Let's Play Final Fantasy X: Djose Temple

[auronlu]

Last time year on my FFX Liveblog, Tidus and friends slogged along the Djose Angst Road commiserating with survivors of Operation Mi’ihen. Condescending yet well-intentioned priests mingled with the walking wounded, dispensing healing and absolution, oblivious to their own Maesters’ subtle stage management of the entire fiasco. 

Sorry, no room in FFX for a Floating Continent... will some floating rocks do? [X]

[Ixion mandala & glyph]

Before we flee into the Temple of SPARKY (as my father named Ixion) to escape rampaging hopper monkeys, let me backtrack and add some thinky thoughts about the Luzzu & Gatta arc...

• Here’s the alternate versions of the convo with Gatta or Luzzu outside the temple. You have a choice of owie or OUCH.
• During Luzzu’s meltdown, Lulu is lurking behind him, watching with arms folded. She steps towards him in concern or sympathy, much as she did when he left for the front lines after his confession to Wakka. I will try not to be bitter that there wasn’t time for Lulu and Luzzu, whose voices are yummy, to exchange a few meaningful words as the failed warrior-babysitters of Besaid. There’s always headcanon.
• The remaster adds something cut from the original: Wakka turns to Lulu and salutes just as the scene fades out, as if to say, “It’s sorted, boss.” I like the way they look after people, as older orphans often do (see the ferryride to Luca, when they’re brainstorming what to do with Tidus). Besides, Luzzu is their only surviving childhood friend not on pilgrimage.
• In my catch-up playthrough, I kept noticing how Chappu’s ghost metaphorically overshadows Operation Mi’ihen, from the “I want to fight Sin, too!” scene with Gatta to this scene outside the temple with the survivor angsting over the one who didn’t make it (Luzzu: You don’t know what it’s like! Wakka: I do know.)
• Witnessing Operation Mi’ihen forced Lulu and Wakka to face the reality of Chappu’s death in a way they hadn’t before (Lulu had said it was “pointless to think about it,” while Wakka was in denial). They had to watch a virtual repeat of his last battle. So did we (and Tidus), giving us some emotional connection to what happened to Chappu. All of which is prep for a brief scene in Guadosalam.
• Gatta acts like a stand-in for Chappu, whose life or death Tidus, i.e. we the players, are responsible for. Alternatively, we can make Luzzu atone by dying. Either way, someone we “know” dies in the battle, not just random no-name NPCs. The stakes feel higher when it’s personal.
  

Okay, enough beating a dead... chocobo. Sorry.

Just inside the temple, Doorpost!Auron snarks, "So you're a champion of Yevon now, Braska?" at the newest Summoner statue. We’ve heard that Yuna’s mom became a pariah after marriage, but this is the first in-game hint that Braska was something of a black sheep himself. It's also another hint that Auron is not drinking the Yevon kool-aid, making him unusual at this point in the game.

It’s time to meet someone who is drinking the kool-aid, yet proves that not all Yevonites are jerkasses:

[FFWikia]

Isaaru is voiced by Reno/Axel's VA, btw. (Not his best work; he’s trying too hard to sound spiritual and compassionate rather than snarky and suave.)

Some fans have remarked that these brothers don’t look related, but considering that the only named couple we’ve seen so far is Dona and Barthello, UM HELLO. If you look closely, Pacce may have Isaaru’s eyes and Maroda’s hair. On the other hand, Sin chips away at families so much that having three siblings with the same parents is probably exceedingly rare. Either way, this trio have more diversity than the entire FFXV main cast.

Isaaru establishes himself as anti-Dona with the first words out of his HD lips. Dona’s opening salvo was a blunt, “A summoner, are you?” Isaaru is shy and tentative: “I beg your pardon, but may I ask your name?”

“Summoner Yuna, of the island of Besaid,” Yuna answers, totally failing to pull rank or flaunt her parentage (so there, Dona). “As I thought,” Isaaru enthuses, although his manner of expressing enthusiasm makes me think of a were-sloth.

