On replaying FFX

[owlmoose]

I've been thinking about replaying FFX again for awhile, and being at home sick for the last week ended up being a good time for it. (I'd also thought about playing along with moogle_university, but I decided I couldn't hold out until October. :) I can always replay again then if I'm inspired.) I haven't played FFX at all for several years, and I hadn't done a top-to-bottom replay in even longer; then again, I know the game so well by now I doubt there will be many real surprises. But that's not the point of a replay like this. It's more about sinking back into the world and spending time there, reminding myself of the voices and the faces and the story. I'm about twelve or so hours in, just reached the Thunder Plains.

A few stray thoughts:

• The Jecht Shot is ridiculously hard. I think I reloaded seven or eight times before I got it to work. FFX was the last game before the ability to skip cutscenes was introduced to the series, and there's also no way to reload besides restarting the PS2, so that was also annoying. I don't intend to play much blitzball, so I didn't really need the Jecht Shot. But I so much prefer the way the characterization works if Tidus is able to make it work that I decided it was worth it.


• The other choice I really care about: who dies at Operation Mi'ihen. Nothing against Gatta, but the scene with Luzzu and Wakka at Djose Temple is one of my favorites in the game, so when I accidentally kept Gatta alive I found myself going back to a previous save.


• One thing I noticed at Operation Mi'ihen: after Yuna performs her Sending, there are still bodies on the beach. I remember having a discussion about that issue either here or someone else's journal a few years back: do human corpses disappear after death the same way that dead fiends do? At least based on this evidence, the answer is no. I'll have to keep an eye out in future scenes.


• Tidus's voice acting is better than I remember. Yuna's, sadly, is worse. Maybe it only seems that way because she gets so much better in FFX-2, so that's the impression that remains in my head.

Comments

[jerkface]

I've been replaying FFX this week as well!

I actually just finished Operation Mi'ihen. I let Gatta live this time because I've never seen what happens, and it's mildly disappointing. Luzzu's story had more...umph, I guess. Gatta, on the other hand, doesn't really do anything memorable for me. Alas, it is too late to go back and get him killed now.

Also, I distinctly remember this game being easier the last time I played it. Maybe it's because I just recently finished VIII, which is a walk through Caketown, and X only seems difficult by comparison? Is it supposed to be this challenging?

[auronlu]

X is a comfortable challenge if you walk along without stopping to level grind. If you spend any time mucking about, it can become too easy (not that I really mind one-hit kills or that Stonestrike blitzball you can buy from O'aka right before Operation Mi'ihen.)

I always waste enough time wandering along side passages to pick up various goodies, so that Lulu has Thundara by Operation Mi'ihen and can handily take out one arm per spell with that bug boss thing. If you don't have her and Auron lopping off one arm apiece in a single turn whenever the arms regenerate, that battle can take a while.

[owlmoose]

I haven't been having trouble -- in fact, I haven't gotten Game Over once yet -- so I can't say that's been my experience. Like auronlu, I tend to poke in every corner, although I didn't get Lulu's "ara" spells until a bit after the Operation, so that might make the difference. I also make a point of cycling people in and out of battles so that everyone gets experience. Not everyone fights in every single battle because that gets too tedious, but often enough. I screwed that up once, and Kimahri ended up sorely under-leveled.

Yeah, Gatta's story just isn't as poignant as Luzzu's. It's a nice contrast, in a way, that Gatta is inspired to start over again and help rebuild the Crusaders, but the way Luzzu just breaks there is more satisfying to me.

[auronlu]

All of the above, yes, except that for some reason my arthritic hands can handle the Jecht Shot minigame, probably because I've replayed so many times. It sometimes takes a reboot, though. (What's frustrating is that you can come back to the ferry and try again later, but for story purposes it feels more satisfying to do it right then.)

Interesting thought about Mi'ihen. I guess this is also true of the bodies in the Kilika sending and in Al Bhed Home (although there, Dona and Isaaru are a little slow on the uptake, and the pyreflies start gathering into fiends before they can finish the ritual.)

I completely agree with you about Luzzu and Gatta. Hence my keeping Luzzu alive for LHAD. Also, he's got a better voice, so he conveys the emotion much more strongly.

VA trivia time!
John DiMita: VA for Luzzu & Barthello
married in RL to:
Julie Fletcher: VA for Elma and Yunalesca (And Drace in FFXII)
in-game being bossed around by or sleeping with:
Candi Milo: VA for Lucil and Dona

Yes, I'm a little obsessed.

