Here’s an Owl House theory. THERE’S SPOILERS FOR THE LAST EPISODE IN IT. I’m SURE others have come up with the same or similar, but I don’t go in fandom tags very much so please nobody think I ‘stole’ this. I’m posting less to impress other Owl House fans and more as a record for my future self of what I thought was going on in the show at this point.
So we know that Luz came through the door between worlds, and that there’s a doppelganger back in Humanland who wrote to her mom from camp and is now living in her house. We know that mom doesn’t think anything at all is ‘off’ about Faux Luz, so there must not be anything wildly different about her appearance-wise.
We also know Philip Wittebane sort of tripped and fell into Magicland accidentally, but we know he disappeared or went back home somehow (it seems like he made the portal door in the first place). Now, we know what Emperor Belos looks like, and he looks and (when he’s not masked and trying to be echoey and intimidating) sounds very very much like Philip’s silhouette and voice in the diary.
We also know that Hunter looks rather like, but not exactly like, Belos. We’ve been shown that Belos performs magic in a way that looks quite different to any other Witch, and we’ve been told Hunter isn’t able to do magic on his own without a staff--and that with the unusual staff Belos gave him his magic has the same red aura as Belos’s, but with a ‘traditional’ staff with a palisman his magic is yellow or golden. In the last episode we were also shown a page in a book displaying info on a creature called a ‘Grimwalker,’ and that creature apparently has jewel-y maroon eyes like Hunter’s--which do NOT match Belos’s blue eyes. (Their ears also don’t match exactly. They have the same notch in the left ear, but Hunter’s are more horizontally pointy like Witch ears are, while Belos’s do come to a point but they’re noticeably smaller and more vertical.)
Hunter told Luz that he was ‘found’ by Belos, and that others in his ‘family’ have been unable to do magic. However Hunter didn’t necessarily say he knew anyone else in his family (I don’t think, someone correct me if I’m wrong), so it’s likely he only knows there have been others in his lineage without magic because Belos told him that.
Okay theory time, everything behind here is pure speculation:
Belos isn’t Philip Wittebane. He’s the Faux Philip that Philip spontaneously, ‘magically’ generated in Humanland when he fell into Magicland. When Philip made the portal door and went home, Faux Philip was swapped into Magicland. Faux Philip couldn’t stay in Humanland while Philip was there; there can’t be two of the same person on the same plane of existence. Once a human has moved between worlds, there always has to be one of them on one side and one of them on the other. And Faux Philip, now known as Belos, who has seen Humanland and who remembers it as being so much cleaner, so much more peaceful and quiet, very much wants to go home.
So what is a Faux person made of? Well, we’ve seen Belos go all goopy and we know he feels better after consuming palismen--and that palistrom wood is one of the Grimwalker ‘ingredients.’ So, I theorize that Belos, in the long years of trying to go back to Humanland, has done enough experimentation to find out what sustains him: very magical things, things basically ‘from the Titan’ and the Isles, such as palistrom wood, and possibly Titan’s blood or galdorstones if he could get them, etc. He isn’t made of those things like a Grimwalker seems to be, but they keep him alive. And he’s needed more and more over time, because the original Philip Wittebane is long dead. Belos should be long dead as well, but has essentially refused to give up on going home to Humanland and is keeping himself going with magical stuff, which works because he is indeed a creature of flesh but also one that was magically generated.
I further theorize that Belos knows the truth of his origins. He knows he’s Faux Philip (rather than thinking he’s just a human who was banished into Magicland suddenly one day) and has at least guessed that if he goes home, something will need to be left behind in Magicland. But his own original is dead. Belos has guessed or knows that he, already being a Faux person, won’t generate a doppelganger. It’s possible he had the portal door at one point, but didn’t find it until after Philip died and so he knows it won’t work for him because there’s no person there to swap with. It’s also possible Belos found the door even before Philip died, and discovered he couldn’t go through it at all because Philip, the ‘real person’ in this scenario, was the only one who could initiate a swap. (Maybe only humans can, naturally. Otherwise, there’s a doppelganger Eda and even a doppelganger Lilith somewhere in the human world right now because they’ve both gone through the portal door and come back to Magicland.)
Anyway I don’t think Faux Philip could see the door right when Philip used it to come back. When Luz tumbled back through the door with Lilith, her own copy didn’t appear right on the other side of the door, at least that we could see, and Luz has no idea she exists. However if my theory is correct, Luz’s copy was just for those few moments swapped into Magicland. Maybe Faux Luz appeared at a distance from the door on the Magicland side equal to the distance she currently was from the door on the Humanland side? If so, the same thing would’ve happened to Faux Philip. So if that’s true, he just popped into Magicland at an equidistant point too and didn’t see the door. But I do theorize he found the door later and tried it and it didn’t work--otherwise the rest of my theory below doesn’t make as much sense, because how would he know he couldn’t make or find only a door and have that work. Still, I don’t have a theory on how he lost access to the portal door after that. Eda found it not far from her home, and Eda’s mom said her great grandmother knew there was ‘a human’ who lived in the area (not necessarily that great granny knew the person but at least that she knew of him, and depending on Witch lifespans it may have been impossible she knew him personally) who turned out to be Philip, so there’s a potential link, but I don’t have a guess yet on why it was there and not with Belos. Unless Belos left it there to hide it and Eda just kinda found it one day? Belos didn’t seem to know Eda had the door, he just kind of assumed since another human appeared that that human may have used it. So going after Eda would bring him Luz and thus info on the door? Like I said I don’t have a full theory on this.
At any rate, I hypothesize that Belos very much knows what he is and knows he can’t go through any door between realms unless something will ‘swap’ with him. So he’s been trying not only to find or make a door and key BUT ALSO to make a ‘Faux Faux’ Philip he can use to be his doppelganger in Magicland so the door will even let him through. (In other words he thinks he could technically become an ‘original’ by making another copy being, and that that being could then be swapped around for him like he was for Philip.)