Hang on. How did Isaaru recognize Yuna? For that matter, how did Dona know she was a summoner? Do aeons leave some kind of spiritual fingerprint? Are the colors of summoner ribbons and/or obis filed at some Yevon Registration Office, unique heraldic designs meant to ID the summoner? The logical conclusion when you see a physically unimposing person with one or more looming escorts? And maybe the Crusaders were gossiping to Isaaru before Yuna’s party arrived.

(Speaking of ribbons and other fashion accessories, I’ve joked before about Isaaru’s boxspring mattress jacket:

[dansg08′s great playthrough / commentary ]

...but actually it looks more like he lay down on an institutional bedframe while the paint was wet.

... ah, college temple dorm pranks, don’t you miss ‘em?)

Where was I? Oh, yes. “You have the look of your father,” Isaaru continues.

“My father...you knew him?” Yuna says, startled.

“Nope! I’m a Braska superfan!” Isaaru explains. “I’ve collected all his bobbleheads and posters!” Or words to that effect.

So yeah, Isaaru probably knows Braska’s portraits well enough to recognize the family resemblance. He’s trying to emulate Braska in every way (including the mellow voice, perhaps?) While Isaaru gushes about his idol, we’re treated to a view of the High Summoner’s statue festooned with hopper monkeys. I hope to goodness Isaaru doesn’t get any ideas...

...oh, drat. Well, we’ll worry about that later.

Something else. Isaaru is 26, and he’s hero-worshipped Braska “since I was a child.” Shouldn’t he have heard the “fallen summoner” scuttlebutt? Or did the church hush up the scandal, which explains why it hasn’t percolated into the NPC grapevine? Or is this another case of people following the church so blindly that they blot it out when the propaganda is revised, as Auron just intimated?

[dansg08′s playthrough]

Isaaru affably challenges Yuna to a race to Sin, i.e. to the death. How sporting! “Good luck to both of us!” he adds. He’s her rival just as much as Dona is, but he’s a gentleman about it. I wonder if all summoners are supposed to compete.

After this introductory cutscene, Maroda is fretting about the snail-like pace of Isaaru’s pilgrimage, worried that other summoners will overtake them. So there’s at least a few summoners on the road we never meet. Isaaru, dismayed about Operation Mi’ihen, says they need to get going, “before another fool plan wastes more lives.” 

However, Pacce’s running around the great hall like a puppy chasing a butterfly. Thanks for pointing out the floaty ball lighting torches, kiddo. I’d missed that they’re suspended in mid-air. “So pretty!” Awww. There FFX goes again, portraying innocence and happiness and cute little kids oblivious to the DOOMY DOOM hanging over them in order to make us wince. (I suspect it’s the main OOC reason for Pacce’s inclusion, although one can struggle to justify that Isaaru wanted his little bro with him as long as possible and didn’t realize quite how dangerous it would be. Perhaps he meant to leave him at a temple somewhere along the way — no, actually, it’s just more angst fodder). 

Whoops, we’re not quite finished with Team Isaaru. Before Tidus can enter the Cloister, Isaaru calls him back with a “Hey, you.” Maroda shares the rumor that summoners are disappearing, kicking off a new subplot now that Operation Mi’ihen is in the bag. (“Ain’t much future for a guardian without a summoner,” Maroda warns, unaware of Auron’s stint on the Zanarkand talk circuit.) You don’t say. Actually, one Al Bhed back at Operation Mi’ihen did say, muttering to Tidus in incomprehensible pink writing, “A summoner... I shall report this later,” which is pretty much what the Psyches outside the Aurochs’ locker room said right before Yuna’s first kidnapping. Consider ourselves foreshadowed.

Okay! Time for the Sparky Cloister of Trials! I like this one. In HD, you can see the Djose glyphs inside the Djose Spheres. (See my ridiculously over-detailed webpage about Yevon script in FFX.)

For once, I remembered not to push that stone plinth into the bottomless pit. Were you afraid you’d lost it forever like I was? Still not thrilled with having to play hopscotch across an abyss, and no, the safety net of lightning bolts was not reassuring. Too many years playing Tomb Raider, until I got too old to be able to tolerate the awful crunch of a body hitting the ground. 

