Final Fantasy Tactics/Headscratchers


 * So was Saint Ajora a man or woman? The Japenese FFXII Clan Primer and Ultimania call Ajora a Holy Woman.
 * I always assumed the real Ajora had been a woman in life, and that the fact that the Glabados Church believed Ajora to have been male was a cynical comment on how religious legends are changed and rewritten, yet are always held up as immutable sacred "truths'.
 * Occam's Razor would imply that he is male, because the Germoink Scriptures, which were contemporary to Ajora's life, state him to be male. Also, FFT's Ajora wasn't even a holy person to begin with.
 * Actually, is probable "he" is a woman mistranslated as a man in the ocidental version. The new(and more accurate) translation of Final Fantasy Tactics eliminates all the gender-exclusive terms to Saint Ajora less "he"-that is not different of "she" in Japan(Gives a look in the third paragraph of Gender Neutral Writing and Pronoun Trouble)Also, "he" only be male needs a explanation to "he" be called of woman in FFXII.
 * I should point out that the aforementioned Ultimania doesn't actually say the two Ajoras mentioned are indeed the same person.
 * In either case, in Final Fantasy Tactics in the ending Ajora appears reencarnated in a woman and linked to the female sign and cases of Crystal Dragon Jesus being female are not uncommom. If "he" not receives any male-exclusive pronoun or a male-excusive term describing "him" in the japanese version, i guess is more likely St.Ajora be female in Japan.
 * A dummied-out portrait of Ajora's true face exists... and it looks male to some people and female to others.
 * See the portrait here.
 * That portrait does appear during the game, in the reincarnated Ajora's dialog boxes. It's a modified Alma sprite. Is there another portrait which was dummied-out?
 * Not the first, but the one at the end of the article. Taking on account the general design of males and females, I'd suppose it's a young man.
 * What happened to Queen Ruvelia and Prince Orinas?
 * Ruvelia's profile indicates after a certain point that she was imprisoned on suspicion of killing her husband. Delita is not likely to have released her once he gained power. The Prince... well, if this Medieval European Fantasy is anything like real medieval Europe, no ruler in their right mind would have a possible rival hanging about, so draw your own conclusions...
 * All There in the Manual, in-game at least, says the prince becomes a fugitive, settling down in Romanda...
 * At least in the PSP version, after the battle in the garrison the Queen's profile indicates that during the confusion she disappeared. Whether she was killed or escaped is not stated (as Alazlam Durai, who's the author of the profiles, doesn't know).
 * Did the other Zodiac Stones have demons in them?
 * Probably, but they seem able to "possess" only a few specific people. What's more, Malak was saved by his sister's honest wish for him to survive, so the stones must be similar to The One Ring, wanting to grant power and corrupt but otherwise inert on their own.
 * It seems more likely to me that the Stones have power of their own in addition to the presence of the Lucavi within them, or that the Lucavi only responds to particularly evil or despairing personalities.
 * My own theory is that the Zodiac Stones can connect to either Heaven or Hell, and which it does depends on a person's qualities. Since there's a lot more corrupt people than pure-hearted ones, Hell is the more common result. The Lucavi don't possess the Stones at all; they're just a convenient bridge.
 * The above seems to be the accepted truth, considering the fate of
 * Speaking of which, Rafa grieving Marach's death caused the stone she was holding at the time to grieve with her and then give Marach a convenient case of resurrection. Being that the stones reflect their owners and Ramza most definitely realizes their power, why the fuck doesn't he use them for good ends?
 * FFXII seems to confirm it in a crossoverific way: now we know the names of the rest of the Lucavi, asuming they are the same and in the same Ivalice: Chaos, Zeromus...
 * Actually, their names were already known. The 'wheel' graphic that is used as the background for some screens in the game has the names of the Lucavi written around it corresponding to their zodiac signs. And no, they don't match up with the FF 12 Summons (Pisces is listed as Leviathan, for example).
 * But in their back stories none of them(excluding Adremelech/Adramelk, Zeromus, and Zalera {Ultima was borderline}) were actively evil(not even Chaos). Though we should be thankful that only one who didn't even show any signs of aggression(throughout any of the Ivalice based games) was Zodiark.
 * Why did Delita persist in manipulating the various characters even though it was that sort of evil planning that got his sister killed?
 * Because Teta's death broke his idealism so badly that he's become too Genre Blind to realise that he's turned into what he hates.
 * He seemed to realize quite well what he was, actually. His experiences showed him that he'd be forever a pawn to higher powers unless he beat them at their own game, and that's exactly what he set out to do. And did.
