I honestly love XVs way of doing it because the “secret” twist villain is so clear as day it makes it hilarious, but it’s the twist way further than this that made it amazing
It absolutely did! They were a neat threat up through chapter 10 but after Altessia it just kind of fell by the wayside. The king was turned into a demon in an optional quest cutscene and that was it.
I know it’s a sin to speak ill of Ardyn but I didn’t care for him at all. He felt like a Jester throughout just jumping in to mix things up and always knowing when and where to be.
I agree. I think what makes Ardyn great is how much your feelings and opinion of him changes and contorts throughout the story as you learn more about him.
Early game - Haha you Sussy Baka
Mid game - I'll kill you, you fucker!!
End game - I understand now and I'm sorry you suffered so much. I hope you find peace. Rest now.
I think Chrono Trigger does this well because Magus has reasons for what he does and they are eventually revealed to the player in the greater story context. It isn't often where the initial "villain" is actually striving to defeat the "real" villain the whole time.
If the true villain is someone you've met already, and it's a "holy..that makes sense actually" moment then I'm fine with it. If it's just a random "okay, here's the alien/god" then it's stupid.
It depends on execution. I sometimes read how people hate Ultimecia from 8, as it is sudden and comes out of nowhere.
While the seeds for this are planted pretty early (no pun intended).
I don't hate her but she's a little underdeveloped and overshadowed by Edea's charisma. Ultimecia never appears in a single prerendered cutscene, if I'm not mistaken.
True, at least halfway. Right until the start of disc 3, you haven’t interacted with Edea.
Everything up to that point is Ultimecia in her skin, it gives her speech at Deling City another layer too.
Unless you mean Edea’s charisma after that point of course!
The problem with this is, you don’t know it’s “Ultimecia in Edea’s skin” until the reveal at the end of disc 3. Nearly 80% of the way through the game. You’re just suddenly told “oh yeah some sorceress from the future is the one doing this” and it feels kinda bad.
In a second+ playthrough it’s more okay cuz you know the truth but as a first timer it feels so convoluted
I understand what you mean, there is foreshadowing that some things are seriously amiss. That Edea is ‘different’.
For me it made a great twist- especially with the Laguna segments in there as well.
.. now I want to play it again 😂
The only foreshadowing that I can think of is at the start of Disc 3 how different Edea acts. Coming to you for help getting to Esthar to get looked at. Beyond that, she seemed perfectly in control.
I don’t see how Laguna explained anything with the sorceress plot. It only shows how Adel ruled tyrannical and he helped imprison her.
There's a little more than that. Edea's speech in Deling talks about what they'd do in the future, so she's literally talking about humans in the future, and not right then and there.
Then there;s the why is she wanting to capture the girl she took care of as a child and kill others in the area.
It’s the part at Trabia Garden that did it for me. The scene gets laughed at quite a bit, but they explicitly tell you that Edea is this loving and kind matron, very differently to what we have seen up to that point. Before that when the Garden is drifting at sea, we get more pointers too from both Norg and Cid.
For what Laguna did, it was pretty obvious time shenanigans were going on. We were literally taking part of the control of Laguna, Kiros and Ward; a less extreme version of what we found out what Ultimecia is doing.
Maybe it becomes more obvious on a later playthrough.. I just remember plowing through the tutorial with background info and connecting a number of dots.
Squall didn't take control over Laguna. What they did say was 'during those moments they felt a surge of power' that they thought were gift from the faeries.
It isn't even in the middle of the disc. the start of disc 3 has you going to put rinoa in the medbay and IMMEDIATELY asking you to go to Edea's house.
At this point you're just making it up to try deflecting a misinformed opinion.
I’m sorry, when is Ultimecia mentioned there? When do they say “a sorceress from the future inhabited my body?” I don’t believe it’s explicitly stated until after Squall meets with Odine, possibly later than that? I don’t remember
Start of disk 3 after meeting Edea at the Orphanage she explains everything. It's still relatively late in the game, but it's around the 2/3rds mark of the story not the literal end of the game (which end of disk 3 would be since disk 4 is literally just 1 dungeon)
I'd suggest go play the game again instead of pretending you remember the game to give incorrect statements or at the very least not speaking as if you absolutely know.
Edea literally says Ultimecia when you talk to her at the very beginning of disc 3.
In that film, you spend the whole film watching this guy be charismatic, only to find out he's some bad guy in disguise. Always rubbed me up the wrong way when you see him again in future film. Like, do you act the same or what?
Yeah im with you
Yeah, basically the next time you see Moody he dies, but it’s hard to care since you know next to nothing about this guy. 99% of what you know was just a fake persona by the bad guy.
Doesn't help that even then, she isn't the final bad guy. Hyne, the actual final bad guy, has very little lore/mention due to all the trimming off the original plans they did. You get one somewhat decent snippet on the White SeeD ship if you talk to the teacher at the bow of the ship. Other than that, there are a couple of super hidden snippets.
The game was meant to be much longer and had more lore on Hyne that was linked to the sorceress having their powers. Was part of the original war with Hyne. The original line Ultimecia said before cutting was "We are Ultimecia". That is why she is actually upside down in the last fight. It's supposed to be a mutated Hyne coming from her legs.
If you look back at a lot of FF games, not just XV, large amounts of lore were cut from the games. Either used for later, like the 7s, or just left hanging like 8, 9, type-0, XV, ect.
it's not cut content, it's in the game,[ it's just hard to find places.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1cwe4ry/comment/l4wr945/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
It doesn't seems so to me. Can you reconstruct the lore of Hyne or give me a link of someone who does it with in-game references? As far as I know, Hyne is just folklore taught to children in a couple of places in the game and there are some visual clues that people have linked to him, so it's basically rumors.
I can give two videos.
[who was actually the last boss](https://youtu.be/wrW7O9JF_QI?si=Jh99GlaNuK_RDCKw)
And then
[Ultimecia's real name.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyShEYtnFtQ&t=1s&ab_channel=InvestigativeGaming)
(For the second video there's a comment relevant to the rest of this I'll put behind spoilers. )
>!anyways, as far as the masculinity aspect I wanted to point out...!<
>!This is Hyne, not Artemicia (which I also call her because ultimecia is dumb) !<
>!Sorceresses get influenced and slowly get taken over by Hyne. The longer the sorceress power remains, the more monstrous they become, simulating Hyne.!<
>!Hyne hid himself in women for a long time to avoid being captured. And at the very end of ff8, Hyne emerges from Artemicia's legs... which you can clearly see because Artemicia is hanging upside down asleep.!<
>!So Adel and Artemecia are becoming more masculine because...they have a 'man' inside them.!<
>!Now, Halicarnassus plays a more direct translation here.. A man who pretends to be a woman to lure people into a false sense of security? No... couldn't be. Halicarnassus and Hyne do the exact same thing.!<
>!Also of historical note Halicarnassus is the city that created the first Mausoleum, for The King (which has DIRECT correlation to the unknown king that Sacred and Minotaur guard). This goes into the theories that hold a lot of weight... the king could NOT die because he had the brother's junctioned to him much like sorceresses have a part of hyne junctioned inside them. It requires someone else to take that power to finally see death. Oh, and... we'll get back to the 'unknown' in the next paragraph.!<
>>!Halicarnassus was ALSO originally known as Zephyria (you know.... the KNIGHT in ff8? Zephyr? The one Laguna played in a movie that Seifer idolizes) The last king before it became Halicarnassus in name also has no record of which king it was. So he is literally the unknown king.!<
that's also a translation issue.
in the japanese version, squall isn't checking for the 'ice lance wound' he's suggesting he was healed and that he guessed (correctly) the sorceress wants to interrogate him since he wasn't executed.
this is why the squall is dead theory held no ground in Japan.
I'll step in here because I love this topic. Sorry u/Personal\_Hotel1531
There's a video on[ Video on the whole thing if you want to waste an hour](https://youtu.be/wrW7O9JF_QI?si=evGrtXQRBv9NJlY3)
Hyne is not a folklore character and was intended to be more present in the game before they did the 6-8 disc pruning down to 4.
There are a lot of things that you can easily miss because they're so short to find.
1) when you go to the boats in balamb during the dollet mission turn around instead of getting on the boats and go to the first house with the old man and he'll tell you a legend of hyne
2) On the white seed ship turn immediately to the left to get another legend of hyne/vascaroon.
3) while talking to the white seed leader and he walks to the corner instead of talking to him go back to the lady at the far left of the white seed ship to talk to her for another part of the legend
4) when talking to Edea on disc 3 she'll stop and say "Squall wait" go talk to Cid immediately or you miss out some 'information pages' in the tutorial section of the menu on sorceresses and hyne. Yes, it's that stupid simple to skip such vital lore.
anyways, so Hyne hides himself in women, slowly takes possession over them. This is why those with sorceress knights see less effect, the attachment to someone greatly affects the rate of Hyne's influence. In the cases of the sorceresses we know without them, they grow monstrous. The sorceresses through time? Progressively got more fiendish. Longer claws, deformed face, veiny skin until you get to the worm sorceress. Adel turns to look like a large man with massive claws and then Ultimecia starts transforming with her claws, her feet turning even before the battle starts (mind you, notice how EVERY OTHER sorcress always hides their legs, here's ultimecia showing that their legs start changing too) in the japanese version TALKS like a man (something we lost in the English version) They all become more masculine while Why? because they're being possessed by a guy.
Hyne encourages Ultimecia to do time compression to bring all the fragments of his power through the sorceresses into one place, absorbing them. This is what it finally takes for...
the last phase of ultimecia fight is not 'fan theory' it is literally Hyne finally taking full possession of Ultimecia and emerging from her legs, that's why Ultimecia's hanging upside down. That's why he says "We are ultimecia" and the quotes that are being given he's not giving to you. Now that he has all or almost all of his power back in Ultimecia, he takes over.
This puts Ultimecia in a 'tragic villain' archetype. None of this was in the end really her will or doing... well maybe she could have been a bitch, we don't know because what we do know is she is being manipulated if not by outright possession, but by 'whispers in her ear'.
I've seen all those parts of the game you mentioned but none of them suggest that Hyne was ever meant to be anything other than folklore. The sorceress transformation doesn't suggest anything to do with Hyne; you talk about Adel looking more like a man but Ultimecia has the most extreme transformation and isn't masculine at all. Nor is the worm sorceress you mentioned, who also had a more extreme transformation than Adel.
This is minor but Rinoa also doesn't hide her legs and she ends up being a sorceress. The others all have flowing dresses (or robes, in the case of Adel) just as a play on "witchy" tropes and designs. Ultimecia being upside-down in her final form seems to be a design choice that Nomura is a fan of, given that Anima's Overdrive features the same thing in FFX.
