99: Final Fantasy X (with Ryan Batie & Chris Taylor - Lightning Strikes Thrice)

00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog play it and discuss I've got 2 wonderful guests with me today. Both are blitzbball superstars and hosts of the lightning strikes thrice podcast Ryan Batie and Chris Taylor welcome to the show. This is not Ryan's first time on the show Ryan was a guest on we talked about tunic. 00:25.95 Ryan Ah, yeah, thanks for having us. 00:33.84 Dave Before and we did that wonderful discussion about whether video games need to be fun and this is Chris's first time on the show and what a game for both of them to come on Today. We're talking about final fantasy 10 which is an rpg developed and published by square for the ps 2 in 2001 and has since been remastered and released on pretty much everything since then this is the fifth final fantasy game to be featured on the show alongside final fantasy six nine sixteen and the goat stranger of paradise final fantasy origin if you've not played. 01:09.60 Chris Noted game of the year stranger of paradise 01:11.51 Dave Oh yeah, the game of the year every year that's one of those ah like what did it come out in 2021 it's the game of the year every year since 2021 if be it every I think most things about that game are really good. Un ironically great game. 01:18.10 Ryan This is. 01:19.43 Chris That dubstep drop at the end of the battle music and that game is really good. 01:30.32 Dave Um, if you are listening and you've not played final fantasy 10 the spoiler policy is the same as every episode of the show. We're not going to spoil the story for you. We're not going to talk shop too much in the non spoiler section. There is a times stamp down in the show notes for when the spoiler wall in this episode is. So if you want to get out and avoid the spoilers that will be the time to do so so we have some elevator pitches for final fantasy 10 to try to set this up I say that this is a this is turn-based combat so good that the final fantasy franchise decided to stop doing it entirely. And it also has a really cohesive and creative story ryan what would you say. 02:12.79 Ryan Ah, mine's real simple. Ah would you like to play the most holistically complete jrpg. 02:19.87 Dave Hell yeah and Chris. 02:19.60 Chris What if I told you you could spend 30 hours participating in an elaborate Trolley problem. 02:28.58 Dave I think we've got um, all kinds of pitches for all different kinds of buyers up here at the top of the show and how long to play final fantasy ten this is not my first time playing it so keep that in mind with my play time. I played this on switch with the the remaster it took me 35 hours this most recent time I did not do a whole lot of side content this time kind of been there done that. How about you all how long would you say a playthrough takes you the way you play. 02:57.92 Ryan Ah, so the first time I played this I was really obsessed with doing all of the side content and I learned. That the original ps 2 time counter I don't know about the remasters but the original ps2 time counter ah stops at 99 hours ninety 9 minutes 99 seconds um but ah. 03:22.70 Ryan If you do a a main plus some extras it would probably be about 45 ish hours. 03:31.55 Chris Yeah, yeah, ah or you can spend like three hundred fifty four hundred hours easy easy got to get them stats up. 03:40.43 Dave If you're the type to max out the spear grid for every character. Do all those Arena Monster fights and all that stuff. 03:51.87 Chris That's part is he don't you don't even max out the fear grid because what you do is you just teleport to everyone to the same place and delete about a hundred and fifty nodes and then just replace them with plus fours. Don't even bother to going around going around chump shit. 04:01.86 Dave But shit this is advanced sphere grid technique here on tails from the backlog tonight. Um, let's ah, get the show started with our histories with the final fantasy series and this game in particular. Now Ryan and Chris are the hosts of a dedicated jrpg podcast. So I have a feeling that you all have some history with the final fantasy franchise so I will kick it to you Chris how about you give me your all right moving on ryan. 04:29.64 Chris Never heard of it. 04:35.66 Dave Now Chris give us your history of final fantasy and this game in particular. 04:37.20 Chris Ah, Final Fantasy, I played all of them I learned to read playing a bunch of jrpgs, Final Fantasy ten I got like my thirteenth birthday party. 04:53.32 Chris Good stuff. 04:55.64 Ryan Yeah, um, it we had a um shortlived ah newsletter for the pitch drop network that lightning strikes thrice is on and I got to edit a really great piece from Chris about final fantasy 10 so. Um, that's great I don't know if there's a pu. Oh right? Yeah, you can subscribe to our Patreon ah pitch drop dot cash if you want to read that and and learn more It's good. Um, however, yeah that so playstation 2 ah when that came out I was fourteen years old 05:18.63 Dave Mean. 05:31.51 Ryan I bought it with my own money. Ah, which was a really big deal because like you know doing lawn mowing and like weird side jobs when you're not of legal age to actually have a job job and and and saving up five hundred plus dollars ah took. 05:48.73 Chris Are. 05:49.24 Ryan Several years basically from the second that the Japanese P S 2 was announced I was like okay this is going to be my first purchase of this magnitude and my parents were very dismayed. They were like oh my god Ryan's finally saving money. But oh no, they're saving it to spend on a luxury item fuck. Um. 06:08.72 Ryan And so final fantasy 10 was a launch game for me and um I like wanted to like it more than I actually liked it for for a lot of like I would say the first half of the game because like the voice acting was very jarring and. Um, the characters were not nearly as angsty as I wanted for you know, being a 14 year old really into new metal and sad things. Um, and then when some of the things that. We're going to probably elaborate on more in the spoiler wall when kind of the dominoes started falling I was like oh my oh my god oh my god and I was just totally ensourced to the point where I wanted to 100% at my first time through and and then ah. 06:57.71 Dave Nice. 07:01.54 Ryan Yeah, so I've like played it a second or third time kind of over the course of my life I made it about 2 thirds three quarters of the way through it this time and then kind of like read up on what happens and watch some videos so I can like talk you know, knowledgeably as a 37 year old about the ending stuff. But but. Yeah, it was um, replaying it for for this show revealed a lot more that I that I really missed so I was really and I'm I'm going to go ahead and finish it even though you know it's no longer assignment play. At this point. 07:33.87 Dave Nice, nice. 07:34.32 Chris And play played it like 30 times easy because I'm like a sad guy and this is my depression video game I'll tell you of as he did got a lot going on. 07:45.80 Dave It does there is a lot going on. Um for me personally, this was not my first final fantasy game was my second. My first one was final fantasy 6 on the game boy advance and I didn't have a PS 2 actually have. 08:00.71 Dave Still never owned 1 probably never will at this point I think it's safe to say but my roommate in college did have a ps 2 and I watched him play final fantasy 10 and like going there was something about it where like at the time I was like this is the best looking game I've ever seen. So. I wanted to play it and it it just became like okay I'm starting up a new file when he's in class I'm going to play final fantasy 10 and maybe I'll go to class sometime else. I'm not sure but I played it then never beat it. I played it a couple of years later never beat it. I picked up the switch remaster in like 2020 or so I finally finished the game. Um I loved it the times that I never beat it I got like 80% of the way through but just kind of fell off for whatever reason and replayed it again to get ready for this episode beat it again this time. 08:52.41 Dave Still had a great time with it to get into some kind of opening thoughts here at the top of the episode this this is kind of unlike a lot of games on the show where where I'm playing them for the first time and so you know all the surprises that the games have for me I'm I'm there for them. Final fantasy 10 has no more surprises for me at this point that doesn't really matter because everything I love about it is still there and knowing like the big plot moments and knowing how to fight all the bosses and stuff let me appreciate a lot of those like smaller moments this time around. So. Had a great time playing it again and again I especially after talking about final fantasy 16 like a month ago on the show I really think final fantasy 10 should get more credit for telling a cohesive story that doesn't overextend itself the way that so many stories in the genre and in this. Specific series tend to do. 09:49.96 Chris Yeah, they did it well enough that they are were recently like hey we're thinking about maybe one day we'll make a third one of these probably be like 50 and like hanging out with ti to still so about. 10:00.34 Ryan Um, yeah. 10:03.73 Dave Yeah. 10:05.69 Ryan Oh my god yes, ah, um, yeah, it's I'm I'm similar like I I I know so many of the broad beats but but like you Dave I I was really. 10:20.35 Ryan Taken with a lot of the smaller moments and details and stuff that's like oh Wow, they actually thought of that. Oh Wow, that's in there and um it yeah it was. It was a genuine surprise. How how much that really like colored. My view of final fantasy 10 because you know when it was in nebulous memories. It's a lot of the big moments. A lot of the big fights and then I was and then and then this time it was just like oh there is there is. So much little detail and so many things that like speak to each other and fold back in on each other and and it was like really it it. It might be the most mature final fantasy story which is funny because it contains some of the least mature characters. But Also if you are a fan of like this style of game. It's still just fun to play like it's it's still just a good game. 11:16.71 Dave Okay. 11:19.34 Chris And like there's a lot in it because it's to me the definite. The the big defining feature is like as a game where nobody said no ever and if somebody said have a cool idea for something we could put in the game like absolutely stick it in there. Whatever. 11:32.70 Dave Listen to. 11:35.57 Chris you want Tidus to have like 30 unique lines for when he uses flea go for it. 11:42.80 Dave Ah, and I guess another thing we can just kind of mention at the top. Not that it really affects this game a whole lot but have both of you played 10-2? okay. 11:50.90 Chris Yes, yes. 11:50.81 Ryan Yes. 11:54.18 Dave I have not and part of the reason I wanted to play 10 again is because I'm planning on playing 10-2 soon ish for the first time looking forward to that. So. 12:03.24 Ryan Yeah. 12:04.16 Chris Yeah, look at you enjoy enjoy that it's ah starts the trend of all of the sequels being some of the best games in the series that nobody has played. 12:10.20 Ryan yeah yeah I we're we're both really big ten-two fans here. 12:10.20 Dave Nice hell yeah so we are going to take a little music break when we come back, we're going to set up the story of final fantasy 10 so the game opens in the high-tech city of Zanarkand where the player protagonist Canon name is Tidus I always pronounced it Tidus because of the water theming of the game but it makes so much sense. Why why would they not do it. But. 12:39.64 Chris Um, it makes so much sense and then they then they made Kingdom hearts and ruined it. 12:44.22 Ryan Yeah, this was be I because I I played this when I was already a proto weeb who had been like forged in the fires of the Aeris-Aerith debate I knew how japanese vowels worked and so I knew that it couldn't be Tidus 12:53.44 Chris Oh. 13:03.81 Ryan I agree I agree Tidus makes all the sense in the world as as a name but I I've been a longtime Tidus head. 13:09.31 Dave Yeah, yep, it's ah it's it's unfortYunate learning that I was wrong the entire time but hey I'm an adult so teetus is a professional athlete in the world ah of the game. There is a sport. Called blitzball that we'll talk about later but the opening part of the game is Tidus kind of getting ready for a game playing in the game of blitzba and then a giant Kaiju attacks Zanarkand its name is sin and Tidus is transported into the far future. Where ah, people have heard of xannerkind but they know it as something that was destroyed a long time ago. So the story is mostly told in these like present day events in the future but also with Tidus's narration as he kind of reflects on ah the journey here. So. Let's ah, let's just talk about Tidus for a second as a final fantasy protagonist. How do you all feel about Tidus. How do you all feel about this kind of world setup here. 14:15.10 Ryan All yeah I love him. Um, he very pointedly is a departure from previous final fantasy protagonists at least you know from like 4 on um, the 5 the characters aren't really characters. Ah but like he is like plucky and positive and a himbo and he hates his dad because his dad's an asshole. Um and him being. 14:47.11 Ryan This guy who has a lot of anger and darkness but like continually keeps a sunny disposition and just like tries to make everyone laugh tries to make everyone smile. Um, it's It's funny looking back that that made him harder to relate to ah as. 15:06.85 Ryan Ah teenager. But as an adult I see his good heart and I see him like struggling between his inner turmoil and his external turmoil and and just and and also he's a jock you know and and final fantasy has not had jocks before. 15:26.38 Ryan Um, I mean like I guess Steiner is like ah like an old timey 1950 s bodybuilder but besides him. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair, but yeah, it is so so yeah. 15:31.43 Chris All right? No, he's a he's he's like he's a cop. They're not a jock because you're in the army or whatever come on. 15:44.50 Ryan Tidus is is the first final fantasy jock and so he's he's so different that I find him to be a really good breath of fresh air and he's also a good point of view character because there is a reason besides amnesia. That he is a fish out of water and that people have to explain the world to him and that really went a long way for me. 16:08.41 Chris And he lives in a world worth explaining which is 90% of the time. Not the case. 16:12.45 Ryan Is it. 16:15.81 Dave Yeah let's ah, kind of elaborate I agree I kind of like Tidus. There's some scenes where he's a little bit hard to ah to love but I will take a Tidus over a cloud type protagonist every day of the week because I'm not a teenager and I don't. Identify with cloud as a person anymore. So. 16:35.94 Chris I I find Tidus is great I find t is deeply relatable as someone who is also it very unlikeable but also very nice, but. 16:47.40 Dave So the the world that we're talking about here is spira and it's a pacific island inspired setting as all final fantasy games in the numbered series reinvent their settings and stuff this one's pretty unique and. The thing about spirra is that sin that giant Kaiju kind of looks like a whale that we mentioned before ah appears and continuously just destroys civilizations and kind of keeps people down keeps them at a a primitive. Level of society and technology and things like that and this cycle of destruction wrought by sin is the basis of the religion in Spyra which believes that sin's destruction is the atonement that people must pay for relying too much on technology in the past. And to shy away from using it too much. So Chris you said that this is a world worth explaining I agree with you I think the concept of number one of sin and number 2 this kind of pacific island setting. But the formation of a dominant religion around a kaiju that repeatedly attacks you. 18:02.66 Chris Yeah, and they hate the computer as much as we do which I think is great. 18:09.38 Ryan Yeah, it I when I when I called final fantasy 10 the most like holistically complete jrpg a lot of what I meant was that it felt like every piece. Of the world they built and the character's place in that world was considered. You know a lot of and I we're going to get into this in just a second but like a lot of jrpgs have religion and and god as. 18:38.12 Dave Because. 18:40.51 Ryan You know, ah overarching world things a lot of Jrpgs have a bunch of you know? Ah ah, a party who has who needs to travel across the world and do little odd jobs for different people in towns as they go but this one it's like it. It. It feels like they went. Ok So why would God and religion be such an overarching like thing. What would that God in Religion. How would that God and Religion shape society. Ah the the party members have a reason to visit all of these towns like it just it. It. It feels like 19:19.13 Ryan Everything in about the world is considered. 19:24.15 Chris And it's like really aesthetically cohesive in a way that is not true for like most of the final fantasy games in general right? like you have There are some standout areas and they stand out. Very different mostly for narrative reasons. But like there's this this aesthetic consistency across the world and the type of cultures that people have there and then they all also have their own minor riff on it. But it still kind of like fits into that like global culture in a way that's really interesting. 19:59.63 Dave Yeah, and you have like a really,? What's the word like you have a good reason to visit all of those yeah different places rather than just kind of like taking a tour through you know? Well we we're done with this area. So Now we're going to go to the desert area and then. Well, we've we've got to the edge of the desert area. So Now we're in the Jungle area. It's not quite like ah an amusement park ride like your characters have a reason to go from place to place. Um, the reason is that one of your party characters. Ah, a secondary protagonist. Someone say the main protagonist I'm not quite sure I didn't think about it too much. Ah, YYuna is what's called a summoner and she is on a pilgrimage to go to these towns and visit these temples to gather power 20:53.92 Dave Ah, to gather the classic final fantasy summons. The aons that they're called in this game ah to hopefully one day get the final a on and defeat sit that is her purpose and that is the purpose of everyone else in the party they're her guardians so they're just there to protect her. Basically so. What you're doing in the game is you're going from town to town following this pilgrimage that unit is on and hijinks ensue along the way. But that's basically how it's set up. 21:17.51 Chris And like narratively you don't need all these guys. What you're really doing right is like you're hanging out and protecting you know while she does like stations of the cross to be like spiritually ready which is cool. 21:33.37 Dave So the cool thing about this and Ryan kind of touched on it is that while so many final fantasy games so many jrpgs use religious iconography or symbolism and stuff like that. But they're not ultimately games about. 