trinityvixen | A Tribute Rant to Final Fantasy X

Right, so, just like the title says, I'm going to get into my feelings regarding the whole she-bang of Final Fantasy X. I remember that just one year ago, Pooch had finished playing and was in need of a hug or three because he was so sad. I will grant that the ending has its sad moments, but I think being forewarned was being fore-armed in my case. I was sad at the beginning of the ending (if you follow me), but not by the end, which should have been sadder. The problem with FFX was that the story was too interrupted for me to follow it with as much heart, I think. Not only were my characters super over-leveled because I went insane trying to fill the monster arena and get their ultimate weapons, but I spent so much time on those things, those distractions, that I kept distancing myself from the characters. When you play over 130 hours of a game where 30-40 are blitzball, 20 or so are dedicated solely to tracking down monsters and another 5-10 on weapons (that might be per weapon, which is sad), there's only about half that time dedicated to the story. And it was mostly way at the beginning. Not to mention that the story was bloody confusing to beging with (remember when I tried to explain Reloaded to some of you after the first time we saw it together? This is more complicated than the Architect's speech patterns, trust me).

If anything makes me sad, it's leaving the game behind in general (though Ping has kindly offered to lend my FFX-2), seeing as I genuinely loved it as a whole. But the ending...well, it's gonna be spoiler-y, so here's a cut:

GODDAMNED ENDING. I have never been more disappointed.

I started off really saddened by the fact that I had to kill off each of my Aeons. Through some convoluted storylines, the god my people had prayed to, gone to for help, and eventually betrayed, couldn't be defeated unless all the aeons in the world were dead. That included the final aeon from the previous summoner, Jecht, who came after I had to kill all of my aeons. And I'd only just gotten used to having Umbridge, Katinka, and Rogue around. I never even got to change Rogue's name to that Marvel vs Capcom 2 character she looked like, either (in case you're wondering, Umbridge, Katinka, and Rogue are the Magus Sisters--I just named them for characters their pictures reminded me of and then found out later I was wrong about one of them, ie Rogue). What I'm really upset about is I did it stupidly, and Valefor was the first to go. He wasn't really that good, but he was my first aeon of the game, he had TWO overdrives, and he could dodge really well. Bahamut's leaving nearly killed me, though, as I got rather attached to him as my first kick-ass, 'i-do-more-than-9999-points-worth-of-damage-at-the-start' aeon. Plus, he looked really pretty with his new color-scheme when Yu Yevon possessed him.

Oh wait, we blew up Jecht before all this, and there was a pretty cut scene of Crush (aka Tidus) crying, but for the most part, I still hate Jecht and am not sad he's dead. I can't believe Crush was. I mean, yeah, Jecht actually ran away to help save Spira, but just because he had a good reason doesn't mean he was a good guy. He spent most of the game relating through the Jecht Spheres as a TOTAL ASSHOLE, so I don't see why Crush was so fond of him. Yeah yeah yeah, Crush kept telling him he hated him, but it's one of those sappy "i love you" 'i hate you's, and Jecht made fun of him for crying again. Woopee. Ding dong the bastard's dead!

Anyway, back to the aeons, who were much harder to lose than Jecht....you know, Jecht had this big long goodbye scene whereas my aeons got summoned, flattened by my over-powered characters, and just collapsed. AND THEN THEY HAD TO GO MAKE A 'YUNA IS UPSET ABOUT EACH AND EVERYONE DYING' SCENE BETWEEN EACH AEON. Gee, I'm ripping apart the things that saved my ass a lot in this game, and now, a Yuna is upset scene. Thanks, I needed that heart-ripping. So, now, I'm aeon-free and off to fight Yu Yevon which looks like some wigglier version of an animated germ, and well, of course I'm going to win. (Did I mention my characters were super-leveled?) Which means we come to the dum-dum-DUM! prettily animated ending, the stuff that's been standard since FF went over to PS and PS2.