Please, keep posting thoughts! It's hard to replay this game when we know it so very well, but it's also our favorite -- er, my favorite, and I assume yours, still?

[owlmoose]

Yep, FFX is still my favorite. It might be as much nostalgia as anything else, but that doesn't change how much I love it. And it's been so very long since I've played that I don't have the feeling of tedium that I might have had otherwise.

The bodies in Kilika are wrapped, so I dub that scene's evidence inconclusive. I think you're right about Home, though -- I'll have to keep an eye out.

Heh, I did not know that voice actor trivia! Now that you mention it, I can hear it with Lucil and Dona, but not the others at all.

[auronlu]

Unfortunately I think Julia Fletcher was trying to disguise her 43-year-old-voice and made 19-year-old Elma sound too derpy. She's very Utena-ish in the original; it's quite cute.

Oh gosh. I see Fletcher has added Orphan from FFXIII to her voice credits. Yet another "BOW DOWN, PEONS!" role. She seems to collect those.

[zen_monk]

I remember when replaying FFX that I was bracing myself for Tidus' dialogue and then finding myself surprised that it wasn't that horrible as cultural osmosis claimed it to be. Really, it's only when he's distressed and frustrated that the voice is grating, but I chalk it up to bad voice direction.

Oh PS2 and unskippable cutscenes. I believe we've been spoiled by current gen hardware capabilities where we can reload stuff by going back to the main menu without having to shut off the console.

[auronlu]

Agreed about Tidus' voice.

Honestly, a lot of people are too hard on him for venting and being frustrated, yet they're totally okay with Cloud, Squall and others throwing hissy fits.

And Tidus wasn't military. He was just this kid thrown into another world, trying to find a way home. His voice tries to convey that "ordinary kid, full of bravado and uncertainty, trying to fake his way through it." And sometimes he breaks down and whines, but that also makes sense.

It's just that awful laughing scene. And the Japanese is just as bad. The point was "sound as stupid as possible," and unfortunately both voice actors succeeded.

[ryry]

I was JUST ABOUT TO ASK if KJ was excited to encounter the laughing scene... I think the last time I replayed FFX I actually muted it for that scene and left the room.

[owlmoose]

Oh, I LOVE the laughing scene. The whole point of the laughing scene is that it is *supposed* to be awful and awkward and just plain wrong. Remember, afterwards Wakka says "we thought you were going crazy"? And having that moment of awful, awkward, just-plain-wrongness together is one of the things that helps Tidus feel more connected to Yuna and gets him past the terrible shocks of learning that Jecht is Sin and that Auron was from Spira all along. I think it's really well-done.

[auronlu]

I vacillate.

I think when I'm actually playing the game, I often feel the way you do. It makes sense. It's supposed to sound awkward and crazy -- hence Wakka's comment!

There are certain Yuna lines that trouble me far more. The laughing scene doesn't throw me out of the game; it's Tidus being a dork. Whereas Yuna's "But first, we have to pray at the temple of Djoooooseeeeeee!" makes me think, "Ack, UR DOIN IT WRONG, Hedy!"

[owlmoose]

I am very pleased to see you making the arguments about Tidus that I have been making all along. :)

[auronlu]

Hmmm. I think I've always felt that way about him?

I can't remember -- I know that I make fun of Tidus, but with a certain sneaking fondness, the way I mock Wakka for being a lovable lunk. I think I used to hate Tidus' voice acting, but I've gotten used to it. I feel a great deal of sympathy for the character. As Wakka says, he handles himself pretty well for a newbie (and a 17-year-old). Cloud, Squall and pretty much anyone in FFVIII could take lessons from Tidus on "how to roll with the punches during difficult circumstances."

I wish I wrote Tidus more often, but he's so blasted normal. I think I've only written one longer story with him as a side character.

[owlmoose]

I seem to recall that you were much more negative about Tidus when we first met. But it's possible that I'm misremembering -- I got into that argument with so many people. >.>

I've also mostly written him as a side character, and only as the main character in shortfic. Partly this is a side effect of being mainly an FFX-2 writer, where he doesn't figure nearly as much.

[auronlu]

You may be right. I was probably too hard on him originally.

I actually didn't like Lulu when I first started playing FFX, oddly enough. The fanservice initially rather distracted me from her intelligence, which is hardly fair, but there you are.

