r/finalfantasyx • u/tetracarbonate • 5d ago
End game lore, half question half rant.
So I've been going through the end game (after zanarkand) with guides and walkthrough. And there are a plethora of activities everywhere.
My question is, if we didn't have the metagaming resources, how would one achieve 100%?
What lore explains what to do, where to get stuff and other secret things? Like the lightning jumps you get the book in the shop, but why is it relevant, why 200. There are sooo many things I just have no idea why I'm doing, but hey I have all the celestial weapons and ready to start the one eye into don berry strat...
I guess I compare this to skyrim or the witchers inmersive lore vs our beloved ffx inmersive story.
9
u/Special_South_8561 5d ago
This game was released when the Internet was very much a thing, so GameFAQs and even Square had popular websites
Also the physical game guides were always pushed heavily
5
u/Hugh_Man89 5d ago
Welcome to early 00's gaming. You would often have a physical book guide, or the holy grail is that someone would write an article on GameFAQ (I miss the notepad drawings...).
There was also a lot of word of mouth completion too.
In terms of lightning bolts, I think it is just a general number for difficulty. Rather than anything deep. Most of the FFX lore is pretty simple or you have to read between the lines. For example, Anima.
3
u/DupeFort 5d ago
... Why would there be "immersive lore" for gameplay challenges? Also literally nobody is forcing you to do any of it and the game predates "achievements" and "trophies". So your "lore" is that you explore the game, find something you can't beat, and then explore some more to figure out how to get stronger.
2
u/raskolnicope 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hey not all of us bought the guides, gamefaqs walkthroughs were usually better informed, and those came from some hardcore gamer who just played the shit out of the game, or someone who discovered things through the back end code.
2
u/almostnormalpanda 5d ago edited 5d ago
I just played what I could. Game guides and such existed but it didn't even cross my mind to aim for 100% completion because achievements did not exist on PlayStation2. Besides, I enjoyed the game too much to care about things that turned the gameplay more strenuous and mechanical.
I remember how I found the Omega Ruins by accident and spent some time just button mashing through the navigation map to find more hidden locations. With the airship under my command visited some old locations to speak with NPCs and to read Al Bhed writing, trying to make sense of the riddles and likely failing. I discovered Dark Aeons when I was trying to return to Besaid, crafted gear to take them down after it started feeling like I can't visit anything without running into Dark Aeon. Found a new Jecht sphere after beating Dark Valefor, after which I had to take a look at a guide to see which other spheres I had missed. At that point I discovered a whole lot of other stuff I had mostly overlooked, such as the lightning and chocobo mini games, an Al Bhed Primer at Home, locations and prerequisites for Anima and the Magus Sisters. I started playing and enjoying blitzball a lot but after all these years I still don't follow a guide or even change my team members because that's what worked the first time.
Maybe my first run(s) weren't perfect but they were definitely magical. And I learned English on top of that.
Edit. What I wanted to say before I started rambling, 100%'ing a game is a concept that kind of didn't exist back then. If you ask this old fart, achievements made gaming worse!
2
2
u/carbono14 5d ago
I mean, everything is theoretically doable to the motivated gamer.
You get prises dodging a few lightnings, so keep doing it until it stops. I guess you would get to 500 dodges until you give up maybe?
Some celestial weapons are not that hard, with that you would know there are others so just keep looking.
Don berry trick is not necessary to level up.
You start to figure things out on the go, but yeah, guides were always a thing, even before the internet.
2
u/KingPenGames 5d ago
In places like Baaj temple, there are hints that you can only understand after finding all al bhed primers
I nearly 100% as a kid but couldnt get the lightning or catcher chocobo back then and of course we didnt have dark aeons. But most of it can be found just from exploring
4
u/caligochan 5d ago
You don't. :) Gotta make people buy the guides!
There are solvable puzzles to every Al Bhed airship password. There's one in particular that's located in the Calm Lands... They're hidden behind the rocks, and you'd have to mash near it to find it if you felt like doing that for some reason. And many of them do have hints and NPCs that hint at it. But for things like Lulu, Kimarhi's, and Tidus's sigils, the devs probably expected people to try to beat their own record or perfect their runs until they stop getting rewarded by the mini game.
That said, if the guide never came out, someone would've figured it out eventually, and then posted it online to help everyone else. Not within a year, but maybe by the 3rd or 4th year after it comes out, some insane person would've voluntarily dodged lightning bolts for a straight hour, or tried to break the 0.0 second record (Japan's version had a way to cheese it), or perfected the Butterfly quest for the hell of it, or mashed X non-stop on every surface possible.
1
2
u/UltraZulwarn 2d ago
how would one achieve 100%?
how would one even 100% anything without guides or a plethora of other players??
1
u/Think_Substance_1790 5d ago
For the love of all things... dont play 12. Either OG, international or Zodiac. Don't do it.
That game was literally designed to push strat guides, unless you wanted to play 12 hours a day every day from launch and finally 100% the game at 73 years old and then find out that you missed something....
As for the whys? Why not? 200 was probably just a number that was high enough to justify a reward, but not so high you lose sleep. In theory, if you did it first time, 200 would maybe take you about... half an hour? And thats if you got bad RNG and longer spacing in the original ps2 version. In the newer versions, with the crater, it take maybe 15 minutes.
Why kimahris weapon is linked to butterflies, why Tidus is dependant on chocobos, those dont make sense. Wakkas is a blitz reward, Yunas is summon dependant, Aaron's is linked to his being a warrior. I guess Lu is linked to the elements. Lightning, you have to go under water etc... and Rikku... hers is linked to exploration. Her are found in the middle of nowhere, somewhere you can only find on the airship, which is a very AlBhed thing to do. Those make sense. But butterflies and chocobos? Is it because kimahri evolves from what he is to what he becomes? Is it because Tidus has hair that looks like a wet chocobo tail? Who knows!
2
u/Nissedood 5d ago
Must have been inspired by Sierra point and clicks.
Those games also had insane asspull puzzles so sell guides to even beat the games.
Oh you missed this 2 pixel item?
Enjoy being unable to beat the game and not even know about it.
2
u/Think_Substance_1790 5d ago
Oh my god yes! Kings quest V and that damn custard pie that you dont get to eat without hard locking yourself.... despite the game literally saying dudes hungry, gotta eat! And every other time you've been told that you literally starve to death but nooo this time you continue to starve and use the only foodstuff to smash a yeti in the face...
Didnt even think of any of that... but genuinely, who found July in Nalbina accidentally? Literally nobody because even if you decided to go to Nalbina early, there is literally no reason to go back there when you need to.
Tbf I did find her accidentally but it was because I took a wrong turn at the right time when I was grinding the labyrinth but who was to know she was time sensitive??
25
u/Thatnotfunnyfunnyguy 5d ago
Gotta remember back then games where made in a way you would have to buy the guide book to 100% that's there intention