21:51.12 Dave Stuff They're just there for theming and things like that. This is ultimately a game about a religion and I think that's really cool. It's like the central thing that ties together everything that you're doing in this game is this religion. How people are dealing with it. How devout some of your characters are how they handle the things that you're doing.. It's really cool. 22:11.86 Ryan Yeah, it there you there is a reason that you might want to kill God instead of just instead of just God popping up and being like Ha Ha I've been controlling things. 22:24.59 Dave Exactly um, some of those other guardians in the party are worth talking about at least touching on some of our favorites here. You meet all of your party characters relatively early in this game. You're not really picking up party characters in the last like five hours of this game. So you meet your party characters Wakka Ain Lulu Kimahri and Rikku Wakka is another blitzball player. Ain is a a dude with a big moonshine jug and a giant sword and a a limp arm for some reason or at least he pretends Lulu is a um. Use the scientific term a big titty goth Kimahri is an animal I struggle to describe what Kamahri looks like in real animal terms and rikku a animal. Okay, thank you? Um, and Rikku is ah she is a member of this other. 23:04.78 Ryan Um, is this. 23:13.88 Chris Manimal please. 23:22.14 Dave Ah, Race called the al bhed who use a bunch of technology and wakka fucking hates the al bhed. 23:29.61 Ryan Yeah, ah I'll I'll try my hand at Kamahri. Um, he's a blue lion with horns or at least his race has horns and his have gotten cut off. 23:39.50 Dave Right. 23:40.72 Chris Imagine if it didn't though and trying to take Kamahri seriously with like the full because Kimahri's got like a cool horn. It looks like it curves a little bit. You're like that's gonna be sick and then you see some other guys and just have enormous unicorn horns like the iconic summoner hat I'm like I'm really glad that. 24:00.47 Chris And my I'm sorry that this this was bad for you. But I'm glad you don't have a horn like that. 24:06.82 Dave Ah, so what do we think about these um supporting characters in here because these are the people you meet them very early in the game and you are with them for the entire game. So you you really get to know all of these characters pretty well. 24:23.72 Ryan Um, how I feel about them is complicated because I like them all in the context of this game because um, they each have their own shit that they're dealing with and you know own personal like. Ah, demons to overcome and they also have interpersonal conflict within the party for good reasons that once again, tie back into the world I will say I've got 2 kind of like boiler. You know, like like high level things about 2 specific characters. The the the first is that um auron I've been poisoned a little bit since following since digesting Berserk after final fantasy 10 and auron is like literally just guts from berserk plus wandering drunken master from. 25:15.96 Ryan Ah, from you know, other various japanese media. He's those 2 things put together and then they give him the personality of an aloof asshole. Um Wakka is really interesting because. 25:31.20 Ryan Number 1 he is ah he's voiced by John Dimaggio and so you can if you know that you can hear both bender from Futurama and Jake from adventure time in Wakka now. But also Wakka's racism makes me hate him. So much more now than I did when I was a teenager first digesting it and I have a hot take that um, final fantasy being released in the Us after 119 ah, might have made some of his like weird like very specifically like anti middle eastern racism because the al bhed are are middle eastern coded um, like not feel as horrific to a 14 year old who had just kind of like lived through 119 you know that. 26:25.12 Ryan That's on that's on teenage me for not realizing how fucked up that was but but but I don't I don't think that square intended for his racism to hit as horrendously as it ended up hitting for me this time. 26:39.35 Chris Yeah, it does. But I think it does combine with the other ways as Wakka is also like the most religious person you hang out with like more than YYuna like walkka does like winds up embodying like a more modern type of guy which is like. 26:48.36 Ryan Listen. 26:58.71 Chris The low information conservative media consumer is like Wakka's vibe now so like Wakka is a super racist but he does just morph it to a different kind of guy and he fits like really well in that role and that role fits really well. 27:03.52 Ryan Yeah. 27:16.11 Chris In the kind of story they're trying to tell anyway. 27:20.30 Chris Because like I think a big a big thing I like here that they don't necessarily hit on is all of your characters have various relationships with religion or the way that religion touches the world and they all like. 27:33.55 Dave Man. 27:37.25 Chris None of them are really in it except for you know, which is why she's like the big protagonist and the way they face in at it and all these different facets is like really interesting. So like it's I think it's good that there's that kind of guy there but it is kind of bad when he talks a lot. It does really dumb noises. 27:49.33 Ryan Yeah. 27:49.35 Dave Yeah, yeah, he it. It seems it seems like I don't know every third time he opens his mouth from like maybe like the 10 hour point of the game that he's saying something racist especially because you have an albe in your party. 28:07.30 Ryan Is he. 28:08.86 Dave And he's just even when faced with overwhelming information that the al bhed are not Evil he's just like Nope fucking hate em. 28:20.14 Chris Is the word shifty ever been used and have it not in a non racist context as he says shifty the a bunch of times. 28:24.76 Dave Um, yeah, ah I realize we ah we didn't really talk much on YYuna though we just brought her up as kind of the person who's actually in the religion. She's the 1 doing this stuff. Um. 28:43.68 Dave So as kind of a secondary or like co-protagonist here. How do we feel about Yuna as a character. 28:49.83 Chris She Union is not very good to me. 28:53.81 Ryan Um, is I So I appreciated her more this time around because I feel like the game. Does a good job of portraying like the weight of expectation and responsibility that are on her shoulders. Um, and. 29:18.30 Ryan You can see why people would want to rally around her to protect her on her pilgrimage. But I do kind of feel like Beyond those 2 things. She's the most generic of all. Of the characters or or at least yeah. 29:39.50 Chris Yeah, she's a good. She's good. She's a good person but not a good plot actor when it comes to like ah being a character. You know what? I mean like she's like a well sketched human being throughout the course of the game but not. 29:50.43 Ryan Are. 29:50.59 Dave Yeah. 29:55.90 Chris Interesting is like a mover and shaker in the same way. The rest of your party can be. 29:57.28 Dave Yeah,, she's very kind of matter of fact about what she's doing and things that you learn about her pilgrimage and the like you said the weight of expectations but also like how she knows things are going to go. Lends her I think a bit of quiet confidence and kind of acceptance that I think is really good but as a she doesn't like really grow as a character. She starts out quiet and confident and she ends pretty quiet and confident just kind of matter of fact, along the way. But. 30:30.96 Chris Um, yeah, your perception of her grows in the way that her character would. 30:35.20 Dave Yeah, because the more you learn about her and what she's going through that grows for sure. Um I've always had a soft spot for you know, regardless of all of that. Um I don't know just always liked her character I I have heard. Criticisms of her voice acting I was liked her voice actor too. Just you know the way that she yeah. 30:57.98 Ryan Yeah I do I eventually make not you know in the appropriate section I Want to camp out on the voice acting a little bit because it's very divisive. Ah, but it in I do want to make a brief point about rikku first which is that you would. 31:04.86 Dave We can go on it now if you want to. Okay. 31:15.37 Ryan Expect the ah big titty goth girl of Lula to be the lulu not the brazilian prime minister or president. But um, ah, but. 31:25.40 Chris Gonna look up some pictures later but. 31:31.65 Ryan Ah, you would expect her to have the most kind of horny fan service but reku actually like when the care when you when you get the character introduction scene to rikku when she finally fully joins your party. She's taking off her. Wetsuit. 31:51.13 Ryan Ah, and the camera really leers at her in a way that really messed me up I was just like oh Wow this is extremely horny. Um, but you know she's just kind of like. 32:03.20 Dave Yep. 32:06.51 Ryan She's plucky and also she provides a window into the Al Bhed culture which is which is very um, welcome in in this game. Um, yeah, if we want to talk about the voice acting and voice direction now like it is. Very idiosyncratic. It doesn't sound like a modern voice acted game and also it is hamstrung by ah them needing to either stretch or fit certain voiced lines into the ah. Length of time that the Japanese cut scene took um and and that definitely creates some awkward moments. But once you get used to its Rhythms. It's still pretty affecting like like a lot of the performances still really tugged up my heartstrings it just it just takes a little bit to get acclimated. 32:48.50 Chris Yes. 32:57.73 Chris I Think Yuna is like the biggest victim of that like the like the need to stretch like really affects like the pacing of a lot of her lines but like beyond that I think it's like the voice acting is like really. 32:58.19 Ryan I think. 33:14.85 Chris Fine like you don't notice it beyond like the first couple of hours I don't think. 33:17.27 Dave No I think it's pretty good and keep in mind that this game came out in 2001 for the time that it came out even better in my estimation. It doesn't have the same It's not final fantasy 16 s voice acting but like again the year two thousand and one and those ah, constraints that you mentioned of needing to like I was reading about this the other day of like they have a japanese voice line. That's like 3.5 seconds long and they're like you need to make a voice line in english that conveys the same information same emotion and all of that. In 3.5 seconds not 4 seconds or else. The game will crash literal information from the the developer the or the localizer that worked on that so extreme um pressure on them to ah to fit that in there. 34:10.25 Dave We can also address the elephant in the room with the voice acting which is the laughing scene that even if you haven't played final fantasy 10 Ah, you're surely familiar with the scene where Tidus scream laughs and ah you know Yuna follows. Um I think this scene's. 34:26.61 Dave Overblown especially by people who haven't played final fantasy 10 you might look at that scene and go what the fuck is that but in the context of the story I think it fits and I think it's good. It is a good scene because ah at the time. That that scene takes place. They have no reason to be laughing in it. It's like every forget which one of you said it. But it's Tidus's trying to cheer people up being a you know outgoing weirdo like he is yeah. 34:54.74 Ryan Yeah, a yeah well yeah I I mean yeah, we're I'm not going to spoil but like it happens after some fucked up shit happens like like they're really dealing with some some like some heavy stuff and. 34:55.38 Chris He's a fucking clown. The scene is really good. Yeah. 35:11.16 Ryan It's Yuna that suggests laughing because because like Tidus is like ha I just want to I I don't know what to do with all this emotion and she's like just try laughing. He's like what the hell do you? What? what are you talking about? She's like no just try it and he starts and you know, um. 35:29.81 Ryan There's a little behind the scenes lore nugget ah where the um scriptwriter in the original Japanese got this idea from an acting class or Improv class that he took where they would like do warmups where they would all do these really awkward uncomfortable laughs. And it loosened them up to like keep doing the rest of the scene. Um, and I love that and also ah like it is just as awkward and uncomfortable in Japanese it it. It. You know the Ha Ha Ha has a different tone and tenor but it still is. A weird scene. So Yeah I Love this scene honestly. 36:09.25 Chris Yeah, everyone you hang out with is a bunch of weirdos. It's great that they do this together. 36:15.51 Dave Yeah, the group does have a really great dynamic together as a group I think like there are some scenes late in the game where like some heavy shit's going on and they are hanging out together as a group and you can I think you can feel the chemistry between them. Um. Sometimes Tidus feels like the odd man out in that but he is also from literal thousands of years in the past so give him a little bit of a break for that. But I do think that the group works together really well and I think that the pairing of Tidus and Yuna is a fairly. Good video game like growing romance that you you can tell from you know the first hour that they're together that that's where this is headed. 37:01.20 Ryan Yeah, there's you can see why they might like each other instead of just plot reasons for them to have to like each other. 37:07.65 Chris Well, they're the really good reason for them to like each other is like spoiler wall stuff. 37:14.52 Ryan Sure. 37:17.52 Dave Yeah, we will get into that in the spoiler wall for sure. Let's ah, let's talk about those other kind of aesthetic things about final fantasy 10 the the music and the way the game looks let's ah, let's talk about the visuals first. Um. Like I said at the time when I played this on ps 2 this was like the best game. Best looking game I had ever seen I think the remaster I don't like the way that they smooth things out in the remaster, especially the faces. The faces looked better on the ps 2 which is something I would never. 37:52.78 Dave Say for most games. 37:53.10 Chris I Don't like the remaster very much like there's a lot of new music in it that I Also do not like. 38:00.96 Ryan Yeah, I'm really happy that the that the remaster has the option to switch back to the original arrangement of the music. Um, yeah, and kind of you know, folding back into what both of you have mentioned and talked about um it is. 38:05.70 Dave Yeah. 38:18.92 Ryan The thing that surprised me the most about the visuals is that they are all informed by the world that they're trying to build so you know what? ah they took inspiration from specific island cultures and specifically ah Okinawa. Um, which has some like ah you know, messy colonial history with regarding ah and exoticism regarding the way that Japan sometimes treats okinawan culture in in their art. Um, but like. You know, like the vistas and the characters and and like everything every little visual touch in the game is like oh no, we want this to exist in a world and it makes it even though it's Ps 2 graphic graphics. It makes it feel complete and and and. Not like just like a series of interesting looking areas. 39:13.00 Chris the the 1 but 1 visual crime that final fantasy 10 commits is like searing the idea that tribal tattoos are cool into square enix as a company an idea they have never gotten rid of. 39:24.56 Dave Um, oh no, Ah overall I think um I guess well no that that's I was about to say that this is the the beginning of. 39:25.63 Ryan Yeah. 39:40.34 Dave Excess accessories for final fantasy characters. But they're on display in this like Tidus's costume design is is real fucking dumb I think it's real stupid. Love to I I love to play my underwater sport. 39:48.47 Ryan I thought. 39:51.18 Chris Um, well, that's what plumbers look like he was a plumber incredible interview quote. 40:00.33 Dave Ah, with one full pant leg and 1 short pant leg really really effective underwater. 40:01.20 Ryan Yeah, well that. 40:03.50 Chris But but the pay the long part is detachable. So like I guess they're doing the though it you can change if you're buying or selling. You know. 40:12.19 Dave Sure. 40:15.16 Ryan But also that just like bring like the goofiest and most incongruous bit of final fantasy ten s visuals is the fact that Blitz ball is played fully clothed um like that will forever be silly to me and I get. 40:23.52 Dave Yes. 40:30.13 Ryan That they would have to put new clothes on the models every time you transition to a blitzball scene and that would be a lot of work and a lot of new assets and all of that but everybody just like jumps in the water can breathe underwater forever and also like emerges and just is chill with wearing the same clothes that they were swimming in. 40:39.17 Chris Was. 40:48.67 Ryan When they're outside and like the salt is like drying on their skin in weird ways and shit and like sand is probably stuck in places that you don't want Sand stuck in and it's just like now this is just what we do not in not and maybe not in the blitzba spheres but whenever anybody goes overboard. 40:55.80 Chris You think that's salt water in there. 41:03.23 Dave Um, you're out in the sea a lot. 41:04.66 Chris Yeah, you you do hang out on the ocean a lot. 41:04.90 Ryan Yeah, you're in the ocean a lot. 41:08.51 Dave This is I Keep this is the same company that in the sequel has a an extremely pregnant character who doesn't look pregnant at all because they didn't want to make a new character model. So yeah. 41:17.90 Ryan True true. Oh my God Also yeah, is it speaking of speaking of accessories. 41:21.89 Chris Look That's fine. She you were the same out. You just got to unbuckle some of them like a couple of hips. You know the perfect pregnancy outfit. 41:27.60 Ryan Right? right? That's what it's this is when people when when when people clown on Nomura and his love of belts it it it. It happened before final fantasy 10 but Lulu's dress is literally made of belts. It is a rat king. 41:42.39 Chris And that's cool, but it's cool. It's cool to me that a war is motivated about a spite because like the interview story is that so that the people told him hey could you stop doing belts That're really annoying to model and texture here's like. 41:59.71 Chris I'll show you and then made big dress out of them and that rocks to me extremely Chris Taylor thing to do. 42:04.79 Ryan Yeah. 42:06.93 Dave Yeah I love that? Yeah um I guess speaking of Lulu like Ryan you kind of mentioned the the male gaziness of Riku's introduction scene but the. The the close ups the way that lulu like the end of a battle Lu Lulu's end of battle animation is to bend over in her breasts are the only thing in the game that has jiggle physics as far as I can tell um, kind of like it just just doesn't quite sit right with me but at the end of the day. 42:22.40 Chris Oh. 42:36.59 Dave Ah, like I said that is who Lulu is so I guess I don't know her she is a like if you talk to her in certain situations. You get a little background and she is a ah how do how do I phrase this she is a sexual character. Ah, but. Those those ah those little animations were like oh okay, that's a that they they put real work into this like this specific thing. 