Game Story Review – Final Fantasy X

When I did my first review of the storyline from a popular video game, I decided to play it safe and do a favorite game that had a fairly straightforward plot. This time, however, I thought I’d try reviewing a game that -while still being one that I really enjoy- has a much more complex plot and may even contain a few flaws. Be warned that because of this story’s complexity, there will be a number of spoilers in this review, though I promise that I won’t give away the game’s final ending. With all that said, let’s talk about Final Fantasy X, the classic Japanese role-playing game by Square Enix.

Premise

The game’s main character is a sports star named Tidus whose technologically advanced world of Zanarkand is destroyed by Sin, a towering, indestructible leviathan. After the attack, he awakens in a world 1,000 years in the future that is culturally, religiously, and industrially dominated by the movements and occasional attacks by Sin. Tidus soon meets up with Yuna, a young summoner who uses fighting monsters called aeons to combat fiends and who is on a pilgrimage to defeat Sin. Tidus joins her as well as her guardians, Wakka, Lulu, and Kimahri. Later, the group is also joined by Auron, a warrior monk who helped the fathers of Yuna and Tidus defeat Sin ten years ago, and Rikku, Yuna’s cousin and a member of the Al Bhed, a subculture of humans who don’t agree with the way their world has come to accept Sin.

The rest of the story revolves around Yuna’s pilgrimage as well as learning the truth about what Sin is and how the rest of the world works. In the end, they learn that in order for a summoner to defeat Sin, she must first sacrifice the life of one of her companions whose soul then becomes the Final Aeon, which is then able to kill Sin. Unfortunately, the Final Aeon then turns on the summoner and kills her, ultimately leading it to becoming the next Sin and starting the cycle all over again. Upon learning this, Yuna and Tidus reject this endless cycle and together vow to find some way to defeat Sin forever.

Review

Trust me when I say that this game’s plot and storyline is much more complex than the very brief description that I’ve given here. Even after playing the game all the way through more than once, I still had to go back to Wikipedia to reread the plot to make sure I got it all right, and that’s without even mentioning the game’s many subplots, including a megalomaniac prophet trying to marry Yuna and Tidus’ struggle to escape from his heroic father’s shadow. Of course, just because a story is complex doesn’t mean it’s good. So what do I think of the game’s plot?

The central theme of Final Fantasy X seems to be life after death and what eventually happens to the souls of the deceased. Each monster or fiend that the characters fight is said to be an ‘unsent’, a person who died without the proper rites performed to allow their soul to go to the world’s afterlife or Farplane. However, some unsent souls don’t become fiends and can instead continue inhabiting their bodies to attain a sort of immortality. Still other dead souls become fayth, communal ghosts which give power to a summoner’s aeons, which are themselves also the souls of those who have died. The game never really explains this confusing and sometimes contradictory magic system, relying on emotional motivations rather than logical reasoning to explain which dead people become monsters, semi-immortal, fayth, or aeons.

In fact, a lot of the plot’s more bizarre twists and turns seem to exist because of their potential emotional impact, rather than any sort of logical reasoning. For example, there’s a scene where Yuna agrees to marry Seymour, the psychotic prophet character, despite the fact that she knows that not only did he murder his own father, but that he’s actually dead himself, since the party killed Seymour in an earlier encounter. The rest of the cast explain that by agreeing to marry him, Yuna is trying to get close enough to Seymour to send him to the Farplane, but what we eventually get is a dramatic wedding scene where Tidus and the others try to crash the wedding, fail, get captured, and are used as leverage to make Yuna marry Seymour. Yuna agrees, after which Seymour reveals that he’s going to kill Tidus and the others anyway. Upon learning that, Yuna then jumps off a cliff, only to be saved by an Aeon at the last minute as her friends escape.

So why, throughout all of that, didn’t she send Seymour? She has multiple opportunities throughout this protracted scene, but she never even tries. It’s moments like these, an unwanted marriage, the sacrifice of marrying against your will to save a friend, betrayal, attempted suicide... it’s all of these very emotionally charged screenshots that seem to drive the plot, rather than well-developed character motivation resulting in events which then trigger other events due to the characters’ reactions.

The wedding scene isn’t the only time this happens. It’s a trend that continues throughout the whole game, making it feel more like an interactive, role-playing music video than a developing story arc. But does that make it a terrible game? Not necessarily. As I said, this is a game that I’ve played multiple times, each time enjoying the beautifully realized world and engaging gameplay. Heck, I’ve sunk dozens of hours into the blitzball mini-game alone over the years. There is plenty of quality gameplay and fascinating visuals to keep rpg fans very happy for a long, long time. And as for the emotionally driven plot, many mediums rely more heavily on the human condition than a chain of events for their storylines, operas and musicals being the first examples that come to mind.

In the end, I would recommend Final Fantasy X to rpg fans who love an immersive world with solid gaming mechanics and some evocative storytelling. While it may seem overwrought at times, as long as you know what kind of gaming experience you signed up for when you started you should be able to relax and enjoy the ride all the way to the game’s poignant, powerful ending.


Thanks for reading this game story review. Leave a comment below to let me know if you enjoyed this review and if you’d like to see more game-related content in the future.