So he knows what keeps him alive, and he’s been in Magicland long enough to know how to make ‘magic’ without being a Witch himself. Eda, who’s been a virtually magicless Witch for a little while, still knows how to make potions. Luz figured out the glyphs, which apparently figured into how Witches did magic before they evolved bile sacs and could do it naturally. How much more could someone who’s been living in Magicland for literally centuries figure out how to do? I suggest that over the years, Belos learned how to make constructs he called Grimwalkers. After all it looks like a Grimwalker is basically a list of potion ingredients that somehow makes a walking talking person. Abominations are goopy constructs too, so constructs are an existing type of magic. But those potion ingredients--one of which is also a known thing that keeps Belos himself alive--are rare and difficult to find. So it takes quite a bit of time and effort to make a Grimwalker.
Anyway long story short Hunter is the latest Grimwalker Belos has made, and Belos hopes to use him as a Faux Faux Philip who can take his place in Magicland when he returns to Humanland. Possibly Belos made a baby him and left him with someone else to raise him, and he was abandoned or later ~found~ by Belos who declared him a ‘nephew’ and ‘took him in’ at the growth stage or moment in time when he’d become potentially useful? The other members of his ‘family’ who couldn’t do magic were other Grimwalkers, and Hunter never knew them, Belos just told him about them. Oh Hunter, you’re different from other Witches, but you’re not the only one of your kind! Here, have a special kind of staff I made that helps members of our family make magic! You’re very special, Hunter, the Titan has big plans for you, but also, don’t fail me or you’ll be (just as) useless (as the others).
So the previous Grimwalkers ‘failed’ in some way. Maybe they didn’t master Belos’s style of ‘artificial’ magic sufficiently to his liking. Maybe like I said, Belos had the door for a while, and he tried to get through and leave a Grimwalker behind but it didn’t work, and then he didn’t give up on the idea but just decided that particular Grimwalker was a failure. Maybe the previous Grimwalkers just weren’t stable and broke down before he could even try to use them. At any rate it would be so troublesome to have to replace Hunter who is skilled and stable (so far), and the Day of Unity is coming and the door is nearly complete and a key might soon be made or found, so Hunter had better stay put and not do any more missions. Just like Amity misunderstood Luz’s texts, Hunter is misunderstanding Belos right now. It’s not that Belos is worried he’ll fail at any further little missions or tasks, it’s that he doesn’t want him to be lost or to fail at his ultimate function.
And that’s what I think so far!
Anyway I also think that if all that is correct, it’s going to be interesting if/when Luz finds out what Belos really is and what he’s really trying to do, because that will mean finding out about Faux Luz. Who’s ‘just like poor Faux Philip/Belos, who’s just been trying to get home all this time.’ Luz has already been having trouble deciding what she wants to do. Be a witch, or go home to Humanland where magic is impossible? Never see her mother again, or never see her Boiling Isles Found Family again? Try to live between worlds somehow?
So, finding out that if she goes home and stays home there will be a creature swapped into Magicland who might feel just as banished and abandoned as Belos... Thinking that if she goes home and stays home her Found Family might take in the Faux Luz which would be nice because Faux Luz would be less sad, but that Found Family might also consider Faux Luz a Replacement (which Luz could think means they don’t care if it’s Really Luz so long as there’s A Luz--that she’s replaceable and not special)... Finding out that her mom didn’t even notice the Luz that wrote home from camp and came back after a few months wasn’t really her (and is Faux Luz less boisterous and more practical like mom hoped? is Faux Luz the Luz mom Always Wanted Instead?)... So thinking that if she stays in Magicland she might not be as missed as she assumed...
Oh boy! Possible feelings and angst! If I’m right anyway!
Rhodes Island’s good intentions but sketchy procedures
I started playing Arknights two weeks ago, and I love it. I haven't read up on CN spoilers or the lore that was revealed in Operational Intelligence. I'm currently on Chapter 4. I know Old Doctor was a monster, but Rhodes Island looks pretty shady. I don't know how R&D companies work in the real world and I hesitate to impose real-world similarities to Arknights because Terra's very different from Earth but here's the description of Rhodes Island.
Rhodes Island Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a registered drug R&D company working on medical solutions for countries, organizations, and individuals infected with Oripathy. To achieve their goal, Rhodes Island recruits talent from all around the world, regardless of background, experience, or condition. Furthermore, Rhodes Island is committed to providing the best medical and living conditions for its employees, attracting movers and shakers — Infected or not — to try to change the world.
I understand that there has to be non-combat patients and civilians that Rhodes Islands cares for off-screen, but it's still pretty yikes that Orchid, a former fashion designer with zero combat experience, got a full ride on the condition that she participates in combat Ops. It's great that Rhodes Islands is giving Orchid a full ride for being a combat op, but people like Orchid really don't have another choice. The Infected usually aren't employed because they're all treated like shit which means they can't afford the treatment available to them in the rare places it's offered. Orchid could either become a Combat Operator or die painfully.
The combat operators in Rhodes Island don't seem to display anger at Rhodes Island since it's a pretty nice place to live, but the whole situation is shady. There's also the sheer amount of connections Rhodes Islands have. Yes, you can summon Ch'en, Silverash, and other bigwigs and have them be your best buds. Canonically these people seem to work with RI on a case-by-case basis, but it still astounds me that an R&D organization has the ear of such powerful factions. RI has scary amounts of connections and Past Doctor and Kal'stit must have been pretty Unga-Bunga to get those connections in the first place.
Then there's Amiya. Amiya seems to genuinely want to create a world where the Infected and Non-infected can live in peace, but the story so far seems to be dedicated to showing her it's impossible. There are also problems with Amiya being the leader of RI. Yes, she's intelligent and wise beyond her years. However, I don't think its a coincidence that the young pretty idealist is shilled as the leader of RI. It's good PR and people would never think Amiya is the leader of an R&D company that acts as a PMC. I'm not saying Amiya's a puppet. She's shown to be a capable leader, but I can see Old Doctor and Kalt'sit setting Amiya up as the face of RI because of her idealism.
