Final Fantasy Retrospective: Mobius Final Fantasy Act One Conclusion

 

Imagine a world where Leonardo da Vinci completes the Mona Lisa and it’s put on display. People are charged money to go and see this masterpiece and word spreads of how amazing the painting is. Then, approximately five years after it’s put on display, da Vinci authorizes its removal and then burns it.

Imagine a world where the Harry Potter series – actually, perhaps I need to come up with a different example now, like A Song of Ice and Fire? – is released and word spreads about how amazing the story is and everyone wants to read it. Five years later, every single copy of the book spontaneously destroys itself.

This is the world gamers currently live in. You’d better not make fond memories of your time spent in a game like Mobius because one day you’ll find yourself waxing nostalgic and want to go back and play it and unfortunately you can’t.

Myself, I have fond memories of my first time playing Chrono Trigger. I was so new to RPGs and to video games in general that I didn’t know the game’s save system is how RPGs handle the concept of “lives.” You don’t get 1-Ups from blocks, you just save your progress so you don’t have to go back to the beginning. I was saving my game, I wasn’t that stupid, but the first time I died, I wrestled with the moral choice of continuing on with the knowledge I had gained from dying, or starting fresh because the characters had died and this should’ve been the end of their adventure. Yes, I was seriously considering restarting the game after dying, even though my save file was perfectly functional.

Since then, I have beaten the game multiple times, and I’ve also made fond memories of many more games. Final Fantasy IX. Breath of Fire III. Okami. Lost Odyssey. Brave Story: New Traveler. I can go back and replay any of these games whenever I wish, I own physical copies of all of them and they don’t depend on a server being active in order to play them.

In the weeks since my attempt to play Mobius Final Fantasy was cut short, I have finally seen the ending of Act One in order to piece together what was going on and figure out where this first half of the story was eventually headed.

 

Prophecies And The Elusive Chapter Six

But first, I had skipped this chapter because it was made optional by the appearance of both chapter six and chapter seven upon making it to the end of chapter five. I’m actually not sure why chapter six was made optional, considering chapter seven was written as if you played chapter six. The only reason I can think of is that maybe chapter six was made optional because it’s from the point of view of a brand new character.

Meia is introduced as a witch, a type of heretic similar to Garland, except that she has resolved to end Palamecia. Because she has resolved to be the enemy of Palamecia, Palamecia itself fights her. Enemies called Sicariuses materialize to try to stop her, but she makes short work of them. Presumably. I did say I skipped this chapter.

One thing that I definitely don’t miss about how this game’s story was told is that a lot of the dialogue is basically a philosophical conversation between two characters that go around in circles and eventually say nothing. Or if something of significance is said, it just leads to nothing of significance being done. It’s as if the game’s story is being stretched as thinly as possible because of the series’ narrative reputation. They needed long cutscenes because they’re known for long cutscenes. Plus, the more story scenes there are between battles and the more battles there are, the longer each chapter plays and therefore the more gameplay that they can claim is present in Mobius. The development cycle for each chapter was pretty long, considering they often went months between chapter releases and didn’t seem to have a set schedule of regular updates, not like Final Fantasy XIV has.

In chapter six, the Warrior of Light meets up with Meia during his travels and she tells him a story about her past. She knew one of the Warriors of Light, some unknown time ago, but Palamecia killed him. She initially wants to discourage the current Warrior, but she’s warned by an Echo fairy that if she turns him into a heretic, Palamecia will just restart the cycle and turn another Blank into a Warrior of Light.

I wonder if this game was meant as a deconstruction of Warrior of Light prophecies and a criticism of chosen one narratives, and certainly it could’ve been if it were written or paced a bit better. Instead, when the Warrior is talking things over with Echo and Echo makes a non-committal “maybe” answer, I can’t help but feel frustrated with the story because there’s a lot of words being used and nothing in the end is being said.

“Here’s a bit more of how the world works, except maybe it’s not and never mind.”

