I spent about a month writing this. It's a 13k-word essay that uses a mix of humor and dramatic flair to tackle the subjects of escapism, gender, memes, philosophy, and the meaning of life or whatever, inspired by my time playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It also attempts to answer questions like "Is Marche the bad guy?" once and for all.

(It uses some experimental grammar that I have been fooling around with, but overall I think it's very easy to follow, although a long long read.)

If you read it in full, and it made you feel something, let me know either here or PM or on Mastodon or via email.

Thanks.

Community Rules

Community rules are in place not only to protect the community, but also to make it as enjoyable place for everyone who wishes to be part of it.

TL;DR

1. Be civil and respectful.
2. Mark all spoilers.
3. No spam or low-effort posts.
4. No NSFW content.
5. Keep it Final Fantasy related.

Community Rules In Full

1. Be civil and respectful

Having a civil and respectful community is vital for creating an environment for all to enjoy. The below will not be tolerated under any circumstances;

• i. Abusive language or personal attacks, whether you are the instigator or not.
• ii. Hate speech in any form, including but not limited to; racism, homophobia and transphobia.
• iii. Doxing, or witch-hunts will not only result in a permanent ban, we will report offenders to admins.

2. Mark all spoilers

Final Fantasy may have been around for 40 years, but there are still large numbers of people who are new to a particular game or the franchise as a whole. Ensuring those who are new to Final Fantasy, are also able to enjoy the games they play is important. To help with this, we have the following rules around spoilers;

• i. Spoiler protections will be enforced across all titles, no matter the age of the game. This includes oft discussed aspects, such as character deaths in FFVII and Rebirth.
• ii. Posts containing spoilers must be labelled, and titled as such.
• iii. Images that contain spoilers should be marked as such. Because Lemmy currently does not provide spoiler specific functionality, spoiler image posts should be marked as NSFW.
• iv. Remakes and Remasters are not excluded from these rules.
• v. Upon the release of a new game, a Mega Thread will be created for all discussions related to that game. For a month starting from the release date, any new discussion posts will be removed and creators will be directed to the Mega Thread. An exception will be made for artists and cosplayers as long as the content does not contain spoilers.

3. No spam or low-effort posts

Spam is the bane of any communication method, and community. Low-effort posts

• i. Advertisements, and posts with referral links will be removed.
• ii. Promotional content, or offsite promotion, outside official streams is not allowed, with the following exceptions;
  • Charity streams.
  • Videos or other content documenting events such as a Fan Fest or conference, meetings with actors, producers, or interviews.
  • Content which shows off non-standard content like glitches, errors, etc.
  • Giveaways are discretionary and must be approved by admins and moderators beforehand. Any that are not approved will be treated as spam and promotional material.
• iii. Fan created content is allowed as long as it falls inline with all other rules, with the exception of AI-generated content, which is not allowed outside of mods (e.g. Moguri Mod).
• iv. Shitposting will fall under low-effort rules.
• v. Though memes can be considered low effort, we will allow them at the discretion of mods. However, you should consider using [email protected] for meme content instead.
• vi. No "Mods, can you please..." or sidebar flavour text suggestion posts. (If you need to talk to the mods, message us.)

4. No NSFW content

BONK

5. Keep it Final Fantasy related

Off topic or unrelated content to Final Fantasy is not allowed. We include other Square-Enix titles such as Kingdom Hearts in this rule, so users should other communities such as [email protected] and any other available franchise communities.

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We (mods) reserve the right to alter and enact these rules as required. This may mean adding, changing or removing rules as the community changes.

I know it's slow around here, but zero-effort AI slop can only make this community worse.

Preview and sign up for Magic The Gathering Final Fantasy.

This is pretty wild.

I was trying to aim for “modern, present-day white mage,” with all the details that might involve. I got lots of compliments!

Full Text: > Wait, wait, wait! > Everybody calm down! > There seems to be some misunderstanding, but I'm not retiring from video game music work! > > I'm going to cut back a bit on my video game music work because I want to have more time to make the music I want to make. It would be difficult for me to take on the entire soundtrack of a video game because the time commitment for composing would be too long, but I would like to continue to work on jobs such as one theme song. > > So, we are waiting for your offer to Nobuo Uematsu con TIKI!