Then there's the Noah Ark's parallels to R&I. Yes, RI has parallels to the Knights Hospitaliers as well, but the ending for Noah's Arc is somewhat hopeful. However, to get to that ending the rest of the world dies painfully. And if Arknights goes really hard with Noah's Ark angle, Amiya is Noah which means Old Doctor and Kal'stit chose her knowing that the world is on the clock and plan for her to be the leader or mover and shaker of the new world. It's pretty yikes.
Anyway canon's and future events will probably make this post laughably wrong, and Arknights won't be a 1:1 retelling of Noah's Ark. But so far RI is shady as shit even if they do have good motivations, and I'm really worried about Amiya.
I go by Not The Author for exactly the reason that I ain’t no expert on any given work of fiction, but I do like to make connections what make me seem smart: an illusion, haphazardly crafted by incident accident and supplemented by precocious pretentiousness. All the same, here are some fun thoughts I had that you might also enjoy!
I do have a point, that I do get to. I feel like I should say that ahead of time, all things considered. Like, I can appreciate if you can’t appreciate a shaggy dog story? But there is a point to all this.
...Eventually.
Spoiler Warning:
Final Fantasies 1, 6, 7, 7R, 13 and 15
Content Warning:
Discussion of death
Cussin’
Length warning:
5621 words
13 sections
16 digressions
Let’s dig in.
- - - - -
Final Fantasy 1 was not my first Final Fantasy experience, but I think it was the first I ever played by myself? The remaster for the GBA, came bundled with FF2 on the same cart, which I played briefly but did not complete and do not remember, except that it had Cid.
FF1 doesn’t have a Cid, but I really loved the narrative anyway, straightforward as it was, because it was very specifically about spitting in the face of an uncaring god who would doom the world for a laugh. Take these chains that bind us to darkness and, though we be forgot to history, strangle with them that selfsame darkness to bring an end to its tyranny.
((it is a terrible curse, to love time travel. so many grand expectations, so few ever met. play ghost trick, chrono trigger, radiant historia, majora’s mask, outer wilds. have you any recs yourself, lemme know! I digress.
((I digress a lot, as I may have mentioned. they’ll be noted in parenthetical, like this.))
This is the foundation upon which Final Fantasy is built, and while any student of architecture could tell you of many and varied perfectly valid construction techniques, it resonates. Grappling with an immutable past to course-correct an uncaring future is, too, an apt description of personal growth; a theme as universal as being alive. And I, as an impressionable youth, ate that shit up.
((I assume I was young, at any rate. my love for time travel, be it era-spanning or moment-stretching, is, I suspect, not entirely coincidental to my terrible temporal memory.))
And that was the tale of the studio, too. Final Fantasy was so titled because, the story goes, the developers knew they would shutter if it didn’t make bank. Staring your imminent demise in the face, knowing your fate is doom, and giving it your all, all the same.
And then they made another twelve, plus two-and-a-half MMOs, and god knows how many mobile games and spin-offs, and now the Fantasy is that there could ever be a Final one. so say I: life parodies art.
((the half-an-MMO is FF14 1.0, which no longer exists and is a fascinating tale, a rally against bleak futures all its own. I’ll [link] Noclip’s three-part documentary covering the developer’s side of things, because that’s the one I’ve seen. there’s plenty other material to hunt down, though, if you wanna.))
- - - - -
Final Fantasy VII is a game about fate, too. Particularly Death, that most ultimate of fates. Tragic, to be sure; preventable, or at least delayable, in many cases; necessary, at times, for the growth of something new.
Unrelenting. Unstoppable. Inescapable.
Death, and the fights against it, take many forms. There are the fascist death squads that hunt down your ragtag band and any dissent against their cruel masters, but these will only truly stop by cutting off the hydra’s head and building an entirely new society; eight dudes and their dog, faced with a corporate private military, can survive but never win. There are such disasters as do slay that hydra, be they natural or man-made. There’s the space alien and the apocalypse it ushers. There’s literal illness and injury, physical or otherwise. There are the deaths of loved ones, friends and family, that lead to some subtler deaths within those that survive them. The deaths of relationships, by neglect or abandonment. The ideological deaths we inflict on ourselves, accepting ever-growing lesser evils in the name of some impossible ideal.
Every day, the person we were becomes the person we are, and soon, the person we are will give way to someone new, and this, too, is a sort of death. In this sense, we tally Cloud’s deaths at least five: failure to become a Soldier and rebirth in shame, the massacre of Nibelheim and rebirth in grief, arrival at Midgar and rebirth in delusion, his cratering at the Crater and rebirth in nihilism, and his death and rebirth in the Lifestream of Mideel.
((you could prolly hunt down another two if you wanna be cheeky, but I lack the knowledge, motive and patience. frankly, this whole thing is to create a leading line of logic and probably isn’t, uh. academically ethical? or whatever the term is. I’m not necessarily wrong, but I’m definitely scuttling nuance. oh well!))
Now, I say “rebirth,” because that’s how deaths of identity more-or-less work. There’s usually some new identity waiting in the wings to take over. And rebirth is itself a notable theme, inasmuch as it is one outcome of death. But death is oft more final than that, and what people do in its imminence and wake is key here, too. Wutai’s collapse into an insular tourist trap. Avalanche’s vengeful fervor, in general and post-plate drop. Bugenhagen trying to pass his knowledge on to Red. The whole party’s ongoing post-traumatic depressive episodes.
Ultimately, death is the inescapable fate of all things. It’s what we do, in light of that, that makes us who we are.
- - - - -
Final Fantasies 13 and 15 are the only modern Final Fantasies I’ve beaten, and I bring them up because both deal very prominently with fate and death, and as Square’s most recent mainline FF titles, Remake can’t exist without comparison to them. Here’s what I remember:
Final Fantasy 13 was a game I enjoyed. The stagger system mixed up my casual FF tradition of Get The Big Numbers by putting a prominent UI element onscreen that says You Can’t Get The Big Numbers Unless The Bar Is Full. Suddenly there’s a natural-but-enforced ebb and flow to combat built in, where you gotta juggle chip damage, survival, and crowd control while keeping resources enough to burst down a staggered foe, but maintain situational awareness to swap back into survival mode if you’re not gonna down your enemy, all in something close to real-time. Very obviously a direct precursor to the combat of Remake. I didn’t realize the depth of it, but it was still super fun.
