Line #17 Headscratchers/FinalFantasyX2


1	!! So... what exactly was the point of the intro story-wise? Why exactly did Leblanc steal Yuna's garment grid? Why did she put on a friggen ''concert'' as Yuna? What was she trying to do? I don't care if the intro was to "set the mood" of the game, this is the introduction to the story of the ENTIRE game and it's not explained why it happened in the first place!
2	** Probably she wanted to piggyback on Yuna's fame, so she stole the grid to impersonate her.
3	** Did you try playing the rest of the game? Doing something that's not very well thought-out but involves getting a lot of attention and adoration is absolutely and totally in character for Leblanc.
4	** Hmm, why ''would'' a criminal group steal something to put on an event that thousands of people would pay to see?
5	** It's spelled out later near the end of the game: Leblanc did it because she thought it would impress/draw the attention of Nooj. Presumably as part of this she would have admitted to him her role as the fake Yuna. Why she thought this would impress Nooj though is a mystery, unless it was supposed to just be the audacity of it, or because she was a former Yevonite (and had been slated to marry the son of New Yevon's leader) while Nooj led the faction which hated all things Yevon...
6	!! Why does the Celsius even need a Barkeep? There are only six people regularly on the ship (plus the occasional hitchhiker); can't they pour their own drinks?
7	** Maybe he just makes a really good martini?
8	** It's established that Yuna is really too nice for her own good. Perhaps he simply asked if he could join them and she couldn't say no?
9	** But Brother (not Yuna) found him and let him on the airship...
10	*** Maybe Brother has some Qui-Gon qualities.
11	*** Yuna is nearly famous for being selfless to a fault. Brother is always trying to impress (read: woo) Yuna. Brother saw an opportunity to show Yuna how selfless he could be to a wandering Hypello. And hey, he makes a really good martini. Too bad nobody gives a crap about him enough to ask his name...
12	** In Grand Gullwing Tradition, he was a hitchhiker too who just sort of stuck around.
13	!! Why are there Fiends in the Farplane? Isn't that the point of a Sending, so that these spirits can be put to rest and ''not'' become Fiends?
14	** Was it ever stated where the pyreflies of fiends you kill go? Maybe they flee to the farplane and merge into bigger fiends.
15	** If Shuyin was able to corrupt ''Aeons'', I don't think corrupting normal spirits into fiends is gonna be a problem...
16	!! If Vegnagun has been chilling under Bevelle since the Machina war and the Maesters knew about it then how come they never used it against Sin? It has the power to wreck the planet so why not aim it at Yu Yevon's space whale and permanently erase Zanarkand's memory?
17	** Because they don't think Sin can be defeated.
18	** Maechen mentions this in Chapter 5 - the fact that Vegnagun can't detect friend from foe once activated made it too dangerous. Besides, even if they brought down the damn thing, as long as Yu Yevon escaped unharmed (which face it, is a pretty small target) he could eventually reform Sin.
19	** It was a control thing. During the days of Sin, Yevon controlled nearly all of Spira. People prayed to Yevon hoping to "atone" for their past sins in the hope that Sin would go away. They attempt to destroy Sin with a huge machina, it's a lose-lose situation for them. Sin is destroyed, they lose control of the people. Sin isn't destroyed, they're exposed as hypocrites for betraying their own teachings.
20	!! Shuyin thinks that he can end the Machina War by jacking Vegnagun and turning it on Bevelle. Thing is, he's absolutely right. Why did Lenne stop him? She's from Zanarkand too and as a summoner it's very likely that she's a part of Zanarkand's army so why does she care if her boyfriend annihilates them? Finish off Bevelle then fly back to Zanarkand and give Shuyin a Medal.
21	** There's a difference between wanting to protect your home city and wanting to commit ''genocide''. Lenne is not a sociopath and doesn't want to see any more bloodshed spent.