Meia finding visions of her Warrior of Light along the paths of chapter six is an interesting development and I would’ve wanted to see more of that. The constant discussion of possibly defying the prophecy except maybe we shouldn’t and I guess we should just keep going and I guess nothing changed then, that I could do without. The only thing it serves to do is to remind the players over and over again of the Sword of Damocles hanging over the Warrior’s head without bringing anything new to the table in regards to the plot.

It turns out that Meia was the lover of the Past Warrior. The problem there is that the Past Warrior is supposed to fulfill the exact same prophecy that the current Warrior follows. If you recall from my past adventures, that means that the Past Warrior is supposed to eventually take the princess for his wife and guess who isn’t the princess? Meia. This causes the Past Warrior to start talking about turning his back on some aspects of the prophecy and forging a new path and a new plan. Basically, the Past Warrior did what most characters in RPGs do: think for themselves and figure out a better way to vanquish evil for good. Or I guess, get lucky and acquire enough power to actually defeat the evil rather than seal it away. That kind of thing comes up every now and again in the series, too.

The cycle of life and death which rules Spira in Final Fantasy X is pretty much the same as the one which rules Palamecia in Mobius, right down to the pilgrimage-like journey that the Warrior of Light must take to defeat Chaos. At one point in chapter five, it’s stated that Chaos and water eventually became one, and it feels like Mobius is deliberately making reference to Sin in preparation of chapter six’s revelations. Chapter six is where the rug gets pulled out from under the Warrior, for it’s shown that the Past Warrior tried to pull a Yuna in order to break Palamecia’s cycle of life and death, but Palamecia itself worked against him and destroyed him. Basically, chapter six is there to tell fans that no Yuna-style plan is going to work, it’s either Palamecia’s way or the highway.

Does this mean that Final Fantasy is writing itself into a corner? Maybe. If Final Fantasy X hadn’t existed, this plot point might or might not have been necessary, but in a series where one of these endless cycles has already been broken, chapter six is there to show the player that there is no breaking this one. At least, not until Chaos can be somehow permanently defeated, anyway.

Not that these sorts of stories are particularly common in the series. Prophecies actually determine very little in the world of Final Fantasy. The first game featured destined heroes, but the second one was purely a story about war. The fourth featured a prophecy as well, but was so vague and worthless to the plot that most fans just forget it even exists. No one thinks of Final Fantasy IV as a game with a prophecy. There’s also Mystic Quest, a game which already tried to subvert expectations by making the prophecy something which the villain made up to troll the world, but then a hero came along who happened to fulfill the prophecy by sheer chance and defeated the villain anyway. I guess heroes will find a way.

After Mystic Quest, prophecies rarely if ever come up in Final Fantasy. Instead of destiny guiding the feet of the heroes, their destiny is always presented as being of their own making. This is also why many games in the series, and in fact many games in general, have ordinary people rising up through their own strength of will and courage to eventually become powerful enough to kill God. My favourite example of this is Breath of Fire III, where the characters face the world’s goddess and defeat her, but whereas most games frame this optimistically, nothing more will go wrong in the world and we’re meant to think that everyone will live happily ever after, we instead get an ending framed in a more cautionary manner. We don’t know that everything will be okay, and in fact it’s going to be a very tough road to follow.

Upon the release of Mobius, it had been twenty years since the Final Fantasy series flirted with prophecies. Even Final Fantasy XIV, the company’s most successful MMO, prefers not to leave the fate of the world of Eorzea in the hands of prophecies. Its version of the Warrior of Light is a part of the world’s mythology and is certainly a chosen one, but the way Eorzea works, this chosen one has a few traits that make it hard to kill her, so no prophecy is needed to guide her path.