People at the time didn’t like the linearity of the game and, I can see that in retrospect? I think it’s closer to, there weren’t breakpoints, there wasn’t variety. It was cutscenes, combat, and the stretches of land between them; the only real thing for the brain to get a workout on was the combat, and eating only one kinda food is gonna make that food taste bland.
((I didn’t mind, but I like idle games, and, also probably had depression around then. Take that how you will.))
The story, though, I loved. You got your uncaring gods forcing mortals to do their increasingly-impossible bidding, cursing them to agonized unlife if they take too long, and with blissful, beautiful death if they succeed. It sucks! And here you have a ragtag band of incidental idiots trying to rebel against a system that, actually, wants them to? Like that’s the plan? Have mortals kill god and summon the devil to destroy all life, because god, doesn’t.... like life anymore?
((The lore gets more than a little impenetrable, and I remember bouncing off it a couple times. The throughline of God Sucks And Makes Zombies was good though.))
The biblical parallels are obvious, and if they weren’t, the final boss’ design will clue you in, god that’s a good design. hang on I can add pictures and already tossed a spoiler warning, here, look at this:
(per the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki [X])
That’s literally The Holy Trinity But A Sword The Size Of A Building. It’s perfect.
Anyway, I love this game, because the heroes win, which is what God wants, so in winning, they lose, as was fated to be, right? Fuck All That, say the lesbians from space australia, as they turn into satan and, as satan, stop God’s shitty metal moon from crashing into space australia and destroying all life.
((this awakened something in me, though, as is becoming a theme, I wasn’t aware of it at the time. actually hold up I’m gonna rewatch that sequence.
((yeah okay wow on review that was aggressively cheesy and had a whole bunch of weird emotional whiplash that just leaves a super-bad aftertaste. I don’t really like it as an experience, but big bazonga lesbian satan with arms for hair is still a look-and-a-half.))
The whole thing is not entirely unlike if meteor was also Midgar, and there’s more than a few points where I went, hang on, are they trying to evoke 7 here? “Lightning” is ex-military and bad at emotions, Sazh is a black dad w/ guns and emotional trauma and I love him, quirky pink healer girl who might be an alien is here, the game starts on a train and leads into a robot bug fight; obviously it’s not one-to-one but the connections are there for a brain like mine to make, and only more prominent for the fact that FF7 was the more satisfying game.
((I cannot speak to 13-2 or -3; 13-2 was fun up until the enemies were abruptly 30 levels higher than me, more or less a mandate by the game for me to do all the side content, which I was not on-board with. I skipped 13-3 entirely, especially when I learned the whole game is on a timer. did not and do not need that stress in my life.))
- - - - -
But okay, FF13 was “too linear” and wasn’t doing super great. Enter Final Fantasy Versus 13, by which I mean enter Final Fantasy 15 actually, we don’t need any more of this 13 crap. And once again, I enjoyed it! ...Right up until it was bad.
Final Fantasy 15 was not a finished game, and we know this for certain now, because all its DLC was to make it a finished game. At the time, though, there was uncomfortable and inconsistent story pacing, only one playable character, relatively sparse combat mechanics... but it was open-world, and hey, that’s what you wanted, right? open, non-linear environments? I picked it up because, Teleporting Swordsman With a Motorcycle Sword. I am of simple pleasures, and those are they.
Of the little I remember, one point that’s stuck with me is the sequence following the Leviathan fight. See, we’ve been talking about fate and destiny and how Final Fantasy likes to spite them. Here in 15, our main man Noctis doesn’t want the destiny he’s been burdened with, to Become The King and Save The World from the Coming Darkness, or whatever. He’d really rather be doing, anything else? like hanging out with his buddies or actually getting married or, I dunno, grieving the death of his father. Nope! You don’t get to do that. Go find the ghost armaments of your dead ancestors so you can ~saaave the wooorld!~ I would have been in college around then, so, eminently relatable.
Now, on this journey, you meet a guy called Ardyn. He’s the sort of character that was built as an attack on me personally: sleazy, charming, possessing airs of casual familiarity with people he’s never met, kinda helps you out in tight spots, and also, by the way, vizier to the empire that killed your dad and wants you and your friends dead too. But not in the “secret good guy” way, he just likes fucking with you! he’s perfect.
Right up until the Leviathan fight.
See, Lunafreya, your betrothed--
((I’m so mad about this stupid, stupid garbage. I love Lunafreya on principle, but the game doesn’t bother to give her screentime. you only ever hear about her incidentally, which can be cool if you then meet the character and get to compare/contrast what you’ve heard, but the initial release only has her show up for this one chapter, and your party doesn’t really get to interact with her that much.))
Your betrothed is here and she’s some symbol of the peoples’ hope, right? she’s got light magic or something, and can actually commune with the gods. the gods are on your side, but you can’t actually understand a word they say, but she can, and that’s sick as hell. anyway.
You lose the fight against Leviathan, because you’re a shitty emo teen who doesn’t know how to use your ghost swords, and she got beat up earlier when Levi got all pissy at being summoned. And then Ardyn shows up in his magitek dropship.
Now earlier, Ardyn had Luna as his captive, completely at his mercy, and right now, he who would be king of kings, destined to save the world from darkness, is clutching at rock in a hurricane, beaten, wounded and dying.
Of the two, which do you think he stabs to death?
if you thought, “the protagonist, which will allow him to win, and subvert Final Fantasy’s themes of defying fate by having the villain be the one to do it, forcing everyone else to scramble for some alternate solution and deal with the fallout,” congratulations! You win disappointment, because that idea’s cool as hell and they didn’t. fucking. Do it.
((Ardyn, before this, had given me major Kefka vibes, and thinking on it now, the world descending into darkness in the 15 we never had could have played with even deeper parallels to FF6... but I never played 6, and that FF15 doesn’t exist, so... I’ll leave that analysis to better scholars.))
now, with the benefit of hindsight, that was never going to happen. too long in development hell, game had to ship, had no time or budget for mid-game upheaval. but at the time? made me lose any interest I had in Ardyn, made me mad at the developers for passing up on fulfilling the themes their series had explored in past, made me almost stop playing the game. I’m still mad about it for crying out loud!