 * What did Delita mean when he said that Teta saved him?
 * Most likely she had just enough strength left to shield him from the explosion with her own body, or that's just the way the blast caused it to happen.
 * No, I thought it was pretty obvious: He meant that she saved him from a fate like hers, that is, living and dying as a tool and being manipulated by others. She made him realize that he needed to gain power himself if he wanted to survive and avoid her fate.
 * Original japanese version used a word that can only translate to actual physical protection. So that implies the other response is the more accurate.
 * Perhaps both.
 * What did Ramza get? The ending of the game is at first Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies. Then Olan gets to see Ramza and Alma riding by at the cemetery, with nobody else around to witness. Then there are now-king Delita's last words.
 * His sister. All of Delita's machinations to become a king (And thus have power in both it's mundane sense and over his own destiny) were created by the loss of his sister and his inability to save her; thus making him determined never to let such an event to happen to him again. While on the other hand, Ramza explictly lost everything but his sister.
 * Also, I'd rather be ruled by Delita (Who never striked me as a bad leader, just not someone you want to employ) than the Knights Templar using the power of Lucavi to rule the world. Essentially, Ramza gets boned, but he does save the world.
 * It seems to me that what Ramza got was what Delita wanted at the end: the freedom to be whoever he wanted to be. Everyone in the game was railroaded into their roles; everyone was using or being used by other people for their own purposes, trying to reach their inevitable goal. Ramza, however, was unique in that he rejected his role and chose another one. When that role (hero) was complete, he left it all behind, with the freedom to chose a new path in life, something that Delita would never have. More emphemeral, but I think more satisfying: Ramza defied everything to do what he wanted, and came out worse off in history, but better off in his own personal satisfaction. I doubt Delita ever really cherished his throne, while Ramza probably loved every minute of his life after the game.
 * This is almost certainly what we're supposed to take from the ending. An important point (mentioned above on the page, as well,) is that Delita has long since turned into a symbol for the system that breeds people like Algus and got his sister killed, and, worse, has done so while seeing the world for what it really is instead of blind belief in religion or noble blood like everyone else. His stance of looking out for number-one came about because he believed there was no other way to live in the world around him, but Ramza proved him wrong by choosing to follow his morality instead of playing the same game. An interesting way to think about it: if Delita's final line continued instead of fading out where it did, it probably would've been, "Ramza, what did you get? I got nothing." (This also makes the "Are Ramza and Alma and everyone dead" stuff completely irrelevant to this subject. It wouldn't matter in the slightest.)
 * Assuming that wasn't the ghost of Ramza and Alma seen in the end, which would still leave the answer mostly the same: Ramza got what Delita didn't- to live a hero, and to die a hero.
 * If it was their ghosts, why would they be riding chocobos? And the credits of the PSP version, at least, clearly show the two of them stopping at a stream to get water. Again, if it was their ghosts, they wouldn't need water.
 * I think a better question than "why would they need water if they were ghosts" is how did they get out of the Death City? The only way out was destroyed when Ramza and the party went through the first time. This troper always assumed they had died as escape was pretty much impossible.
 * Well, assume what you want to assume, I'm going by what the ending shows. And the ending shows them doing things it would make zero sense for a ghost to do.
 * The Original PSX game also shows the same FMV ending, there are volumes of Epileptic Trees about whether the FMV is real or not, because if they survived somehow, then where is everyone else? And I am not talking about the generics, I mean, where's Mustadio, Agrias, Meliadoul, Rafa and Malak, and Grand Daddy-o Mr. Thunder God? Olan even asks "Did my dad died bravely?" or something to that effect. Yeah... I love this game.
 * Yeah, all those characters you could have kicked out of the party at any time past their introduction. Same reason that Yuffie and Vincent don't show up in any of Final Fantasy VII's FMV cutscenes--they didn't want to make a bunch of different variations, so they made the cutscene showing all the characters you're guaranteed to actually have.
 * Been a while since I played this game, but did Olan even know that Orlandu switched places with an imposter? If not, could imply that Olan thought Cid died during the battle at Bethla.
 * For the record, Word of God (tweeted by Yasumi Matsuno) is that Ramza and Alma survived. It is even suggested that they went on adventuring in another country.

