History Headscratchers / FinalFantasyIX

*** My mistake, I misread that as "Princess Schneider" at first. It's been about a decade since I played the game.

*** My mistake, I misread that as "Princess Schneider" at first. My mistake, it's been about a decade since I played the game.

*** I was talking about Baku declaring Steiner as 'Prince Schneider' when he came out of the trapdoor. There's no other female roles in the story. Of course 'Prince Schneider' might have been an offscreen character the whole time, much like Romeo's first crush Rosaline in the original RomeoAndJuliet.

* In the first performance of 'I Want to be your Canary', who was going to play the role of Prince Schneider if Steiner never interfered? There's nobody left in Tantalus and Ruby obviously had the role of Princess Cornelia...
** It's not unheard of for actors to pull double-duty in a performance. Ruby could've played both. Or one of the other Tantalus members could've crossdressed (also not unheard of).

* In the first performance of 'I Want to be your Canary', who was going to play the role of Prince Schneider if Steiner never interfered? There's nobody left in Tantalus and Ruby obviously had the role of Princess Cornelia...

* The chocobo-wrangler Moogle slaps an 8-item limit on your treasure-digging game because "I'll go out of business"... makes one wonder how many runaway chocobos he's been fielding up till then. What, do they each dig up a different set of Chocographs and unlock unknown colors like cheetah-prints or rainbow-colored Chocobos with the ability to run, like ten seconds backward and forward in time or scale only cliffs facing south or something?

*** Now I'd protest, I can quite remember at least a few times where Vivi is considered "just a boy" by passers-by, but then again my memory isn't the best. I, myself, also assumed that until I played Final Fantasy Tactics, where a common human Squire can become a Black Mage, complete with the spooky face(see also FinalFantasy IJBM entry).

**** Well they probably didn't have a choice on what fighting style would come out(plus the BMs are partially based off of Kuja who is by all means an offensive magician). Why would you suggest summoners, when plot wise only a specific group of people could summon AND are all dead? Plus then they'd have to create summons since no summon can have a pact with 2 summoners.
** As for creating summoners, that goes counter to Garland's wishes. It was commanded to wipe out the Madain Sari villiagers, creating summoners would defeat the purpose of having comitted that genocide.

** I always assumed that in FF 9, Black Mage faces really ''were'' just black balls with eyes. Remember, they're not human, but rather magical constructs derrived from "a cauldron of souls", as Kuja put it. And hatched fully grown from eggs by machine.

* Why is it that Vivi only really learns about death from No.288? when he is seeded early on in the game, '''before he gets to the black mage village''' he asks Blank "will I die?" So why doesn't he he know what death is in the village. is it {{PlotInducedAmnesia}}?

* {{Rebochan}}: Why the hell is Rinoa Heartilly one of the most hated character in the franchise and Garnet not? Rinoa makes you take one 5 minute detour so she can do something stupid and got caught by the villain thus requiring a quick rescue that doesn't change the fate of anyone or anything. Garnet makes you get one of your allies get turned to stone and puts all of your lives in danger, all to escape her mother with a crappy kidnapping attempt she organized for herself that she actually tries to *flee* from and thus make it harder...than suddenly decides her mother was really a nice person that would stop being a genocidal murderer if she asked nicely instead of the evil scary monster that she put you all through hell and back to rescue her from...then ungratefully poisons everyone in the party so she can go home and get captured again and placed in the evil ceremony that she was escaping from in the first place, thus getting even more people killed by her stupidity and ultimately giving the villains the weapons they use for the majority of the game to slaughter as many people as possible. And the player has to actually follow her through hours of gameplay of getting her to the damn castle and rescuing her. And nobody ever calls her out for it. We're actually supposed to feel ''sorry'' for her.