((thinking about it gets me tensed up, coiled, with that sort of full-body thrum that’s best conveyed with letters that jitter around. best I can do here is bold italics, but it doesn’t have the right energy. it’s a fleeting feeling, but when it’s here? god. given the men that wrote this scene I would fight all of them and win.
((inhale...
((exhale...
((and move on.))
We, the player, never really meet Luna, so there’s no real... impact, no substance to it. It’s sad, but impersonal. villain kills damsel to inflict manpain on hero. that’s it. we’ve seen this song and dance before.
But kill Noctis? The character the player’s been controlling all this time, who they know intimately? Now it’s personal. Now your party members’ grief is a mirror to your own. And now you get to play as Luna, maybe? give the game time to flesh her out, have her bond with your old companions over their shared grief, and maybe use her connections and public speaking skills to rally the people of the world, in a perhaps-vain attempt to resist the oncoming darkness, while simultaneously using that public-facingness to drive her to hide her own fear and hopelessness...? That’s a complex character ripe for drama and tragedy right there! And then her, at the head of a story about people coming together to solve a global calamity themselves, rather than await their appointed savior?
Even then, but especially now... You can see the appeal, right?
- - - - -
Lemme step back and zoom out for a moment, because there’s one more kind of Fate to discuss before I finalize my thesis. Yes, I promise, there is a point besides being mad at FF15, this is still ultimately about Remake. Bear with me a little longer.
See, Remake’s premise is that it’s not quite FF7, but that itself is predicated on Remake being essentially FF7. Certain things must be in the Remake series, or it will cease to be the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series. The developers have gone on record saying as much, that they’ll still cover the thrust of the original, and that makes a lot of sense from a development standpoint. Building on an existing framework saves loads of time, and lets them focus on details as they have in Remake.
((I think they've already set up an in-universe justification for this, too. The party may have defeated the Whispers at Midgar, but the Whispers are the will of the planet. The only way to truly defeat them would be to defeat the planet itself, which: kind of the goal of the villains!
((a bit ironic, because the villains are the Whispers’ means to keep manipulating events. Remake backends a very large portion of the plot, and I don’t think Rufus seeing the Whispers is a throwaway detail. The party chases Sephiroth by chasing Shinra in the original, so even if the party has shaken free of the direct influence of the Whispers, manipulating Shinra should in turn manipulate the party.
((on top of which, Rufus prizes power, and the power to change or control fate-- something both the party and Sephiroth have seized-- would be as enticing as anything.))
But this begs the question: How much of Final Fantasy 7 is necessary before it stops being Final Fantasy 7? Do you need all nine characters? The Weapons? Rideable chocobo? Breedable chocobo? What about locations? Can you drop the Gold Saucer? or Mount Condor? or Mideel? How many minigames am I holding up? These are necessary questions, but so is this:
“Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?”
- - - - -
Now, the phrase “emotional impact” is necessarily kind of nebulous and subjective, so lemme dig into that a little bit.
The first significant chunk of the original FF7 takes place entirely in Midgar, which is one huge city. Every screen is densely packed; movement is typically constrained to narrow corridors and industrial crawlspaces. The whole world is deeply claustrophobic and visually hostile, by design.
This is FF7 for the first few hours, before a motorcycle chase deposits you outside city limits, and then... you hit the world map, and everything changes. The world is rendered in three whole dimensions, now! (Then, a technological marvel in its own right.) There’s a sky! There’s a horizon! Grass, mountains, the ocean!
Boundless, terrifying freedom.
From a mechanical standpoint, there’s only one real destination, an A-to-B with random encounters before a small enclosure with an inn and shops, no real change from what you’ve already been doing. But the mood? Everything’s fresh and new, now. Everything’s an unknown.
So, how do we do that again, two-and-a-half decades on?
Let’s say, something like this: Remake 2 starts with Cloud and Sephiroth en route to Nibelheim. For new players, this provides immediate intrigue: why are these mortal enemies hanging out in a truck? how did they get here, where are they going? For veterans, it’s familiar: oh, we’re in the flashback sequence.
For both, it provides mechanical familiarity. We just finished last game hanging out in Midgar, a bunch of town squares with shops and cutscenes connected to hazardous corridors. Well, Nibelheim’s a town with shops and cutscenes, connected to a monster-filled anthill and capped with a reactor. We know this. We’ve done this. We can do this again.
And when the flashback ends, we’re in Kalm. Another town, maybe with sidequests this time; Midgar looming in the distant skybox as a reminder of how far we’ve come.
And then you leave Kalm, and the camera zooms out, and out, and out...
Remake is essentially 7, and you can’t have the impact of 7′s world map reveal if Remake isn’t functionally open-world too. Square has plenty of experience with open environments, however successful their more recent attempts have been; I’m confident that the have the ability, at least, to craft an expansive world that feels appropriate to FF7.
((I’d like to take a moment here to talk about FF14, which mixes both compact twisty dungeons and wide-open overworld zones, and is necessarily wildly successful to still be operating as an MMO... but though I have played it briefly, I don’t claim knowledge sufficient to go in-depth. The point is, Square not only can make a game like that, they have, and are, and apparently possess non-zero competency. I have worries, but I’m not worried, if that makes sense.))
So, can you recreate a given kind of emotional impact? Yeah!
Can scenes from the original Final Fantasy 7 be rendered into a new context, more-or-less as they were? Absolutely!
Would a one-to-one recreation of the original game have the same emotional impact as when it released, twenty-three years ago?
- - - - -
Aerith dies.
If you opened this post and didn’t know that, well. There were spoiler warnings up at the top, the game’s more than two decades old, and the spoiler itself is basically a piece of pop-culture, up there with space dad and wizard killer. There’re probably plenty of people who know next-to-nothing about Final Fantasy 7 except that Aerith dies.