As a sidenote, it bugs me when someone says they're confused over something, then summarize it with phrases like "so and so talks awhile..." Read the lines maybe and it'll clear things up a bit. They're not just there as window dressing, you know.
 * I can't believe this hasn't been brought up yet... Why, of course, the ridiculous break of (Gameplay and Story Segregation) in the mission when Teta dies. Even if you go to a ridiculous length to get a chemist up to her to heal her, or use a white mage, nothing you can do can save her. For goodness sake, though, it's only a crossbow bolt! Even level 1 mooks can survive that, and even if they don't, you have three rounds to revive them. That Just Bugs Me.
 * The battle system really isn't a simulation, so that kind of flaws the logic of that. The whole purpose is to provide the actual mechanics to play the game, not that a person actually needs to be bashed eight times in the head with a sword before they die.
 * She's a level ??? Commoner. She's lucky she survived that long, probably because Golgaros didn't seem to have a pet cat.
 * Plus, if you look at Algus' gear, he's got a nice crossbow from a little later in the game that has On-Hit Poison. Chances are, she's in shock. She's got to get back up to shield Delita anyway.
 * Just what DOES happen at the end with Delita and the princess? She..stabs him, then he stabs her, then he talks a while and...what? It seems really quite nonsensical, and for the life of me I can't figure out what it was supposed to mean.
 * That scene is set an indeterminate amount of time after the end of the game. It shows how Delita and Ovelia ended up. For an unknown reason, they wind up killing each other; it is implied that this is Delita's inevitable end. From Teta's death onward he doesn't have friends, just pawns. Even the woman that he loves, he used as a tool to obtain his status, and my pet theory is that Ovelia attacked him in self defense, knowing full well that he was coming to kill her. I'm sort of assuming that she needed to die for his purposes, and she overheard his plan... With his dying words, Delita thinks back sadly on Ramza. We know from the opening that Delita wound up taking all of the credit for ending the war and saving the world, so Delita is thinking back on the real hero of the story (see above).
 * It is fairly likely that he didn't actually die in that scene. It is a historical fact of the setting that he had a long and prosperous reign, and he was behaving very awkwardly about bringing her flowers. Had they been together for a long and prosperous reign over a (relatively) peaceful kingdom, he probably wouldn't have had the early-relationship jitters.
 * Well, she spells out why she stabs him: She saw how he manipulated everyone, including his best friend, and believed he would continue to do so, including to her. She believed he'd become the very thing he had always hated, and she hated him for it. The tragedy is, he was bringing her flowers for her birthday, and his actions leading up to that implied that he really had fallen in love with her (that's my interpretation, anyway). It wraps up the dichotomy between him and Ramza: Ramza may have been branded a villain by history, but he got what was really important, his sister and freedom. Delita would go down in history as a Hero King, but end up with no friends, and no love. What I don't get is, with all his strength and fighting ability, he couldn't have just disarmed her?
 * Maybe he had counter equipped. In all seriousness, most soldiers would probably go for a kill on instinct. And since he didn't expect her to do, that he just reacted to being attacked. Excuse me if my memory of the scene is hazy and he had plenty of time to disarm before killing.
 * It's over in a few seconds, but there is a noticeable pause between Delita getting stabbed and Delita stabbing her (presumably during which he's wresting the knife from her). But yeah, it probably was more of a gut reaction/reflex than anything, though.