** This is just my opinion, but I think it's because Rinoa's major developments involve her doing ''extremely'' stupid and naive things, and even if being ignorant and naive are legitimate character flaws, it means that the player has to pilot Squall around so he can go and babysit her, and it doesn't endear her to most people. None of her development matters to the player unless the player themselves cares about her, and a lot of people didn't. At the start of the game, you're off doing missions and being a mercenary and doing exciting, important stuff... and then Rinoa joins your party, and you have to hold hands with the three-member playtime-resistance movement she started because she wanted to make her mean ol' daddy mad, and then you have to do a dungeon crawl for the explicit purpose of apologizing for saying mean things to her, and then you have to rescue her because she assumes that a Sorceress wouldn't know what an Odine bangle is even after she's been told that's a bad idea... and that's just the ''first disc''. Garnet is ''inept'', but she's not immature about it; she's naive, but she ''tries'', and pursues her goals with as much dignity and strength as she can manage. She's also from a much more sympathetic background-- Garnet has a terrible, monstrous mother, and eventually has to face the fact that everything she thought she knew about herself was a lie. Rinoa is a spoiled brat who rebels against her father for no reason besides Bratty Teenage Girl Syndrome, but is happy to spend his money to pimp out her train car and hire SeeDs to beef up her toy LaResistance. Garnet was probably the more cliche'd of the two, but at least she wasn't someone we would probably not be able to take seriously in real life.

** Considering that the world of FF9 is filled with all sorts of weird demihuman like things, I always figured that it wouldn't stand out. I mean Baku has rabbit ears, for god sakes.

***** That's not a bad theory, but it's speculation! Considering how a lot of weird arcane stuff in FF9 is just part of the setting and never explained, there's no telling WHERE Zorn and Thorn most definitely came from.
***** Stay too long in the Mist? Is this a [[GuideDangIt GuideDangIt]] I've missed?

** I always figured Terra as used to being something similar to Midgar of FF7, just planetwide. Maybe a bit more magic/bright-colored oriented but basically the same. Which of course explains in the first place why Terra died in the first place.

* ATEs. What's the point? On the one hand, its definitely a good idea to give players the option of how they want to experience the game. They can either sit around and watch the characters get involved with comical scenes, or just skip to the next playable portion. But the problem is that ''most scenes in this game are unskippable''. For example, when you return to Alexandria at the start of Disc 3, you're subjected to approximately two hours of inaction, 90% of it is unskippable, as those scenes are not ATEs. There's an Eiko scene that's an ATE, but then its followed by a Garnet scene that isn't. Both scenes are equally detached from the characters you're directly controlling, but one scene is mandatory while the other is optional, for no reason at all. I simply do not understand why this system was even implemented or what purpose its supposed to serve if not to streamline the game a bit. Then there are the occasional grey-font ATEs, which you ''have'' to watch, making the entire ATE system a complete joke. Also, would it hurt them to warn us if a scene is either an interesting one with Vivi or a lame unfunny one with Quina? No wonder they never came back in any other game.

<<|ItJustBugsMe|>>

**** Well, the thing is, they are a similar device, through two completely different framing devices. The themes of FFVIII and FFIX, as I have heard told, through rather compelling means, are realizing one's maturity level, and realizing one's true nature and becoming the mask one makes for oneself. Rinoa believes herself to be competent and mature enough to lead her resistance to stop what she feels to be a great injustice, and is soon proven to be not even close. However, as she fights on, and struggles, she finds the strength she thought she had, as she develops, and matures. Dagger, on the other hand, is at the very least somewhat aware of her sheltered upbringing and naive nature, however, she dons the mask of the action princess to help stop an atrocity. However, for much of the game, for all her actions, she even admits that everyone is a step ahead of her, and she is varying degrees of helpless. Hoever, much like her predecessor, as she fights, and learns about herself and the world around her, she grows into the role she cast for herself. Both are women of nobility (after a fashion, with Rinoa) trying to act for the greater good in the only way they feel they can...under a veil of naivete and wholly unprepared for the brutality that awaits them when they do face it.

** The ATE's really give a lot of characterization. We get to see the characters run around outside of their interacts with other party members and how they feel. It works a lot better than having the teammates just say things