Way back when, Besaid temple’s Cloister included a wall teaching suppliants the stations of the pilgrimage. Kilika Cloister was a test of courage: can you push through the flames? Now we have to power up a huge Yevon symbol, acknowledging the power of Yevon. Yes, I’m probably reading too much into these puzzles.

For the first time, Tidus enters the guardians’ antechamber without risking execution or excommunication. Good thing Yevon’s always so lenient, huh? Not that Lulu and Kimahri don’t watch him like a hawk. “Settle down.” “Pick spot. Shut up.” Kimahri’s followup line is more gentle: “You grow stronger, but are still a pup.” (Kimahri is Isaaru’s age, by the way). Then Dona shows up to take the heat off Tidus.

Begging for a handshake, Barthello proves to have as much of a fanboy crush on Auron as Isaaru had on Braska, and it’s adorable (except for the part about unwittingly following role models to their doom). Lulu and Wakka lay the verbal smackdown on Dona for failing to recognize Auron, and it’s all very satisfying.

[dansg08′s playthrough ]

Dona is constantly presented as the shallow bitchy rival, complete with slut-shaming costume, yet a closer reading shows she’s actually a shrewd cynic, as X-2 makes clear. She simply has no time for phony courtesies. She means to save Spira, but she’ll do it on her own terms. She refuses to play the “ray of light” game, smiling to keep up morale. She’s not putting on an act.

She also thinks Yuna is coasting on other people’s coattails: her father’s reputation, an excessive posse of guardians, Sir Auron’s support, invitations from the maesters, Seymour’s personal patronage... no wonder Dona is skeptical and a little jealous. She has a point, really. Before the end of Yuna's pilgrimage, all these things get stripped away at one time or another. Yuna will have to be able to get by without them.

Something else I noticed this time through. When Tidus first enters the guardians’ antechamber, there’s a brief lag before Dona arrives. Yuna’s actually still in the room with Kimahri standing over her, although you have to dash across the chamber before the cutscene starts to see her. She’s on her knees doing the Yevon prayer-gesture, which causes the stone door of the Chamber of the Fayth to rise with a grinding sound. That must be the proper way to open the door when you don’t have a Kimahri!Crowbar handy. She enters the Chamber of the Fayth just as Dona enters the other side of the waiting room.

Luckily, Yuna’s becoming quicker at this communing-with-the-fayth business. After the "May I shake your hand?” Dona & Barthello cutscene, a male voice starts up in the background singing the Hymn of the Fayth. I think that signals that the fayth has manifested in the next room to talk to Yuna. Yuna emerges soon afterwards, stumbling into the arms of her Big Blue Kitty spotter, at which point Dona launches her “stand on your own two legs for a change” tirade.

After scoffing that “your guardians won’t be able to protect you,” an indirect insult to poor Barthello, Dona enters the Chamber of the Fayth to collect what will turn out to be her last aeon. The scene ends with the Blackscreen of Snorage Time Passing, and Tidus wakes up in the inn beside the temple.

Outside, the rock sheath has settled back over Djose temple, apart from the front door. Lulu spouts a generic “no matter how dark the night, morning comes” platitude to reset the mood (I actually like that line, contrasting dark and light in the way that Lulu herself does visually, but it sounds like an Auron epigram). Wakka and Lulu are standing closer now, Wakka talking animatedly with arm-waving while she listens with arms crossed. Have the scenes with Luzzu helped reconcile them somewhat? And the hopper monkeys are still scurrying around underfoot. They’re cute, but they’re everywhere, gah.

Inside the temple, I find a shellshocked Luzzu praying in front of Gandof’s statue, saying he’s about to leave for Besaid, since he “can’t keep eating the temple’s bread.” He wishes Tidus farewell. “I hope we’ll meet again.” It’s not a very dynamic scene, but then, Luzzu doesn’t have a personal connection with Tidus. 

dansg08′s excellent walkthrough provides the alternate scene with Gatta...

Apart from that line, the conversation is almost identical, except that there’s a hint of camaraderie between Gatta and Tidus. They’re about the same age, and Tidus has spoken up for Gatta before. On the way to Operation Mi’ihen, Gatta was optimistically asking Tidus to teach him blitzball once Sin was dead, echoing Tidus’ fans back in Zanarkand: “Teach us how to blitz!” Now, Gatta wishes him luck and says soberly, “I hope we meet again someday.” He’s faced Sin and lost. He knows now what odds Tidus is up against.