I’ve mentioned it before, but the way the characters presented Palamecia’s prophecy, it sounded like it was being made up as the Warrior journeyed. It is still possible that most of it was made up as they went along. Other than the end goal of defeating Chaos and marrying Princess Sarah, we never hear about prophesied events until after they’ve come true. Whether this means that the game really was being made up as each chapter was developed or if the entire story was planned out from the beginning, I don’t know. This is one of the ways in which Mobius tells its story differently from Final Fantasy XIV. There are many points in the story of Final Fantasy XIV which foreshadow events that take place in the future, sometimes years later. Mobius is told as if it’s being made up as it goes along and gives no indication that this isn’t true. This is also the frustration that Kingdom Hearts fans have, that the series is being made up as it goes along and Tetsuya Nomura has hardly given any reason for us to believe otherwise. There’s a subtlety to the way in which Final Fantasy XIV is written that is otherwise not there in some of Square-Enix’s other ongoing properties.

When Meia and her Warrior took a new path away from the prophecy, they were branded heretics. They still attempted to defeat Chaos, and the Past Warrior even spoke similar words as many who have come before in the Final Fantasy series. By joining with others, as many against one, they can defeat Chaos, he claimed. In most games, it would’ve worked. The power of friendship is a powerful magic indeed, and whether it’s the sizable playable cast of Final Fantasy VI or Squall’s eventual acknowledgement that he needs friends to fight alongside, every time a hero stands with allies he would die for, no enemy can stand in their way,

Instead, Mobius said nope. Palamecia made the prophecy too powerful. Or maybe Palamecia itself is too strong and acts out like a petulant child whenever anyone tries to stray from a pre-defined path of the planet’s own choosing. Vox would do anything to turn the world against a heretic.

All this time, including in this very article, I’ve talked about how the prophecy seems to be made up on the spot, and Vox is certainly not above that kind of power play. At the very same sluice gate where the First Warrior defeated the original Lord Chaos, Meia and her Warrior faced a bunch of Vox-deluded Blanks who declared a previously unknown prophecy, that the Warrior of Light would be led astray by a witch, but he would kill that witch and return to the true path, whereupon he would defeat Chaos and marry the princess. The Warrior refused and he was slain by a Blank, his love Meia dying from a wound of her own, the both of them pushed over the edge and into the water, left for dead. This is the first time that the game actually, blatantly shows a prophecy that is legitimately and provably made up on the spot and I can’t help but feel like I was right about my impressions of the other prophecies, even the ones that chapter five showed me were legitimately true.

Meia’s tragic story paints a picture of a world that tries its hardest to deny its Warriors any agency of their own. The deck is 100% stacked against the Warrior of Light to exact any lasting change to the world. If he denies the prophecy, he is branded a heretic and the entire world is turned against him. If he tries to take his own path apart from the prophecy, he is branded a heretic. He must continue along the path or else. And if he were to die along the way, then the world just chooses another Warrior of Light, there seems to be a large, nearly infinite source of warm bodies to turn Blank and coerce into throwing their lives away for the cause of fighting Chaos.

 

The Rest Of The Story

Chapter seven opens with Vox pretending that the Warrior of Light befriending Meia, whom he had previously tried to have killed, is actually part of the prophecy. Yes, the very same prophecy that claimed that killing her would set the Warrior back on the proper path. By now it’s quite clear that Vox is full of shit, and by skipping chapter six, I didn’t fully realize the extent of which Vox was in dire need of a colonic irrigation. Oh, I knew that Vox was malevolent, his voice actor certainly got the memo to make him sound as moustache-twirling, finger-steepling as possible and we’re supposed to hate Vox with all of our being almost from the start. He even sounded this way in the opening narration, but at that point there’s no context to his performance. It’s after the Warrior actually interacts with him for a while that we begin to suspect that all is not right with him. There is definitely no subtlety to the way the story of Mobius is told.

