Final Fantasy X was one of the most successful in the Final Fantasy series, the first for
playstation 2, the first to feature voice acting, the first to do away with the much loved world map and the first of countless other things I suppose. Is it however, most importantly, the first of the
FFs to support a Catholic worldview or morality? One Catholic minded review praises the fact that the opening quest of the game is that of making a
pilgrimage to all the temples across the fantasy world of
Spira in obedience to the received religion, is this then the game to give to your younger bro to try and inspire him to come to the next
WYD or something? Let's see, let's analyse the game according to sound criteria and discover whether it is the kind of thing that will fuel a Catholic worldview and morality or whether it will mock basic morality and present false, inadequate responses to the most important questions of life. (Spoilers contained more or less throughout)
Reality of Objective Moral laws.The first section of the game could be themed "
Relativist Tidus in the religious land of
Spira".
Tidus essentially sees the world in the same way as your average young
worldling out in
Croydon on a Saturday afternoon.
Spira the land to which
Tidus is pulled into, at least to being with, seems to have rules, objective morality, hierarchical authority and religious rituals.
Tidus, the protagonist, that is, the voice of you, responds to all this with
cynicism and derision.
He joins a band of guardians protecting Lady
Yuna, a summoner, on her quest to perform a pilgrimage culminating in her self- sacrifice to temporarily destroy the wicked monster "Sin".
The obvious
baddy, Seymour, one of the religious authorities, from quite early on shows how the whole religious system and morality is in fact totally arbitrary as he is willing to tolerate the use of illicit weapons in the fight
against Sin- there is a sickening moment when he says something like "after all, using this wicked
weaponry is for the greater good and so it is fine".
Tidus agrees with his thinking and even supposedly pious
Yuna sees some sense in it. Surely if something is
intrinsically evil, it is evil regardless of the supposed good that will come from it? Indeed, ultimately no good can come of it because you offend Almighty God, the infinite Good and reference point to all that is good. The philosophy is preached loud and clear though, apparently objectively evil acts can be performed intentionally to
achieve a supposed "greater good".
Of course over time it becomes clear that the acts were not in fact evil but rather indifferent because, guess what,
Tidus and Seymour are both in fact correct- things are neither good nor bad in
Spira, the only certainty is death.
Interior Struggle to pursue the good.Many of the characters, even within the team are thoroughly nihilist- they don't accept that there is a good let alone that one needs to conquer himself in order to attain it. Before the shock revelations that the whole religion is a sham and that
Yuna has been wasting her whole life and that her supposed vocation is a sham she really embodies a noble conquest of self- the weaker side of her nature wants to cling to romance with
Tidus but the greater side overcomes and doggedly insists that she must continue to her vocation.
Divine Providence working through free will.Free will is taken as a given through the game. There is some sense of providence.
Tidus knows the game is "his story". and that he is going to end the cycle of sin in
Spira. Is
Tidus free? Is
Tidus a one off? Could other characters have been dreamed into existence to destroy Sin? The last section of the game seems to be one of
Tidus resigned to his necessary fate rather than freely being an agent in a grand story beyond him but requiring him.
Self Sacrifice for othersThe initial religious plot is quite noble. The evil monster sin can be checked for a period of time by a summoner, after having made a pilgrimage across the world, sacrificing him or herself in a one on one show down.
Yuna, the summoner in the party is undertaking this quest and is quite willing to give of her life for the people. This is wonderful and I found myself egging her on. She has a clear sense of vocation, a higher calling, that her life must be given up for the sake of others. Some of the others also seem to embody self-sacrifice-
Kihmari for example, who is clearly dedicated to his role as
Yuna's guardian and totally willing to die to allow her to fulfil her vocation.
Tidus is opposed to
Yuna's sacrifice as is
Rikku.
Yuna ought to say "get behind me Satan!" but she allows them to continue with her! Eventually the plot spins around as
Tidus realises that he is in fact some kind of character being dreamed into existence and with the death of sin the dreamer ceases to dream and he will disappear.
