Skip to the End

Okay, so I gave in. Final Fantasy obviously didn't WANT me to finish it, or it wouldn't have been so goddamn tedious. I watched an ending video on Youtube to make sure I wasn't missing anything. It didn't make a whole lotta sense. I googled 'FF13 ending' and there are a whole host of forum discussions about what it all means. What I took it to mean is; the writers couldn't write for shit.

Cieth Fang - bringing sexy back

To cut a (ridiculously, unnecessarily) long story short, Fang goes Cieth and wrecks the place up, everyone else kills a Falcie, Cocoon turns to crystal and everyone from Cocoon, including people who were previously dead or crystallised, turn up on Pulse and all live happily ever after because presumably the massive killer creatures that dogged the party's steps for the entire game are no longer an issue. So, that would have been worth playing 80 hours for, right? Mmm. So sad to see a franchise die on its arse like that. No wonder part 2's down to £10 in Grainger already.

Should've seen it coming though. All the clues for abysmal storytelling were there pretty early on:

1. Sazh is a Danny Glover analogue

He even says, repeatedly, "I'm getting too old for this."

2. Brand placement

This guy made good life choices

Positioning of female's brands: Fang - arm, Vanille -upper thigh, Lightning - tit.
Positioning of male's brands: Hope - wrist, Sazh - collar bone, Snow . . . wrist. So, the writers could picture three body parts on ladies, two of which are rather saucy. And on men . . . two. I'm not saying they had to give Snow a scrotal tat or anything (although that would have evened things up a bit) but am I alone in wanting a big ugly brand right across Hope's pretty little face? Just think it could've added another dimension to his character is all. Giving him a healthy 2 dimensions.

3. They couldn't think of more than 4 vehicles...

In my version, he's called Grunzolo

So, the Eidolons are all transformers right? And all those transformers are based on modes of transport? The Shiva twins are a motorbike, Odin's a horse, Brynhildr's a midlife crisis car, Bahamut's a dragon/jet. But Hecatoncheir and Alexander? Let's leave their shitty names to one side, and consider that Hecaton is a ride-on gun, and Alexander is a walking castle. WTF? I can think of at least five things they could've been that would've been cooler and made more sense within the context of the other Eidolons. For a start, by settling on one or the other for Bahamut, they could've left themselves with a dragon or a jet. Then they've still got: griffon, tank, helicopter, truck, dinosaur, and that's without really going into fantasy vehicles, spaceships and animals. But nope, FF13's writers went to 'Castle' before they went to T-Rex. And I know a lot was made of Alexander representing Hope's desire for safety and stability, but if he couldn't feel safe riding a robot T-Rex then the kid's a fucking asshole.

So now, it's on to Just Cause 2, which is proving to be just the fast-moving, mindless antidote I needed to all this pseudo-deep shit. Round up on that in the next installment.

Suitably Out of Date News

Haven't played much lately, so instead, I feel inspired to discuss FFXIII. I know, I know, it's not even out yet, which is way off my brief, BUT the particular thing I want to mention has been kicking about on the internet for the best part of a year now, so I think it's a safe subject. And that is the welcome return of SUMMONS!

There's a new face, the incredibly cute (despite the name) Carbuncle, and a couple of old favourites, Ifrit and Shiva. And it's Shiva that really interests me. Ifrit has looked pretty much exactly the same in every game he's appeared in, and Shiva, though undergoing various changes, was always a pretty foxy blue lady. So at what point did
this happen:

How did she go from the flirty dreadlocked goddess of FFX to this bizzarre lovechild of a praying mantis and a Japanese motorcycle? You know who I blame? Michael Bay. Not content with pissing all over one cherished childhood memory, here he is influencing the bastardization of another. Damn you Bay for trying to make robots sexy, damn you to hell.