42:57.73 Ryan Yeah, yeah, they are pendulous in in the victory screen or the the victory animation it is it is it is weird. It is It is a little bit just like oh ok, this is this is this is happening but but but yeah, the. The way that they try to flesh it out in the character. It herself does feel a little bit like ah, a back backboarding a justification for how sex Lee they wanted to draw her and render her but like it. It's not.. It's not. 43:26.61 Dave Then. 43:36.80 Dave No, it's not egregious. It's just I noticed it you know 1 but 2 things 2 I was going to say 1 but 2 objects in the game have jiggle physics and they they both belong to lulu. 43:36.88 Ryan Hentai right? like it. it's it's it's yeah ah, ah. ah 43:46.46 Ryan Yeah, it is a thing and I did notice it and I did go like little for sure. 43:54.57 Chris Also so does the elephant know that I think about it that you cross the river on so shout up. Also I'm going tell you right now you may decide to cut this. This is rub final fantasy 10 to stuff good news. There's an entire continent of lulus no more just has his entire. 43:55.53 Dave Um, okay, okay, um I retract I retract everything I just said. 44:01.23 Ryan Ah, yeah, yeah 44:14.30 Chris Continent of hot horny goth life who because there's another one of these in the next one and they just are all from the same place it rots and that he made a final fantasy fourteen character and I was like this seems like a Nomura character before I knew he did it but he just. 44:16.59 Ryan Yeah. 44:18.92 Dave Hell yeah, nice that. 44:26.90 Dave That that is what we call World building. 44:27.46 Ryan Naha. 44:33.83 Chris He just has a thing he likes it. He goes for it and shouts out to him. 44:37.17 Dave Yep, and we can all aspire to just follow our passions the way he does um talking about the music I suppose in final fantasy ten. This is the first final fantasy game to not be solely composed by Nobuo Uematsu They had collaborators. masashi hamauzu and jun nakano that were chosen because they had different styles from uematsu and I think this really shows. This is one soundtrack in the the final fantasy games that I've played at least that does not feel super cohesive. You could. Pick me a random song from this game and I'd be like I don't know could be ah, could not be final fantasy at all I have no fucking idea but the really strong tracks I think are as strong as anything Uematsu ever did. There's just a bunch of stuff that really sticks out I think in a weird way. 45:28.45 Chris Is like a training game for these other folks is like Hamauzu's the 13 composer and what's his name goes on to do a lot of work in 11 so they're basically just training a bunch of people here. 45:33.78 Dave Okay. 45:45.60 Dave Gotcha. 45:46.43 Ryan I will say um I I don't disagree that it that it's not necessarily cohesive but it does have a couple of my favorite final fantasy songs. Um, and also ah even though final fantasy 7 through 9 had Cd audio technology that they could have utilized uimatsu were was still composing in midi and so there's still a lot of very digitized midi instruments and so there the the. Summoner temple song is a choral arrangement of a song and they're using actual recorded voices and it blew me away when I was a teenager I was just like oh my yeah. 46:30.46 Dave Mean. 46:30.70 Chris I wish they had bullied him into that so much sooner because like like that's like if you let play file has he 7 remake right? You're like wow it was borderline a crime that they let a bos you do this in midi. 46:47.70 Ryan Yeah, yeah, it it really like it that that moment in particular that song in particular really um sticks with me because it is like hearing recorded voices instead of like. Bob Bob or Bob It makes the emotion a lot more affecting. 47:08.44 Chris Yeah, like like you can't get like a besaid island out of something like on the how they were composing on the PS1 for sure. 47:08.70 Dave Yep, agreed. 47:15.17 Ryan Right. 47:18.60 Dave Do we have any tracks that we think are standouts so we want to give a shout out to. 47:26.34 Ryan I mean I don't want to I don't want to steal yours but um, like the the opening theme um is yeah, To Zanarkand is is way up there for me. 47:32.92 Dave To Zanarkand. And yeah. Yeah. 47:41.00 Chris Like the the Thunder plains for sure big one and the music for that and the remaster do not like in comparison. Um I like the ah the Chocobo racing song is really good to me actually. 47:57.23 Chris Like the big horns. There's a lot of really good music on the soundtrack actually and Mount Gagazet also big standout. 48:07.52 Dave I think I have like a bit of a negative association with Mount Ga gazette because I don't like what you're doing there when you're there, but it's ah. 48:12.74 Chris I died two feet away from the same point at the end of Mount Gagazet and had do the entirety of the call mines through Mount Gagazet again, don't. 48:18.91 Dave Um I agree I think To Zanarkand is the the standout. Um I went to the distant world's final fantasy concert about a month ago and they played this and it was fucking great to have like a whole orchestra. Do it. 48:38.44 Dave Um, this is the piano piece that plays at the beginning when you load up the title screen I think it's an all timer of like an emotional final fantasy song because it gets reused throughout the game and you know, additional emotional weight gets added to it as you play through the story and then on the other side of the coin. You have other world which is the metal song that plays during the opening cut scene when they're playing blitzball and stuff this was done by Uematsu's metal band called the black mages. Um as a metal song I think it sucks but I I love it for being. 49:16.78 Dave So fucking, cheesy and standing out so much from everything else in here. It kind of feels like a heat check from Uematsu who's like this is number 10 like I'm killing it right? I'm putting this metal song in the game and I'm just doing it. 49:29.55 Ryan And it's very 2001 metal like it. It sounds like it could be like a mud vein song it it um it it is corny it's very funny that like nobo ummasu I really like a lot of the prague rock that he likes you know he he. 49:32.46 Dave Yes, yes, yes. 49:45.44 Dave Yeah. 49:48.00 Ryan Ah, references King Crimson and Emerson Lake and palmer and gentle giant but his his metal tastes are very much not mine and so when he goes when he dips into metal. It's very corny. 50:02.21 Chris Um, I'm glad he has an outlet for it. That's not the video games I like to play. 50:03.58 Ryan Yeah, for sure. 50:08.89 Dave Ah, yeah I Definitely put that song earlier in the episode when we kicked off the story setup so people even if you haven't played final fantasy 10 You know what we're talking about you'll be like oh yeah, that one the one that doesn't sound like anything else. Yeah I don't know I can't help it. It's I have an like unironic love of cheesy stupid metal. Um, and even though I don't think again I think that if you took this out of this game and just like played it on the radio I'd be like no and not even that one. But. In the context of this game something about it maybe just because I love this game. 50:42.23 Chris Not not for me even as a guy who had like a very protracted power metal phase not for me. 50:47.31 Dave I am the one who um, like just the other day I was driving home and I was like I'm just going to put on the top 10 creed songs on Spotify and just that's I'm going to listen to that on my drive home I fucking love it. 51:03.81 Ryan Great. 51:09.15 Dave Ah, so let's talk about the gameplay and final fantasy ten I said in the elevator pitch. This is the last true turn based combat in the series as far as I know I didn't play the 13 sequels but I assume they're not turn based because thirteen's not 51:26.98 Dave This is true turn based also it's not atb like a lot of the games that preceded it so you can sit and wait and think about the things that you want to do and I think this is interesting because there are. Reasons why you would actually use strategy that's like the number 1 reason why I think this turn based combat system is good. It is because it is a turn-based system where you have a lot of strategic choices. You can make the most important I think is that they show you the turn order on the side. 51:47.59 Chris And. 51:59.79 Dave And you can do various things to manipulate the turn order. Ah you can slow enemies down you can speed yourself up and you know maybe you are going to take turns with the enemies now. Maybe you can get 3 or 4 straight attacks before they get to act at all. This is I think the basis of. Strategy and final fantasy 10 is manipulating this turn order in your favor I think it rocks. 52:21.58 Chris And there's nothing new about it because is how all of their turn base schemes have worked is just the fact that they say this they just show it to. You is the big innovation and that's all I took. 52:31.92 Dave Yeah, yeah. 52:34.98 Ryan Um, and you know, um, some of my favorite combat systems that either came out contemporary with or right after final fantasy 10 specifically Xenosaga and trails in the sky. Ah, also do this turn manipulation thing. 52:52.41 Ryan But both of them have their own issues that final fantasy ten doesn't really have um xenosaga it's just I mean we camped out for 3 whole seasons of lightning strikes thrice on the like cool things and failures of each individual combat system. But mostly it's just that like combat is too slow paced. And ah, there are too many ways for the turn order to kind of get turbo fucked ah with so you can't like be a master manipulator of it whereas like if you have all the tools then you can just really abuse. Ah, turn order and final fantasy 10 in ways that honestly make me wish that there was a hard mode for this game. Um, like you know some of the some of the bosses near the end game actually are pretty big challenges. But um I do think that because. 53:45.41 Ryan Manipulating The turn order is so fun I wish that there is a version of the base game that challenged me to use it more. 53:51.93 Chris Well, the good news is that stuff does exist but also to grind forever to do it because it lives in the Monster Arena But what I think is cool about this is that they lean into this by giving you Tidus as your primary character. 54:09.30 Chris Like you start the game immediately ready to manipulate the turn order and he's the pov character So you're most of the time playing him also and it's really good that if you're going to surface the way that your game has always worked and say just lean into like the manipulation aspect of it because. 54:26.36 Chris Like he's just a time mage which is cool. 54:27.66 Dave Yeah I Also like I would my perspective is a little bit off because this is the fourth like fourth time I've played this I said at the top of the show like I know how to beat all the bosses I know all their tricks that the game doesn't really have much challenge left for me. Except the final boss because I didn't do a lot of grinding before it so that was a challenge but I also thought like I'm ready for the next Level. So I agree I Wish there was like a more difficult level that you can set this on. 54:57.30 Chris Difficult thing in it is in the remasters. Well maybe it's in the remasters as for sure in the European version is that dark aeons are like the dark aeon stuff in the remasters. They don't the problem I have with those is that there's just like big numbers and they're more about. 55:07.49 Dave Yeah, they are yeah. 55:15.60 Chris How can you manipulate the equipment system rather than how do you manipulate the turn order because it's just real big numbers. 55:23.49 Dave You kind of touched on it. Ah that the game kind of sets you up to learn about manipulating the turn order by having Tidus be like a time Mage basically the his most valuable skill for the entire game is haste and slow. 55:39.53 Dave Um, but ah, another thing I like about this gameplay is similar to something I like about final fantasy nine is that at the beginning of the game for the the vast majority of it characters fill really specific roles and you. Don't have ultimate freedom to do whatever you want with the characters unless you choose like the expert sphere Grid which is not recommended for a new player in the Slightest. So If you're following the the recommended Sphere Grid. It's a linear path of progression for each character. 56:16.00 Dave And they all fill roles. So Tidus is that time mage Lulu is a black mage Yuna is like a white mage and summoner Wakka is like your status effects dealer Auron does dps stuff like that I think I love when these rpgs do this because. Ah, first of all I don't like unlimited customization. It stresses me out and it lends more characterization to the characters I think. 56:43.59 Ryan I also like that even while they fill archetypes almost none of them fill at an extremely traditional rpg archetype. There's no like straight warrior Auron is the closest but like he is also still situational. 57:01.61 Ryan Like having the white mage also be the summoner so she has an offensive vocabulary um having um, just like there being basically like a so a status mage um, where that falls down is Kamahri because Kamahri's thing is. 57:21.40 Ryan Being a blue mage but number 1 there are only like twenty blue mage spells and number 2 You can only do them in overdrive which is a thing that we'll talk about later I'm sure. Um, and so and he also has yeah like yeah yeah, that's the other thing is that none none of the blue age. 57:32.90 Chris And none of them are good. 57:41.17 Ryan Overdrives are are are that useful and and Kimahri is supposed to be the jack of all trades he has the smallest dedicated sphere grid to start with and he's the one who could who has to start jumping over into other characters. The quickest but. 57:57.70 Ryan Because everybody else is so specialized sometimes it's like well what the fuck am I using kamari for like I don't know which ah enemy abilities are are absorbable so I don't know when to use Lancet and um also I can only use those things very rarely. So what's the point. So yeah I i. Love it and I love how unconventional it is also but ah it I I don't I don't think they had a good thesis for kamari. 58:24.70 Chris So as a min maxer I don't like how they divided everything up because there's too much overlap so like Wakka being your guy that has high accuracy and hit wires doesn't like really matter because Tidus does the same thing. 58:41.32 Chris Because he's so much faster. It's fine if you miss half the time or like how the way that um magic works in the game is that healing is also affected by your magic defense. So what that means is that all you have to do like Ah, it's like even. 58:59.63 Chris Before you get to like the the big first like blitzball thing that you're going to do later, you get like the ability for lulu to learn drain and then units alert it with a sphere and then she does like 3000 damage to guys when enemies still have one thousand hp for like. 59:18.67 Chris Just wins the whole game and like at that point you're just like I'm going to bring Auron along because Auron hits armored guys and then I'm done. That's all I do all game. Basically. 59:25.10 Dave I guess I'll just say with regards to Kamari I've played this game 4 times and I've never had a good kamari character camari just kind of comes into tank hits every now and then for me and Kamari has yeah Kamari has like. 59:37.50 Chris Well a pacing mechanical pacing for Kamahri is bad. 59:44.56 Dave 2 overdrive skills that I think are good but it's it's it's really just the one mighty guard I think is really helpful if you're not overpowered but other than that it's like yeah, you'll come out, you'll throw out mighty guard and then you'll go back to the bench. Um, on that note 1 thing that is really cool. 01:00:01.64 Dave Is ah, you can switch your characters out in combat freely and there's no penalty for doing so there's no penalty even if you switch a character out and go oh shit. That's not the right character and switch them out for someone else. You can do this as many times as you want to as long as it's that character's turn. Ah, who who you want to switch out of the fight. Um, this is great because boss fights and like big difficult enemies will require skills from like more than 3 of your party members oftentimes and just. Getting them in and out of battle to do their like specific skill that they're really good at and then switching them out because okay, somebody has been their magic defense has been broken by orange now I'm going to switch in Lulu so she can fucking hammer with magic attacks with no penalty whatsoever. Is awesome There's a downside to it. But first I will kick to you. What do you think like I saw nodding heads so you agree with this too. 01:01:04.11 Ryan Yeah, and Most of my comments are going to be about the downside to it but I but also it is so nice to not waste a turn switching a party member out or not have to restart a battle to switch a party member out like that rocks that it's like. 01:01:08.69 Dave Yeah. 01:01:22.55 Ryan The game goes. Oh we designed a battle system that is going to require a whole arsenal It's not just press x not to die. Even though it it's relatively easy if you if you it it in you know it. Regular random battles are going to take a little bit longer and not but they're not like you're you're not going to party wipe generally but like it's so nice to be able to hot swap it it adds a real sense of tactics to um, the 2 a jrpg battle system that. Doesn't often allow for tactics like that. 01:02:00.32 Chris I Wish they respected the equipment the same way though because equipment does have a time penalty when you swap and like like we're talking about like these big mid boss type enemies. 01:02:14.51 Chris They're there for you to manipulate the equipment around because they all have like very specific gear weaknesses you would apply but they don't treat that in like the same way. 01:02:25.52 Dave I'll be honest I've never swapped in a piece of equipment the entire time I played this. 01:02:31.00 Ryan Um I swap Wakkas weapons out a lot. Um, especially so you get so um, their ability spheres specifically are at a premium early in the game but you and I don't want to waste. 01:02:43.98 Dave Yeah. 01:02:48.18 Ryan An ability sphere on Wakka's ability that lets you just get an abilities sphere from any enemy you kill, but you do pick up a ah ah weapon from him that will distill an ability sphere if you attack. An enemy with him with that weapon and so I would swap out to the I think it's called the able um to just to to snag an extra abilities fear and then swap back but but ah and also. 01:03:14.49 Chris Did you know those are randomized. It's the ability from a boss that's fixed. Not what character the weapon is for. 01:03:23.43 Dave The downside of this hot swapping system I think that ties into it is that characters only get experience and the Ap the ability points to move on the sphere grid. 01:03:24.17 Ryan interesting. 01:03:41.27 Dave Um, if they participate in a battle. It's pokemon rules. Basically so this ah this game I think this game does have grinding in it like required grinding sections and it has a really annoying type of grinding I Think where. 