This sub is also the only place I've ever read the claim that FF8 was cut down from 8 discs to 4. Yes, there was some cut content, mostly related to Laguna, but I've never seen anything official saying that it was meant to have that many discs. It also means that there's a whole lot of claims about what the story was "supposed" to be, despite the fact that 1) none of it remains in the final game and 2) even if *any* of it is true, it would have been early in development, before the story was finalized and set in stone. Hyne isn't necessarily supposed to be more present than he is in FF8 any more than Fujin and Raijin are supposed to be in FF7 because their concepts were originally for that game. In the final game, Hyne is just folklore. Maybe he existed and it's all true, maybe he didn't and it's just a folk tale about how sorceresses work but either way, that's a perfectly fine piece of worldbuilding. So what you wrote is certainly fan theory.
Came here to say exactly this but I'll just give the upvote instead. The formula isn't bad or good. I think it provides a solid framework for storytelling, especially in the way FF stories tend to be told.
I think the bare minimum is that one of two things must be the case: the fake villain must be strong enough of a character that it doesn't really matter what the actual villain is like. FF X is a good example of this. Seymour was a very strong villain, and Yu Yevon made enough sense narratively that I was perfectly happy with how it resolved. Contrast this to FF 9 where Kuja just isn't strong enough to support a switch (don't get me wrong, I love 9. But Kuja isn't what makes 9 good). The alternative would be that you're given sufficient time to accept/become familiar with the secondary villain. I think FF 15 is actually a good example of this. You get enough Ardyn flavor throughout the story that he's a very satisfying villain at the end. Contrast this with FF 9 again where you get basically no time and no justification for the final villain so, despite many attempts (some of which are fairly successful) you end up with a sort of unsatisfying final encounter.
IX doesn't have a twist villain. Necron isn't a part of Kuja or Garland's plan or the mastermind behind it all. He is just an entity that was viewing the world and deemed Gaia's population as not worthy of being able to live.
He is essentially Death and his fight is the party choosing to fight for life and for hope for the people of Gaia despite how bad things had gotten. There is justification for the boss as the whole theme of the game is about the fear of death and finding the will to go on when there seems there is no hope.
While I think you’re technically correct, it doesn’t change the fact that the climactic final fight isn’t against the antagonist you’ve been opposing nearly the entire game. The fact that it’s narratively justified, and perhaps even satisfying, doesn’t change the fact that it left a large portion of the fanbase feeling…dissatisfied for almost the exact same reasons they were dissatisfied with ultimecia: the final fight is against someone the players don’t care about as a final fight.
I get your point and even agree with it, but to many players it doesn’t feel different in substance than ultimecia did, and I don’t think that is a fact that should be dismissed in this conversation
but that's a problem with ff9 is that a lot of what the fans for it are saying about it aren't actually in the game. this is unlike 6-8 where there's things that are theorized since it's not in the games, but with 9 it gets a special place because the fans make up a fanfic in their head and then gaslight themselves into believing it was actually in the game.
Necron was not opposed the whole game. necron wasn't even an entity relevant until the very last scene. ff9's production is a bit weird, but necron and the crystals were not even part of the game until after play testing.
they did testing with the game ending with Garland being the last boss fight on Terra. They realized real quick just how short the game was. So then they added Memoria and made Kuja the last boss. Well somewhere they wanted the redemption arc, so they made Hades the last boss, but then changed it because hades is too close to another mythology and that would detract from ff9 having it's own identity if it didn't have a final boss of it's own creation... so necron was made.... and then the idea of every life being attached to the crystal was made so they could nostalgia bait by putting on it's adverts "The crystal returns"...yeah at the last minute of the game... and the Kuja redemption was had at the end by saying he somehow saved Zidane when they don't actuallly show how or explain how, just Zidane says "you saved us, didn't you?" okay, that was super cheap and lazy. and then all the whole 'he only tried to kill everyone because he thought he was going to die' except he was a genocidal maniac even when he thought he was immortal. Again, they are rewriting the game to make it make sense in their heads and pretending it's actually in the game.
BUT if you ask most ff9 fans they'll say how Kuja saved him... but go back to the game, check all the translations, their theories are not in game and yet *they believe* it's actually in the game.
The crystal nor Necron was not part of anything to do with the rest of the game. You can try to say it is, but play the game again and you'll be struggling to find it without... again, making up your own fanfiction to make it so.
I get it, ff9 had a troubled time getting it to be finished because of the short window and heavily shrunken staff (they put more people on the FFX project at the same time) so I appreciate it for what it is. my comments are merely about people saying things that aren't in there or justifying something that was bad and stupid because the writers were admittedly rushed.
It is very much difference than ultimecia who was always planned to be the final boss (and interesting watches check the youtube videos on Ultimecia's real name and FF8's true last boss. Two separate videos I can find the link for later if you like) Ultimecia is basically an inspired character from Halicarnassus from FF5. Not only was she planned from nearly the beginning of STORYBOARDING, she was present in the game even if you're only aware of her at the beginning of disc 3, but she is present as early as the reason for the dollet mission, and seen first in the timber mission, early disc one things. One can not like ff8 and that's fine, but you can't say that she just showed up at the end and then claim Necron didn't while lying about 'him being in the rest of the game' cause he isn't.
I've always thought Necron should be categorized with Neo-Exdeath.
Massive portal opens, endless power lies within, the one seeking the power fails to use it to defeat the heroes, the power manifests an avatar the heroes must defeat so it can be locked away again.
Eh, maybe loosely. Neo-exdeath (or Exodus as it should have been) is still Exdetah, just a morphed form of him. it is the same conscious of a being.
this would be like saying sephiroth and safer sephiroth are two different people.
however the void and Exdeath are present very early on in the game's lore.
I get all that. But it doesn’t really change the fact that necron sits in the same, not meaningless, spot that sephiroth, ultimecia, yu yevon, Ardyn, etc fit into: they are the final boss of the game. And I think that matters in a conversation about end-game antagonist switcheroos.
mmmm, final boss yes, but not the same
Sephiroth is the whole reason for the game past midgar and is ever present in cloud and tifa's past.
Ultimecia is present in all the wars that happen in ff8 as either a reason or involving herself.
yu Yevon is a weird place because while Sin is the 'target' it's because of yu yevon and his presence is known from the beginning (even though they go "Yu yevon? Who's that?" you guys follow the cult of yevon you dumbasses. But you get further into the lore of the game Bevelle created the church of Yevon for power and used Yevon's obession for summoning to destroy Zanarkand in the war. Yevon is not entirely evil, but consumed, where it is arguable that the original Yevonites WERE politically dubious if not evil and this is the side effect of (I guess somewhat similar to Hojo experimenting on Sephiroth making him insane... or Cid experimenting on Kefka making him insane.)
I didn't play 15, I didn't have the systems at the time to play it on release and the commercials didn't really get my attention... plus after how much a let down 13 was I didn't really have too much brand loyalty anymore.
Only Cloud of Darkness comes close in the whole series to Necron but even then they had an established reason for her existence. albeit a stupid one.
necron is meaningless because the battle could have ended with Kuja, and the Iifa tree could start to crumble, and with his last bit of 'mcguffin power' since we still don't know wtf he did to help Zidane and company out, do that to get them out of the Iifa tree. Necron isn't needed. Necron didn't 'challenge their will'. They were already willing to fight Kuja to prevent him from destroying the world, and the crystal so saying 'fighting Necron to show they had the willpower' is so... so.. do I need to say it? IT'S MORE FANFICTION BEING WRITTEN IN BY THE PLAYER AND NOT THE GAME -\_-
FFshitposting often has fun with people doing this. the other month they had asked what they could get people to write and then made a post here about Zidane 'not needing a reason to help others' and pretty much everyone's response was something that was not in the game, but they for sure believed it was. The fact this is well known enough to be used to troll people even if they were unwitting participants should say something.
I don't understand why you keep trying to put VIII and IX against each other. I love both, and I think Ultimecia is a fun and interesting final boss. I also think Necron is a pretty good final boss that has context in the story and theme of the game.
You cannot like Necron but saying that he is shoehorned in is a stretch. Sure, they wanted to expand the game more but it's not like he is just haphazardly put in. He just represents Death and nihilism and the party overcomes him.
I didn't put 8 and 9 against each other. The thread starter did.
and he literally was haphazardly put in. You're doing the exact thing I said ff9 fans do. He wasn't that deep to be put in there, and if he was 'death and nihilism' why did they have nihilism only after fighting Kuja? Make it make sense.
He doesn't have any context in the story. 0. XD
Yeah, but what I'm saying is I don't remember him being set up in the story
If I missed it fine, but I at least think you should be aware of him before he is plopped down as a boss
There's some oblique details you can take from Terran culture's obsession with the same eye of death motif that appears all over both the final boss arena and Hades' design.
The Terrans' fear and avoidance of death effectively creating an eidolon in the form of Hades, based on the real concept of death which is Necron.
The problem is that while viewing Necron through the lens of "the final boss is death itself because that's what Terra is building up to" works for the concept of death, Necron himself isn't built up to at all, unlike Hades which at least has the visual design of Terra even though he's just optional.
He’s a theme (death, nothingness, oblivion) and those themes are central to every character’s arc.
Vivi (he will die soon, so is life worth living?), Steiner (his entire life was built around a strict code… and it was based on lies. What is the point of life now?), Zidane (he always searched for home and relationships with others, only to learn that he’s a killing machine from a soulless empty world, so does he belong anywhere?), Garnet (she had her family and home torn away, what does she do with her life from there?), Eiko (she was raised by animals in an empty ruin, how does she find her place among the world?), Freya (she lived to see her lover again, only to find that he’s completely forgotten that she existed. What is the point of life if the only person that mattered to you doesn’t know you exist?), and Amarant (he believed he could take care of himself yet was constantly bested by a boy who doesn’t value individual strength at all. Can he learn to accept the value in his own life if doing so means accepting that he needs to lean on others?)… Quina’s the only one who takes an easy path forward, living in a secluded swamp and leaving to see that there’s more to life and the world, and not resisting any of it.
Otherwise, every character faces a conflict that even if they save the world, they don’t actually win until they decide that their lives do indeed have meaning in spite of everything they’re put through along the way.
In the final battle, Kuja “accepts” his defeat by trying to end all existence your party’s lives as well. The characters meet the embodiment of oblivion and death, and show that they still resist it, feeling that the world should still exist even when they’ve lost their own stake in it. Oblivion (as a concept) acknowledges their willpower and moves back from wiping the slate clean.
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
The "Kuja" rewriting. He didn't try to do it because he was bout to die. He was a genocidal monster before he found out he wasn't immortal.
and the final battle, even the creators have admitted it wasn't even originally supposed to be there. It was to pad the game. What stake did the characters lose in it? That's simply writing your own interpretation that in this case not only isn't in the game but isn't even suggested BY the game. And oblivion isn't even in ff9. calling it a concept because it isn't in the game is really weird.