FANTASIAN: Neo Dimension will be his last game.

> Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet hinted that the development team had eyed up a Cloud cameo that never got approval from Square Enix. "It's difficult to comment on that," Doucet said. "We really respect the choice of each publisher."

• Features both the main game and DLCs.
• Priced at £69.99
• Standard Edition now £49.99

I have, but I'm going through the Remake trilogy and my partner is watching me complete the game. As far as I know they have somehow stayed unspoiled this whole time, so I'm going to try to keep it that way as long as I can. I'm playing Remake on Hard to remember the story and delay until my next paycheck, but will zoom through as fast as I can to get any cool stuff I missed and then jump into Rebirth.

But I'm just curious, will they still enjoy Rebirth as much as I enjoyed the original games? Or do they change too many things for the sake of the meta-narrative? They are adamant they won't play the original btw, they are watching me play for the story while on their phone, and I don't think will be able to get past the old graphics and lack of voice acting, so I suspect the "This is a sequel, just play the original game" line I keep seeing on Reddit won't fly for them.

• 🎧 Original Soundtrack: https://sqex.lnk.to/vPfoY9
• 🎧 Original DLC Soundtrack From Spire to Sea: https://sqex.lnk.to/JB75Nb

> [Notice] PlayStation®5 version of FF16 > > In response to the crashes and graphical bugs that were occurring on the PlayStation®5 version of FINAL FANTASY XVI, SIE have released a new system update. Please try downloading and installing this update.

Translated: > «Notice About PlayStation® 5 Edition FF16 Since the recent PlayStation® 5 system update, there have been reports of crashes and graphics-related issues with the PlayStation® 5 version of Final Fantasy XVI. We are currently checking the situation with SIE. We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Please wait for further updates.

An interview with the directors and producer. Here’s a few snippets that I found interesting.

> - With reports that the Remake game sales underperformed, are there plans to change the console exclusivity window for the next installment of Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy? > > KITASE: Regarding the strategy of the [console] release, there's sort of nothing we can comment on regarding that. But overall, we are looking forward to more players enjoying and playing this title. So we wish for that to happen.

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> - Is there another cinematic sequence in Rebirth that takes the crown for the greatest challenge? > > HAMAGUCHI: So actually, the most difficult scene in Rebirth, I believe, was Rufus's Inauguration Parade. > > I'll go into why. First, we had to look for a person that understands parade formations. [Someone with that experience] was very rare to find. Then, we had to find actors who could perform these various sequences. So, with both of these [requirements], we had to look and have all of them before we started motion capture. It took a while to find these people. > > An interesting story I'd like to share is that in that scene, all the soldiers, including Cloud, have guns in their hands while they're doing the parade. To mimic this, we created real gun models for all the actors to hold while doing the sequence. But then what happened is the gun models we made were so heavy, and it was impossible to move, you know, twirling around and doing all of those motions. So it became a problem. In the end, even though they made those models, they used umbrellas.

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> - What is the wildest fan theory you've seen about the trilogy so far? > > [Everyone laughs.] > > HAMAGUCHI: After the panel yesterday, we were chatting with the voice actors over dinner, and this exact topic came up, funnily enough. We were talking about Chadley, which is that character who supports Cloud in Rebirth. And we were talking about how, like, some people think that he's actually evil and will turn out to be the last boss in the final title. We were cracking up about that.

!

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Audrey Lamsam - aka @aitaikimochi shared on Twitter the full setlist for the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Concert in Yokohama. I thought people here might enjoy and want to see the list.

A number of tracks are medleys so how they appear in this list is not how they appear in OST track listings.

