The Shrine

It's Saturday morning, and I felt like sharing some videogame moments that I found touching. I don't think any developer had such an impact on me as Square did in the 1990s. I didn't limit my selection to the 90s, it just happened that's where all the moments were.

I could probably create a top 10 moments for Xenogears and certain Final Fantasy games, but I stuck with one clip max from each. Sorry about a couple of the resolutions, these games are old, and some of these bits were posted a decade ago in resolutions which are now below youtube's minimum.

These bits might now necessarily seem that important on their own. Small moments, but I found them really moving in the context of the game.

Xenogears: Fei and Elly find a moment of peace - This bit was after a lot of stress and fear surrounding Fei's character in particular, he is in a land where the only people who speak his language are other slaves and really dangerous people who want to kill him.



Final Fantasy Tactics: Death of Ovelia and Delita - such a simple moment, but also a surprising one. Delita was like a Julius Caesar or an Aurelian, he was incredibly intelligent, very effective at warfare, conquered and transformed an Empire, and fell by the hand of someone trusted. With Delita's case, it was his own wife, and there was a bit of a love story there. It gives a whole new perspective on it all, was Ovelia terrified of Delita? Did she actually hate him that whole time?



Final Fantasy 8: Laguna and Julia - it's a really small goofy moment, but I found it a very powerful couple of scenes which really defined Laguna. The story ends later when Laguna reads that Julia did love him, and then later was killed in a car accident.



Final Fantasy Adventure: Julius - this battle sequence, while very simple looking, is today still one of my very favourite of all time. When I was a kid playing this, nothing got my adrenaline pumping this much from any other game.



Chrono Trigger: Ressurection - sorry, there's a bunch of junk in the video before this. But seeing this kind of emotional expression in Chrono Trigger was really touching, particularly at this point in the game. Chrono Trigger to this day is still fantastic, it plays very much like an interactive story with RPG mechanics. It seems like there's something interesting every step of the way. Like Xenogears, this was a very hard one to pick a favourite moment out of.

I think the final scene in FFT is a senseless tragedy because even if Delita planned on killing Ramza, he never actually got around doing it. I got the feeling Delita doesn't really care about Ramza because he's superior to him in every way and he'd be fine just seeing Ramza exiled somewhere or even continue being a lord in Igros as long as he's not directly opposing him. But Ovelia, who obviously had some feelings for Ramza, mistakenly thought Delita was going to kill everyone. Delita may have lied and betrayed many to get to where he is, but there's no reason to believe that he is not a good king. He ended a war and as far as I can tell Ivalice prospered under his rule. He didn't even know there's all the supernatural stuff behind the scenes, though surely had he known he'd have taken steps to defend Ivalice from the threats posed by the Zodiac Stones. I don't get the FFT notion about how Ramza is the true hero. He is not. He just happened to be the guy who defeated a bunch of supernatural forces that Delita could've done the same. He was not the one who ended the war and he literally had no idea how to let Ivalice prosper. He believed that truth was all that matters, but the point was that Ivalice was founded on falsehood, down to the state religion itself. In terms of the Lion War, the most pivotal figures are likely Delita and Olan, as those are the two characters that commanded the most significant armies. Whatever impact Ramza had was basically just him charging somewhere like a commando and killing everyone, something Delita could have done if he has T.G. Cid backing him up, and Ramza's bravado accomplished little in ending the war unless his idea of ending the war was just killing everyone that held an important position. After defeating Altima, Ramza decided to hide himself for apparently no reason along with Alma and that was directly responsible for leading up to the final events.

Does it ruin FFT if I informed you Delita didn't die? lol. In the official record, Delita maintained a long and peaceful rule.

Good list otherwise

Eric wrote:Does it ruin FFT if I informed you Delita didn't die? lol. In the official record, Delita maintained a long and peaceful rule.

Good list otherwise

That's what the story says, but almost everything in the official record of FFT is a lie anyway so I figured he might have actually died and it was just a body double or whatever because I don't think he'd have tried to kill Ovelia unless he was dying. Or maybe he just thought he was dying.

I think whole Olan dying trying to clear up Ramza's name or that how the entire game is about Olan's descendants trying to clear up Olan's name for being burned as a heretic is actually pretty pointless. Maybe it's because of how overpowering Orlandu was but I always thought it was just Orlandu killing everything and Ramza happened to be with him for the final battle.

My favorite moments were going to places in the game with certain aesthetics. I never followed the plot/characters that closely. Most 90s Square games had a part where you went to some "faded magical pure land". They had similar dream-like ambient music which I like and you could more or less just bliss out. Most likely this was Japanese nostalgia for the simpler times before westernization or maybe before their defeat in WW2(?). Here are a few that I remember. Were there others? I'm sure there were...:

Chrono Trigger: Zeal


Secret of Mana: Pure Land (skip to 50 second mark)


Xenogears: Shevat (skip to 4 minute mark)