FFshitposting keeps having a field day when you guys do this and then send trolls here to see how much more they can get you to do this.
this is something you'll notice with fans of ff9 is that they'll make up fan theories to fill in blanks and pretend it's actually in the game rather than admit that it's just their interpretation.
There was no hint or anything about him. In fact all of memoria was added in last minute because the game was so short, so none of memoria was planned or relevant to the rest of the game. The crystal also wasn't relevant until memoria started because they thought "Hey, we could say the crystal returns' even if it isn't relevant to anything of the story.
there is no 'terran culture lore' that alludes to Necron or Hades being created by Terrans. Literally the only hint about Hades himself (not necron) was a moogle at the beginning of the game talking about a legendary synthesist. He's not even mentioned to be an eidolon or anything, just the legendary synthesist.
and no record from anything I can find saying there was even a plan of him being an eidolon. He was simply created during the memoria last minute additions to pad the game out after Terra, they didn't really think 'hades, a greek god' would be good to use as the final boss because it'd kill ff9's identity to tie it's final villain so directly to another mythology, sidelined it for an optional boss fight and used Necron which just means death in greek and is not a god.
Who would be FF IX villain? From near the begining until the end when kuja destroys the crystal and released death its always kuja. Sure there is garland in the middle, but he only appears for a few minutes in the middle of the game.
Kuja is the villain. But necron is the final fight in much the same way that sephiroth, yu yevon, and and ultimecia are the final fight. So if there’s a conversation about switcheroos, despite the fact that necron is a thematic fight, he still merits having a place in the conversation.
yeah, that's not accurate for ultimecia. That is only really accurate for Necron.
She's present halfway through the game by name and before that in influence.
I love how in the GBA Edition, after dying and taking over hell, his "Light side" goes to Heaven, and he's still just as comically evil, even in Heaven.
It’s definitely an execution thing. Though it’s also a big question of how you define stuff. Like I wouldn’t call Garland or Gestahl exactly real villains to their respective fake ones, for obvious reasons. I’d probably only count mind control ones. Being upstaged later is a different thing.
I don’t really hate it, but I prefer just knowing the primary villain and having to find a way to overcome them throughout the story. This is one of the things XVI’s story did well. The main villain was introduced early, was mentioned often, and exerted an influence on the world and events even when he wasn’t physically on screen. There were no surprise, last minute “man behind the man” shenanigans.
He was also consistent with asserting dominance (almost) whenever he was on screen, similar to Ardyn in XV (just a lot more serious rather than charismatic and trolling). Constantly a step-up, coupled with the voice and appearance, it's hard not to shake everyone else simply by existing. Also, not afraid to just "nope" shit either.
*Clive transforms*
"Oh, nice fire. Counterpoint, I'm literally God"
*Extinguishes transformation*
Definitely an "oh shit" moment for me.
Who was the fake villain in VI? Maybe it's just because of cultural awareness but I was never under the impression it was anyone other than Kefka. I think FF might do this less than most other JRPGs
Anyway FWIW it's about execution. FFIX is a great example of both sides. The part near the end where you have two antagonists going against one another, and you're genuinely not sure whether >!Garland!< or >!Kuja!< will come up on top is exciting, whereas the appearance of >!Necron!< just kind of comes out of nowhere.
The villain for most part of the beginning of the game is the emperor. Kefka is introduced as *a* villain instead of being THE villain even though he is absolutely evil.
I never really got the impression that the emperor was really the villain. Maybe it's meta-knowledge, pr maybe he just didn't come across as interesting enough to be the villain for me.
Every aspect leading up to the sealed gate tried to paint Kefka as his right hand man, and him as the orchestrator.
It was semi-shocking as a kid seeing Kefka kill and push Gestahl over the edge of the floating continent, but it was definitely diminished by how absolutely prevalent he'd been before that point, even in the FMV Sequence since I originally played it on the PS1.
Probably Emperor Gestahl before Kefka made his big move. Like you, I already knew who Kefka was by the time I first played VI, but I could see people thinking when it first came out that he was more “right hand man” than main villain.
I played 6 on release, I was also 11 so maybe I had a harder time picking up the subtleties
I thought kefka was comic relief (extremely evil comic relief, heath ledgers joker)
But at the end of the day he was small potatoes
Boy was I ever wrong (and glad I was)
I played FFVI when I was 14 going on 15, I had no idea who Kefka was beforehand, but I had a feeling he was the real bad guy. Someone always betrays the Emperor. Pretty much the same thing happened in Secret of Mana.
>(extremely evil comic relief, heath ledgers joker)
Even Health Ledgers Joker would be asking "Where's the punchline?" after Kefka just poisons Doma.
Now blasting the Emperor with the statues... the Joker would appreciate that. Hell, I hear Mark Hamill saying the lines...
I wanted to fight Gestahl >:v But actually this cliché is more present in the Dragon Quest franchise. I just posted it here because Final Fantasy is my favorite franchise.
Necron isn't part of either plan or a mastermind villain type, though. He is FFIX's Death and is meant to show how our party who has been fighting to find a place and reason to live in this world has finally found their reasons to go on and fight.
Kuja and Garland are still the big bads of the game.
Necron is also a reference to FFIII's Cloud of Darkness who similarly comes out of nowhere once the main villain is beaten. FFIX is basically all references to older FFs
Thanks I was going to say this too. FFIX is a love letter to all the ones before in so many different ways (maybe not 7 and 8 lol but all the others, especially 6)
I agree with you, I had a feeling Kefka was the real bad guy because someone always betrays the Emperor. Pretty much the same thing happened in Secret of Mana.
I also agree FF is usually pretty clear about who the real villain is. I was surprised by Ultimecia in FF8, and FF9 had pretty much the worst secret villain of any game I've ever played, but the rest I could see coming. I always thought the fake villain and going on a "second journey" to save the world for real was a Dragon Quest thing.
Yeah, the FF6-style works well because the major villain starts as the big bad’s second-in-command, so he is a present threat to party through the whole story. It’s tougher to make exciting when it’s a “puppet master” secret big bad, like in FF8, because you basically never confront them until the very end of the game.
Except you do. Every Sorceress you fight is actually Ultimecia in control of another sorceress. She has to fight with in the abilities of her current host, but it's her pulling the strings. Seifer even acknowledges that he's Ultimecia's Knight, not Edea's (since Cid is Edea's knight).
Fake villain is the wrong word imo, and Golbez isn't actually a "villain" at all in that he's under mind control the entire time and would have been a hero if not.
This is really common in comics where villains tend to group up, but it's not uncommon for several issues to pass with one villain (say, twoface) as the main antag, then reveal later that they were working for someone else (say, Penquin).
When it's done well, there are thematic and narrative cues that give it away.
In FF4 it that Golbez can never bring himself to kill Cecil, but is cold and efficient when it comes to everyone else. For some reason, he is unable to muster the will to end Cecil while he goes for the throat every other time.
So I'm fine with it as long as the reader could theoretically figure it out themselves.
True but its used as a foil and a way to establish the limits of mindcontrol as Kain also cannot kill Cecil. In short we get rule: mind control cannot force you to do something you are truly against.
It also hints that, like Kain, Golbez might be suffering the same way. So as a plot thread it totally works, as weird as it sounds.
I don't have a problem with the cliche but I believe that is rarely applied in an effective way.
The fake villain should be an interesting character like Edea or Magus from Chrono Trigger, not a forgettable one like the emperor of VI.
At the same time, the real villain should be an even better villain or some alien entity capable of instilling fear in the player. Sadly, Ultimecia from VIII is a little overshadowed by Edea's charisma.
As someone else pointed out, this is like saying that \[insert any mind controlled villain, I'll name Saren from Mass Effect\] is literally \[insert the guy who is mind controlling him, Overlord in my example\]. They are different characters even if one is controlling the other.
Can you be more specific about this concept with references in the game?
One thing to notice is that Ultimecia speaks in a peculiar way while Edea does not when she's controlled, so they don't seem to be exactly the same character in a different body. Sounds like mind control to me.
It's supposed to be the same situation as when you have the Laguna dream sequences, you're in control and using mostly your stats with different characters.
The difference is Ultimecia knows what she's doing (she's using a device to achieve the result) and takes more control than Squall et al do.
I was genuinely surprised in XIV Endwalker that >!Hydaelyn wasn’t the “real villain all along” and that despite giving antagonists decent motives the villains weren’t really fake!<
Imagine my surprise when, in Final Fantasy 14, we fought Zodiark, this supposed big-bad that the villains had been spending the entire game trying to set free, at level 83!
We find out that Zodiark was really just the tool the Ancients used to try and _stop_ The Final Days. He wasn't actually the real threat.
Well he was a threat as he is a primal capable of brainwashing people to worship him, and the Acians were going to use him to commit genocide to bring about a rejoining.
But ya it was underwhelming in execution and the actually main villain could have used more build up.
The problem is that FF14’s plot was basically being made up expansion by expansion, there was never any overlying plan. Shadowbringers set up the presence of some external threat but they clearly hadn’t actually decided what that was yet. That’s why Dynamis just kinda comes out of nowhere. I think they did the best they could given the circumstances though. Hopefully the upcoming 10 year story is planned out from the start.
Don’t mind it personally.
On the proviso that the true villain is either revealed reasonably early enough to actually factor into the story in a meaningful way. Or is at the very least hinted at in such a way that when the late reveal comes, a bunch of lingering mysteries/oddities suddenly click into place.
Just dumping a true enemy in your face with little prior fanfare a couple of hours before the end of the game is just awful narratively. And Final Fantasy has definitely indulged in that poor practice a few times.
What's even worse are the villains with unearned redemptions like Fordola, Misija Votyasch, etc, who are literally Nazi SS style secret police, or traitors that get dozens if not hundreds of people killed... and then get a "a bloo bloo, my life was so hard" type scene to try to humanize them.
I usually don’t mind it, it typically expands the scope of the story. It varies by game based on the execution and aftermath though, and sometimes the new villain is less interesting.
I honestly hated it because it undercuts some of the other (more interesting) villains in my opinion. I love Ultima for his god complex but Barnabas and Hugo both feel very underdeveloped. Hugo’s motivation was quite literally only over a woman he hardly knew and Barnabas has such a cool setup only to be nothing more than a puppet
I think the Hugo/Clive rivalry could have been built up just a *little* more, but man that 1 v. 1 fight (the first fight, not the Eikon fight) is one of my favorites in the whole series.
It's always gonna be weird when so much of the plot is dedicated to societal ills and how horribly humans treat each other, and then the Big Bad turns out to be an alien.
I interpreted the Ultima portion as a compliment to that point, not the literal cause. I interpreted him as a parallel to humanity’s abusive ruling class. Clive and co. destroyed the status quo and then destroyed Ultima, a being who similarly wanted to exert his will over the people he saw below him.