01:03:57.57 Dave In order to efficiently grind you need to make sure everyone takes a turn during every fight even if they have nothing to contribute to that fight. So like people don't need healing so I'll swap in Yuna she'll whack the enemy with her little scepter. It will do 3 damage and then I'll swap her out so she gets her Experience. At Least that's the way I did it if I'm an idiot. Please let me know. But um, this is feels like a big waste of time I think. 01:04:18.37 Ryan No. 01:04:24.42 Ryan And also as an added little knife twist. It makes it makes sense diagetically. But if you're attack if you just do a regular attack and your attack misses that doesn't count as taking a turn to get Ap and so if it's a bunch of flying enemies. 01:04:38.26 Dave Brutal 01:04:43.17 Ryan You have to like be clever about what action you're taking so like you know, healing You don't have to damage the enemy to get ap healing will give you ap stealing will give you ap all this stuff. But if it misses then you don't get it and then you have to have that person in for another turn. 01:04:56.66 Chris This is mechanically why everybody has a freebie action like cheer is so they can come in and do this because like cheer is like 6 cheers is the equivalent of like casting like a mild buff. 01:05:02.25 Dave Yeah. 01:05:13.10 Chris They're like really weak but they're just basically there as mildly beneficial free actions. Yeah. 01:05:14.00 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, they don't cost any magic or anything like that to do that kind of stuff. Yeah, good point. 01:05:21.10 Ryan It's also very very funny story wise to the idea of like Tidus jumping into the fight just to go come on guys. You got this and then jumping back out of the fight. Yeah. 01:05:32.48 Chris Ah, yeah, totally totally fitting with who Tidus is like again, love all of his flee lines like I got to go or you got lucky this time. Very good stuff. 01:05:34.49 Dave True. 01:05:42.64 Ryan Ah, um, the other thing I want to say about about this kind of like swapping and how it can really lengthen battles and slow battles down is um, this game is retroactively harmed by the remasters of the. 01:06:00.48 Dave Yes. 01:06:00.54 Ryan Previous final fantasies that happened because um, final fantasy 10 was seen as the fastest paced final fantasy battle system in forever because it wasn't tied to waiting for an active time battle meter to fill up. But. Every other final fantasy that's been remastered has had a fast forward feature. Ah where if it's just a regular role battle. You can click the fast forward button and it might not be you know, like the quote unquote original intent which means that I should be against it. But I Also I have limited time on this Earth. So I'm going to. Fast forward through some older final fantasy Battles Final Fantasy Tens Remaster does not have that same fast forward. Um, and ah, that sucks to me. Um, and. 01:06:42.45 Dave Yep, final fantasy 12 s remaster does have that fast forward so they just skip 10 01:06:49.25 Chris Yes, most you was like thinking time at least has speeds up all of your animations as muchsh as it does your character. Yeah. 01:06:57.74 Dave It's very funny. Yeah, all the characters in battle have like these idle animations. You know Ti does like hop back and forth on his feet waca will do this weird fucking thing with his hand but they do it at like double time if they have haste on and it's It's very good. 01:06:59.13 Ryan Ah. 01:07:10.99 Chris I'm like my man needs a massage look at him'm looking a shoulder. Go. 01:07:15.16 Dave Yeah, just constantly and I mean he's he's carrying like a three gallon jug of of some alcoholic liquid that shit'll wear on your shoulders. You're just carrying it all the time. Um, we've mentioned overdrives a couple of times. Um, just. 01:07:33.88 Dave Want to point out they are basically limit breaks if you played final fantasy 7 or um, ah like the thing that makes them stand out I criticize the trance in final fantasy nine I think those suck. Ah. 01:07:46.77 Ryan Ah, aha. 01:07:48.42 Dave The good thing about final fantasy Tens overdrives is you get to keep them and use them whenever you want to? So if you're preparing for a boss fight. You can build up those overdrive meters go into the boss fight with those big attacks ready to go and it's great I don't have a whole. Yeah. 01:08:01.72 Chris For all of your summons too which is how you can be every boss in the game. 01:08:07.92 Dave Ah, that's like the pro strategy for getting ready for bosses is to get your a your summons. They have their own overdrive meters. Get those ready because those are the strongest attacks in the game for most of it. 01:08:20.44 Ryan And they so um, the cool thing about overdrives is you can customize like you know you you can say oh I actually want to build up an overdrive bar. Doing damage or I actually want to build up my overdrive bar by when my allies take damage that instead of when I take damage and there's all ah all of these different permutations that that you can um, customize. Ah aeons gain. Overdrive meter when they're dealing damage and receiving damage. So. It's a much faster ramp up. Um, it's because they're the only target right? And so like you don't have as many turns and ah to work with and ah once they die, they're Yunavailable for like ah you know a dozen fights at least. 01:09:07.26 Ryan Um, and and so it's nice that you can like really ramp up ah a on overdrive a lot faster. 01:09:15.11 Chris The ability to set your own overdrive charge is like how you turbo grind in this game. Ah because you can get gear that says whenever I gain overdrive convert it into a p then you could get gear that says give me triple overdrive. 01:09:32.90 Chris And you're like what if I gained overdrive I took damage and then what and fought this Tonberry who does break damage limit and does like a 100000 damage to my guys and I level up 300 times 01:09:39.67 Dave Um, I'm glad I'm glad we have you on we needed a grinding min maxing sicko on this episode. This is this is great. 01:09:50.60 Chris The equipment in this game is how I became a sicko for sure. 01:09:57.74 Dave Hell yeah, um I Guess the other thing I want to mention about combat that kind of makes this stand out from a lot of final fantasy games is that status effects are good all the time um something that I think is. 01:10:07.00 Chris Um, yeah. 01:10:12.31 Dave Really lacking in a lot of older final fantasy games is the fact that you get a bunch of status effects like sleep and poison and darkness and all of these things but you could basically never use them on anything that you want to use them on and that is just not the case for most of final fantasy 10 Um. Big examples being that. Ah, there are some formidable like late game bosses that you can and should poison to kind of chip their health down which you know what are you going to Poison Kefka in final fantasy six like that's not going to work but in this game you can do that. 01:10:51.50 Dave Ah, brings back that trick where undead enemies are basically one hit killed if you use a Phoenix down or something like that they feel like they respect a lot more of your move set. 01:11:00.26 Chris They this against you though because like there's that um, there's like this weird rule that doesn't crop up very often which like if somebody's petrified underwater. They just instantly die because they can't swim and there's like 2 boss fights designed a route 01:11:14.93 Chris Ah, round this against you. 01:11:17.18 Ryan Um, and ah this this ties into 2 different things. Um that I really like um the first is that um so your gear. Ah. Like your gear doesn't give you traditional stat boosts that often instead. It's specialized into different abilities that are tied to that gear and so there's a reason to keep a bunch of your gear and not sell it and and and swap it out. Ah situationally but also. 01:11:50.32 Ryan If either you use Kamari's scan spell or you have a scope on one of your active party members items. Not only does it show their hp and their elemental weakness like um, most final fantasies with the scan function. But also it ah sorry sensor not scope, but but. But also um, it will give you a little hint like this enemy is vulnerable to poison or this enemy is vulnerable to darkness and darkness when ah when it can affect an enemy is so. 01:12:24.62 Ryan Powerful because all of their attacks will miss for like 3 to 5 turns. 01:12:29.91 Chris This is the other thing I like is that there's ah, a lot of enemies when you debuff them. They'll take care of it but because it's a turn based game. Not a real time game. They don't just get a free move so you're still eating into the action Economy. So It's still good to do not all of the time. 01:12:44.49 Dave Um, yeah I had a lot harder time. The first time I played this because I assumed that status effects suck and I just like didn't use waca a whole lot and the. 01:12:57.83 Dave Ah moment I realized that darkness is like 1 of the most powerful moves in the game. It basically became fairly simple because a lot of those big enemies that hit you really really hard. You can use darkness on most of them and. At least by yourself a couple turns to take care of everything else. 01:13:16.91 Chris There's a boss that has some like little chumps with him and they like berserk the boss and he one shots all your guys and like that that has led to me. Doing like pro really early internet searching where I wound up on like this forum with like 10 people where they're doing their tabletop game organizing. This is how I got a de forum culture is trying to figure out what was up with this guy in final fantasy 10 and it is like oh. 01:13:45.90 Chris It would literally never occur to me that you could just cure. This guy's status condition in the same way you would because that's not how most games like this would just operate really cool stuff. 01:13:52.11 Dave Um, right, The other thing to mention about gameplay here before we kind of clean up some miscellaneous stuff. We've mentioned that sphere Grid a bunch of times and talking about various. 01:14:09.96 Dave Fears this is the way that you level up in this. You don't get like traditional level ups you get ah the ability to move a spot on the sphere grid. It looks like a board game basically and you move from node to node to unlocking. Um. Various stat ups as you go so like 1 ah node will say hp plus 200 and you unlock that you instantly get 200 more hp and the next one will say speed plus one and then you get 1 for your speed. So I wonder wait. 01:14:42.43 Chris This is just path of exile for people who have not played follow fe 10 path of exile said we should just do this. 01:14:50.53 Dave Yeah, um, and I was doing some research on lord of the rings games for future episode of the show. There's a lord of the rings game that just took the final fantasy 10 combat system like wholesale put it in their game. Yeah yeah. 01:14:58.99 Chris Um, yeah, it's great. All the lord of the rings games are good drought that game boy advance which is just a cool Diablo. 01:15:01.69 Ryan Whoa Wow huh. 01:15:06.41 Dave Yeah, it is yeah I played those a lot. Um, you just play through the the events of the movie in like a little handheld diablo game. It's cool. Um, but back to the sphere grid I want to hear what you all think because I'm kind of of 2 minds on the sphere grid on one hand I think it's kind of annoying that. 01:15:10.15 Ryan Whoa. 01:15:14.37 Ryan Wild. 01:15:25.83 Dave Like a lot of work goes into the sphere grid to accomplish the same thing that one level up does in ah, a different game. Ah but I do like collecting those things once I trained myself to not go in and go one space at a time. And just like dude wait till you can go 3 or 4 spaces then go in and do that stuff after that I do think it's pretty satisfying to move around in it. But I Wonder what? you all think. 01:15:51.57 Chris I love a for like forever since this game came out going in their every battle because when you level up, you don't really appreciate it and like like follow fantasy for right? like I just got I am generically better. In a not really noticeable way because you're getting a tiny tiny bit of everything at once you're getting like 1 strength or whatever and like here's twenty h b but here I'm suddenly getting like a plus four strength at or and I go from 1 shoting this to shoting this guy to 1 shoting this guy or. Get it moving before a guy that I would move after in a way that's like really noticeable because it's so granular like you gain something at the expense of your time if you're willing to do it. You gain like an appreciation for how it's technically a small numbers game. 01:16:48.28 Chris Like at the end of the game like Tidus might have like a hundred shrink so like a plus 2 is like not trivial and is like pretty noticeable if you're looking for it if you're if you're not definitely just save it up. 01:17:00.97 Ryan Um, yeah I um I initially it does it. It does create more of a sense of ownership on the building of your characters than basically any final fantasy that came before um. And a lot of the ones that came since I think the 13 series also does a really good job of like letting you customize your characters and also it's very similar to this fear grid in a lot of ways. Um, but it is very linear like you can plan it out. But. Until you start unlocking the other character paths or unlocking the endgame paths. You only have 1 or 2 options of where to go and just kind of like the dungeons. There might be 1 or 2 diverticula where it's like oh if I turn left here I can get 3 nodes that I can that I could. That I would otherwise skip and when I was a kid I was just filling everybody out and when I replayed it as an adult. It was very easy to be like actually this person's fast enough for now. So I'm going to use my sphere levels to kind of go past this speed node. That's off if I turn left. Or like you know oh I don't remember actually liking this ability that that Wakka has and so I don't need it and I need more abilities fears. So I'm just going to skip this ability and that is nice but I had to train it I I had to play. 01:18:30.86 Ryan Crpgs that that were ah more about build customization before that turned on to me and so it ends up being like a happy medium where it's very. It's a very guided experience but you still. 01:18:45.77 Ryan Can make decisions and those decisions matter because like Chris said it's a very granular small numbers kind of progression. 01:18:54.13 Chris I'm going disagree a little bit but because there's way more flexibility than you think there is but in a way that's really unintuitive is what I was talking about like Kamari's mechanical pacing. Is that ah bosses will start dropping level nodes initially which let you unlock into other branches and basically you have to choose not to use certain characters for certain stretches of time and you have way more off ramps into way more characters than you think you do right? So like if i. 01:19:25.25 Chris Like if I branch off right away after that first boss and then I don't use that character again until the next boss I'm suddenly 3 characters over and have a thief like in the first 5 hours of the game. 01:19:38.37 Chris But you have to like basically know that which is why I think it's a really weird compromise and I think the expert sphere grid is a way better way of doing it. 01:19:45.30 Dave Yeah, that's what I was going to say like there are ways to manipulate what you're doing but you have to know what you're doing So that's for repeat playthroughs and like you said there is that expert sphere grid where it's like completely just hey build them. However, you want to build them. But if you don't know what you're doing you'll. 01:19:50.65 Chris Yeah. 01:20:04.50 Dave Probably royally fuck up your characters doing that. 01:20:04.78 Chris Well also I think that's too much. It's like in file fantasy 12 where you wind up with a bunch of identical characters because there's no guardrails put on at all. 01:20:17.20 Dave 1 ah 1 definite good thing about the sphere grid I think is that you can see the entire thing ahead of you and you can follow the path that your character will be taking so if you're grinding for example and you look. 01:20:32.17 Dave 5 spaces ahead and you see oh tidus is going to learn hastega in 5 nodes I will just there's a boss fight coming up that just killed me or something like that then I'm just going to grind up I'm going to get that skill. It's going to help me a ton in this boss fight and it kind of like gives you a target. 01:20:50.60 Dave When you're doing that or just you know, look ahead and see oh shit Lulu's going to learn flair at some point that's awesome and yeah, it gives you a little bit of a target in a way that like a lot you can look up. You know when characters and rpgs learn new skills. But. Like in this one, you don't really have to. 01:21:08.22 Chris When I was a kid I was like why do you move backwards for at a time who would ever need this and now I'm an adult and I realized that 10 hours later oh shit I never got darkbuster for Wakka and now I have to waste 20 levels going back to get the skill and that going forward because that's the. 01:21:28.15 Chris 1 that basically always works and I need that. 01:21:29.64 Dave Yeah. 01:21:35.99 Dave It's an interesting style of progression. Um I feel I still feel like you spend a bit too much time in the sphere grid as you're playing through the game. But I think like it's. I can see benefits as annoyed as I am sometimes and I'm like Wow I'm in here a lot.. It's kind of like ah oh like the Larian rpgs where I find myself doing inventory stuff like all the fucking time and I have to just tell myself like hey. Ah, you don't have to check your equipment every time you pick something up, you can do this every hour or 2 and you'll be fine and the sphere grid was mostly the same way for me personally I want to I want it So badly. 01:22:11.66 Chris Too much of a signal I want to check it every time I want that I want that plus 1% efficiency 01:22:22.59 Dave So um, never mind so there's some miscellaneous gameplay stuff to kind of clean up here first thing to mention is we mentioned the progression of your characters is pretty linear but the path of the entire game is extremely linear and I just want to point out that. I think this is good and I think it's kind of fucked up that final fantasy 13 gets gets or got relentlessly shit on for being linear when 10 is just as linear if not more. 01:22:51.79 Ryan I will say one thing in for final fantasy 10 s sense of linearity over final fantasy thirteen sense of linearity which is that the difference to me is that final fantasy 10 has towns even though. 