Ivalice and April 25th 2014

Final Fantasy: Ivalice

(original, much larger post at my Gaming blog)

In the early 1990's, the Yugoslav Wars were highly televised and covered around the world.  Matsuno would see what the war, and the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, would do to a modern society.  He became determined that his next game would explore the horrors of war, and force people to think of how horrible it was.  He then created Tactics Ogre, a game very strongly respected, even today.  Through the use of telling a smaller personal story, like that on a stage, Matsuno was able to get the epic story of war to the audience in a digestible way.  Matsuno left Quest, but was soon hired by Squaresoft to produce the first "modern" spinoff of Final Fantasy; Final Fantasy Tactics.  Ivalice was the world he created for the game.  In it, he mixed his political story with the fantastic elements of Final Fantasy.  Summons became religion, Chocobos became warhorses, and the Final Fantasy job system got one of its best incarnations.

 I personally subscribe to the timeline that goes like this:  Final Fantasy 12, Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story.  In Final Fantasy Tactics you find ruins while exploring that have broken airships, and they talk about moogles being extinct but once existing.  This firmly puts it ahead of Final Fantasy 12.  In Vagrant Story the religions of Final Fantasy 12 are all talked about as an old "pagan" religion, and that the new religion took place after an old one was found to be heretical.  The heretic religion, I believe, is the one from Final Fantasy Tactics while the Pagan ones are FF12's.  By Vagrant Story, magic is a rare thing, only practiced by those that know the secrets, in Final Fantasy 12 and Tactics it is common place.  To me this timeline makes the most sense.  I also have suspicion that Lea Monde from Vagrant Story is a settlement built on top of the Ancient City of Giruvegan in Final Fantasy 12.  Both cities seem to be entire cities that are actually magical sigils, arranged in circles, and tied to a power source in the center.  Matsuno has said he never intended to make Vagrant Story part of Ivalice, but this was obviously an intention that was thrown away before the game actually began, so to me it is absolutely the same world.

The world of Ivalice has had many critically acclaimed games to take place in it.  When Famtisu "Perfect 40's" were more rare than snow in hell, there were 2 games that earned it in this world, "Final Fantasy 12" and "Vagrant Story" were among the first 8 to get the score and Matsuno the only person to direct two "Perfect 40's".  Sadly the games were never financial hits compared to the JRPG's of the late 90's.  With the entire Ivalice Alliance set up taking place in a waning era of Squaresoft, we are likely to not see much else happen there.  This may have been a contributing factor to Matsuno deciding to leave Squaresoft after Final Fantasy 12 was taken out of his hands and tinkered with heavily before release.

April 25th, 2014

I am hopelessly steeped in 70's rock.  Even though the first year of the local classic rock station only had about 30 songs in its repertoire, they were all 70's rocks and I never got tired of listening to it.  I was sad when they started adding British New Wave 80's to the list of songs... I don't listen to radio any longer.  Anyway, I am practicing and learning guitar phrases from so many 70's rock bands.  A lot of it is easy power chords with some stuff played over top, and that's where I am in skill right now.  It gets me playing and playing for hours trying to spin them together, and it compliments my Hendrix/Angus bluesy rock style that I focused on so much earlier.

First spring Salamander came out to play today while I was on the porch.  I would say it was the first cardinals too, but when it was snowing they came out to stock up on seeds.  Our flowers are all sorts of confused this year.  The front ones had a super early bloom on the morning sun side, but the rest have only started to bud.  Then on the evening sun side we've had 1 bush bloom out a week basically, having only patches of "prime" flower blooms.  I guess the weather has been very sporadic so far.  Some people blame global warming, but I'm going to blame Meg Griffin, because that's what you do.

No beer and no smokes this week.  I get like 2 six pack a year, so I'm not dependant on it.  I frequently smoke a lot for about a month, the go about 6 months without one, so I'm not addicted there either.  Its always at the end though that I have problems occupying my time without them.  It is relaxing for me, and especially in the Spring they get me outside and enjoying the sunshine.  My favorite, quick simple smoke recently stopped being stocked at my close gas station, so now there's no more $2 packs around.  I guess I'm just complaining to complain.

Have a nice weekend everyone.