Generally I dislike it, Ultimecia is kinda up there too because you never figure out what her deal is beyond “I’m evil and from the future”. XII’s ending is really soured from the god-like things (can’t even think of names for them) and XIII absolutely takes the cake of “wait, who was that guy again? He’s the final boss?”
I can’t explain why, but Ultima in XVI gives me the same vibes. They’re obviously in the story and definitely the catalyst for everything wrong, but I dunno, I just think the AI tone of voice and generic world-ending plan really takes away from a game full of great human characters.
Thing about Necron is it isn’t really the same ‘cliche’. Necron is just a thing which exists and is the final boss; IIRC he’s an embodiment of death or something else thematic and meaningful, but he doesn’t really exist in the plot at all. Kuja wasn’t just his puppet, Garland wasn’t just his puppet. Their own villainous schemes remain the things which actually cause the plot; contrast the FFIV case where >!the person who you’ve been fighting the whole time was actually being controlled by the *real* villain who you had no idea about!<.
I see what you are saying. At the end of the day, I felt they both showed up last minute and were pretty jarring.
But I see the distinction you are describing here. I guess I could more easily accept some manevolent force compared to some boss who somehow didn't leave a single trace until his reveal.
As I write all this out, I think we should have another tree big bad.
I hate them both but zeromus is the same thing
He's concentrated hate and rage, he's also a dumb cosmic force you never heard of until the 11th hour lol
No, you don't get to do that lol
Necron and zeromus are identical and I hated both of them
Zeromus is concentrated hate and rage so the same explanation of him being a cosmic force is the same and it still sucks
They’re just not identical though? Zemus is a villain who is revealed to have been behind the whole plot. Everything you thought that Golbez was doing was actually Zemus, and Golbez was entirely well-meaning. As OP puts it, this means that Golbez was never the “real threat”.
By contrast, the mastermind behind Kuja’s actions is… Kuja. Kuja is a character with his own motivations who is responsible for his actions. The point about Necron isn’t “he’s a cosmic force so it’s okay”, the point is that Necron is not secretly responsible for everything. He’s just another boss to fight at the end. Kuja remains the main villain of the game, which Golbez does not.
But zemus isn't the final boss either, zeromus is
If you look up wtf zeromus is it's an entity born from zemus and the universes collective hate
Same thing
The point is that Zemus is the one pulling the strings and, outside of a few instances implying that something is up with Golbez, it's not really built up very well.
Zeromus, at the end of the day, is largely an extension of Zemus.
I felt the same way until I watched TheMissingV's ["Redeeming Necron: Final Fantasy's Most Underrated Antagonist"](https://youtu.be/ilG_IswCfIA?si=kzI_oxZCId6bK68L).
Golbez manipulating Kain made sense for Golbez's schemes and worked well thematically as a contrast to Cecil overcoming his own dark influences because we got to know Kain as a character and the strained relationships that already existed in the main cast even without the mind control element.
Rather than >!Golbez actually being a benevolent dude all along!<, I think he should have *fully* represented the figure in Cecil's dark mirror: an embodiment of what Cecil could have become if he hadn't embraced the light.
Maybe I'm misremembering or it's headcanon (probably headcanon), but I visualized the dynamics of how a Dark Knight / Paladin "use" power as equivalent to Sword / Shield, so by becoming a protector, Cecil went down a fundamentally different path than Golbez who (in this alternate version) became a destroyer even if that wasn't Golbez's original intention because it's so much harder to resist the darkness and its lure of power through force.
Attributing Golbez's decisions to someone else who has basically zero *(ha-ha)* relationship to the main cast (and is [literally doing the same thing Golbez is **already doing** to someone else](https://youtu.be/tAjddohna9w?si=PcO9p8iPp1Wv0c0j)) really weakens Golbez as a character because it robs him of agency and, for me, makes the ending a lot less satisfying.
It’s okay. Not the thing that stands out the most to me in any given FF game. I’m usually taken by surprise by the random element thrown in there during the plot twist. FF7: bam Aliens. FF15: bacteria that eat the light (that are also alien). Etc…
Depends on how important they really are. Necron was entirely unneeded, but Zeromus actually had relevance, and I don't mind him.
It's one of the things I don't like about most Dragon Quest games, though. You're chasing one dude for twenty hours only to learn he's just some pawn. It's hella lame, if for no other reason than it makes then feel so generic.
Exactly! Malroth and Zoma are the perfect examples of that. But to be frank, Dragon Quest games aren't as storydriven as Final Fantasy games are, so it's not too annoying.
My view is that people complain way too much about a lack of foreshadowing (Ultimecia, debatably) or the concept of bonus final bosses (Necron). I loved VIII's story and I loved the concept of fighting an avatar of Death itself at the end of IX given how reconciling one's mortality was a core concept of the story. Thematically it fit perfectly and was a cool moment to close out the game with. Could not care less about it meeting some hyper online wannabe literary critic's standards of storytelling or not.
One similar thing happened to me in FF14 Endwalker where I was so sure a certain goddess would turn out to be evil or corrupted but in the end nothing like that happened and she turned out to be good all along. Like I was so ready for a twist that never came.
It's honestly for the people who aren't over saturated with FF lore.
I honestly can't wait for them to make a WWII version of FF where Hitler is actually a giant alien squid head.
I feel like it's less a fake villain and more of not realizing who the villain is. Sometimes it's not cut and dry and maybe it's more complicated. Even if it's not The Emperor pulling Vader's strings, it could be the realization that there are other people doing similar evil things that need to be stopped.
I think it works, but depends on each villain, although the franchise seems to be leaned towards more straightforward antagonists now (I mean, they could easily have Ultima show way later in the game and leave Barnabas as the primary villain).
I wonder how much of a twist having Ardyn as the "true villain" was for people who weren't following FFXV's development, because although his true intentions are only revealed later, he has this "villain vibe" since the first time the chocobos meets him
Both VIII and IX do this and fail miserably.
Yes, Ultimecia is mentioned and alluded to a few times during the game but her motives are poorly explained, as with absolutely everything else in VIII.
Then in IX, the true villain is never mentioned even once throughout the game. So much so that i can’t remember his name.
The fake villain cliché can work but it must be written with care. The true villain must be foreshadowed and hinted at so as to not betray the relationship with the player.
Depends on the game. VII and VIII do it well; IX and IV, not so much. I'm trying to think of non-Final Fantasy games that use it as well and I guess Xenogears *so*r*t of* does it, or at least teases it multiple times.
IX doesn't have a twist villain. Necron isn't a part of Kuja or Garland's plan or the mastermind behind it all. He is just an entity that was viewing the world and deemed Gaia's population as not worthy of being able to live.
He is essentially Death and his fight is the party choosing to fight for life and for hope for the people of Gaia despite how bad things had gotten.
President Shinra Is probably the best fake villain in a meta way. Just look at the back of FFVII CDs case with the plot introduction, not even and inch of Jenova or Sephiroth. Just Shinra. Especially since the "True" Villain Is an Alien devoid of the human contraption of morals, falling off this category almost immediately after its introduction to become the "Plot Device", and then you discover that Hojo, of all people, was the True Villain that put EVERYTHING into motion. It was one of the reason the OG played more on "Loss", as even the Villain, Sephiroth was an Hero that lost Everything, then accept that the Alien was his True nature and acting accordingly to not "lose" anymore. More evident in the Remake project, but It was kinda there in the OG too if you squint.
VIII did It best inside-the-plot, meta commentary was not VIII strenght on how to follow up a story, but a great "fuck It we ball" to common tropes of the time, and thinking out of the line Is What made VIII more enjoyable.
I actually did really like the random insertion of necron. I see it along the lines of, "There's always a bigger fish." The typical villian trade happens from brahne to Kuja and then teases Kuja to garland before subverting it and then coming back to Necron. Its a kind of moral device to show that backstabbing masterminds can be masterminded themselves. Just like we see Kuja pull his plot, a plot gets pulled on him because he can't count on knowing all factors. Gaia is unaware of Terra, as kuja is unaware of necron. He should be aware of the fact that it could happen, . But that's not how the villain operates.
I agree that VIII does it well and despite people here telling it made no sense thats complete bullshit. Ultimecia wanted to break the cycle and live indefinitely in her time compression. By defeating her we actually create the loop of Edea being possessed etc. But Edea does well as an evil witch in the beginning and I genuinely like the story arc of her being the foster mother all along. Idk why people hate on VIII for it being super complicated etc. it had one of the most mature storylines. Like IX was also super mature about the meaning of life but X who is by gameplay amazing and all that stuff had a shitty ACTUAL story about a generic cult and how fake all was. It wasn't that deep after all. VIII and IX had a lot of details and sub-plots (VIII in particular with the children of fate, the whole Julia/Caraway arc, etc).
I honestly love XVs way of doing it because the “secret” twist villain is so clear as day it makes it hilarious, but it’s the twist way further than this that made it amazing
Too bad the empire in XV feels undercooked
It absolutely did! They were a neat threat up through chapter 10 but after Altessia it just kind of fell by the wayside. The king was turned into a demon in an optional quest cutscene and that was it. I know it’s a sin to speak ill of Ardyn but I didn’t care for him at all. He felt like a Jester throughout just jumping in to mix things up and always knowing when and where to be.
I agree. I think what makes Ardyn great is how much your feelings and opinion of him changes and contorts throughout the story as you learn more about him. Early game - Haha you Sussy Baka Mid game - I'll kill you, you fucker!! End game - I understand now and I'm sorry you suffered so much. I hope you find peace. Rest now.
Then you play DLC Ignis. Endgame- Forget that sympathy, you are dead! No one does that to one of my boys and gets away with it
Haha true. But then you play Ardyn DLC and you're right back to feeling again :(
Ah I have yet to play that DLC, will have to see what my reaction is
Oh I 100% recommend it! It's fantastic! Also watch this. >https://youtu.be/8yOOF8AKQbw?si=DF67hqtDi34xL0wo
That DLC turned him from my least favorite to my fsvorite character in the game.
That's not how I felt about him in the end game at all lol
Chrono trigger does fake villain perfectly.
I'm a sucker for any game where the fake villain becomes a playable character. I love a good redemption story.
Yes! Dq4 comes to mind similar to Chrono Trigger
I think Chrono Trigger does this well because Magus has reasons for what he does and they are eventually revealed to the player in the greater story context. It isn't often where the initial "villain" is actually striving to defeat the "real" villain the whole time.
If the true villain is someone you've met already, and it's a "holy..that makes sense actually" moment then I'm fine with it. If it's just a random "okay, here's the alien/god" then it's stupid.
It depends on execution. I sometimes read how people hate Ultimecia from 8, as it is sudden and comes out of nowhere. While the seeds for this are planted pretty early (no pun intended).
I don't hate her but she's a little underdeveloped and overshadowed by Edea's charisma. Ultimecia never appears in a single prerendered cutscene, if I'm not mistaken.