01:23:08.42 Ryan Those towns are also like 2 paths you know sometimes it's just like a boardwalk um, but that pacing of okay, you're going to go to a dungeon and that dungeon might be a quarter where it's but it's still a dungeon and then you're going to have some downtime where you talk to folks like. 01:23:27.54 Ryan 10 does not have or 10 has that where 13 doesn't that being said I also the other thing is that like there is because you're seeing it on a world map and and like there's still a sense of adventure and place to it that I think really? um. 01:23:47.34 Ryan Eases the the feeling of linearity and also there are still like you know, um there there are still left turns that lead into slight puzzles where you can get cool gear along your linear path. There's ah 1 moment about 10 hours into the game where you're writing a chokobo for the first time and there are little golden feathers that you might not catch where it's like oh I think there's a chest up there I don't know how to get there and you still have to puzzle out like oh how do I get there. So yeah I you know. Almost every final fantasy game is linear. It just has a world map that you travel around. Um, and yeah, it's just fake and and this one is like no, we're we're linear and there's a and and there is a plot justification for why it's linear and then also there are still. 01:24:27.49 Chris Yeah, it's just fake. 01:24:43.52 Ryan They're they're short. They're small, but there's there are nooks and crannies to explore still. 01:24:48.40 Dave Yeah. 01:24:48.99 Chris Going back here. Comparison. It's not just towns the other big difference is that found fantasy 13 teleports you around a lot You're just I got to the end of this hallway I'm going to get teleported to another hallway and they don't connect and I can never go back and that's. True and final fancy 10 I think exactly once when you get teleported to a completely different place. But other than that you go backwards to the whole game if you want to so you don't it doesn't feel as disjointed. It has a sense of placeness that it doesn't where 13 feels like an anonymous tube which is how I think that people really are like. 01:25:26.59 Chris Grading on is that there's no one to talk to and I have no idea where I am so I'm just kind of holding the stick the whole time. 01:25:32.22 Dave Yep, yeah, like not not to say that I like all of that stuff about 13 because that's why I stopped playing it. The first time I played it but it's like final fantasy 10 kind of feels like it gets a huge pass here like people just don't even bring it up all that often and just worth noting that it is a super linear game. Yeah, ah. 01:25:52.10 Chris Yeah I think this because file fesy 10 wants to be likable and charming and final fantasy 13 wants to be cool and it is cool but it doesn't want to be likable. 01:26:01.68 Ryan Ah, yeah. 01:26:07.31 Dave Um, we have heaped a lot of praise on final fantasy 10 so far so there is 1 thing I have to bring up that I think is like pretty much like. Easily the worst thing in the game and ah YYuna goes on this pilgrimage from these temples to temples in different towns throughout the land here when you go into the temples you have to do these puzzle sections. They're called the cloister of trials. Um, where you. Basically solve puzzles by putting different spheres into different holes that have different properties and I don't know try to create paths and stuff like that I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about them just have to bring them up. You spend a decent amount of time doing them in the game and they suck. 01:26:53.29 Chris And you do them all twice if you want to get 1 of the secret summons because you got to do all the secret puzzles within the puzzles. Also we did it. We finally figured out why the entire not everyone in the world is a summinar and is because everyone in the world hates these except for you know. 01:26:56.89 Dave Oh no. 01:27:10.28 Ryan Yeah, but um, a lot. So the only saving grace for the cloister of trials Cloisters of trials are that there are no random battles inside these temples. Um it it would be. 01:27:10.38 Dave Right? ah. 01:27:22.14 Dave Yes, can you imagine? ah. 01:27:24.60 Chris Um, ah holy shit. 01:27:27.26 Ryan The worst but it's it's really tough to know what's interactable even though there are like glowing interact points there. They're inconsistent. Um, there you have to like hit confirm way too many times it like asks you if you're sure every time you press x on a thing you can. Yeah you can only hold 1 sphere like it it in trying to do adventure game puzzle style stuff. 01:27:45.96 Chris You can only hold one ball I got 2 hands. 01:27:49.66 Dave Um, your 2 hands. Yeah. 01:27:58.43 Ryan They did not consider how the engine should be altered in order to make it a smoother experience and so not only is it tough to know like okay what am I missing here? How do I push Forward. Where's the secret explodo wall like you know all of that. It's also just like.. There are too many buttons. There are too many slow animations you have to sit through.. It's just clunky like the idea. 01:28:23.13 Chris The one in bavell is a war crime where it's also the puzzle is traversal and you just have to whoops I forgot to hit the button I got to wait two more minutes and the music is bad. 01:28:32.60 Ryan Yeah, it really it it? Yeah yeah. 01:28:37.00 Dave Yeah, it's not a great song and it's the same song for all of them. So. 01:28:42.28 Chris Yeah, the fight. 01:28:43.32 Ryan Yeah yep, and and and you you get hit with the with the with the choral song that I like so much in the entrance to each one of them and then you go in and you get bad music instead. 01:28:55.73 Chris A you have to do them all again, no matter what because some of the coolest shit narratively in the game is behind doing these all again. Even if you got all of the secret puzzles. The first time. 01:29:10.46 Dave Weak. Okay, you're gonna have to tell me in the spoiler section because I've never done that because these suck as much as I love this game and don't love this game that much. Um, now last thing I want to talk about and it's. 01:29:17.32 Ryan The first. 01:29:24.61 Dave Maybe 1 of the more divisive things about final fantasy 10 and that is not only artTiduss and Wakka blitzball players narratively but there is a blitzball minigame in this and I maintain that they did this because the minigame and final fantasy 9 is such a fucking mess. 01:29:44.36 Dave They're like we're making a sport in final fantasy 10 we're doing something totally no more card games so blitzball. 01:29:51.17 Chris Match Not here. We can all admit the triple that a triple triad and all those card games are bad. Ah. 01:29:55.88 Ryan I like triple triad until it introduces the rules that suck ah but basic base Triple triad is something I like. 01:30:01.69 Chris So bad I have a plugin do it for me in final fantasy 14 01:30:06.22 Dave I didn't get far enough in final fantasy a to even hit the tutorial for triple triad. So maybe something the the music is good. So what happens in blitzba blitzball like we said takes place I don't actually don't think we said this blitzba games take place. 01:30:11.70 Chris This ball is so good though and the music rocks. 01:30:24.89 Dave Not only underwater, but in a floating sphere of water. Um to the point where like I think in one of the cut scenes you see someone get like body checked out of the sphere of water and like out into the stays it. It's a ah, a very metal looking sport. 01:30:32.73 Ryan Yeah. 01:30:35.94 Chris Um, ah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:30:42.38 Dave Ah, what you're doing like when you play blitzball is significantly less cool I think but it is still I think a fun game to play you swim Around. It's kind of like a real-time control. But then you can pause at any time to pass the ball to someone or to take a shot. It's like on it's like. I Don't know enough about water Polo to definitively say it's like water Polo it's like underwater soccer. 01:31:03.56 Ryan Um, yeah, yeah, it's it's like it it and it's menu based so it's like menu based underwater soccer slash rugby like it's rugby but with soccer nets instead of football goals. 01:31:15.94 Dave Yeah, right? um and your players all have stats that determine like can they make this long pass can they survive being body checked by somebody. It's exactly yeah, but. 01:31:26.90 Chris It skills that poison guys when they catch the ball. Yeah. 01:31:33.86 Dave You learn special skills like ah, there's a shot that if you get the q to ease right? Tidus can learn where he basically takes out 2 people by hitting the ball at their face really hard and then taking a shot at the goal. There's a bunch of customization. It is um. 01:31:36.50 Chris You are. 01:31:42.13 Ryan The first. 01:31:47.39 Chris It's that's like a third of your team you kill at once that's crazy. 01:31:53.43 Dave And to kind of wrap it all up before we talk a little bit about playing it. Um, as you go through the game you can meet the players from the other teams and they you can recruit them to come play on your team which you should because your players kind of suck. But. 01:32:05.93 Chris So when you when you win the tournament. The cut scene is so the cut scenes after are so good. Can't really talk about them right now. But I love that. 01:32:12.33 Dave I Yeah proud to say that Um, there's a I think one mandatory time that you have to play blitzball in the game and it's a tournament your the odds are kind of stacked against you like I said the players on your team. 01:32:15.67 Ryan Um, yeah. 01:32:23.89 Chris Um, yeah. 01:32:31.99 Dave Other than Tidus are bad but I'm proud to say I won it this time I won that tournament and it was good moment I've gone back and forth the rewards. Not great, but the satisfaction that's the real reward I've gone back and forth. 01:32:38.39 Chris I spent 3 hours trying to win it and then all I got was a stupid strength sphere. 01:32:51.36 Dave On blitzba I loved it. The first time I played final fantasy 10 like the second to most recent time I played it I was like this sucks actually and then on this replay I was like wait blitzball is actually really cool I love this. 01:33:05.80 Ryan I am very ambivalent because I like it so much in theory but a triple triad match takes 30 seconds um blitzbal has so much downtime. And so it takes a lot of time and that bugs me um and then also the other thing that's kind of frustrating is that because it is stat-based and menu-based you can um, really. Hose yourself into playing a game that is literally unwinnable because even with the special moves. Nobody's shot power is powerful enough to um, counteract the goalies. Ah but like saving stat even though it's a dice roll that it. The savings stat will then roll between 50% of the max or one hundred and fifty percent of the max. But sometimes there are some optional tournament fights where it's just like oh I literally I literally can't win this. But um I have to I have to play it out in order to get to the next match and i. 01:34:20.18 Ryan Very much just like that part of it. So if it had less waiting and there was a way for players skill to better augment. Um character stats I would be a hundred percent all for it. Um. I think it is definitely one of the better um like long running binny games in a final fantasy but I also did not want to spend my time playing it this time. 01:34:49.66 Chris Um, it it's no coin game from 10-2 but it's really good. 01:34:55.32 Dave It does take a long time. You're right about that like you you can. Yeah you can play blitzba at any save sphere and it is a commitment to say oh I am actually going to sit down and play some blitzball now. 01:34:57.58 Chris Yeah, it's like 15 minutes a match easy. 01:35:09.72 Chris You say spheres also just look like blisball like spheres which is really good to me. 01:35:15.70 Ryan Yeah. 01:35:15.26 Dave Yeah, and we we didn't mention at the beginning but like blitzball is like a blitzba is like football in the Us but like probably more ubiquitous in this world it. It feels. Yeah, it's it. Not only does it seem like it's the only sport it's the only like source of. 01:35:28.38 Chris It's the only sport. 01:35:34.24 Dave Happiness and entertainment in this world at all I feel like. 01:35:35.13 Ryan Yeah, yeah, and also like American football it ties directly into the nationalism industrial complex like like they use it at they use blitzball as the opiate of the masses and as propaganda a lot. 01:35:49.35 Chris Yeah, the Pope who is the president shows up to likes be do the opening ceremonies. 01:35:54.81 Dave Yeah, but. 01:35:56.76 Ryan Yeah, um I will say ah so my sister was a sociology major in undergrad and she wrote her big senior thesis on the sociology of Seattle turning into a baseball town in the mid 90 s and um. 01:36:10.00 Dave Who. 01:36:13.56 Ryan That that made Wakka's speech early in the game about how sports are actually really good for the community and and really like help instill a sense of place and a sense of belonging to each town. Ah. Really hit for me like I don't like Wakka I I think he's a racist asshole but he's right about sports. 01:36:35.53 Chris Oh it's interesting that you like that when Wakka says we should all band together in opposition to everyone from everywhere else. Interesting. 01:36:43.58 Dave So I think this is a good opportunity to get into some kind of wrapup thoughts in this non-s spoiler part here before we break the spoiler wall down entirely. Um, what we do in this section is we just kind of you know sum up our thoughts if we have things to say and answer the question who would you recommend final fantasy 10 to. 01:37:12.25 Ryan Um, I think any like anybody who has an interest in Jrpgs should give it a shot like it is I think one of the best just from how fun the combat is how. Complete and and and naturalistic the characters are how integrated the story is with the world. They've built it. It. It's not my favorite jrpg. But I think it might be the platonic ideal of the genre. 01:37:49.16 Chris Yeah, yeah, I can't think of 1 I would recommend fall hasie 10 to people who are sad and also to people who used to be very religious and are no longer very religious because Paul has he 10 loves to think about religion in all stages of your life and even if you're not so in. 01:37:58.20 Dave Um, I think that's true. 01:38:10.36 Dave Yeah I agree with a lot of what you said I It's interesting like I play I've played a lot of final fantasy games both for the podcast and not this is my favorite combat system in the entire series of the games that I've played. 01:38:20.75 Ryan Thank you. 01:38:30.50 Dave Ah, maybe like I don't know maybe tactics might give it a run for its money with combat systems I like but this is really good I would put this up there with some of my favorite turn-based combat systems in general. So if you like games with like strategic turn-based combat I think this is for you. Um, if you like jrpgs but don't like how they have unnecessary increases in scope where like all of a sudden a god that's been watching you the whole time jumps in at the eleventh hour final fantasy 10 doesn't do that it like. Naturally gets to its ending in a way that I think a lot of games in the series and genre don't do so in that case I do think yeah Ryan like you said like a platonic ideal for the genre. Good combat a sort a story that doesn't like you know. 01:39:15.68 Chris I Thought of one. 01:39:22.30 Dave In a web that it can't wrap up stuff like that. It's really good I go back and forth on what my favorite final fantasy game is. It's probably between this one and 6 the the saga of playing all of them is still ongoing but to this point still one of my favorites I love it. 01:39:39.81 Chris File fantasy 4 which has all of the same general like you want to hit all the classic notes but is fantasy which is what most people associate with a jrpg. 01:39:40.54 Dave Chris you thought of 1 01:39:51.62 Dave That's true. 01:39:53.43 Ryan Um, yeah I I like 10 more than four but I else I think 4 is a yeah yeah, sure sure sure sure sure. Yeah. 01:39:55.74 Chris I like it more I just think 4 is more platonic. 01:40:01.95 Dave Gotcha Yeah, it is when you think of yeah fantasy The the Pacific Island setting and the walk of fighting with a volleyball and stuff like that doesn't quite. It's not the image that people conjure up. 01:40:10.21 Chris look when I think of Jrpgs I think about throwing a volleyball at a giant whale flipper. 01:40:18.13 Dave Exactly all right? So before we get into the spoiler section here. We want to do a little bit of housekeeping first things first Ryan and Chris tell everybody about lightning strikes thrice tell everyone what's going on on the show these days. And tell people where they can find you. 01:40:39.24 Ryan Um, sure. Yeah so lightning strikes lightning strikes thrice is an incredibly deep dive jrpg podcast um grpg and jrp g adjacent at this point. Um, and so ah, we. We'll spend multiple weeks multiple episodes on 1 game and really dig into what works. What doesn't how our perceptions change over time. Um, we get into the weeds about ah you know themes and. And artist intent versus effect and all of that and then sometimes get into like really specific. Ah inane arguments about tiny little details that end up being very fun. Um, right now. Our season is on an incredibly ah indie game called Wolfstride that is, um, we're having a great time dissecting. Um it it I I would say listen to the season for for more of our thoughts. Um, we also have um, we're part of a larger network called. Pitch drop where um if you subscribe to our Patreon you get a bunch of other shows about anime and other specific video games as well. 01:41:58.50 Chris Yeah, one of those is ah the ah the podcast that just Ryan and I do which is ah icons and eikons which is ah the same podcast. We just described but about follow fantasy 14 and ah, how much it loves to do colonialism and racism. 01:42:11.80 Ryan Um, yeah, yeah. 01:42:13.17 Chris Lots of cool stuff going on in there also. Also we just finished the entire basically the plot of final fantasy 10 01:42:16.45 Dave Um, what are. 01:42:20.69 Dave Nice, nice. What are some other games that you've covered in the past for lightning strikes thrice. 01:42:28.78 Chris See I think I can name all of them. We did final fantasy 13, 13-2, lightning returns which is thirteen three ah 15 shadow hearts covenant Xenosaga 1 through 3 final fantasy 8 and now wolfstride and I don't think I missed anything. 01:42:48.20 Ryan No I think that's all of them. Ah yeah, the the name lightning strikes thrice ah ah came because the the initial project of the podcast was to play the 3 final fantasy 13 games. 01:42:52.16 Dave Bravo. 01:43:02.00 Dave Nice yeah, and it nice. Yeah, it's a it's a good show I enjoy listening to it especially like I'm not playing wolfstride So like. 01:43:03.14 Chris Thirteen two is the best final fantasy game. Check it out. 01:43:05.69 Ryan I Don't disagree and I wasn't even on those seasons. 01:43:19.90 Dave Episode 4 of your deep dive into wolf stride kind of loses people like me but I did enjoy listening to the first one to figure out what is this game about that I'd literally never heard of before it came up on your show and. 01:43:29.62 Chris No one has ever heard of it besides me apparently Austin Walker has heard of it and not played it I The only person has paid money for wolfstride as far as I know. 01:43:33.99 Ryan You and Austin Walker are the 2 people who I've heard mention it besides us right? Um, yeah. 01:43:45.20 Dave But yeah, it's um, it's a good show. Deep dives um, the final fantasy fifteen when I was preparing to play 15 I listened to your episodes about the supplementary material because I was not going to watch that shit. But I would listen to you all talk about it. 01:44:00.17 Chris 1 of those was good I think which one was it was it the movie. No, that's what I liked though. That's the what I liked because it had because the teleporting was cool and that's it the game didn't make the teleported cool but the cool look it was cool. The movie. 