Final Fantasy X, the virtuality of the dream
Final Fantasy X
There was a time when Final Fantasy was the undisputed ruler of the JRPG. The reason was a lucky combination of craftsmen, starting with the minds of Kitase and Sakaguchi and ending with Nobuo Uematsu's fine ear. Then there was the ability to speak to a young audience, thanks to the urban and fashionable aesthetics of Tetsuya Nomura. Each chapter of the saga contained within itself a charismatic, compact, at times experimental world, where even the sound of a menu jingled with promises.New game. A train catapult Cloud into a desperate city, Rinoa's words kick off the sci-fi esotericism of Squall's temporal adventure, a storm and a scenery in flight herald the Shakespearean and superdeformed fairy tale of Gidan. Three experiences that bring the then Squaresoft to the homes of gamers all over the world. After these successes, the time has come for the generational leap, to abandon the 4 CDs in favor of the single DVD.
On July 19, 2001, the saga moves to PlayStation 2 and Final Fantasy X is played, for the first time, by the Japanese public. No trains, no Gunblade battles, no theater pantomimes. The story starts from the end, Tidus wants to tell us just a stone's throw from an abandoned Zanarkand ruined by the succession of eras. Here it is, the goal of his journey. There is solemnity, there is religiosity, there is a distant and sad sunset. His story, our story, the beginning and end of a spiral.
'This is my story.' The cover of Final Fantasy X presents Yuna intent on dancing on the surface of a wave, she tames the waves but she is partly enveloped by it. Her pose is delicate and elegant, her robes are priestly, her silhouette is an evanescent blue; on the other side, above the usual white background, there is instead a wall of an almost blinding yellow. We get lost in Yoshitaka Amano's drawing, the first one that she explicitly signs: let's suppose that the young woman is not simply dancing, but she is the last defense before an anomalous, apocalyptic tsunami approaches. As we play, we discover that the scene represents the rite of passing away on the beaches of Kilika, a funeral for the dead. All of Final Fantasy X is enveloped by the twilight that gives way to the evening, its main theme is sacrifice.
In the game you can see in passing the lunioli rise from the limpid mirrors, float on the surface of the water and vanish. On this occasion, precisely because Final Fantasy X is among the most intimate of the trips built by Square-Enix, (it is certainly the most romantic), we will present glimpses of his world, Spira, in the same way. Because on Speyer everything is twofold: water is the destruction brought by the mammoth Sin and at the same time the calm after the storm; the Aeons who protect summoners have a dark counterpart; death is the end and a continuous existence straddling dreams; a massive battle can be won in a single attack, with the safety of a powerful Zanmato, or with the pure knowledge of the game. Even Der Richter ...
Der Richter is the secret superboss of Final Fantasy X. The superboss, traditionally, is stronger than the final enemy and is faced when all is done, all is said. By traditionally we mean that as a playful ploy he is found from Pokémon (Red) to NieR: Automata. As long as we talk about JRPG, in the post-game it is legitimate to expect the challenge of challenges, that moment in which spamming X is no longer enough to force the power of your equipment on the unfortunate Chocobo Eater of the case.
The ritual of the passing away. Der Richter, translated The Judge, is an insurmountable and silent barrier. A breathless automaton, a monolith of codes, born only to undergo the player's decisions. In its inexpressiveness, it exists only to propose this choice: will you defeat me by resorting to Zanmato or do you want to find a way to cancel my twelve million life points? In both cases, defeated, he says nothing. The only message he communicates is that "Ten Botsu" on his torso, a code that means "Heaven Death".
Der Richter is the most mathematical of the Spira and Final Fantasy bosses, one of those challenges in which a few mistakes are enough to nullify whole minutes of superhuman effort and concentration. He certainly isn't comparable to the war of attrition that required Absolute Virtue (FFIX superboss), or the hell of mechanics and timing that FF XIV's Ultimate requires.
To challenge him, however, it is necessary to have faced hours of farming to properly arrange the spherography of the characters and the ability (patience) to read and interpret the shift table properly. Barriers, continuous resurrections, altered statuses, enemy flying arms and magic points to keep an eye on. If you don't feel like it, there is Zanmato. Nobody judges you, Der Richter will explode in the sky in any case. Ten Botsu: It's just a lost numbers bot in a digital sky.
Yevon's ultimate weapon. Final Fantasy VIII. Squall and his friends Seed are deep in the throat in a geopolitical conflict of enormous scope, witches and continents make the peaceful territories of Balamb, Dollet, Timber and Deling places to always watch your back. In this terrible situation, Squall can challenge strangers to cards, overdo chaotic bets for the sole desire to meet the Queen of Cards. It is understandable, after all, a few seconds of leisure between one battle and another. A crazy trump under a moon that cries demons.
In Final Fantasy X Tidus is literally an enthusiast who is too loyal to his passion, basically obsessed with the myth of his father, himself a formidable champion in the art of Blitzball . It's a fantastic football sport, a bit like Quidditch is in Harry Potter. It is practiced in a water bubble kept active by magi-technology, inexplicable except with the concessions given to a Fantasy. Participants are athletes capable of holding their breath for minutes, assuming that they take air between a jump out of the water and the other, as if they were dolphins.
The Blitzball replaces Triple Triad and Tetra Master, card minigames present in Final Fantasy VIII and IX, appreciated by the public so much that they have been re-proposed in the two online chapters of the saga. This is a semi-managerial minigame, in which different players face off against opponents with opposing stats, dribbling and throwing balls loaded with altered status. Perhaps it was born in a time when technology could not make the most of it, perhaps it was born to give a hand to the first appearance of Sin: at the beginning of the game, Tidus makes an upside-down in the sky and in falling he sees the silhouette of the huge silhouetted monster. against the thousand-year-old Zanarkand.
