16-bit Summary of FFXIII and FFXIII-2 Story

[Andromeda]

Square Enix released today a video to get players up to speed on the trilogy for Final Fantasy XIII. However, rather than just editing down cutscenes from the game, they opted to completely do the summary 16-bit style. The summary of the story from both games is extremely brief. So don't expect to explain everything it only covers the major plot points of the game. If you haven't played the games it may leave you with more questions, but if you have played them and just don't remember everything clearly. This will help to jog your memory.

And for the SNES-era FF fans, this one is for you.

[LocoColt04]

Ultros was hiding in Sunleth Waterscape!


~ sent from my Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

[Xanatos]

Hard to believe but this brief summary took Square six months to make.

[Rowan]

Hard to believe but this brief summary took Square six months to make.

So this is what they have been doing instead of getting ff15 released.

[Crescent]

Even in 16 bit form FFXIII only has corridors that move from left to right.

But srsly no matter what I think of the FFXIII series that was an awesome video. Hm...noo 6 mnths is about what I wouldve guessed. Sounds about right.

[Andromeda]

Yeah, making sprites is a time involved process and I can't imagine that they had a lot of people working on it. Probably the reason for it being so long. The way the article read it almost sounded like people might have volunteered their free time for it or at least worked additional hours apart from their standard schedule.

[Sang Hee]

Hard to believe for some but I would have actually liked it better in this style, like FF6.

[Odin1199]

What the hell happened? Why was the Cocoon so important?

[Xanatos]

Cocoon was nothing more but a facade to "produce" enough humans to harvest or sacrifice if you will so Cocoon's L'cie can summon their maker and start anew. In other words Cocoon was a mean to execute their plan.

[Odin1199]

So why would it being destroyed be a bad thing if it was used to clone people? Why did they freeze it and prevent it from falling? I'm even more confused now. The video was too fast for me.

Ok, I got it all backwards. Now I get it. It was their floating continent and earth was bad so to speak.

[Xanatos]

Perhaps produce was not the right word to use even though I placed it under quotation marks, they were not cloned or anything, they increased their number naturally over course of several centuries or so. Cocoon's L'cie pretty much pampered humans the entire time. Annihilating millions of innocent people would be bad, but not as bad as summoning the maker who would I assume destroy everything, Gran Pulse included. Gran Pulse, while savage is not bad or as Cocoon's L'cie like to call it living hell, both sides were tricked by their respective L'cie. Cocoon L'cie made humans completely dependable on them.

This 16bit video is just a brief summary, to get the full scope of things I suggest either playing FF XIII and XIII-2 or at least see a playthrough on youtube. Though confusing at times I for one love XIII's story, I'm not sure in which direction they went later as I have yet to play XIII-2.

[Odin1199]

I'm kind of intrigued to play these games as well. I don't get how the doomsday device appears in LR though. Who created it and for what purpose? Or is it just a countdown till the end of the world?

[Andromeda]

The mythology of the XIII series is a complicated one, since a decent amount of the motives for things by the "bad guys" are not made completely clear until you've read up on the material available in the game. The way it works is there was the original one God or in this case Goddess Myuuin, she created the other God Bhunivelze. Bhunivelze defeated Myuuin and she fleed from the god's realm. However, Bhunivelze foresaw the end of the universe by some unknown force. Believeing it to be Myuuin's revenge, he sought out where she had escaped to, the Unseen Realm. He was however unable to reach the realm so he created three more gods, Pulse, Etro and Lindiez. He tasked Pulse with locating the Unseen Realm and Lindiez to protect him and wake him up when the Unseen Realm was discovered. Etro looked like Myuuin so fearing that he gave her no powers. Distraught over having no goal and no power, Etro committed suicide and her blood she shed became humans which were granted a special gift as a result of being her creating the power between light and darkness. After doing all of this Bhunivelze went to sleep. When Etro died, she passed into the Unseen Realm and found Myuuin who did give her a task and a piece of herself before being completely consumed by the chaos inside the Unseen Realm. Etro's task was to keep the chaos inside the Unseen Realm as Myuuin knew that if it is escaped it would be the end of the universe, which is what Bhunivelze foresaw.