01:44:00.27 Dave So thank you for your service. Um. 01:44:14.80 Dave Um, we we we just got word like today that PS plus members on like the top level can watch a bunch of Sony movies on like ps plus for free. 01:44:19.60 Chris And all the dlcs were good except for gladio. 01:44:19.99 Ryan Listen. 01:44:31.55 Chris Ah, yeah, Spiderman. 01:44:33.11 Dave And they advertised it by being like you can watch some of your favorite movies for free such as looper and final fantasy 15 KingsGlaive and I was like okay, that's what you got looper is good. Yeah I'm not mad at looper for sure. Um. 01:44:42.77 Chris Fun. Yeah I would watch a looper. 01:44:45.57 Ryan That's amazing. 01:44:50.47 Dave So I will put a link down in the show notes for everyone to check out lightning strikes thrice. 01:44:53.70 Chris Ah, oh I thought you fit to looper. Yeah. 01:44:57.12 Dave So yeah I shall put a link down to looper where you can stream it at this time who knows it's not bad. Yeah, but I will also put a link for lightning strikes thrice so people can check out. What you all are doing and I'll put a link for your Patreon as well. If people are interested in the other shows that you're making especially the ah final set final fantasy 14 show kind of like a play along type thing. 01:45:24.27 Dave So for this podcast. You can support the show by doing the same things I ask you to do all the time such as juicing up the algorithm on your favorite podcast app by leaving a rating and review ah you can join the discord server to come in and chat talk about final fantasy ten this week talk about final fantasy ten two if you want to and that continent full of Lulu goths hell yeah and you can join the Patreon if you want to support monetarily patreon.com/realdavejackson you can also listen to my other podcast which is called a top three podcast. Where we do top 3 lists and we do drafts and other fun stuff like that so we are going to take a break when we come back. It is full spoiler time for final fantasy 10 01:50:58.52 Dave All right? We're back in its full spoiler time for final fantasy 10 and as per tradition Lately. We're not going in a linear order through the story. So we're going to spoil like big revelations that you may learn late in the game. So again, if you don't want to be spoiled. 01:51:36.30 Dave Please leave now. So one of the early things that you learn in like 1 of the early revelations that you learn in the game is that sin is not this like well it is a monster but it's not like a. Ah, monster in the way that a lot of other games. Do big monsters. It's sin is actually the one of the people who participated in defeating sin the last time and I didn't bring it up in the non-s spoiler part because it just didn't come up but sin was defeated. Ten years ago by YYuna's father and her 2 guardians Oren was there and the other guardian was Tidus is dad and his dad is now sin so that's kind of the way the cycle works somebody one of the guardians who helped defeat sin um takes its place. And then we continue again and this sets up 1 of the kind of struggles for Tidus throughout the story. Um, interestingly because in my opinion because he fucking hates his dad his dad is an asshole and so it's not like a. 01:52:51.60 Dave Oh my God I don't want to like I don't want to fight my dad or something like that. It's like I think Ttus is up for it because Jacked is such a dickhead. 01:52:59.84 Ryan Yeah, it really it what it does is it like personifies or mons Ratifies I Guess ah Tidus is daddy issues. Um, and also it happens so early and it happens before you really even have. 01:53:17.40 Ryan Your feet in the world. It's like the third thing that Auron ever says to you. It happens like 6 or 7 hours in and I was really surprised by that and at first it feels like a very it felt. Like a very clunky reveal to me for a on to just be like yeah and and and aran just goes sin is jeed and then he's like and you know this is true and it's very very star wars in that way but also like. 01:53:32.93 Chris This is right after the Blitzb ball tournament right? okay. 01:53:50.70 Ryan Um, then you find out throughout the game that jacked the guy did love his son quite a bit but that doesn't mean that he was ever a good dad. You never like turn you never like look back on on. Like Tidus' childhood and go oh Tidus had it wrong. Jack actually was great. He he sucked as a dad he was an arrogant asshole but also he drew Tidus in or because or he got r on to draw Tidus in. Because he knew that his kid would have the ability to kill him and so he was like oh if I'm going to become sin I want my kid here when I resurface because I know that he's going to be up for killing me and I love that. 01:54:46.30 Chris I do love that one of Tidus's primary complaints is my mom loved him more than she loved me. 01:54:47.49 Ryan I Really I Love that. 01:54:56.71 Dave Ah, ah, it's just it was interesting to me replay you can correct me if I'm misremembering this but like even at the end when you have like the final confrontation. It's like finally time to kill jacked. He's still a dickhead to Tius and like. 01:55:13.28 Dave They don't have like a reconciliation at the end Ttus is like I hate you. It's actually one of the lines that sticks out of my head as like really suffering from having to shorten it to match the the Japanese he just goes dad I hate you. He says it like really fast and it just doesn't fit. But. 01:55:31.97 Dave Yeah, they don't have like a makeup at the end. They just kind of go and Jack probably badgers him for crying too much like he does throughout the whole game and then yeah, it's like time to time to kill my dad. 01:55:39.45 Ryan The earth. 01:55:44.98 Ryan Yeah, it's I mean it's it I I after getting over being jarred by it I ended up really liking it because it provided this like thematic throughline for Tiduss fuck you dad. Lifestyle. 01:56:04.44 Chris Yeah, yeah, it Also when you see Tiduss bachelor Pad I'm like oh yeah, you did grow father with didnt you. 01:56:23.50 Dave Ah, so part of like the reason I mean you want to go kill sin because that will bring peace to the land for 10 years or something like that. But part of the reason is because it would free ject from being in this like prison of sorts. Um, one of the villains in it. Well the main villain other than sin is Seymour who we didn't talk about in the non-s spoiler part not that he's like a giant spoiler. You know that he's the villain you the second you meet him you're like. 01:56:52.92 Dave I Like the the veins in that guy's cheeks like he's definitely. Evil. 01:56:54.90 Chris Someone was so mad at me for spoiling that Seymour was the villain one time I'm like are you for real. What have you ever seen any media before. 01:57:00.47 Dave Late. Do you look at its hair. You think he's gonna be nice the way like. 01:57:02.46 Ryan Wow. Wow! This is this is so and this I mean this is the thing that I really like about Seymour is that um he is design wise an evolution of the. Like bishonen kind of like feminine featured or androgenous featured evil fuck boy. But right, but but well and once you meet the rest of the guado it's like is that belly hair also tree roots. 01:57:24.64 Chris You can tell he's evil because he's got chest hair. 01:57:27.18 Dave Yeah, he's got belly hair. Not a lone chest hair. He's got belly hair. 01:57:38.74 Ryan Um, which is wild but like he isn't just a disillusioned like a nihilist who's disillusioned because he's reckoning with his own mortality like sephiroth and kuja. Um, instead he's tied into the church. He has a reason for wanting to do all this evil shit he thinks it's noble even though it's not another thing that we didn't talk about is that um like the guado ah which he's half guado um, and he's kind of like the the like he. Is the next guy in line after his dad who was the one who the reason why Guado went from being shunned to be by the rest of society to being like ah begrudgingly and slowly accepted is because. They accepted Yevin and started adopting the dominant religion which is also fucked up in a cool like in a good like oh that's an interesting plot detail way. It's fucked up not fucked up like the story like they made a mistake but um, then he is just so 01:58:50.87 Ryan Petty he's the guy who reveals in front of Tidus that Zanarkand is ah 1000 years in the past. Um he his marriage proposal. He basically does because he knows it. 01:59:07.10 Ryan Would really fuck Tidus over and also because he wants to be the head of the church and also like you know the ambassador of the Guado and all of that. Um, but yeah seymour is such a catty messy little asshole. 01:59:21.42 Chris But yeah, he huge huge mean bitch vibes from seymour but he's like you know we all know that all these guys here at this military operation. You've heard about for 15 hours are going to eat shit and die. 01:59:37.45 Chris But you know what it gives him a purpose and that's cool I walk it like I don't think a pastor should say that he's like well why don't you pretend I didn't say it bitch and then leaves. Um. 01:59:51.53 Dave Ah I like Seymour as a villain I prefer him to a lot of the kind of because ah, again, he's the villain who's the villain for most of the game but then at the end of the game. He's not the villain anymore. But. A lot of people play that role throughout the series in the genre I think Seymour is a pretty good one. He kind of chews up every scene that he's in I think he's really good. The voice acting for staour is good. 02:00:16.10 Chris Ah, his theme is so good. Yeah yeah, his theme is good as voice acting is good and like his position in the narrative as representing like the worst excesses of this philosophy is really good. 02:00:29.90 Ryan Yeah, yeah, especially because like he and his people are relatively new converts and so like he is the most fervent because a lot of times people new to a religion are the most like extreme about it. 02:00:43.99 Ryan And he also recognizes the corruption beneath it and is like oh I can use this. 02:00:47.76 Chris Yeah, once Seymour finds out might it seems like oh yeah, we definitely got to do this and that like compare him leaning in harder to like Micah being like well I guess I'll just die them right? like. 02:01:00.24 Ryan Earth earth. 02:01:04.55 Chris He is way into it. 02:01:09.65 Dave I liked at the beginning when you kind of first meet him. Um, it's it's during that operation that you talked about where all those soldiers die he gets to join your party for a second and. 02:01:18.34 Chris I think you know the first time you meet him is when he is at the tournament because Mehan's right after that and he is just like the baddest motherfucker ever and then he's joins your party which is so sick. 02:01:23.46 Dave Right? right. Right? If you get to see him be powerful but then I like it. They let him join your party so you get to like fight with him and feel how powerful he is because your characters are nowhere near as strong as him when he's in your party for that that short time. 02:01:30.92 Ryan Yeah, yeah. 02:01:44.64 Ryan And though the way at at that tournament is that tournament in a Luca that's right, yeah, the the way that he kind of saves the day because what happens is you know there is a big. It's like the opening day of the tournament. 02:01:53.54 Chris That's Luca. 02:02:04.43 Ryan In Luca and a bunch of people have been brought in and like the grand masterer of Yevin has has been brought in and and and seymour is like the grand Maester's second in command and one sin span show up in the middle of the tournament and everyone starts fleeing. He saves the day by summoning an aeon and that Aeon is so fucked up and it's chained and like it only has one eye and you can tell it's been through some shit and also like yeah and you're like oh oh this guy seem this this guy's summon seems really. 02:02:28.81 Chris It like cries blood out of its eye. Ah. 02:02:29.23 Dave Yeah. 02:02:37.42 Dave Yeah, it seems rotly it seems like you know Yuna has like these nice summons I think maybe you have like 1 or 2 by that point and okay and you and then you have valifor also so they're both. 02:02:46.49 Chris You have Ifrit 02:02:54.63 Dave You know, cool looking summons but they don't look evil like the way you see more seymours is like oh ah, the head of the church. That's what his summon looks like. 02:02:56.60 Ryan Right. 02:03:02.63 Chris It also is like it they in the middle they're false flag that they blame on the al bhed to make see more seem likeable. 02:03:04.48 Ryan Um, and like yeah. 02:03:11.29 Ryan Yeah, yeah, um, and like yeah like like a lot of unique summoning animations show a kind of like tenderness towards her aeons also like valifor in particular like like it. 02:03:25.73 Ryan Like nuzzles her and she like pets its head and that's the piece that when you choose the um, the quick sum in animation instead of the full sum in animation. That's the part that still plays and then yeah, this one is just like all chained up in iron chains and is look. It's yeah I love. 02:03:41.70 Chris It gets like dragged up by an anchor by its neck. Ah so good. 02:03:43.84 Ryan Yeah. 02:03:44.59 Dave Yep, ah, yeah, it's good. Um, so I guess like Seymour's grand plan after I don't know after his like church Takeover plan is is complete is he says that he wants to become sin. 02:03:52.67 Chris Yes. 02:04:02.45 Dave Ah, which he's will free jecht. He says that's his reason but he does he just want to become sin to become all powerful and fuck everything up. 02:04:11.30 Chris He thinks that he will be able to control sin and kill everybody and free. Everyone from the suffering of being alive. You can't suffer because Sin is real if you're killed by sin. 02:04:26.90 Dave that's that's true it can't fault his logic there? Yeah ah the the only other thing I noticed about ah Seymour is you get a flashback. Um. 02:04:30.78 Chris Demi Fucking got me guess I'll go lay in the street. 02:04:43.38 Dave When you're in Zanarkand and it's a flashback of Seymour's mom who's like dying and she tells him to go defeats in and then people accept him after that and his mom looks a lot like Yuna and I made note of that because he spends most of the game trying to kidnap and. 02:05:00.83 Dave Marry Yuna 02:05:01.86 Ryan Yeah, um debt. Yeah for sure some freudian shit going on with Seymour. 02:05:04.83 Chris Well, the person who looks more like his mother is already dead. This is 10-2 stuff but he does just like people that look like mommy. 02:05:13.57 Dave Okay, gotcha. So the um, the other kind of big reveal that you get like of it. A fairly early maybe midway through the game is that YYuna's pilgrimage is destined to end with her dying the way that it works is you get the final a on and the the process of summoning the final Aon the one that can kill sin will kill the summoner and then a guardian will become sin. After 10 years of calm and this I think this is a really good like thing that adds weight to what you're doing and I think again adds a lot to Unice's character when you see how just confidently she proceeds on this journey that she knows she's going to die at the end of. 02:06:05.93 Chris Yeah, yeah. 02:06:07.72 Dave But knowing that this is coming like replaying this and knowing that this is coming There's a lot of scenes where like Titta talks about like what we're going to do after we beat sin and like how are you're goingnna live after all this is over and yoYuna's just kind of like smiling and nodding and just being like. Yeah, and not really like you know, acting excited about all of that and it kind of just passes if you don't know what's coming I think but. 02:06:34.14 Chris Yeah, this is what I was talking about with their relationship thing and this is what you know like so much about their relationship is that Tidus is like the 1 person she can lie to and pretend to have a normal life while she's around. 02:06:47.66 Dave Yeah. 02:06:49.78 Ryan Um, and it totally works I mean so I'll be real like the foreshadowing hit me very hard as a kid like I knew that they were talking around which is you know that's not that's not to say that like anyone's dumb for not. 02:06:56.43 Dave Oh okay. 02:07:01.85 Chris Um, look I can't help it I only read Dean Koontz novels when I was a teenager. 02:07:08.74 Ryan Ah, but but the fact that at his core besides the rage against his dad like Tidus is such an optimistic kimbo who just wants people to be happy like it. The fact that. Everyone is talking around it and so it actually hits like a revelation for him and a surprise. Um like I was really I was really living in that dramatic Irony of oh I know something that the character doesn't and I think even if you do know? Yeah, like. On Replays or if you pick up on the hints that that the game is dropping either one it it it adds this tragic weight to everything even though they circumvent it and that she doesn't have to die at the end. Um, you know someone else dies instead. But ah yeah. 02:07:52.91 Dave Right. 02:07:59.17 Ryan It I love I Love the dramatic irony of that. 02:08:01.52 Chris The reveal is like so powerful at like where it comes in the narrative. Also right? like you just as far as you know you just like killed Seymour you got sucked up by sin and you're at where riku lives. During basically like the launch of the crusades and all of the other summoners that you've met and like have had been what you thought was friendly competition with but really, you're trying. They're all racing to be the only one that has to die to save the other ones that they like like. 02:08:18.73 Ryan The birth. 02:08:35.76 Chris That's the real competition between like and stuff right? They're all there and they're like no, we all get it. You're the only person in the world who doesn't get it and this is why we think it's good actually. 02:08:48.00 Dave Yep, the old well tidus and Dave the only people who didn't get it at least the first time I played it. It was a big. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, it's awesome. I'm just. 02:08:53.34 Chris Oh I definitely is fine. It was huge I loved it. Great stuff. 02:09:00.68 Dave The type of person who like I don't ever really pick up on foreshadowing and a twist will always surprise me. It's just the way I you know pay attention to stuff or don't pay attention to stuff who knows. But um, this is also interesting. We'll talk a little bit later about like what. 02:09:16.95 Dave What we learn about the church and like what this game has to say about religion but ah, YYuna's faith is threatened and then destroyed at certain points throughout the story but then she decides to continue on with this quest anyway because you know this is the only way. Until you learn the other way. The only way to um to bring any semblance of like peace of mind to anybody in the world and it's again, it's part of the reason why I think that I like Yuna as a character more than a lot of people do because. She's staring all of this in the face and just being like nope we're continuing this is what we're doing. 