Tidus accepts this and
ceases to exist as sin dies. There is wonderful Orpheus and Eurydice moment as
Yuna clasps in vain at the dissolving phantasm of
Tidus!
Basic Christian Theodicy- Monotheism, Goodness of creation, understanding of eternal reward/punishment based on moral behaviour.This is where the game suffers big time, typical Square 'eh? It seems that people have souls and when they die and have a ritual
performed over them their souls go off into a spiritual world. If the ritual is not performed the individual can remain in an undead state or gradually turn into a monster. The whole problem with all this is the absolute indifference of the whole thing. Seymour the wicked
baddy dies, so does
Auron, apparently good, so does
Ject, another
baddy, so do a few other good
characters and what happens to them all? They all float of neutrally into some kind of existence- What then is the whole point of anything?! There has to be a judgement! The existence of evil, if we are able to name such a thing (and the game does name evil) demands that evil must be punished. The good and evil character cannot
indifferently drift off into eternity. Furthermore there seems to be continued existence but there is no God sustaining all of this! It is all very
soccinianist, the "soul" isn't so much immaterial as subtle matter that seems to just float off.
There is no God to whom the souls are presented before, there is no God at all. For a while we think "
Yevon" is a kind of deity who is utterly indifferent to the cries of his people but over time it becomes clear that
Yevon is not the creator at all but simply a powerful human being living inside of Sin. How can any positive worldview contemplate existence without a creator? What fools!
ConclusionFFX is in many ways
technically very good. It is probably the first in a run of new "interactive movie"
FFs where the game is made up of linearly progressing cut scenes with lots of optional side quests at the end. I have to admit that I do prefer the old style where you have the world map, the ability to jump a little ahead and the alternative of deviating into side quests at every step of the game. The towns have very little character which is a great pity, there seems no reason to return to them after they have been visited and the
NPCs are, excepting 'Cid', all pretty dull.
I really liked the battle system, totally turn based with some really tactic-based battles. I think the difficulty level was just right, the game isn't a walk over and some random encounters can cause trouble- I like that though, sometimes it is refreshing to have an enemy
successfully cast death on your whole party ;) I'm was not all that keen on the "sphere system", after a while I started wishing the game would just do all the levelling up automatically rather than giving the option of which stat to increase. It was a little tedious really.
The beauty of the graphics opens up the issue of pornography and I think at a few points the game edges close to the mark. Some characters are absolutely and ridiculously immodest even more than
Tifa in her dumb
cowgirl outfit in
FFVII ;) At one point it is suggested that Sin is a punishment for the vanity of the people. This seems totally ridiculous though as the religious authorities seem to be doing nothing to get people covered up!
Fundamentally
FFx carries a worldview that is relativistic, materialist and ultimately nihilist. The game concludes with
Yuna proclaiming that the wonderful people of
Spira can now build a wonderful peaceful world now that they have redeemed themselves from Sin. Religion was a farce and man has saved himself. It seemed very
Rousseauian, that naturally benign man was now going to have paradise on earth now that the religion has been cast aside and the external foe defeated. The real truth about sin though is that it is not some external creature that can be eradicated from the earth in a puff of smoke, no, sin is reproduced by our own wills and to some extent its seat will remain within our hearts until our wicked nature has been made anew in Christ. May the Blessed Mother form Him inside of us through grace here and now that even before the final resurrection we may live free from sin grafted totally into Christ.
I am glad that I played FFX, hopefully writing this review has engraced the act in some way ;) I wouldn't recommend it to anything more than a mature Christian who is capable of mocking the plot for what it is. There are some poisonous ideas more poisonous that Sin's toxin that can easily infect even the aveThe gameplay is really something and there are some great music tracks. Square-Enix have got some really talented guys on their staff, it is a pity, a crying pity that ultimately their games seem to be one after the next supporting godless empty philosophies that leave their depressed teenage audience utterly uninspired.
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