Around the temple, priests and nuns are returning to normal routine. Most of the Crusaders have cleared out apart from one mentally-scarred fellow who can only babble, “Kweh.” (Last night, he was groaning, “My chocobo... oh chocobo... kweh.”)

We hear that Yuna stayed up until dawn, healing the wounded and sending the fallen. One of the priests remarks, “I imagine it must have been quite hard on such a young summoner.” Why didn’t the older summoners stick around to help? Dona didn’t assist with the Kilika sending, either, although perhaps she didn’t arrive in Kilika until it was over. Isaaru seemed more concerned with getting on his way to head off the next Operation Mi’ihen. Perhaps post-Sin-attack-cleanup normally falls to nuns, priests and  “temple summoners,” unless there’s no temple summoner on hand to send. 

Tidus (not Lulu!) rouses a flustered Yuna, who dashes outside, bows and apologizes too much. She gives Auron a full ninety-degree bow, which seems to me excessive (but I don’t know bowing etiquette well enough to be sure).  Tumblr member They Better Be Mysterious notes that the “bed hair” joke is only in the English; instead, the party teases Yuna for sleeping with her mouth open and mumbling. I prefer the English localization. I love Auron’s line about — DAMMIT HOPPER MONKEY WILL YOU STOP PESTERING AURON— ahem, I love his smug, “Once Lady Yuna fixes her hair, we leave.”

I have a note in my notes: Don’t forget to stop in at the Inn before you leave; there’s a Str +3, Str +5 stacked-bonuses ball for Wakka in a chest that a priest was blocking earlier.

Now it’s time to head to the dubiously-named Moonflow. But first, I’m going to chat up NPCs for another round of Spiran Scuttlebutt. Big events are afoot in the larger world of Spira, events which are easy to miss without tedious backtracking!

___

Cross-posted on Tumblr here.

Comments

[zen_monk]

I played X-2 recently on the Vita as something to try to finish first before FFX, since i've never really finished it as a game and X is something that's been in my memory for a while.

And I was really surprised at how nuanced and well-thought out they made Dona out to be in this game. I think it's more like when it's no longer this competition thing with Yuna, they decided to flesh that aspect out by having her affiliated with being on one side of political strife. I also thought that the Kilika scenes in X-2 were really well-done.

[auronlu]

Absolutely. When I first played it, I felt like X-2 ruined a lot of things and improved Dona.

I have a somewhat more nuanced opinion of X-2 now (there is much good in it), but I remain impressed by the Kilika story arc. More importantly, I can see the seeds of X-2 Dona in FFX, making me appreciate her more.

[zen_monk]

what I liked about X-2, now that I started to pay attention more and have the knowledge to analyze it, is that there's a lot of emphasis on how fundamental changes can really become noticeable in places where opportunity develops. Like Kilika is seen as the prime example of the political tensions and it has the reasoning that they feel the Crusaders (or Youth League) were the ones who benefited them the most in comparison to anything Yevon, even though in the past it didn't seem like it would be the place where Yevon as a structure would've impacted them in the same way that it would for people who took up headquarters near Sin's battlefield around Djose.

Or the destruction of family unit and relationships between Dona and Barthello, who both have difficulty reconciling on who to keep supporting (or if they need a cause to support), and the separation between Isaaru and his brothers with the youngest one being... strangely blind to it, but he found his own gang to be with so I guess that was a new way to supplant his family by creating a new one.

It still jars me a bit how there is an overall blurring between what is sacred and what is mundane, what with places like Zanarkand and Djose temple having to get different people to try to keep it active, but at the same time no one really wants to say that some things should be held on a pedestal without wanting to sound like they're taking an ideological side.

[auronlu]

Yes, even with the lies of Yevon exposed, it's hard to believe that people abandoned sacred places quite so quickly and drastically.