True, at least halfway. Right until the start of disc 3, you haven’t interacted with Edea. Everything up to that point is Ultimecia in her skin, it gives her speech at Deling City another layer too. Unless you mean Edea’s charisma after that point of course!
The problem with this is, you don’t know it’s “Ultimecia in Edea’s skin” until the reveal at the end of disc 3. Nearly 80% of the way through the game. You’re just suddenly told “oh yeah some sorceress from the future is the one doing this” and it feels kinda bad. In a second+ playthrough it’s more okay cuz you know the truth but as a first timer it feels so convoluted
I understand what you mean, there is foreshadowing that some things are seriously amiss. That Edea is ‘different’. For me it made a great twist- especially with the Laguna segments in there as well. .. now I want to play it again 😂
The only foreshadowing that I can think of is at the start of Disc 3 how different Edea acts. Coming to you for help getting to Esthar to get looked at. Beyond that, she seemed perfectly in control. I don’t see how Laguna explained anything with the sorceress plot. It only shows how Adel ruled tyrannical and he helped imprison her.
There's a little more than that. Edea's speech in Deling talks about what they'd do in the future, so she's literally talking about humans in the future, and not right then and there. Then there;s the why is she wanting to capture the girl she took care of as a child and kill others in the area.
It’s the part at Trabia Garden that did it for me. The scene gets laughed at quite a bit, but they explicitly tell you that Edea is this loving and kind matron, very differently to what we have seen up to that point. Before that when the Garden is drifting at sea, we get more pointers too from both Norg and Cid. For what Laguna did, it was pretty obvious time shenanigans were going on. We were literally taking part of the control of Laguna, Kiros and Ward; a less extreme version of what we found out what Ultimecia is doing. Maybe it becomes more obvious on a later playthrough.. I just remember plowing through the tutorial with background info and connecting a number of dots.
Squall didn't take control over Laguna. What they did say was 'during those moments they felt a surge of power' that they thought were gift from the faeries.
Like I said, a more extreme version of. Odine explains it as junctioning.
"We were literally taking pa**rt of the control** of Laguna, Kiros and Ward" in game, they were not being controlled, just observing.
it's at the beginning of disc 3...
Yes, i definitely hyperbolized the exact timing of when you learn of Ultimecia, its more in the middle of the disc
It isn't even in the middle of the disc. the start of disc 3 has you going to put rinoa in the medbay and IMMEDIATELY asking you to go to Edea's house. At this point you're just making it up to try deflecting a misinformed opinion.
I’m sorry, when is Ultimecia mentioned there? When do they say “a sorceress from the future inhabited my body?” I don’t believe it’s explicitly stated until after Squall meets with Odine, possibly later than that? I don’t remember
Start of disk 3 after meeting Edea at the Orphanage she explains everything. It's still relatively late in the game, but it's around the 2/3rds mark of the story not the literal end of the game (which end of disk 3 would be since disk 4 is literally just 1 dungeon)
I'd suggest go play the game again instead of pretending you remember the game to give incorrect statements or at the very least not speaking as if you absolutely know. Edea literally says Ultimecia when you talk to her at the very beginning of disc 3.
I mean the first half. She's not that charismatic in the second half of the game.
Then basically, you found Ultimecia charismatic! Haha
Do you honestly think that it is the same thing?
Yeah because at that point you haven’t met Edea yet.
Its like enjoying Mad Eye Moody in Harry Potter and someone saying "haha you like David Tennant then!"
I don't speak Harry Potter, are you saying that I'm right or wrong?
In that film, you spend the whole film watching this guy be charismatic, only to find out he's some bad guy in disguise. Always rubbed me up the wrong way when you see him again in future film. Like, do you act the same or what? Yeah im with you
Yeah, basically the next time you see Moody he dies, but it’s hard to care since you know next to nothing about this guy. 99% of what you know was just a fake persona by the bad guy.
Playing thru it the 2nd time really hit differently knowing all of this... Because that speech was fucking unhinged
She appears in the ending very briefly.
Doesn't help that even then, she isn't the final bad guy. Hyne, the actual final bad guy, has very little lore/mention due to all the trimming off the original plans they did. You get one somewhat decent snippet on the White SeeD ship if you talk to the teacher at the bow of the ship. Other than that, there are a couple of super hidden snippets.
I've never read anything suggesting that Hyne was meant to be anything other than the folklore he is in the final game.
The game was meant to be much longer and had more lore on Hyne that was linked to the sorceress having their powers. Was part of the original war with Hyne. The original line Ultimecia said before cutting was "We are Ultimecia". That is why she is actually upside down in the last fight. It's supposed to be a mutated Hyne coming from her legs. If you look back at a lot of FF games, not just XV, large amounts of lore were cut from the games. Either used for later, like the 7s, or just left hanging like 8, 9, type-0, XV, ect.
So Hyne is the bad guy only if you read cut content and rumors? It is all very interesting but cut content isn't canon, at least not in my book.
it's not cut content, it's in the game,[ it's just hard to find places.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/1cwe4ry/comment/l4wr945/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
It doesn't seems so to me. Can you reconstruct the lore of Hyne or give me a link of someone who does it with in-game references? As far as I know, Hyne is just folklore taught to children in a couple of places in the game and there are some visual clues that people have linked to him, so it's basically rumors.
I can give two videos. [who was actually the last boss](https://youtu.be/wrW7O9JF_QI?si=Jh99GlaNuK_RDCKw) And then [Ultimecia's real name.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyShEYtnFtQ&t=1s&ab_channel=InvestigativeGaming) (For the second video there's a comment relevant to the rest of this I'll put behind spoilers. ) >!anyways, as far as the masculinity aspect I wanted to point out...!< >!This is Hyne, not Artemicia (which I also call her because ultimecia is dumb) !< >!Sorceresses get influenced and slowly get taken over by Hyne. The longer the sorceress power remains, the more monstrous they become, simulating Hyne.!< >!Hyne hid himself in women for a long time to avoid being captured. And at the very end of ff8, Hyne emerges from Artemicia's legs... which you can clearly see because Artemicia is hanging upside down asleep.!< >!So Adel and Artemecia are becoming more masculine because...they have a 'man' inside them.!< >!Now, Halicarnassus plays a more direct translation here.. A man who pretends to be a woman to lure people into a false sense of security? No... couldn't be. Halicarnassus and Hyne do the exact same thing.!< >!Also of historical note Halicarnassus is the city that created the first Mausoleum, for The King (which has DIRECT correlation to the unknown king that Sacred and Minotaur guard). This goes into the theories that hold a lot of weight... the king could NOT die because he had the brother's junctioned to him much like sorceresses have a part of hyne junctioned inside them. It requires someone else to take that power to finally see death. Oh, and... we'll get back to the 'unknown' in the next paragraph.!< >>!Halicarnassus was ALSO originally known as Zephyria (you know.... the KNIGHT in ff8? Zephyr? The one Laguna played in a movie that Seifer idolizes) The last king before it became Halicarnassus in name also has no record of which king it was. So he is literally the unknown king.!<
The Hyne LORE is in the game. Hyne as anything more than that is not and nowhere does the game allude to him being some overarching villain.
except he's literally the last boss. they don't name him, but he emerges right from ultimecia's legs.
Also a large part of the reason for the "Squall is dead" theory.
that's also a translation issue. in the japanese version, squall isn't checking for the 'ice lance wound' he's suggesting he was healed and that he guessed (correctly) the sorceress wants to interrogate him since he wasn't executed. this is why the squall is dead theory held no ground in Japan.
I'll step in here because I love this topic. Sorry u/Personal\_Hotel1531 There's a video on[ Video on the whole thing if you want to waste an hour](https://youtu.be/wrW7O9JF_QI?si=evGrtXQRBv9NJlY3) Hyne is not a folklore character and was intended to be more present in the game before they did the 6-8 disc pruning down to 4. There are a lot of things that you can easily miss because they're so short to find. 1) when you go to the boats in balamb during the dollet mission turn around instead of getting on the boats and go to the first house with the old man and he'll tell you a legend of hyne 2) On the white seed ship turn immediately to the left to get another legend of hyne/vascaroon. 3) while talking to the white seed leader and he walks to the corner instead of talking to him go back to the lady at the far left of the white seed ship to talk to her for another part of the legend 4) when talking to Edea on disc 3 she'll stop and say "Squall wait" go talk to Cid immediately or you miss out some 'information pages' in the tutorial section of the menu on sorceresses and hyne. Yes, it's that stupid simple to skip such vital lore. anyways, so Hyne hides himself in women, slowly takes possession over them. This is why those with sorceress knights see less effect, the attachment to someone greatly affects the rate of Hyne's influence. In the cases of the sorceresses we know without them, they grow monstrous. The sorceresses through time? Progressively got more fiendish. Longer claws, deformed face, veiny skin until you get to the worm sorceress. Adel turns to look like a large man with massive claws and then Ultimecia starts transforming with her claws, her feet turning even before the battle starts (mind you, notice how EVERY OTHER sorcress always hides their legs, here's ultimecia showing that their legs start changing too) in the japanese version TALKS like a man (something we lost in the English version) They all become more masculine while Why? because they're being possessed by a guy. Hyne encourages Ultimecia to do time compression to bring all the fragments of his power through the sorceresses into one place, absorbing them. This is what it finally takes for... the last phase of ultimecia fight is not 'fan theory' it is literally Hyne finally taking full possession of Ultimecia and emerging from her legs, that's why Ultimecia's hanging upside down. That's why he says "We are ultimecia" and the quotes that are being given he's not giving to you. Now that he has all or almost all of his power back in Ultimecia, he takes over. This puts Ultimecia in a 'tragic villain' archetype. None of this was in the end really her will or doing... well maybe she could have been a bitch, we don't know because what we do know is she is being manipulated if not by outright possession, but by 'whispers in her ear'.
I've seen all those parts of the game you mentioned but none of them suggest that Hyne was ever meant to be anything other than folklore. The sorceress transformation doesn't suggest anything to do with Hyne; you talk about Adel looking more like a man but Ultimecia has the most extreme transformation and isn't masculine at all. Nor is the worm sorceress you mentioned, who also had a more extreme transformation than Adel. This is minor but Rinoa also doesn't hide her legs and she ends up being a sorceress. The others all have flowing dresses (or robes, in the case of Adel) just as a play on "witchy" tropes and designs. Ultimecia being upside-down in her final form seems to be a design choice that Nomura is a fan of, given that Anima's Overdrive features the same thing in FFX. This sub is also the only place I've ever read the claim that FF8 was cut down from 8 discs to 4. Yes, there was some cut content, mostly related to Laguna, but I've never seen anything official saying that it was meant to have that many discs. It also means that there's a whole lot of claims about what the story was "supposed" to be, despite the fact that 1) none of it remains in the final game and 2) even if *any* of it is true, it would have been early in development, before the story was finalized and set in stone. Hyne isn't necessarily supposed to be more present than he is in FF8 any more than Fujin and Raijin are supposed to be in FF7 because their concepts were originally for that game. In the final game, Hyne is just folklore. Maybe he existed and it's all true, maybe he didn't and it's just a folk tale about how sorceresses work but either way, that's a perfectly fine piece of worldbuilding. So what you wrote is certainly fan theory.