With the revelations of chapter six in mind, chapter seven feels even more manipulative. I’d already figured that Vox is a likely candidate for the final boss of the game, and the more of the story I learn, the more certain I am of that. If players didn’t get to fight Vox as the final boss of the game earlier this year, I would be incredibly surprised. Vox dodges hard questions with nonsense words and emotional manipulation in order to try to make those questions go away long enough for the Warrior to do as he’s told, and he counts on the Warrior becoming too frustrated to try to question things any further. I certainly know how that feels. I’ve had conversations where I’m trying to find out the reason for something and the other person just repeats the same answer over and over again as if that’s explanation enough when it’s just a bunch of bullshit meant to shut me up and quit questioning it and oh my God, why are you still questioning it?

Then comes chapter eight, when we find out the true nature of the cycle of Palamecia. It is a cycle of hope and despair, one where a Warrior fights Chaos in order to generate a large supply of hope in Palamecia and that hope is funneled into another world, one in which another Sarah lives. Replacing that hope for a time in Palamecia is an overwhelming despair, one which is eventually overcome by another cycle of hope. It’s a cruel cycle, made worse by the fact that outside of the pyramid where Chaos awaits the final battle is a cemetery of Warriors who have fought and died in service of the prophecy. Each grave bears the exact same memento each Warrior was given earlier in their journey, a piece of cloth that the princess had given each and every one of them, the oldest of which are the most tattered and worn out, having fluttered in the wind the longest. The current Warrior had noticed from the beginning that the world was rotting and certainly, the endless resetting of the cycle and therefore stagnation of the world has caused it and those within it to take on a rotten air. This has definitely been going on for many years. Tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands… this version of Palamecia is the most tragic of all Final Fantasy worlds, for all previous worlds can be saved. This one was set up from the beginning to be the absolute hardest one to disrupt and save. Palamecia’s ultimate role is to become overwhelmed in despair, over and over…

So how does chapter eight ultimately end? Well, Garland had told me he had a plan, but the server shut down before I could reach that part in the story. It turns out that his plan is to summon the Princess Sarah to the final battle, but not to watch. Sarah, wielding a bow and a quiver of arrows, declares that she’s there to join the fight.

By this point, it’s clear that there are definitely variances in the prophecy, and that much of it can be made up by Vox as the Warrior continues on his journey. There are some aspects which are permanent and unbreakable, of course. The tournament is one, being unattached romantically so that they can marry Princess Sarah is another. Going against those is often the cause of heresy and death.

But perhaps there are other ways to fight the prophecy and come out ahead. One of the ways in which people fight the rules is to comply with the letter of the law but not with the spirit of the law. If you’ve ever been to a Reddit community known as Malicious Compliance, then you know what I’m talking about. It’s very possible to act within the rules to undermine that which the rules are supposed to govern, and that’s what Garland has come up with. As far as he can tell, the prophecy requires the Warrior and Sarah to be together in matrimony, but it does not forbid them to be together on the battlefield. The prophecy does not want more than one Warrior of Light to exist at once, but as long as the Warrior’s companions are also not named CW Tyger, it seems to be fine. As long as the Warrior keeps to the exact words of the prophecy, there’s nothing Palamecia can do to stop him.

The best thing about Princess Sarah joining the fight is that Vox can’t send anything to kill her in retaliation because she’s the only person in the entire world who is absolutely required for the cycle to continue. If she were to die, the prophecy would be completely broken and Vox would probably have a lot of extra work on his hands to come up with a new Princess Sarah in order to renew the cycle.

In the end, four warriors gather in front of the Gate of Hope. Four warriors just like in those early Final Fantasy games. A party of four to fight Chaos. They do so and win, the prophecy fulfilled. But instead of a marriage, Vox begins to encourage the warriors to go to their reward on the other side of the Gate of Hope.

Garland’s absence in The Sleeping Lion is explained here, for his intention is to ride the wave of hope out of Palamecia entirely and into the world beyond, leaving the endless cycle for good. Garland also plans on taking Sarah away and out of the cycle. Meanwhile, the Warrior resolves to find a way to break the cycle for good and wishes to stay in Palamecia. As he says this, he makes an observation. He sees a formless being, Chaos’s true form.