I feel like X-2 may draw on some of the jarring changes in Japan right after WWII, which transformed Japanese culture dramatically and vibrantly over the course of a generation... but it didn't change that fast, and sacred places still retain some reverence. X-2 seems to exaggerate that generational gap to a caricatured extreme.

Then again, its players are too young to remember the culture shock of their grandparents (or, at this point, great-grandparents).

[zen_monk]

Could be post-war Japan, since the occupation after the conclusion of VJ day involves heavy US influence and occupation of their military, and that includes dictating laws and such to the government.

What makes sense to me is that if people are so betrayed by Yevon as a whole, there's reactionary rejection of almost everything relating to it, and that includes finding new identities to formulate around from and incurring revolutionary behavior. It's probably not going to have the same context, but I'm thinking of like socialist revolutions which overthrows one state power that circles around one ideology, and replacing it with one with an ideology that it's more "inclusive." It's like how more Youth League members have Al Bhed associates, but you can't really say the same thing with New Yevon being seen doing the same thing though they don't have the same antagonism especially once Al Bhed persecution became unpopular in the two-year interim alongside the rise of the Machine Faction.

Though of course, any sort of communist coalition postwar Japanese people might have get quashed by the government since the US puts pressure to stop such things from happening if they want to keep watching Vietnam and China and N. Korea.

[auronlu]

I'm always cautious about drawing comparisons between FF and Japan, because of my own ignorance. On the one hand, I'm trying to escape imposing western interpretations on something that isn't (see: taking Yevon and the pilgrimage as Christian allegory when Christianity almost doesn't exist in Japan and Buddhism and Shinto symbols are all over the place in the game). On the other, I don't know enough about Japan to break free of the blinkers, so I never know whether my guesses are right.

Hm. The socialist/cultural revolution analogy does seem more apt. Because that does happen fast. Real-world Japan couldn't do that unobstructed, as you say, with the American occupation shaping the forms their institutions could take. Maybe youth culture did more, because that was one area that was hard to control? I feel like there was a lot of blaming WWII on the older generation and trying to reject everything they stood for. That's Youth League; New Yevon tries not to lose their values.

It's an interesting basis for a fantasy world's factional clashes. I just wish FFX-2 hadn't dwelt so much on extremely superficial stuff like matchmaking minigames and had spent more time on THAT. Then again, part of the point of all the silly random games is that people had no idea what to do with themselves, and silly pointless activities were finally allowed, so they were making up for lost time.

[zen_monk]

I wouldn't say "almost doesn't exist" considering that there had been some Portuguese missionaries who went over in the 17th century, and the subsequent attempts to purge Christians due to realizing that if people started to look to the Pope as a religious leader it would undermine the influence of the Emperor. And then once the Meiji Era happened in 1868, there has been efforts to get more Western influence because the country wants to catch up to the rest of the Western world, and that includes having people going to other countries to study at universities which may be religious anyway (as per the genesis of a lot of universities in the West).

However, this isn't to say that the history of Buddhism and Shintoism weren't tools of state power since getting people know the Emperor as a divine influence means they have push either one with all they got depending on which happens to be more popular. Not to mention Confucian influences since that is a philosophy/religion that structures the government.

What I think should be noted is that the emphasis on the "Youth League" isn't just something like proponents of a "Modernity vs. Traditionalism" which X-2 and some elements of X have included. It also has the metatextual level, I think, of being an active criticism of Japan's tendencies to prioritize the old over the young. This isn't me being a kind of expert, but whenever there's been criticism against the government or business practices one of the most common things I've seen is that there's tension between older groups of people who still maintain fundamental control over the country and those people tend to be not only conservatives but super nationalists. This is something that goes back to WWII, as well, since those beliefs were rooted from that kind of ultra-nationalism, and that includes convincing every one of the citizenry to have utmost devotion to the militarized government.

And a lot of times, the dialogue back then was that anytime there was criticism against Imperial Japan, it's usually framed around how the United States was right and justifies its occupation while also avoiding blowback from Asia. Then there's other things nowadays like why the gov't was so ineffectual in mitigating the aftermath of the 3/11 Tsunami disaster, as well as toward the nuclear/electric companies responsible for Fukushima. Or whenever there's sketchy work stories about how new entry-level people can't seem to make it up the corporate ladder while committing unreasonable work hours but the senior workers are cut so much slack.

