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Join Date: May 2010  |
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The storyline and its ending - I'm trying to make sense of it
(Warning, long post)
I just beat the game, and it's hard to make sense of what happened, but here is my attempt. When you read this you will see that it's inspired by my extreme bemusement on how things went down, so please correct me on my (potentially horrendous) misinterpretations.
Up until that final encounter, everything made sense. Sanctum was going through extreme measures to protect cocoon from Pulse Fal'cie magic, but it was secretly ruled by a Fal'cie who wanted to destroy Cocoon so he can get the attention of his one-god, the Maker. So he will accomplish this by destroying Orphan, the thing that powers Eden who facilitates the survival and maintenance of Cocoon. But he can't personally do it so he gets L'Cie (who were branded by another guy, Anima, who wasn't mentioned at all after the beginning - I guess Anima was just working for Barthandelus) to do it for him.
Of course, this is a huge sacrifice for something so questionable and arbitrary as summoning a god so anyone with any sense of morality would refuse such a thing, as the main heroes obviously do, so they decide to traverse the quest Barthandelus sends them on, not to destroy Orphan, but to kill Barthandelus, thus eliminating the primary culprit who wants to destroy Cocoon, and thus, saving it from its biggest threat. (One might think that just doing nothing would suffice to save the world but Bart might just get another L'Cie to do this, so killing him is necessary.)
So they do it.
Yay! Barthandelus is dead and Orphan (and thus Cocoon) is safe! The heroes celebrate, but the player (us) knows this isn't over because that boss was ridiculously easy even if you didn't grind at all (not like the following bosses make up for that) and the air is still a little tense, and beautiful relief music isn't playing yet. So what happens next? Orphan, the guy we just saved, comes up and starts taunting us! Saying "Kill me bitches! Turns out I want what Bart wanted. We must make the ultimate sacrifice, and I can't do it because I'm not powerful enough to kill myself (I'm too powerful to kill myself); only you humans can kill me!" (I guess this is true since he only does a thousand damage at a time and has millions of life and lots of resist; if he tried, it would be a long harrowing process, like standing in front of the mirror cutting your wrists for weeks straight before you even start feeling a little woozy, or jumping off a fiftieth floor building five hundred times before you get really bored/frustrated with the slow elevator).
So despite the fact that your heroes spent the entire game completely determined to save him (and they did!), they get a bit annoyed by his trash talk, give in and start fighting him. After a long epic (short disappointing) battle the heroes are victorious, but Orphan just starts laughing. "This was a fun fight, but it was actually pointless, and only made to appease the video game players controlling you - look, I'm still completely healthy! - actually the only way you can kill me is by turning into Ragnarok. Poof! Now you're Ragnarok." And Fang is about to kill him, but decides not to, because this whole game she's been fighting so Orphan survives. I guess that means she knew the fight in which she partook a minute ago was pointless, but they want to save orphan and shut his mouth too (like having your cake and eating it too). So Orphan is disappointed and, having watched too much Return of the Jedi, starts electrocuting her, goading her to destroy him. Lo, the heroes come back (from a "dark" place... I didn't occupy my mind with what that could have been but your input is appreciated) and blast the shit out of him. Don't worry, they're not Ragnarok so that won't kill him, just shut him up, which seems to be their new primary objective.
So I guess that blast from our heroes when they come back into the scene really hurt him, because he cries and sinks in the ground, but the characters have wised up after the Barthandalus fight and know not to celebrate right away (because you never know), so they look ready, guns a'blazin, baby chocobos ready to peck out some eyeball, and their battle stance is given merit by a new presence (they're not just standing there looking like idiots after all) as a golden disc (which if you look carefully was a piece of Orphan before, the third head that wasn't talking) and tells us that we overreach ourselves, and Lightning responds with an inspiring speech on how they don't give up and keep trying when all hope seems lost.
After this speech, Orphan goes on a screaming rage (and then smiles for a split second) and fights you, but this time you're fighting with murder on your mind because after an epic one minute battle (no worries, major anticipated televised fighting events have been over in a matter of seconds), Orphan blows up, and Barthandalus's evil plan comes to fruition! (FF6 was probably seen as the only FF wherein the villain actually accomplishes his nefarious plan, but now FF13 can be counted among such a category, and this is facilitated by you, the player!)
I guess they weren't lying when they said killing Orphan would lead to Cocoon's destruction. I mean, I thought at most there would be a slow decline of nutrition and inhabitable conditions and in a matter of months the population would slowly die off. But damn! The second you kill him everything starts erupting and kerploding and Cocoon looks like a primordial planet in its lava stages. Oh the humanity! Millions of lives! I'm sorry! I know we fought to protect Orphan so this wouldn't happen, but the bitch has such a mouth on him, I just couldn't resist shutting it!
Of course our heroes are special, so they get to float away and survive, along with a few soldiers and civilians. (Okay, maybe everyone survived somehow, but I doubt it. We saw the open field below Cocoon and it didn't seem that populated. Cocoon has millions of citizens. I've seen half a million people in an open field once for a major fundraiser anti-SARS concert, it's and endless stream of people crowded elbow-to-elbow which seems to go on forever, here we see lots of open space and a handful of people, and our heroes find Serah and Dajh in a matter of seconds rather than days.)
Luckily Pulse doesn't get destroyed (and Cocoon is a moon-sized object, it would destroy all macroscopic life upon impact) thanks to Vanille calling her summon to stop it and ice it up (or crystallize?). Everyone turns to crystal but unlike Vanille and Fang, Lightning and co. decide to wake up from it... because they chose to. (Can they do that? Just choose to wake up from crystal stasis? It must be very nice in there since some people chose to take their sweet ass time about waking up.)
Anyways, I am quite baffled by the turnout of things. I guess everyone saw Cocoon as a dystopia, the whole game suggests it as it is the ultimate urban life, people choosing to live on an artificial satellite isolated from the beautiful green planet it's orbiting. Hope even thanks Vanille saying if it weren't for her he'd never get to experience it for himself. So maybe destroying Cocoon was for the best. (I don't believe it was though; the ends don't justify the means and killing lots of people so that we can force the rest out of their shells and back to Earth just isn't worth it.) But our heroes were fighting so hard to prevent this! Sure, we put an end to a dystopian society and brought people back to nature (and one might wonder if they could survive, but sure they can - I mean, there were human cities on Pulse, and I assume they evolved as a species on Pulse), but at what cost? The heroes seemed indifferent - Sazh says "there's our demolition. Our focus is complete, blah blah blah" and everyone laughs.
Basically, in summary, Barthandelus tried to send our heroes to kill Orphan and thus destroy Cocoon as our focus, all to summon a god, but the heroes decide this is inhuman and refuse, and quest instead to kill Barthandelus, and they do! But Orphan is an ungrateful bastard with quite a mouth on him so the heroes kill him anyways and Cocoon gets destroyed but Vanille saves Pulse by stopping it from crashing, and the (few) survivors are forced to once again live on their dreaded home planet.
I remember after the final battle, instead of rejoicing, Lightning said "we did this to save Cocoon right?" When I first watched it I felt like they were desperately trying to reassure themselves, as if they were in denial of what they just did. I guess I can give SE credit for not making this one the stereotypical game where a band of heroes go to save the world (even though some of them were heart set on doing this [Snow]), but instead get tricked by a villain and destroy it for him. What a strange turn of events.
Last edited by Bottle; May 14 2010 at 06:36 AM..
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