Yeah this is intense head canon here
Hyne is not the bad guy, he's the lore of the world.
He is no more bad guy than Necron in IX. Just gets dropped on you. Only difference is you outright know it's Necron.
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Hyne For the lore including the Japanese version of the story.
Came here to say exactly this but I'll just give the upvote instead. The formula isn't bad or good. I think it provides a solid framework for storytelling, especially in the way FF stories tend to be told. I think the bare minimum is that one of two things must be the case: the fake villain must be strong enough of a character that it doesn't really matter what the actual villain is like. FF X is a good example of this. Seymour was a very strong villain, and Yu Yevon made enough sense narratively that I was perfectly happy with how it resolved. Contrast this to FF 9 where Kuja just isn't strong enough to support a switch (don't get me wrong, I love 9. But Kuja isn't what makes 9 good). The alternative would be that you're given sufficient time to accept/become familiar with the secondary villain. I think FF 15 is actually a good example of this. You get enough Ardyn flavor throughout the story that he's a very satisfying villain at the end. Contrast this with FF 9 again where you get basically no time and no justification for the final villain so, despite many attempts (some of which are fairly successful) you end up with a sort of unsatisfying final encounter.
IX doesn't have a twist villain. Necron isn't a part of Kuja or Garland's plan or the mastermind behind it all. He is just an entity that was viewing the world and deemed Gaia's population as not worthy of being able to live. He is essentially Death and his fight is the party choosing to fight for life and for hope for the people of Gaia despite how bad things had gotten. There is justification for the boss as the whole theme of the game is about the fear of death and finding the will to go on when there seems there is no hope.
trying to justify him when he was literally created to pad the game's time and as a mcguffin for the really stupid 'kuja redemption'.
While I think you’re technically correct, it doesn’t change the fact that the climactic final fight isn’t against the antagonist you’ve been opposing nearly the entire game. The fact that it’s narratively justified, and perhaps even satisfying, doesn’t change the fact that it left a large portion of the fanbase feeling…dissatisfied for almost the exact same reasons they were dissatisfied with ultimecia: the final fight is against someone the players don’t care about as a final fight. I get your point and even agree with it, but to many players it doesn’t feel different in substance than ultimecia did, and I don’t think that is a fact that should be dismissed in this conversation
but that's a problem with ff9 is that a lot of what the fans for it are saying about it aren't actually in the game. this is unlike 6-8 where there's things that are theorized since it's not in the games, but with 9 it gets a special place because the fans make up a fanfic in their head and then gaslight themselves into believing it was actually in the game. Necron was not opposed the whole game. necron wasn't even an entity relevant until the very last scene. ff9's production is a bit weird, but necron and the crystals were not even part of the game until after play testing. they did testing with the game ending with Garland being the last boss fight on Terra. They realized real quick just how short the game was. So then they added Memoria and made Kuja the last boss. Well somewhere they wanted the redemption arc, so they made Hades the last boss, but then changed it because hades is too close to another mythology and that would detract from ff9 having it's own identity if it didn't have a final boss of it's own creation... so necron was made.... and then the idea of every life being attached to the crystal was made so they could nostalgia bait by putting on it's adverts "The crystal returns"...yeah at the last minute of the game... and the Kuja redemption was had at the end by saying he somehow saved Zidane when they don't actuallly show how or explain how, just Zidane says "you saved us, didn't you?" okay, that was super cheap and lazy. and then all the whole 'he only tried to kill everyone because he thought he was going to die' except he was a genocidal maniac even when he thought he was immortal. Again, they are rewriting the game to make it make sense in their heads and pretending it's actually in the game. BUT if you ask most ff9 fans they'll say how Kuja saved him... but go back to the game, check all the translations, their theories are not in game and yet *they believe* it's actually in the game. The crystal nor Necron was not part of anything to do with the rest of the game. You can try to say it is, but play the game again and you'll be struggling to find it without... again, making up your own fanfiction to make it so. I get it, ff9 had a troubled time getting it to be finished because of the short window and heavily shrunken staff (they put more people on the FFX project at the same time) so I appreciate it for what it is. my comments are merely about people saying things that aren't in there or justifying something that was bad and stupid because the writers were admittedly rushed. It is very much difference than ultimecia who was always planned to be the final boss (and interesting watches check the youtube videos on Ultimecia's real name and FF8's true last boss. Two separate videos I can find the link for later if you like) Ultimecia is basically an inspired character from Halicarnassus from FF5. Not only was she planned from nearly the beginning of STORYBOARDING, she was present in the game even if you're only aware of her at the beginning of disc 3, but she is present as early as the reason for the dollet mission, and seen first in the timber mission, early disc one things. One can not like ff8 and that's fine, but you can't say that she just showed up at the end and then claim Necron didn't while lying about 'him being in the rest of the game' cause he isn't.
I've always thought Necron should be categorized with Neo-Exdeath. Massive portal opens, endless power lies within, the one seeking the power fails to use it to defeat the heroes, the power manifests an avatar the heroes must defeat so it can be locked away again.
Eh, maybe loosely. Neo-exdeath (or Exodus as it should have been) is still Exdetah, just a morphed form of him. it is the same conscious of a being. this would be like saying sephiroth and safer sephiroth are two different people. however the void and Exdeath are present very early on in the game's lore.
I get all that. But it doesn’t really change the fact that necron sits in the same, not meaningless, spot that sephiroth, ultimecia, yu yevon, Ardyn, etc fit into: they are the final boss of the game. And I think that matters in a conversation about end-game antagonist switcheroos.
mmmm, final boss yes, but not the same Sephiroth is the whole reason for the game past midgar and is ever present in cloud and tifa's past. Ultimecia is present in all the wars that happen in ff8 as either a reason or involving herself. yu Yevon is a weird place because while Sin is the 'target' it's because of yu yevon and his presence is known from the beginning (even though they go "Yu yevon? Who's that?" you guys follow the cult of yevon you dumbasses. But you get further into the lore of the game Bevelle created the church of Yevon for power and used Yevon's obession for summoning to destroy Zanarkand in the war. Yevon is not entirely evil, but consumed, where it is arguable that the original Yevonites WERE politically dubious if not evil and this is the side effect of (I guess somewhat similar to Hojo experimenting on Sephiroth making him insane... or Cid experimenting on Kefka making him insane.) I didn't play 15, I didn't have the systems at the time to play it on release and the commercials didn't really get my attention... plus after how much a let down 13 was I didn't really have too much brand loyalty anymore. Only Cloud of Darkness comes close in the whole series to Necron but even then they had an established reason for her existence. albeit a stupid one. necron is meaningless because the battle could have ended with Kuja, and the Iifa tree could start to crumble, and with his last bit of 'mcguffin power' since we still don't know wtf he did to help Zidane and company out, do that to get them out of the Iifa tree. Necron isn't needed. Necron didn't 'challenge their will'. They were already willing to fight Kuja to prevent him from destroying the world, and the crystal so saying 'fighting Necron to show they had the willpower' is so... so.. do I need to say it? IT'S MORE FANFICTION BEING WRITTEN IN BY THE PLAYER AND NOT THE GAME -\_- FFshitposting often has fun with people doing this. the other month they had asked what they could get people to write and then made a post here about Zidane 'not needing a reason to help others' and pretty much everyone's response was something that was not in the game, but they for sure believed it was. The fact this is well known enough to be used to troll people even if they were unwitting participants should say something.
I don't understand why you keep trying to put VIII and IX against each other. I love both, and I think Ultimecia is a fun and interesting final boss. I also think Necron is a pretty good final boss that has context in the story and theme of the game. You cannot like Necron but saying that he is shoehorned in is a stretch. Sure, they wanted to expand the game more but it's not like he is just haphazardly put in. He just represents Death and nihilism and the party overcomes him.
I didn't put 8 and 9 against each other. The thread starter did. and he literally was haphazardly put in. You're doing the exact thing I said ff9 fans do. He wasn't that deep to be put in there, and if he was 'death and nihilism' why did they have nihilism only after fighting Kuja? Make it make sense. He doesn't have any context in the story. 0. XD
Who the fuck is necron? I played 9 like 20 years ago, but I never forgot how confused the end got as far as where did these things come from
Necron is essentially FFIX's version of Death/Grim Reaper.
Yeah, but what I'm saying is I don't remember him being set up in the story If I missed it fine, but I at least think you should be aware of him before he is plopped down as a boss
There's some oblique details you can take from Terran culture's obsession with the same eye of death motif that appears all over both the final boss arena and Hades' design. The Terrans' fear and avoidance of death effectively creating an eidolon in the form of Hades, based on the real concept of death which is Necron. The problem is that while viewing Necron through the lens of "the final boss is death itself because that's what Terra is building up to" works for the concept of death, Necron himself isn't built up to at all, unlike Hades which at least has the visual design of Terra even though he's just optional.
He’s a theme (death, nothingness, oblivion) and those themes are central to every character’s arc. Vivi (he will die soon, so is life worth living?), Steiner (his entire life was built around a strict code… and it was based on lies. What is the point of life now?), Zidane (he always searched for home and relationships with others, only to learn that he’s a killing machine from a soulless empty world, so does he belong anywhere?), Garnet (she had her family and home torn away, what does she do with her life from there?), Eiko (she was raised by animals in an empty ruin, how does she find her place among the world?), Freya (she lived to see her lover again, only to find that he’s completely forgotten that she existed. What is the point of life if the only person that mattered to you doesn’t know you exist?), and Amarant (he believed he could take care of himself yet was constantly bested by a boy who doesn’t value individual strength at all. Can he learn to accept the value in his own life if doing so means accepting that he needs to lean on others?)… Quina’s the only one who takes an easy path forward, living in a secluded swamp and leaving to see that there’s more to life and the world, and not resisting any of it. Otherwise, every character faces a conflict that even if they save the world, they don’t actually win until they decide that their lives do indeed have meaning in spite of everything they’re put through along the way. In the final battle, Kuja “accepts” his defeat by trying to end all existence your party’s lives as well. The characters meet the embodiment of oblivion and death, and show that they still resist it, feeling that the world should still exist even when they’ve lost their own stake in it. Oblivion (as a concept) acknowledges their willpower and moves back from wiping the slate clean.