But nowadays, it's not too much of a stretch to see that what the Youth League represents is a reactionary opposition against old traditionalists, usually the older generation, who take advantage of continuing generations by what they say as "Yevon lies" which to me is code for brainwashing. It's like how the aftermath of the attack against Sin near Djose is always framed around how it's people who go against the teachings, and so it's putting the "nonbelievers vs the true believers" even though two maesters were there to help and oversee its success. Who wouldn't be pissed at New Yevon, when it seems like they're trying to be Yevon-lite but they're supporting an old system that would throw so many people under the bus while putting on the face of "helping" it succeed since there's the common cause of defeating Sin.

Which is also like, yeah I wish X-2 would delve more into it, but I wonder how much the production team was willing to go that way without having to align political parallels, so I guess padding the game out with a whole chapter of sphere video viewing (omg, all the cutscenes that goes one after another for 100% completion), and a burgeoning consumerist culture might be the middle ground. Though my question is when the hell did pop music get its start in Spira, but I guess if heavy metal is in 1000 yr ago Zanarkand, I guess power ballads are still going strong.

[auronlu]

There are so many fascinating/insightful things in this reply.

I knew that China's governmental bureaucracy had adopted Confucianism for a good part of that country's history, but I was a bit fuzzy on the extent to which it showed up in Japan. Likewise, I wasn't quite sure how much Buddhism and Shintoism overlap with or are used in government in various times.

I'm curious about the extent to which Christian mythology is present in Japanese anime and video games. I know I was exaggerating slightly about Christianity being almost nonexistent in Japan, but for a few years there, I saw Yuna's entire pilgrimage, the church of Yevon, and Seymour being interpreted exclusively through the lens of Catholicism (that whole "atone for your sins" notion), with Seymour as a Christ figure (because of the way he falls down when he dies), and Seymour/Tidus/Yuna as a Holy Trinity (which is a bizarre analogy, since they don't map to father/son/holy ghost all that well). I've tended to overcompensate in the other direction, trying to look for Buddhist/Shinto details instead.

The clash of old vs. young, the older generation vs. youth is fascinating. I was picking up some glimmers of that from 3/11, but most of the news I've seen out of Japan lately seems to be sabre-rattling, for the first time in my lifetime.

Mrgh. Dunno where I was going with this; the heat/humidity is turning my brain to jelly. But anyway, thank you for all the insights from someone who knows the culture!

[rionaleonhart]

I always send Gatta to his death, because I prefer the scene with Luzzu afterwards, and I feel horrible about it every time. I'm a monster. I can't believe you have to tell him he should be fighting twice; it's as if the game is asking you, 'Are you sure you want this kid to die? Really?' (And I was so busy being ashamed of myself that it didn't occur to me until this moment how Tidus must feel, knowing he encouraged Gatta to fight.)

she’s actually a shrewd cynic, as X-2 makes clear. She simply has no time for phony courtesies. She means to save Spira, but she’ll do it on her own terms. She refuses to play the “ray of light” game, smiling to keep up morale. She’s not putting on an act.

I love your analysis of Dona here! She's a character I've never really given much thought to, but you've made her much more interesting to me. She'll sacrifice herself for the greater good; just don't ask her to pretend she's happy about it.

[auronlu]

Likewise about Gatta: Luzzu gets slightly better scenes, but it's brutal forcing Gatta to die. (And we know we're doing it, too -- I can't imagine anyone triggering the Luzzu-lives storyline by accident, without some kind of walkthrough tipping us off how to make it happen.) Interesting psychology, making the player complicit.

I strongly disliked Dona when I played FFX. Then I got to X-2, where some of my favorite NPCs had turned insufferable (at least for a while -- Oh, Isaaru), while, strangely enough, Dona turns out to be a smart cookie with some shrewd intel for Yuna. Dona never becomes a "nice" person, exactly. But she's a helluva lot more complicated than I had taken her to be from her FFX caricature.