 * Is the continent used in this game's setting related at all to the one used in any of the other games set in Ivalice?
 * Yes, but apparently it takes place after the downfall of technology and some of the other races went extinct.
 * From what I understand, FFT takes place west of where Final Fantasy XII does. One of the pages on this wiki has a link to a picture with both maps put together.
 * There's still points of contention. The Ultimania Guide gives us this timeline, which gives the possibility that the past of FFXII Ivalice was concurrent with the past of FFT Ivalice... but the map that fans stitched together supposedly contradicts the actual games. Maybe Ivalice is meant to be a land of legends, home to many tales and myths, and the histories we've seen are interpretations from distant observers. At best, Olan and Alazlam might have gotten bits of geography wrong; at worst, "Ivalice" is a different region in every different game, and the references between the various Ivalices are Shout Outs for fans rather than Continuity Nods.
 * How did the mourners know that Alma was dead if she and Ramza were trapped in Murond Death City? Did they just assume she was after a few months? Did Altima's final attack send them back somehow?
 * Alma and Ramza never die(at least that's what's implied), but yes they just assume that since neither of them returned.
 * How did Alma gain approximately 50 levels from when she fights as a guest at the beginning of Chapter 3 to the final battle?
 * Perhaps being possessed by St. Ajora gave her that power, which stayed after she came out.
 * She spent a lot of time level grinding when Folmarv wasn't looking.
 * Fighting off possession ought to be worth some XP...
 * If we allow the possibility that Ramza and Alma (at least, but possibly even the rest of Ramza's troops) survived the final battle, how did they escape Mullonde at all? The portal connecting the city to the monastery was destroyed. Also, Ramza spent the game saving people, so why would he just vanish instead of saving his friend Olan/Orran from being burned at the stake?
 * We've seen Zodiac Stones save people in the past. They revived Marach, for one thing. Also, we've seen people affected by the stones teleport. The scene with Marach also implies that the stones aren't good or evil, they simply react to the one who wields them; therefore, my theory is that the stones saved everyone in the end by teleporting them out just in time to escape the explosion.
 * They all switched to Dragoon and jumped out. Seriously, though, if you've got 20 soldiers with you (possibly including a machinist and a robot) you can improvise some sort of escape. As to why they didn't save Olan...Well, we're not given an exact time frame for when he published his report; if it was months after Ramza and Alma fled the country, then they simply weren't around to help. There's also the fact that Ramza is branded a heretic, and if he shows his face, he's going to be hunted down.

Honestly, I just don't like the Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies ending theory because it makes Ramza's quest almost pointless. I mean, he was in it to save his sister, so then you make the ending where she--and everyone else--dies anyway? What was the point, then?
 * But Ramza was already a heretic that everyone was hunting down. He killed (and was charged with killing) high-ranking Church officials, people probably heard how he killed a Marquis and other nobles, and so on and so forth. Unless they all fled Ivalice for another kingdom, they must have heard about Olan's report and subsequent incarceration. While I firmly believe that everyone did escape the Dead City and lived out the rest of their lives in peace, the fact that they let Olan face his own fate alone Just Bugs Me. It's even worse in the PSP version, which shows that Agrias cares enough about Ovelia to keep in touch, but she never went to check up on her Queen after the Final Battle either.
 * Yeah, he was already branded a heretic. And at the end of the game, everyone thinks he's dead, and thus nobody's hunting him any more. If he shows up to save Olan, that means everyone finds out he's still alive, and he's right back to being hunted. Plus, as was mentioned earlier, we don't have a solid time frame for when Olan was executed. If Ramza's already fled the country, then he's simply not there.
 * Olan was burned at the stake five years after the game's ending.
 * Having engineers and whatnot in your party to come up with hare-brained escape plans doesn't help you escaping from another dimension that was opened up by crazy mage guy and then the apparent only way in or out was destroyed by said mage guy. I also don't think the teleporting thing works out because for one, not everyone who can teleport has a stone (Zalmo) and all the people who did have the stones wanted to get into Murond Death City, so why go through the whole complex ritual to open the gate if they can just teleport in with the stones? I also don't think dying after saving the world renders your quest pointless. Certainly he was fueled by trying to save Alma, but he was doing things to stop the bad guys before Alma was kidnapped.
 * And none of the villains use the stones to bring someone back from the dead, either. They clearly do different things for different people, and if whatever power behind the stones is willing to pull off a full-on resurrection for the deserving, I see no reason they couldn't help Ramza out and get him out of the hell-hole as a reward for saving the world.
 * It was established that a Zodiac Stone could power an ancient robot, perhaps they could do the same for an airship. Take a look at the final battleground... Sure that airship looks pretty beat-up, but not so much that a Gadgeteer Genius with some strong friends couldn't get it back to working order.
 * Mullonde seemed to be a pocket dimension rather than a physical space in Ivalice, so perhaps its very existence hinged on Ultima's soul being trapped there - with the bodily destruction of Ultima, Mullonde may have collapsed in on itself and spat the party back into Ivalice proper.
 * There's no proof that there was only on entrance, they could have found another for all we know.


