KH-Vids Podcast Episode #37: Gamers Talk - A Look at Square Enix

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Hello everybody.
Today we give you the utterly deep pool of conversation that is Square Enix. The company behind our much loved Kingdom Hearts series and other franchises like Final Fantasy. We take a critical look at their involvement since they merged from the two separate companies, Squaresoft and Enix, up until the present day and what could happen beyond.

We have our resident Square guru, libregkd, and our regular feminist, Square cynic, Misty. And me, Peace and War, the only one who seems to have played their western games series. We are obviously amateur observers whose opinions are our own, so on and so forth, so don't take our word for gospel. Just our views.

We'd love to hear your opinions on the topics we bring up in this podcast, and would be willing to answer any questions about the topics we discuss.
So let us know by commenting. Thanks for listening!

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Spoiler: Music Credits

Intro: A Fleeting Dream by Nobuo Uematsu
Outro: Road to a Hero by Yoko Shimomura

Have suggestions or questions for the members of the KH-Vids Podcast? Let Peace and War know, or bring it to our attention in the posts below! Just be sure to follow the rules and guidelines here.

 

I'm not sure how much Ross put into the actual episode but we got into a pretty lengthy argument about this, heh. Glad to have more support.

That's true, I hadn't thought of that. Timeless River was sort of... self-contained time travel, though. The Cornerstone was a plot point for Disney Castle but in terms of the overarching plot, it didn't mean much. Dream Drop Distance made time travel key in the Xehanort Saga, so the gravity of the situation is a bit more extreme heh.

Oh yeah, I don't think I have to justify my infatuation with the KH series, even now that it's kind of gone a bit crazy in terms of plot. I think KH3 can definitely tie things together and ground the plot a little bit more. I would like to see some more prior planning in future games, just because you can only pull things out of your ass for so long, but KH doesn't quite yet boast the craziest sequels of Square.

It depends. I would like to see characters explored a little bit more (namely Sora and Kairi). Having Sora struggle with the darkness is some long overdue development that I really hope makes it into KH3, and in the recent GameInformer interview Nomura did say there'd be some intrigue about who exactly are the 7 lights and 13 darknesses (and that we'd be guessing about it through the game). I really hope they'll play with characters' allegiances like they did with Axel in CoM. That said, I think we can all kind of predict the ending: light triumphs over darkness. It is Kingdom Hearts, after all, and that level of predictability doesn't really concern me, as long as the journey to get there is exciting.

I've actually never finished one either, unless you count Tactics Advanced (which I don't but it is a magical game). I've tried and failed with FFX many times, getting stuck near the end, but that hasn't stopped me from loving the game. I never finished XII (though I'd like to, but imo the game requires a lot of grinding and that makes it a bit of a chore. Also I want an HD remaster). I got pretty far in XIII, and played a little bit of III. I'm also not a fan of the gameplay, though XII did change it up quite a lot--so if you have trouble with the style in FFVII and FFX, I'd recommend giving XII another try, or even going for XIII. The gameplay isn't perfect in either but they're a little bit more fast-paced.

As a disclaimer I haven't played XIII-2 or LR, nor did I finish XIII. I've gathered a lot of the plot details and followed the games with passing interest.

I'm not too offended or bothered by FFXIII. I'm glad that Square finally made a game with a female lead, and the female supporting characters (Fang and Vanille, though Vanille is definitely sexualized) are far more interesting than some of the males. Snow is pretty awful in XIII, Hope is kinda whiny but I like him, and while I didn't dig Sazh he's not bad. FFXIII is a decent if uninspired Final Fantasy. It's beautiful to be sure, but the storytelling has some serious flaws (all the interesting stuff is shoved in datalogs, you never connect with the setting or the characters), and the linearity is a problem (I think we discussed all of this lol). In the scope of just the first FFXIII, I don't find Lightning to be sexualized all that much--her skirt is definitely short, but beyond that, I don't have any problems. She's kinda bland in terms of personality and the voice acting doesn't help*, but I don't think the first game is really problematic. The second game barely features Lightning so I won't include it in here.

Lightning Returns, however, things went completely overboard. They decided to sex Lightning up to help sell the game. A major component of the gameplay is switching Lightning's costume to let her assume a different job. This is nothing new with the Final Fantasy series--it's quite similar to the system in FFX-2, actually (FFX-2 is a different animal in terms of sexualization and my problems with this system tho). LR just really took it to a new level, essentially making Lightning the player's doll.



Even her base costume is pretty revealing.



Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not calling for my females to be covered in layers and layers of clothing (though leaving your back exposed in battle seems to be a pretty stupid decision). In fact, I think portraying and empowering female sexuality is needed--but you have to look at the intent; it's not empowering if the portrayal is there to satisfy the male gaze. Female sexuality is not empowered if it is based on the approval and the notice of an onlooker, which LR has turned into. This is pretty easy to blame on Toriyama, who has made no secret of his raging boner for Lightning. Some choice quotes:

It's just really sad to see that a female character that wasn't really sexualized at all--maybe wasn't strong, but wasn't sexualized--has now been run into the dust. This doesn't even mention how aggressively they've pushed Lightning, either.