Everyone knows because, at the time, it was so big a thing. This was a title that Square hyped to heaven and back to push JRPGs into mainstream western markets, and it worked. And this was before major death was so common and arbitrary as it is today; even now, Game of Thrones and its ilk are a relative rarity. The death of a protagonist or love interest wasn’t a new thing for games, or any media really, but usually you knew it was coming, or it served some purpose. Aerith’s death was sudden, arbitrary, you’re almost immediately thrown into a boss fight so you don’t even have time to process it right away, and it’s the first stone in an avalanche of other pointless arbitrary tragedy. It’s an obvious narrative setup for the endgame confrontation with Sephiroth; instead, Cloud has a breakdown, Meteor happens, and now there’s an entire Disk 2.
Fandom has always been fandom, even before the continuous immediacy of the modern internet, but... people wrote letters to Square, and got sad on message boards. There’s an entire subset of forum signatures, back when those were a thing, that you could sort as “people fucked up over Aerith dying.” And again, this was the world. Not just Japan, or Asia, but everyone.
((Or, everyone with the finances to have a PS2 and/or an internet connection. Gaming as a pastime remains way expensive, whether played or watched. But you know how it is.))
And that’s the problem with answering that question.
See, FF7 is a lot of things, but for better or worse, it is defined by Aerith’s death. It’s one of many factors, but you can’t... leave it out, right? or it wouldn’t be FF7 anymore.
Aerith dies in FF7, and everyone knows it.
- - - - -
But Remake has promised, repeatedly, that things will be different this time. Everyone is coming together to defy fate, and Cloud in particular is here to keep Aerith from dying. Bodyguard jokes aside, Cloud repeatedly has flashbacks (flashforwards?) to Aerith’s death and the events leading to it. When he meets her in the church, when they cross into Sector 6, twice in the final battle. Hell, the very first time they meet, Sephiroth taunts him about not being able to save her. Even from a metatextual standpoint, since everyone knows Aerith dies, that’s like, The Most Obvious Fate To Change.
If, after all that, Aerith still dies? It’s not just tragedy, at that point. That’s the developers, actively lying to the player about their intent in making this game series. That’s frustrating, and immersion-breaking, and when said death is likely to still have one or more entire sequels to come after? maybe not great for sales! I know I didn’t bother buying the complete edition of FF15; I couldn’t bring myself to care enough about a game that set up this cool possibility, and then just, failed to deliver on every count.
And, Remake is being made for two audiences. I’ve said “everybody knows Aerith dies,” but that’s not really true, is it? It’s been 23 years, after all. Remake could well be someone’s very first Final Fantasy experience. That’s why they’ve been telegraphing Aerith’s death so hard. Not everyone knows, but at least everyone can guess. Is it fair, then, to this new audience, with potentially no knowledge or understanding of the legacy of this flashy new action game, to foreshadow tragedy in the future, have everyone come together to say, We’re Going To Stop This, and then... not? Is that good writing? Is that satisfying? When this is a multi-game and potentially multi-console investment of time and money, is this, as a newcomer, a story you’d want to keep playing?
And then on top of that, it’s 2020.
I don’t mean that in the current-year-fallacy, “we’re better than this now” kind of way. Rather, the way I felt about Final Fantasy 15 is even more relevant now. People, in real life, are realizing that the powers-that-be are failing them, have failed them, have been failing them for far longer than twenty-three years. The people that already knew that are actually showing up for each other, to spite what felt and feels like inescapable fate and finding that, together, they might just be able to ruin God’s day.
Game development is, of course, its own whole beast, and projects in motion tend to stay in motion; deviating from a plan takes time and money that Square may be unwilling to spend. But, under current world circumstances: is making a game where the hero sets out to save one specific person from their fated death, and following that with a game where that one specific person dies anyway, aside from everything else, a good business decision?
- - - - -
So... Aerith, shouldn’t die, right...? But, FF7 requires Meteor, and so requires the Temple of the Ancients and the Black Materia. And, Meteor can only be stopped by Holy, so FF7 requires the Forgotten City.
FF7 is a tragedy. FF7 demands blood.
...Hey, actually, hold that thought. How come Cloud can remember Aerith dying in the first place? He’s not from the future, right? He’s got a connection to Sephiroth, who is from the future... and Sephiroth can manipulate his memories...? but, why would Sephiroth let him, or make him, remember that?
Hey, how come Zack is alive, but like, in the “narrative scope” sense? Wouldn’t his presence circumvent Cloud’s delusions about the Nibelheim incident?
Hey, how come Cloud had multiple big climactic Sephiroth confrontations at what’s essentially the end of the prologue, including one that mirrors the very end of the original FF7? Shouldn’t that still come at, like, you know. the end?
Hey, how come--
- - - - -
Remake has these... Callbacks? Refrains? Like my favorite, when Sephiroth throws a train-- you know, The Fate Metaphor-- at Cloud, who absolutely shreds the thing. Or, for a more direct example:
And it frequently uses these to show that people are changing, that things can change. You know, the whole Running Theme the game has going on.
Sephiroth gets a refrain, too.
At the start of the game (give or take a reactor), in his first real appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, makes sure Cloud hates him, and tells Cloud what he wants.
At the end of the game, in his last appearance, Sephiroth philosophizes at Cloud, tells Cloud what he wants, and makes sure Cloud hates him.
Structurally, these encounters more-or-less bookend the game; thematically, it doesn’t exactly indicate change. Barret may or may not have come around on Cloud, and his admission that Cloud is important to him after all is, itself, important. Cloud, on the other hand, was always going to defy Sephiroth. He stands resolute, now, ready to fight rather than flee, but apathy was never on the table.
Now, Sephiroth’s whole Thing is psychologically manipulating Cloud to get what he wants, and as part of that, what Sephiroth wants is usually not what he says he wants.
All throughout the original FF7, Sephiroth riled up Cloud so that Cloud would pursue and defy him, culminating first in the Black Materia incident, and then again in the Forgotten City. None of the Sephiroth clones could survive the trip through the Northern Crater, so Sephiroth had to lure Cloud, with the Black Materia, to him, and then also convince Cloud to give up the Black Materia of his own accord. Mind control, memory manipulation and illusions were involved, but if Sephiroth could maintain those indefinitely, he probably just. Would have done that instead. Way easier,
The point is, in Remake, in addition to all the intermittent retraumitization sprinkled throughout the game, Sephiroth goes out of his way twice to directly ask Cloud, “hey, you hate me, right?” And, as part of that question, he tells Cloud, “this is what I want.” And Cloud? He hates Sephiroth, and will do his damnedest to keep Sephiroth from getting what he wants.