 * How can Balthier be killed in the remake of the game? He's the leading man, and the leading man never dies!!
 * Because he's a cameo instead this time, and he realizes it.
 * Why are Ribbons gender-specific in this game when they could be worn by anyone in the mainline games? What reason did the developers have to make that change?
 * Probably for gameplay balance.
 * Certain combinations of Ramza's birth month compared to Alma's (which is canonically August because her sign is Leo) can lead to Unfortunate Implications: you can make Ramza and Alma twins, or make it so that either one or the other was born several months premature (to the point of biological impossibility). I know it's a concession to allow the player to put their own birth date in for Ramza's, but still, ouch.
 * But what about the years? Alma is a couple years younger than Ramza, isn't she?
 * Nope. I checked the PSP version and Ramza and Alma have the exact same age in their profiles.
 * Well, the Final Fantasy wiki gives Ramza's age as 17-21, and Alma's as 15, so it could be that SE just made a mistake on the PSP profiles.
 * Bringing the discussion over whether Delita ripped out Balamfula's tongue here from the main page. Original cut in the folder:

Ow, my tongue!

 * Having said that, the original PS 1 translation (and possibly the remake too) imply some people seem to think that.
 * If by "imply" you mean
 * But
 * Just to answer the last point: There are a lot of one-time-only actions in that game. The thief stomping on his hat, for instance. That guy right in the beginning that gets stabbed, rather than using a regular slash (as cited in Going Through the Motions). Clearly, the guys making this game weren't about what was "easier" to do, as evidenced by all the unique sprite poses in various in-game cutscenes.
 * Just to answer the last point: There are a lot of one-time-only actions in that game. The thief stomping on his hat, for instance. That guy right in the beginning that gets stabbed, rather than using a regular slash (as cited in Going Through the Motions). Clearly, the guys making this game weren't about what was "easier" to do, as evidenced by all the unique sprite poses in various in-game cutscenes.
 * Just to answer the last point: There are a lot of one-time-only actions in that game. The thief stomping on his hat, for instance. That guy right in the beginning that gets stabbed, rather than using a regular slash (as cited in Going Through the Motions). Clearly, the guys making this game weren't about what was "easier" to do, as evidenced by all the unique sprite poses in various in-game cutscenes.

And the female scream discretion shot isn't unexplained: It's for narrative tension, and we know vaguely what's happening and why there's a scream. Delita attacked her. Him going so far as to cut her tongue out seems unnecessarily brutal, and the only evidence is that she doesn't talk in a scene that she's only in to show that Delita didn't kill her. "Orran: I believe Delita may be just the man you [Ramza] said - pure of heart, in the end. When Valmafra revealed herself for an agent of Mullonde, he made it appear as though he'd killed her, then let her run. I think he must have caught a glimpse of himself in her - a tool manipulated by Lord Folmarv."
 * Orran's dialogue at the end (in both versions, but especially the PSP version) seems to contradict this theory. He was in the room at the time, and he wouldn't be speaking so highly of Delita if he had just witnessed him mutilating his own subordinate in his last scene.

