final fantasy 13 Launched globally 13 years ago, it has had a bit of a shaky reputation since then. The setting of nothing less than a bland hallway, an intricate plot that favors proper names, more changes to the combat system, and a hero of gold who can’t hide his inherently annoying heart define this awkward entry Legend series. No matter how correct some of these criticisms are, they overshadow one of the more complex and important stories in the series, and possibly the genre as a whole.
Final Fantasy XIII is the most daring entry in the series. It’s not about an evil government, or even a power-hungry deity who wants to shape the world in his image. Lighting’s first adventure is darker and more sinister — something no other Final Fantasy or RPG has ever attempted. It’s a case study of how easy it is for those in power to paint one group as “the other” and create a society based on prejudice, and how to make things right.
Beneath its plot twists and inexplicable name, Final Fantasy XIII is a tale of social conflict and a dictatorial regime that leans heavily on the themes of Final Fantasy VII (considering lead scriptwriter No Kazushige Shima also wrote Final Fantasy VII, perhaps unsurprisingly). The world of FF13 has two societies: Cocoon, a floating nation isolated from the world below, Gran Pulse. The Fal’Cie are minor deities whose essence provides power to the world, and they shape and guide human life. Some humans come into contact with the fa’Cie and gain Focus – a quest from the fal’Cie that they must complete. These humans are known as l’Cie, and Cocoon’s ruling power leads people to believe that Pulse and their l’Cie are evil forces trying to overthrow the social order.
The opening setup owes a lot to FF7. A train speeds along the tracks of a high-tech industrial city, bathed in a green glow, with too much surveillance and military equipment nearby for comfort. Passengers become agitated after passing a certain point, and our hero — a veteran — joins their partner — a concerned parent fighting to protect a child — into action.
Where things start to diverge is Lightning’s attitude. Cloud and the rest of the Avalanche were shocked when they realized that their actions had hurt others in Midgar, both in the slums and on their plates. Lightning has no remorse for the damage she caused, even her death, and for good reason.
I suspect that someone on the narrative team must have read Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Man Who Escaped Omelas between Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 13. The people of Midgar are passive. They might hate Shinra as much as the next ghetto dweller, but they’re trapped in the city, where there’s no hope, with those who lure and trap them.
However, everyone in the cocoon is guilty. In LeGuin’s work, Omelas is a paradise, a city of happiness and prosperity built on a dirty secret. A child must live his life in darkness, filth and misery so that the city can continue to prosper. People learn about this injustice as adults. Most people choose to live with it, to make “the other” suffer so they can be happy, though some find it so repulsive that they leave heaven behind.
Cocoon is also heaven. That’s what the ruler fal’Cie tells everyone, at least, and that with a range of fun and entertainment options to choose from, no one wants to question them. On what conditions does their happiness depend? Transporting a handful of people, l’Cie “contaminated” from another world, died during a routine purge. Cocoon’s government, Sanctum, is doing its best to convince everyone that l’Cie is inhuman, a terrible threat to order and all things good. It’s easier to believe a convenient lie and do nothing about it, so the people of Cocoon stood by and watched their neighbor die.
Passivity is a Cocoon political act with deadly consequences.
Even Lightning and her cohorts work together without question, like Final Fantasy versions of the characters from Shirley Jackson’s classic short story The Lottery. Jackson’s story takes place in a small medieval American town, an idyllic countryside with – you guessed it – a dark secret. Every year, townspeople hold a lottery ceremony to help ensure their fortunes for the next 12 months: They draw random notes, and the winning families and individuals get stoned to death. No one questioned the custom—until it affected them.
It’s too late for the heroines that Jackson is destined to fight back, but when the purge involves Lightning and a handful of others — who haven’t even been branded l’Cie themselves — they don’t leave Cocoon or Crying over his misfortune Jackson’s character does. They fight.
The problem is that Cocoon’s deep-seated corruption means that even standing up for himself can lead to more heartache.
After the opening sequence where Lightning tries to release those marked as purges, Final Fantasy 13 takes a break from the sociopolitical plot to focus on the character drama, but it picks up the narrative threads of Final Fantasy 7 again about halfway through . Just like clouds and companies. Discovering that Sephiroth is the real driving force behind Shinra, Lighting and friends learn that a cunning fal’Cie is actually the mastermind behind Sanctum, the Purge, and everything wrong with Cocoon.
Sephiroth wants to destroy the world to summon his alien mother. Barthandelus wants to destroy Cocoon and use the mass death of its population to summon The Maker. Maker is fal’Cie’s god, but even in Final Fantasy 13 lore, fal’Cie has no idea why they want Maker back, just wanting to go back to the vague golden age – at the cost of almost everyone’s life .
While Sephiroth’s attempt to summon a meteor takes center stage in Final Fantasy VII, fal’Cie’s goal in FF13 is less important than the means they use to achieve it. When Lightning and her sidekick, Pulse l’Cie, fight back at the beginning of the game, it gives Barthandelus and The Sanctum an excuse to turn Cocoon’s passivity into a burning hatred for the villain they see as a threat to their imagined paradise. Barthandelus even staged a clever political coup, depicting the cavalry, the only group in Cocoon to imply that the Temple was a problem with a rapacious terrorist group.
Ostensibly, the solution to the cocoon problem is to defeat Barthandelus and the tool he plans to use to summon the Creator—in other words, the usual Final Fantasy solution. However, defeating Kefka in Final Fantasy VI restored the world to normal, shutting down Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII saved the Earth, and killing the gods in Final Fantasy XIII only solved half the problem. The fear and hate infrastructure that the fal’Cie depended on will remain even after their downfall.
For Thunder and the other l’Cie, killing their god means destroying society, and it is their responsibility to find a new way forward among the ruins. They are dedicated to promoting knowledge and education, so people can escape their willful ignorance living under Sanctum’s rule.
Even though Final Fantasy 13 portrays all the dark sides of human society in their worst form, it ends on a note of cautious optimism, believing that people can change — as long as someone stands up to corrupt power and remakes the world. Information as important as it was in 2009.