[zen_monk]

The Japanese laughing scene is just as bad! I didn't know what I was expecting when I saw it, but it left me flabbergasted. I really don't know how to react to it. Because Masakazu Morita is freaking Ichigo Kurosaki...

See, what I like most about Tidus was that he asks the right questions. Because he's trying to figure things out that were seen as "common sense" things in Spira, that it makes people like Lulu and Wakka start re-examining their own beliefs. He actually reacts to things in his environment, and unfortunately some people interpret that as him being stupid. Sorry other people, but if being stupid means asking questions and reacting to weird-ass things that you've never encountered before, then I guess we're all idiots.

[owlmoose]

See, I don't think that is bad voice direction. Yes, he's grating. That's kind of the point. He's being a whiny teenager and whiny teenagers are *always* grating! :)

Basically, I think the voice acting in FFX gets a bad rap and I will defend it to the death (except for Yuna who so often sounds stilted and wrong, and I think that's largely because she was trying too hard to make her speech patterns match the Japanese mouth movements).

[auronlu]

This. All of it.

There are several characters in FFX I love despite their choppy voice acting. In Hedy Burgess' case, the lip synching attempts are a little distracting. I wish someone had told her to stop doing that before X-2.

[zen_monk]

I say that it's bad voice direction because of the behind-the-scenes facts where voice direction was mentioned. Such as having the direction be that they have to match the lip flaps when dubbing or that they feel compelled to sound just like the Japanese seiyuu.

Also, a lot of people I know blame the voice actors, which is very unfair because the ones who decide the quality and the overall sound of the acting is the voice director, and so that's really their responsibility. James Arnold Taylor is a very good voice actor, and it's unfortunate that because of Union rules, I think, that he doesn't voice in anime that often, because in other incarnations of Tidus he's actually very good. Hedy Buress as well, in X-2 and in Dissida and KH where she reprises Yuna. And X-2 actually got the lip flaps to match the English dub, as a well to assist the actors.

[owlmoose]

I haven't played any of the Dissidia games, so I can't comment on the voice acting there, but I agree about X-2 and KH. FFX definitely has its voice direction issues -- I guess some of the actors ignored the directive to try and match the lip movements -- mostly to do with it being the first time out. But specifically in the case of the whiny teenager moments, I still say that it's not bad voice acting or direction for them to be annoying, because I think it's very likely that they are *supposed* to be annoying. Just like the laughing scene is supposed to be awkward.

[zen_monk]

Firstly, I'm not disagreeing with you if the direction intended for characters like Tidus to sound annoying. The quality of how it sounds to me is based on my personal preference and it's my belief that it can sound better than it is now. If one were to compare Masakazu Morita's take on Tidus, such as in the scene in being angry with Auron, the difference between how he does it and James Arnold Taylor isn't just how each actor chose to act or how the director wanted them to sound. If there's a way to increase the quality in making "annoying" scenes with the acting and the direction, then it should be aspired to and not just have to settle for less.

[zen_monk]

By the way, I'm hoping that I'm not being persistently negative about it all, or picking fights, and if I were then I apologize. I'm recounting what I know of how the development was like when localizing it, and knowing it helps to explain parts of the voiced scenes which I thought didn't sound quite right or that it sounds like there were technical things underlying it. When I say that I wish some scenes were better sounding, I didn't mean that I want Tidus to be "less whiney" but that I think that it would be delivered better, and those moments are subjective.

[owlmoose]

Oh no, not at all. Although I appreciate this clarification, and the further information! I knew some of what you about the localization, but not all. And I do agree for sure that the voice direction could have been better. :) But I do tend to cut Square a little more slack than many since it was the first time they'd done localization with voice actors, especially since they've gotten so much better over time. Even X-2 is a significant improvement. And I'm really glad they learned from their mistakes! I found the voice acting in XIII, for example, to be one of the best parts of the game, for the most part.

[lassarina]

Doesn't soft reset work on FFX? It ain't much, but it's something; at least you don't have to get up. XD

I replayed FFX about a year ago for paladin. I'm going to be really interested to do it in October.

[owlmoose]

Here is where I confess that I haven't played a PS2 game in so long that I don't remember how to do a soft reset!

[lassarina]

L1/L2/R1/R2/Start/Select all at once. :)

Also works for PSOne classics on PS3. In case that is relevant to your interests.