So. What does Sephiroth... say he wants?
- - - - -
One last aside before we cap off: This post would not exist without the valiant efforts of one Maximilian_dood. His devotion to the series kept myself and many others engaged and excited and, frankly, hopeful, in the leadup to the release of Remake, and his correlations between the rest of the FF7 series and Remake were enlightening and entertaining.
and had he not the gall to identify defying fate as a device to make aerith’s death more tragic, I would never have been angry enough to write this.
((I know, I know. Gaming and streaming and lit analysis are all hard individually, and I don’t begrudge losing one for the other two. And it was a first playthrough! I might have seen these lines sooner than some, but collating all this info was certainly not instantaneous. And Square can be hack writers at times-- see again my rant on FF15-- so even then, I can’t discount the possibility.
((but, still.
((Really?))
So, while I would like to believe that I have, by now, made my thesis on Remake’s narrative direction abundantly clear, here it is spelled out anyway:
- - - - -
At the bottom of the Forgotten City, at the shrine on the pillar in the lake, Cloud will find Aerith, who believes her fate immutable.
Sephiroth will descend, and Cloud will sacrifice himself, that Aerith should live.
This is Sephiroth’s plan.
- - - - -
Hey, thanks for reading this far! With my conversational tone and rambling tendencies, I’d have preferred to make this an audio post or, god forbid, a video essay, but I got a keyboard, and that’ll have to do. Diction is important to me, as the capitalization, italics and use of punctuation may have clued you in on, so... maybe you’ll get a dramatic reading sometime in the future? but, don’t bet on it.
Feel free to riddle me with questions, or point out inconsistencies with this big ol’ thing! I’m not exactly an expert, and I’m sure I glossed over, heavily paraphrased, completely forgot, intentionally ignored and/or aggressively misrepresented some stuff, but I love learning and teaching esoteric bullshit about The Vijigams. On that note, anything that sounds like it should be sourced is sourced from “I heard about it on social media or in a stream or youtube video one time, but if I actually had to hunt it down this whole thing would never see the light of day, and it has already been like three months,” which isn’t to excuse my lack of due diligence, but I do, lack diligence, so, tough.
Oh! but the Remake screens all come from [here]. Don’t care much for that splash screen, but, I Get It, so, whatever.
There were some other things I wanted to touch on but couldn’t really find a spot for. FF7 Remake as a metaphor for its own development, for example. Or, some of The Possibilities, like how Cloud’s death could very literally haunt Aerith, or how Remake sets up a more fleshed-out Midgar revisit that Cloud’s death specifically would make infinitely sadder.
On that note, if it was not yet obvious, I love speculation, and if they do go this direction, it’ll probably be their justification to go completely... off the rails? Remake only has to be FF7 until it doesn’t, after all. If there’s some wilder implications youall see for like... I dunno, a Jenova more fully-regenerated from also having Cloud’s cells back, getting into proper Kaiju-on-Kaiju battles with the Weapons, or anything like that? Feed me your brain juice, etc.
And, once more, for the road: this is interpretation; subjective, opinionated, and very much in denial of any kind of author-ity. Nor is this a claim on how things should be, or an assertion that this would be good or bad. Everything ultimately rests on Square's narrative design team and, we’ve touched on them already.
((but, for your consideration: I’m smart, and right))
Here’s hoping, whatever happens, we get the game we deserve.
thanks for coming to my ted talk, have a great day
in honor of this tasty new hero trailer, it’s time for
PHENOMENALLY STUPID THEORIES (with Nottles):
Zen has no lore b/c Zen is from the future
It’d explain a bit, at least:
Inconsistencies of relative dates
travelers from the future interfering with sequences of events
or referring to future events similar to past ones as those past ones to obfuscate their origins
Leaving the Shambali to go out into the world being a Big Thing
the iris is an eye is observation, not action
Zen’s emissionless hovering technology
All of Zen’s tech, honestly
also Zen’s caginess wrt how his tech works
Like, I don’t wanna downplay spiritual whatevertheheck (you know, like I’ve just done in this very sentence), but we got Tracer’s weird time schtick, we got whatever Sigma’s deal is, we got Zarya’s Graviwhatever so clearly someone’s still researching all this chicanery...
I dunno. There’s a glimpse of something bigger, here, but maybe I’m just seeing things.
If nothing else, I think it’ll be neat to see how the concept of oneness within the Iris resonates with someone who is not one within themselves as a direct consequence of something that looks, from the wrong angle, kinda like an eye.
dsn makes it clear that the vidsgam would kinda be outside her purview but hanging with the thieves makes her exposure thereto basically an inevitability. she might be new to the scene, but she’s observant and clever, an I think she’d pick up on even the deeper complexities in games pretty quick, even if lacking the manual dexterity or muscle memory to act on that knowledge right away.
generally speaking, I feel she’d favor
methodical games, with time to think and room to breathe,
turn-based strategy and visual novels, generally
Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, Ace Attorney, Ghost Trick
Animal Crossing
not so much pure puzzle games, though
heavy atmosphere, deep lore, and emotionally evocative experiences,
adventure games generally
Zelda, Metroid, Yakuza, Half-Life, Myst, Katamari, Undertale, Shadow of the Colossus, Pyre, Nier: Automata, Mario Odyssey
Resident Evil, Dead Space, Silent Hill
and sharing an experience with others.
co-op preferable, but any game gets better with friends!
