SPOILER RIDDEN!
After playing through Final Fantasy 13, I had plenty of complaints. The characters were flat, Lightning never had any sort of arc or change in mood, there was never any point where I worried about or cared about anyone in the cast except maybe Sazh since he was the only character with believable emotion. But the most offending part about FF13 was the abhorrent battle system and how it systematically removed all decision making from the user, so much so that you had to swallow the incompetence of the AI in every battle. My complaints of the poor characters, nearly non-existant villain, and terrible plot was hugely overshadowed by how much I hated the battle system.
With that in mind, imagine my surprise after playing FF13-2 which returns my most hated RPG battle system of all time and somehow manages to make me forget about that due to just how awful the story is. From the onset it is filled with contradictions. Immediately we see a character Noel go through a time gate in Valhalla and moments later is confronted with another gate exclaiming that, "he's never opened a gate before." We JUST watched you do it!
Add to that even more obvious moments where Caius explains how he just killed Lightning, then you kill Caius and RIGHT after that Noel monologues how there is no death in Valhalla.....except for those people who JUST died!!! Why fight there at all? Why is Noel so fixated on not killing anyone, specifically Caius, but if no one dies in Valhalla WHY are you concerned at all? Oh but wait, people did die...(except Caius inexplicably comes back in a secret ending).
I really wanted to like the plot of this game, I really tried. But around every corner was yet another contradiction, and more often than not they come within sentences of each other. It really makes you wonder if anyone actually read the script at all. Take this example for instance:
So the entire game Caius's main goal was to basically turn all of the real world into what Valhalla has become, a place without time or death as they constantly explain it. Ok, that's really cool and honestly well explained by Lightning near the end. (needless to say that's NOT how it ends up happening, I will explain later.) He wants to do this because he protects a character named Yuel who is a forever reincarnating future seer person. Every time the future changes she dies a little inside until eventually dying. Turning the real world into Valhalla, a place without time is a really great idea to keep her from dying all the time. He goes about it in unsavory ways of course, and well, no one really wants the world to turn into purgatory.
Anyway, here's where the facepalm comes in. Serah is bestowed this curse of Yuel at some point in the game and by the end Noel is worried she will die soon. While in Valhalla they kill Caius and Noel asks her if she's had a headache inducing future change vision. She doesn't of course. But WHY is Noel asking this? We are going on this journey for the specific purpose of stopping everywhere from becoming a place with no past or future, he KNOWS she won't see anything anyway. From Valhalla it's said you can see all time past and future anyway. PLUS no one dies here right??? So why is he so worried she'll die there???
IT MAKES NO SENSE! Why are Lightning and Caius fighting in Valhalla anyway? No one can die right? Well they can if it's convenient for plot...
What makes less sense is the end of the game of course. So Caius has the Chaos heart bestowed to the guardian of Yuel from the goddess Etro. To become the new guardian you must slay the current one and are then bestowed with the Chaos heart. At the end Noel does kill Caius....except....he doesn't get the Chaos heart....and Caius somehow is still alive and has the heart presumably in a different time?
Lightning originally explains that Caius's plan is to have Cocoon fall and kill lots of people which causes the unseen gate to open larger so more souls can pass through to Etro. With the gate open wide enough he can unleash Chaos and the curse of Valhalla to the rest of the world which all makes sci fi sense. But then that doesn't end up happening. Hope changes that future saving those who may have died from Cocoon falling. But for NO reason Caius's plan works anyway which happens because Noel stabs and kills him...in an place where there is no death.....? What just happened here?
Then they talk about how the Goddess is dead now because she resided in the chaos heart...a thing she bestows to all new guardians.....Now if this is the last remnant of her because Caius killed her in Valhalla after defeating Lightning, it doesn't make sense because Noel stabs and kills the heart in Caius right? Ok, then how/why does Caius still have the heart in the secret ending later if there's no Etro to bestow it again?
Now I am doing a lot of complaining about the begining and ending, but that's only because that's where ALL the plot lies. The remainder of the story is Noel and Serah constantly wondering if they're on the right path to finding Lightning, and talking about random paradoxes to resolve. The only moment in the game where the story has some measure of characterization is in a dream sequence, and yes, it was quite good. But when you can only pluck one good moment out of a 35 hour game means there's a lot left to be desired.
The worst part about both of these games is they never once stop and give you a moment to give a shit about any of the characters in the game. We never really know their hopes and dreams other than the really lofty ones of "fight for the future!" nonsense. This "love" story of Serah and Snow is somehow more unevolved than Squall and Rinoa from FF8. I didn't think that was possible since that love story was about a guy who doesn't express any emotion and is king of the "..." and a girl that apparently "sees" something in him which is never explained. She also had the hots for Seifer at the start of the game too, so that shows how insightful she is. Still, THIS love story is explained like a George Lucas movie, "I love you, because I love you." Written out like that shockingly has more depth than what is expressed in this game.
So we can't care about Serah, and Noel's goal is the exact same as the villain Caius who both want Yuel to be happy. Noel thinks she'd be happy dying all the time and Caius disagrees. Personally I have to side with Caius. Furthermore, SO DOES YUEL! She tells Noel and Serah to leave Caius the fuck alone at the end of the game. She also says she can't see the future anymore too, so she wasn't seeing the massive failure of the main characters where Caius does unleash his plan successfully at the end. So she's clearly not vested in what happens to the main characters. The only outcome of the main characters not intervening like she suggests, is Caius's success in making sure Yuel doesn't suffer anymore by accomplishing his plan!
WTF!!! Who's side is this bitch on? Why does Noel think he knows what Yuel wants? Is Yuel really trying to save them?
With any of these answers you have definitive contradictions. Noel is clearly trapped in a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario and this isn't explained that way. Yuel is expressing there is a successful path but there absolutely isn't. And that's fine too, that actually makes for interesting writing! The problem here is the writers probably didn't even think about that conundrum when they wrote it. That is just my speculation trying to derive sense out of this mess!
AND WHEN YOU TRY TO DERIVE SENSE OUT OF THE SENSELESS THAT'S WHEN YOU GET FAN-FICTION!
*FF13-2 = Shitty Fan Fiction*
PS - All fan fiction is shitty
OH and I almost forgot! Why does Caius kill the Goddess if he's so concerned with Yuel? The game explains that the Goddess is required for Yuels constant reincarnation! If she's dead how do we get anymore Yuels if they're all FUCKING DEAD??? FUUUCKKK THIS!
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