Back to regular stuff

 * This supports my opinion that there's a way out of Murond/Mullonde, but why would the bad guys destroy the only way out if, indeed, it was the only way out? The place is a wasteland and has nothing of value. Unless Vormav/Folmarv's plan was to resurrect Ajora and then just relax with him/her and whatever underlings survive Ramza's rescue attempt, he HAD to have a way out planned, or something that someone could have found. Which is why after everyone survives the explosion (seriously, Agrias has Chantage and just hops back to her feet and then Phoenix Downs everyone), Ramza probably grinded his way to Kletian's level and ripped a hole in space using nothing but his now absurdly powerful magic.
 * It doesn't seem likely that anyone else knew that mage (can't remember his name) had destroyed the portal. He was the last one through because he was busy fighting Ramza, so by the time he got through and destroyed the portal, the remaining knights were ahead. It does make a Good Job Fixing it Villain moment though, if that is the case.
 * Fanfiction JBM: There are a number of stories which essentially retell the story with a twist, and inevitably Rad, Lavian, and Alicia are minor characters who get a bit of development, almost always with Rad being Gafgarion's evil sidekick while Lavian and Alicia serve under Agrias. Which I'm fine with. No, what gets me is that there is a third female knight at Orbonne, who warns everyone about the attack. This knight is NOT Lavian or Alicia... And I've yet to see a fanfic which covers the Orbonne event and even mentions her beyond recycling her line from the game script. She comes in bleeding, everybody goes out to fight, and then poof, she's gone.
 * She's probably dead.
 * Which, in the game, is fine. However, in a story which focuses more on the characters than the adventure (as most fanfiction does), it's a little jarring to have someone be completely ignored when two other characters get completely fleshed out.
 * Ramza can shout at himself to make himself go faster. The mental image is hilarious.
 * He must be a Sayian!
 * Something I noticed when I played Tactics Ogre (pretty much FFT's predecessor) was at one point of that game you got the chance to give a name to your army/squad. It was a cool way to personalize your army. But here, I guess what bothers me is that Ramza's army/squad was never given an official name during the game, despite the fact it (potentially) got so big and important enough to become its own faction gameplay-wise. It's also strange when you consider that over the course of the game Ramza's squad was at first connected to The Order of the Northern Sky, then became mercenaries, and finally vagabonds/heretics. As a squad of knight apprentices at the beginning, I think they should at least been given a platoon/squad/regiment number to differentiate themselves from other groups when they started out.
 * Platoon/Squad/Regiment numbers and names don't really make sense in the context. This was a small number of nobles, not grunt soldiers. Each one would be identified and recognized by their individual name. The mercenary phase wasn't an individual group, they worked for Gargarion. They weren't a faction during the heretic/vagabond phase. Also keep in mind they weren't a big group. The smallest named groups still numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands.
 * So Larg and presumably Dycedarg and possibly Zalbag arrange a false flag operation to kidnap Ovelia and pin it on Goltanna. And for the most sensitive part of the mission - the man that will actually kidnap and transport Ovelia, they choose the guy whose sister they killed?
 * If memory serves, Delita wasn't chosen for the mission. When Dycedarg was talking with Gafgarion, the later asked what the hell was up with the guy doing the task, and former told him that the men they sent were found dead in the forest near the monastery. Delita was a spanner in the works.
 * When you try to dismiss Ramza from your party, he is actively aware of you, and claims that you cannot find the truth without him. Normally, I'd chalk this up to breaking the fourth wall, but this happens in the updated, more serious translation as well. Is Ramza somehow still alive, talking to a person who represents the player with the scholar studying the War of the Lions?
 * The various in-game biographies refer to characters having a relationship with the player. For example, Alazlam says in Alma's biography says she is "Your younger sister". The player is Ramza, not the scholar Arazlam. And even then, Arazlam, who is a descendant of Orran Durai (an ally of Ramza), is implied to be publishing his report about 400 years after the events of the game. Ramza isn't even alive by the time the scholar narrates the story.
 * There's one thing I totally do not understand. In the start of chapter 2, when the party tries to save a chocobo from a gang of goblins, why is it a Game Over if it dies (other than the obvious "you failed to protect him" game mechanic)? Seriously, the story does not change afterwards and you can get rid of the damned bird if you want to!
 * You actually don't HAVE to save Boco if you don't want to. Just choose the first option listed when you have the choice. Still, it's actually a bad idea to NOT choose to save him. If you choose the first option, you lose 10 brave for the battle, 2 of which is a permanent loss. And besides, it's one of the easiest 'Save X' battles in the game, right next to the very next story battle at Zeirchile Falls, where you need to rescue Ovelia. Honestly, failing either of these battles requires either horrible luck, or actively sabotaging your own efforts.
 * How can you use jump techniques when you're indoors?
 * Let's just say Ramza and company won't be paying for the roof's repairs, and call it a day.
 * They're apparently jumping into an alternate dimension that contains the skybox. (Don't believe me? Have Ramza jump on someone with Blade Grasp. Ramza then becomes a useless sky-walker unless he has a gun equipped.)

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