Also, I have become more aware of narrative tropes which portray rival woman as slutty bitches. Because our society vilifies women (a) for being confident in their sexuality and/or (b) for refusing to smile and be polite all the time. I'm starting to take a closer look at "bitch" characters,, juggling the unanswerable question, "What part of this character's negative traits are due to sexist game design, which often sexualizes female opponents, and what part is a female character refusing to let her choices be muzzled by conventional opinion?"

[wallwalker]

I did accidentally trigger Gatta's death on my first playthrough, but it was because I was trying to do what I thought Tidus would do. I always talk to people until they have nothing new to say, and Tidus's first words after seeing Luzzu lecture Gatta about how he needed to stay back because of the danger were something like, "Gatta deserves better." So I thought, of course he'd encourage Gatta to do what he wanted to do, even if it's dangerous. The thought that he would die would possibly never occur to him until he sees the body... I mean, if I remember right, Tidus sees the destruction at Kilika, but Luzzu or Gatta are the first people he's met and talked to that were added to the body count.

I've got to take another look at X-2 sometime. I got a little frustrated by the gameplay, but it sounds like it has some interesting bits to it. (So far my top-level look at the plot can be summarized to, "Politics ruin everything!")

[auronlu]

Yes, X-2 is a bit of a mess, with an uneasy combination of extremely silly stuff, political factioning and some more interesting explorations of "what do you do when your culture's dominant social structure has collapsed?" But there are many good parts to it.

Fascinating that you and CumulusCastle both got the Gatta-dies arc, which IMO is the more interesting of the two. That makes sense: I often do things based on what seems plausible for the characters (up to and including pulling in the party member who loves them most to clobber a monster that's KOed somebody, even if that party member isn't the best person for the job).

[cumuluscastle]

I did it too, actually. I wish I could be as coherent about why I did. I just think I responded to how sure Gatta is that he wants to participate. I probably knew the mission was doomed, but I don't think I knew how many people would die and I guess I just didn't like the idea of forcing him to stay behind. He was so adamant!

[rynling]

That Luzzu meldown scene, ouch. And doubly so because the cinematography doesn't really match the strength of that particular voice actor...

...who Google tells me is John DeMita, who apparently voices Barthello as well. Google also tells me that, while John DeMita has done a lot of voice acting, he's never had a major role. That's kind of a shame, because I think his performance is one of the reasons why Luzzu (and, now that I think about it, Barthello) is so sympathetic.

I never made it all the way through X-2, but your paragraph on Dona just lit a fire under my ass. Wow.

Why didn’t the older summoners stick around to help?

You know, that was something that bugged me all throughout the game, not just at this particular point but also as a more generalized issue. I'm not a super-fan of FFX, so please be patient with me if this has been debated and addressed ad infinitum elsewhere, but I wonder if Yuna's not simply strikingly good at sending and white magic. The first time I played through the game, FFX was difficult to complete without leveling even with a full party, while other summoners seem to make do with only one or two other people. Could it be that Yuna's skill at healing and sending comes at the cost of her being unusually weak as a fighter?

[auronlu]

Agreed about John DeMita. He's the husband of Julia Fletcher: Elma, Yunalesca, Judge Drace in XII. (Their son voices Kytes in XII, Vaan's young friend.) Also, I forgot to note the amusing OOC/IC tangle of relationships: Candi Milo (generally fantastic) does the voicework for Dona and Lucil, so I wind up with Elma's husband either the subordinate officer/lover of Lucil/alt!Lucil. Which amuses me, since Elma/Lucil was my stubborn f/f ship for this franchise until Fang and Vanille came along with their queerbaiting near-canonicity.

Oh, I think John DiMita also voices all the Hypellos. Who are one-dimensional, but pretty impressive voicework, since I have a good ear and really can't recognize him. (He also does Graav, one of the haughty Luca blitzball players, but that's more obviously his voice.)

Sorry, tangent. Voice acting interests me. Despite some of the really excessive shatnering -- someone should've told Yuna's English VA Hedy Buriss not to worry about lip-synching to the Japanese -- it's one reason I like this game.