22	*** This. There's every indication that while Yuna and Lenne were spiritually almost identical, including being very gentle souls that don't even really want to see their enemies get hurt, Shuyin was a bit of a violent bastard and not a lot like Tidus at all. Tidus seems to be a heavily idealized version of Shuyin... and by "heavily idealized" I mean they seem to have wholly excised the part of his personality that would lead him to see "committing small-scale genocide" as an acceptable alternative to allowing his girlfriend to die, since I don't recall him ever trying to blow up part of Spira to save Yuna.
23	*** Tidus (and his group) killed the only known way of slowing Sin down. Had his plan of singing at Sin not worked for whatever reason, all of Spira would be doomed. That would count as committing genocide in my book.
24	** Also, Vegnagun has a mind of its own, and could not distinguish friend from foe, which is why it was never used. He may have only wanted to destroy Bevelle (at first), but it might not have stopped there.
25	*** That's why it wasn't used to level Zanarkand in the first place.
26	!! Why does Tidus revive now? The fayth trolled him two years ago about how he is going to disintegrate regardless of what happens. Now, the fayth shows up at the last second explaining he can revive him... To make it more ridiculous it's up to Yuna to decide and it would be completely selfish to say no.
27	** The PowerOfLove?
28	** Perhaps the Fayth had the power all along but they weren't allowed to use it. After all, if word got out then there would be an uproar of desperate people trying to have their loved ones brought back to life. Yuna saves the world twice and does it completely selflessly. The fayth figure she deserves a reward and ask her if she wants Tidus revived. Also bear in mind Shuyin corrupted the Fayth and had them attack innocent people. Perhaps they want to make it up to Yuna for forcing her to kill them '''again'''.
29	** Or maybe Shuyin or Vegnagun's reassembling the Aeons gave the Fayth the idea/convinced them it was possible.
30	** A twisted version of the OneSteveLimit, Tidus could only exist as a dream while Shuyin existed as a ghost. so once he was defeated/banished, the faith/pyreflies could use the resources it was alocating to both forms to focus on one. thereby making him ARealBoy.
31	** The Fayth have had ''two years'' of sleep at this point. They've probably gained enough energy to wake up and dream again. And they didn't tell Yuna they might be able to resurrect Tidus in the future because that would've interfered with her grieving process.
32	** Less of a troll and more that the Fayth likely didn’t predict they’d be ripped out of their dreamless sleep in the matter of a couple of years by a pissed off ghost. They couldn’t really hand out the option at the time since the dream had to end to get rid of Sin. Bringing back one person for a few decades because you got woken back up a little bit later isn’t really a turn around so much as this is actually an option now, seems likely that the current version of Tidus would only need to be sustained by a single Faith anyway(probably Bahamut’s since he gave the option).
33	!! Okay, in the opening FMV, it's Leblanc and not Yuna performing the concert, because she stole the Songstress Dressphere, right? So where in ''creepy stalker lesbian Hell'' did Leblanc get a dressphere to imitate Yuna's ''summoner'' outfit, let alone her actual full appearance...?
34	** She stole the whole Garment Grid. That's why she's able to impersonate Yuna. Presumably the Songstress Dressphere was the only one she had. Yuna was wearing her Summoner outfit when she first acquired the Grid (as the "Eternal Calm" prologue confirms). So when Leblanc put on the Grid with no Dressphere in it, that was the default outfit. She was spherechanging into the Songstress for the first time. I know the "Bare" Dresspheres would contradict this but that's only in the International and Last Mission editions.
35	** I always figured it was just a really good disguise Leblanc pulled off, and the Songstress dressphere allowed her to sing competently. In the HD remaster version, they didn't fix Fake!Yuna's face during the intro, making it look a bit like a mask. My two cents...
36	!! How on earth did Lenne’s spirit or ...whatever get inside the Songstress dressphere? Most of the other dresspheres don’t have someone’s soul stuck in them, only their memories of training to be a thief/warrior/whatever, and that lets the person equipping the dressphere to act as if they were trained in that discipline. So why is Lenne the exception?