Now Pulse and Lindiez went and created machines that had godlike powers to execute their goals and tasks and then both of them went to sleep as well. What Pulse and Lindiez created were the fal'Cie. The fal'Cie with their more active role in the world and godlike powers, took dominance over humans. All fal'Cie were given a very specific task and were unable to do anything outside of that task. So they made use of humans, who had freedom to do what they could not. When a fal'Cie grants power to a human and places a brand and task to them they become l'Cie. A l'Cie has a specific task they must complete, but the result of being a l'Cie grants you strength and magic. Failure to complete your task or "focus" means turning into a monster Ci'eth, which amounts to being a zombie which eventually becomes a stone forever alive and yet never able to complete your focus. Success as a l'Cie means you become a crystal and go to sleep, with the chance of maybe waking up later, though it is likely to be centuries and anyone you know will be long dead.

That is the core mythology of the series.

Rest is spoilers, so read with caution.

Spoiler: The fal'Cie from Lindiez made Cocoon, which is run and managed by the fal'Cie. When they created it they brought up humans as well. The Cocoon fal'Cie became tired of their task and wanted to return to "the maker" which would be either Lindiez the one that created them or Bhunivelze the one that created everyone, likely Bhunivelze given things. However, as said before the fal'Cie could not do any of that. They had a task and had to follow it no matter how much they wanted change. So they forced l'Cie to do that for them. Their idea was destroy Cocoon, which is home to millions of humans. When humans die a portal to the god's realm. If millions die that portal has to open will be large enough for them to return to Bhunivelze. Unfortunately, what none of them knew was that it is a portal to the Unseen Realm that opens and thus chaos. What happens after that plan is adverted is that through a miracle by the Goddess Etro causing a time paradox by contradicting the expected outcome time gets screwed up. In the course of resolving that issue the heart of Etro is destroyed, which kills the goddess and also what was holding back the chaos. Etro dead, chaos is allowed to run free and escapes the Unseen Realm into the Living Realm. Chaos is a corrupting element that twists all natural laws. The result is that humans no longer can age or give birth, they are still mortal just ageless now. The chaos slowly is destroying the world. Lightning Returns picks up 500 years after the last game where the chaos has reduce the world to only four islands and those will not survive for long. The goal of Lightning to hold back the chaos long enough for Bhunivelze to awaken and take the souls of the humans from the dying world into a new world. The world will end in 6 days with no one doing anything, but Bhunivelze will awaken in thirteen days. That is the end of the world

[Odin1199]

Cool, thanks. It's pretty complex, to say the least. How do beings like Bahamut, Odin, Shiva, etc come into play?

[Andromeda]

Yeah the mythology is pretty interesting. It feels very much like the old stories of how the different gods and land came about in the various polytheistic cultures on Earth.

Bahamut, Odin, Shiva, Alexander and a couple of new summons are beings that come to test l'Cie when they have either lost their way or lost hope. They are challenges that if passed they gain even greater power, if they fail they die. They use the FFIX term of Eidolons for the name. Ifrit, Carbuncle and others show up in different references through the game, like Carbuncle is the fal'Cie of agriculture if I remember right.

[Sang Hee]

I didn't understand 13's story at all, maybe because I refused to read a ton of text and what the characters talked about made no sense to me. So I liked 13-2's story better. Caius was out to destroy the world through Chaos and stop time so that Yeul would not have to die anymore. Easy.

[Odin1199]

Why did she have to die? I don't get any of it. Why couldn't he pull her out of the time loop thing, as shown in the 16 bit video?

[Andromeda]

If you're asking about Yeul dying. The reason for her dying is because she is the seeress. Being the seeress allows you to see the future and create prophecies. However, if something happens to cause the timeline to change, like with what happened with Etro's miracle. Then the seeress is forced to see the entire new timeline, no stopping it. The problem with it is that the human body wasn't designed to see all that and when timelines are changing frequently due to the heroes interference, it happens frequently and that results in her eventual death. As long as time changes, she is going to die no matter where she is. Which is why the villain of XIII-2 wants to stop time, if time no longer exists, she can't die anymore as a result of changes.

Which is why XIII-2 is interesting. Depending on your point of view and how deep you look into it. Your role could be seen more as a villain or at the very least mass murder. Since due to your actions of trying to fix things has caused all Seeress in the past, present and future to all die. And the villain is actually the good guy in the situation since he's trying to stop you from changing the timeline again which is killing her repeatedly. XIII-2 is a pretty grim game, especially the side endings.