I started working on my next Final Fantasy Character Assessment, but it’s been a tiring week, and I decided to save it to draft. For those of you who are fans of that feature, never fear; it will return. The Shameful Narcissist doesn’t give up that easily 🙂
Today’s question was inspired by a post on LightningEllen’s Release, Question of the Month: Sept 2017 Edition. The post itself comes from yet another blog called Later Levels that hosts the QOTM event. All the information is in LightningEllen’s link, and I now follow the good folks at Later Levels, too.
While this is not an exact mimic of the question at hand, it did spur the thought. So I’d like to know…
Who is your favorite Final Fantasy NPC?
I started with IV and worked my way through, but it wasn’t until I reached Final Fantasy VIII that I knew I had my unplayable person.
Ellone, a young woman with the mysterious time powers that were never explained in the story. She wasn’t a sorceress, and (as far as we know) she wasn’t junctioning a GF. Even if she was, none of your playable characters had that ability when they were. Ellone could send peoples’ consciousness back into time by putting them into people from the past. It’s eerily similar to Bran’s power in Game of Thrones and ASOIAF, though Ellone insists neither she nor anyone she sends back can change what they witness.
Due to this ability, Ellone is sought by both Adel and Ultimecia, the sorceresses from the past and future respectively. According to the wiki, Ellone’s powers allowed Ultimecia to control Edea and then Rinoa in the past through the machine Dr. Odine invented “creatively” named Junction Machine Ellone. So while Ellone herself could only connect consciousnesses across time in order to observe, the sorceress could control people and therefore change events. FFVIII has a lot of wibbly wobbly timey wimey shenanigans to parse through.
Squall knew Ellone as “Sis,” and in some of his own flashbacks, it’s probably no coincidence that he constantly states, “I’m all alone,” as a sorrowful double entendre.
She is one of the most interesting characters in that her powers are paramount to the game’s narrative, since time travel is the major catalyst, and she alone has time travel powers. Though her abilities are never explained, they still fit within the Final Fantasy VIII universe, and she, theoretically, could be considered akin to a Guardian Force (GF), since Ellone is necessary as an intermediary to connect one consciousness to another. She’s like a fully sentient weirwood tree.
Who is your favorite NPC in the Final Fantasy universe? If you haven’t really played Final Fantasy then what game/franchise contains your favorite NPC and who is it?
The Shameful Narcissist Speaks 
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I have a whole 21 hours of Final Fantasy XIII under my belt, so…. Fang. Because she’s a reflection of and a foil to Lightning and I love seeing them together.
Otherwise, this is a hard question. I mean, there are plenty of characters I love, but I’m going to arbitrarily go with Solid Snake in MGS2 because his situation is pretty unique. Without spoiling too much, it’s nice seeing him from the perspective that the player is given in that game, after the perspective the player has in previous games….
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“Let’s have a look. Don’t be shy.”
“…okay…?”
😂
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And thus my love of Fang was cemented into my heart!
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See, I thought Fang was playable! She definitely is in Brave Exvius lol.
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Ack you’re right. I think she’s playable for a hot second in this game, too. Oops… sigh oh well….
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Hey if you told me she wasn’t, I would’ve believed you lol.
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Oh. Erm… yes… she’s totally an NPC, then… yes… 😉
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I always thought she was a playable character! I don’t know much about FFXIII, but it’s close to the top of my queue to play next.
I definitely need to watch some Let’s Plays of Metal Gear.
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Seymour! I mean, I know FF is notorious for silly hairdos, but that cut was just absurd.
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FFX was a game of major extremes. Seymour 100% had the most ridiculous hair of anyone in the FF world and Tidus had the most asinine outfit (and laugh). Can you imagine those clothes with THAT hair. It would be a mess…or the hottest new fashion in 2018. Seriously, some of the things I’ve seen on runways look like they took inspiration from FFX.
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Blitzball is still amazing though 😉
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I was NEVER good at that game lol.
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I got to the second last boss in FFVIII but I don’t remember Ellone at all… I’ll have to pay more attention when I give it another shot, haha. A FFVIII remake would be awesome to see someday!
I’m going to say every depressed NPC in Lightning Returns. I had so much fun helping The Savior save everyone 🙂
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I should’ve added this, but she has the same FF character archetype as Aeris! She’s the “magic girl” who’s sought by the powers that be in order to exploit her gifts, and she’s a far more interesting character than Rinoa whom the creators didn’t seem to bother even giving a personality.
Aw so many depressed NPCs D:
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The only thing I remember about Rinoa is her cool dog, haha.
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Angelo was the best thing about her character lol. There was this one ability he had that you could totally exploit: Angelo Search. You’d get into a battle with this one enemy in Esthar, blind them, and leave the game on overnight. When you turned it back on and finished the battled, you’d have SO much stuff.
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Noted for my future attempt at beating this game! 🙂
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I will tell you my most unfavourite one: Namingway! His character was a sneaky, miserable guy that got under my skin so badly the first time I ever played FFIV. Faking being sick in bed and asking me to change my name… hmph!
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He didn’t even have the decency to tell you he was an alien! Cecil can be forgiven. He didn’t know…plus he was hot 😉
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Amen to that!
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I kind of have the opposite problem with Ellone. She’s got so much going on, and she’s so important to the plot, but I keep forgetting about her completely when thinking back on Final Fantasy VIII. Nothing bad about her character, she just gets completely overshadowed by so much else in that game, to me.
As far as my favorite NPC in Final Fantasy, I think that’d be Cid. Yep, definitely Cid. The one and only.
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Tbh I had to think about all of the NPCs in the games starting with IV until I remembered her, then I thought “Holy shit, she’s such an important character!”
I like that sometimes Cid is an NPC and sometimes he’s not 🙂
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https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/a/a9/Gau%27s-Father%27s-House-FFVI-iOS.png/revision/latest?cb=20140130033215
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Sorry for first failed embed :p
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That dude who threw out his own son o.O He was quite amusing…if kind of a monster lol.
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Memorable though!
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Chocolina. She’s got the goods… in more ways than one.
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Her tiny self with her tiny bikini :p
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I love this! I am always intrigued by time travel. I actually just wrote a blogpost about an imaginary time-travel scenario! 🙂 Thanks for this interesting read!
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Time travel is one of those topics that you can pretty much do anything with 🙂
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