37	* I think because Lenne was a summoner, she may have had an idea of the process. So she became a quasi fayth that bonded with the sphere instead of a statue - as she seemed to be able to leave and go to the afterlife at will.
38	* She was also an unsent. She did die a sudden and violent death, and maybe she sensed that Shuyin hadn't moved on either. She was sustained by her obsession - which was for him to join her in the afterlife - and maybe went into the sphere to prevent herself becoming a fiend.
39	!! Who thought it would be a good idea to create something like Vegnagun? Strong enough to destroy all of Spira in one go, artificially intelligent but not to the point where it's smart enough to tell friend from foe? Separately, why are its controls a piano?
40	** The side opposing a group that thought "giant indiscriminate fishmonster holding our dead in purgatory" was a good idea - it’s pretty clear both sides of the war were both extremely desperate and completely, stupidly insane at that point regarding weapons development. The difference is, the ones who built Vegnagun were smart enough to realize that maybe they shouldn't activate such a poorly designed overpowered WMD, while the other side ''did'' activate their fishmonster and the rest is history.
41	** Think about what the human race did in the 20th century--we created weapons powerful enough to destroy most living things on the world. The Vegnagun situation on Spira is reminiscent of the Doomsday Device in the movie Dr. Strangelove. Can't help you regarding the question about why it is controlled by a piano, though.
42	*** Fishhook swords. A regular flute being nearly as useful in battle as an InfinityPlusOneSword. Keyblades. Why is the WMD operated by pipe organ? Because Square Enix, that's why.
43	** Zanarkand was using summoners on the front lines. Vegnagun was created presumably to deal with an army of Aeons that could destroy any of their regular machina in minutes.
44	!! Why was Shuyin's spirit locked in the Den of Woe, with presumably no way out besides through possessing people? Theories come down to he was buried/killed there, but Vegnagun was clearly in Bevelle, and he and Lenne were shot right in front of it. Why would his body be buried in a random cave that's nearly the half the map of Spira away from Bevelle?
45	** You ask why, I ask why not? They weren't just going to leave Shuyin and Lenne's corpses lying in front of Vegnagun. It was probably some sort of cover-up. Famous blitzballers don't just randomly turn up dead after visiting Bevelle, so maybe he just "went missing".
46	** Alternatively, a summoner tried to Send him and it went wrong somehow (he was playing Vegnagun's piano...thing shortly before, after all), so they just stuck his spirit in a really remote location and put magic seals on it and whatnot.
47	!! Alright Maechen, how did you manage to forget that you're dead and that you've been wandering Spira as an unsent for about a thousand years?
48	** Senility?
49	*** Probably an effect of being Unsent for so long, he managed to keep his humanity by clinging to the purpose of gathering knowledge but eventually forgot everything else that wasn't conducive to that purpose. Mika likely did not have that problem because he was relatively "young" compared to Maechen while Yunalesca, being a Summoner, knew how to maintain her identity after death...or did she?
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51	!! Why were Logos and Ormi counting the bodies in the Den of Woe? Furthering that, how many soldiers were involved in the operation in the first place?
52	* The same reason the Crimson Squad had to go into hiding. The Den operation was a ruse so Yevon could get rid of troublesome soldiers by sending them to die, and they wanted to make sure no survivors had escaped. So they told some mooks, "Hey, go count the corpses here and tell us how many there are", so they could compare that number to the amount of soldiers deployed.
53	!! If Shuyin wants to destroy the world, why did he not take a more direct route instead of “subtly influence Nooj for two whole years to find a superweapon that might not even exist anymore”?
54	* What "more direct route" was there?
55	** Influencing Nooj into finding the damn sphere quicker and not letting him sit in his tent and angst about how he wants to die?
56	** And who says he's able to do that? Just because he takes more direct control ''at the end'' does not mean he could have done so at any time.
57	*** He took direct control when he had Nooj shoot Baralai and Gippal, which was soon after the Crimson Squad investigated the Den of Woe. So clearly it wasn’t just at the end.