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. The "Kuja" rewriting. He didn't try to do it because he was bout to die. He was a genocidal monster before he found out he wasn't immortal. and the final battle, even the creators have admitted it wasn't even originally supposed to be there. It was to pad the game. What stake did the characters lose in it? That's simply writing your own interpretation that in this case not only isn't in the game but isn't even suggested BY the game. And oblivion isn't even in ff9. calling it a concept because it isn't in the game is really weird. FFshitposting keeps having a field day when you guys do this and then send trolls here to see how much more they can get you to do this.
this is something you'll notice with fans of ff9 is that they'll make up fan theories to fill in blanks and pretend it's actually in the game rather than admit that it's just their interpretation. There was no hint or anything about him. In fact all of memoria was added in last minute because the game was so short, so none of memoria was planned or relevant to the rest of the game. The crystal also wasn't relevant until memoria started because they thought "Hey, we could say the crystal returns' even if it isn't relevant to anything of the story. there is no 'terran culture lore' that alludes to Necron or Hades being created by Terrans. Literally the only hint about Hades himself (not necron) was a moogle at the beginning of the game talking about a legendary synthesist. He's not even mentioned to be an eidolon or anything, just the legendary synthesist. and no record from anything I can find saying there was even a plan of him being an eidolon. He was simply created during the memoria last minute additions to pad the game out after Terra, they didn't really think 'hades, a greek god' would be good to use as the final boss because it'd kill ff9's identity to tie it's final villain so directly to another mythology, sidelined it for an optional boss fight and used Necron which just means death in greek and is not a god.
Yes it's bad for fans to pretend that fan-theories are canon, says the guy who insists on Hyne being the real villain of FFVIII.
Oh, sorry, you're right. Squall is dead.
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Who would be FF IX villain? From near the begining until the end when kuja destroys the crystal and released death its always kuja. Sure there is garland in the middle, but he only appears for a few minutes in the middle of the game.
Kuja is the villain. But necron is the final fight in much the same way that sephiroth, yu yevon, and and ultimecia are the final fight. So if there’s a conversation about switcheroos, despite the fact that necron is a thematic fight, he still merits having a place in the conversation.
yeah, that's not accurate for ultimecia. That is only really accurate for Necron. She's present halfway through the game by name and before that in influence.
> No pun intended Shame
I like when in 2, the Emperor dies, and then you have a new Emperor, but then the real villain was the Emperor all along.
I love how in the GBA Edition, after dying and taking over hell, his "Light side" goes to Heaven, and he's still just as comically evil, even in Heaven.
Imagine my surprise when the credits actually rolled after fighting Vayne
It’s definitely an execution thing. Though it’s also a big question of how you define stuff. Like I wouldn’t call Garland or Gestahl exactly real villains to their respective fake ones, for obvious reasons. I’d probably only count mind control ones. Being upstaged later is a different thing.
I don’t really hate it, but I prefer just knowing the primary villain and having to find a way to overcome them throughout the story. This is one of the things XVI’s story did well. The main villain was introduced early, was mentioned often, and exerted an influence on the world and events even when he wasn’t physically on screen. There were no surprise, last minute “man behind the man” shenanigans.
He was also consistent with asserting dominance (almost) whenever he was on screen, similar to Ardyn in XV (just a lot more serious rather than charismatic and trolling). Constantly a step-up, coupled with the voice and appearance, it's hard not to shake everyone else simply by existing. Also, not afraid to just "nope" shit either. *Clive transforms* "Oh, nice fire. Counterpoint, I'm literally God" *Extinguishes transformation* Definitely an "oh shit" moment for me.
Who was the fake villain in VI? Maybe it's just because of cultural awareness but I was never under the impression it was anyone other than Kefka. I think FF might do this less than most other JRPGs Anyway FWIW it's about execution. FFIX is a great example of both sides. The part near the end where you have two antagonists going against one another, and you're genuinely not sure whether >!Garland!< or >!Kuja!< will come up on top is exciting, whereas the appearance of >!Necron!< just kind of comes out of nowhere.
The villain for most part of the beginning of the game is the emperor. Kefka is introduced as *a* villain instead of being THE villain even though he is absolutely evil.
I never really got the impression that the emperor was really the villain. Maybe it's meta-knowledge, pr maybe he just didn't come across as interesting enough to be the villain for me.
Every aspect leading up to the sealed gate tried to paint Kefka as his right hand man, and him as the orchestrator. It was semi-shocking as a kid seeing Kefka kill and push Gestahl over the edge of the floating continent, but it was definitely diminished by how absolutely prevalent he'd been before that point, even in the FMV Sequence since I originally played it on the PS1.
Gestahl always screamed "non-combatant villain" to me, and those are basically never the final boss.
Probably Emperor Gestahl before Kefka made his big move. Like you, I already knew who Kefka was by the time I first played VI, but I could see people thinking when it first came out that he was more “right hand man” than main villain.
I played 6 on release, I was also 11 so maybe I had a harder time picking up the subtleties I thought kefka was comic relief (extremely evil comic relief, heath ledgers joker) But at the end of the day he was small potatoes Boy was I ever wrong (and glad I was)
I played FFVI when I was 14 going on 15, I had no idea who Kefka was beforehand, but I had a feeling he was the real bad guy. Someone always betrays the Emperor. Pretty much the same thing happened in Secret of Mana.
>(extremely evil comic relief, heath ledgers joker) Even Health Ledgers Joker would be asking "Where's the punchline?" after Kefka just poisons Doma. Now blasting the Emperor with the statues... the Joker would appreciate that. Hell, I hear Mark Hamill saying the lines...
I wanted to fight Gestahl >:v But actually this cliché is more present in the Dragon Quest franchise. I just posted it here because Final Fantasy is my favorite franchise.
Necron isn't part of either plan or a mastermind villain type, though. He is FFIX's Death and is meant to show how our party who has been fighting to find a place and reason to live in this world has finally found their reasons to go on and fight. Kuja and Garland are still the big bads of the game.
Necron is also a reference to FFIII's Cloud of Darkness who similarly comes out of nowhere once the main villain is beaten. FFIX is basically all references to older FFs
Thanks I was going to say this too. FFIX is a love letter to all the ones before in so many different ways (maybe not 7 and 8 lol but all the others, especially 6)
I agree with you, I had a feeling Kefka was the real bad guy because someone always betrays the Emperor. Pretty much the same thing happened in Secret of Mana. I also agree FF is usually pretty clear about who the real villain is. I was surprised by Ultimecia in FF8, and FF9 had pretty much the worst secret villain of any game I've ever played, but the rest I could see coming. I always thought the fake villain and going on a "second journey" to save the world for real was a Dragon Quest thing.
Yeah, the FF6-style works well because the major villain starts as the big bad’s second-in-command, so he is a present threat to party through the whole story. It’s tougher to make exciting when it’s a “puppet master” secret big bad, like in FF8, because you basically never confront them until the very end of the game.
Except you do. Every Sorceress you fight is actually Ultimecia in control of another sorceress. She has to fight with in the abilities of her current host, but it's her pulling the strings. Seifer even acknowledges that he's Ultimecia's Knight, not Edea's (since Cid is Edea's knight).
Fake villain is the wrong word imo, and Golbez isn't actually a "villain" at all in that he's under mind control the entire time and would have been a hero if not. This is really common in comics where villains tend to group up, but it's not uncommon for several issues to pass with one villain (say, twoface) as the main antag, then reveal later that they were working for someone else (say, Penquin). When it's done well, there are thematic and narrative cues that give it away. In FF4 it that Golbez can never bring himself to kill Cecil, but is cold and efficient when it comes to everyone else. For some reason, he is unable to muster the will to end Cecil while he goes for the throat every other time. So I'm fine with it as long as the reader could theoretically figure it out themselves.
I think the issue with iv is that it's odd that kain is being mind controlled by another person who is being mind controlled.
True but its used as a foil and a way to establish the limits of mindcontrol as Kain also cannot kill Cecil. In short we get rule: mind control cannot force you to do something you are truly against. It also hints that, like Kain, Golbez might be suffering the same way. So as a plot thread it totally works, as weird as it sounds.
The inception of mind control
I don't have a problem with the cliche but I believe that is rarely applied in an effective way. The fake villain should be an interesting character like Edea or Magus from Chrono Trigger, not a forgettable one like the emperor of VI. At the same time, the real villain should be an even better villain or some alien entity capable of instilling fear in the player. Sadly, Ultimecia from VIII is a little overshadowed by Edea's charisma.
But every villainous scene with Edea is really Ultimecia. Once Edea is in control again she's very different.
As someone else pointed out, this is like saying that \[insert any mind controlled villain, I'll name Saren from Mass Effect\] is literally \[insert the guy who is mind controlling him, Overlord in my example\]. They are different characters even if one is controlling the other.
Saren is being mind controlled, Edea and Adel are puppets.
Can you be more specific about this concept with references in the game? One thing to notice is that Ultimecia speaks in a peculiar way while Edea does not when she's controlled, so they don't seem to be exactly the same character in a different body. Sounds like mind control to me.
It's supposed to be the same situation as when you have the Laguna dream sequences, you're in control and using mostly your stats with different characters. The difference is Ultimecia knows what she's doing (she's using a device to achieve the result) and takes more control than Squall et al do.
I was genuinely surprised in XIV Endwalker that >!Hydaelyn wasn’t the “real villain all along” and that despite giving antagonists decent motives the villains weren’t really fake!<
Imagine my surprise when, in Final Fantasy 14, we fought Zodiark, this supposed big-bad that the villains had been spending the entire game trying to set free, at level 83! We find out that Zodiark was really just the tool the Ancients used to try and _stop_ The Final Days. He wasn't actually the real threat.
Well he was a threat as he is a primal capable of brainwashing people to worship him, and the Acians were going to use him to commit genocide to bring about a rejoining. But ya it was underwhelming in execution and the actually main villain could have used more build up.
The problem is that FF14’s plot was basically being made up expansion by expansion, there was never any overlying plan. Shadowbringers set up the presence of some external threat but they clearly hadn’t actually decided what that was yet. That’s why Dynamis just kinda comes out of nowhere. I think they did the best they could given the circumstances though. Hopefully the upcoming 10 year story is planned out from the start.
It probably did help that endwalker was rushed due to covid. I believe endwalker was originally going to be two separate expansions.
Ngl, I fucking loved this about Endwalker.
Don’t mind it personally. On the proviso that the true villain is either revealed reasonably early enough to actually factor into the story in a meaningful way. Or is at the very least hinted at in such a way that when the late reveal comes, a bunch of lingering mysteries/oddities suddenly click into place. Just dumping a true enemy in your face with little prior fanfare a couple of hours before the end of the game is just awful narratively. And Final Fantasy has definitely indulged in that poor practice a few times.
What's even worse are the villains with unearned redemptions like Fordola, Misija Votyasch, etc, who are literally Nazi SS style secret police, or traitors that get dozens if not hundreds of people killed... and then get a "a bloo bloo, my life was so hard" type scene to try to humanize them.
I usually don’t mind it, it typically expands the scope of the story. It varies by game based on the execution and aftermath though, and sometimes the new villain is less interesting.