Also, this scene is a real thing that happens. It's so over the top and hilarious that I cannot actually believe it exists. It's produced some good gifs, though.


* = just to note, this isn't a shot at Ali Hillis at all! She voiced Liara in the Mass Effect trilogy, who I am deeply in lesbians with, and I thought she was great. I think either the script or the directing (or both) for FFXIII was just so, so uninspired. Lightning isn't exactly an emotive character but in the few scenes where she had to be it still fell flat.

 

My distinction wasn't in-game, actually: it's the consumer. The dramatic shift that was Lightning's wardrobe becoming a major advertising point for the game, and Toriyama's comments, lead me to believe that the change was ushered to in to appeal to a male player rather than characters. As far as I'm aware, within the Final Fantasy XIII storyline, Lightning doesn't have any romantic or sexual interests (I did ship her and Hope while I played but I don't think that ever had any real suggestion :v). Basically, they decided to make Lightning "cool" and "sexy" in this sequel, exploiting the female character's sexual appeal for marketing appeal, and therefore, sales. I'm drawing a line here between empowering female sexuality and using female sexuality for personal gain. Sorry if I was unclear, ha.

Final Fantasy games only really go as far as hinting at actual sex/sexuality; there are some heavy-handed undertones for sure, but sexuality is never a major topic where we'd be discussing how Lightning functions sexually within LR.

 

I have to agree with the more in depth exploration of Sora and Kairi and there relationship. I think the dark struggle with Sora would be very interesting because with BBS at the end of Ventus's story when him and Vanitas's hearts get shattered, did they become one again, if so does that mean that when Sora took Ventus into his heart he took in Vanitas as well, if so then that could explain why Roxas was so angry and why Xion which was supposed to be a clone had black hair instead of brown. And since i think Sora will bring Ventus back does that mean that Vanitas will leave him as well or will he have an internal struggle with Vanitas.

Another thing i found interesting is that Riku's sword and keyblade bothe have little blue eyes on them, as did Vanitas's and Master Xehanort's keyblades. Riku's dark clothes also look almost identical to Vanitas's Clothes. does that mean that if Terra is freed from Xehanort's control he will go after Riku and gain control over him instead, after all he has already been possessed by "Ansem" in KH1 and looked like him in KH2, so it's setting him up to fall back to the darkness as with how Terra started the fight good but lost to the darkness in the end. Who knows there are many possibilities with that.

 

I agree; there have been a lot of teases to exploring more of Sora's character but it's just never come to fruition. Given that Kingdom Hearts 3 will be such a big title, I hope we see it in there.

That's definitely an interesting theory. Kingdom Hearts loves to use parallels, and there's a definite connection between Vanitas and Riku (if only that they once were Xehanort's pawns). Who knows what KH3 will bring~

 

Noice podcast guys.

I do agree with Ross, not on that BBS/KH3D/Days (I'm gonna touch on this one after this) are plothole solver for plotholes sake, but that the sheer amount of these "sequels" does make the transition for someone who's gone from KH1 -> KH2 kind of difficult. KH2 was my first game, and I hadn't played CoM...ever, lol. I didn't find that it hampered my ability to understand what was happening with the Organization or Sora, though. The Roxas Intro did a pretty good job of overviewing the main parts of KH1, and Namine did pretty alright at handling the CoM stuff. It never went to into depth, but it covered the important parts (Sora was tricked by Org., his memories were fried).

With going from KH2 -> KH3, you have four games worth of pretty mandatory content to catch up on. I'm hopeful that KH3 will do what KH3D did and have those memory archive things, they were really good overviews for all the other games. It's also made much more easier and accessible with the HD remakes, but the fact that there's so much mandatory content for KH2 -> KH3 when there was like...three sentences worth of stuff you needed to go from KH1 -> KH2 can be hard for a KH casual to jump into if they only played the first two main games. I do think the games are important though, and I'm glad they're moving them mostly over to PS3 (which, tbh, should have been where BBS/3D/Days should have been from the start, imo).

Re:Coded, while super fun, is basically "here is letter...save these ppl sora...do the thing...btw xehanort is back ayyy lmao"

*Days: I think Days is important not for the Organization but mainly for explaining why:

1. Namine took a whole year to repair memories she wrecked in 20 days.
2. How Roxas managed to absorb all of Sora's memories. They could ahve just gone along the lines of "Sora needs his body back or he will die" and Roxas would provide that. Though I still question how he was able to coproduce Namine with Kairi since his body was used in the making of both her and Roxas.
3. Roxas' motives for leaving. I never really thought they did a good job with it in KH2, so it was nice to have that expanded on in Days.

I mean, tbh, I would've been fine if they just had it as a cutscene movie like they do in 1.5 now. But I do think it answered questions about Roxas that were relatively important and unanswered.

tl;dr i am probably a xion stan