I have never seen anyone make that suggestion about Yuna being a specialist white mage before, and it works really well! During Operation Mi'ihen, Seymour joins the party briefly, and we see that he has second-level black magic spells plus a pretty ferocious attack overdrive if one wastes enough time to get it charged up. So the only other summoner we see in battle is as proficient in black magic as he is in white magic. Among the High Summoners, Lady Yocun was a Crusader depicted brandishing a sword, and Lord Ohalland was a blitzball player, suggesting physical prowess.

So the evidence fits your idea nicely.

[mintywolf]

Yeah Wakka stops talking about how Sin’s going to bring Chappu back one day after Lulu shuts him down on the subject in Kilika, but seeing Operation Mi’ihen in person is when it really sinks in, I think, for both of them. Even Lulu, who already accepted what had happened, hadn’t actually seen it for herself yet. The close brush with Sin itself too could have been a reminder that it’s an uncontrollable destructive force, and as far as they know its act of bringing Tidus to them unharmed was only a fluke and they can’t count on something like that to happen again.

I haven’t gotten this far playing it in HD so I didn’t know about that little change in the cutscene with Luzzu! Interesting.

Every single time I play this I wonder how DO summoners recognize each other on sight? I thought they must give off some kind of aura familiar to each other, like once you’ve been in communion with the fayth it leaves some psychic impression on you that other people who have had that experience will recognize while others would just not notice. That they might just identify them from having an entourage of heavily-armed bodyguards actually never occurred to me but it makes a lot more sense, haha. I guess it is the first thing about Yuna that Dona notices!

Haha Tomb Raider has given me a deeply-ingrained habit of caution about platform-jumping too. Even if it’s impossible to fall I will spend time carefully setting up jumps. (The way Yuna stops at the edge of a ledge and windmills her arms around if you don’t jump properly in X-2 is really cute though. I’m glad she can’t actually fall.)

Huh. I don’t think I ever noticed Yuna opening the door with the power of prayer before either. (Maybe it wasn’t visible until the widescreen remaster?) So is the fayth personally in charge of letting summoners in, or is it somehow machina-powered beyond anyone’s understanding, I wonder?

Kweh. :(

Why didn’t the older summoners stick around to help? SERIOUSLY. I mean, I guess they’re all dedicated to helping Spira in their own way and both Dona and Isaaru are looking at the bigger picture, both trying to ward off any future calamity by getting to Sin posthaste, but it seems pretty callous to ignore the current tragedy. It shows that while they’re focused on the perspective of saving Spira, in general, Yuna is more inclined towards helping individual Spirans. (Noticeably, Seymour also walks off and leaves Yuna to perform the sending on the beach right afterwards by herself, too. What a guy.)

Haha well it seems to be that Lulu went in to wake her up but couldn’t or decided against it since she was so tired. (And talking in her sleep and/or snoring, which is adorable.) Tidus just wakes her up because he’s a walking cacophony. ;)

I like Auron teasing about Yuna’s hair too. I wonder now what he says in the original Japanese because in English, it’s the only time he ever addresses her by her title, and he’s doing it to be snarky.

[auronlu]

This post originally was missing the comment about summoners recognizing one another by the presence of looming bodyguards. I edited it in after rereading and revising about a dozen times. So I'm glad you didn't get to it until the director's cut. :)

Anyway, I was thinking "spiritual aura" too, or maybe the fact that at least Isaaru and Dona wear ribbons, and others wear obis, but there really is no consistency whatsoever in their costuming (WHY AN ARTICHOKE?! WHY?!) so that doesn't work.

I think the fayth probably is in charge of opening the door mechanism, but who knows. Remember those lifts in Mushroom Rock... at least some of them have Yevon symbols and seem to operate using some form of very primitive hydraulics that seems rather different from gear-and-mechanics machina. HEY. There's a lot of water in this game, actually; maybe Yevon does sanction Roman-style hydraulics with clay pipes and water and hot springs and such. (Not that one should expect any kind of consistency about machina from Yevon.)

FFX remaster

[tsakura_rain]

I am so, so excited that you are running through this.

Sparky is a great name. And yes, I too think that the Catholic-not-catholic-Buddhist-Yevon glossed over poor Braska's fate. Isaaru worships him like most boys do with baseball players or Transformers. Autobots, roll out!