and that is how I felt playing (or more to the point watching) Final Fantasy 13.

Yes, I know it’s very easy to bash a Japanese game on its laughable story but by Odin’s Beard it needs to be said. I personally feel Japanese writers do not know the first thing about pacing. The opening shot of Star Wars was NOT the rebels fleeing the empire RedLetterMedia! But rather a quick little text scroll giving you all, and say it with me now children.

CONTEXT.

Context is a key and essential part of story telling and failure to explain what is going on leaves your audience fucking clueless. I began to wonder if I needed to play Final Fantasy 12 just to understand the story but then remembered each game ignores the last which makes this even more confusing! I kind of doubt that for I suspect the hardcore fans know what all those things I vaguely listed mean from previous FF titles and is having a good old chuckle at me for not knowing what on Earth a Chocobo is.

I’ll show you what I mean. Lightning alludes to a military unit called Psycom, I inquire “Okay, what’s Psycom?” and she doesn’t tell you. The game introduces the concept of a l’cie, I again inquire as to what that is and it doesn’t tell you. I felt like that friend who’s invited out on a trip to the cinema with his friends who wanted to watch Transformers but got stuck watching Avatar.

I know some of this games defenders will raise their voice and tell me “The game offers details via a log that updates” but I would naturally fire back with “If the game has the time to fire 700 cutscenes in less than an hour then they could at least fill those 700 cutscenes with a narrator to EXPLAIN to potential new fans like me WHAT. IS. GOING. ON!!??” Vanille giving a lame narration every 300th cutscene does not count either!

And then my head began to fill with even more questions.

Why can’t my team stay together and fight as one?
Why does the battle gage take forever to recharge?
Why can’t I select which party members I want to use in battle?
Why is Lightning such a massive cunt to everyone?
Why has Snow got such a punchable face?
Why am I jealous of Lightning for punching Snow 3 times?
Why does Snow look about 19 and his bride look like she's 12?
Why is Sarah spelled with a E?
Why did a Crystal machine who make people l’cie transform into a Megazord?

Why did said Megazord curse my party into becoming l’cie by giving them Cutie Marks, one of which got it on her upper leg and Lightning got one on her tits.

Why couldn’t I see Lightning’s tits?

Why does Snow look like a weird fusion between Detective Gumshoe, Gaston and Owen Wilson?
Why does Snow just punch things when he clearly held a gun several times in the cutscenes?
Why can't Snow take the fucking hint and accept Serah is dead?
Why does the game have so many cutscenes?
Why can't the battle segments have more than one song so I don't have to hear the same piece of music constantly?
Why do the fights in the cutscenes look so amazing but aren’t doable in the actual battles?
Why does Vanille also have an incredibly punchable face?
Why does Vanille exist?
Does Vanille have Aspersers Syndrome?
Why does Vanille change accents constantly?
Is it wrong that I began to entertain the notion Vanille wanted to sleep with Hope?
Why is Vanille’s running animation so hilarious when playing “Having a wonderful time” by Tiny Tim?
Why does everyone have weapons that fold up like Iphones?
When will this plot begin to make sense?
How can two women transform into a motorbike?
How does Serah come back in FF13 2 when she died in this one?
How does Lightning come back in FF13 2 & 3 when she becomes l’cie in this game meaning she’s doomed to die?
If they’re sequels, shouldn’t they be called Final Fantasy 14 and Final Fantasy 15: Lightning Returns?
Should I play those games to find out?
Why is this guy called Odin killing me continuously no matter how many adjustments I make to the paradigm system?
Why can’t these characters just explain how they feel?
Why can’t Snow just marry someone else?
Why did It take who I suspect is the main villain 7 hours to show up?
Why does Will Smith have a small chicken living in his hair?
Why is this game on 3 discs?
Why is purging the l’cie so important?
When did this purge begin or what was the cause of contamination?
What is Lightning’s policy on Bacon?
Why does Hope hate his father?
What kind of parent names a child Hope?
Why does Hope also have an incredibly punchable face?
How many more of these goddam questions will fill my brain and will no doubt cause me to think myself to death?

I think my brain crashed and I just had to stop. Not out of frustration, anger or the game was awful. I stopped for 2 reasons.

1: I encountered a boss called Odin that continued to rip me a new asshole, that I could not continue. No matter how much I altered my items, stats, paradigm or whatever. It would mean restarting the game again to correct a minor fault to get past him. HOWEVER if I find a way past this I will continue.

2: Those questions I had been asking refused to be answered so I felt if you didn’t want to address them then I won’t let more be added to the pile.

But my curiosity no doubt has got the best of me so I am going to keep this game JUST to beat the story and then never replay it. I do take one note of pride out of this experience.

I officially lasted longer than Yahtzee did and I won’t go on a never ending bitch fit like Spoony did.

So by my retarded logic…. I won?

Rest assured this isn’t over between me and Final Fantasy 13, I will “return” to this series sometime down the road.

Oh btw, true story.

I literally ran in a circle with Vanille for 2 minutes while playing Tiny Tim’s “Having a Wonderful Time!” Then Hope groans "What am I doing here?"
I never laughed so hard in my life.



To those who’ve stuck by me for this Preowned Experiment. Thank you for reading, laughing, liking, faving or even hating on my thoughts. Next comes the calculations and the results to determine who won if you will.