58	** Fair enough. But that doesn't necessarily imply that he could take direct control for long periods of time; he could take control in that place -- where his soul was -- for that particular thing, but he may not have been able to fully possess him and act for a length of time that you're expecting.
59	*** Wasn’t the cutscene where he shoots Baralai and Gippal outside of the Den of Woe? IIRC there was a short amount of time where Nooj was acting out of it during the investigation itself, and the other two (three if you count Paine) told him to snap out of it. Then the scene where Nooj shoots Baralai and Gippal is actually outside the Den of Woe.
60	*** It's been a decade and a half since I played it, so maybe. Point is, him making him do a thing once does not imply that he could take direct control for long periods of time whenever he wants.
61	*** ''Last Mission'' clarifies that Shuyin could only control Nooj briefly and once Nooj snapped out of the control, he helped to save those he had just shot, though he didn't understand why he had done what he had done.
62	** Shuyin didn't seem able to influence anyone while trapped in the Den of Woe, so he didn't possess anyone until the Crimson Squad was in there. He went to Nooj because he was a DeathSeeker and therefore easier to manipulate. And I'd say that being an Unsent for over a thousand years probably dulls his perception of time a bit - so the two years between the two games must have been a drop in the bucket. I think maybe returning to the site of his death might have given him a burst of power - hence why he activates in Nooj and possesses Baralai once they're in the Bevelle Underground. Once he had that power and control, he was able to activate Vegnagun.
63	!! A minor one - if Shuyin and Maechen are around the same “age” in terms of their existence as Unsent, why is Maechen the only one forgetting things? If it’s related to how old the person is when they die, then why did Maester Kinoc from X not have any memory problems?
64	* Shuyin ''has'' forgotten things, like his entire damn conscience. It's just that he hasn't forgotten anything related to the plot, because he's been stuck reliving that one memory of being shot in Bevelle all this time. Outside of his capacity as the BigBad, he probably has no memories at all.
65	** Shuyin has become like Yu Yevon, who lost all humanity and was sustained only by his 'programming' to operate Sin.
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67	* Why did the creators of Vegnagun never use it against Sin? It would seem to me that using the continent-destroying superweapon against the local equivalent of Godzilla would be the smart thing to do in order to prevent all the mass destruction and chaos that Sin was causing. We see in one of the flashbacks that Vegnagun's main weapon is unbelievably powerful and capable of planetary-level destruction, so it would seem ideal for taking out Sin and Yevon.
68	** Several reasons. First of all, it is highly unpredictable. Once it is activated it can't distinguish between its enemies. So they might make it go after Sin but it could turn around and destroy the rest of Spira. Also it's been hidden underneath Bevelle for over a thousand years so very few people knew about it. And also Yevon have been spouting the "machina are bad" laws for years. If Sin doesn't get destroyed then they're exposed as hypocrites.
69	** Not to mention that by the time the religion of Yevon was established, they didn't really want Sin to be killed forever.
70	** Because Vegnagun could easily prove to be worse than Sin. Sure, they could destroy Sin with it, but they might destroy the whole world in the process. CrossingTheStreams is something you simply do not attempt- Sin may kill a lot of people, but at least there will be survivors, which there might not be after Vegnagun's rampage is over.
71	*** Putting it another way: Sin is manageable. Send Summoners to be a form of sacrifice; bam, a few years of peace. Vegnagun could theoretically permakill Sin, but especially for people like those of Yevon, they'd rather deal with a practical natural disaster on-off and force summoners to sacrifice themselves for peace than unleash what is essentially a potential nuke: if it doesn't go how you want it, well... the world ends.
72	* Why is Shuyin's spirit stuck in the Den of Woe? Initial theories pretty much came down to 'he was buried/killed there.' No, Vegnagun was in Bevelle, and he and Lenne were shot right in front of it. Why would they bury the guy in a cave that's nearly 3/4 of the entire map of Spira away?

Context Headscratchers / FinalFantasyX2