(side-eyes mario party)
almost any game.
this includes playing for or being in an audience, too
you know the thieves are all gonna like different genres, they gotta have a game night where they all play for each other
while avoiding
score-chasers, strict time limits, and micromanagement,
it’s escapism!! real-life stressors can literally make an appointment.
zero-sum multiplayer,
don’t plant no seeds in toxic soil
and games that otherwise don’t respect their players.
you know the type.
games from companies that don’t respect their players, too; she’d def be conscientious about that kinda thing
dead space........... silent hill..........................................
this is probably where Yusuke and Taba would launch into an argument about games and art and Games and Art, but I have enough trouble stringing together one coherent thought at a time so I’ll spare you my inferior rendition. suffice to say, though Haru avoids elitism, she’s still a bit of a connoisseur.
regardless, there are several punchlines to take away here--
(there always are, where I’m concerned)
--but here’s a fun one for Gamer’s to enjoy:
her penchant for methodical, evocative adventures, love of horror, and keen observation skills ultimately converge to make her, the computer-illiterate casual gamer, the first out of all the thieves to beat bloodborne.
Nothing I love more than wasting time on wild speculation based on less-than-no information, so here’s my predictions for what we might see from Joker Personafive’s Smash Bros release.
The following is based primarily on Joker’s Game Awards reveal trailer and the subsequent interview with Reggie [x], as well as general knowledge of how Joker fights in Persona 5 and how other smashbros characters have been adapted to the platformer-brawler format.
Again, though I’m going to use present tense and authoritative voice to bamboozle you into thinking I have any idea what I’m on about, this is all purely speculative. I’m sure I’ll be proven wrong before the end of April.
Giving the acrobatic thief archetype high mobility is a no-brainer; he’s a thief, it’s thematic. I propose, however, that his movement speed will be about average. Rather: his attacks allow him to reposition quickly. His neutral special, for example, allows him to fire his gun while leaping in a direction chosen while the button is held, while his side-special has him toss a bomb while backstepping. His side-smash lunges forwards too, why not.
His recovery is also very powerful, up to and including longer rolls and airdodges. Up-special tosses a smoke bomb which Joker leaps out of or away from-- it is not a teleport, but does not put you into special fall.
The improbable mobility option-- or at least, one not yet seen in Smash-- is that side-throws launch Joker away from his opponent while he riddles them with bullets.
Here’s where things get dumb:
Joker himself is a hit-and-run character, with minimal kill potential. Mobile, high attack speed, lots of multi-hit attacks, but low knockback and low damage per hit. When you need to kill, down-special summons (and dismisses) Arsene, changing Joker’s moveset.
With Arsene out, most attacks become slower, single-hit skills (claw swipes, wing strikes and curse spells) with much higher damage and knockback. Joker loses retreat options in favor of chasing his opponent down for the kill.
“Why wouldn’t I just have Arsene out the whole time, then,” you’re probably wondering. Well! If you’re actually still reading this post for whatever ungodly reason, and not just skimming the bolded bits, you probably know how using Personas works in, y’know, Persona. That is: attacking with Arsene deals heavy damage to Joker, whether you hit or not. Like Pichu, but a lot worse, since you can toggle it.
“This sounds like a lot of bullshit for one character,” you might think. And yeah! It is!
So was Original Sheik. So’s Olimar. So’s Rosalina. So’s Shulk. So’s Cloud’s limit break and Bayonetta’s infinite air combos and Ryu doing stronger moves if you do fighting game inputs what’s your point.
“This just sounds like personal fantasy, based on what you want and not grounded even a little in reality,” you may dismissively scoff. To you, two points:
1) Arsene being a stance to dance to is based on the trailer having two distinct moods-- Joker jumping around and then later standing around dramatically with Arsene billowing in the wind-- and on Reggie saying “summon a persona into the game” as though its some thing distinct from just playing as Joker.
2) What I want is his moveset to cameo the rest of the Phantom Thieves, in his smash attacks and specials and aerials, but I’m not completely out my goddamn mind as to suggest that.
Relative to how out my mind the rest of this makes me sound, of course.
Because I should probably put my fancy ideas that at least some of you will enjoy reading somewhere other than youtube comments every now and then. Save 'em for posterity or whatever.
This post will make more sense if you're familiar with the Shadowbringers Normal Raid series, as it reuses concepts seen therein.
The Oracle is a caster-melee hybrid (classified as Caster DPS) which wields a Gavel (a one- or two-handed blunt-force melee weapon which fires spells from the pommel). It focuses on dealing damage in large but less-frequent bursts, while planning ahead to deal even greater burst damage during the appropriate buff windows.
Oracle's core class feature is Spell-in-Waiting, a single-use self-buff which alters the function of certain spells, similar to Sage's Eukrasia. Activating Spell-in-Waiting makes your next basic spell cast instantly, but apply as a debuff which detonates after ~6 seconds.
Casting a basic spell at an enemy afflicted with Spell-in-Waiting will enhance the Waiting spell based on the elements of the spells involved. Oracle eventually gains access to Dark, Light, and Unaspected damage types, which are each associated with particular effects.
Normally, the spells just do raw damage, but striking an enemy afflicted with a Waiting spell may change how the spell detonates, applying AoE patterns, healing, buffs, or debuffs.
Thus, the rotation runs:
Spell-in-Waiting > basic spell
basic spell (enhances Waiting)
melee strike (modifies, detonates Waiting)
...Which I think is a fairly unique combat flow. You're encouraged to stay in melee range (though any number of other mechanics, such as healer AoE sizes, already do), and become vulnerable right before your burst goes off (basic spells have a default 2-second cast time, to purposefully ratchet that tension and grant the satisfaction of the spell and melee hit going off near-simultaneously).
In addition to an expanding elemental repertoire, Oracle also gains Stock Strike, which stores a copy of a Spell-in-Waiting for future use. This could be cast on its own, but would optimally be used to create a third-stage Spell-in-Waiting (operating on Monk chakra rules, you'd want either monotype or omnitype for optimal results).
Please do not ask me how quickcast interacts with this kit.
911 is filming at/near Venice Beach on Thursday and I'm already overthinking. Are they filming "Henren Begins" already? Do we get to see young Hen be a life guard? Do we get a parallel scene to her sitting at the beach in Full Moon?
[Image ID: gif of a scene from Treasure Hunt where Bobby is standing in front of his white board with collected evidence explaining his thought process to Athena who watches skeptically /end ID]