02:09:57.14 Chris Yeah, it's just she starts almost fully developed I think is what's hard about it. 02:10:02.92 Dave Yeah, yeah. 02:10:04.99 Ryan It does it does it does make her crisis of confidence and crisis of of faith hit though it that like it I I agree in that she has the least kind of growth to do but then but then she's like oh wait. This religion is fucked. Um, what? like oh god this is what I've been doing my whole life and the other I mean the other thing that we haven't really talked about is the other reason why Yuna and Tidus ah. 02:10:37.76 Ryan Kind of get along is that they're both living in the shadow of their much more famous dads because her dad was the last one to do the summoning and um and they're living in the shadow of either dead or Absentee or both dads Also um, which I I think is just so so Great. 02:10:59.30 Dave Yeah they're a good fit for sure. Um, the part where you get to xannerkind and you find the sphere where Yuna is because Zanerkind is the last stop. Basically. You find the sphere where Yuna is saying goodbye to everybody um, kind of reliving her favorite memories like a lot of a lot of rpgs do this where like the party will kind of do this sort of thing before the final battle. But in this one. It's just kind of Yuna saying like you know. 02:11:30.96 Chris Okay. 02:11:34.81 Dave Ah, talking about her favorite memories with each character and then saying goodbye and when she gets to the end and talks about Tidus and she can't say his name because he's the only character that you can like you know customize the name so she goes and then yeah, yeah, just just just have a canon. 02:11:48.40 Chris Huge fucking mistake. 02:11:53.13 Ryan This is. 02:11:54.45 Dave Name. Um, so at the end she just goes and then finally I guess that leaves you instead of you know? Yeah, um, but then she says I know how it feels now as their you know Love Story's been developing this. 02:11:59.40 Chris My newest guardian. 02:12:10.68 Dave Fear thing where she's saying goodbye to everybody and then coupled with like the stuff directly after that is like really really powerful emotional stuff and I I love it. 02:12:20.26 Chris Um, well. Also it says ah it really adds a lot again retroactively to all the things that happened before because this is the thing she's doing like right after the blitzball tournament when you stop after beating up the Chokobo Eater. She's recording this then and it's just basically just been hanging out with all of these people. She thinks of as gone to her already. 02:12:39.90 Dave Yep. 02:12:43.78 Dave Yeah yep, and this is really interesting at least the first time I played it like you're you're buttting up against like. 02:12:45.78 Ryan Um, it hurts it hurts. 02:12:54.99 Chris Yeah. 02:13:03.24 Dave The deadline like if there was going to be a way to figure out how to not have Yuna die. You're really, you're right up against it because you're as basically as soon as this is over you go talk to Yunalesca who. 02:13:10.80 Chris This is my favorite thing in the plot is once you get is Tidus and Rikku repeatedly have you thought of anything yet? No but I'm gonna I swear and they're like really desperate for it. 02:13:23.30 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, and if you're right at the end basically and obviously Yuna doesn't die, but the fact that they they basically figure it out at the last minute um not like. 02:13:41.11 Dave I think it would have lost something what I'm trying to say is I think it would have lost something if like 2 thirds of the way through the game they're like we figured it out and then now we're going to do ten more hours of game before we actually do the thing that's going to save you know? um I think that you get to that last stop? Well yeah. 02:13:53.86 Chris I like that they don't figure it out. You just get told it. 02:14:00.50 Dave But you get to that last stop and they have that campfire scene and everyone's sitting around and like Tidus like kind of like wants to talk to people because he can't sit still and everyone's just like dude not now a man and it's a really really powerful scene. The music's playing again. It's awesome. Um. 02:14:19.69 Dave Those you're right up against it. You really think that like oh shit did they lose the opportunity to figure something out. 02:14:24.48 Ryan Listen. 02:14:24.97 Chris It. There's like this really good. It isn't a little. It's very good. It's a good scene but what I do think is a little bit funny is that there's a really iconic shot of like here's all of our swords in the mound where we put it up. We hang out together and it also Wakkas volleyball. 02:14:35.68 Dave Yeah, on top of it. Yeah. 02:14:42.49 Chris Yeah, just also there. 02:14:43.65 Ryan Ah, ah, it's great. 02:14:48.45 Dave Yeah, during that scene another cool just kind of touch that people start kind of telling memories and stories. It feels like the like the halftime scene of the water boy when people are telling Bobby Boucher stories 02:15:00.59 Chris Yes. 02:15:02.79 Dave But then you know just like shuts it down. She's like guys, please let's not do this right now like I'm going to die in 10 minutes yeah ah 02:15:08.60 Chris Who yeah I fought like 70 big jellies and I'm tired. 02:15:22.11 Dave 1 thing that I think sucks about this part is kind of repeatedly throughout the story but it kind of comes to a head right? when it's time for Yuna to die. Um. Tiduss basically takes over and he says this is my story and kind of takes it over when like at this point like this is like not really your story anymore again you know's about to die and Tidus throughout the game has been repeatedly saying that this is his story but this is the one time I was like you. Maybe not now. 02:15:52.50 Chris I Think he just got sports like sports at like Sports Star brain. Basically yeah. 02:15:56.83 Dave Yeah, and can't be a professional athlete if you're not like an egotistical maniac. Basically. 02:15:59.50 Ryan Um, yeah. 02:16:04.88 Chris Um, yeah. 02:16:05.25 Ryan Right? And and and him like listening and being like oh shit. Oh you're right up So Sorry is is is really it. It. That's also great because um, you know he he. Is emotionally mature enough to listen to people and realize when maybe he's he's getting a little too big for his breeches which is maybe not something that his dad would have been capable of. 02:16:32.88 Chris But at this point so this is something We didn't talk about because we're in the spoiler wall but like this is the scene that like frames the entire narrative up until now because this is also the at the beginning of the game and like you have Tidus there. 02:16:45.40 Dave Yeah. 02:16:51.48 Chris And then you immediately go to play him. He's like a completely different person and like the level of growth that's between then and here for him to be able to just take the backseat for a minute is like so big and like really well earned. 02:17:04.37 Ryan Yeah. 02:17:06.45 Chris Because there's no like just one eighty on Tidus it is like a really slow over time. He's like really well in and it comes through here at this moment when you wrap back around to the framing scene. 02:17:12.89 Dave Yeah, right exactly. It's part of the reason why he does a lot for me narratively more so than ah, a cloud or ah nah Zidane's cool I like zidane. 02:17:24.35 Chris Get go clouds clouds character girl is I'm a completely different guy now by right. 02:17:28.95 Ryan Right? right? right. 02:17:32.80 Dave um ah yeah um I think the this like the only like notable boss fight here other than maybe the last one is when you fight Yunalesca because Yunalesca has like 1 of the. 02:17:48.95 Dave Boast Serious tricks If you're not prepared for it where she'll basically just kill your entire party at once. 02:17:55.48 Chris There's a bunch of really hard ones in a row because like you have the mountain Guardian which is just like the hardest traditional boss and then you have the guy with all the minds which is like really out there and like a good puzzle fight. 02:18:06.66 Dave Um, that one is yeah. 02:18:09.80 Chris And then Yunalesca the fucking the Poison Megadeath thing is a lot. 02:18:11.66 Dave Yeah, kind of made me rage quit. The first time I played it where until I realized like oh just you know, stop healing yourself for a minute and let that stay there or I knew that there was going to be a sicko way to. 02:18:20.41 Chris Or you can grind to like 10 levels and get holy and then be done immediately. Oh because you can't hole's at the end of the trees because everyone's locked behind a level 4 lock and you don't get them so you beat Yunalesca and. 02:18:39.38 Chris So basically this is where you cap out is getting holy which does a 10000 damage to her every time. 02:18:44.96 Ryan How do you get the level 4 spheres before you beat her. Oh. 02:18:47.64 Chris You don't so you're what basically what I'm saying is you can cap out here and you're only like 10 levels away by the time you get here. Probably. 02:18:57.65 Ryan Um, got it. Yeah it and. 02:18:59.46 Chris And I hope you don't die because that entire cut scene with Oren before is very long and in the PS 2 version unskippable. 02:19:07.19 Ryan It's the cuts scenenes are also not skippable in final fantasy the in the remaster which is interesting because they are skippable in 10 two. But I think the original tend to also the cut scenes might have been skippable. 02:19:16.24 Chris Well I think they realized they fucked up and redid their entire engine at that point. 02:19:20.11 Ryan Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because the reason you can't skip cut scenes is because they were hard coded and into the engine to not be skippable so they couldn't just like yeah it is. It's It's also I I mean like. 02:19:28.54 Chris That cuts me with art is so good. 02:19:37.90 Ryan The whole time that I was playing this I was like oh my god auron is such an asshole. He's such a dick Jesus everyone loves him and he's such a bully to Tidus um and then and then we get we get this scene and it's just like oh my god okay, he's got like you know he's he's a very no nonsenses like. 02:19:56.98 Ryan This is the harsh reality kind of guy but like he has care and tenderness inside him. 02:20:00.53 Chris He or is like really well developed but they don't always in the background aarin or and Orin is never the foreground character like it's not like in ah like final fantasy nine where everyone has their turn to be the main character for like. 3 hours and then they're gone forever Orin is never the main character in that way but he's like this warrior monk who is excommunicated and then got adopted out of pity and like reform from being a drunkard by braska. Then was forced to hang out with jet forever and then watch all of his friends die like and then also got smashed against a mountain when he went back for revenge ever finding out his entire life was a lie so like huge dick but also earned probably. 02:20:37.30 Dave Yeah. 02:20:48.50 Ryan Um, yeah. 02:20:50.62 Dave Yeah, big, been through a lot for sure. 02:20:54.40 Chris And then you promise your friend, you're going to go to another dimension basically get his kid and then have him hang out with you and he's the same exact annoying guy in the exact same way. 02:21:04.78 Ryan Yeah, it's like oh I thought I got away from this asshole. 02:21:16.58 Dave Um, ah, speaking of je after you fight Yunalesca I thought this like a weird comic relief moment you you're supposed to. Like summon the final a on to kill sin. But instead you decide to basically kill God instead and start by killing Unileska when you walk out of that Scene. Sin's just kind of like outside looking at you like bro what the fuck like this wasn't This wasn't the plan like I'm supposed to be gone right now. Literally just sitting there like looking at you like if he if Sin had a traditional face. It would be a face of like hey man what? what happened?? Yeah and yeah I thought that was fun. Not a lot of like 02:21:48.75 Ryan Yeah, come on come on fight me bro fight me. That's great. 02:22:00.27 Dave Expression on Sin but the way they posed him or something like that just made me laugh. 02:22:09.65 Dave So ah, we can talk about the kind of religious stuff and the things you learn about the religion in this game. Basically the sin cycle is being like propped up by Yevon or yu Yevon I suppose and the. Promise of like atoning for it for like their past technology use and stuff like that with the promise of like sin disappearing and all of that is a lie propagated by the church to keep people busy and let sin I guess keep them. Um, introduce like trauma into their life to keep them looking for comfort anywhere I suppose and they can find that in the church. Um, so or much earlier in this episode now. We said that this was a game about a religion and. This is kind of what you find out and this is what Yuna the the most devout character but also Wakka in the rest of the party has to deal with basically learning the entire thing is a lie. 02:23:16.14 Ryan It. It's interesting like you Evan himself really doesn't get developed as a character. Ah despite driving the way that the world functions. 02:23:30.77 Ryan Like the only details that you get are actually from like the text description of bahammets ah like Aon or sorry Bahamas's faith and and then you like you hear about him from dialogue with ah unileska and with machen. Um. 02:23:47.00 Chris You can get a bunch more so this was the thing I was going to say is once you get out of here and you go talk to bahammet to find out what at that point you can go back into all of the other chambers of the faith and talk to all of the other faith to find out about the past. And that's where you also learn more about you. Yevin and that's why you got to do all the puzzles twice because you can't just go straight to the chamber of the faith. 02:24:24.11 Ryan Um, but it it, you've you've you've called it out in the notetave. But um, something that we didn't really talk about is how um, one of the big tenets of the yevin religion is that it was machinery it was maina. That's what. Like the sin that sin cleanses. That's what the punishment is is like oh we get to a certain level of technology and we all become like selfish assholes who are living in luxury and sin is there to destroy it all and the reason why they hate the al bed is because the Aled. 02:25:03.30 Ryan Just freely use Machina um their lightning guns are too cool and that means that like they're gonna they're they're the ones who are driving sin to reappear. But um, you get. 02:25:03.74 Chris Their lightning guns are too cool. 02:25:13.10 Dave Right. 02:25:17.10 Ryan Hints that that's kind of a lie very early on like when you're riding the shoe puff and ah YYuna gets temporarily abducted by the aled and gets dragged into the ocean. Um, eventually so ah, one of them I don't remember which party member is like well but doesn't don't. Don't we use mackina too and Wakka was like yeah only approved mackina only the yak to right. 02:25:38.27 Chris Yeah, Tidus says that because Tidus is the only guy who's like yeah well that doesn't make any fucking sense. What are you talking about? as. 02:25:38.54 Dave Right. 02:25:45.51 Ryan Right? And walk is Wakka's response is like baca. Obviously there are holy approved machina and then sin machina. 02:25:55.74 Chris And like as you're like going over this super wide River like the thames basically and there's an entire ruined like future City underneath it. Ah so good. 02:26:07.79 Dave But then you also learn at a point that like not only do the rules not make sense. But then the people that are basically running the religion are just not following any of the rules they're using whatever machines they want to use. 02:26:25.30 Chris Yes. 02:26:26.33 Ryan Um, yeah, and and ah also what that means is that like if the thing that they're atoning for is a lie then obviously like the ultimate like oh we're going to get to a spot where total atonement happens that also can't happen. Like it. They're they're going to perpetuate the cycle Forever. There will not be a final summoner even though that's what everyone is looking for and it's the only repeat the cycle. Otherwise. 02:26:43.14 Dave Yep. 02:26:50.30 Chris This is this is a mistake real of religions don't make is real religions. Don't say you can ever get rid of your original sin. 02:26:59.36 Ryan Yes, but like um, apocalyptic cults do um and so this is it's like a combination of catholicism and um, an apocalypse cult. Essentially it's like heaven's gate plus christianity. 02:27:01.11 Chris Yeah, yeah. 02:27:12.42 Chris Um, so let's I'm gonna tie it forward a little bit and the reason it's like that is because this is the same religion that has been around since Actuals Zaargan and you yevin is the Maister Mica from back then and is also the guy. He's the reason that Tidus is a dream right? because he is the summitter for the entire fake xanarkin that he lived in which is why Tidus is basically functionally an Aon. 02:27:39.88 Ryan Okay, okay, that is super interesting. 02:27:42.35 Dave Interesting. 02:27:43.69 Chris And that's and like mechanically speaking he functions that way like he's he gets the water sword. He's the only person who like is spec to be elemental by default and he is of the element. You don't get which is what I think is also cool. 02:28:02.66 Dave Um, interest interesting. That's just like it taking ah a minute to process because that is like it. It's a lot but it's it's yeah yeah, that and also it's it's. 02:28:10.79 Chris There's a lot. There's a lot that is hidden behind doing the worst content in the game twice. 02:28:19.11 Dave Like they do explain. They give you an explanation for what Tidus is and why he's there and how he was able to time travel. But they tell you that basically it's a dream put forth by the faith that are like sleeping and this they're Using. The extent of their power to like project Tidus into this world. 02:28:39.68 Chris There has to be a weird translation to me because when you get up to the mountain like it's clearly just like the biggest summoning you've ever seen. 02:28:48.68 Ryan Right? Well and so it's it's it's important to for podcast listeners because this is an audio format. There is a proper Noun in this game called the fayth and it's with a y. 02:29:03.92 Ryan Ah, and it's not a proper Noun in that like it's capitalized every time but it is a specific final fantasy thing that is which is confusing in audio because also the game is about the nature of faith with an eye but um, faith are kind of like monumentals from Demon souls in that they are They are. 02:29:24.21 Ryan Statues that have perpetually alive humans in them that are constantly dreaming in order to kind of like fuel the lifestream this game's version of the lifestream. They're the ones that are like keeping the spirit world alive. 02:29:35.25 Dave Ah, yeah. 02:29:40.70 Chris I Have bad news. The life stream is also real in this game as we find out and ten-2 But thanks. 02:29:43.24 Ryan They're dreaming. 