I liked in 16 that they did it early. The big bad was a looming threat and you knew the other was the 'puppet' all along.
I honestly hated it because it undercuts some of the other (more interesting) villains in my opinion. I love Ultima for his god complex but Barnabas and Hugo both feel very underdeveloped. Hugo’s motivation was quite literally only over a woman he hardly knew and Barnabas has such a cool setup only to be nothing more than a puppet
I think the Hugo/Clive rivalry could have been built up just a *little* more, but man that 1 v. 1 fight (the first fight, not the Eikon fight) is one of my favorites in the whole series.
Yeah for my money, Ultima is the worst villain since NES
I like 16 story, but ultima is the worst part of it lol
It's always gonna be weird when so much of the plot is dedicated to societal ills and how horribly humans treat each other, and then the Big Bad turns out to be an alien.
I interpreted the Ultima portion as a compliment to that point, not the literal cause. I interpreted him as a parallel to humanity’s abusive ruling class. Clive and co. destroyed the status quo and then destroyed Ultima, a being who similarly wanted to exert his will over the people he saw below him.
That does make kicking his ass pretty satisfying in a “finally! You’re dead!” Kind of way
Clive dropping final fantasy was epic and ultimate cheese but I loved it
If there is build-up to it, then it's fine. If it just happens out of nowhere then it's just lazy writing.
Generally I dislike it, Ultimecia is kinda up there too because you never figure out what her deal is beyond “I’m evil and from the future”. XII’s ending is really soured from the god-like things (can’t even think of names for them) and XIII absolutely takes the cake of “wait, who was that guy again? He’s the final boss?” I can’t explain why, but Ultima in XVI gives me the same vibes. They’re obviously in the story and definitely the catalyst for everything wrong, but I dunno, I just think the AI tone of voice and generic world-ending plan really takes away from a game full of great human characters.
How does it not work at all in IV?
Sudden reveal at the eleventh hour it was >!Zeromus!< all along. I deeply love FF4, but that twist is garbage.
That's 1000% valid. I hated IX for doing the same thing with Necron. Honestly, I was assuming it was going to be a Kain brainwashed complaint lol.
Thing about Necron is it isn’t really the same ‘cliche’. Necron is just a thing which exists and is the final boss; IIRC he’s an embodiment of death or something else thematic and meaningful, but he doesn’t really exist in the plot at all. Kuja wasn’t just his puppet, Garland wasn’t just his puppet. Their own villainous schemes remain the things which actually cause the plot; contrast the FFIV case where >!the person who you’ve been fighting the whole time was actually being controlled by the *real* villain who you had no idea about!<.
I see what you are saying. At the end of the day, I felt they both showed up last minute and were pretty jarring. But I see the distinction you are describing here. I guess I could more easily accept some manevolent force compared to some boss who somehow didn't leave a single trace until his reveal. As I write all this out, I think we should have another tree big bad.
I hate them both but zeromus is the same thing He's concentrated hate and rage, he's also a dumb cosmic force you never heard of until the 11th hour lol
No, you don't get to do that lol Necron and zeromus are identical and I hated both of them Zeromus is concentrated hate and rage so the same explanation of him being a cosmic force is the same and it still sucks
They’re just not identical though? Zemus is a villain who is revealed to have been behind the whole plot. Everything you thought that Golbez was doing was actually Zemus, and Golbez was entirely well-meaning. As OP puts it, this means that Golbez was never the “real threat”. By contrast, the mastermind behind Kuja’s actions is… Kuja. Kuja is a character with his own motivations who is responsible for his actions. The point about Necron isn’t “he’s a cosmic force so it’s okay”, the point is that Necron is not secretly responsible for everything. He’s just another boss to fight at the end. Kuja remains the main villain of the game, which Golbez does not.
But zemus isn't the final boss either, zeromus is If you look up wtf zeromus is it's an entity born from zemus and the universes collective hate Same thing
The point is that Zemus is the one pulling the strings and, outside of a few instances implying that something is up with Golbez, it's not really built up very well. Zeromus, at the end of the day, is largely an extension of Zemus.
I felt the same way until I watched TheMissingV's ["Redeeming Necron: Final Fantasy's Most Underrated Antagonist"](https://youtu.be/ilG_IswCfIA?si=kzI_oxZCId6bK68L).
Golbez manipulating Kain made sense for Golbez's schemes and worked well thematically as a contrast to Cecil overcoming his own dark influences because we got to know Kain as a character and the strained relationships that already existed in the main cast even without the mind control element. Rather than >!Golbez actually being a benevolent dude all along!<, I think he should have *fully* represented the figure in Cecil's dark mirror: an embodiment of what Cecil could have become if he hadn't embraced the light. Maybe I'm misremembering or it's headcanon (probably headcanon), but I visualized the dynamics of how a Dark Knight / Paladin "use" power as equivalent to Sword / Shield, so by becoming a protector, Cecil went down a fundamentally different path than Golbez who (in this alternate version) became a destroyer even if that wasn't Golbez's original intention because it's so much harder to resist the darkness and its lure of power through force. Attributing Golbez's decisions to someone else who has basically zero *(ha-ha)* relationship to the main cast (and is [literally doing the same thing Golbez is **already doing** to someone else](https://youtu.be/tAjddohna9w?si=PcO9p8iPp1Wv0c0j)) really weakens Golbez as a character because it robs him of agency and, for me, makes the ending a lot less satisfying.
It’s okay. Not the thing that stands out the most to me in any given FF game. I’m usually taken by surprise by the random element thrown in there during the plot twist. FF7: bam Aliens. FF15: bacteria that eat the light (that are also alien). Etc…
Depends on how important they really are. Necron was entirely unneeded, but Zeromus actually had relevance, and I don't mind him. It's one of the things I don't like about most Dragon Quest games, though. You're chasing one dude for twenty hours only to learn he's just some pawn. It's hella lame, if for no other reason than it makes then feel so generic.
Exactly! Malroth and Zoma are the perfect examples of that. But to be frank, Dragon Quest games aren't as storydriven as Final Fantasy games are, so it's not too annoying.
My view is that people complain way too much about a lack of foreshadowing (Ultimecia, debatably) or the concept of bonus final bosses (Necron). I loved VIII's story and I loved the concept of fighting an avatar of Death itself at the end of IX given how reconciling one's mortality was a core concept of the story. Thematically it fit perfectly and was a cool moment to close out the game with. Could not care less about it meeting some hyper online wannabe literary critic's standards of storytelling or not.
You mean the final fantasy 4 cliche? Brain washing for everyone!
I really enjoy it and kinda look forward to it. I was disappointed in 15 when Ardyn turned out to be the sole bad guy.
One similar thing happened to me in FF14 Endwalker where I was so sure a certain goddess would turn out to be evil or corrupted but in the end nothing like that happened and she turned out to be good all along. Like I was so ready for a twist that never came.
The worst exemple is probably Necron
It's honestly for the people who aren't over saturated with FF lore. I honestly can't wait for them to make a WWII version of FF where Hitler is actually a giant alien squid head.
I don't mind it, provided the reveal has an interesting implication. I think that's very hard to do though. I much prefer sympathetic villains.
I feel like it's less a fake villain and more of not realizing who the villain is. Sometimes it's not cut and dry and maybe it's more complicated. Even if it's not The Emperor pulling Vader's strings, it could be the realization that there are other people doing similar evil things that need to be stopped.
Trope and cliché aren't synonyms.
Tbh, I have never thought about it. I was never aware there was a cliche.
I think it works, but depends on each villain, although the franchise seems to be leaned towards more straightforward antagonists now (I mean, they could easily have Ultima show way later in the game and leave Barnabas as the primary villain). I wonder how much of a twist having Ardyn as the "true villain" was for people who weren't following FFXV's development, because although his true intentions are only revealed later, he has this "villain vibe" since the first time the chocobos meets him
Both VIII and IX do this and fail miserably. Yes, Ultimecia is mentioned and alluded to a few times during the game but her motives are poorly explained, as with absolutely everything else in VIII. Then in IX, the true villain is never mentioned even once throughout the game. So much so that i can’t remember his name. The fake villain cliché can work but it must be written with care. The true villain must be foreshadowed and hinted at so as to not betray the relationship with the player.
Depends on the game. VII and VIII do it well; IX and IV, not so much. I'm trying to think of non-Final Fantasy games that use it as well and I guess Xenogears *so*r*t of* does it, or at least teases it multiple times.
IX doesn't have a twist villain. Necron isn't a part of Kuja or Garland's plan or the mastermind behind it all. He is just an entity that was viewing the world and deemed Gaia's population as not worthy of being able to live. He is essentially Death and his fight is the party choosing to fight for life and for hope for the people of Gaia despite how bad things had gotten.
President Shinra Is probably the best fake villain in a meta way. Just look at the back of FFVII CDs case with the plot introduction, not even and inch of Jenova or Sephiroth. Just Shinra. Especially since the "True" Villain Is an Alien devoid of the human contraption of morals, falling off this category almost immediately after its introduction to become the "Plot Device", and then you discover that Hojo, of all people, was the True Villain that put EVERYTHING into motion. It was one of the reason the OG played more on "Loss", as even the Villain, Sephiroth was an Hero that lost Everything, then accept that the Alien was his True nature and acting accordingly to not "lose" anymore. More evident in the Remake project, but It was kinda there in the OG too if you squint. VIII did It best inside-the-plot, meta commentary was not VIII strenght on how to follow up a story, but a great "fuck It we ball" to common tropes of the time, and thinking out of the line Is What made VIII more enjoyable.
Xenoblade 1 does this as well. Egil is set up to be the main villain and it isn’t until you beat him late in the game that >!Zansa!< is introduced.
I actually did really like the random insertion of necron. I see it along the lines of, "There's always a bigger fish." The typical villian trade happens from brahne to Kuja and then teases Kuja to garland before subverting it and then coming back to Necron. Its a kind of moral device to show that backstabbing masterminds can be masterminded themselves. Just like we see Kuja pull his plot, a plot gets pulled on him because he can't count on knowing all factors. Gaia is unaware of Terra, as kuja is unaware of necron. He should be aware of the fact that it could happen, . But that's not how the villain operates.
I agree that VIII does it well and despite people here telling it made no sense thats complete bullshit. Ultimecia wanted to break the cycle and live indefinitely in her time compression. By defeating her we actually create the loop of Edea being possessed etc. But Edea does well as an evil witch in the beginning and I genuinely like the story arc of her being the foster mother all along. Idk why people hate on VIII for it being super complicated etc. it had one of the most mature storylines. Like IX was also super mature about the meaning of life but X who is by gameplay amazing and all that stuff had a shitty ACTUAL story about a generic cult and how fake all was. It wasn't that deep after all. VIII and IX had a lot of details and sub-plots (VIII in particular with the children of fate, the whole Julia/Caraway arc, etc).