Echo starts to tell the Warrior about the truest nature of the world, Chaos is a being of pure despair that reforms after feeding on the despair of Palamecia and then once he is reborn, the cycle truly starts anew. This is why Vox wishes to remove any and all successful Warriors from Palamecia along with the hope they generate and why he was trying his hardest to goad these ones into leaving, for when one is strong enough to defeat Chaos in his reborn form, it is very likely that one can defeat Chaos before he can be reborn, destroying his essence and thus the endless cycle of despair and hope.

For revealing this truth to the Warrior, Echo the fairy is destroyed.

Vox then forces Sarah out of Garland’s arms, for his plans definitely do involve her remaining on Palamecia for all time, playing the part of the princess over and over and over, each time having her memory wiped so that she always believes with all her heart that the next Warrior is her true love. There is no marriage after all, this is just a smoke screen to cloud the judgment of all Warriors of Light, a ploy to use the promise of a princess against them. Way back in chapter three when I compared Princess Sarah to a blow-up sex doll with no agency of her own, I did not know just how right I was. Vox literally wants to treat her as an object to fulfill the prophecy and despite how forcefully Garland tried to go against her wishes for her to stay because she was certain her people need her, he was truly trying to save her from that fate. The Warrior didn’t have a lot of agency to determine his own path in the story, but in Vox’s captive little playground, no one has any agency to follow their own path. He is quite the jealous god, forcing his puppets to put on the same play, over and over again and punishes any of them for trying to do anything different. He has them killed for daring to put on their own story, except when it can serve his purpose to keep them alive a little while longer. If it was not made clear before, Vox’s true colours are laid bare for all to see in the final cutscenes of chapter eight, which marks the end of act one of Mobius Final Fantasy.

If anyone hadn’t realized in chapter five that Voyce had manipulated the events of the First Warrior’s ascendancy to the title of the Warrior of Light in order to bend the nature of the world and become its god, it’s likely they figured it out by the end of act one. Vox tried his hardest to protect his captive world, to prevent the Warrior from enacting his plan and prevent Garland from taking his most treasured toy out of the sandbox.

In the end, Garland was swept away from the world into parts unknown and the Warrior was able to stay behind and fight the true essence of Chaos. Up until then, Vox had always sounded confident and in control, and Vox’s panicked cries as Sarah and the Warrior turned weapons of pure hope against Chaos’s true essence of despair were delicious to listen to, and I wish the game had stayed active long enough for me to play out this battle.

And so the Warrior brought lasting change to the world, destroying the prophecy by removing Chaos entirely and breaking a cycle that the game had gone to great lengths to show was unbreakable. Although darkness is inevitable in a world that would no longer see light, the Warrior of Light is not yet done. He declares that with no destiny to tell them what to do, they can go where they please and live how they like. Him, Sarah and Meia.

If not for the fact that there’s an act two to the game, this would’ve been an amazing place to end Mobius entirely. Even in a world so tightly built that a Final Fantasy X style subversion of fate shouldn’t have been possible, the Warrior subverted fate and found a way to kill a god-like being using the power of friendship and hope. Palamecia was built to strip the agency from its inhabitants but even so, the Warrior firmly gripped the threads of fate in his own two hands like every Final Fantasy hero before him and won the freedom to choose his own.

If there’s something that Act One lacks, it’s any sort of foreshadowing of Act Two. Act One is a complete story, one which doesn’t try to tell any more than its own tale from beginning to end and although it does drag in places thanks to the prophecy hanging over everyone’s heads, the ending is so satisfying it… well, it doesn’t really make up for the obvious padding in the first seven chapters, but being able to destroy Vox’s carefully constructed prison by removing the capstone that held it all together must’ve given players the ultimate justice boner.

Man, I wish I’d had an extra day or two to play this game.

 

 

Next week: To be announced…