I was annoyed. Yes, pretty, yes nice expressions, but gah...it got to be where I was convinced characters were tossing their heads as much as they were just so Squaresoft could show off how well they'd learned to animate hair. Carrie was there, she was thinking the same thing, so this can't have escaped people's attention. Rikku looked like she had Downs Syndrome, Wakka's hair looks worse with nice animation, Kimahri was eh, Lulu didn't get enough time for me to notice, and Auron....ooohhhhh, that made me sad. Yuna started to perform the sending to allow the fayth to finally stop dreaming, and Auron started to disappear. Now that was sad. The saddest part was that everyone looked upset meaning that they never really knew, which surprised me. Crush knew, I figured he's a blabbermouth, he would have said something. Yuna knew about Seymour and the others, right? Gah, when she sees that he's starting to fade, she stops, and he tells her not to.... ::single tear-drop just to annoy Carrie and bring about cosmic imbalance::

Then it's Crush's turn because apparently he's just a dream and now that the Fayth aren't dreaming any more, he'll cease to exist. Or something like that (storyline = hella confusing; I'm going to read a FAQ to figure out what the hell happened). And it's not happy he's going, but I wasn't as upset as I was about Auron. Auron died because he attacked Yunalesca for perpetrating the myth that Sin could be destroyed via the final summoning. So, when Braska summoned Jecht the aeon (who looks ridiculous as an aeon--did they have to keep the bandanna? other aeons were allowed to look different...), and then Jecht became Sin, Auron went balistic, got killed for being betrayed by Yunalesca and her false promises, and cuteAuron became HOTAuron, Auron the older, the scarred, the sake-drinking, Bushido-blade son-of-a-bitch. And now, now that Sin was gone, he was done, and ohhhhhh. But Crush...meh.

I think it's because his and Yuna's relationship wasn't what you'd call romantically satisfying. At the end, when she runs through him because she can't touch him (because he's a dream of ghosts or something), she says, "I love you." My response, spoken aloud and indignant, was "On what evidence?" They made out once and ignored each other and pretended it didn't happen for the rest of the game. Crush spent more time with Rikku, hell, in my game he spent more time with Keepa and the rest of my Auroch team than with Yuna in any fashion, let alone scenes of a romantic nature. "I love you," pshaw. Honey, he got some face time with you while you were distraught and upset about betraying Yevon (I think that's when that happened...) or were otherwise not happy, and that makes him your destined love? Phooey. I'm sorry he's dying, but man, what a let down. It would have been a lot more realistic, and funny as hell, if the ending had copped to the fact that the two of them had zero chemistry.

Yuna: I...look, about that night....
Crush: You know, I'm about to vanish, could we not make the last moments of my existence awkward?
Yuna: We haven't had much time alone since then, and I really did want to talk about this...
Crush: Why? We spent all this time not talking about it. Ooh, look, see, I can see through my hand, it's about time I got going...
Yuna: But didn't it mean anything to you? Aren't we in love?
Crush: Did you see that montage just now? One night. One scene, count 'em. There was all of one flash scene of us. You get the picture yet?
Yuna: You're not going to call me, are you?
Crush: Okay, I get it now. You're just willfully not seeing what's in front of your eyes. We had one romantic interlude, and, let's face it, it was just another excuse to animate water and hair because this game is Squaresoft's work of love to itself. Auron's been dead since as long as you or I've ever known him...
Yuna:...wait, Auron's dead?
Crush:...and I've just made it abundantly clear that, in a few seconds, I will cease to be. So, thanks for wasting my time. Gotta run. ::jumps off Sin into....more explody Sin::
Yuna: I have this awful feeling he's not coming back.
Rest of Cast: ::various noises of exasperation::
Wakka: Well, that sucks, 'cause now I gotta take his place as midfielder. Better get used to losing again.
Lulu: Look on the bright side.
Wakka: What's that?
Lulu: You get to boink me.
Wakka: ::thinks about this:: Isn't that incredibly, uh, yah know, weird? You were supposed to marry my brother.
Lulu: ::on microphone for sob-speech:: But now that Crush--who we all said looked so much like your brother then it never came to mean anything or have any bearing on our lives--vanished and he took with him the last remnants of my attachment to Chappu...
Rikku: Who's that?
Lulu: ...so now we get to get it on which will take my bad but useless self out of contention for the sequel. Fan service--DENIED!!!! Ahem.
Wakka: Well, that's that, I guess. Can't see any problems here, nosir.
Rikku: What about me? Who do I get? Crush is gone, and Yuna's a little gone herself, so she might do something untoward if I decide I loved him. Auron's dead, and that would definitely be illegal either because of our ages or the fact he was walking corpse even if he were still around. ::whines:: Who do I get to love, I ask you?
Kimahri: ::clears throat, doesn't speak::
Rikku: ...

The End

That would have been brilliance. Ah well, bring on FFX-2, I say!