Thanks to Blitzball, Spira forgets his tragedy. This minigame also features a similar choice to Der Richter's. Mandatory to unlock Wakka's final weapon, it requires you to win tournaments and games of a duration that is often enough to discourage the less willing. An exploit, which takes place looking for refreshment in the goal of your team, sends the AI of the opponents into the ball, no matter their power.
They will run in circles, under an infinite mass of blue, allowing the player to fix the counter, stop playing, win after a first, banal advantage, obtained with a good knowledge of the rules. This bug was not fixed in the HD remaster: Final Fantasy X is true to its philosophy. The Blitzball has no referees, no Der Schiedsrichter.
The hymn of the intercessors is one of the best known songs from the Final Fantasy soundtrack. It is a prayer, a chant, sung by several voices during the adventure. The big voice of Ifrit, the sweet soprano voice of Shiva. Sometimes it's simple hum, simple music. The tenth final fantasy strongly leans on its religious theme, with ecclesiastical figures and terms that recall the sin, the faith, the solitude of the hermits.
Tidus' Zanarkand is a dream of the Intercessors (Fayth), a possibility due to the human capacity to tell stories, remember, suffer a loss. Final Fantasy X is not a journey to get stronger, despite being disguised as it is. It is a journey that takes Yuna to the realm of the dead, as well as Ulysses and Aeneas who meet their loved ones in Hades. FFX is a long, introspective pilgrimage to confront the characters with the inevitable mortality of Spira, who is a continuous vortex to drown souls.
Sin is a sentence from which she cannot escape. For some, but these are theories that see the only explicit connection in the character of Shinra, the world of FFX is built on the remains of the Gaia of Final Fantasy VII, or that vice versa is the humus to make it possible. What the two realities really have in common is that the destruction of Kilika is equivalent to the destruction of the Mako reactor, especially when we think of the version of the Mago in the throat that you have in FF7R. If the player cannot deal with certain themes in front of such suggestive scenes (playing or replaying to believe), there is probably no video game that can move him.
Kimahri is the most anonymous character in Final Fantasy X. It is an anthropomorphic lion that comes from Gagazet, a frozen mountain that separates the rest of Speyer from Zanarkand. Kimahri is a guardian of few words, faithful and stoic, with no flashes of humor or joy. He protects Yuna by mimicking the abilities of her enemies, as if he doesn't want an identity of his own. It lacks his horn, lacks something, a part of himself. In the final acts of the adventure, he confronts Biran, in a way to redeem his honor. A one-on-one clash, in a snowy and threatening place, without interference of any kind. Two beasts, one against the other. Kimahri wins. The redemption of the introverts.
The Albhed are a desert people dedicated to technology. Isolated from the rest of civilization, they developed their own language, or rather, their own alphabet. Final Fantasy X, in taking inspiration from Asian places (such as Thailand) and in representing different original cultures in a very characterized way, manages to make its exoticism something natural and at the same time familiar, for the players. Yet this attention to detail makes the foreign lands explored during the adventure seem different even for those who (unlike Tidus) were born and raised in the world of the Spira of the future. Spira is made up of unknowns and twists.
Suteki Da Ne, a song by Uematsu sung by RIKKI, accompanies the most romantic moment of Final Fantasy X. Much of Fantasy is based on the concept of wonder. The scenarios must astonish, be ambitious, imposing, absurd. Here then is an underwater temple where a feeble bonfire chases away the cold and humidity; a huge Shoopuf swaying on a river full of fireflies and lunioli; a bride who throws herself headlong from an exorbitant height, to be grabbed by a flying Aeon; petrified men and women, leaning their faces on a glacier; a wasteland where lightning rains incessantly; a glacier in which to whiz with snow bikes. Finally, a kiss under a forest of sapphire trees.
Tidus, Yuna, Wakka, Kimahri, Lulu, Rikku and Auron. A list of more or less musical names, which like any fictional character say nothing to those who have not met them, much to those who have shared their time with them. An RPG involves an exorbitant amount of gameplay, sometimes the longevity of these epics exceeds a hundred hours. Choosing to invest a lot in a video game can only leave a mark. Graphics, music, narration: a totality that does not ask for permission and hides in the palace of memories.
Zanarkand is sought for yet another epic against evil, but not all the struggles against the dark lord on duty are identical. In The Lord of the Rings, for example, bringing the ring to Mordor is an excuse to introduce Minas Tirith, Rohan, Moria. To meet Pippin, Tom Bombadil and Saruman. Perhaps for this reason the linearity of the journey of Final Fantasy X has never bothered the players, unlike the one encountered in the 13th.
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Spira is there to show you the Chocobo charge on the Micorocciosa route, introduce you to the megalomania of Seymour, to tell you with the same nostalgia that one encounters in Middle-earth, that Zanarkand was once the center of the world. Spira, unlike the Cocoon of FFXIII, makes itself known and visited far and wide. You speak, tell, scattering traces of past wars and other historical eras. It is not a repetition of graphic patterns.
For many Final Fantasy X is the last classic chapter, the last faithful to its spirit, the last honest. It is Yuna dancing before the wave of sequels, compilations, Fabula Nova Crystallis, severed and altered projects (the poor FF XII and XV), exploration of online multiplayer, Dissidia, mobile gacha and of the hyper-corporate drift of some choices that for years have made Square-Enix a spiral with two faces, just like Spira.
On the one hand a compilation that has lost its heart. On the other, Final Fantasy XIV, the MMORPG capable of launching Yoshida and Soken as new, reassuring and skilled faces of the franchise. The impression is that, whatever path Square-Enix takes with XVI and the sequel, hardcore fans will be like Der Richter. They will say nothing, they will accept the choices, strangers in heaven.