02:29:52.34 Dave Um, we didn't talk about it earlier. We've said this a lot. There's so much fucking stuff to talk about in this game. Um, one of YoYuna's jobs aside from going on this pilgrimage is to go to places where people have died and perform like ascending ceremony to. 02:29:55.46 Chris Yeah. 02:30:08.99 Dave Like send their life force back into like the lifestream for lack of a better final fantasy 10 term. Um, and if they don't they say they turn into monsters. Another interesting thing about the leaders of the church. Is that they all died a long time ago and were never sent same thing happened with Auron, Auron is basically dead the whole time but it was just kind of cool where like the leaders of the church are all basically undead and you can just rule over the living forever because you're not bound by a. 02:30:44.89 Dave Lifespans anymore that includes Seymour everyone else basically all the leaders of the yevin religion. 02:30:46.54 Ryan Um, right. 02:30:53.75 Chris Seymour was notably alive until you hung until he tried to hang out with you at muck a lot by hanging out with you I mean threaten your life but also. 02:30:59.92 Ryan Yeah. 02:31:00.16 Dave Um, yes Ryan you had something. 02:31:07.13 Ryan Um, yeah, it it like yeah I do I do think that there. Yeah I'm not sure if it's intentional or not but there is a there is a metaphor there where. You know the leaders of the religion are all like ancient and dead and we're still following them even though the world has changed and the world should adapt and move on and and there are these institutional powers that are also personified that are forcibly keeping the world back. Because otherwise they have to give up their power and then might as well die and be sent. Um and the other thing is that you know, um, the reason why this sending is so important is that these pireflies that represent these people's like life force. Ah, it's like considered. You know, akin to hell or a very bad version of purgatory if you don't get sent but you know if you are the leader of a like of a religion then you're not going to just be like wandering around the world and potentially like have to turn into some. Sin Spawn Monster because you weren't sent. 02:32:19.30 Chris God Imagine if the Pope gets turned into it like a bird that gets killed by Wakka. 02:32:26.11 Dave Ah, just a really unfortYunate draw by the ah by the pope. Yeah, it's just all of these things combined. Um I mean this game I think is fairly unique among at least the series for taking on the idea of a religion. 02:32:27.92 Ryan Yeah, yeah. 02:32:44.43 Dave As like one of its central themes. Um, but I think that like the way they've like creatively and cohesively put it all together like all of this makes a lot of sense once you learn what's going on. There's nothing. Yeah. 02:32:57.97 Chris Um, it's real tidy. There's like nothing that's like thematically just dangling. 02:33:00.31 Ryan Right? right. 02:33:02.39 Dave Exactly there's there's nothing that they introduce that they don't really wrap up. Um, again, it avoids the pitfall that a lot of these games have where like at the last second they suddenly increase the scope a ton like you. 02:33:14.24 Ryan The earth. 02:33:18.49 Dave You're on the quest to kill sin for most of the game and then at the end of the game you learn. There's like an extra step. You have to do and then you go do that. But it makes sense in the context of your quest to kill sin. 02:33:23.23 Ryan Right? right? Yeah I would say that the other 2 final fantasy games or subseries that deal most directly with religion are both messier and that is final fantasy tactics. Which you know the whole it like there. There is a church conspiracy but it's much more grounded and also takes some weirdass swings at the end that that that have this like bad god escalation problem. Um. That's not a spoiler for final fantasy tactics as much as it sounds like 1 listeners who haven't played final fantasy tactics I promise and then the other one. The 13 series cares a lot about religion and the way that religion has been warped like what the actual gods are versus what people tell folks the gods are but. All of that shit is in 13 proper is just in like text descriptions that you have to go into a menu and read and it doesn't start actually engaging in that stuff until the sequels. 02:34:22.89 Chris Um, and it is very different because it's they might be literal gods but they're like gods in the way that like your cell phone could be a god. 02:34:33.89 Ryan Sure sure. Yeah, yeah. 02:34:36.83 Chris Right? Like it's like imbued with like the spirit of how long you hang out with it and then eventually that becomes powerful because everyone has the same cell phone or whatever, very cool, very different. 02:34:43.58 Ryan Right? right? right. 02:34:46.71 Dave Yeah I don't know I think this game does like a really good job in the way that it sets up and then pays off and explains how these religious leaders have basically set up an unwinnable situation for everybody like I got the sense that it correct me if I'm wrong, but. 02:35:06.61 Dave Sin does not have to be doing this. They're they're letting this cycle like perpetuate. Basically. 02:35:11.57 Chris Yes. 02:35:12.13 Ryan Absolutely yeah 02:36:06.43 Chris There's an interesting gap where it doesn't always have to have been fake given that what happens to Zanarkand originally is basically the start of a holy war with another religion. 02:36:22.71 Chris And they barely survive and the other side is wiped out so like it doesn't start fake but becomes fake at some point like when you yevin leaves and he says oh my city is destroyed I need to keep all these people alive. 02:36:40.56 Chris Oh if I Somehow die everyone I ever knew is gone forever Guess I need to make this giant monster armor to live in and then everyone else over time adapts to that because for them that comes out of nowhere. Basically. 02:36:56.94 Chris So like it gets grafted onto this existing thing in like a really weird way because basically it's a splinter sect of Evan taking over. Yevon. 02:37:00.95 Ryan Um, right right. 02:37:09.34 Ryan Sure, Yeah, yeah, ah oh met God Yeah, all the details in this game are just oh good. It's so good. Ah. 02:37:14.56 Chris Good stuff, good news, good news file phase he Ted 2 the same thing but it carries on with final fantasy ten is the setup for this and now what does that entire world do now and it's a whole game about it and it rocks. 02:37:17.91 Dave It's good stuff. Yeah. 02:37:29.33 Dave Exactly Yeah, now that that now that all of this is gone. Yeah, now that people can have fun again. Yeah um I guess the the last like big thing and like this is the big conclusion of the game too is that because Tidus is. 02:37:46.10 Dave Ah, said to be a projection or Tidus is in Aon as you said Chris when you defeat you Yevon then Tidus is going to disappear and this is like the kind of like the emotional climax the emotional conclusion of the game. So. You kind of go into this last thing you you now know that? um you know is probably not going to die. But you're still not probably not going to get like this happy ending or at least like you think it's not possible. It's. 02:38:16.98 Chris I Do like that you start the last dungeon by the way with punching your dad in the mouth is that the bus fight is used hit him in the mouth a lot. 02:38:20.26 Ryan Reverse. 02:38:25.97 Dave I Keep thinking like when we talk about all this you know fighting your dad and stuff my mind immediately goes to the movie hot Rod If either of you have seen a movie a movie about beating up your dad. 02:38:32.10 Ryan This. 02:38:34.45 Chris Um, yeah I see that movie the last three months so 02:38:41.50 Ryan Yeah, ah. 02:38:43.60 Dave But yeah that that final scene when like I said Spoilers win the spoiler section. They don't figure out a way to keep ttus around and he disappears and Yuna runs to give him a hug after it's done and she just kind of passes through him and falls down great. Great ending here. Yeah. 02:38:57.53 Chris Every fucking time every time. 02:38:57.89 Ryan Um, ah yeah, oh my God it it hurts and this is it's maybe like they they provide some background plot justification for it. But if you're. 02:39:02.31 Dave Me. 02:39:12.47 Ryan Like it might feel a little manipulative or shoehorned in just from like ah from like a top level view of the thing but it works I mean it really it it like something that I love about the game that it didn't really talk about because it was spoiler adjacent even though it's not necessarily spoilery is that this game has real costs. And it and it grapples with the weight of people we've lost the whole time like you know we see Sin Attack a village multiple times and that village is devastated and people are talking about all the people who have died and it's unique. 02:39:45.92 Ryan For Jrpgs which usually have these enormous stakes but those stakes don't always have weight to them because you can't feel the dead and. 02:39:52.10 Chris Like even at the smallest level like in that first town you're like oh a treasure chest and then would you open it this old lady walks up but she's like yeah, that's my husband and his family. They all died in the re most recent sit attack. So I guess you could have their stuff. 02:40:07.25 Ryan Right? right? And yeah, a hundred percent and so and so Tidus ceasing to exist I think ties that full circle and you know it it I I know Dave you raised it as a question be. Because not because you were like anti but because you were really actually grappling with it and and I can see how it can kind of feel like a bit of and ah ah of a manipulative gut punch. But but like the performances and the arc of the game. Just really really sell it for me. 02:40:46.68 Chris It It doesn't have that has like the best possible remix of to Zanarkand theyre the like really big sad orchestral swell like when you know just falls through Tidus. 02:40:46.83 Dave Right. 02:40:57.54 Dave I Yeah I had because I was kind of grappling with whether you know this Tidus is a dream thing was some was a plot point that was created so that he would conveniently have a reason to disappear when this was over. 02:41:15.68 Dave Because we we had really no indication of that for a while like it seemed like he just time traveled which is you know you want to explain that Sin's magic can time travel people like I was ready to believe that but I eventually came around to thinking like I liked that. You know, using what the game told me that Tidus is a a dream manifested by the fayth that that shows that the fayth actually do have real power and that I eventually came around to thinking. No, it's actually good that. 02:41:43.66 Ryan Oh. 02:41:52.90 Dave That was their explanation because it lent strength to the rest of the world building in a way I thought was cool. 02:41:57.88 Ryan It's also just like a much more like dramatically interesting and satisfying ending than most isekais have where a lot of isekai stories. You know, kind of person transported into a totally unfamiliar world stories end up either with. 02:42:14.91 Ryan The person just returning home and then the sadness is like oh well I won't be able to go back there again. But you know I'm home doing my normal life or they're like you know what I'm going to stay in this world because I am literally the most powerful person who has ever existed in this world and to and to flip that to be like oh if I complete this 02:42:34.51 Ryan If I do all of the things that I was brought here to do then? That's it for me and I've been trying to grapple with the fact that it's going to be it for the person I Love and actually I'm I'm the person who's going to die. Ah, really it I it's it's Clever. It. Ah, it's It's very clever. 02:42:54.49 Chris I really thought you're gonna say and I'm the person I love which is very like Tidus energy to be fair. 02:43:04.87 Dave Um, yeah, this is his story after all. 02:43:06.92 Chris If you haven't played follow as he ten two before don't 100% follow fantasy tend to. 02:43:11.48 Ryan Yeah. 02:43:14.22 Dave I have seen the ending of that on Youtube I might cut this out but um, because for a long time I was convinced I would never play 10 to so I was like well I'll just go watch the ending on Youtube I want to see if they reunite so I've seen it. 02:43:26.71 Chris Okay, and then then there's enough but a fellow where they're like that was a bad idea so actually Tidus dies again by kicking a bomb shaped like a blitzball and like this is for real and I love that. 02:43:27.90 Ryan Um, yeah, it's just it's just the secret ending that does that. 02:43:30.16 Dave Yeah. 02:43:43.13 Dave Ah, it's canon. 02:43:45.60 Chris Which is why I really want them to make a ten three 02:43:47.70 Ryan Ah, oh my god. 02:43:50.50 Chris That should have that should be how funnel has he 10 3 ends actually. 02:43:50.69 Dave Um, anything else about yeah, just a ah real looney tunes ass ending to it. Yeah. 02:43:55.88 Ryan Yeah, um, so I've got 3 unrelated stray thoughts in my notes that didn't really feel appropriate to bring up and they're not necessarily spoiler while things but I do want to call them out. 02:44:13.74 Ryan Um, with regards to how holistically complete the world building is the large fairies are powered by Chocobos on Hamster Wheels and I love that so much. Ah. 02:44:24.53 Dave Specific. Yeah. 02:44:26.48 Chris That rocks and you can hear them like 2 rooms away and it gets progressively louder as you go through the ship. Ah. 02:44:30.23 Dave Yeah. 02:44:32.99 Ryan Yeah, um, related to that. Um, the fact that the chocobos also died in operation Mihan and so the chocobo knights are like really fucked up about that that hurt me um I love. 02:44:45.92 Ryan The running gag through the first half of the game of whenever Tidus says too much about Zanarkand he can fall back on. Ah oh I just got too close to sin. So my brain's all messed up and they keep doing that it like stops being funny and then they do it enough times that it is funny again? Um, and finally. 02:44:54.40 Dave Yeah. 02:45:04.00 Ryan Ah, the single most racist thing that Walka says is when he calls Al Bhedd Sand Blasted grease Monkeys that. 02:45:11.79 Chris Oh yeah, who of. 02:45:15.21 Ryan Just that that that is as close as a rated t game in 2001 can get to saying an actual like horrible slur. 02:45:24.90 Chris It's fine I worked at a gas station in Pennsylvania one night eleven it happened I got you all? How do we feel here's some unrelated thoughts. How do we feel about the cool macarena joke cuts in the game. Um. 02:45:24.24 Dave Yep. 02:45:28.20 Ryan Wolf Oh god. 02:45:32.91 Dave Ah, ah. 02:45:36.31 Ryan Of I god I rolled my eyes so hard because there's a town called Makalania and Tidus mishears it and then after saying Mockerina Wakka goes i. 02:45:49.64 Dave Oh man. 02:45:49.98 Chris Ah, so fucking good I Love a wakka I Love him a lot and we didn't really talk about him but like the pyreflies to me are extremely cool. Um, like is like a visual representation because like it's very. 02:46:07.73 Chris It's like the first indication that you have that what everyone here believes in is real and then the way that gets to used in that scene after the Kilica attack is like really fucking strong might be 1 of my favorite cut scenes in any video game is the sending it sending a kill like a. 02:46:18.31 Ryan I agree. 02:46:21.13 Dave The one where Yuna does the sending. Yeah, it's it's I was just going to say that's a really really good cut scene still looks incredible to this day. Um. 02:46:35.15 Dave I was going to say yeah when you brought up the sins toxin thing. Um, it made me laugh at the beginning when rikku is like whatever you do don't tell people you're from Zanarkand and then like 15 seconds later they're like where are you from I'm from Zanarkand or like. 02:46:47.94 Ryan Yeah. 02:46:51.10 Dave What team do you play for the Zanarkand Abes and he's like oh yeah, yeah, right, the sin toxin all do all of the blitzball team names are ridiculous goers. Yeah. 02:46:56.60 Chris Um, keep his names at Abes do better. 02:46:59.96 Ryan Yeah, the Luca the Luca goers. 02:47:00.36 Chris But the Kilica Beasts is real. That's not that far off from the fucking seattle kraken or whatever 02:49:16.52 Chris Oh random thought that's not here really quick. Sorry last thought is did you still have scan on during the ending because I know you were taught we we. 02:49:30.19 Chris You have scan on during the ending when you fight all of your aeons. They all have text in the box that says something along the lines of please kill me. 02:49:37.41 Ryan Oof Oh brutal. 02:49:37.86 Dave Ah, oh yeah, yeah yeah I did see that. Yeah yeah, that was yeah, another thing we just kind of like breezed past. But yeah, that part where you kill all your aeons And yeah. 02:49:51.21 Chris You release all of the fayth like there which is like good because if they hadn't done this the direction of ten-two could be really different because like the religion still exists just in a diminished way at that point because like the faith are still active. 02:50:06.35 Ryan Um, right right. 02:50:08.71 Dave I Guess the last miscellaneous thing that I want to talk about is I think it's a hilarious and confident move to bring back other world for the fight against jecht at the end you're gonna fight your dad you're gonna listen to some fucking like like you said 02:50:28.69 Dave Mudvayne while you do it. 02:50:29.68 Ryan Ah, ah, ah yeah, yeah, even even if you don't like the song. It's an excellent implementation of that song. 02:50:30.51 Chris Um, and then he turns into that huge monster that rules. 02:50:34.26 Dave Yep Pulls a sword out of his chest. 02:50:39.75 Dave Yeah, the perfect soundtrack to fight your dad. 02:50:46.10 Chris God Okay can you imagine when they make final fetasy ten three which will inevitably happen but they have the but fucking they so it gets to do all of his dumb guitar music for it. It's gonna be so good. 02:50:56.19 Dave Oh yeah. 02:50:58.47 Ryan Ah, yeah, yeah, soken is a much better composer of rock music for Jrpgs than um than uematsu is but it is Corny It is just as Corny but in different ways. Yeah I also like it. 02:51:09.62 Chris But in a way I like but also you could have just left it off at composer. You know this is true I would have agreed with you. 02:51:16.15 Ryan Sure. 02:51:21.46 Dave All right? So that sounds like final fantasy 10 to me. So thank you both for taking what is now close to 3 hours to talk about this with me I had a feeling this game has a lot to talk about It's also a game that means a lot to me personally so I knew that I would. Want to give it justice. So thank you both for joining in this. 02:51:42.17 Ryan Yeah, thanks for having us This was a great time and yeah it it means a lot to me too. So I'm really happy that you asked you asked me on. 02:51:50.34 Chris Me Also I'll try to get that. Maybe I'll put that thing up on my website if I'm not lazy and then link you to it. Oh. 02:51:55.48 Ryan Yeah, it's great I Really I love that piece. 02:51:57.44 Dave Okay, hell yeah, would love to read it. Nice um, so I will give another recommendation at the end of the show for everyone who likes jrpgs to check out lightning strikes thrice and yeah, what else I forgot how to end my show. Yeah, tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.