Part I

• The Unknown Journey Continues
• FF7 Rebirth Opening
• FF7 Main Theme Battle Edit
• A New Journey Begins, Grasslands, Junon, Mt. Corel
• Crossing the Planet, Corel Desert, Gongaga, Nibel
• Queen's Blood
• Stamp - Rebirth Medley
• Rufus's Welcoming Ceremony - A New Leader
• Costa del Sol - Fun in the Sun
• Custom Valkyrie
• End of the World Medley
• Cosmo Canyon - Sanctum of Planetology

Part II

• Bare Your Soul
• Welcome to the Gold Saucer
• LOVELESS Symphonic Suite - Gift of the Goddess
• No Promises to Keep - LOVELESS Version
• Galiant Beast
• J-E-N-O-V-A- Lifeclinger
• Sephiroth Reborn Symphony

ENCORE

• One Winged Angel - Reborn
• Aerith's Theme - Return to the Planet

If you’ve been following discussions over the past couple of days you’ll know that there are no characters, or even references to Final Fantasy in yesterdays released Astrobot.

I honestly think it’s a miss that we’ve not been able to see this representation in the game. Astrobot is a celebration of PlayStations 30 year history, and in those 30 years Final Fantasy has been a mainstay of the consoles history. We even had the Buster Sword reference in Astros Playroom, which again was a celebration of PlayStation (in addition to a controller/tech demo).

I don’t know why we’re not seeing FF in the game, whether it’s down to Square Enix, Sony or Team Asobi. But having played the game it achieves what it sets out to be, so it’s a shame that part of its history is not represented.

An interesting video detailing some of the history of a neigh impossible challenging the started life out as a “No Sphere Grid” challenge and transformed into something utterly bonkers.

The challenge combines all of these in a single run -

• No Sphere Grid
• No Summon
• No Customization
• No Overdrive
• No Escape
• No “No Encounters”
• No Blitzball

This applies to the Portal app specifically, not FFXIV.

I can’t find a public link to the announcement. You can find it in the Final Fantasy Portal app on both iOS and Android. It’s dated 26/08/2024. However for convenience, here’s a full copy of the announcement text.

> Thank you for using the FINAL FANTASY Portal App. > > Regrettably, service for the Triple Triad game within the app will be ending on November 25, 2024 at 6:00 PM PST/November 26, 2024 at 2:00 AM GMT. (Service for the FINAL FANTASY Portal App itself will not be ending.) > > The team would like to apologize to everyone who uses the app for ending this service. > > Ever since introducing the Triple Triad game to the FINAL FANTASY Portal App on August 20, 2015, we have continuously strived to improve the quality of the service. However, it recently became clear we would not be able to maintain the same standards going forward, and as a result we have decided to remove the game from the app. > > We would like to sincerely thank all of you who have enjoyed playing Triple Triad till now and apologize for having to end this service. > > ■End of Service Schedule ・Triple Triad End of Service Announcement (This Notice) 8:00 PM Sunday, August 25, 2024 (PDT) 4:00 AM Monday, August 26, 2024 (BST) > > ・End of GIL Sales (Same Time as this Notice) 8:00 PM Sunday, August 25, 2024 (PDT) 4:00 AM Monday, August 26, 2024 (BST) (Any GIL users currently possess can be spent until Triple Triad is removed from the app.) > > ・End of Service 6:00 PM Monday, November 25, 2024 (PST) 2:00 AM Tuesday, November 26, 2024 (GMT) > > ■ Item Exchange for Triple Triad Cards We will lower the required number of points to 0 for all Triple Triad cards accessible via the “Triple Triad” option under “Item Exchange” within the app until the end of service. (Please confirm that the number of points listed on the exchange screen is also “0” when exchanging points for cards.) > > There is not much time left until the end of service on Monday, November 25, 2024 (PST)/Tuesday, November 26, 2024 (GMT), but we hope you continue to enjoy playing Triple Triad until then. > > Sunday, August 25, 2024 (PDT)/Monday, August 26, 2024 (BST) FINAL FANTASY Portal App Team

> Asked if future Final Fantasy games may see a day-one release, Takai says "I think it's possible – probably even likely," before adding, "That said, the team in charge of each project gets to decide its own policy, so this is just my personal opinion." > > While Takai's thoughts are his, they align with what Square Enix has said throughout various financial briefings throughout the year. At the company's financial results for the last fiscal year, the developer spoke of a "shift from quantity to quality" as it "aggressively pursues a multiplatform strategy."